This is the last post I'm making to LJ. I'll be at Dreamwidth only, full-time, after this.

If you don't do DW, I'm happy to keep in touch via gchat or email (lassarina dot aoibhell at gmail).

There are only a couple people here who don't mirror, and for you - I'm sorry, I love you, I want to stay in touch and am happy to do so on another site, but.

Yeah.

I am pleased to report that all of the April Fool's nonsense I personally encountered yesterday was adorable rather than terrible, which is a trend that I Hope continues. I'd rather see silly cute things like the Flight Rising HD Beta than nasty antics.

Anyway, it is now a new month and that means I get to face up to how poorly I did on March goals, and also check in for the year since we're a quarter done. (How did that happen? It's a fucking mystery, I swear.)

So, without further ado, here we go!

( this is gonna get long.Collapse )

I've posted this at http://lassarina.dreamwidth.org/1176153.html and you may comment there or here. On Dreamwidth, this entry has comments.

Tags: resolutions 2017

This time next week I am going to be talking about Persona 5 aaaaaah!

Ahem.

Welcome back to What Are You Playing Wednesday! What's new this week? What did you recently conquer? What are you hovering in eager anticipation of?

In console-game news, I've been making a lot of progress in Puzzle and Dragon Z - I'm almost to the fourth Skydragon temple, and I have comprehensively hit the point where having a higher skill level than the game expects (thanks to having played a fair bit of the mobile game) no longer compensates for not having stopped to grind. Fortunately, I have a lot of the runes that allow me to run metal/sapphire/etc. dragon dungeons, which are both worth a bunch of XP on their own merits and give me eggs to level up my monsters, so that's good.

Otherwise, it's been a lot of MMOs and mobile games. I'm level 35 Dragoon in FF14 (and making grand progress on a Scholar level 60 relic), and I didn't dive headfirst into the patch last night but oh, do I plan to. OH BOY do I plan to do that. I discovered that the latest build was not running very well on my iMac (kernel panic errors in the middle of the last boss fight.....no) so I've been learning how to actually play the PS4 copy I have. I'm getting better. Slowly. I actually really like movement controls, but I miss my hot bars.

In mobile games, I am having exceptionally lovely luck with the 2nd anniversary pulls in Record Keeper, though I did not get Celes's Overstrike and had to remind myself not to spend real money on trying to pull one specific thing. And I finally managed a Y'shtola pull in the Ifrit event in FFBE, and conquered all the levels of the Tactics event and can reliably grind Pro for red orbs, so that's exciting. :D

So! What's going on with you?

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Tags: what are you playing wednesday

Hello, friends! The middle of another week and that means it's time for What Are You Playing Wednesday!

I know several of you *side-eyes* are head-down in Mass Effect: Andromeda. I'm not, yet, but I've got plenty else going on.

I took a (for me) big step and crossed six games I was not enjoying off my backlog. It's very likely I'll add a seventh, but in the meantime I'm enjoying this rare moment of having substantial backlog progress going.

I've been making steady progress in all of my games; I picked up the third skydragon jewel in Puzzle and Dragon Z (where I also finally hit the wall where my skill at the game is not enough to make up for not having stopped to grind up monsters at all, so I guess I'm gonna have to do that, now.)

Last week I played some more of FF13 for my husband and we hit Palumpolum, AKA "where all the feelings live," so that sure was a thing. A thing that happened.

I hit level 30 Dragoon in FF14 and started working on a new relic, which has been pretty successful so far. In FFBE, I'm grinding enthusiastically at the FF14 event, and also taking great advantage of the current event in FF Record Keeper.

What about you?

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Tags: what are you playing wednesday

Good evening, gentlefolk! It is that time of week again (no, I don't know where it went either), so!

Anything new and shiny in your hands/console/computer/phone/etc.? Anything you're perched like a gargoyle over, waiting for it to land? Anything you just finished?

For me, I finally finished doing everything in Bravely Second tonight! I cannot believe it took me so long to get through it when I blitzkrieged the first one so hard, but grinding out bestiary really wore me down.

I've also been poking at Puzzle and Dragon Z, and I'm in the second area.

Other than that, it's been quiet apart from achieving Bard 60 in FF14.

How about you?

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Tags: what are you playing wednesday

So it snowed a lot in Chicago the past couple of days. Not nearly enough for me to stay home from work, naturally, but enough to have to get up an hour early yesterday to shovel, and to have to do the same tonight when I got home. ._. come on, weather, it's March, could we not? (Also, it seems unusually cruel to throw a "get up early and shovel snow!" on top of the fucking Monday after the time change, seriously.)

Regardless, it's been a productive few days. celeloriel gave me a ton of amazing feedback on the novel and at least I have some idea what the hurdles are (they are large, but we eat the whale one bite at a time, and yes I am mixing my metaphors all over today, thank you.) I got started on incorporating some of what she said, and we'll see how I do with it.

I am not having a particularly good series of brain-function days right now; we're in the awkward part of the year where light has come back but it's still cold and I can't absorb enough sunlight yet to make up for the past few months, so I'm just vehemently cranky at everything and everyone. Also I don't want to do anything productive, which is...tricky.

While I'm complaining, I took the cats to the vet on Saturday and that cost me a chunk of money - they needed checkups and shots, and then the vet wanted to test Zelda's blood and urine for her renal disease, and it turns out she has a UTI, so I got to add the testing (and eventually, meds) for that....she's lucky she's cute. (This is a joke. I take good care of my cats, or try to do the best I can.)

In less complain-y news, I finally beat Bravely Second. I think I'm going to have to NG+ a couple of things - I'm missing one Cat Skill, and a couple of weapons, some of which were apparently missable steals (thanks, game), and I just have to do the very last optional boss fight, and then I'm all set! Fortunately NG+ in this game is not the worst, so I can probably take care of that pretty fast, if I decide to.

( some spoiler mumblingCollapse )

So yeah, I did that, and I played some of A Link to the Past - I'm in the first Dark World dungeon and I'm seriously considering walking away because I'm just deeply frustrated, to be honest. I'll see if, once I shake my brain back into gear, I approach it better--but over the weekend I knocked a couple games off my backlog that I know I'll never want to get around to and it felt pretty good, so I'm considering having a good, hard, unflinching look at said backlog and rampaging through it, getting rid of anything that I tried and then walked away from for boredom or frustration reasons. But I probably should not do that when I'm mega-cranky. (Either that or this is the BEST time to do it...)

Okay. Off to FF14 - where I am now a level 60 bard and possessed of a shiny new relic Scholar weapon - to play with Sev for the night :D

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Tags: bravely default, snow, video games, zelda

Good evening, friends! It is that time of the week again and therefore: whatcha playing? Got your eye on new shinies? Clutching ones that just came out to your chest and muttering "My preciousssss" over and over again?

I made a lot of progress on different fronts, myself:

* In FF14, I'm at level 58 and 2/3 on my bard, which means I'm just a bit more than a level away from max!

* In Bravely Second, I'm sitting right at the final boss (I tried to take it on with my "eh I'll run through the final dungeon leveling up extra jobs" party and, er, that was not a wise decision on my part.)

* I started Puzzle and Dragon Z, which is stupendously adorable and I forgot how nice it is to wreck early-game stuff when your skills vastly outclass the game's assumptions about same.

* In FF Brave Exvius, I fully cleared (with all Completes, even) the Type-0 event, which is the first time I've done that. Now I'm wishing I had time to play Type-0, which I totally bought at release, but...

* Persona 5 in less than one month. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. I cannot even contain my squee.

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Tags: what are you playing wednesday

Here is a conversation that happened between seventhe and myself this afternoon, re: Final Fantasy Brave Exvius. We were yelling about Lasswell and his canonical preference for dudes:

Rina
....fuck
What if Lasswell/Gabranth bonding over guarding Larsa and Rain
Help pls

Sev
your brain did the thing didn't ~~~~~ yep
It did the thing
I love it tho

Rina
Curious, were you expecting that specific iteration or just "yep Rina is kinked as fuck for knights"

Sev
Not that particular combo but I was expecting Lasswell x Knightly FF Partner
My brain went to Lasswell/Kain unrequited love

Rina
....I hate/love you so much

Sev
Ahahahahaha
This is why ILU

(This is a totally normal conversation for us to have, in tone/style if not substance.)

ANYWAY. It is now March, and that means goals! Spoilers: I did an awful job in February, because as predicted, I overcommitted myself.

Video Games
In February
*Beat at least one game
* At least 5 hours on a pre-2008 game
* Paladin to 60 (currently 54), Bard to 60 (currently 50)
* At least 2 session of FFXIII
* Post to MU

I whiffed entirely on the first two - I'm near the end of Bravely Second but I decided to fuck around leveling things up instead of progressing, as one does. And I only managed one hour of a pre-2008 game (starting up Tales of Symphonia.) I got paladin to 60, but Bard is still at 56.

On the other hand I did play XIII twice, and did post to MU, so there's that!

In March
* Beat Bravely Second
* Bard to 60 (currently 56)
* Dragoon to 50 (currently 21)
* 2 sessions of FFXIII
* 5 hours of a pre-2008 game

Writing
In February
* Edit 4 chapters of Trilogy 1
* Participate in Kiss Battle
* Write 2 genprompt_bingo fics
* Keep up with prompt fics
* 15,000 words overall
* 3,000 words of original fiction (part of prior goal)
* Put in at least 3 hours of editing on Every Light

.....I. Uh. I participated in kiss battle! The rest of this is a total wash. I don't know what I expected, losing 8 days of the 28 available to vacation and fun times, but I still have no capacity to actually judge my own writing product. And now I"m behind on everything.

In March
* Catch up on prompt fics
* Write 3 genprompt_bingo fics - I already have brainstorming done
* 16,500 words
* of which, 3,000 original fic
* Complete Trilogy 1 analysis
* Assignment for Chosen by the Crystals

Financial
In February
* Save $200 toward Scotland trip
* Pack a lunch at least 3 days a week

I did the first, but not the second. Some of that was the weirdness of my schedule but that also contributed to lazy and thus I didn't do things.

In March
* Save $200 for trip
* Pack lunch 3x/week
* Do not buy new games

Health and Spirituality
In February
* Imbolc ritual
* Physical activity 3 days a week (ski trip days count!)
* Meditate once a week for at least 10 minutes

I did the ritual. I did not do the rest.

In March
* Work out 3x/week
* Ostara ritual
* Meditate once a week
* Full moon ritual

Miscellaneous
In February
* Meaningful progress on seasonal embroidery
* Piano practice at least once a week
* DW post, twice a week, excluding what are you playing Wednesday posts
* Read and review 4 books
* Read four magazines

....I did not even pick up a needle. I practiced piano twice. I did manage 2+ DW posts all but one week. I read six books and reviewed 5, but no magazines.

In March
* Read 5 magazines
* Read 4 books
* of which, one non-comfort
* Review them
* DW posts 2x/week excluding WAYPW
* Practice piano once a week
* 6 hours on sewing project
* Watch at least one hour of an LP

I've posted this at http://lassarina.dreamwidth.org/1174753.html and you may comment there or here. On Dreamwidth, this entry has comments.

Tags: resolutions 2017, sev and rina need a hobby

Good morning! It is rain-to-snow here, which means I really want to be tucked up under a blanket playing games, but alas I am not, so let's do the next best thing: talking about them!

What are you playing this week? What are you eyeing longingly that's out and you don't have it, or is coming but not soon enough?

I am making pretty solid progress in Bravely Second, and I'm nearly done maxing out jobs. I've also been making good progress in FF14, having cleared most of the available plot and now finishing up leveling adventures and side quests.

I am also pressing my face to the window with regard to Torment: Tides of Numenera. I never played Planescape: Torment but I heard amazing things about it (and it's on my backlog, thank you, GOG). Numenera sounds amazing but I'm making myself be good and not buy it until I've cleared enough backlog to accommodate that plus my next two purchases (Persona 5 and Zodiac Age.)

This will probably last until I have a really bad day and want to make retail therapy decisions, because I'm realistic about my self-control, but I'm trying.

So! What's in your console, phone, tablet, or computer?

I've posted this at http://lassarina.dreamwidth.org/1174458.html and you may comment there or here. On Dreamwidth, this entry has comments.

Tags: what are you playing wednesday

Last Saturday I got my hair cut!

( pix!Collapse )

I super love it and I think it's intensely adorable.

The rest of the weekend was kind of quiet. I spent 4 very frustrating hours in FF14 Saturday afternoon, trying and failing to get stuff done and not accomplishing it at all. One adventure included timing out of Titan EX, during which we went through three tanks besides myself; the first one dropped, then we got a player with the mentor crown, who proceeded to run one attempt, yell at us all, and quit; then we got another player whom I happen to actually know. I was doing a terrible job, and as I said, we did time out which was incredibly frustrating, but Titan EX is a special circle of hell.

It did get better from there. Paladin and I went out for a Fancy Dinner, for no better reason than I felt like going out, but as it turned out he had just had his review and it was good and came with a raise, so it ended up being a bit of a celebration.

We came home and spent some time in FF14, dragging him through some content and I made progress where I'd been failing before. Sunday was equally chill; I watched him play some of Dishonored 2 and had Feelings about the Kaldwins, and did a lot of grinding in Bravely Second, since I'm at the end and maxing out all jobs before I actually finish the plot.

Sunday night, my friend M was gracious enough to run me through Dun Scaith in FF14, at which I was pretty bad but we had a party full of mentors actually behaving like mentors, being friendly and welcoming and giving explanations and not minding that I was new and dumb.

At that point, paladin went out to take down the trash, and discovered that I had left my car's dome light on (the valet had actually turned on the headlights, which I never do - I let the auto-headlight thing do its thing - and so I had turned on the dome light to figure out where the hell the switch was to turn them back OFF.) Naturally, the battery was dead. He jumped it and we let it run a good fifteen or twenty minutes, and then confirmed it would start again, and came back in.

Well, yesterday morning, the car would not start. ._. I texted my boss that I'd be a bit late and hustled to the bus, thence downtown, to discover that boss was out sick and that left me and a coworker responsible for the new hire starting that day, so that was certainly A Way to start the week. (It was fine; boss sent us the general schedule of what she wanted, and new hire seems pretty self-sufficient.) We took her out to lunch, as we do with new team members, and then I ended up walking home from the train, since it was reasonably warm and not raining and it's only about 3 miles. (In related news, I got 13,000 steps yesterday.) After that, I was not much interested in doing anything useful or cooking, so we ordered Mexican and caught up on the backlog of Blindspot.

Today was much the same; I ran a meeting for requirements, and got to express my Strongly Held Opinions about web design needing to have accessibility features in a forum where they might actually be heeded. I didn't do as much walking, because it's the second flood out there (Husband was going to stop and get me a new car battery, but changed his mind when the deluge started; we are under tornado watch and tomorrow is supposed to be snow and hi, winter, I'm really quite over you, thanks.) But I did come home and make dinner (kielbasa with fried potatoes and baked beans), so there's that.

And now, video games :D

I've posted this at http://lassarina.dreamwidth.org/1174256.html and you may comment there or here. On Dreamwidth, this entry has comments.

Tags: boco, car, final fantasy xiv, hair
Feeling: full

and accordingly, my head is exploding, but I did at least manage to post two Kiss Battle fics, so here are those.

"Unlike," FF Record Keeper, Kain and Celes. "He mistakes her for Rosa." G, 262 words.

Dreamwidth | AO3

"Flammable," FF1, Matoya and f!Black Mage. "Even a witch's books might burn." G, 362 words.

Dreamwidth | AO3

I tried to write more, for bingo or kiss battle, but my brain is having none of it, so I think I shall go curl up and level mindlessly in Bravely Second.

I've posted this at http://lassarina.dreamwidth.org/1173771.html and you may comment there or here. On Dreamwidth, this entry has comments.

Tags: fic pointers

I have no idea what day it is anymore (multiple long weekends will do that to a person), but my calendar reminders inform me that I have only a couple hours to get this post up while it's still Wednesday. XD

So, whatcha playing? Diving into something new and shiny, or revisiting an old favorite?

For me, I spent the weekend plowing through Bravely Second; I am now literally at the point in endgame where I run around the area Clearly Designed For Speed Levelling with autobattle going while I watch TV with my husband (or run dungeons in FF14....) and that's pretty much been my focus. I'm also leveling Bard in FF14, which is slow going because DPS queues, but I'd rather suffer them now than when Stormblood comes out!

So, what's in your consoles, phone, computer, or other device?

I've posted this at http://lassarina.dreamwidth.org/1173615.html and you may comment there or here. On Dreamwidth, this entry has comments.

Tags: what are you playing wednesday

And for the second time, I dropped off of the Internet for most of a week. It was for much the same reason - Very Fun Things in Life - but I think I'm mostly caught up now on posts. If I failed to comment on something I should've, feel free to point me there.

The main reason I was off most of the Internet was that my darling seventhe arrived Wednesday evening for our irregularly scheduled weekend of "pants are the devil and wine is our friend." I picked her up at the airport on Wednesday and brought her home, and we posted the Kiss Battle (p.s. go play!) and curled up playing phone games on my couch with goldmare, whom we subsequently enabled into buying almost all the FF games on Steam since they were on super sale, because we are helpers.

We went to bed entirely too late, and got up Thursday to go to brunch at one of my favorite places. From there, we did a quick spin past the grocery store for things I'd forgotten to acquire, and we went to Binny's to fill out the stocks. We got a bottle of raspberry liqueur and a bottle of peach (both of which are pretty much gone now), and a giant bottle of "French Kiss," which smells like candy, tastes like magic, and will knock me flat on my ass. (Sev dubbed it "giggle juice" for its effect on me.)

We came back to my place and flopped downstairs with FF14; goldmare eventually rejoined us, and we constructed a dinner out of various cheeses, bread, fruit, avocado, pepperoni, and wine, and then we wrangled paladin into watching Kingsglaive with us, which was amazing and I picked up on stuff I had previously missed.

We went to bed much too late, and got up Friday to raid Panera for breakfast. Since it was beautiful outside (60 degrees! in February! I know objectively this is bad but having glorious sunshine in the middle of The Hell of Winter is so good for my soul), we went out with games and books to sit and bask in the sun, which was wonderful. I have gotten so much progress made in Bravely Second - I technically could finish it at any time, but no, I must master all job classes FIGHT ME. Once it started to get chilly out, we went back inside, and then goldmare briefly departed for work, and Sev and I played more FF14 (and dragged her through the ending of 2.0 plot! Yay!), and we ordered a giant pile of Thai food and played games until I don't even know when but it was late.

Saturday was a quieter day - more sun-basking, more video games, more wine, and we watched the extended cut of Advent Children which I apparently had never watched before and which makes remarkably more sense than the original! Also, Rude ♥

In related news, my cats adore Auntie Sev. Zelda slept on her for hours. It was adorable.

Sev unfortunately had to leave quite early on Sunday, and then I went back to sleep because I was not sleeping enough most of the weekend. I got up around noon-thirty and did the groceries and spent some time leveling up in FF14, and then paladin ran Exalted, which was mostly good although I got antsy and sad thinking that something lethal might have happened to my character from book 1 of this chron (I am assured she will not die, which is good - I'm not playing her anymore but I ♥ her so, my delightful mess of a soldier.)

I had every intention of getting useful things done today, but I woke up with a bad headache, so instead I've been playing a lot of video games and catching up on things I missed on the Internet. Tomorrow it's back to work, and somehow getting through the rest of winter, I guess.

Hopefully this week I'll be able to buckle down and get some writing done; I'm two weeks behind on prompts and I want to do more kiss battle and also get started on bingo. Plus editing and rewriting.

But for now, more headache meds.

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Tags: a distinct lack of pants, can i just lick it, friends, goes down like kain's dick, i blame sev for this, i stole this tag from sev, i want balthier's cock, i'm in ur ljs stealin' ur tags, it's 5 o'clock somewhere, kain owns me, kiss battle owns me, laughing too hard to breathe, nat is happy shinies, omg squee, pairing: balthier/us, sev and rina need a hobby, sev/rina otp, sev/zeromus otp, squee!!!!!, st ajora it's a war lion!, the no-pants party, this is nat's fault, threesome: nat/rina/sev, too little sleep too much keyboard, why is it always the knights?, zeromus wants this action
Feeling: cheerful

Come play with us!

There's more information at the link, but tl;dr a promptfic fest for all FF fandoms (and some related stuff, like Bravely Default.) All ratings welcome, all pairings welcome, gen and shippy kisses equally welcome.

Come play!

I've posted this at http://lassarina.dreamwidth.org/1173222.html and you may comment there or here. On Dreamwidth, this entry has comments.

Tags: kiss battle owns me

Good morning, friends! A week has just flown right by, and here we are again at Wednesday, so it's time for the weekly post! (Slight change in format this week; I'm going to try putting my own stuff in the post, instead of in a comment. We'll see how I like that.)

What have you been playing this week? What are you looking forward to?

I spent most of my weekend (when I wasn't skiing) playing Bravely Second; I'm in Chapter 6 and now that it is no longer a (self-made) slog of filling out my bestiary, I am super into this game again (also, the plot has suddenly stomped on all my buttons and I am Here For This.)

I also made some phone game progress; I cleared the ultimate-plus level for the FF4 event in Record Keeper, and I've been inching along in the grinding events in Brave Exvius.

And, of course, there's FF14, where I am now working on leveling up Bard (and of which I plan to play a ton while seventhe is here starting TONIGHT OMG.)

I've posted this at http://lassarina.dreamwidth.org/1172744.html and you may comment there or here. On Dreamwidth, this entry has comments.

Tags: what are you playing wednesday

Oh gosh I fell off the face of Dreamwidth for like 10 days. I think I have commented/caught up on everything on my friends page; if I missed something you wanted me to see, do let me know, as it wasn't my intent.

I have been having a lovely weekend. So, as I may have mentioned once before, my Christmas present from paladin was a ski weekend in Wisconsin. I have not been skiing since I busted up my knee in 2012, so I was excited but also somewhat trepidatious. Paladin had this past Friday off, and I had Monday (owing to it being Lincoln's birthday and this being Illinois), so Friday morning we got up moderately early and petted the cats and cleaned up the house, and then we got on the road to Devil's Head, which is up Madison way.

It's about a 2.5 hour drive, almost all freeway, and once we got out of Milwaukee, there was nothing. Land forever. Occasional farmhouses, but mostly: empty land. (Well, "empty" in the sense of "no humans," but there were crops, and some incidental cows and horses.) I commented on it and paladin joked that "there's nothing to do out here but raise crops and cows." It was pretty enough, I guess, and I could see the appeal of being in an empty place like that for a short while, but not permanently. I am a suburban girl. I want to live next to the city so that the conveniences accrue (delivery food options, shopping, walking distance to stuff) but I don't actually like being in the city itself. The one time I tried to look for apartments in Chicago, I felt like everything was closing in and staring down upon me judgingly, and I was in freaking Lakeview, not even downtown. ANYWAY.

We got somewhat distracted along the way by the presence of wineries; southwestern Wisconsin is the hilly bit, once you get out of "God's ironing board" aka Illinois, and thus it's good land for grape-growing. We ended up at Wollersheim Winery and Distillery, just to the end of the day. We skipped the tour, because honestly after you've been on 3 or 4 winery tours there's just not much new to see, and went straight to the tasting because of course we did. I really liked their wines; they have a complimentary flight (maybe 1 oz pours?) that gives you a range of things to try, and then they had a dry tasting flight and a sweet tasting flight for purchase; of course we got one of each, and shared. (Wineries are better with someone you are OK swapping glasses with!) I really liked that most of their wines are sipping wines; you don't have to pair them. The guy running our tasting said that that's intentional; they want their wines to be flexible and good on their own. One of the dry reds was assertive enough that it really wouldn't go well on its own, but the sweet flight that I had was all stuff I would drink. We bought half a case of assorted wines, because of course we did.

Across the way from the winery, there is a distillery, so we went over there and poked our noses in. They primarily make brandy, which was interesting - we had a pear brandy, and two apple brandies, and a gin and absinthe, and something else I don't recall. I wasn't as excited about the distillery tasting, mostly because I'm just not that into hard liquor unless it's mixed with sweet tasty things, but it was an interesting experience.

Having fulfilled our habit of always going somewhere to taste and purchase alcohol when we are on vacation together, we continued on to Devil's Head. It's a cute little resort at the bottom of...well, I guess by Midwestern standards it's a mountain, but by my (Colorado-trained) standards it's a hill. With no cell service, and debatable wi-fi (when it works, it's fine, but there are a lot of spots in the resort itself where it doesn't.) We had dinner at the "fancy" on-resort restaurant since we were quite hungry, and then flopped in the room with books and games.

Saturday morning we got up bright and early to start our skiing adventure. We got our rental skis and then headed out. It was fairly warm this weekend - 40 degrees - which makes for nice skiing weather, and there was enough snow to make a solid base (resort report said 55".) I made paladin tolerate me starting out on the greens, since I'm rather a nervous skier to start and more so after I wrecked my knee last time. I learned to ski in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, which--it's a pretty damn hardcore mountain, okay. It's where US Olympians train. It's steep enough that the only way to build greens is to have you ski down the CAT tracks; the mountain is just too sheer for anything else. Wisconsin is...gentler. A blue in Wisconsin would be a green in Colorado, mostly, so every run is solidly one category down. Still, busted knee and fussy Meglet, so the greens it was. I got settled on those pretty quickly and moved on to blues, which is how I spent most of Saturday morning. Toward the end of the morning I let paladin talk me into the black diamonds, which were definitely doable for me, but steeper. By the time we stopped for lunch around noon, my knee was sending signals of "okay so you know how last time this fucked me up??" Accordingly, I sent paladin off to fling himself down double-diamonds at his preferred speed as opposed to toning himself down for me (he was giving me a head start of a full minute on the blues and still beating me to the bottom) and I went back to the room to stretch and read for a bit, and then took myself off to the bar to spend the afternoon with Shirley Temples and Bravely Second (Yes, I'm the chick who goes to the bar and drinks a kiddie drink, fight me, it's fucking delicious.)

Paladin eventually joined me, and we had drinks and then went back to the room for snuggles before we went off to dinner at the bar and grille, which had a very limited menu but a tasty one.

Sunday morning we got up and went out to ski again; we did a couple hours on the blues, and then came in for an early lunch, since the wind had picked up and paladin wanted a warmer jacket. We went back out after lunch; paladin went for (I thought) his afternoon adventures, and I did a few blues and a couple of blacks. We met up at the lift about an hour later and it turned out he'd been planning to ski with me, but I'd been adventuring all around the middle set of slopes (blues and blacks), and he hadn't quite been able to figure out where I was. We did one diamond together and then three blues, and by then my thighs were quite tired and my knee and ankles were sending mild alarm signals, so I turned him loose to be ridiculous and went in. I'm pretty proud of how I did; I was skiing pretty fast (by my standards) at the end.

I took myself back to the bar, having cleared the FF4 Ultimate Plus level in FFRK, to play Bravely Second and watch skiers fly down the slopes. Last night we went go back to the fancy restaurant for early Valentine's Day, and then got up early today to head home, with a stop along the way for brunch at Cracker Barrel.

A good vacation. :)

Once home, we assured the cats that they had not been forgotten, and took apart one of the couches to replace the mattress that Ganon had destroyed and sand off the resultant rust and apply Rustoleum, and then we spent the rest of the day playing video games. I did a decent job of tanking some extreme primals in FF14, including one run where I was apparently The Experienced One, so that was terrifying and also heartening in that we only wiped twice and two newbies (including the other tank) got their clears. I also made a giant batch of chili, and we did the grocery shopping, and most things are in readiness for the arrival of seventhe in LESS THAN TWO DAYS OMG I'M SO HYPED.

Yep. That is the state of the Rina.

I've posted this at http://lassarina.dreamwidth.org/1172514.html and you may comment there or here. On Dreamwidth, this entry has comments.

Tags: skiing, vacation
Feeling: cheerful

I have a really long post about the last few days (they were good ones! I enjoyed them!) but in the meantime it is onedeadplotbunny time again, and thus, bunny list.

Standard disclaimers: original fic is intentionally vague, the dividing line between short and long is 10k words, and this list looks intensely similar to last year's.

(The original fiction ones are intentionally vague, sorry!) For purposes of the ongoing fic list, "Short" is here defined as less than 10K, and "Long" is defined as more than that. This includes both partially completed projects and vague ideas.

( long list is longCollapse )

I've posted this at http://lassarina.dreamwidth.org/1172330.html and you may comment there or here. On Dreamwidth, this entry has comments.

Tags: ficlist

Good evening, gentlefolk! It is time for another round of What Are You Playing Wednesday?

New shiny things? Old familiar things? Between games as you wait impatiently for a new thing to drop?

Let's chat!

I've posted this at http://lassarina.dreamwidth.org/1172128.html and you may comment there or here. On Dreamwidth, this entry has comments.

Tags: what are you playing wednesday

I'm sick of fighting with the current Ultimate Plus event in FFRK, so here, have a bit of fic.

Echo, Lunar Silver Star Story, G, spoilers everywhere, 100 words. The boy reminds him of Dyne. For samuraiter's prompt, "the mastermind lurked among them without their knowing."

In other news, it's been a pretty good day. I slept until 11, got up and had lunch, then played FFXIV all afternoon (some of it with seventhe) and got my paladin up to 58, and then goldmare came over and we ordered Thai food and did some prep for Super Bowl shenanigans tomorrow (by which I mean, like, we chopped four vegetables and I mixed up a dip; I am not going All Out for this one), and then I played some of Tales of Symphonia, which I have finally started.

( musings through the events at the ranch at the beginningCollapse )

I've posted this at http://lassarina.dreamwidth.org/1171833.html and you may comment there or here. On Dreamwidth, this entry has comments.

Tags: fic pointers, tales of symphonia, video games own my soul

Good stuff about yesterday! My friend M came over with the intention of providing me impetus to actually watch Kingsglaive and Brotherhood for FFXV, so we ordered grilled cheese sandwiches and did that thing.

The non-spoilery reactions:

* I'm still really mad about women in this canon, but I tried really hard to approach the movie/anime without that, and I think I did okay
* holy shit I can't even with how fucking pretty this is
* Nyx is my type and I'm doomed forever. ("I'm so surprised you latched on to him!"--no one who has met me, ever)
* I texted Sev "he's worse than Kain" and she replied "oh good Lord here we go" (I'm going to show her this movie when we're both drunk in two weeks OH MY GOD IN TWO WEEKS SEV WILL BE HERE AAAAAAAAAH)
* I really like Lunafreya, in the same ways that I like Rosa and Yuna. No one is surprised.
* In general I found the movie and its characters pretty compelling!
* There was the usual, expected amount of "we're Final Fantasy lol what is physics fuck you" but since I wasn't expecting otherwise, I rolled with it
* I am weirded out and also fascinated by this mishmash of what feels, to my brain, like Persona settings with FF shenanigans
* Brotherhood was really cute and also sad, and I liked its structure as five fifteen-minute backstory bits quite a lot!
* Everything about this entire canon is fucking hilarious when you come at it after six years of Latin; I can't take anything seriously. BRIGHT FRIENDSHIP. FLOWER FRIENDSHIP. MULTIPLE VERSIONS OF NIGHT AND KING. Sure, Square.

( and now we hit the spoilery bitsCollapse )

Anyway, having watched that, I'm more excited about FFXV, but I'm also still/more mad. It's Complicated, to the nth degree.

Hmmm, I should probably move some of this over to MU.

I've posted this at http://lassarina.dreamwidth.org/1171504.html and you may comment there or here. On Dreamwidth, this entry has comments.

Tags: final fantasy xv, reaction shots