The Kleptomaniac

For awhile after the birth of baby Beth, things got a bit repetitive around the Pine household.

Annabelle continued to solve cases…some important, some silly. She even reached the top of the investigator field and the mayor had a small ceremony outside city hall for her, and she got a nice little “neighborhood hero” moodlet for a few days. She isn’t making much money, but at least the town seems to appreciate her. Unfortunately, her case load came to a drastic halt thanks to glitchiness. She is stuck now, unable to complete a stakeout at a diner, but due to excessive saving on my part, unable to return to the past and decline the case. If only she had married an inventor instead of a snake-charmer-gone-fisherman! My best hope for getting her out of this glitch was to complete an opportunity. She spent several days caring for Beth, who was now a toddler, and working on her chess-playing and writing abilities. She wishes to write a novel, and I think it is appropriate that she publishes a mystery novel.  The first opportunity she got, however, was a cooking opportunity. She is pretty decent chef, better than her hubby who is a natural cook, so this isn’t unusual. The local bistro asked that she create a dish of excellent crepes as an example to the new folks they are trying to train. As luck would have it, the recipe for crepes in the SimWorld can only be found in France. So, she saved up enough money and visited France! She spent her time in France studying cooking and crepes (she needed even more skill before she could create them), as well as drinking coffee in small cafes, of course. She returned home a few days ago and has been making crepes like crazy. They are being quite challenge though, she has only achieved a “very nice” quality crepe. Hopefully, after all this work, the achievement of an opportunity will fix the glitch, and she can finish her case. She needs to complete 35 cases to get her lifetime wish and she has only done 19.

Youssef has had far better luck in his career. He quickly & easily mastered the fishing skill while also collecting fish for his perfect aquarium lifetime wish. His lifetime wish was to collect 13 (?) perfect specimens for his own private aquarium- which he has no created, woohoo! His aquarium also includes some crocodiles from a fishing expedition he took to Egypt. While he was there, he took an interest in photography and purchased a book on the subject, along with a few Egyptian recipes. Now, Youssef is trying to catch one of each species present in the Twinbrooks ecosystem.

As a toddler, Beth was fairly easy to manage. She went back and forth between coloring and playing her xylophone. She recently aged to child…her new trait? Kleptomaniac. It will be interesting to see if her impulse to steal will overrule her “good” trait. So far, it seems like she leans more towards just cheating people out of money, instead of outright stealing. She has opened up a little baked goods stand in front of their house, and sells muffins she makes in her toy oven. However, she isn’t a very good cook…so she has been trying to get people to buy horribly burnt and inedible muffins.

A Snake Charmer from Egypt

Everyday, for at least 30 minutes, I’ve been getting in some time playing the new Sims expansion, so Annabelle’s story is playing out.  A part of me hates that I’m not doing the normal story-style blogging for this legacy, but I feel it is better. While I really love blogging and telling the stories of my Sims, it takes more time away from the game and I really want to complete a legacy. I also already have 2 story projects that are in limbo- Funke and Crumplebottom- and a third would just be silly.

However, I think this more casual style of posting is okay- it is far easier and I can squeeze it in when I’m not able to play. I’ve also taken to posting updates on facebook, lol.

Annabelle has moved through the investigator career fast. By the time she transitioned from young adult to adult, she was already level 9- and I hadn’t pushed her. On the weekends and evenings, we did what she wished to do. She really likes being a PI, which helped, and she has good traits for a PI (computer whiz, perceptive).

Her cases have ranged from downright silly (gnome-kicking) to serious (car-stealing ring). While her weekly stipend has gone up, I’ve been disappointed to find that she doesn’t get more money for the more difficult, longer cases.

This is Annabelle while out investigating a crime scene. She thought she’d been caught snooping around someone’s home- false alarm.

While her professional life was rocking, her love life was sound asleep. She met plenty of friendly townsfolk, but very few cute, available men. Furthermore, being a PI she had the dirt on everyone…and everyone had something. There was one kind who had potential, but they were just too alike, and I didn’t want another PI in the house. I didn’t encourage the relationship, and she also didn’t appear to be interested, so we moved on. Good thing, he turned out to be in apart of the car-theft ring we busted later. He’s in jail now- that would have been awkward.

When Anna turned into an adult, we knew we had to start pursuing a man a little better…this is a legacy challenge afterall. Anna had previously expressed a desire to travel, so I booked her a ticket to Egypt.

A couple hours after arriving in Egypt, Anna met Youssef, the snake charmer. They hit it off really, really well. They spent the entire vacation together…they fell in love, and were married before she left. Huh…that was easy…maybe in the future all my Sims will go to foreign nations to find dates.

Youssef has the following traits: flirty, angler, natural cook, artistic, and friendly. Umm…no flaws there! His lifetime wish is to have the perfect aquarium (I love fish, so I’m totally fine with that!). He loves French music (he is very multicultural), Stu Surprise and the color grey.

Youssef is now registered at City Hall as a self-employed fisherman. We live next to the water, so he has spent the last few days down there. He has already progressed to a level 6 in the fishing skill, and is turning up fishing-related wishes left and right, so this is a good job for him. We have yet to collect any “perfect” specimens for our aquarium, but I am sure that will be soon.

Baby Beth arrived shortly after they came back from Egypt.  Anna’s pregnancy went smoothly so I was able to choose two traits for Anna. However, by the rules of my legacy, all the traits must be randomly generated except for those the computer selects based on pregnancy, and I’m allowed to pick 1 trait from the mother and 1 from the father. I opted to randomly generate the traits and I got “easily impressed” and “good”. Her favorites turned out to be: blue, roots music, and pancakes.

WELCOME GENERATION 2!

Legacy Score:  1.00/100

Previous Score: .5/100

The Adventures of Annabelle Pine

The skies (read: plastic bag) opened up and the heavens (read: Jimmy) blessed upon me (read: threw at me) a copy of the Sims 3 Ambitions Tuesday evening.

I didn’t have much time to play Tuesday night, especially after having to relocate my computer and install the game. Fortunately for me (knock on wood), the game has run fairly flawlessly for since (for the Sims, I did have one crash last night, but I was really asking too much of it at the time, and I didn’t blame it for pooping out- and it didn’t really, it only pretended to crash…long story).

Tuesday, I just selected a random premade house in the new town of Twinbrook. I ended up choosing Amy Bull- a budding stylist. I would have never actively selected to play a stylist first (if you know me in RL you know I hopelessly lack any sense of style…and will to care), so it was interesting. I had fun playing Amy for a few hours, and I was surprisingly pleased by the stylist career. I look forward to playing it again.

However, Wednesday night I had more time to play- and I had a whole day at work beforehand trying to figure out what I wanted to play, lol. I’ve decided since I am so in love with Ambitions, now would be a good time to give a legacy another shot. I need to complete one to achieve a goal on my 101 things in 1001 days list. My premade legacies aren’t going to count for this goal. I’m going to play a scored legacy (akin to the Sims 2 legacies) because I want a list of mini-goals to achieve and to make sure I thoroughly play every aspect of the game.

For those of you who are non-simmers- or  just casual simmers- and don’t know what a legacy is, it is essentially a challenge to make it to generation 10 of a single family. There are also some rules in place. The Legacy challenge was originally developed by Pinstar for the Sims 2 and has become a very popular challenge. The traditional TS2 legacy has lots of rules, and a complicated means of scoring. The TS3 edition was very, very simplified. I chose to make my own more complex version of the legacy, but not nearly as complicated as the original. I simply added a scoring system (out of 100 points) that encourages me to try different aspects of the game.

Step 1 of my legacy involved creating my legacy founder in CAS. I used the 1st Sim that appeared, fortunately, she was decent looking. I changed her clothes, of course, but I kept her long, straight black hair. I let her favorites be randomly generated- she loves blue, egg rolls, and classical music. Since Ambitions came with tattoos, I clearly had to give her one. She has a blue butterfly on her lower back. Her personality traits I decided not to randomly generate since I wanted to play a detective. I selected perceptive, bookworm, computer whiz and brave to help her become an excellent detective. I also tossed in dramatic for fun. Her lifetime wish is to solve 35 cases. I named her Annabelle Pine.

I’ve played Annabelle for a full Sim week now. Her house isn’t pretty, but it looks realistic to me. I paid attention to all the details- even the toilet paper, laundry hamper, and recycle bin. She got a job in the private investigator field, and is doing awesome. The dough is just rolling in. In this one week, she has managed to upgrade her bed, buy a new book shelf, buy a telescope, buy a grille, and join a book club.

She has solved several cases this week. Most are pretty trivial- and not really legal, but Annabelle’s not picky. She’s hacked into forums several times to clear up “misunderstandings”, she has dispelled some rumors, and hunted down people who were kicking garden gnomes. She has also found a missing child, and hacked a database to fix some credit “misunderstandings”.

The only mystery Annabelle can’t solve is where to find a single cute bachelor in Twinbrook. All the men she has met on her cases have been romantically involved with someone else. How is she to carry on her legacy?

Stories are on hold for awhile…

I fully intend on going back to the Funke Family and Ms. Agnes Crumplebottom. However, I have recently become addicted to another game called “Now Boarding”, so I’ve been taking a little vacation from simming on my laptop.

However, I did just start back simming on my desktop. See, I have the Sims on both my laptop and my desktop. My laptop version doesn’t have WA, Riverview or Ambitions and it runs like crap. However, its nice to have access to the game when I am on the go (or for breaks at work!). My desktop is a slightly better machine, and has WA, Ambitions and Riverview.

I just got Ambitions and I am totally loving that, so I am thinking about giving a legacy another try. I will be posting the rules I am going to use soon. I think I am going to start tonight.

Funke Family: Chapter 2.3

Despite his reservations, Rhett took a job at the local police department. Very quickly, he became friends with his partner, Justine Keaton.

While Rhett getting a job helped financially, the house suffered. Stacks of newspapers and dishes accumulated, and no longer were quality leftovers available in the fridge. The children began to live on cereal and canned soup.

Michael Bachelor, Bella’s brother and friend of Spencer, invited him over to visit one afternoon- not long after Spencer had transitioned. And…wow…there she was. Bella had transitioned. Spencer realized how much he missed hanging out with Bella.

It was just like old times again, Bella & Spencer were hanging out every day afterschool.

Funke Family: Chapter 2.2

Irene Funke wasn’t happy with the look she transitioned into. Spencer seemed fine with his- though Irene thought he could also use a makeover. Irene decided to go with a Gothic look.

Irene coached her younger sister on how to play her toy xylophone. Agatha was only happy when she was playing. If she didn’t have a toy, she would cry and cry.

Irene and Rhett were close. Irene would often help him in the kitchen, cleaning up after him while he cooked. Rhett would have done it himself- Irene got her neat streak from Rhett, but Irene enjoyed being helpful.

Irene got a job at the Spa. She was wishing she had a bit of extra money to donate to several causes that she supports, but she couldn’t ask her parents- who were barely able to pay the bills. So, she got a job working at the local spa.

Despite all the cooking he does- and his careful ways- Rhett managed to catch the stove on fire. Fortunately, the fire department responded quickly, and no one was injured.

Funke Family: Chapter 2.1

After the transitioning, Spencer seemed to want to hang out with Irene more. She wasn’t sure why…perhaps it was because Bella hadn’t transitioned at the same time, so was still a child, or perhaps because their parents had purchased them a video game console in honor of their transitioning and Spencer enjoyed competing with Irene. Irene didn’t care why Spencer was back to his old self, she was just glad he was there.

Shortly after the twins transitioned, Carol transitioned into a child.

Carol preferred to spend her time alone. She enjoyed being outside, and would often wander off into the hills outside of town. She had a fondness for insects, and began a collection of them.

Crumplebottom: Chapter 1.5

Agnes decide to try out writing. Just one book to start- a science fiction novel. A computer wouldn’t fit with her decor, so Agnes had purchased herself a laptop, and works at the dining room table. She also recently discovered the internet- a brand new way to find valuable coupons!

Every day, Agnes visits her husband’s grave hoping he will once again return and talk with her. To make sure she doesn’t miss a visit from him, she has taken to sleeping during the day, and staying up all night.

Agnes seldom goes out to dinner anymore. She eats all her meals at home, so she doesn’t have to leave her home and interact with other people.

But she began to get tired of the same old food every evening, so she has begun to work on her cooking ability and learn new recipes.

Crumplebottom: Chapter 1.4

One evening, Agnes woke up with a start. The room had gotten fiercely cold. She looked around for an open window, instead she saw her husband.

It took her only a few minutes to overcome her fear, for some reason she found the presence of his ghost more comforting than anything else. He smiled at her, and spoke to her. His voice was just like it was when he was alive with just a slight almost metallic ring to it. He told her he had been keeping an eye on her, and how he will always be with her.

Agnes told him all about her life since his accident. She went into great detail and stayed up most of the night talking with him, even when her eyes began to droop from being so tired.

Eventually, he said he had to go, the sun was coming up. She begged him to stay, but he said he couldn’t. And then he vanished.

Agnes went back to sleep. Despite the sunlight creeping in through the curtains, Agnes had the best night sleep she had since Erik left her. She didn’t feel so alone.

Crumplebottom: Chapter 1.3

Agnes Crumplebottom spends most of her time couped up in her house. However, occasionally, she goes out to run a few errands.

Agnes got a coupon for a spa package, so she visited the spa.

And writing classes were on discount- so she took a class in that as well.

She also had a coupon for a book, so she stopped by the bookstore.

Then, it was home again.