Still taking leave at least one day a month partly to burn my use/lose hours and partly for a bit of respite. Felt a bit awkward scheduling this one, since I did so early in the month because Juneteenth was and still remains on the schedule as a day I'll get off late in it, but it's still hard to believe I actually will. But I'm glad to have it today. This was a week that started with my finally buying a second lidded pot, and getting to use it exactly once before the lid fell down and got smashed. I looked into buying a rice cooker instead yesterday, but I'm not sure you can use them to cook amounts as small as we typically cook.
This was also a weekend where I got a couple of people watching my BG3 stream, but almost nobody watching my other two; one streamer who I raided last weekend popped in for a few minutes, and there was then noone else. I'm still getting viewers and even likes on YouTube for Little Kitty, Big City, and even a little bit for Date Everything! I wonder if this might end with my livestreaming only BG3, and recording other games. But given I got more viewers for Dispatch, I kind of feel like I should at least try other games out.
I had considered streaming today at one point, but now am instead going to see The Mandalorian and Grogu. It'll be the first time I've gone to the cinema in nearly a year. I've developed an interest in seeing Project: Hail Mary as well, but it's no longer playing at convenient times at the local place.

My trip to Atlanta was an exercise in having a great time despite logistical headaches. Starting with a literal one just as the train was getting stuck while entering Atlanta due to a stalled freight train on the tracks. (Later, when someone in Discord similarly took a night train down, I jokingly posted a hope the same thing wouldn't happen to them. It did. They thanked me for the warning.) My plane back was also delayed four hours, the hotel wifi didn't work well, and it always seemed to rain exactly when I didn't have my umbrella. I suppose I should be glad the rain kept the temperature down...
But despite all this, I had some of my best times yet during a con trip. The highlight of MomoCon was absolutely attending the TriForce Quartet concert; I'd never heard of them and wasn't familiar with most of the music they played, but I still loved it. But it was also one of the best floors I've been on. I even managed to find and buy a cute knit bag small enough to be brought into the live show venue fifteen minutes before the floor closed. Monday I met a bunch of fellow Critters at the aquarium, and once we all managed to actually find each other, we had a great time see all sorts of fish, getting a close look at penguins and sea lions, and even getting a glimpse of a whale shark! And no spoilers for the show, obviously, but it was a blast.
I also finished writing a new fic, but I'm not sure when I'm going to get it typed up and posted. It may not happen until Saturday.

Got my first raid today! Another small streamer whom I raided some time back returned the favor. Streaming BG3 both yesterday and today, if only because I'm going to be out of town come next Saturday, I got a few more viewers than I have on my non-Dispatch streams before them. Though I also got accosted by at least one more non-bot scammer, possibly two.
As I close in on one trip, I'm also working on the next. I booked my flights to San Diego and back just now. Ended up going with United, like in previous years, but one thing that made me raise my eyebrows was they had no direct flights going either way, and when we'd always taken those in the past. (I also looked into Southwest, who didn't have any direct flights either, but they often haven't.) Hope there are some good options for lunch in the Chicago airport. A layover there might not be a bad idea for me if there are, since I can't eat on planes.

And so I have reached the answer to life, the universe, and everything, and meanwhile I have a birthday twin who's made it to the century mark! Congratulations, Sir David Attenborough. I should watch a bit more of his shows at some point. I've taken the day off, though I'm not sure what I'm doing with it. Besides posting this.
This morning I got the second comment on "The Final Afternoon" that was clearly from a scammer, which is especially depressing when the story still only has four hits. Though at least this one made the effort of reading it first. Here's hoping I have more luck with this thing.

Title: All Five
Part: 18: Everyone on Planet
(Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part 14, Part 15, Part 16, Part 17)
Fandom: Star Wars
Characters: Qui-Gon, Anakin, Obi-Wan, Mace, Padme
Disclaimer: Now Disney owns them.
Warning: Off-screen suicide
Note: Sequel to "Growing Up in the Jedi Temple."

( It was a journey that could be done in just under a day if you took the quickest routes and went as fast as it was safe for their ship to go. Just enough time that Anakin had to actively work to keep all his scarier thoughts at bay. )

I finished this little narrative prelude this morning, right before I started streaming.

( The Final Afternoon )

In the two days since Hotelpocalypse was announced as happening today and my sister confirmed she can't afford to go this year, I have been thinking about how to make the biggest trip I've ever taken on my own as low-stress as possible. I quickly decided today I would make no attempt at the the biggest hotels, and started debating how many minutes of wait time I would allow before I gave up on any downtown hotel room and just went straight for one in Mission Valley. I really want my room booked and done with today. Especially because this wasn't even the best day for me to take off work.
But there's no wait time. My bar is currently moving, if slowly, but I don't know how long this is going to take, or what's going to be available as a result. Initially I even wondered if the system crashed, but now I'm hearing on Bluesky some people are now getting in.
Being home meant I watched lilsimsie's stream this morning, with the congressman trying to keep EA out of the hands of Kushner and the Saudis. I'm afraid his words didn't leave me all that hopeful, honestly. I signed the petition, though.
ETA: A two-hour Hotelpocalypse! Got a room in Mission Valley in an area that doesn't look like a bad place to spend a free Saturday.

When I first prepared to make my second attempt at streaming this afternoon, fate continued to throw things at me. The OBS acted up and the game capture stopped capturing, though thankfully the display capture ultimately showed it would do. And it was a very good thing that the links I posted in a couple of discords did get me a watcher, since otherwise I might never have noticed the microphone had turned itself off! Some other people came in too, though unfortunately they were all trying to scam me or hit on me. (Actually conversed with the first of them, until the one proper viewer told me not to. I suppose I was still naive enough to assume even the not-bot scammers would make themselves more obvious more quickly.) I need to locate the ban hammer at some point. But all in all, I think things went quite well. The sound seemed fine, I think I kept that one good viewer throughout(which was one more than I honestly thought there would be!), and I think I did well enough at talking for my first time.
Now I just have to find a new video editor, one at least good enough to trip the VOD and edit together the highlights from my test recordings to go up on YouTube, since I can no longer find my code for the video editor I had on the old computer, and I can't seem to find where to buy a new version of it. I may or may not end up paying for whatever I use, but I'd have to think it at least as good as that one.

Everything was going great yesterday-until right before I went online, when I possibly clicked on something wrong, or maybe the problems that failed to make themselves apparent during the test recording just decided to show up on their own. I spent half an hour struggling to get the stream to work. The game audio wasn't playing, and the audio I was getting instead was appalling, and repeating itself at points, or maybe that was just the stream in general, I'm no longer even sure. I gave up in tears.
After venting in one of my discords, something suggest I ask for help in the OBS discord. So I did. They gave me a couple of pieces of advice that helped, probably most notably muting the audio from my webcam. But the game audio is still muting whenever I try to do anything with the OBS, and will almost certainly still do so when I try to do so with Twitch's control page, and their only suggestion for that was that I try to control those remotely, which honestly does not sound realistic. Also their analyzer is still claiming one of my audio devices has a sample rate that doesn't match the rest, and with the webcam muted I can't find any that aren't at 48000 Hz. And while the audio doesn't sound terrible anymore, it's lost volume, and still doesn't sound all that great, and I've heard all too much about how you need it to be good.
I'm tempted to just take today off from trying to deal with it. Go see the cherry trees in DC, maybe, since the ones in the neighborhood are finally blooming. I don't know if I'm even going to try to stream next weekend, but I might aim to make a second go at it the weekend after that.

As is my current custom, I watched about two hours of Critical Role last night, ( enough of it to... ) Nonetheless the Schemer's table is going to be a bit harder for me to watch, because it's so reflective of the times we're already suffering through in real life. I've just come up on a scene I am not looking forward to, so I'm procrastinating on watching it by posting this, which I finally finished yesterday.

Title: Habeas for Superheroes
Part: 13: Page versus Stark
Fandom: Daredevil/Avengers
Characters: Matt/Foggy, Karen, Tony Stark, Colleen Wing
Disclaimer: Now Disney owns them.
Warning: Discussion of MCU Civil War events
Note: Third installment in my Femme!Foggy series.

( Foggy entered the offices of Hogarth, Chao, and Benowitz to find much of the firm gathered in their reception area, eyes on the TV. )

Our D&D group has moved from Clarendon to Crystal City. At first we tried another gaming bar, but it had the same problems that drove us out of the Board Room; too loud and nowhere for us to sit. We ended up in the semi-outdoor section of a sports bar, where things are actually much quieter. I don't know how it'll do once the weather gets cold again, but these past two weeks it's been nice. Unfortunately we're still having people bail on us, and when once guy couldn't make it tonight we were down to three players as a result. Though as the DM noted when we ended up finishing early, that made things go much faster than they have. It's been a slow investigative campaign so far; the only time initiative has been rolled was in the immediate aftermath of the bar getting fireballed, and that was emergency management instead of combat. We've also leveled up, which is nice.
Last month when I bought my badges for AwesomeCon, I decided for a change of pace to take Friday off and go then and Saturday instead of Sunday. Now, of course, the schedule is out, the Critical Role people are making their first DC appearance on Sunday! But at least I should be able to see Neil and Devora, and that'll be the first time I'll get to see any of the BG3 cast too.