Must see a picture of the most useless cat ever. XD

Ha, I'm not in my game right now but I'll try to get one next time I load it. Tank loves that freaking cat.

I just got back my computer in the last 30 minutes, and I think I'm going to go get a new surge protector strip because this was among worst 3 weeks of my life-between losing my computer, and having a very disturbing (but ultimately cleared) diagnosis, I've been bouncing off the walls without playing my game.

Watch out, TT, I'm coming for you!

Sorry to hear you've had a tough week, I think it's going to be getting better soon!

During the past 2 weeks, I've had to deal with the distinct possibility of breast cancer. Which is to say, very difficult to deal with until the second batch of tests came back this past Friday and I was overjoyed to learn that I do not have it.

Imagine being deprived of your one go-to fun and having to do without any real escape from real life. It's enough to make one drink.
Thankfully I had husband's laptop which helped a bit but I could not play any of the games I've got, nor really do much.

The problem with the machine? A power surge-my tech guru, who had been dealing with his own life problems came to my rescue.

So yeah, life's been a bit difficult..but it's much improved now!

That's amazing to hear you don't have cancer @FranH stay strong!



Anyway, this is Malcolm Landgraab and Alabaster Cowl getting into a fight, as usual. basic backstory is that Alabaster is part of a group of Sims that wants to undermine the SimValley presidential race by using zombies to prevent Malcolm Landgraab from being reelected. It's part of a new subplot in my Plot of Land neighborhood.

Malcolm Landgraab: "You witches and weirdo necrophiliacs, I'll have the lot of you deported when I am reelected!"

Alabaster Cowl: "There's no way you're getting reelected you sleazeball..."

Malcolm Landgraab: "Listen here pal, maybe your band of misfits thinks you're clever, but I've got money and fame. I'll have you expelled from Plot of Land if you keep at it."

In one of the dorms, Davis twins fell in love with my remake of the Roomies. If both couples end up marrying, this means Melissa and Chris will become sisters-in-law!

While the Appleby family enjoyed a great vacation in the Far East, and the Walsh family loved their trip to the mountains, the Silke family was not so lucky when they decided to keep up, specifically with the Appleby neigbors.

The Silke's has just soaked in the hot springs for a while when all 5 family members got the flu. They survived but had little success with anything else. Mr Silke did not learn to teleport or to do tai chi. He may have learned a massage if they could stay a day longer, who knows? His wishes were pointedly ignored by the Far East.

No map found either, but they drank plenty of tea and ate plenty of ramen. Mr Silke saw his waistline expanding and is quite unhappy with his fitness state. (Perhaps Appleby can teach him Tai Chi). They all seemed rather relieved to get back home

Nothing's happening at all! I'm looking at my myriad folders of hoods to test, hoods to finish, hoods to play and thinking, which one do I choose?

So glad you don't have it! It's scary when they say they need to do a biopsy.

Looks like things are improving with the computer back!



Hey, quit looking at my to do folder!

I am extremely not pleased!

Valentine Hart's lifebar is running out, his youngest grandchild just aged up to child, they had about $16K in the bank, and I decided what that family needed was a vacation. He booked the entire household - him, Mary, Rhett, Penny, his and Mary's children Rhein and Aiken, Rhett and Penny's children Laika and Skye - to Three Lakes and I figured (since they were all going to get huge insurance payouts when he died shortly after getting back) that he'd fall back on the habits of his glory days and book the most expensive hotel. I have edited all of the hotels in Three Lakes.

When they got there and got checked in, he took all the ones that wanted a tour on a nature trail, leaving the others to hang around the hotel having a good time. The chance card said that a bear had eaten the tour's picnic lunch, and I know with a result like that there was a chance they'd all be in orange hunger, so I clicked on a phone in one of the suites to order room service so it would be ready for them. But I couldn't get a room service option! Nor is there a restaurant or grill at the Sky Vista Hotel! Sure enough, they came back orange. I did not for one moment believe they could be gotten to a community lot and fed before they hit red, and I was not going to let half the Harts die on their first day of vacation! So I quit to neighborhood.

Where I saw that there were no hotel plumbobs, occupied or not, over any of the lots. Not even the cheaper hotels I've sent people to since my mass neighborhood edit. So I clicked on the expensive hotel in Lot mode, and they weren't there.

All the rooms had wall phones rather than the table phones I'd used last time I had a sim call for room service. I don't know why you'd need table phones, or even if that was a change, but it was the only thing I could think of that might be at fault, so I changed them while I was in there. But there seemed to be no way to get to the family while in Three Lakes. I had forgotten to save when they got to the lot.

So now they're back at home with no vacation, $4k poorer, and I don't know what's wrong with Three Lakes! It's possible, if there's a mod that makes room service only available in hotels with a restaurant, that I've installed it, but I don't remember doing so. And I damn sure didn't download a mod that said it wiped out the lodging plumbobs! This is my first day back in Widespot since the start of the rewiring of the house and I'm monstrously disgruntled about it.

Oh no @Peni Griffin I hope you figure it out! Poor simmies, no holiday!

Ouch, @PeniGriffin. That is where I will cheat and send them on vacation again

In the meantime, the headmaster in my game has just rejected the children of the Minister of Education

I started working on a new hood that's a military base, so I probably won't have many updates to Strangetown in the near future unless my new project loses my interest. The base is a remote outpost called Camp Jejune. The name was inspired by a military base in my home state called Camp Lejeune, but of course there is the double meaning, which reflects its remoteness and lack of stuff to do (for now).

I did play Strangetown for a bit to get Bella Goth moved Downtown and have her hire a bodyguard, since everyone has been spying on her with the telescope lately. She hired a townie I had to make playable because he is the father of Nina Caliente's first child. He is a Romance aspiration, so I thought bodyguard would be a good profession for him, and of course he and Bella got right down to business. Then, Bella wanted to invite over Dustin Broke, whom she must have met somewhere. She wanted to seduce him, and they did make out a little, but Dustin refused to go any further. He had other plans, and while Bella was upstairs with her bodyguard, he was able to nick several expensive things from her house and slip out unseen. Unfortunately, his wife, Lilith, had seen him kissing Bella through the window and was rather pissed when Dustin got home, but he was soon able to smooth things over after showing her all the stuff he got away with. The loot was enough to pay for their son's college education so he would hopefully have better career prospects. (These are all Pleasantview characters I imported into Strangetown, except Bella is the Strangetown version.)

Also, sadly, Johnny Smith died of old age. I did my best to give him a good send-off. I have to admit that I'm reluctant to keep playing Strangetown because Tank will be next to go, and as you all have probably guessed, he is my favorite. (I am aware of Elixir of Life, but I don't play with it too much, except for story reasons.)

And I just realized that I forgot once again to take a picture of Tank's cat, Bonkers. Sorry!

I'd download a build/buy enabler, so you can at least whip out a grill if it happens again.



Bonkers will be sad if his human dies is a good enough story reason to use Elixir of Life!

I prepared and started up an attempt at a version of the tiered Apocalypse challenge, as described by Phaenoh here on MTS, but starting out with the Desiderata Valley sims rather than just one sim. Starting out with so many sims is both a pro and a con - especially as Elizabeth Aspir, Opal Contrary and Hannah Bell all started out pregnant. I also allowed sims to bring some things from their old homes with them, but only things they could be expected to be able to carry in their hands, and nothing I felt went against the spirit of the challenge.

Pauline Aspir had a fear of her mum dying before everything was even set in place, hopefully that's not foreshadowing. The Aspir family is all in one household, including the now old Natasha Una and the resurrected Noriko, bringing that household to three elders that according to the rules can't be controlled. I had planned to put in some downloaded lots but the game crashed when I tried to enter so I had to whip something up on my own. For the Aspirs, I made a lot that looks like an old office building or something, but where only a small section is available. Victor works in the medical career so he got to keep his job. Elizabeth got put on cooking duty, got food poisoning and gave birth to a son who got the name Levi and looks a lot like his father. Pauline was stuck on the toilet for an hour because Noriko stood blocking the toilet booth door and wouldn't move out of the way. Isaac Bell came to visit. The welcome wagon consisted solely of little Allan Jocque, Sophia's and Marcel's adopted son.

The Contrary and Jocque families moved into a house together, a small simple thing that was put up in a haste for the current situation. Marcel is in the culinary career so he kept his job, Rick Contrary got a job in the culinary career too, and Violet got a job in the military career but was fired on her first day. Opal gave birth to a daughter named Engla and who Marcel ended up as one of the primary caregivers to, especially as he and Rick are in charge of the kitchen.

The Bell family took in John Mole and are currently squatting in a small, rundown house. John joined the military career. Hannah got put in charge of cooking as she's the only one who can grill hamburgers, though Sharon got the family to starve one day when she managed to sneak out the ingredients for a bologna sandwhich that I forced her to give to Daniel (at this point in the challenge, sims are only allowed to take food out of the fridge once per day). Between Hannah and Elizabeth Aspir, about six plates of hamburgers have disappeared into the ground so far because they've paused to complain about something and dumped the plates into the void. Hannah gave birth to a son, Jakob Bell. Daniel grew up to a fortune teen. I had planned to have him join the military career, for free food mostly, and he grew up looking more than military ready. The welcome wagon consisted solely of Allan Jocque.

As a whole, everyone's tired, hungry, dirty and miserable, toddlers are continously disappointed getting rejected when they ask the adults for things, and people are generally cranky towards each other (Marcel Jocque, for instance, got rejected trying to make out with his wife). The bathrooms are constantly cramped with people (though that's nothing uncommon) and the bathrooms sinks have probably gotten more use these past few sim days than in my previous years of playing the game, for sims washing their hands profusely, the occasional sponge bath, and downing glass after glass of water for that ever so slight decrease in hunger.