Believe it or not, I have almost completely finish the gameplay for Generation 5. I am probably going to let myself play until all of Generation 6 become teens and then move to the Wonderlands. Dylan’s teen birthday is “today.”

But I was just furloughed.

I don’t know how much all of you internationals have seen of the train wreck that is American politics right now, but on Tuesday we failed to fund our government for the upcoming year (federal year is measured October-September). My job is writing human resources applications for a defense lab. Tonight they told me not to work next week.

I don’t know how long this is going to last. Quite honestly, it’s really scary to be living through this. We’re actually doing all right financially, and my husband has the dominant salary anyway. But none of that really feels secure in the face of all this national turmoil.

We’re committed to daycare for a while, so I expect to be taking a bit of a staycation. I don’t feel much like writing, though, so I don’t know how much you’ll see from the blog.

I have pictures and plot outlines for two posts queued up and am not in the mood to write anything. But there’s plenty more Samples to be told, never fear!

I think I have a Simantics I can toss out, though.

Because I must be clinically insane, I’m starting up another Sims challenge. I TRIED to talk myself out of it, I swear to you, but the idea just wouldn’t go away.

Blog is here: Waypoint.

This is a Nothing Is Free challenge, which starts with an empty unpopulated world with no rabbitholes and requires you to both populate it (from service sims and the like) and build it. I’m also going to do Buckygirl’s Six Degrees of Separation story, so “heirs” are going to be unrelated sims in the town. It seems like a really fun combination to me.

The theme is going to be a shipwreck on a desert island — how’s that for cliche? Heh. It was that or a colony on Lunar Lakes. It was hard to decide between them. In the end, the shipwreck won out on account of the story idea. Also, I don’t have Lunar Lakes, it hasn’t gone on sale in forever, and I’m already forking over the dough for Island Paradise.

I have another fairly serious, plotty story in mind, something closer in style to the Samples, where I build a retroactive plot over gameplay. That is, of course, a more labor-intense way to blog it. It’s going to somewhat center around Island Paradise, so I won’t be kicking anything off until it is released.

It’s probably going to move verrrry slooowly because I already have two friggin’ challenges.

I’ll probably drop a note here again when I have an actual game post up.

A bunch of my other friends are doing it, so I thought I’d jump in.

Hey there! I’m not posting either!

Urgh. Part of it is life. We just completed a remodel of our kitchen that involved living in less than half of our house for two months. I mean, it’s just the kitchen. Well, and the dining room because its floor had to be redone. Then take all the STUFF out of your kitchen and dining room and put it elsewhere in the house, then set up a table with a kitchenette outside your bedroom. How much space is left? Not a whole heck of a lot!! Claustrophobia shouldn’t have much effect on sitting in front of a computer and writing a blog post, but it turns out it does.

Oh yeah, and we have eaten every microwavable thing that can be sold in this town, and we are sick of them all.

That is officially done, and we’re moving back into our space.

Oh, and here’s something stupid — the next post in the Sample queue involves Hunter, and I have shots of him inside a building. I really want a shot of the outside of the building as a transition, but I forgot to take one. And while the events in Hunter’s story are late summer I think, it’s winter in the game, so any exterior shot I took for that post would be REALLY WEIRD.

The correct answer is to say !@#$ to the exterior shot and my absurd sense of artistic license and just write the $%^& post.

OTOH, playing the game has been really important escapism recently, so I’ve played really far ahead. And the Samples have been *so interesting*. But that kind of makes the posting pressure worse because I want to do justice to the story.

I’m about ready to switch back to playing the Wonderlands, I think. I hope if I just force out a post, the creative juices will start flowing again.

I have a CC-free (I hope) version of each of the Gen 5 Samples up for download on the Exchange: Forest, Hunter, and Sky.

I managed to find a Supernatural skintone that I thought suited Sky. I think that’s pretty cool. Though it’s on a multi-color slider, so I can’t represent how much darker Sky’s skin is than Charles’s, and her children will be unpredictable :).

I intend to update the Download page with a few more options: .sim files and Sims3Packs with CC. At some point anyway.

I find it amusing that Forest got a lot of downloads quickly. Hunter has a few, and nobody wants Sky. I wonder what it is about Forest that draws Exchange users.

OK, the comment spammers have found both my blogs. If you subscribe to post comments, you’ve probably gotten them in email, though Blogger has already deleted them when I show up to check. The comment spam is so entertaining that I’ve been tempted to leave them alone, but there’s always the chance that they’re linking to malware or something scary, and I don’t think any of us want to mess with that.

I don’t think any of you guys are posting without an account anyway. I don’t think I’ve gotten more than one or two legitimate anonymous comments in the whole (depressingly long) history of this blog. So I am turning off anonymous comments as of today. I think that’s a much better alternative than turning back on the Captcha. I don’t think any of you will be affected.

Bah.

I hate getting writer’s block on this blog because it gets harder to write stuff that is REALLY far away from what I’m playing.

Of course, the Samples seem to run 50/50 for gameplay, troubleshooting, so I’m not *that* far ahead. In fact, my game crashed about 12 sim-hours from the triplets’ birthday. I’d estimate I’m something around 5 me-posts behind.

I think the problem is that I put the pictures together for my next post, and they’re a mess. I need to reorganize them, and probably the post will pop out.

At any rate, there’s no great crisis signified by the lack of posts here. Not even a crisis caused by work. And tomorrow’s my first day, by the way!

The good news is: I got the job!

The bad news is: I have no idea what it will do to my playing and posting schedules :).

This really is the perfect arrangement for me, but they want to be start fast, and it’s a telecommuting position, so I’ll need to set up my office.

But I am here and reading other people’s blogs even if posting slows down. Or it might not. My posting has slowed down anyway just due to the pressure of the job hunt, so who knows?

Just wanted to say that my new ISBI We’re All Mad Here is up and running! I’m hoping to put up an advisory mate poll in the next day or two, so come check it out!