There is nothing more relaxing than creating a redwood forest with the SimCity 3000 soundtrack playing.

My computer was running slower, so I armed myself with CCleaner (that works like a charm) and AVG TuneUP... I'm always super careful and I make sure some settings and softwares are left untouched but this stupid new program decided to do ignore the settings of the main antivirus and edit some of the TS2 registry entries, so now K&B is gone from my pc. Got repair through Origin and then make sure I get clean templates, additional subhood, remove the stealth...

Well I wish antivirus would just ignore The Sims lol

My dog woke me up to go out at 5 am this morning. I thought, "nooo, go back to sleep. I'm supposed to sleep until my energy bar is full at 6 am"

Your energy bar is full at 6am? Lucky. I have to sleep until at least 10am :P

You know how in the Brokes' trailer home, Brandi's room is furnished in very lavish things, with a big portrait of an apple-headed lady above the bed? It always seemed weird to me how that part of the house is a lot nicer than the rest.
Well, there's a Hungarian book/play called "Tóték", in which there's a character called Gizi Gézáné, who has a bad reputation in the village for... um... let's just say that when she heard about the arrival of the general, she asked for a portrait to put "above the bed, because that's where I work".
So, basically, what I'm getting at is... Brandi might just be Pleasantview's version of Gizi Gézáné (Brandi Skipné?)
Food for thought...

Haha, usually it's not. But I started summer classes this week and my lecture is at 7

Interesting idea.

I always thought this set up was for Skip who was romance because he brought home 'his ladies' and that this is why she killed him. Caught him at it.

I really wish EAxis had put more nuance into the lighting in this game... we basically only get two intensities and a handful of colored lights, instead of what I'd have liked, which would be everything from a single candle up to huge stadium-style floodlights, with different colored lights available for each...

Totally agree. I was so happy when I found that Plasticbox and CircusWolf had tried to fix this. But it didn't work for me, something is conflicting. I'm so jealous cause them fixed lights look so pretty.

I always figured it was stuff he'd stolen for himself and Brandi. But I figure being a criminal got him killed, and Brandi had nothing to do with it. I also give her a romance secondary. I figure they were kind of the epitome of young, poor, head over heels in love, and making poor choices.

Totally agree. Young, Poor, In Love and STUPID. So STUPID as STUPID can be. Stupid enough to drown in a cup of water. Stupid enough to have expensive machines and pictures, but no job, no furniture, too many kids and no plan to keep feeding them. Stupidity and evil baby Beau did them in. (Where did Skip sit when he was at home, did they take turns using the only tv and chair?)

On the topic of lighting, why is the Nightlife lights folder such an unholy mess of .nlo's? Gah! I gave up for the day but will try again tomorrow to find the one light I want to edit.

So I wanted to share a couple of touching things I remember. These happened not in the neighborhood I'm playing now, but a previous neighborhood where I had some of my own Sims and tried to move in a lot of townies.

I had this one Sim who was a loner and a conspiracy nut. He liked having girlfriends but lived in his little shack and was always adamantly single. Then one of his girlfriends, who ran the coffeeshop, decided she needed more financial stability and married a townie. He showed up autonomously at the wedding party and just stood in the doorway and cried.

I had another Sim that I called the Cleaner. He looked creepy and weird, and his only role was to move into houses of Sims that had died alone and clean up the lot and move the graves to the graveyard. I had him sitting in a house and was playing another house with one of my Sims who was about to die of old age alone. Autonomously, he shows up at her house. I didn't even know they knew each other. They spent her last day playing chess and chatting. It was so sweet, as if he were an angel seeing her out.

It's these little things that you never expect that make the Sims the greatest game ever. I'm going through a tough time right now personally on top of lockdown and the Sims is really helping me cope. I can always escape into this wonderful world when the real one gets too hard.

Obviously Skip sat on the bed, reclining, getting ready to woohoo some more!

If you look at Brandi's age at start, they were like fourteen or fifteen year olds when Dustin was born. Not an age renowned for making good marriage choices, generally. (Though I do have a friend who married at fifteen who made a brilliant choice: he passed two years ago after decades of marriage, her first great-grandbaby is due next month, and she's amazing--I'm trying to talk her into writing her memoirs because she thinks she's just an ordinary woman.)

If I had known sim cats would be so adorable, I wouldn't have waited 13 years to acquire and install Pets.

I love my Cats in the Sims and in RL.

They are particularly wonderful if you use a couple of cheats:
boolprop ControlPets on
boolprop PetActionCancel true

I put them in my userStartup.cheat file located in The Sims 2/Config folder, works wonderfully and the cheats allow me to control the pets like they were regular sims, I would not want to play with out them.

I honestly think there is something off with Goopy in my current hood. He always happens to be walking past my houses when the kids are outside playing, calling my teens on the phone and trying to befriend them. It's creepy.

I got rid of my old Download folder (I was basically playing just using AGS because I didn't want to wait for the game to load), at the moment I'm playing with some CC added just for my Strangetown. I'm very close to start over a new download folder with just maxis match content for TS2 (repositoried clothing, add ons for the buy/build sets, preorder items, stories conversions and minimal hairstyle). I'll probably be in pain for not using some of the 3t2/4t2 conversions but at least I won't tempted to keep adding CC to my game lol

Yeah, I know those cheats. I don't like them on all the time because it's more interesting for me to leave the pets uncontrollable. But in case of glitches or a desire to test new pet CC, I aliased both so I can turn those cheats on and off as I play. So I have cpon, cpoff, pacon, and pacoff in my cheats file.

I leave those cheats on all the time in my game. I just don't ever use them unless I need to move a pet out of the way so I can build a wall, move a sofa, etc. Leaving the cheats on doesn't affect pet behavior. They behave just like they would with the cheats turned off unless you take control of the pet.

Why are shelves so damn expensive in this game? I mean $200? $245? Really?

Have you ever bought them in RL? They're far more expensive!

Really? More expensive than $200-250 for a single shelf? That just seems so expensive to me. I mean, it's more than a cabinet.

Also, I'm not saying that there aren't high end pieces of wood out there. It just seems high considering there's only 2 wall shelves in a vanilla game. Where's the options for the poor sims who went down to the store, picked up a piece of plywood, and slapped up a shelf on the wall to hold some extra stuff?

I've never been interested in creating a medieval hood until recently. It sounds different and like a lot of fun... such a huge project to undertake however. Making new rules, finding all the CC and having a separate downloads folder from my normal game, etc. Especially for someone who likes to make terrains & lots from scratch..
I can't stop thinking about it though.

I haven't played my medieval hood for a while but it is a lot of fun and the amount of cc available is just incredible. Talking of cc, since I started playing again in late March I've downloaded 130 items. That may not be much to you, but I never was a huge downloader. I can't seem to stop myself.