It’s another Monday. And the end of the month.

February went by quick. Tomorrow is March 1, which means…Sims 2 University (which I pre-ordered)! And the new Mars Volta album (which I didn’t).

Apparently NIN tickets go on sale this week, though being on the mailing list failed to come through for me. I got emailed the European dates and pre-sale links, but not the ones that matter. They are going to be in Atlanta on May 21 and 22. However, Sabrina’s wedding (in which I’m maid of honor) in the 21st, so I suppose I’m limited to going to the one on the 22nd. Assuming I can even possibly get tickets considering they’ve all sold out in like five minutes for the ones that have already been on sale.

This weekend was okay. We’ve pretty much beaten Tales of Symphonia. Actually we did beat it, but we went back and loaded up an older save so we could get some other stuff done before the actual end of the game. Friday, we went and hung out with some friends in the Old City and then went to wish Becka a happy 21st birthday. Saturday, we went to Philip’s birthday party, and there’s pictures in the gallery of that.

I’m thinking of adding a new section to the site called “Stuff I Don’t Own” or something to that effect, so people can write reviews and make recommendations on stuff I don’t have.

I meant to blog about this site when I first found it a few months ago. But better late than never, right?

I can’t remember how or when, but a few months ago, I stumbled across Abandonia. The site offers old DOS games that you can’t find (or play, usually) anymore. Some games work with a direct download, but many of them benefit with the use of a DOS emulator. I’ve finally played all the King’s Quest games because of this site. They have such classics as Civilization and Alone in the Dark among other things.

It’s snowing outside.

February is here. I don’t know whether January seemed too short or too long.

Last Friday night, Ben and I were planning on having a video game party. We set up the Xbox in one room and the Gamecube in the other and prepared for a night full of Mario Party and Fuzion Frenzy. However, after the party had been going on for a few hours, Ben got a call saying it was Sam’s birthday and he hadn’t had a very good one. So Ben pulled together an impromptu surprise party over at his old house. We ended up rushing around to get everything together too quickly and ended up waiting around for Sam for about three hours, hehe. It was pretty cool. We had a few false alarms, but he was really surprised when he got there. Too bad I forgot my camera.

So, anyway, for all you Gamecube owners, if you haven’t played it already, I recommend “Tales of Symphonia.” Excellent game. It’s a multiplayer RPG, so Ben, Chance, and I have been playing it all together. We’re about 25 hours into it with the end nowhere in sight. I’m not going to give anything away about the plot (although, it’s basically the typical “save the world” theme).

Aside from that game, I’m also currently playing “The Bard’s Tale” on Xbox. Cary Elwes (of Princess Bride and Men in Tights fame) does the voice of the bard, and it’s a pretty good and very humorous game. On Gamecube, I’m playing “Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem” which is good. It’s basically a survival horror game, and the coolest thing about it is you have a sanity meter. If it gets low, you start hallucinating. For example, sometimes your head will just explode or rooms will be upside-down. On PS2, I’m mainly playing “Ico” which is a puzzle game. You play as Ico and you are trying to get the captured princess out of the fortress, but the rooms are all puzzles. It’s pretty cool. I’m stuck, though.

Yes, I have turned into a video game junkie.

Recommend some Xbox games…

So I bought myself an Xbox for my birthday, along with Fable and the Urbz. Now I’m kind of stumped as to what other games to get. I see Worms 3D is out, but I don’t know whether I should get it for console or PC. Beyond Good & Evil looks pretty cool, and I’m obligated to buy Halo 2. Also, I know Knights of the Old Republic is good. But other than that….

So here’s what I like when it comes to video games:
- I don’t like sports games. The Xbox came with three. So I have enough.
- I don’t like games where you just constantly kill things and don’t do much else.
- I like good plots.
- I like puzzles.
- I like simulation games.
- Cute is good.

So…recommend!

More Sims 2 gems…now where did I leave off?

First of all, there have been quite a few glitches in the game, which I highly enjoy taking pictures of, because they are usually pretty funny. I’ve seen floating babies, two people in one, twisted arms, and naked men on the ceiling….

And as for the families…

Evil Ben soon moved into the neighborhood to create some trouble. However, he seemed to have troubles of his own.

Then the Young Family moved in. This family consisted of Rick, his wife Darla, their kid, and Rick’s sister Stephanie. Darla, however, was secretly in love with Stephanie, and soon left Rick for her. They had a commitment ceremony and adopted a little girl.

Kaylynn and Steve got a divorce. Steve moved out and almost immediately married Tina, who had just moved into the neighborhood with her teenage daughter Maria.

Kaylynn then married up with Daniel Pleasant, who had recently divorced from his wife Mary-Sue. They had a daughter named Wendy (this makes three kids for her, counting my brother’s two). But, if you remember, Kaylynn is in love with practically every man in the neighborhood and it wasn’t long before Daniel caught her cheating and moved out. While they were separated, she got pregnant again, this time with Evil Ben’s child. It was a girl, complete with Evil Ben’s red eyes, and she named her Sorsha. Then she had a child by Trent Reznor, who was named Trent Jr. But he, sadly, was taken away by the social worker. So she had another child by Evil Ben, another girl named Angel. Evil Ben came and took his children. Saddened by this, she had another child by Trent, also named Trent Jr. This one turned out to be a prodigy on the drums and won a competition in the elementary school band. Then Kaylynn met Rick Young and had a daughter named Tiffany by him. Finally, she met some random Townie named Joe Carr and had two kids, Tyrone and Hannah. Yes, Kaylynn had 10 kids overall. Ouch. I was too busy going crazy to take any pictures of this.

My dad died of old age. My mom went nuts after that happened since it was one of her Fears. Sadly, her Wants now are to fall in love and remarry. That’s just not going to happen. She will have to remain in the world of talking to bags of flour.

And for some reason, my son drives a really nice car…as I discovered when he came to pick up one of Kaylynn’s kids for a night out.

That’s all for now.

More Sims!

Here’s a couple more families I created, the Meadows Family (Joe and Frances) and the Taylor Family (Jason and Becka):

Joe and Frances immediately had twins, which just reconfirms my statement that no one should ever have twins under any circumstances.

Or, really, no one should ever have KIDS under any circumstances, as witnessed by this random family I made, the Autonomous Family. I was going to just set them up and let them do whatever they wanted, with very little help from me (except for on things like having kids, doing homework, and other important things that they won’t do automatically). The family consisted of Lana and Dale, their daughter Dana, her husband Winston, and their three kids, Tara, Paul, and Sera.

Anyway, they immediately had another kid after they moved in, another daughter named Kira. They started off pretty well. They kept their needs fairly satisfied and even some of their wants. Tara and Sera even got into private school.

Then things slowly began to fall apart. Dale’s aspiration score began to just stay negative and he started flipping out and talking to a volleyball.

Paul started to flunk out of public school because his fun level was never up so he never wanted to do his homework. Dana was going nuts trying to take care of all the kids. And then for some reason they just completely stopped taking care of themselves. No one would go to the bathroom when they needed to, so they peed all over themselves and then refused to take a shower. With eight people all doing this, I was about to go insane. I had to intervene a little. They wouldn’t even go make food so they could live.

After I got them sort of back into the green, it was almost time for Tara to grow into an adult. Except right before the start of her birthday party, Dale and Lana both died of old age. What a way to start a party. Kira grew up into a kid, but she had been sort of neglected as a toddler (since no one would even take care of their own needs) and she has the lowest aspiration score possible and is sleeping on the floor. After Tara grew up, she immediately moved into a tiny shack in the woods to get away from her crazy family.

Also, here are some shots of my parents’ house that I built (perhaps I should have taken them during the daytime):

And here’s how Pleasantview is looking at the moment (you can sort of see Trent’s mansion in the upper left hand corner there):

Okay, I’m coming up for air.

So, I got Sims 2 a little over a week ago. It’s been a busy week since then. I’ll try to recount some of my Sim tales.

First thing I did was build my parents’ house. I was never able to fully accomplish this in Sims 1, due to building restrictions such as a set number of floors, not being able to build on hills, etc. I still wasn’t able to fully recreate the house (due to restrictions on staircases) but I was able to do a much better job. I moved my parents into this house along with my brother Steve and me as teenagers. I was actually going to do my other two brothers later, like they had already moved out of the house, but one silly thing about the game is you can’t create relationships (siblings, children, etc.) with people who are not in your family when the family was created. Anyway, so here we are:

Teenagers are a lot harder to raise in this game than in the first (well, they didn’t really exist in the first, but anyway..). Steve never wanted to do his homework and I liked to sneak out of the house with my best friend Meadow. The first time I snuck out, I got brought home by the cops. The second time, I died of hunger the minute I got back home. I don’t know what I did when I snuck out, but eating apparently was not involved. Anyway, the Grim Reaper showed up, and Steve ran out of the house to plead for my life. The Reaper made him play the pick-a-hand game, and Steve chose correctly. I got to live.

Shortly thereafter, Steve and I grew into adults. Steve grew up badly since his aspiration score was low since he never did his homework. This sent our parents’ aspiration scores into the red and they were thoroughly depressed for awhile. Steve’s social also got really low at our birthday party and he started hallucinating and seeing a huge bunny. He danced with said bunny. None of the other people could see it, so we all just think Steve is nuts now. I, on the other hand, grew up well. After our party was over, I immediately moved to the other side of town.

Now that I was an adult, all my friends were still teenagers. I was going to play them and make them grow up, but apparently they were all Townies and didn’t actually live in this neighborhood. So I had to set off on a goal to make new friends (especially since I chose the Popularity aspiration).

So I made a variety of other families of people I know. From left to right, we have the Manplex Family (Ben, Sam, Fjord, and Kris), the Sloffer Family (Matt and Sabrina), and the Anderson Family (Drew, Samantha, and Liliana).

The Manplex Family is actually Ben’s creation. He built their duplex and everything. Ben chose the knowledge aspiration for himself so he really likes to gain skill points. One way of gaining a logic skillpoint is to stargaze through the telescope. Except the first time Ben did this, he got abducted by aliens. When he came back, he was pregnant and three days later gave birth to a baby alien girl named Leia.

Back at my parents’ house, my brother was still living at home. At our birthday party, a cop had showed up to break up the festivities. I couldn’t get her to leave. She stayed there for about five days before finally dying of hunger. She now haunts my parents’ house.

After a few Sim-years, Steve developed a crush on the maid that came to clean the house everyday, Kaylynn. He slowly started talking to her and they fell in love and got married (my parents had grown into elders by this time, as you can see with the picture of my dad toasting the new couple).

After their honeymoon, they moved into their own little house and had a kid named Seth. They then immediately had another one named Adam. Steve grew into an elder when Adam was still a baby and Seth was a toddler.

Meanwhile, Ben had gotten me pregnant and I had twins, Eric and Jewel. Never try to raise twins on your own. It’s not fun. Especially when everyone has the flu and the kitchen is on fire.

After that, Trent Reznor and Maynard James Keenan moved into the neighborhood. Trent opted for a large mansion on the edge of town, while Maynard chose a small place in order to blend in. They immediately started wooing (and woohooing) every woman in the neighborhood. No one could resist. Well, except for me, of course. I have twins. Who has time for that sort of thing?

Anyway, that’s basically it. I need to remember to take more screenshots, cause I never really remember when the good stuff goes on.

Tomorrow the game I preordered months ago will arrive.

Yes, that’s right. UPS will be delievering Sims 2 to my doorstep tomorrow, hopefully when I am at home. If not, they can expect me to go live at the UPS building until the truck gets back.

In celebration of this, I am cleaning my apartment. Okay, so maybe I’m really cleaning because (a) pest control is coming tomorrow, (b) I need to get rid of fleas, (c) I’m having a board game party in a little over a week, and (d) when I get Sims 2, I’m really not going to want to do anything other than play it. Either way, it’s not looking to be a fun night. Of course, on Saturday, I get the joy of giving Lydia a flea bath. Fun. I always wanted to have no skin on my arms.

Also, the Halloween costume dilemma has been averted, since I have already been invited to two parties. If I get invited to any more, there will be decisions to make.

Six Flags has been planned for the next to last weekend in October. I still need to locate some season passes before then.

Yay! A release date!

The Sims 2 finally has an official release date! It’s September 17. That seems like forever away. Especially since it was supposed to be out in March. I’ve already created like 10 Sims with Body Shop, including reasonable likenesses of me and my friends. So apparently now I have four months to tweak them.

I went out to dinner with Brina, Matt, and their families last night. Afterwards, we went back to Matt’s house. Brina and I attempted to play pool. Heh. I am so out of practice. Anyway, she had sunk all her balls and was working on the 8-ball while I still had yet to hit anything in. But I made an amazing comeback and somehow won. Apparently I remembered how to play about halfway through. We attempted to go out and do something after that, but we were all too tired. Anyway, I took some pictures, which I will probably put up when I get back to Knoxville tomorrow night.

Two more days till APC!!

Hmm…

Well it doesn’t seem to be close to shipping at all. So I cancelled my order. I will just go to EB or something and buy it. Much quicker anyway and I don’t have to make the long journey to the post office since I will undoubtly not be home when it arrives.