Checking in: a quiet week

Menuchah's been working like a little beaver on her gardening and is now at level 7. Too bad that's all she ever does. She and William are still an item, but they aren't doing anything about it. I guess they like it the way it is.

She's the one I've always had the most trouble getting out of the house, so I was glad to see her downtown talking to this townie.

Rachel had changed her hair without asking me, so I changed it back. It wasn't bad, but it looked so ... ordinary. Her original hair was still there in CAS, so I was able to get it back, but now the pony tail is held back by a little clip instead of a bow. Weird.

All right, Rachel, stop kidding around. Just put it back the way it was and leave it.

Max is still content to be unemployed and has low levels in several skills.

Rachel and Max's son Riley wanted to learn to paint. so I bought him an easel and made him use it. This is the closest I've seen this kid come to smiling. I don't know why he's so solemn all the time, with two parents who seem so happy all the time.

I still can't believe he changed so much when he aged up. I go back and look at him as a toddler and I can't believe it's him. He's got such beautiful delicate features, but they seem to sit oddly on his face, as if they don't quite all fit. I'm anxious to see what he'll look like as a teen: whether he'll look like the school nerd or a real lady killer.

All the other kids are teens now. Sharla Sharma (on the right) has started wearing her hair in braids and looks a lot like her mom. She needs a little lesson in fashion sense, though. This isn't her nightgown. It's what she chooses to wear to school.

I finally caught her smiling, too! Who knew she'd be so happy about going to school?

As soon as I started catching sight of the teens in each other's friends tabs, I got so excited I had to run around and get a look at them all before doing any more in-depth visiting.

I found Carter Townsend reading a book at the fish hatchery. Why there, Carter? Watch out, girls! Here comes mister OhMyGodWhatAHunkIsHeLookingAtMe. On closer inspection, I find that he's got a crush on a townie named Adrian Pickett. She's the sister of Ronnie's girlfriend. That whole Pickett family looks just alike. I have to keep a scorecard to see who is who. Drat. I wanted him to fall in love with one of OUR girls.

Wyatt Walker and his boy Freddie. Hotness times two! Is Freddie a chip off the old block, or what? I just watched them for a while. Had to wipe a little drool off the keyboard after.

 

Lexie has completed the Celebrity Skill Challenge. I had to look that up; it's the one where she knows 25 other sims. As a reward, she's supposed to make friends more quickly now.

Oh, for God's sake, Lexie. What have you done to your pretty hair? Not you too! That's it. No more women in the science career. They're obviously doing some experiments there that turn their employee into clones of each other.

Wyatt's at career level 6, pastry chef, and is very close to another promotion.

I bought Stephanie Townsend the computer she asked for. Talia immediately made Stephanie get off it so she could get on it herself and play games. She played until she nearly passed out from lack of sleep. Like me. The Townsends now have two computers.

Carter is very busy. He wanted to buy a tomato and learn to garden, but when the sink broke he then wanted to fix it. I think he's having second thoughts about that, judging by the way he's scowling at that wrench.

Carter went to the Pickett's after school, and Stephanie invited a boy named Oscar Alphender home with her. Before she got on the bus, Stephanie changed into her dress. I wonder if she likes this boy.

Random Christmas toddler pictures

This really has nothing to do with this game; I just didn't want to create a new blog just to post these pictures.

If you'll vote on the best one(s), I'll put it on Simatography. I can't decide, and I don't want to flood them with 50 similar shots. The last two are my favorites, but once I started taking them, I didn't want to stop.

 

A rash of burglaries

I was planning on doing a long update this time and spending lots of time with each family, but most of them just weren't doing anything interesting.

Menuchah at least had another exciting interlude. Last time it was a fire; this time it's a burglar. I made her wake up and call the police as soon as I heard the burglar music. The cop came, and then just stood there for so long that even the burglar got bored. Menuchah turned her head and gave a deadpan look into the camera as if to say, "Can you BELIEVE this?!"

Then he had the gall to stand there and check her out.

She's thinking "oh, you are SO busted just as soon as I call your boss tomorrow."

Rachel and Max's son Riley is a big boy now. He's disciplined, friendly, and he has the photographer's eye, which is one of the new WA traits. I changed his hair style but nothing else. I LOVE the way he dressed himself. That's Rachel's son, all right. I wouldn't have known him for the same child, though. Everything about him looks different, right down to his skin color. Rachel is actually watching TV with him in this shot. I didn't know they could watch TV in bed.

I saw another ghost there. Apparently, the entire Remington family is buried on the property and I never noticed. I found some other headstones in the flower bed.

Max is still unemployed. I can't keep him away from the books, but all he will read is pregnancy books even though he has a pack full of skill books. Rachel isn't even pregnant. Every time I take the pregnancy books away from him, he gets another one.

Lexie and her son Freddie enjoyed a nice afternoon at the park. I might have gotten a better shot of them had they not both kept choking on their hamburgers, leaving not much for me to take a picture of. While they were eating, I got a popup message saying "William ran into Menuchah Muleskinner and chatted for a while." I've never had a message like that before. Menuchah was at work and William was having drinks inside the diner rabbit hole, so this may be something new - the game letting me know of things my active family is doing that it knows I can't see for myself. I wish it would do that more often!

I got that message twice, then when he'd finished his drinks, William stayed in the parking lot and started playing his guitar. Suppose he's serenading her? Hehe.

Tyler and Talia had a great day. They both landed promotions. Tyler also got a hefty bonus and a cool new food processor. Stephanie got too hungry to wait for mom and dad to get home, and cooked dinner herself. She looks pretty pleased with herself.

I don't know who this lady is who was at home with the kids, since Stephanie's plenty old enough to do any babysitting needed. Whoever she is, the kids decided to have some fun with her. Stephanie staged an insane fit and freaked the poor woman out. Carter was amused.

Sharla Sharma came over for a visit and she and Carter got acquainted. Those sim kids are so polite. They invited Sharla to stay for dinner, but she had to go home.

A nice family dinner. Mom was eating at the diner. If anything could make Tyler less sexy it would be that hat, but he's still damn fine.

I was right: the cute girl at the protest rally, Georgia Pickett, is officially Ronnie's girl now. I didn't get to see them together, but I'm sure I will soon.

Ronnie got hit by a burglar too. Fortunately, he had an alarm designed to incapacitate burglars by splitting their eardrums and blinding them with radiating pulses of neon light.

Ronnie got a kick out of it all.

I noticed he got another promotion, too. And a commendation from the General for doing a good deed.

Honestly, this ghost is everywhere. I liked it when they stuck to their own property.

Just because Ronnie gives me such good photo ops and I love taking pictures of him ...

They grow up so fast

Well, I didn't save all of their jobs. It was too little too late. I'm not going to babysit them, though. Max got fired, or possibly quit, and Larry and Lexie both got demoted. On the other hand, Wyatt has reached level 6 in his career and Tyler's at level 5.

Ronnie's new friend Georgia was visiting him, and she seems to like him a lot. She likes his jokes. I had to age her up because she was only a teen and I won't have him robbing the cradle. Just look at that smile on his face. I think he's sweet on her. I hope for good things there. Maybe even before I finish the next long rotation. He's also been working out a little and gotten a promotion, even though he and his boss still can't stand each other.

Speaking of AJ, it looks as though she and Sam have moved away again. I don't like it, but they're going to have to stay gone this time. Free will is free will, after all.

Rachel was teaching Riley to talk. Judging by the look on her face, he's doing fairly well. The reason I wanted this picture was that they brought along their own rug to sit on, which I'd never seen before. Unfortunately, in my haste I clicked in the wrong place and caused them to stop what they were doing. I tried to get them to do it again, but they didn't put the rug down again.

Tyler and Talia forgot to pay their bills, and the repo man came. They slept through it.

The other kids all had birthdays. The first thing I did was go around and give some of them more becoming hairstyles and everyday clothes, and get rid of the cribs and books (I hate having to type that last part).
 
Stephanie's a teen now, so she gets some skill books. She's allowed to wear makeup now, too, although her daddy said no to the gloppy eyeshadow. I might take her to City Hall and change her name so it's spelled "right." I can't keep remembering to spell it Stephenie.

Let me take a pic of each of the kids, and I'll leave the household rotation until next time. I've been sitting here fighting with CAS and CASt for hours and I'm starving.

Sharla Sharma
(heavy sleeper, evil, mean spirited)

She just didn't feel like smiling. You can still see her  pretty eyes, though.

Stephanie Townsend
(brave, insane, genius, friendly)

Stephanie is very excited to be a young lady. She aged up into long hair like her mom's, which unfortunately didn't look at all good on her. With short hair she's very pretty. I lightened it just a touch, too. Now if she'll only make friends in high school.

Freddie Alexander
(loves the outdoors, genius, evil)

Definitely got his dad's pretty eyes. With those traits, I won't be surprised if he becomes a mad scientist.

Carter Townsend
(brave, absent-minded, grumpy)

Carter stayed adorable. What else can I say?

I'll try for a longer update later.

Wayward adults and cute kids

With one or two exceptions, everybody was on the verge of getting demoted or fired. Even the ones whose job performance smileys were perfect. The only reason I could come up with is that, when I'm not looking, they're skipping work. I did find one or two skipping work when I played their households. It may be related to that glitch I've been getting lately where they queue up a task and instantly cancel it, in an endless loop so they end up doing nothing. I saw a lot of that happening too. It's a funny glitch. It comes and goes.

None of the babysitters would go home, either. That was actually pretty funny, and I left the Walker's babysitter there because he at least was taking good care of the baby while everybody else went to bed. He also mopped up the puddle from the broken sink and put away the dinner leftovers.

I went around slapping wrists, sending them to work if I found them playing hooky, taking away the novels they keep slipping into their backpacks, and making doubly sure they only have skill books to read.

I set aging on normal now that the baby boom is over. I snuck in a few last toddler screenshots before they all age up.

 

The park is haunted. That ghost who lives in Rachel's house has begun hanging out there and may never go home. He loves it there. I don't know if I like the new ghosts who can stay out in the day time. It makes it less of a novelty to have a playable ghost.

 

This guy looks like he was young and cute when he died. He seems very happy.

Tyler finished up the job of teaching Carter to walk.

 

I wanted one nice shot of Stephenie Townsend before she aged. I've never seen anybody actually build anything with the blocks before.

 

I had to spend at least a few minutes with each person while they were at work, to try to to get them to work harder or suck up to the boss, or whatever I thought might get them out of trouble.

Menuchah was so engrossed in talking to William on the phone that she never noticed when the hamburger she was cooking caught fire.

 

 

Good thing she had a fire alarm.

 

The fireman was pretty ticked off at her, but she seems to be secretly amused.

 

 

Not terribly perturbed, she went right ahead and prepared her lunch. A nice safe fruit and cheese plate this time.

The counter and stove were ruined, but the paper towels were untouched.

I don't know whether they were protesting engagments, diamond rings, or what, but Tyler, Rachel, and Max were all in on it. If the signs had had wedding rings on them instead of engagement rings, I'd feel a little guilty, since I'm the one who made Max and Rachel get married.

 

That Egyptian tourist is still in town. Menuchah played welcome wagon and engaged him in conversation about gardening. Stephenie had to get out of the house to read a novel, because I had taken them all away.

 

Then it was Lexie's turn. She got to hear an Egyptian folk song. The guy on the bench behind them is only dressed like a tourist. He actually lives in town. His wife is the one who knocked over Sam's trash can.

 

I know crowd shots are never very successful or very interesting, but I wanted to check on the protest rally again. I think I spotted just about all of our sims who weren't at work at the time, plus the ghost! Ronnie is standing off to the side pretending to ignore them. Maybe he's afraid he'll get in trouble at work if he gets involved.

 

Turns out he was just working up his nerve to chat up the pretty girl.

 

 

I'd intended to play until the toddlers aged up into children, but the game began to do that thing where it slows down to 2 frames per second. No exaggeration - I checked. I'll post kid pics next time.