When Charles got up in the morning, Veronica was still up. She was even in her work clothes, so she definitely hadn’t been to bed the night before.

“What’s up?” he asked. “Clearly you are, and you should be sleeping.”

Veronica gave him a strange look. “I was wondering,” she said sheepishly. “How attached are you to Sunset Valley?”

Charles frowned. “I’m the fourth generation Sample to live here. I never thought about living anywhere else. Why?”

“Well,” Veronica said. “The Landgraab Science Center got a call from the Sufficiently Advanced Technology Center on Avalon Island. They have a unique paranormal situation out there, and they heard about me after that stunt at City Hall. They’re, um, trying to recruit me to work in their town.”

“Whoa,” Charles said.

“I know it’s a lot to ask,” Veronica said. “But I would really like to go.”

“I need to think about it,” was all Charles could manage.

That night, he found himself sitting at a bar in the club district of Sunset Valley.

He’d watched this town grow from a sleepy town to a flourishing community with an active nightlife and even a decent film business. In fact, his dojo had contributed something real to Sunset Valley’s growth.

Still, had he just assumed he would live here all his life because his parents and grandparents had? What else was out there? If he stayed, would it be because he loved his home town or because he was afraid of something new?

“I can always go back,” he said softly to himself. Charles was a traveler. He loved new places and new experiences. In the end, wasn’t moving to a new home just a kind of travel? He was hardly barred from living in Sunset Valley again if that was what he really wanted to do.

All right then. He’d go, but only if the kids wanted to do it.

That last part didn’t turn out to be as hard a sell as he expected.

“I think Mom’s going to find us an amazing new place to live,” Sky told Forest as they played in the park after school one day. “It can’t be worse than here.”

“The people of Avalon Island are supposed to be pretty weird,” Forest said. “There could be all sorts of things to learn there.”

Hunter was so unaffected by the whole thing that he took a nap.

“Wow! I can’t believe it,” Aunt Shanni said when he told her.

“You know,” she said once it had sunk in, “There’s a Crumblebottom Chateau on Avalon Island. Agnes left her fortune to me, and, well, I’ve been thinking about moving to someplace that doesn’t make me think of her every moment. You see… Jeanna Yo asked me to marry her, and I said yes! Does that make me crazy? She’s young enough to be my daughter!”

Charles couldn’t help but smirk. “Well, only if you got pregnant in high school.”

Shanni laughed a bit self-consciously. “Well, yeah, I guess that’s true.”

“Nobody’s going to think you’re crazy for being happy,” Charles said. “I’m really happy for you.”

Adjo took the news pretty well all told.

“I’m the retired husband of a workaholic politician,” he said. “I have frequent flier miles. You’re going to instruct me in my next belt, don’t worry.”

And Wu….

“There’s no Sim Fu instruction on Avalon Island,” Wu said. “It’s a perfect place to establish a fresh branch of the art if you think you’re ready. Did you know I have a nephew who lives there? I visit Avalon more often than I visit here. Though I warn you… you may find the people there a little surprising.”

All told, by the end of the day, moving across the world felt a lot like moving to the next street.

The one real loss was Jabari. Charles had known they were drifting apart for some time, but breaking the news of his departure made it clear. They sincerely wished each other the best, but Charles knew that with an ocean between them, their once brotherly closeness was a thing of the past.

In light of the big news, the Samples decided to have a private birthday party for the triplets before they moved. The intimate affair seemed like the right way to say goodbye to their home.

First Forest…

Then Hunter…

And at last Sky…

They ate their cake in the yard as the sun set and listened to the waterfall.

“I guess I’m going to miss this place, at least,” Sky admitted.

“Me too,” Charles agreed. “Let’s hope the next place is better.”

———-

We made it to the last Sunset Valley post! Did you think it would ever happen? I’ve been playing in Avalon for months, and I love it. Which of course means that I have a huge queue of posts again. I will never be caught up. I need to accept it. It’s the nature of the beast.

Here’s a closeup of our triplets:

Forest

Hubba hubba! Our evil boy has grown up into quite the fantasy fodder.

Hunter

I assumed that Hunter had dark brown eyes like Veronica, but it turns out his eyes are very dark green. I’m not sure where THAT came from. Could Layla have had very dark green eyes? At any rate, it really does make him a good case for an identical twin of Forest, though he came out normal weight and Forest is skinny.

Sky

She rolled glasses when she became a child, and I forgot to give them to her. So maybe her ghostliness made it take longer for the bad vision to show up. Heh. Charles didn’t get glasses until teenagerhood either, despite having terrible genes for eyesight.

I redid her clothes and glasses later, but I don’t seem to have taken a CAS shot of it. And she’s in the process of blinking here. Argh. I’ll have to see if I can’t provide a better CAS shot of her later.

Their faces are so similar that they could almost be identical triplets. Fortunately, I think that face is pretty awesome.

I haven’t been posting much here because I can’t play the Samples right now, and I was wasting all my time for the family on figuring out why. I still would like to dedicate a post to the excruciating process of discovering this because I’m going to bet there are other Mac users who are getting the same behavior and are pulling their hair out. I friggin’ learned to read crash logs to figure this out. I can never get that part of my brain back. Blast you, EA.

So here’s the technical jargon: Windows 7 is a 64-bit operating system. Mac OSX is a 64-bit OS too. In fact, Mac OS has been 64-bit for longer, and it’s arguably better-integrated and more efficient about it. However, The Sims on the Mac is run in a wrapper called Cider that emulates Windows. I knew this, and though it provided slightly slower response times, it did all right, so it seemed like a decent tradeoff to be able to play the game when it was released like an ordinary Windows user.

But it turns out that the emulation used on the Mac is Windows XP. No really. So all the beautiful computing power of my i7 MacBook Pro has been wasted running a game inside an emulation of 10-year-old 32-bit Windows. This did all right until I installed the last three expansions all at the same time, and then it gave up the ghost. I can play my new Wonderland legacy, probably because it’s a brand new game in an EA world, but the Samples Error 12 and crash to desktop as soon as I load them up.

Somebody said, “They call it Cider because it squeezes the juice out of your Apple.” Damn. They’re right.

The sad solution is that I’m going to have to play the game in Windows 7. To be able to do that without switching to running Windows all the time, which I don’t want to do because I’m a !@#$ Mac user because I like the !@#$ Mac, I intend to run it in a Windows 7 virtual machine within my OSX. To do THAT, I need to upgrade my memory. The memory arrived yesterday, but now my parents are visiting for the holidays, and I won’t be able to upgrade for at least a week.

Then again, the effect should be seamless because I’m about 10 posts behind anyway. At least I won’t be wasting so much stupid time troubleshooting.

So there, DragonWife, is the medium-length version 🙂 :).

Romance was in the air when everyone returned from seeing Ada off. Charles and Veronica didn’t have many occasions to dress to the nines, and they liked what they saw.

“Eww,” Forest remarked. “Isn’t is supposed to damage our young minds to watch our parents being gross on each other?”

“I didn’t read that child psychology book,” Veronica said with a chuckle. “But I suppose we can help your delicate mind by going to our own room.”

Charles glanced over at the dining table, where Sky was sitting alone, arms crossed, staring down. “I’ll be right up,” he said. “I’m going to grab a slice of cake first.”

He tapped his daughter on the shoulder, warm ectoplasm touching same. “I’ll cut you a slice too.”

“Check this out,” Forest told Hunter. “It’s awesome. Dad just taught me how to play. I didn’t know he ever engaged in any exercise of the mind.”

“Ok…” Hunter said warily. “It looks really complicated.”

“It is,” Forest said. “That’s the beauty of it. “All the pieces do something different, and you have to line up a bunch of moves and counter-moves in your head.”

“You’ll trounce me,” Hunter said. “I know you’re a lot smarter.”

“It’s Ok,” Forest said. “Sure I well, but you can still think of it as a learning experience.”

“You know what’s the most awesome about this game?” Forest continued as he showed Hunter the complex moves the pieces were supposed to make. “It’s a little model of society. You have pawns that can’t do much, and their job is to be sacrificed to save the leader. Then it’s the leader’s job to get all the most powerful pieces working together to protect him from the powerful pieces on the other side that want to destroy him. It’s just like life.”

“Hmmm,” Hunter said. “I guess that’s like some people’s lives.”

Forest immediately took his queen.

Charles sat down with Sky for an evening snack. “So,” he said quietly, “What’s with the face?”

“You have Mom. Forest and Hunter have each other. Great Aunt Shanni and Great Uncle Adjo are close. Everyone was so eager to see each other at the wedding. Except me. Nobody’s ever eager to see me.”

“Wait,” Charles said. “I’m eager to see you every day.”

“You’re supposed to say that,” Sky pointed out. “You’re my dad.”

“You know, we’re fish of the same color,” Charles said. “I’m a ghost man, same as you. I know it’s hard.”

“You’re like a Sim-Fu god. Everyone respects you. You don’t have to go to school where everyone keeps their distance because you’re so creepy.”

Charles remembered back on his childhood, where people didn’t keep their distance because they almost never saw him. At the time, he’d have given anything just to be more than a shadow. But he couldn’t say anything like that. It would come out as, “You think you have it hard? When I was your age….”

So he just said, “It will get better. It doesn’t seem like it, but trust me.”

She forced a smile. “Thanks for trying anyway. Here, let me clean up.”

“Good grief, Sky!” Charles said. “That is NOT cleaning!”

———-

Not much to this one, but it was a little bit of character activity right after the wedding with everyone in their formals, and it didn’t seem appropriate to let this stuff steal Ada’s thunder.

I’m going to start trying to pick up the pace here. I’m at a point where I want to do an heir vote, and I want everyone to meet Generation 5 as teens before I post one. Plus, it’s high time everyone got to see Avalon and hear what’s going on with your cross-pollination sims.

It’s HARD for me to pick up the pace, though. I seem to have a psychological block against leaving out anything interesting. I have sorted the pictures for the rest of the posts I’m planning to do in Sunset Valley, and it looks like there are five more after this one — that’s including a montage post that includes several episodes I’d expected to post separately. Heh. I’ll see how fast I can put text to them and get them out.

Also, following my strategy of buying expansions from Amazon Download when they go on deep discount after the release of ANOTHER expansion, I now have Showtime. Nobody in Gen 5 will probably have much to do with it, since those characters are essentially complete, I’m not clear how many special lot spaces I’ll need in my almost built-out Avalon to be able to do much with it. We’ll see :).

Charles called on Aunt Shanni as soon as he could get away the next day. He dropped by the Crumplebottom Estate, but Jeanette reported that her mom was at work. Charles dropped by to find her at closing time.

Shanni’s eyes looked empty as he hurried up to her. He suddenly found himself unsure of what to say.

“I didn’t expect you to be here,” he said awkwardly. “You don’t need the money. Why don’t you take some time to heal?”

“I’m trying,” Shanni said. Her voice was raw. “It’s just–” She brushed a tear out of her eye almost angrily. “It’s just that work reminds me of Agnes a lot less that home does.”

“I’m sorry. You can stay with us for a few days if you need to. You should’t be alone at a time like this.”

Shanni smiled wanly. “I’m not alone. The kids have been wonderful. Especially Jeanette. She’s growing up to be an amazing young woman.”

Then a real smile played on Shanni’s lips. It makes me think of what Agnes said to me when we were getting together. “You’ll do it, and you’ll be the better for it.”

Charles smiled back. “She was usually right.”

Shanni nodded. “And I usually didn’t notice until later. You know thing she said the same day that has helped me through my entire career? ‘The line between trashy and powerful is all about style!'”

Shanni was going to be OK.

“Please come home for dinner at least. It’s the kids’ birthday. They’d love to see you.”

Shanni shook her head. “Give them my love. Jeannette and Garry are making dinner, and I think we need some family time.”

So the triplets’ birthday was a local family affair, but it was plenty happy for all that.

In order of birth, first Forest blew out the candles.

(Better picture, but without glasses:)

Then Hunter.

Then Sky.

The partying ran too late on a school night, but eventually Veronica kicked them upstairs to sleep in their newly renovated bedroom.

Tomorrow would be a long and exciting day.

The next morning, after the hustle and bustle of getting the kids off to their first day of school, Charles heard Veronica calling his name from the yard.

“Oh, Charlllles!” she called. Her voice was almost a singsong.

He found her at the gazebo, engaging in her favorite hobby.

“Hey stranger,” she said with a sly smile. “You know, I keep having this dream where we were wicked young things who used to go skinny dipping and worse at all hours of the day. You ever have that dream?”

“Once or twice,” Charles admitted.

“We did it!” Veronica chortled. “The kids are off to school. Your folks are off at work. We have the whole place to ourselves! It’s been so long I’ve almost forgotten what to do.”

“I haven’t,” Charles said. “I’d be glad to remind you.”

Veronica sank into his arms with a sigh. “It’s good to get some of our own back.”

“They’re great kids,” Charles said, “But I’m looking forward to recovering my hobbies.”

“I couldn’t have said it better myself!” Veronica exclaimed and pulled him down under the water.

——–

Patient readers, the triplets finally grew up!

After the bit with Shanni, which was actually Charles’s failed attempt to get a makeover, I completely redid the lighting at the Salon. I have no idea why nothing I did would make things light up in there. Argh. And now I don’t think there will be another reason for the Samples to go there before they move.

Come to think of it, I had that problem with the dojo when I placed it. There was a lot of lighting in there already, but none of it activated. I had to redo the lighting in there too.