My Word Is Mud

Jan11

OK, I’m still not dead. No drama here, not even baby illness. The holiday season just turned out to be way busier than I expected.

This week, I finally got some Sims time again, and I wasted every moment actually playing the game. I don’t know where my priorities are.

I highly recommend Eco Friendly as a personality trait just for grins. I am definitely in love with Charles. I couldn’t stand to be married to him, but that’s OK. I’m already happily married. I’ll just love him from afar.

Hey, I haven’t been able to access thesims3.com for most of the last few days. I was able to upgrade to the latest patch just fine, though. Anyone else having that problem?

Post any day…. I swear!

Dec16

Woo. So, I have pics for Shanni’s wedding and a Simantics post, and I haven’t been able to actually stitch the words together. However, my reasons for being quiet are in general better this time.

First of all, Amazon Download had both Late Night and Generations on sale for half price! So I had to get them. But then I really wanted to continue in Sunset Valley, but it’s essentially impossible to get the stock clubs into the town, and the skyscrapers look out of place anyway. (But seriously, some of those high-rise clubs that come with the expansion are like 61×48 and crap. I can’t even make a lot that shape in the world editor. Why????)

So, I downloaded the Sunset Valley Late Night Revamp from ModtheSims (http://modthesims.info/download.php?t=424192). And then I wanted to tweak it to add a few more of bars/clubs and some of the residential lots I’d already dropped into my existing game. And THEN I had to port my entire town because I was SO not going to start over with the Sunset Vally starting characters for another generation, plus my family’s had a lot of contact with the town at this point, and I wanted to preserve everyone at their current generation. Twallan to the rescue, but it still took a couple of afternoons fiddling with the Porter and MasterController’s Total Annihilation before I got everything over. Oh, and I resurrected a couple of attempts at making celebrity faces now that there are actual celebrities and an acting career. Bill Cos-b and Michelle Yo are now in town. Actually, a previous version of Michelle Yo is an elder with a husband and three children. So I renamed the elder Sim Mikki Yo and added a Late Night rework of YA Michelle Yo into the household as her daughter. So now Willem Yo (Shanni’s ex) has a younger sister who is an actress and looks uncannily like her mom.

As a bonus, I was able to put an old copy of Cycl0n3’s playable ghost back on the lot, link him back in as Charles’ father, and kill him! Meaning that the urn I mentioned Zahra keeping in her room that never actually existed (because it had to be annihilated to fix a glitch, if you’re not tracking my game drama in excruciating detail) now does exist and IS in her room! And someday there may be a CyclOn3 ordinary ghost haunting around the house. This makes my world feel right again. An unfortunate side-effect appears to be that Zahra picked up a level-one bad romantic reputation for cheating. Or that may be because the porting process temporarily gave the impression of multiple Fabians existing at the same time. She doesn’t have any extra romantic interests that I can see, so I assume there will be No More Cheating.

I hope the new setup doesn’t have too many bars and clubs. I wanted one of each of the lot types, but it seems like the biggest complaint with Late Night is that the clubs are usually empty. Still, I had a great time downloading fabulous lots.

And THEN my darling daughter got an ear infection. This was her first, and I hadn’t realized how scary they would be. She started developing symptoms early Saturday (of course), and by the time the pediatrician’s office opened on Monday, she was running a frighteningly high temperature, was either crying or sleeping in someone’s arms all the time, could ONLY sleep in someone’s arms (cosleeping anyone?), AND couldn’t hold down food. Our info sheet from the pediatrician told us not to panic at stuff like this, so we didn’t take her to urgent care. But I admit I was surprised when it turned out to be as straightforward as an ear infection. Later I did more internet research and discovered that those symptoms are textbook for a nasty ear infection.

She’s fine and happy now. Her acid reflux meds have been tweaked, and so far the results look good. The fight with the insurance company has been addressed by moving her to a different insurance. With the ear infection, tweaked meds, and some extra teething behind her, she has slept fabulously for THREE WHOLE NIGHTS. But I am not going to draw any conclusions from this because I get superstitious about things I have no control over. But lemme tellya, getting enough sleep that many nights in a row after prolonged sleep deprivation is better than drugs.

I still have about three posts before Charles takes over and the movie industry movies into Sunset Valley, but I’ve been using my precious Sims time recently just to play in the new town. Now that things are more settled (I hope), I expect to crank out another post or two.

But THEN, of course, there will be the holidays, and I will be making a pilgrimage to a week-long extended nuclear family gathering, and I expect to be silent then too. So let’s raise a toast to more posting after the New Year.

Heir Hair!

Dec7

So, this is the first generation transition where I have actually had READERS, or at least readers I was aware of. I have been DYING to put up an heir poll, but I think you’ve probably figured out that’s just foolishness. Charles is my ghost baby. I’m terribly attached to him, and while Ada is developing into an interesting character of her own, there’s just no way she can win out.

So. I have an even more important poll instead!

Charles started life as a proto-hippie and has aged into a full-grown hippie. He was born with Disciplined and Loves the Outdoors, became Brave as a child (legacy trait), and then Angler as a teen. For his final trait, which I let myself choose, I gave him Eco-Friendly just to round out the package. I figured that he’d probably grow his hair out as an adult to look the part a bit more, but that means giving up the hair style he’s had since he was a toddler (NewSea’s Battler, if your curious).

So, my faithful readers, how should our Generation 4 Patron, Charles Babbage Sample, WEAR HIS HAIR?

Shall he stay with his old standby, NewsSea’s Battler?

What about The Duuuuuude?

Jordan’s Strands?

Fliggs Fluff?

Or this style that came with one of the expansions, which we’ll call Backswept.

Don’t leave me to make this decision alone, readers. Vote!

BTW: I don’t know if you noticed his totally awesome John Lennon glasses, but I think they are, in fact, totally awesome. They say that if you were born before a certain date they are John Lennon glasses, and if you were born after that date, they are Harry Potter glasses. So this is just another way I am OLD, because Harry Potter totally wears John Lennon glasses.

This is, of course, also a test of Blogger’s polling widget, so it’s possible this will be totally screwed up. Just a warning.

Simantics: Where’s Agnes?

Dec2

OK, I revamped my post tags again. “Simfail” is now reserved for the technical rants about crashes and fixing borked cc and other such nonsense. I have a new tag for Bloopers and the silly, quirky, charming nonsense that the game produces. The tag is “Simantics.”

That’s “Sim” + “Antics.” Get it? Ha! I crack myself up!

Anyway.

Immediately after Shanni and Agnes became engaged, Agnes announced that the had something important to do elsewhere and left. That got my curiosity up. Agnes is a professional author. She shouldn’t need to leave the house at all if she doesn’t want to. If it had been relevant to the story, I’d’ve said she needed to meet with her publisher or something. But it wasn’t. But I had to know what was so important she had to walk out on her new fiancee right after receiving a ring. So I followed her.

I’d never tried to follow an NPC sim before. It turned out that I could just keep my camera on her car, and she never vanished or anything. It was pretty cool.

She drove all the way to the edge of town to Goth Manor. So I figured she was going to visit her sister Cornelia’s family.

But no. She got out of her can and ran around the house to the wilderness behind it.

She ran up a hill.

Past a set of standing stones I didn’t even know where there. Awesome.

Then she stopped.

And picked up a rock. And put it back down again.

And ran all the way back to town.

So if an NPC sim has to leave a meeting for some kind of emergency commitment, now you know what they do in their off time.

And here’s a standing stone with etchings in ancient simlish that I just thought was cool. Some of them have pics of UFOs :). EA really ought to get around to introducing some aliens to this version of the The Sims.

3.41 Family Matters

Dec1

When work nudged her toward more work with vertebrate life forms, Zahra discovered another common interest with Charles.

They’d never needed conversation, which was good because Zahra was so bad at it. But their silent time together said paragraphs.

When he wasn’t fishing, Charles got Granddad to train Jabari Keaton in Sim-Fu.

Finally, someone his age to spar with.

(With the train ability, you can compel random NPCs to learn skills! Awesome!)

Ada, on the other hand, discovered her Easy Bake Oven.

When she had all the muffins she could carry, she went and found Fabian, who was sitting at the computer as usual. “Come on, Dad! You’re going to teach me entrepreneurship.”

“Queen to queen 4… What? I’m going to teach you what?”

“Oh, come on, Dad. I need an adult with me.”

So she dragged Fabian to the square and set up shop. Once Fabian got over the unpleasantness of being dragged out of his nice comfortable house, he found a wealth of opportunity.

Harvey Ursine, for example, couldn’t avoid talking to a guy whose brother-in-law just happened to be married to his daughter.

(And Fabian becomes the first character to actually MEET Harvey.)

Harvey was waiting for his new squeeze, Zelda Mae, to get off work. He took up with her within days of Rachel’s death. But you had to give the old bastard one thing — he never stepped out on her while she was alive. At least not so that anybody found out.

Mortimer Goth showed up at the theater on a date with Madison Langerak.

But he spent most of it complaining about Shanni.

Ada was a born saleswoman, and the crowd around her muffin stand lasted stretched down the block.

Fabian had to drag her home past her bedtime. “But there are still muffins left!” she cried.

And in all of this ebb and flow of daily life, Shanni was nowhere to be found.

She’d barely been home since things started between her and Agnes. She certainly hadn’t slept there.

There was a whole world to Agnes that she never let people see.

It only took a visit to the dark, half-decorated second bedroom to set Shanni thinking on the life Agnes had expected before her husband’s unfortunate accident turned her world upside down. No wonder she was so bitter now.

As she was coming down for breakfast, Agnes dashed out of the downstairs bathroom, looking embarrassed. “Don’t go in there dear. I’ve already called a repair man.”

When the repairman arrived, though, Shanni was in for a surprise.

“Adjo!” She gave her brother a big hug. “It’s been too long. Since when are you fixing toilets?”

(Seriously. If I knew Twallan was going to appoint Adjo as the down repairman, I would have taken a screen shot of Agnes breaking the toilet. It was funny.)

“Since Toya had another baby. You heard, right? Another girl. Her name is Starr.”

Shanni nodded. “Yeah, I heard.” She held her tongue on Adjo’s choice of names. “Congratulations! But appliance repair? I thought you were going to stay with busking and avoid working for The Man.”

Adjo looked to the floor. “Well, that doesn’t exactly pay for a growing family, does it?” The edge to his voice was something Shanni had never heard before. “Toya’s home on maternity leave, and I don’t want her asking her dad for money. I got work as a Roadie at the theater, and I’m picking up odd jobs where I can.”

There were bags under Adjo’s eyes, and he seemed pale and wan under his dark complexion. Shanni could barely find her voice. Adjo had always been so sure of what he wanted. She’d never entertained the possibility that things would be less than perfect for him. “Wow,” she said at last. “I’m sorry.”

Adjo forced a smile that quickly became the real deal. He was tired, not beat. “But enough about me,” he said. “What the hell are YOU doing here?”

Shanni flushed. “Um. About that. I’m kind of here with Agnes.”

Adjo blinked. “With Agnes? You meant WITH with?”

“Yeah. I haven’t told any of the family. I didn’t know how.”

“If you and Agnes are a couple, what’s so hard to say?”

“Well, it’s just that, I don’t know. People expect me to behave a certain way. And good grief, Zahra’s so straitlaced. She’ll completely freak out to see me with another woman.”

Adjo took her by the shoulders. “Look, the real question here is whether she makes you happy. If she does, then we’re all happy for you. Simple as that.”

After he left, Shanni kept on thinking. Adjo might be having a hard time, but he was still people-wise in a way she would never be. He’d taken all the confused thoughts dancing around in her head and made everything clear.

She was happy.

Shanni had dated cops and criminals, nice guys and bastards, smart and dumb, relaxed and ambitious. Nothing had ever stuck. Maybe she hadn’t found the right guy because he wasn’t a guy.

Suddenly, she knew what she wanted.

“Shanni, where are you?” Agnes called. “Come have breakfast.”

“Agnes,” Shanni said from the foyer. “Could you come here? I wanted to ask you something.”

When she got down on one knee, Agnes went white. “You don’t want to. You can’t possibly mean it.”

“I’ve never meant anything more in my life,” Shanni said, and she meant it.
Agnes held her breath while Shanni put the ring on her finger.

“But you might change your mind. When you meet my husband’s ghost–“

“Hush,” Shanni said. “Wait till you meet my nephew.”

(I’m so glad you guys enjoyed Shanni’s big reveal! So here’s the gameplay story behind it. Shanni is a Hopeless Romantic. It turns out that if you ever want to play a Wishacy with no challenge to it, make your heir a Hopeless Romantic. Shanni had tons of romantic wishes, but they were almost never for specific people. The only guy she ever spontaneously had a romantic wish for was actually Michael Bachelor, her first boyfriend. All other times, she just rolled high-point wishes to be in a relationship, and if she talked to anyone for very long, she’d roll a wish to kiss him. So she wasn’t going to tell me who she wanted to settle down with after she fulfilled her LTW. I had to look for cues from the story.

And, well, Agnes was one great big cue. She kept popping up in Shanni’s life. More than that, her “secret” trait is ALSO Hopeless Romantic. It seemed like the two of them were a perfect match that was just a little bit less than obvious.

Now, the Heartbreaker LTW is phrased, “Be the girlfriend of 10 different sims.” It does NOT say, “Break up with 10 different sims.” So I figured that once Shanni became Agnes’ girlfriend, her LTW should be fulfilled. Except that once they made a commitment, she didn’t get it. I was getting pretty ticked off. Agnes was the choice. I didn’t want her to have to break up with the love of her life, wait for things to cool down, and then start the relationship up again. And it wasn’t FAIR because that’s not what the LTW said. Even more annoyingly, her commitment tally was 10/10. She needed to be the girlfriend of 10 different sims; the tally SAID she was the girlfriend of 10 different sims, and yet she hadn’t been granted the wish.

In a fit of impulse, I had Shanni propose, since that’s what she was going to do anyway. And lo-and-behold, as soon as Agnes accepted, Shanni got her LTW. It appears that the actual wish is to STOP being the girlfriend of 10 different sims. How you stop being a girlfriend can go either way :).

But wow. Heartbreaker is one heck of a LTW to try to complete with spare. She barely went to work the last couple of days because I was ready to be done and just rolling her through the relationships :).)

3.40 A New Woman

Nov23

The day after she wrecked a customer’s makeover because her thoughts were on Mortimer, Shanni met Agnes for lunch. To her surprise, she found herself pouring out her soul.

Agnes’s face melted into sympathy when Shanni spoke of her own heartbreak. Underneath the woman’s harsh exterior was a heart that had been broken not so long ago.

“Now, Shanni my dear,” she said conspiratorially over her toasted french sausage, “I can see that you are not the same timid girl who Mortimer Goth walked all over. You just need to convince yourself of that. I think you need to confront him yourself.”

“Honestly? You don’t think that’s kind of trashy?”

Agnes laughed dismissively. “The line between trashy and powerful is all about style. You’ll do it, and what’s more, you’ll come to my place right afterward to tell me how it went. Trust me. You’ll be the better for it.”

So Shanni found herself the one place she never expected to be: Goth Manor.

It was difficult to even figure out which door was the front door, and the doorbell echoed cavernously inside.

Mortimer answered the door. He might be a high school graduate now, but he looked pretty much the same as he hand in school.

“I wanted to drop by to congratulate you,” she said lamely as he sized her up at the door.

“Come in! Come in! I never expected to see you here. Can I show you around? Would you like to hear about the book I’m writing? Dad has already lined up a publisher.”

Wow. He was hot for her, and he wasn’t even trying to hide it. Then again, he’d always been like that, right up until he snubbed her.

“I was just kind of curious. When I graduated, we had this conversation about older women.” She smiled a sultry smile. She’d gotten a lot better at that since school.

“Oh? Did I say something about older women? Older women are delightful. They have lots of experience.”

Shanni laughed at him.

“Huh?” Mortimer asked. “What?”

“Do you have any idea how sleezy that line is?” Shanni said.

Mortimer looked like he’d been smacked. “What are you doing here? You came here to insult me?”

“I came to see how I felt,” Shanni retorted. “In high school, I would have done anything to get you to like me. Now I have no idea why I cared.”

And with that, she turned around and walked out of Goth Manor and out of Mortimer’s life.

It had been so easy. The magic of her memory of him had stripped away as soon as he’d opened his mouth. What a transparent, skeezy looser. She could do so much better.

That evening, she kept her promise and dropped by Agnes’s estate.

To her surprise, Agnes was outside with Parker Langerak, who was making the most amazing lover’s eyes at her.

“Shanni Sample!” Agnes exclaimed when their eyes met. “You didn’t waste any time at all. Do come inside and tell me all about it. Parker, I had a nice time. I’ll call you.” She headed into the mansion, beckoning Shanni to follow.

“Did I interrupt your date?” Shanni asked awkwardly.

Agnes laughed. “Parker thinks he’s going to get some. I usually just let him decorate the lawn. All men are pigs, but some of them oink louder than others.”

“Now then, I was just going to make myself some spaghetti bolognese. Do tell me the story while I cook.”

So shanni sat at the bar and described the encounter with Mortimer. The idea of Agnes Crumplebottom doing her own cooking was hilarious somehow, but the big mansion was looming, dark, and empty. Clearly the legendary heiress was too much of a tightward to keep a staff.

When Shanni’s story was done, they sat down to dinner at the long formal dining table.

“Now tell me I was right,” Agnes said. “You feel much better now.”

Shanni laughed. She felt like a weight had been lifted from her self-esteem. “Yes, you’re right. I never would have guessed! I feel like a new woman.”

Shanni was a new woman, and everything felt possible.

Anything at all.

Including things she’d never dared to imagine.

(And *drumroll* Agnes is Shanni’s SO number 10!

The shot of Shanni leaving Goth Manor with Mortimer looking after her is actually a cheat scene from when she arrived, not when she left. When Shanni rang the doorbell, for some reason the game decided they both couldn’t stand on the stoop together. So it walked them both out all the way to the garage to greet each other. First Shanni walked the whole way, then Mortimer. But the image was just too good not to use.)

3.39 Meditation and Other Adventures

Nov15

Lance turned 100.

He celebrated by running 3 miles and then pumping iron for six hours straight.

Afterward, he looked… well, pretty much the same as he always looked. His days of bulging biceps and pulsating pectorals were long past, and he tried to take the truth with equanimity.

Lance couldn’t quite grasp the idea that his glory days were past. And the more he thought about it, the more he couldn’t let go of his last trip to Egypt with Charles, where they had been blocked from completing the tomb of the Sphinx.

The thing was, he knew exactly what they needed to smash those boulders. It had been hanging on the wall for ages as the prize trophy of his adventuring days.

Pangu’s Axe.

“All, right, Charles my boy, we are going back to Egypt, and this time we’re going prepared.”

Ada looked up from mixing paints. “You’re going where?”

“Charles and I, we have an unfinished date with the Sphinx,” Lance said with a twinkle in his eye.

Ada beamed. “All right! Just give me a minute to pack!”

“You want to go?” Charles asked in surprise.

“I am SO not going to let you go without me,” Ada retorted.

“But you’re just a little girl.”

“Ha! And it was OK when you were a little boy?”

It was hard to argue with that, even for Charles.

Ada was sure to make sure her mother was all right with things. Nobody mentioned how Lance had whisked Charles away without so much as a by-your-leave.

“I’m going to see the world, Mom! And learn how to ‘walk like an Egyptian’, you know.”

“Ada! You’re one quarter Egyptian! They walk just like everyone else.”

“It’s a joke Mom….”

“I don’t get it.”

“I love you anyway, Mom.”

“What about you, Layla?” Lance asked. “Come with us.”

“That’s all right. You kids have fun.”

“Don’t you miss your homeland? What about your sisters?”

Layla smiled wistfully at her husband. “Lancelot, my love,” she said. “I am an old woman. My joints ache. I hate flying. I like staying home and working in my garden, and my sisters and I do just fine with email. I keep waiting for you to notice that you’re an old man, but you don’t seem to have noticed yet.”

“Eh,” Lance said a bit awkwardly. “Maybe I’m still in denial.”

But she saw them to the airport and made sure everyone had one her amazing perfect apples to eat on the plane.

Ada gasped when they arrived. “It’s so beautiful! So amazing!”

“It’s a campsite,” Lance pointed out. “There’s a lot more than this to see.”

“I have to PAINT IT!” Ada cried.

Charles, on the other hand, was still petrified of flying. It was just unnatural to be tossed through the air in a big tin can. Lance knew to look for his jitters this time and had an idea how to fix them.

“Have I ever taught you any Sim-fu meditation?” he asked.

“No. What’s that?”

“Here, let me show you. First, get comfortable. Yes, like that. Now, let your mind expand.”

And then something amazing happened.

“I’m solid! I can’t believe it, Grandad! Thank you!”

“Ooof! You’re welcome! Who knew the power of Sim-fu?”

Ada dropped her paintbrush and dashed over.

“You don’t look like a ghost at all anymore! Well, maybe a little bit, but it’s a fabulous look. I can’t wait until I can paint your portrait!”

Charles was pleased to see that he really could have it all. He hadn’t lost any of his so-called super-powers. He could still float, pass through solid objects when he wanted to, and teleport all over town. And he could be just as scary as he was before if he choose to be.

But now he was both more visible, and more substantial.

Lance gathered the kids up into Fabian’s patrol car, which he just happened to have with him, and they headed out to the Sphinx.

Ada stayed outside to paint it, while Lance and Charles headed inside for adventure.

Charles had never felt so powerful in his life.

He and Lance made a great team.

And the final conclusion, at the center of the Sphinx, filled him with awe.

Afterward, they took some time to drink in the beauty of the place in their own ways.

On their final day, Lance cooked breakfast on the camp site’s stove.

“You two should appreciate this hot meal! Back in my day, we didn’t have the luxury of a stove at the Egyptian camp site! We had to eat cold cereal out of the refrigerator and like it!”

(Seriously. I had to install a mod just to add that stove. China and France have base camps with stoves, but not Egypt. Why? Don’t ask EA those silly questions.)

Charles got a little bit of exotic fishing in.

And Lance and Ada a little fun.

(Plus some games of tag that looked horribly inappropriate whenever I tried to photograph them. Sigh.)

And they finished their time bonding around the fire, talking of their adventures and future plans.

All too soon, it was time to catch the plane home.

(Herein, I get sick of never being able to see Charles either. What I’m actually doing is using the “Deghostify” option in EA’s testingcheats, made easier to use by Twallan’s DebugEnabler. He still floats and has sparkly ghost effects, but now he is in full color. I downloaded a metallic silver skintone for him so that he could continue to look ethereal. He would have had Cycl0n3’s pasty white skintone, so I made him very pale silver. The hair is just what looks like a ghostly hair color to me. He would have had Layla’s all-black hair. He also inherited Cycl0n3’s ice-blue eyes, which are a nice genetic touch in the Sample family.)

Cross-Pollination Update

Nov11

Velvet has finally found love.

She and Arlo Bunch got into each other in my last session, and just before I closed out, THEY had an unexpected pregnancy and decided to move in together. She’s the first character to move OUT of the Cosmopolitan Lofts. It must’ve been getting pretty crowded in there.

For some reason, I thought Arlo was a creeper, but I looked him up on the Sims Wiki. He’s a child at the time Sunset Valley initializes, and he seems to be completely wholesome. So, assuming that he didn’t pick up nasty traits for his final two, she did good.

So far, the only character still losing in love is poor Trixi, who is stuck with Xander Clavell’s baby and abandoned by her baby-daddy for a 100+ year-old woman.

DUDE. None of your Sims can find the protection. But I think just adding them has doubled the reproduction rate of my town.

Also, I need to take a look at this unexpected pregnancy probability in Twallan’s settings. I didn’t think I’d touched it, but sheesh.

3.38 A Bit of Advice

Nov10

(Two posts for the price of one because I have some posting time. It’s been a rough week.)

Shanni couldn’t believe how long it had been since she’d seen her brother face-to-face. Adjo and Toya had a lovely little starter home overlooking the sea, and he talked it up to her on the phone every chance he got. It was high time she went to see Adjo in his new digs.

It really was a lovely little place. Very rustic.

When she raised her hand to knock on the door, it opened suddenly, and she found herself about to punch Adjo in the face. “Oh!” she cried. “I’m sorry!”

“Hey sis!” Adjo said in a rush. “Great to see you! I gotta head to work.”

“But,” Shanni said at his retreating back. “This is your day off. We were going to do lunch!”

“Sorry!” Adjo called over his shoulder. “I’ll catch up with you later!”

Wow. He looked stressed. Shanni couldn’t bring herself to be mad at him. She hoped he was OK.

Toya emerged from the house as Adjo disappeared. “Hey there! Want to come in to meet Charmaine? Did he tell you were expecting again?”

“You’re what? So soon?”

Toya laughed. “Well, it wasn’t exactly planned. But Adjo wanted a big family. Might as well get the maternity leave over with in one dose, eh?”

Wow. Adjo was going to be a daddy. Again.

“Actually,” Shanni said, “I think work’s calling me.” Shanni headed to work and tried to distract herself. Israel Bauer dropped by on her break. “Hey there! I graduated and have a job and everything! Any chance you’re free for lunch?”

(I have only one picture, and it’s not terribly flattering.)

“Actually, I just had lunch,” Shanni admitted.

Israel was not to be distracted. “Dinner then. Maybe we can hit the theater. What do you think?”

Shanni laughed. “You’re the most persistent guy I’ve ever met. OK, you’re out of school and fair game. It’s a date.”

They had a nice time, though Shanni didn’t exactly feel the pangs of love in her chest by the time they got out of the diner. She had a chance to catch up on Israel’s life, and it had be a rough one so far. His mother Devin Bauer got sick not long after Antonio died, and she died when he was in elementary school. He’d been bounced from one foster home to the next, finally setting down with Malika Williams and her two daughters. It was quite a sob story, but he told it with a smile.

(Seriously, the poor kid has been in Twallan’s “Last One Standing” routine TWICE. Devin died, he got moved in with a foster parent, then THEY died, and he ended up in Malika’s house. I don’t know why Devin died so soon. She was a life stage younger than Antonio when they got married, but I have to guess she was actually just days from becoming an elder back when I photographed Layla visiting her in Gen 2.)

“Want to head back to my place for a nightcap?” Israel suggested after dinner. “I like the sound of the word ‘nightcap.’ It’s so old style.”

“Sure,” Shanni said. There was something about this guy…. it wasn’t love, but she was intrigued.

They headed to the Williams house.

Malika’s older daughter Lisette just happened to back from a date of her own.

The four of them awkwardly shared the front lawn for after-date flirts. Shanni noticed that Israel was constantly looking over her shoulder to see what Lisette was doing.

Oh.

“This isn’t about me at all, is it,” she demanded of Israel. “You’re doing all of this to make your foster-sister jealous.”

Israel cringed. “I didn’t mean it that way. I was… trying to get over her.”

Shanni glanced surreptitiously at Lisette, who turned out to be glancing surreptitiously at Israel. It was something out of a sitcom. “I’m not sure who is trying harder to make who jealous,” she told him. “Watch.”

She pulled Israel close, but made sure he had a good view of Lisette.

“Watch her make with the green-eyed monster.”

“Oh,” Israel said. “Do you think she really cares.”

“I think the two of you should have a long talk.”

“Wow,” Israel said. “You’re not mad at me for dragging you through this?”

Shanni suppressed a sigh. When had she gotten to be everyone’s dating counselor? “No. It’s OK.”

“When I saw you with Mortimer in high school, I knew you were something special,” Israel said. “You really are.”

Mortimer. “Ah, Mortimer was in your graduating class, wasn’t he?” she asked, trying to sound unconcerned.

“Oh, yeah. He has big plans to be a writer now that he’s out. Want me to say hi to him for you?”

“No, uh, that’s OK. Let’s talk later!”

Shanni got out of there and headed home as quickly as she could.

Mortimer. The wound was as fresh as it had been the day of her birthday.

And it was still on her mind at work the next day.

This had to end. It was time to do something.

(I thought the end of Shanni’s date with Israel was HILARIOUS, and it was totally not staged. I had not idea Israel and his foster-sister were romantic interests. After this, I really wanted to see Israel and Lisette get married, and I considered forcing it for story cuteness, but while I was contemplating, he got involved with the Sharpes, and the rest is history.)

3.37 Sunset Valley’s Finest

Nov10

Ever since his birthday, Charles had been thinking about fishing. He’d dabbled with it before, but now he really saw the appeal. There was just no better way to commune with nature.

One morning, he got up at dawn and teleported down to the beach behind their house to get a chance at the fish before Sunset Valley woke up.

It was just like Sim-Fu meditation: him, the water, the dawn, and his thoughts.

Until the cops hauled him in for being out before curfew.

To give you an idea of how nuts this was, let’s look at the setting.

Here’s the Sample family house, perched on a cliff above the beach.

Here Charles ran up the path back to his home, where the cop stood shouting at him. The guy didn’t even bother to come down himself.

“We can’t have ruffians the likes of you running about all hours!” the cop lectured him when he finally got back home. “Especially ones in, uh, camouflage paint to make ’em hard to see.”

Great. Nobody noticed Charles when he wanted to be seen, but when a bit of invisibility would have been nice, he got screwed.

“Now get in the car, and I’ll take you home.”

“I AM home,” Charles pointed out. Then, more quietly, “Doofus.”

“What’d you call me?”

“Nothing.”

“Well, we’ll see what your folks have to say about this.”

Zahra, who was hauled in from her morning gardening, looked from Charles to the cop and back again. “You picked him for FISHING before curfew?” she asked. “Really? Don’t you have real troublemakers to arrest somewhere? You know his stepdad is detective on the force too, don’t you?”

“Um, no ma’am.”

That’s Sunset Valley’s finest for you.

(Seriously, teens wish to go out after curfew all the time. How on earth do you NOT get caught?? I canceled Zahra lecture because the whole thing was so silly and it would have made them all late for school/work.

This chapter is super-short b/c I thought it was funny, and it didn’t line up with anything else thematically. Going to get another one out quick while I have time.)