Admittedly not much... but something. Finally.

After the EA app decided to update and could no longer run on the laptop specifically bought for playing Sims, I couldn't play for the past few weeks. Tried a bunch of methods to get round the EA app, none of which seemed to work for one reason or another. My creativity for a new neighbourhood I had been building has been wild fumbling around in the back of my head just waiting to play the game again....

Husband fixed it today I've since been building more of my neighbourhood "Shovelle" based on 1990s English council estates, also made a few families for a different neighbourhood, and I'm excited to be playing Riverside again soon.

So despite some glitches, puzzling behavior, and the structural annoyances of playing an apartment lot, I've generally had a really good experience with apartments in Centuryville, where I started in 1901 and we're currently in 1906. (Hat's aging mod making this work with four days equalling a year.) Three single women started in a row of three small shacks and soon became firm friends. When one of them was seduced and deserted by the town's resident rake, the other two kept coming in and spontaneously helping with the baby, her cats, the cleaning, and so on. (It helps that Maria and Jamesina have high Neatness points.) Jamesina fell in love with Katherine and moved in with her when baby Sally was born, which enabled them to move into a slightly larger apartment when Sally got to be a toddler. Maria got married and moved into the apartment right above them, and they continued to run in and out of each other's places and be generally supportive. But when Maria had twins and Sally was on the verge of growing to child, even those apartments were way too small, so Maria and her husband, with their carefully hoarded savings, bought a small house, and Jamesina, Katherine, and Sally moved into a rental house directly across the street. I was rather sad about this, because while in real life they'd still be popping in on each other and lending a hand -- Katherine could get a job and Sally could go to Maria's after school till Katherine or Auntie Jimmy came and got her! -- but this was obviously the end of that era.

Well! The first Wednesday in that house was Sally's birthday. Jamesina went to her job and Katherine bustled around getting the house ret up, because she's a Popularity sim and of course she was throwing a party. Suddenly, as she carried Sally off to give her a bath, Maria appeared in the kitchen and started cleaning! I don't mean she teleported in, but that she wandered in on her own and I didn't notice her till she was in the kitchen. It was one of those magic moments. No, they're no longer subject to apartment code, but yes, they are still supportive best friends.

Then at the party, to which Katherine invited the seducer and his wife (Katherine and the wife are both Popularity sims, okay? They made friends in the background, even though Flo once found some flowers Katherine left), things blew up. Sally never knew a thing about it, as she was playing out front with another kid, but Katherine was poking the seducer and making him cry in the background, as rain poured down upon them -- and Jamesina was practically dancing in the puddles, kicking and splashing happy as a clam at high tide, jumping nearly as high as the guest who'd found the trampoline. Jamesina was not upset about this development, at all! I don't suppose the rupture will stick, because everybody's BFF, but it was funny and satisfying in the moment.

I love this game so much.

I've been working more on my neighbourhood. I added a hotel & spa similar to the one I had my wedding reception, and I've been working on the houses interiors to make them look "90s" and less like identical lots - It's really hard to make houses for Sims who don't yet exist or live there, but I've mostly just been building based on houses my friends lived in growing up. Sims naturally has a very Early 2000s theme, so it hasn't been difficult or too restrictive just using vanilla game content. I built a lot of the houses based on council estates in Greater Manchester, and the estate in North Wales my husband grew up on. I've been browsing house listings in the area for accurate floor plans - I actually built the house I currently live in before I even planned on moving

I still haven't got round to building most of the community lots - though I'm running low on creativity; I didn't realise how many tiny little convenience shops we have and how it isn't necessary in Sims where they're 1 loading screen away from any shop.

Also since fixing my game; I've managed to fix the bug that wasn't letting me take pictures in that neighbourhood.

My sim seems to have taken to having some unusual pets! :D

Consort Hutchins-Capp (nee Consort Thebe, formerly known as Consort Capp) is looking for others to join him in complaining about the ruinous level of taxation in Veronaville. I know it just says "Bills", but both Consort and I know that a substantial property tax makes up a significant part of these these vanilla Maxis bills. Anyone wishing to support him should write to him at 95 Bard Boulevard, with his young wife April Hutchins-Capp, and their baby son Caspar. (Also living with them is former Downtownie Seth Almassizadeh [Ian Byall in the game files], a friend and business associate of Consort's. Seth is there to help April and consort look after Caspar, as Consort doesn't trust the nannies. I'm not sure if I trust them either!)


I have actually started up my game for the first time since my operation for prostate cancer just over a fortnight ago. Since the operation (with the insertion and then removal of a catheter) has left me rather toilet-obsessed, I feel I have quite a bit in common with a non-potty-trained toddler, so I thought it a food idea to play a family with such a toddler. Well, in Sim time, April Hutchins-Capp only gave birth to little Caspar late last night, But in reality, due to the funereal pace of my game, it really happened back in October 2022, so I think it's high time to turn Aging on and let young Caspar age up to a toddler. (I normally play with Aging off.) But, when I checked in SimPE, I saw that Consort only had only 2 days left. So I went back into the game and used the Sim Manipulator to give him an extra five days. By that time I was getting too tired to play any further, so I quit and went to bed. Maybe I'll really play them today! Or tomorrow. I'm just so tired since my operation!

At one time I think I might have been quite happy to let Consort die of old age, but over the years I seem to have grown to almost like the old bigot. Moreover, having passed my threescore-and-ten a few years ago, I realised that Consort and I are now both "living on borrowed time". And, since my operation, I'm starting to feel my age. When I looked in the mirror the other day, my cheeks looked sunken like Consort's. (Fortunately I still have my long hair -- well long for a boy!) I think Consort is quite safe now -- as long as I live myself. I'll give him more "Days Left".

So . . . I'll see if I can really play them today . . . and see what Caspar looks like as a toddler. And let Consort see too.

I'm dealing with 9 young sims from 4 heavily intermarried families with a 10 yearday spread in their ages. That means a lot of aging up to teen, aging to YA, going to college, and parents turning elderly or dying. Since I play in a strict rotation to keep memories in the right order, this means there's a lot of fiddly timekeeping going on in my game right now. I really do not enjoy 1-day rotations because it makes the gameplay feel choppy. Ah well, I shall get through it eventually, and go back to my preferred 3 or 4 day rotations.

Riverview Rotation 7
I completed this rotation 25/02/2026 and just never uploaded it... so here's what's been going on in Riverview, before I update you all on rotation 8

Jefferson
Barbara can't seem to get pregnant, she's hoping fertility treatments will help. She has 10 days before she becomes an elder and she really wants 10 children. She's currently at 5. Is it possible? Probably not. But a girl can dream. For now, she is entertained by her first grand baby- Alicia Molyneux, born at 12:59pm. Gina is still a teen for few more days so raising little Alicia is probably going to partly fall on Barbara. The twins became teens, Carla of course became a fortune sim, and Jim a pleasure sim.

Thompson
So Virginia took custody of her son Anthony on his 4th birthday. Virginia and Bernie tied the knot quietly and Bernie finally met his first born. Virginia gave birth to 'their' second child, Cameron at 3:26pm. Luckily he had 'his fathers' black hair, and Virginia's brown eyes and light skin. Virginia knew if it got out that she had woohooed Don after he briefly left Sarah, the whole family would hate her and she couldn't imagine what would happen if Bernie left her with two kids on her own!

Roberts
After a rocky start, James and Patricia were surprisingly good parents to Hiram. Maybe Hanna was free to go to college without all hell breaking lose, though she suspected she wouldn't get much of a say anyway- her parents had been pushing for her to apply for scholarships for weeks. Sadly her grades weren't too good, and although she was doing quite well at her job as a part time business reporter, she wasn't anywhere closer to getting another promotion and she only had 4 skills total.

Molyneux
Junior and Christina grew up into happy toddlers. Gina set the house on fire making spaghetti, Victor tutted, then as soon as the fireman left, he set the house on fire a second time making porkchops. Everyone is exhausted from the toddlers.

Marshall
I'm sure you can imagine the absolute shock it was when the adoption agency dropped off Kaylynn, Margaret was of course overjoyed, and expected Ralph to be a little reluctant since she made this decision without him - he didn't show his anger at the time but instead went to slap Lila, who luckily had been passed the baby and therefore Ralph just sulked off to his bedroom instead. The twins are indifferent to a new baby sibling.

Brooklyn
Gregory skipped school, so he could (1) woohoo Lila Marshall, (2) Take a nap and then (3) go on a date with teen townie Jenna Torry. Charles skipped work, so he could (1) nap and then (2) go on a date with Lisa Russilo. He asked her to be his girlfriend, but then while Charles was cleaning the bathroom, Lisa went and made out with Gregory and they fell in love. So. That's an interesting dynamic.

Brooke
Abraham and Macey had a birthday party for their son Michael. They invited their older daughters from Uni and a few others. Michael grew up well. They decorated a bedroom for him, and have left the other bedroom as a study.

Brooklyn-Thompson
Isabel and Jack finally tied the knot. They both now want a baby to "complete" the family. Isabel doesn't have long until menopause, so by the end of the wedding party they were already expecting. Charles is still kicking over their garbage can every day. Kenneth became a teenager, I've been really debating his aspiration, it's a tie up between popularity (lonely childhood = need for friends?), family (divorced parents, love of animals = need for stable family?) Or knowledge (just because he keeps rolling wants to skill)... I ended up choosing popularity. I've already planned for him to go to uni, so when the time arrives I can rethink his aspiration if need be.

Anderson
Jennifer was shocked to find out she was pregnant, and instantly the fight for the house began. She had been the only one paying the bills around here, but it was Marty's name on the mortgage, Lisa didn't care either way as she was hoping to move in with Charles anyway. The obvious solution; Jennifer asked Marty to marry her! He reluctantly agreed; she framed it as a purely financial decision, but she knew exactly who the father of her child was. Lisa was vomiting all day too, at first I thought "oh god not another!" but it turns out she just had a stomach bug. Haha Marty was definitely not ready to raise 2 babies.

Russell
Trenton went on a date with Dina, it went really well. He has a want to woohoo 10 sims, but I'm really running out of Sims -- by this point it feels like all the romance sims in town and half the townies are in a massive poly relationship. Aaron became a toddler... I'm not really sure what to do with him. I did originally consider him for the baby the Marshall's adopted, but Claire bonded with him. This time he's mostly been left to scream in his crib all day while both parents go about their business. I eventually decided Claire would move out on her own with him and leave Trenton in the house. They weren't really serious about each other anyway, so Aaron just complicated matters. They split on good terms and Trenton agrees to visit often. Whether that's for woohoo or to see his son is a different story lol.

Ross
Dina's finally enjoying time on her own after Don moved back in with his family. She can't really afford the bills though, since she doesn't work. Lisa Russilo came over, and she kinda looks vaguely like Nina Caliente, so I have a new plan of the two living together... Today they've just been getting to know each other and becoming friends.

Thompson
Martha just found out she was pregnant with her and Thomas's second baby together. She's very excited. Thomas on the other hand is very worried- He'd much prefer a grandchild to another child. He's nearing the end of his life and dreads the idea of leaving this last child fatherless.

Baxter
Sarah banished Don to the pool house. She figures she might as well squeeze one more baby out of him before kicking him to the curb. The pregnancy is still early on but she's already struggling, Alex is left teaching the twins their toddler skills.

College dorm
Danielle and Mellisa are settling in nicely. Danielle is studying Philosophy, and Mellisa Psychology. I'm playing want-based so they don't all end up on deans list. Despite being a family sim, Josh spent the majority of the time wanting to befriend Mum's in the main hood and dormies. Mellisa could barely keep herself alive without my constant assistance, and Danielle romanced one of the dormies and then lost interest and was mostly focused on talking to everyone about games or playing chess.

Time to install triplets and quads. XD

Opened the game after months long hiatus. Everyone is still on Christmas rotation.
Started with visiting the McCallisters and Valerie Trottier. She is at the end of her unplanned college pregnancy and about to give birth to Rupert McCallister's child. Rupert just graduated college and is living with his family until his fiancee graduates. He hasn't told them about Valerie and the baby yet, and it makes Val angry. She needs support, and Rupert's parents are her best bet. They are stable, secure and loving, and she herself is unemployed, broke and not interested in being a mother.
Back at her place Valerie received a phone call from random townie named Amy Trottier. They hit up instantly, and after thinking about the storyline a bit I decided to roll with it. Gave them family ties and a backstory, and, whola, Valerie has a sister now.
Amy came over for a visit, and after a chat about their options and needs, she moved in. The story goes that Valerie and Amy have the same mother who lost custody rights and they grew up in different foster families. Amy is trying to track down her siblings, and Val is the first she found. Amy longs to have a family, and she sees this as an opportunity to build one. Valerie is not so sure - she hoped to give the baby to Rupert's parents, and she still doesn't want the responsibility. But she appreciates Amy's support and the fact that she is not so alone anymore.

I did not know that cats could look so angry when playing with the cat teaser. XD

Kevin Cadler spent the whole Christmas day trying to adjust to his new fallen-to-disgrace-and-fired ex-politician life. Mostly, he cleaned. His husband Gerry Romm should have taken the day off but decided to make extra money on Christmas day and kept his bistro open. He promised to be home before 6pm but ended up staying late. The latest addition - take out food shelves - were quite popular among costumers, and by the time he was done restocking it was way past 8pm.
Back at home Gerry and Kevin's daughter Lydia grew up into a teen without a birthday cake or party. Gerry did arrive with cake, presents, and apologies (and a promise to use all the extra Christmas income on new clothes for her!) but everybody were too tired to do much. So they just went to sleep feeling a bit disappointed and sad.
Gerry now wants to get back into culinary career. It wasn't TOO bad when he had specific working hours and set income...

I don't want him to rush into this decision, though. He is already an elder, and Kevin will age next rotation, and going back into career is not profitable. Kevin now has more time, and Lydia is at the age she can help around the bistro as well. She is a fortune/family sim (money and work has been a huge theme for this household her whole childhood. Seemed fitting), and I think she might enjoy being involved in a family business with her dads.

one of my sims serenated the other before falling in love, but then the guitar got stuck to her body and they woohoo'd with said guitar. damn lesbians

"If music be the food of love play on" : William Shakespeare Twelfth Night: Act 1, Scene 1

Playing Veronaville as intensively as I do, and with so many of my best friends living there, has made me much more aware of Shakespeare!

Haven't played TS2 since the 6th pc I had it on blew up. The new pc never has had any sims game on it all, but I put TS3 on a back-up pc & tried hard to play it for several months, but the constant crashing drove me crazy.

I guess that was about 2022.

I had played with my own custom Vville for about 2 decades until every lot was filled with multi-generational families & got to where it took over an hour to load the game, then another hour to load the hood. Over 1000 sims with deep history.

A new hood was made for the last generation of Vville. Made sure the hood was flat & could have a lot more... LOTS, haha.

That one got up to about 200 sims. The game then became stale & predictable. House building, sim genetics, playing astrology match-maker. All of it. I finally stopped. After about 4 years out of it, I miss it & am thinking about going back to it.


I did screencaps of everything. Most of those are on a back-up disc, but found some on this pc of the final TS2 shots of what was going on in my hood before I stopped playing.

My first character wasn't my sim-self. She came later. Instead, her best friend Shirley Rohr was the 1st sim I made for TS2. She was ancient. No telling how old in sim years.

I finally let her go as my neighborhood was dying of bloat. Shirley was an actor that became a studio head.

She came home from work, waved at her family, then The Reaper came for her. This is her right before she died, as well as her daughter, son in-law & shot of her house.

Early on I decided to do certain things to let me identify sims before there became too many to memorize. Color was a big thing, so clothing & house decoration let me know. In fact, it's helping me now to recall who these sims are.

The purple ones are from my sim-self family. The purple one's here are from my sim-self's sister Selah, her kids & house.

One shot has my sim-self in it before she started crashing the game. The shot is zoomed out since I was going for floor-plans.

One shot has Selah's daughter Shiloam with her new sim baby that went on to the new hood I made so I could continue playing.

Some of Selah's family are identified by the color red, so are the Bravo family. Those sims married each other, so there are snaps of their red house, as well as another branch of the elvish Bravo family.

After a while, I became obsessed with having elves in my game & wanted to breed out all of the round ears, so a lot of them had pointy ears.

One way to tell is by their hair. You may not be able to see the ears, but if the hair is swept back to where the ears are exposed, they're elves and not roundies.

Another way to identify what family they were from were the letters in their name. All of the Bravo's had B names, the Zoink's had Z names, and so on.

Some sims got a free pass on that, such as Shirley's family.

What's going on now can be a widely varied answer for those who play several families.

I generally would play a house until someone was born, and went through every life stage up until they began school, then I'd go to another house.

Other times I'd play until someone died, which was rare, since I really liked my sims.

Getting married was also a big deal, so I'd also play until a courtship led to marriage, which often meant that their house would be too full to have more sims, so that meant the new couple would have to move.

Sometimes it didn't go down that way. Sometimes the new couple kept the house, while I'd move out the elder sims to an empty lot just for sims retired from major game play, but would show up in public spots. Make sure you have a phone on those lots so that you can call them & so on.

If anyone played Veronaville, then you know the Capps. I erased most of them, but kept I think just 3 sisters, Hermia, Juliette & Desi.

The older two became infamous vampires and maintained the Capp name, while little Desi grew up and made baby sims with with other families.

Here are some of the Capps descended from Desi, who like the other original Maxian Capps became unplayable & had to be removed from the game.

New Capps were fine. Only the originals that I kept had to be elminated.

One of the families my Capps married into & bred with was the Mills family, who were elves. This is the 3rd and last Mills-Capp home built before my Vville was too full to play.

This particular home was also from a template I used a few times, so this one would be the most perfected one. It was a hard one to get right with kitchen, bathrooms and bedrooms.

When it came to moving sims out of a family home after marriage, I'd go to build mode and use the eye-dropper to make a collection of wallpapers, floors and so on for the basic family look - then I'd go to buy mode and use the eye-dropper to get everything in the family house, then drop that on the lawn. Going back to sim mode again, I'd put all that stuff into the sims personal inventory, then they could go on with their lives & move.

However, things like beds, chairs, sofa's and so on cannot be used when taken out of an inventory. So you just get your new home that you designed & built for the happy new couple, then pause to basic lot set up stuff, and liberate your sims of that inventory & dump it onto the lawn, then use the dropper to get identical stuff that's new & sell back the inventory stuff. Wah-lah. That stuff is usable.

Another family the Capps married into was the Zoinks, who were the second family I made after I made Shirley's family, the Rohrs.

The Zoinks were matriarch Zev and her kids Zam & Zippy. Zippy was rather fond of a lot of sims, including Desi Capp, so these sims are descended from Zippy & Desi.

This is the very last sim house I ever built and played in my new hood. Cannot remember it's name, but it might have been D-Town.

At this point, I realized I built this Zoink-Capp house using a well-used formula that worked for my style of game play, which was basically 6 bedrooms for extended family expansion, along with two bathrooms attached to every bedroom that were usable only by one sim. No bathroom gatherings in my game.

There was also a large open living space with a large foyer that opened up into the kitchen, a guest bathroom & the kitchen. There would also be a nursery with no doors to make sims leave their kids alone while they skill build, and then also a garage. For some reason, something borked my sims ability to drive anything in the last 2 years of game play, so the garages were empty & my sims flew to work everyday (using a mod) and sometimes maybe took a cab. However, the empty garages could be a skill building area for some of those specifically large objects that don't fit in well with the rest of a house.

Also had school bus jump bug, so my sim kids were home schooled.

There was a Maxian home that came with Veronaville that was quite nice if one was new to the game. It was something to covet. That was the pad the Zoinks got in Vville, so this house has the same basic decor that I gave that nice pool house in old Vville.

One of my favorite families belonged to a dude named Flip. He had one of those large Maxian houses that was hard to get. Selah's big brother got it actually & he shared that with his pal Fanny, who was Flip's sister. When they died, Flip inherited it.

Flip married into a family I created called the Tunami family, which were basically 4 hot pollinator sister chicks. Flip married one descended from Trish Tunami, her daughter Tiffany.

This is their heavily redesigned home, a two story with a lot of space for a multi-generational family.

There is also the last Tunami home made for this hood before it went splody. It was a Tunami also descended from Trish, and then a family whose actual name was Pollinator that I made.

Its patriarch was Sylvester. Wasn't a nice sim at all. He had a sister that returned to the family mansion & liberated all the sims he had imprisoned there, then bumped the guy off & took over the family.

Nice sims, heh.