Those of you who've been around for ages probably remember when I worked at what I not-so-lovingly called the Restaurant of FAIL when I first moved to Maryland. There was a beer & wine store nearby that doubled as a small bar that I spent a lot of time at back then, and even once I moved further north I still tried to go there from time-to-time until I, you know, stopped having a car. Even now, whenever I happened to be down in the area for a doctor's appointment or whatever, I'd try to stop by since it's within walking distance of the metro.

Anyway, I just saw that they made a post on Facebook on Thursday saying that they're permanently closing tomorrow. Three days' notice. That's it. Considering that very much is not something the Gilly's that I knew would do, I quickly did some googling to figure out what on earth was going on. And, well, I found this Reddit post from back in February. Which explains a lot.

From what I can tell, without any warning they fired the entire management team (some of whom had been there for 10-15 years) for nepotism purposes, which pissed off a lot of the staff and caused many of them to quit. Then a big chunk of the long-time customers stopped visiting after that as well, because the staff is what kept people coming more than anything. And, uh, it doesn't seem to have ended well for them.

My financial situation is even more precarious than usual thanks to some news I got this week, so I'm desperately trying to raise money yet again. I'm going to try to make it to my storage unit this weekend, so I might have several virtual garage sale posts going up, but for the time being this is the only one as I'm running out of things that I have in the hotel with me to try to sell.

Would anyone be interested in any of the following Nintendo Switch games?

Pokémon: Let's Go, Pikachu! (example on Amazon)
Spyro Reignited Trilogy (example on Amazon)
TemTem (example on Amazon)

For payment, I have CashApp ($Settiai), PayPal, Venmo, or Zelle (nancy.lynn.foster@gmail.com).

If you're interested but know someone who might be, please point them my way.

Daughter of Luck (2467 words) by Settiai
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Characters: Original Half-Elf Character(s) (Dungeons & Dragons), Original Human Character(s) (Dungeons & Dragons)
Additional Tags: Background Poly, Dungeons & Dragons Character Backstory, Family, Illegitimacy, Loss, Mother-Daughter Relationship, One Shot
Summary: Siân Valinta might be what half the city called her, a good half of them mockingly, but Siân Breyer was who she was and who she always would be.

In tonight's game, ( the rest under a cut for those who don't care. )

And that's where we left off.

Ever since I moved into the hotel, I've felt about watching television too late at night because I know from personal experience that sound carries. When I watch something after 10pm or so, I've turned it down low, which means I miss things. And that's been a big pain especially when it comes to Critical Role since it doesn't even start airing until 10pm, so if I want to watch live then I end up missing things because I have to keep it quiet unless I want to be an asshole.

As I mentioned in my most recent Critical Role post, though, I finally figured out an alternative that seems to be working well. It doesn't work for anything that I'm watching on the hotel's cable, but since most of what I'm watching in the evening/night is streaming, that means I use my Fire Stick. And my Fire Stick has the ability to connect to Bluetooth devices. Such as the ear buds that I usually keep in my purse for when I'm out and about, which I realized earlier in the week.

And, well, it's working great. The last few nights I've been able to watch movies late at night without accidentally disturbing anyone in the rooms next to me or above me. The video is playing on the shiny new TV that the hotel gave me, but the audio is entirely in my ears and not bothering anyone else nearby. For example, right now I'm finishing up watching The Martian, but it's essentially silent in my room because the sound's playing on my ear buds.

Now if only I had thought to do something like this ages ago...

In tonight's game, ( the rest under a cut for those who don't care. )

And that's where we left off.

What can I say? There's been a lot of Critical Role related things happening this week thanks to NYCC. This post is about the adorably hilarious (and not at all safe for work) summary of the first three seasons of The Legend of Vox Machina that they released. In song format. Sung by Grog.

Oh, they've finally released the trailer for the first season of The Mighty Nein! And it looks amazingly good!

I've gotta admit, I'm very curious to see what they end up doing for this series. While I love CR2, the fact that the pandemic happened in the middle of it and they had to unexpectedly take a multiple month hiatus really caused some disconnect in the campaign itself. They've already said they're reworking some plot-related things for the animated series, and I'm really hoping that will fix some of the campaign's weaknesses because the story itself is amazing.

I really wonder what they're going to do with the release schedule. For The Legend of Vox Machina, it's had twelve episodes per season and they've released it in four batches of three episodes each over the course of a month. This series is going to have hour long episodes instead of half hour ones, so I really wonder A. how many episodes the season will be and B. if they'll release it one episode a week.

My suspicion is that it will be eight episodes released weekly, since that's what Amazon does for other hour-long shows like The Rings of Power. We'll have to wait for them to officially confirm it, though.

Assignments just went out for the Dragon Age Poly Exchange, and I've got to admit that I'm very excited about my assignment(s) for this one.

As is the case for most single fandom exchanges, I offered Any and offered to take multiple initial assignments if needed for matching purposes, so I had no idea whatsoever what I would get. That said? My muse is definitely interested after reading the prompts that I was given, although some of them are very much not relationships that I ever would have considered myself.

I'm very curious to see just what I end up writing.