Oh my god newly divorced John Burb just ordered groceries from the phone. He's not got much money since he refuses to get a job. The delivery dude came round and when John accepted the delivery and put it in his fridge, the Delivery dude CAME IN AND TOOK THE FRIDGE AS PAYMENT. Now poor John has no fridge, no groceries and since he has no job, absolutely no means of feeding his family. He immediately rolled a want to get married though?

He better marry a rich sim lol.

After a 10 year hiatus I have resumed playing Pleasantview where I left off. It feels a bit funny, as I was still quite a rookie player ten years ago. (Maybe I still am!) I also have different mods some of which rather change the dynamics of the game. (I'm thinking especially of the "No Jealousy" mod that Andrew and Julian told me to get!) I've started off by playing the Goths, where Bella had turned up again. She remarried Mortimer two days after her return. The extra day was to give her time to choose and to buy a wedding dress. Somewhat to my disappointment, the game considered the wedding party a disaster. It's the first time that's happened to me and my Sims, and I'm not sure what we did wrong. It was doing OK until about 40 minutes before the end. I then, to try to save things, I started Mortimer and Bella on a date, but it was too late to make a difference. Probably we should have drunk more toasts.

Now I'm used to playing our Veronaville, with its dozens of CAS Sims (including CAS townies) and in contrast Pleasantview felt a bit restrictive, with the same pre-mades turning up all the time. So I'm starting to do in Pleasantview what I've been doing for a while in Veronaville: when good-looking Sims generate in CAS while I'm "rolling the pacifier", I save some of them to the game. Hence Babs and Babette Nunney ---

Babs Nunney and her teenage daughter Babette arrived in Pleasantview looking for somewhere to live. They found a small house at the end of Oak Street, but the house was really tiny. It had no bed, no dining table, no telephone, and no counters to prepare food. Babs had a bit of money left out of her starting §20,000, so she set about furnishing the house a bit more adequately. She added kitchen counters, and a telephone, but there was only room for one bed, and a single one at that. So she bought a good quality single bed, so that she and Babette could sleep in in "shifts". Since there was no room in the house, Babs put an outdoor dining table in the garden.

Around 10 o'clock local papergirl Amy Jones brought the morning paper. Babette hung out with her till lunchtime. A little later in the morning Bella Goth came by in her new orange outfit. Unfortunately her top was the same design as Babs's blue one.

Just after midday, Darren Dreamer, John Burb, and a very pregnant Brandi Broke came to welcome Babs and Babette to the district. Babs made up lunch meat sandwiches for everyone. Babette, Darren and John ate theirs in the kitchen while Babs, Amy, Bella and Brandi ate in the garden. While she was eating lunch, Babs spotted Marissa Bendett passing in the street; she left her half-eaten food to go and greet her. Brandi is clearly eating for two. When she'd finished her own sandwich, she ate Babs's. Although it was still just late afternoon, Babette went to bed, so Babs could get the bed later. Babs placed a second dining table in the garden, and, feeling hungry again, she made mac and cheese which everybody ate.

Then, keen to make new friends, Babette went out with Amy Jones to Young Pleasantview, a youth club near where the Brokes live. The first thing she saw when she arrived was Dustin making out with Angela for the first time. She then played pinball with Ivy Copur, but the two of them really didn't hit it off. She did a little better with Lilith. Just before she left for home she met young Charlie Spence who lives with his family near the Dreamers.

When she got back home, Babette took a shower in the garden shower at the back of the house. (I had replaced the base game shower with the CC communal beach shower, so they change into swimwear rather than stripping naked.) She couldn't go to bed, because her mum was in it, so she spent the next few hours writing up her diary.

At this stage Babs got the builders in to enlarge the house to allow for a second bed -- a double one. Despite the extra space, the house still looks and feels very small.

Eating still has to be done in the garden, so on Tuesday morning Babs and Babette breakfasted together in the early morning sunlight. Babette went to school, and an hour later Babs went to first day at her fashion job. She's a starting-level shop assistant.

At 1 o'clock Babette came home from school. She brought a new friend with her, a boy called Orlando Centowski. Babette did some of her homework, but then spent most of the afternoon playing kicky-bag with Orlando, stopping only when she was too tired to continue.

Around that time Dina Caliente happened to be passing in the street, so Babette paused playing and greeted her. By the time Babs came home at 5 o'clock, Babette and Orlando were firmly established as friends. Babs found she got on well with her daughter's new friend too. Babette went to bed to recover while her mum cooked the dinner.

In the late evening after Orlando and Dina had left, Babs called her new friend Helen Strachan. Meanwhile Babette squatted down between the two beds and finished her homework. She found it heavy going, and she thinks in future she'll ask Babs for some help. Finally they both went to bed. They now have a wardrobe between the beds, but unfortunately it blocks virtually all the light from the window behind it. Babs is thinking of getting the builders in again to move the window.

........................

I think I'll take the bull by the horns and play the Brokes next. After ten years pregnancy (!) Brandi's baby must be due now. I hope that by now I'm I'm a good enough player to handle the birth without killing either the mother or the baby. "Dustin, I'll be relying on you to help me!"

Ten years pregnant. :O Get that baby out!

You'd better get Babs a few promotions before it starts raining lol.

@AndrewGloria, did the marriage happen at the arch? In the first half of the party? If the scheduled event doesn't happen using the designated item the party will tank, and the game seems to assume that if it hasn't happened at a certain point it's not going to, and the party never recovers.

Alternatively, if they invited Mary Sue's whole family, and they were picking on Lilith the whole time, the score might never recover from that, either. But it's hard for me to believe that fixing the Pleasants wasn't the first thing you did.

Not a damn thing is happening in my game right now because the house is being rewired and my gaming computer is unplugged behind a wall of Stuff shifted to let the workmen get at the walls. But they are pledged to be done by the end of the week and my time will be spent between putting stuff where it belongs and playing my heart out.

My tech guru just took away my computer box to look at and hopefully fix. I don't know if he'll be able to save the drive, but I'm hoping he'll be able to clone it so I can save the game I have on it.

I'm thankful he did this-and I only begged him now because the machine isn't doing anything at all except spinning it's wheels. I've done everything I've be able to (in my limited capacity) and this is not in my skill set.

He told me it 'should be under $1k'. I didn't even flinch even if he was joking.

STOP PRESS

Brandi Broke has just gone into labour -- in the bathroom -- at 16:57 on Wednesday.

Watching sims at the fishing pond is always fun I love to see what my playables do when I am not playing them.

Mr Shaw is quite a lover of nature, so he was sent fishing yesterday. He caught 5 boots

A bit further away, Mr Evans was catching fish after fish after fish. (I looked into his inventory later - he had 37 fish, including 4 golden trouts)!

Two active sims decided to trade the fishing for a game of throwing football. They both have a lot of body skills and seemed to enjoy throwing that ball for hours on end.

Appleby made hamburgers, later he made hot dogs, and, while he caught some fish, he was more interested in talking to Ivy Copur.

And the lazy Doyle parked himself on the garden bench.

Current Neighborhoods Update
Hawkins, IN - Corrupt, most likely. Haven't played in over a year. Last time I opened it, all the lots had vanished, as if the Mind Flayer had come up and sucked them all into the Upside Down. I restored from a backup. The lots were back, but no inhabitants. Some day I'll get back to it - probably after Season Five airs next year.

Florin - The Benedictine brothers at the Abbey of St. Peter & St. Paul go about their daily toils and devotions. Br. Cadfael has just signed up to be an in-home Flexi-School teacher, so that his teenaged assistant, Br. Oswin, can devote more time to his gardening chores, after hitting the schoolbook for a few hours. Those plants need lots of weeding. Prior Robert, supposedly in charge of the monks while the abbot is away at a conference, is secretly living the good life, sleeping in the abbot's comfy bed and enjoying his private cook rather than mucking in with the other brothers. His toady, Br. Jerome, occasionally allowed to share in these illicit pleasures, trumpets his "superior rank", mostly by picking on the timid Oswin. There's sure to be a comeuppance when the abbot returns. Down the road, Undersheriff Hugh Beringar keeps "the King's peace", even though King Lotharon is a dottering old fool who spends most of his days fishing for old shoes in the castle moat, leaving the running of things, unfortunately, to his stinking son, Prince Humperdinck. Fortunately, Humperdinck's idea of running things mostly consists of hunting deer in the Thieves' Forest and throwing wine-guzzling parties, so the Undersheriff is free to carry out his charge mostly unmolested by the powers that be. In the family cottage (half of which doubles as the local hoosegow), Aline divides her days between growing veg, tutoring their son Giles and schmoozing with the gossipy passers-by from the town... a wife with a talent for listening is always an asset to an officer of the Law. Even farther down the road in the forest, Inigo and Fezzik bide their time while the shipwrights make repairs to "Domingo's Revenge". Fezzik has taken up with a local rugby team, giving them a rather unfair advantage. Inigo is making ends meet as a paid assassin, but his heart isn't really in it, and most days he calls in sick and meets Westley and Buttercup at the Jolly Hangman, hustling billiards and formulating theories about where Vizzini may have hidden his treasure. On the other side of the Forest, Max and Valerie Vunderlekh (that's Yiddish for "marvelous" ) fill their days with growing weird herbs and mushrooms, taking long naps, admiring their flock of ravens, and a little light bickering... heavily supervised, of course: Sims aren't really made for the "old Jewish couple" life... they're either at each other's throats, or all lovey-dovey. Someone should invent a mod that allows for a grumpy, but relatively peaceful coexistence.


Roma - a low level of corruption going on, and I'm not talking about the bribes that Caesar shells out to keep the augurs in line. It's under control for the moment, but one always must keep an eye open for floating children. The two households that seem clean enough to play regularly are that of Gordianus the Finder, and the gladiator academy next door. Gordianus' family is in flux at the moment: while he is living just north of the City on a farm he inherited from a client, his oldest adopted son Eco has moved back to the old neighborhood with his wife Menenia, and are saving money living above a squalid tabernum, while they contemplate starting a family. Diana, his daughter by his freed Egyptian slave Bethesda, is a little sparkle of mischief and joy, leaving her toys everywhere and tormenting her older brother Meto, another adopted slave, freed from one of Gordianus' more notorious former clients. Bethesda mostly keeps a lid on this by spending a lot of quality time with Meto, who is nearly ready to put on his manly toga. Will he follow Eco's footsteps and move back to the city as a private eye and factotum? Only time will tell. Meanwhile, the multi-ethnic gladiator "family" next door has just taken in "Marcus", a young street urchin, who was apprehended during a street festival whilst in the act of picking the pocket of Drobarka, the gladiator's giant leader from Taurica (now Crimea). Marcus shows lots of physical aptitude on the obstacle course, as well as with the fencing dummy. Will he grow up to be a professional fighter as well? Lapis, the stocky Sicanian, has secretly hired himself out as muscle to one of the local ganglords. Raksesa, the Nubian, is nearing the end of his shelf life as a gladiator, and when not tutoring the young Marcus in the ways of the warrior, spends time at the Hippodrome, talking to the horse handlers and contemplating an equine-based career switch. Drobarka used to be in the cavalry himself. Will he be able to recruit new talent to the school, or will he join up with Raksesa and abandon the facility?

After moving to Strangetown and purchasing a lavish but rather gothic-looking villa there, Cassandra Goth located her missing mother wandering around town and was able to eventually get her to remember her life before her abduction. Bella is not much older than Cassandra because of alien hand-wavy reasons. She agreed to move into the villa and even used some of the Goth money to start a little boutique selling Southwestern furniture and art in town, as she had the want to buy a community lot. Then Cassandra tried to fix the computer and set herself on fire. So, change of plans. Alexander is almost ready for college, and I don't think Bella ever felt like she fit in to Strangetown proper, so I imagine once he goes off that she'll take herself and the Goth money Downtown, buy a ridiculously expensive house, and live out the rest of her days in relative luxury.

As for my other Pleasantview transplants (who live Downtown as well), Dustin and Lilith did about what I expected, which was that they fell in love, got married, and had a baby. They are still pretty poor, but Lilith has been making a lot of friends, and Dustin is trying to work his way up through the criminal underground. Nina Caliente quickly got herself involved with Ripp Grunt. In fact, Ripp dumped his very longtime girlfriend, Fatima, and moved Nina into the house he shares with Aldric Davis and Chloe Curious in her place. (Fatima was not happy about this development, but she is now a rock god and lives with the other permaplat senior ladies, so I think she's over it.) Nina has not been seeing only Ripp, but he doesn't really care about that as long as he gets to be with her. He seems to have settled down a lot in his elderhood but certainly hasn't forgotten what he was like when he was younger. Nina even got pregnant by another guy (a townie), and Ripp was cool, let's just raise the baby here in the party house. It's not like he hasn't done that before, when Fatima and Aldric had twins together. Nina had a difficult pregnancy but got through it, had a little girl, and then went and got herself pregnant again--by Ripp, this time! She's a fertile girl. And here I was thinking that Ripp wasn't going to have any children. My game, as usual, laughs at me, but honestly, I'm not too upset about it. I'm very curious to see what a Ripp-Nina child will look like.

Middletown, the shopping district, is well-established, and most of the next generation has moved there to either start businesses or work in the town services, which has injected some new life and purpose into the hood. Jonah Loner's (Ajay and Lola's only child) mayoral campaign is going very well, and I expect him to be elected by the end of the season. He's the perfect guy for the job. I think he's the first Sim I've played who actually has a shot at having 30 best friends, which is his other locked want right now. Strangetown is becoming something of a ghost town by comparison--the military had better start recruiting!

Mr Silke, partly due to his liking cooking/having house parties, has set his house on fire.

Nobody told him to try to make turkey, but he was quite hungry (probably that Simmer who plays him's fault) and probably would love to impress some of his guests (those not already impressed by him, of course) well.

With the party going up in flames, some of the guests hid the road. The rest tried to get to the bathroom, but Appleby was occupying one, taking a bubble bath, while Doyle went for a shower in the other bathroom. Mr Silke took a sponge bath, and started stuffing his face.

4 guests left after this

Mrs Silke saved the party with gelatin, and in the last seconds, the party turned into a roof raiser!

I have noticed that since Vidcund died and I moved Bella Goth into Strangetown, so many of the citizens have been obsessed with getting on the telescope during the day and spying on her. I guess she is the closest thing we've got to a local celebrity. I think when she moves Downtown, she may have to hire a bodyguard.

I am almost done with the winter round, which means that 50 days/years (more or less) will have passed in Strangetown. Johnny, Tank, and Almeric are very far into their elderhood, and it will be hard to say good-bye to them. However, I am focusing on turning the shopping district, Middletown, into more of an integrated community where everyone has a role. There's a post office, a newspaper, and quite a few police officers (who don't seem to be any good at catching that pesky arsonist-burglar), and several small businesses have been launched. We still need a schoolteacher, though, but there should be quite a few college graduates next round. Jonah Loner easily won the election to become mayor and is spending his days at the City Hall doing what he loves best: glad-handing.