The Grouch's Trash Pile [Baldur's Gate 3]

I could have finished 6.0 on Phae but instead I spent an hour or so messing around with glam and re-doing all of Phae's portraits, so now he's parked in the third part of the last zone contemplating existence.

Spoiler: The portraits are good, though!

Tried to get a little more rockstar with them than his previous really boring headshots.

BONUS:



This is supposed to be a joke about being a green DPS but I just realized it'd probably work better if I went for a red background and the healer icon, whoops.

 

If this job coaching has done anything, it's made looking for training by myself and just settling on something 1000% more appealing because it's been such a soul crushing waste of time. I can force myself to scroll relevant websites and struggle through reading them on my own so I don't have to spend two hours and 8€ of transit fare for the privilege. x_x

 

Oh hell yes I have an optometrist appointment in an hour. I've been putting this off for waaaay too long, not helped by my attempt at making an online appointment a couple of months ago ending in an error, AFTER filling a bunch of forms. I just walked there and made the appointment in person this time. :P I noticed I got my tax return a couple of weeks ago so that lit a fire under my ass to getting it done because progressive lenses are not cheap.

 

After an eye exam and getting the cheapest possible lenses with the cheapest possible frames (as well as these bc it was buy one get one free, so why not) I'm 143€ poorer. Bleh. Absolute tragedy that all of the 'not hideously boring' frames start at 89€; there were some extremely cool bright blue frames and some cool multicolored frames but. 89€!!! The 60€ I saved can go to new underwear (or a new sports bra... ugh). =_=

I'm glad I at least got over my hangups over wearing 'women's' glasses bc the colors available in the cheap range in men's are black, clear, and gray, and the more expensive frames aren't much better. Outside of cat's eye glasses the styles aren't any different. It's so stupid.

Anyway in 10 days I will be free from 'everything is slightly blurry and it's giving me eyestrain' hell.

 

I was feeling mopey about not springing for Cool But Expensive Frames but it occurred to me that with the money I didn't spend on those, I could put toward a cool shirt from Morningwitchy...

>_>
<_<

 

And, well. The basic frames I got still aren't bad; I remember going to get glasses 21 years ago and the frames available for cheap were absolutely hideous thick black plastic. Anything that wasn't wretchedly ugly was at least $100, and that was in 2002 money. (I technically didn't 'need' glasses because at that point I was only slightly nearsighted in one eye, but it was very noticable for me. If I sit in the back of a classroom and the board is hard to read, it's not good enough!)

Funny enough, my left eye hasn't changed a ton since then, but my right eye went from perfect vision to noticibly worse.

 

Man even my optometrist was like "yeah if you care about style you're better off ordering your frames online and bringing them to me for measurement, there's not a pair of frames I can't make lenses for :)" and he was right! I even have a pair of military surplus snow goggles with corretive lenses b/c he knew exactly the right shop to make the chamfer to make them sit right. Apparently the margins on frames are just shit all around, and almost every optic I know will happily make new lenses for old frames or even entirely new frames you brought yourself.

 

'_'

orz

Part of me is very WHY AM I ONLY FINDING OUT ABOUT THIS NOWWWWW but the other part is sensibly telling me that I would have had to find an optometrist who could do this and not whoever I could get at Specsavers ASAP. But still: arrrrgh. (Not that I'm sad to replace the old frames, I'm tired of basic black and the plastic of them is all clouded.)

I'll keep that in mind for later, though, and because J has a pair of frames he's been told they just can't make custom lenses for... from Specsavers, who ofc want people to buy new frames. And his would be considerably cheaper still, since he doesn't need progressive lenses like I do.

 

After way too many years of fussing and fretting and putting off submitting a name change petition I finally got off my ass and did it a couple of months ago because I realized my passport is expiring in September. I got the decision back today and it went through! I was probably fussing and fretting for no good reason; it's probably a lot less of a sticking point for a middle-aged foreigner to have a weird name than it is a citizen (remembering one of J's friends having trouble getting his name changed to something gender neutral before he transitioned). Well, whatever the case, it's done, now I can tackle the mountain of paperwork I need to do to get it propagated everywhere else it needs to be.

It feels good to have it official, though. Now it can't be taken away from me.

 

Increasingly O_O at the latest forum problem child. What in the middle school mean girl bullshit is going on here????

 

Spoiler: His job is beach.

Well, it's his warrior glam, but close enough.

 

With how rainy it's been, I've decided I need to finally invest in a pair of rubber boots. If this continues all autumn, I'll need them if I want to go on walks at all.

... I don't know why I was under the impression that rubber boots wouldn't cost a fortune... /o\

Oh well. I'll suck it up, take a trip to Etola in a couple of days since they offer them in All The Colors (at least for someone who can wear women's sizes) and see if I can find something I like to match (clash with) my BRIGHT ORANGE poncho. At least I think it's orange, it's one of the ones J and I bought on insistance of his brother because they can be used to make emergency shelters with but I haven't actually had much reason to take it out and kind of forgot about it.

 

I dug it out and my poncho is indeed bright orange. I wish I'd remembered it a few days ago when I did take a walk in the rain, and ended up getting soaked because the light jacket I thought was ok for a rain jacket is, uh, also only ok for light rain. It's also only hip-length, so I was wet all down my front and my sneakers are definitely looking a little worse for the wear now.

 

Hey I know it's been ten thousand years since we talked but I just wanted to say hello and sorry about the rain!

 

Rubber boots: acquired! (Turquoise, a color only second to violet in Bestness.) My very first pair, if you can believe that. I asked J if I was Finnish yet and he was like, hmm, have you ever queued to get a free bucket? That's a no so I still have a ways to go u_u (Even though I think that tradition may have started after I moved here...?)

 

No, no, Finns have been doing shit for free buckets since at least the age of my parents.

Have you thrown your cell phone across a field yet?

 

I have not. XD Maybe if we were still in the era of Nokia bricks! (J had to look that one up -- cell phone throwing contests?)

 

Spoiler: Some Phae Pictures

His job...



... is no longer beach.

New tank glam. It fortunately only took me ten runs total of Aglaia to get it all; unfortunately, it took me ten runs and WOW I'm tired of Aglaia now. But he looks really, really good.

I also discovered there are a lot of bad tanks out there that can barely keep aggro against a shoddily geared warrior. :P




Even though his job is no longer beach, he's still a total himbo. I do wish this chest model was on the aiming gear as well so he could look the same between those jobs. Oh well.





My current favorite part of his FC house, the 'portal' into the basement, meant to evoke The Secret World's Agartha portals.

 

Ah, right, the formless dread and fuss I've felt all day did have a cause -- on Monday my mom told us she was really sick with something, sicker than she's been for a long time, and we hadn't heard back from her about it. Turns out her and her husband have covid. :( I'm really worried because they both have health problems. I hope that they just feel awful and it won't be so bad once it passes...