#my schedule is very packed :(

[intotheelliwoods]

Yeah aha 👍This week along with last week were midterms too, which was fine up until my car decided to break down on me Sunday! Still recovering from all... that atm, so sorry for the lack of art from me! I promise I am still here and alive and well :)

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But you see, poptart is sprouts braincell... and sprout is poptarts braincell.... do you see the cycle? the dependence??? DID YOU TAKE POPTART? WHAT DID YOU DO WITH HIM.

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@domsakromsa08 WAA thANK YOU!!!!! I AM STILL IN SHOCK OVER ALL TEH FANART I GOT LAST UPDATE HAHA thank you for the addition! <3 <3

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Today I learned about the musical Into The Woods....

Haha theres so many interpretations for my username....

My username 'elliwoods' is just a play on the name Elwood, yknow like the blues brother! 'intotheelliwoods' I will admit.... I forget most of its origin but I think I was slightly inspired from the streamer inthelittlewood even though I dont even watch him pfft-

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@justletmereadmycomics @cavern-of-shenanigans aaaaah I am so so happy people liked that last update :) I have been planning it for ages! And sorry, no, I will not be paying for anyones therapy.....

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I am too biased for this question.....

[kirnet]

did an acrylic painting for the first time in forever, so now i can test my wip texture pack on it :3

[capn-twitchery]

oh god i've been so busy all day and i still have more stuff to do...AAAAA

gotta get to the next dogsitting job for a dog i've never met before and i'm praying he will not be a pain in the ass. cross fingers for me

[elitadream]

Ah, dear Elita it’s been so long!!! 😭

How are you doing? Quite the long break, huh? It’s SO nice to see you back on this silly website for us silly mutuals lol

I’ve missed your art dearly. I know sometime around you’ll have the chance, no rush!

It’s a pleasure to see you back on track once again ☺️❤️💚

Hello!! 😁🫂 It sure was haha, though I feel like it's only been a week or two. 👀 Those last few months went by so fast! It's wonderful to see you again too! ^-^ 💞

Aww I really appreciate that. 🥲 And I'm doing really well, thanks!! I've been painting a lot over the summer and was able to complete some projects I had left aside previously. The change of pace has been great for me so far. 🥰 Oh but certainly! When things get less busy for me again, I'll be looking forward to sharing samples of all and any subject I'm currently interested in. ;) ✨

Thanks again for the warm greeting. I hope you're doing well too! 💗

[tag-if]

Progress Update;

JAN 2024 - FEB 2024;

Hello all!

University has finally gotten back into full swing, i reckon the routine is helping me out a lot, but it means this hasn't been the most productive in terms of writing (more planning based). I'm pretty busy this month, i've realised, so i will be aiming to get chapter 1 out around the beginning to middle of March.

I did a bit of reworking, to fix the pacing (and keep myself sane) so i apologise if it isn't what you expected when it does come out.

now, without further ado, the checklist :)

DONE;

reworked the plans to fix the pacing a little bit (subject to further change)

added some more customisation that wasn't previously there

polished off the previously finished scenes, so they aren't just word vomit anymore

TO DO;

still have to do the meet the ROs scene

toying with the idea of replacing the first skill check with an option to snoop for information instead (be it through interaction or exploring); this would move the skill check to the beginning of chapter 2

[wreckedhoney]

a while ago on the discord i brought up the "which desk at the station is forrest's desk" question when the answer should probably have been obvious. he's been at the job for approx. one week, so it's the desk with all the unpacked boxes. it just didnt occur to me because thats Frankly A Lot Of Boxes and my first thought was this is where all the storage and junk are piled on, but no. it's all stuff forrest brought (/hc). he's a heavy packer. he spite packed all the stuff he didn't want his old job to keep even if he doesnt need or even like them all that much but now that he's blacklisted then no one in the entirety of chicago can have them

[mintandcreme]

I will not get triggered.

[catboydan]

.

[skitskatdacat63]

Lmfao my mom was getting on me abt not having enough to do this upcoming semester so I decided ah okay I'll add another class. And that's perfectly fine. But the one I picked results in the majority of my schedule being generally unaffected and still lax, but my Thursday being absolutely fucked.

For reference, on every other day I'd spend like less than four hours in class/commuting(anywhere from zero hours to almost four), but Thursday, its almost 9 hours combined 😭 which is like fine with me, but I think ill despise thursdays after this, AND MY BIRTHDAY IS ON A THURSDAY :(

[alienssstufff]

*taps you on the shoulder* Pst a YCAO spin off fic just dropped

answering to say www my yiss I saw -I read it the night it was published ^^

read it all in one sitting oi did - then proceeded to walk outside my house and have an existential lie on the grass at 4am …. Whwhwh it was really good ><

[ LINK ]

[its-captain-sir]

Class I had in my schedule for next semester (which starts in a month btw) got cancelled and they only told everyone about it like an hour ago and while I did manage to find something else and get everything sorted my heart is still pounding over the ordeal

[olessan]

I love the fact that I can work as hard as I can manage with a broken tooth and a dying tooth (one on each side, I've been chewing on the cavity for a year) and I still cannot save even $10 towards getting dental treatment (2 impacted wisdom teeth, + tooth broken off under the gum, + bad cavity) because I barely make enough to cover my food and board and the insane energy bill

[penrose-quinn]

Oh my god I'm almost done. Just one more scene and I'm free \(T⌓T)/

[variousqueerthings]

I’m on the columbo episode that takes place at the military academy, and it’s very satisfying to see them unleash a funky little adhd man onto a rigorous macho (abusive) type of institution

not predicting he’s about to change the whole world, but sometimes all you need is to experience some mild chaos

[lume-nosity]

LULULU WHAT IS UR BEST SUBJECT IN SCH

okay i know i have to list one but i have multiple so my best subject(s) in school would be:

forensics

civics

literature / creative writing

english

computer science (?)

piano (i took only one year and dropped out afterwards because the teacher saw me as a music prodigy and i can’t handle that amount of attention/pressure)

i’m such a nerd it hurts

[thoughtvoid]

Now that my work schedule is drying up faster than a puddle in a desert, I have to say. Holiday retail is getting really weird now.

It might just be for the store I work for, because management is making some really weird decisions, but some part of it feels like the shoppers are just. Not doing things at the right time, too.

Like. My work has slashed hours to nothing, to the point that I wouldn't even say we have a skeleton crew 90% of the time. Unless we're a skeleton with a couple of missing limbs. But during holiday, we of course have seasonal workers. Possibly not as many as usual, but also enough to make things noticeably better for the months leading into the Big Sale time. And for the Big Sale time, we had all hands on deck on Friday and Sunday/Monday.

But, while we did have a lot of orders to deal with, the amount of people we had scheduled to work them were actually struggling to have a good consistent workload. There weren't enough orders to keep us all busy, and most of our work was from taking care of the orders made during the holiday when we were closed. But as far as dealing with what came in all day, it was just us juggling with taking whatever had come in during the past ten minutes. Orders started to build up a bit over the weekend, but nothing like what I've experienced in the past and came to expect. The 'peak' days were fine and manageable.

...The days after the Big Sale days were hell, though. Employees to process things slashed immediately back to one person per shift a day, two shifts total. The company advertised a pretty good coupon the day after the biggest online sale day of the year. One day use, so anyone interested would have to order that day. I wasn't originally scheduled for orders, we had freight coming in that I was scheduled to help with instead, but I wasn't at all surprised to get pulled off that to chip away at orders instead. We didn't get the numbers under control for a couple of weeks.

I blame most of the insane workload on our company. Us backroom people weren't given a single break, not one single day without a sale to let us catch up with the orders that the Sales left behind. And our hours for backroom were divvied out to other areas of the store. (Which, granted, the floor upkeep people are basically treated as so low of priority that most of the year we might have one person scheduled to keep up with the entire store. And during the holiday time, they might have been given a couple of extra people who were more expected to back up registers.)

However. The customers were also just making the most inane choices. There were so, so many orders coming in like crazy after the Big Sale days, up until a week before Christmas.

I get that the "Big Sales" are overhyped at this point and not always the real lowest price they ever get to. But I've been at this store long enough that the price they get to is pretty much the lowest things will be through the rest of the year. The sales can be lower, or the coupons higher, but they usually aren't as good or are only just as good as the Big Sale day price. During the year, the sales and coupons might match up to more savings, but during holiday season? Everything's getting roughly the same deals throughout the last month and a half. There's no real need to hold off during the days when stores are prepared for high workload. With all the cost cutting, the store only bolsters its workforce for those specific days. And immediately afterward, they leave all the workers to deal with the floods that came afterward, be it with pushing people to work harder, asking them to stay more hours, pulling people from other shifts, or ultimately calling in people who managed to get a day off.

When it's a one day 40% off one purchase, I get it. That's a company screwing us over problem, and they don't even tell us at the store level when they give those limited time deals. That's something we would prepare for, if the company gave a damn about us being prepared for it. But the one week 25% during subpar sales? I'm sorry, I will be calling everyone who ordered during that kind of sale stupid. There was no need to wait compared to the better sales and coupons earlier. There was no need to have the two people scheduled per day struggling to keep the order numbers under control. And the people ordering the week before Christmas to have things shipped to them? 1) I hope they weren't seriously ordering for Christmas, and were just ordering something for themselves because 2) I hope none of those packages got there in time. In previous years, the website used to have a countdown for when something ordered online would be guaranteed to arrive. They stopped doing that at some point, but the deadline used to be 14 or so days before Christmas. (And they may have stopped giving that countdown because they wanted people who don't plan things well to place more orders even if it might not arrive in time.) My patience is thin during holiday season, and I have no good vibes to send to people who didn't jump on the sales they should have and wait until functionally the last possible moment.

TLDR: Retail holiday season has gotten weird because the Sale days aren't a problem, but for various reasons, the time between those days up until Christmas were horrid.