And in the end...

I am not sorry that this blog is coming to a close.

Not because this hasn't been a fun assignment. And not because I don't enjoy the silliness of writing about the Sims.

I gotta be honest and say this was the most difficult semester I have had since the early days of undergrad. School and work and family has all been a lot to handle. I am so glad it is over. The school part anyway. This frees up a portion of my brain I can use for something else.

At least until May 11th when it starts all over again.

So I'll end where I began. I am a pretty boring person. I like pretty simple things. I like playing the Sims 2 when possible.

Dear Ms. Polly Experiment. I miss that old girl.

Cheers.

PS - LET'S GO PENS!

Are we there yet?

At this point in the semester, I cannot begin to explain how glad I am that I picked a silly topic like The Sims to blog about. This has given me the excuse to play the game a little bit almost every week, and then gush inanely about it to practical strangers.

It has been a small bit of relief. I am so glad that I didn't try and fool myself into thinking I could blog about anything serious here. I am not that interesting, and I don't have a whole lot of brain to spare on serious thinking.

On that note, I give you all the Whack Family, Lynette and Jed. Don't know what to do with them yet.

Experiments, Revisited.

Checking back in with the Household of Herbert Experiment:

1. Teenager Helga apparently hates Amelia Creepy. Without any provocation, they began to brawl.
2. Retired cop, Herbert, still likes to check his kitchen for prints.
3. Roland and Cassandra's son, Ralph, is a piano prodigy.
4. The giant penguin also likes tennis.

A Family Dinner

I haven't had much time to explain (or play with, really) the Creepy family that live in Fail House.

A recap:

Amber Creepy moves in with Darren Dreamer and his teen son, Dirk. Dirk dies of sickness because the house was infested with bugs leftover from the family that had lived (and all died) there previously.

By playing with cheats, which I usually don't, I managed to get Amber to have the Grim Reaper's baby, Amelia. Weird. Right. She turns out to be pretty normal.

Then, experimenting with another cheat, Amber had an alien baby, Astrid.

Again exploring the cheats, I discovered that there are vampires in the game. Turns out Amber likes vampire dudes, so she had a son, Arnold, with Count Von Something-Or-Another. Arnold, so far, seems normal.

All this time, Darren had been busting his butt taking care of Amber and her children. Poor guy. Thought he deserved a fair chance to have his own legacy. Besides, this was all a giant experiment in Sim genetics anyway. So Amber had his twins, Olga and Orville. Interestingly, one twin has the darkest skin tone and the other has the fairest.

Something else notable about this family: I have always struggled to get my Sims to eat meals together. The timing is always weird, and the larger the family, the more challenging. The Creepys, however, like it.

Also, I don't know why, but Arnold's default clothes are pirate garb.

Cerebral leakage

Honest to god, man, I am exhausted. My job and homework. That's it. Nothing else.

Enjoy some random unrelated pictures of Sims.
1. The Grim Reaper coming for some dumb Sim I killed.
2. Amber Creepy's portrait before she started having babies with the Grim Reaper and a vampire and an alien.
3. Helga Experiment being scared by some ghost.
4. Dirk Dreamer (Darren's late son) being scared by some other ghost.

Ephemeral

On top of having zero leisure time for anything, I am experiencing utter brain failure due to masses of stress. It is alarming to be as young as I am and feel like I cannot string together more than two complete sentences because of lack of concentration and/or memory. I just cannot remember things anymore. Names, words, ideas, things that I have to get done.

I am falling apart.

On that note, here are some pictures of the giant Sim penguin talking to a snowman. Apparently, he is interested in soup, prison, and fried eggs.

Vomicity

I am absolutely drowning in work.

I have a full time job in an extremely busy department in an extremely busy library. I do book design consultation work on the side, including work for Carnegie Mellon University Press. I take two classes in the LIS program.

I am never home before 10:00PM. I have no social life whatsoever.

Weekends are marathons of trying to get everything else done that I can’t touch during the week, like laundry or shopping or home maintenance. Plus hours of homework, errands, and side jobs.

I am exhausted.

All I wanted to do this weekend was have maybe one hour to lay the Sims. It just didn’t happen.

Lame.

What?

So this one time? On a snowy night at Herbert Experiment’s house? Little Helga was obsessive-compulsively raking leaves in the yard rather than sleeping. I noticed a strange little character waddling down the sidewalk. It wasn’t a Sim and it wasn’t a Sim pet.

It was a giant penguin.

And she got to pet him.

Neat.




Also related to penguins, I went to the hockey game tonight. And I met the awesome dude who writes the Empty Netters blog for the Post-Gazette. He took a picture of my WICKED-AWESOME 1995 Tomas Sandstrom jersey. Now I am on his blog. Wooooooo!

http://community.post-gazette.com/blogs/emptynetters/archive/2009/03/20/kings-at-penguins-live-3-20-09.aspx

The Fun of Fail

Alex and I have branched out a little in our Sim play.

We were both feeling confined by our benevolence to our Sim people, so we decided to create a whole new family of total losers, give them miserable lives, and kill them off.

Frank, Felix, and Felicity Fail moved into a house with very little comforts or necessities. Frank we trapped on the second story porch and removed the door. He eventually starved to death. Felix started a stove fire all on his own and burned. Felicity, who survived actually being caught on fire twice, was left to drown in a pool without a ladder.

I know it is sick. But it left us with an interesting scenario to continue play with. You see, right before Felicity died, we moved pre-made Sim Darren Dreamer and his teenaged son Dirk into the household. After she went away, we fixed the place up and let the two new Sims live there. And now there are 3 very cranky ghosts attached to the property.

As a bonus, Dirk kept coming down with the flu because the house was infested with bugs from the previous Fail family, plus he would not stop running outside in the cold to stomp the damn things. So he too perished.

To consol Darren, I created a new Sim, Amber Creepy, for him to live with. He is totally in love with her, and she thinks he’s okay, I guess. Did I mention she’s the mother to a toddler fathered by the Grim Reaper?

Mwahahahaha!

(The photos: Felicity passed out from exhaustion while Felix burns down the kitchen. Frank wishing he had some friends or was at least allowed back inside. Felicity eating rancid food on the couch. Darren having the pee scared out of him by Frank's ghost.)

There goes the neighborhood...

This is a boring post.

I just wanted to list, mostly for my own sanity, the families who populate the Pleasantville neighborhood. Most of them are related to the great departed Polly and Benjamin Experiment.

1. Experiment Homestead (Original dwelling of the first & second generation Experiments. Also where Polly and Ben are laid to rest.)
Rupert and Christy (Wife)
Regis
Reuben & Rhonda (Twins)
Rapheala
Fuzzy Butt (Cat)

2. Experiment House 2
Herbert
Helga (Daughter of Herbert and former love Marisa)
Roland and Cassandra (Common-law situation. Roland can't commit.)
Ralph
Roosevelt
Camilla
Roux (Cat)

3. Naggin House
Yalex (AKA Alex Sim)
Peggy Experiment
Prudence Experiment (Peggy's daughter with Yalex. The above picture is from her birthday)
Poppy Experiment (Peggy's daughter with newbie to the neighborhood, Sheldon.)
Penny Experiment
Perry & Percival Experiment (Twins. Penny's sons with Stan Nice. Interesting.)
Bonkers (Cat)

4. The Nice House
Ernest
Stan (Son of Ernest)
Thad (Son of Stan)
Priscilla Nice (nee Experiment)
Petunia (Thad and Priscilla's daughter)
Bridget (Stan's alien progeny)
Kay-Ya-Tay (Cat)

5. The Turnips
Ginger
Donald
Gertrude
Garth
Gunther
Griselda
Trial Cat (Cat)

6. Ingram House
Sheldon (I have this embarrassing fixation for Channel 4 personalities. No offense meant to them)
Link (Exotic Cat)
Zelda (Exotic Cat)

I have always thought something was off about Rupert Experiment

I don't know what it is, but he has some interesting habits.

When he builds a snowman on the lawn with his son, Regis, it winds up with devil horns and an evil smirk.

When he gets in a hot tub, even if there are people he hasn't even met around, he strips naked.

What?

I do believe in ghosts!

I didn't mention that very shortly after Polly died, Benjamin passed away, too. Even after we got him the kitten, he was just beside himself without her, and the Hula girls came for him.

Now there is a small cemetery on the Experiment property with two headstones, some flowers, and a bench. I started researching Sim ghosts right away because I knew it was possible. Apparently, depending on the cause of death, Sim ghosts have some pretty weird behavior. If you want to see something oddly amusing, go to YouTube and search for the terms: Sims, cat, ghost, fight.

I waited a couple of Sim days, and I was rewarded. Benjamin showed up one night, floating around the inside of the house. He scared his daughter-in-law Christy pretty bad on one occasion. It was awesome.

The following night, Polly returned, doing spectral laps around the yard in the snow.

Polly Experiment, December 2008 - March 2009

Polly Experiment passed away peacefully at her home on March 2nd, 2009, surrounded by her family. Polly is survived by her devoted husband, Benjamin, who is devastated by her death. He needed to adopt a kitten immediately to help assuage the pain. She is also survived by her six children: Herbert, Peggy, Rupert, Roland, Penny, and Priscilla. She was grandmother to six: Helga (daughter of Herbert), Ralph and Roosevelt (sons of Roland), and Regis, Reuben & Rhonda (the children of Rupert and his wife Christy).

Polly recently celebrated her 78th Sim day. In her life she enjoyed many parties and had many close friends, including Alex Naggin, Donald and Ginger Turnip, and the entire Nice family.

Polly’s life aspiration was a large family, and in that regard she was quite satisfied. Although she may have regretted the fact that two of her sons fathered children out of wedlock. Everyone benefitted well from her generous insurance policies.

She was ushered to the other side by the Grim Reaper, who greeted her with dancing Hula girls and a mixed drink.

There is no viewing or service planned, but the family invites visitors to stop by the Experiment homestead, where she was laid to rest, and mourn next to her tombstone.

No ghosts have been seen. Yet.

Ah! Leah!

Yeah I'm listening to Donny Iris, what about it?

I have been way too busy for games this week. I have a TEST to study for. Whoa, wtf, right? So not much game-play to report about.

I am looking forward to the next chance I can play quite a bit though. Polly is nearly 77 Sim days old now. They don't give you any idea how long your Sims will live in the game, but I think she's got to be pushing it a little bit. She's kinda cranky now and prefers sitting on comfortable furniture to almost anything else.

While I love Polly dearly in some kind of weird I-know-this-is-a-game way, I also am pretty curious about experiencing my first natural Sim death in the game. Which might sound sick, but, it is just a game.

Birthdays, awkwardness, and OCD Sims.

Two major birthdays were celebrated last night while Alex and I got caught up with the Nice household.

Thad went from awkward teenager to awkward adult with a stylish new leather jacket. Shortly after his birthday, during a get together with the Experiment sisters, he got engaged to Priscilla. Despite his geekiness, she is crazy about him. I’ll move her in with the family just as soon as I can convince Alex that Dina (Grandpa’s hot young girlfriend) is really boring and should move out. I already broke up Stan’s marriage to Melissa. Actually, they are still married. I just moved her out of the house because she didn’t really do anything to add to the dynamic in the Nice house.

Bridget (as in alien baby Bridget) is now a child. She’s still pretty cute, but she’s very shy. And, as it turns out, she has an extremely neat and tidy personality. This means she does things like scrub the bathtub and take out the trash without being prompted. A Sim with OCD! Neat! I think this might be a product from the compulsive way that every family member had to give the baby a bath when everyone was left to their own devises.

Also, as a birthday gift, we got Bridget a cat. Hooray for the Pets expansion pack.

I spent my birthday in my robe, sick as hell, playing the Sims. Not so bad, actually.

I made a lot of moves in the Neighborhood this week. I’ll try and run down the major developments.

1. Herbert and Marisa split up. Some quirk in the game wouldn’t ever give them the option to actually marry, and honestly Marisa was a boring Sim to play with, so I just moved her out. No hurt feelings, either. Their daughter, Helga, is a well-adjusted Child Sim. She stayed with her dad.

2. Penny and Priscilla Experiment both reached adulthood and moved out of the old Experiment homestead. I didn’t want to separate the family much further, so I placed them in the same house as their older sister, Peggy, and Alex Sim. Wonder how that’s going to go over with Mother Polly.

3. Rupert moved out of Herbert’s house and back in with Polly and Benjamin. He is the nicer of the twins, and it was easy to marry him off to a family-minded Sim named Christy. They promptly had a son, Regis. Polly was delighted to have a legitimate grandchild at last. Now her “wants” inventory has “have 20 grandchildren” in it. No. Way.

4. Back at Herbert’s house, with Marisa gone, the nasty womanizer twin, Roland, made Cassandra Goth fall in love with him. She’s an interesting character, so I moved her in. But he won’t marry her. Either a game quirk, or maybe he’s a total ass. Who knows. Anyway, they have two sons, Ralph and baby Roosevelt.

The pictures:
Top - Polly and Benjamin having an adult conversation on the sofa. Considering that they had six children, this may be the first time they have ever done this.

Middle - Back when the three brothers lived in Herbert's house, Roland used to get into a lot of trouble with the neighborhood women. Here are a couple brawling over him. Whoa. I did not make this happen.

Bottom - Right after Marisa had baby Helga, all three brothers ran from the pool to the bedroom, and just stared at her. No wonder she wasn't so into sticking around.

Turnips.

I haven’t introduced the Turnip family. They are newer to Alex and I, and they haven’t involved themselves in any of the Experiment or Nice sagas. Donald is a family man. He has a budding career in the medical profession and seems like somewhat of a homebody. His wife Ginger isn’t sure what she wants to do yet. Actually, I am holding off on getting her into a job because I am interested in seeing what new career tracks are available in the new expansion packs that I haven’t installed yet.

Ginger and Donald have a toddler daughter named Gertrude. I was curious to see what the Sim genetics simulator would do with her. Donald is a very dark skinned Sim with black dreads. Ginger is extremely pale with bright red hair. So far, Gertrude favors her mother’s complexion and has black hair like her dad. I think there should be maybe one more baby in this family just to see if that child is any different.

I don’t have many pictures of them, but here are a couple of highlights:

1. Donald and Ginger. This was their “family shot” before they had Gertrude.

2. One of their wedding pictures. You can make a wedding happen in the game, it just takes some effort and purchasing a wedding arch thing. I find it easier just to let them shack up until “propose marriage” appears in their interaction options. The blond woman on the left is Polly. The older guy is Earnest Nice. Can't remember the other two guests. A lot like my own wedding in some ways.

3. Aw. Donald and Ginger cuddle on the couch sometime right before Gertrude was born.

News, or the sudden lack thereof.

I have been lacking in the Sims updates this week, and for that I sincerely apologize. I just haven't been as indulgent with my time. Time is this funny thing that I just have absolutely very little of.

But, I can at least throw a couple of random pictures of my Sims at you with the promise that Alex and I have some ideas brewing for our current households as well as a couple of new ones.

Anyway, up top we have Stan attending baby Bridget while everyone else plays video games on the giant plasma screen TV. This is a pretty recent picture in their new house.

The bottom picture is of Stan shortly after his return from space. This is an older snapshot, but one of my favorites. I like how this is the only time the family members express any interest in where he was.

Updates:

(Above: Stan in his swim trunks teaching Bridget to talk)




So Herbert Experiment moved out of the Experiment Homestead. Mostly because having so many people in the household makes the game run slower, but also because some glitch was preventing him from marrying anyone while in that house. So he has his own place which I am working on fixing up. I also want to move Rupert and Roland in with him to keep the family bonds close and to take advantage of the combined friends inventories. It is hard to try and have enough friends to advance in your career track, but the game counts the friends of family members, so it is a good strategy.


Polly and Peggy are working through their differences. It is easier since Peggy moved out for Polly to get over the betrayal.


Penny and Priscilla are happy teenagers who often want to sneak out of the house. Trouble makers Roland and Rupert did that a lot as teens, but they often got caught and lectured by Polly. Once, Rupert was brought home in a police squad car.


In the Nice household, the family has moved into a bigger house, and baby Bridget is now a toddler. She's just like any ordinary Sim toddler. Except she's green.

Drama

The latest developments in the Polly Experiment house have been INTENSE. Polly and Benjamin have both moved on to their Elder years. Benjamin retired from his job as "Celebrity Chef" and is collecting a pension. Twins Rupert and Roland, along with little sisters Penny and Priscilla are all Teens. Oldest twins Herbert and Peggy are adults now. Herbert is a criminal investigator looking for a wife. And Peggy is in the Military track, and she is a slut. Yeah, I said it. She always has "WooHoo" in her wants. And this is where it gets tricky. You see, a long time ago, before Alex Sim (not to be confused with my actual human being husband, Alex) had the little fire mishap, he cultivated a relationship with Polly. They had the hots for each other, but never once was Polly unfaithful to Benjamin, for the record. They just had a deep spiritual understanding of each other. In a Sim kind of way.

So as it happens, Alex Sim has been a family friend forever. And befriended all of the Experiment children. Eventually, Peggy grows up, and decides that she really needs to sleep with Alex Sim. Keep in mind that Alex Sim has been in suspended time all the while we haven't been playing his household. Sims only age when you are in their house playing with that family. He and Peggy are the same age now.

To set the scene: a party at the Experiment house. Everyone in the family is entertaining a friend, watching television, eating, swimming, or something downstairs. Peggy slips away with Alex Sim. Things happen. Suddenly, Polly storms in with a flaming thought bubble of first Alex Sim and then Peggy. She is furious! (Which is represented by a red haze over the offending party's icon in her friends inventory). She slaps Alex Sim repeatedly, but he moves on and rejoins the party. However, I could not get her to stop slapping her daughter, which would then result in both of them crying. I tried to manage her movements, make her talk to someone else, bathe, eat, whatever, but she would get distracted and fight some more.

Ultimately, I had to move Peggy out of the household. Slowly, the furious red dissolves and they can be friends again, but it was about time for the eldest daughter to move out anyway I think.

Also, the household I moved her into to get her away from her angry mother? Alex Sim's.

Wooooooo.

This has nothing to do with The Sims. Just sayin'.


Super Bowl. Steelers. Yesyesyesyesyes. I do not have to mention anything about the big deal that last night was.

That being said, did anyone catch Channel 4's coverage of the after-game chaos? From the South Side and Greensburg, looked like people were having a civil, drunken time.

However, my boy Ari Hait was stationed in Oakland, couch burning capital of Pittsburgh. Every time they cut to him it looked like he was reporting from Gaza or something. Things were on fire right next to him, guys were jumping on his back and swatting at his face. Nearly naked college students were making lewd gestures behind his back. He looked very afraid and very angry. What were the WTAE producers thinking? Why leave your guy out there to possibly be mauled by inebriated Pitt students? Holy hell, guys. Poor Ari. And he's the one the morning news always sends out to some remote location when it is -6 so he can report back, "Yep, it's cold." C'mon Channel 4, next time send Ari to the Super Bowl or to the next big thing to report with dignity. He's earned it.





Yay Steelers. And let's go PENS!

Notice the weird portrait of Grandpa Earnest in the background.

I almost totally forgot the picture of the happy new father and daughter.



Makes you kind of wonder if Thad would ever think about his mysterious origins.

Breaking news...

Oh. My. God.

I never would've believed it if I didn't watch it happen.

So there was Stanislaus, stargazing in his underpants at about 2:00AM Sim-time. Grandpa Earnest was watching television; Thad was chatting up some girl in the hot tub. Dina was playing chess by herself, and Stan's new wife, Melissa was at work. All of a sudden, a spaceship comes out of the sky. Seriously. And beams Stan up. Seriously.

OMG, WTF, right? Yeah! So Alex and I are all like, wait! How do we get him back! He's gone! His little status was still in the family toolbar, but his needs (hunger, hygiene, comfort, bladder, etc.) were erratically going up and down.

Argh! Right? So the rest of the family panicked for a second, but eventually went about their business. Sims I guess are just callous like that. Anyway, around about 8:00AM, the ship returned, depositted Stan on his face in the front yard, and left. Whoa.

So what's the deal? Alex and I didn't know until about a Sim-day later when Stan started showing the sign of . . . a Sim pregnancy!

It was just CRAZY. Three Sim-days passed. And then Stan had a black-eyed, green baby girl. Seriously.

We named her Bridget. She's really cute.

Like watching dysfunction in a fishbowl.

Alex has established himself a new Sim family, the Nices. The patriarch of the household is an elder Sim, named Earnest. His life aspiration is the romance option, which makes him one “silver fox” according to the game. He lives with his adult son, Stanislaus, a science-minded Sim who has really bad luck with the ladies. And then there is Stan’s son, a teen named Thadius. Thadius aspires for popularity, but he is a bit of a dweeb, and as you’ll see, he doesn’t have the greatest influences in his family.

Early on it was clear that grandpa Earnest couldn’t be happy without frequently dating, or at least hooking up with, a female Sim. Stan, whose day-to-day wants rarely have anything to do with other people, only skills and knowledge, tried to give the old guy a hand by having parties in the house to get to know more Sims. It works out well, but Stan winds up being the one with multiple girlfriends, eventually leading to quite a scene at the public park in which both women confronted him and beat him up in front of the rest of his family. One of the women and her sister had become roommates of the Nice family, but she promptly moved out. Dina, the remaining sister never had eyes for Stan. She had the hots for Earnest. Despite the marked age difference, this May-December affair is working out wonderfully. They aren’t married yet, neither seems too interested in that commitment.

So Stan is alone. Grandpa Earnest has himself a blond bombshell. What about little dorky Thad? Well, at the moment he has himself two girlfriends. He frequently can be found lounging in the hot tub with one of them at 3:00AM. Apparently teen Sims have a bad sense of time. Thad still desires many friends and parties a lot at home with Earnest. But, the kid still gets straight A’s, so Stan doesn’t appear upset about any of it.

Wicked awesome

Alex and I have discovered something really interesting (or maybe not at all interesting) about our Sims.

I have known since the earlier version of the game that music generally makes them really happy. They like to dance, whether alone, in pairs, or in groups. I also remember that different Sims have tendencies toward different types of music. Like actual people. Kinda neat, right?

Well, in The Sims 2, we have found that our Sims really, really, really like metal. And anyone familiar with the game might remember that while Sims speak and sing and such, they don't use English words. It sounds like English words, but it is actually gibberish Sim language. So imagine a hardcore death metal song, but even less comprehensible.

They will dance to anything, but they seem to prefer the metal station on the radio. Also, it helps that the music video station on TV has a metal video in its rotation. It features Sim teens running through a graveyard, kicking grave markers, falling down on the ground and then writhing around.

It's pretty wicked.

Playing God

It seems to be about time to introduce you all to Ms. Polly Experiment.

(The photo is of Polly and I think maybe Penny on the eve of her transition to childhood. A Sim birthday!)

Polly was born about a month ago when I first stepped into the world of the Sims 2. I played with the Create-A-Sim feature of the game, but ultimately was happy with what the randomizing option created.

She is an adult Sim, pale and blond with a hippie kind of look to her. Without realizing the consequences at the time, I gave her a “family” life aspiration. It seems that not only do players now get to pick what their little Sims look like and maintain their hunger, comfort, and toilet needs, but they also control whole life happiness. And Sims age. They go from babies to toddlers to children to teens to adults to elders to . . . the great unknown.

So, in order for Polly to have a happy life, she needed to find a mate and have babies. A lot of babies as it turned out.

I am getting ahead. I initially moved Polly into a comfortable two bedroom house and let her socialize with whatever neighbors the computer generated for her to interact with. This used to be a huge challenge for me with the first Sims game. There were never enough ways to keep the “social” meter in the green, but Polly seems to have little trouble making friends. Polly is a single-minded gal when it comes down to it.

From their very first meeting, she had her eye on a Sim named Benjamin. I would describe Benjamin as a slob. He came outfitted in mismatching shorts and a sweater, and he ate like a pig when served dinner. Polly was smitten. Her thought bubbles constantly popped up with images of Benjamin and hearts and engagement rings. Her “wants” bar kept displaying wishes like “flirt with Benjamin” or “fall in love with Benjamin,” and for a time her biggest fear was “death of Benjamin.” And the guy hadn’t even given her a second glance!

Well, they wound up moving in together and getting engaged and married very rapidly. There just wasn’t another way to keep her happy! But, it was a very functional household to play with. Benjamin’s job was in the restaurant industry, and he happily went off to work everyday while she figured out how to do things like cook and repair the grandfather clock. And unclog the toilet.

Then, things went nuts. Polly’s wants were entirely baby-related. Her obsession made its way into nearly every conversation she had with any other Sim. In time, along came the first set of twins, Peggy and Herbert. Shortly after, the second set, Roland and Rupert. Polly was not yet completely happy. Then Penny was born. Finally, near the end of her adulthood, we have Priscilla. If you’re counting, that’s a household of 8. That is the max capacity for any one household in the game.

At this point, there are 4 teenagers in the house and two children. Both Polly and Benjamin are closing in on their elder years. I haven’t had the heart to go in and play with that family lately because I know, without the age-stopping cheat, Polly will not live forever.

However, the temptation to have her pass-on and leave the possibility of a Sim ghost to haunt whichever of the children inherits the house is always there.

Sims don't understand "Stop, Drop and Roll".

I didn't have as much time for Polly Experiment this weekend as I would have liked. I had quite a bit of actual work to accomplish, but I did take a little bit of time to teach my husband, Alex, the basics of the game. You see, he played the old school SimCity back in the day, but now only ever plays NHL '09. And I just can't stand sports games. They aren't even fun to watch. And if he doesn't win a game, he doesn't save and replays the same match until he does. So boring.

Anyway, he asked to try out my game, and since I haven't had time to indulge, I got him set up. I taught him the money cheat and everything. He had a nice household going for himself. His Sim had a job, too, for a couple of days. But then he got fired and, seeing that he is independently wealthy, decided to work on scoring some friends and skill points at home. These are important to have once he re-enters the work-force.

So happily little Sim Alex went along painting and cooking and making passes at the maid. I strongly discouraged this last behavior because it seems to make her less diligent at work and is kinda sleezy and all. But, whatev. Sim life went on.

Until Sim Alex went to make himself (and his date, the maid) hamburgers. Suddenly, he starts yelping and jumping about. Then, he bursts into flames. Real Alex was beside himself. "What do I do?!?" Well, I couldn't help since my Sims were never dumb enough to catch themselves on fire before. Their kitchens, sure, but never their little bodies. We watched in horror as the Grim Reaper came to decide if Sim Alex was to have another chance. The maid cried, but ultimately it was of little use. Sim Alex turned into an urn. Then, the Grim Reaper settled in to watch some TV and chat up the maid, who got over her grief pretty quickly. What a trashy woman.

Luckily, Real Alex exited the household without saving, so Sim Alex has actually been saved from death by essentially getting sent back in time.

I am sure there is some important life lesson somewhere in all of this.

I hate cat hair in my keyboard. Welcome to TELLAIHTF.

So the true theme of this experiment in blogging is The Extremely Limited Leisure Activities I Have Time For. (TELLAIHTF)

I didn’t want to blog about work because I really get enough work at work, thanks, although I have a badass job (Teen Services Specialist at a busy urban public library).

I didn’t want to blog about library services in general either. Library blogs are just too dry for me. No offense to anyone who maintains one. I think I am just saturated with library stuff right now.

I could maybe have blogged about book design and my second career in publishing. Eh. I love it and all, but blah blah blah.

Right now I have a lot going on. In order to maintain some semblance of sanity, I indulge in approximately 3 activities that have nothing to do with professionalism, education, librarianship, or being a grown up.

1. I play The Sims 2. I have been waiting YEARS to get this game, and over the holidays, I finally allowed myself to go for it. Now, I am NOT a gamer. Games for systems after the Super Nintendo bore me to tears. You all can HAVE your PS3s and Xboxes. The Wii is cool, but I don’t think I could play it. But I have a weakness for playing the Sims or SimCity on my Mac.

2. I love Where’s Waldo? That guy gets me every time.

3. I follow the Pittsburgh Penguins. Even with the current suckage they are currently experiencing.


Welcome to Polly Experiment Blog. Named after my first Sim, Polly Experiment herself. Look forward to exciting updates about the simulated life activities of a pixilated representation of a human being! You’ll all like Polly, I promise.

Now, I can rationalize playing on the computer, watching a hockey game, or nerding-out with Waldo because it is for school! Wooooo!