The Bookacy Family Alphabet Journal

Another good simming week behind. I'm happy to have made this much progress.

During the week, I managed to squeeze that little bit of the next Lakewood update together, and on Friday night, I got it posted. It's been a long time coming, and I'm glad to have it done finally.

Yesterday I did some more building, and I think I'm now finished with the set I've been making. What's maybe a bit less encouraging is that I'm going to need at least four more for shooting the upcoming plotty interlude. Yes, four. Well, when the mood strikes, building is fun, plus I suppose I can use some of those again in the future. I think I should probably finish the Mendoza household first and take a backup before I start making the next set.

Today, I documented my TS4 legacy for a bit and also played a little bit, apparently for the first time for about a half a year or so. My teen spare managed to set the stove on fire, but luckily he also managed to extinguish it while the rest of the family panicked. Now they're all pretty miserable, trying to recover from the shock. Except the spare, who thinks he did a pretty great job putting out the fire.

Next week promises to be pretty busy, so busy even that I suspect that there may be no simming at all. But I'll check back in about a week and we'll see.

This week was one of my better simming weeks lately. The progress happened mostly during the weekend as it generally does these days, but there was surprisingly much.

First of all, I managed to update the TS4 randomizer, which is now up to date until Seasons and has a new feature for randomizing tattoos. Well the code was mostly done for a couple of weeks already, it only needed a finishing touch plus the documentation needed to be updated. But anyway, I got that done and posted, so that's all good.

I've also been writing up the Broke week, and I'm almost there. It's missing like ten pictures and a cover now, so it's really really close. I should probably try to take/use less pictures for Lakewood so at least there updating would be less slow, but well you know me: I'm just wordy like that. Be it plotty or not plotty (or an assignment for school, documentation for work...), that's one of my biggest flaws as a writer, I can't cut. Oh well, at least this one is again almost done and I can move on to the next thing.

I also finally got around to continuing the building of the set I started building probably months ago. It's supposed to be a house for a clearly wealthy family, and I'm having a lot of fun with it actually. A lot of internal monologue with "no no, it has to look more expensive" and "okay well that's just too much over the top" was going on. That one's getting somewhere too, but still lots of furnishing, decorating and landscaping to do. In any case, I'm happy to see that moving on, as I'm going to need several sets for my upcoming plans.

So yeah, I did good this week. Hopefully next week sees some progress too.

Not the greatest simming week ever, the past week, but well, I got something done. During the week I was distracted and kind of tired, then towards the end of the week I got headache problems again, so yesterday was pretty much shot. (Thank goodness I have a masseuse appointment next week!) Fortunately my neck issues sorted themselves out in the end, so today I got a bit of progress.

I got pointed towards some icons for the TS4 Seasons expansion, so I finally started working on updating the randomizer for Seasons. I think I got it working too, but I should yet test a bit more carefully and update the documentation before uploading the new version.

In addition to that, I didn't feel like writing, so I decided to start on the Mendoza household in Alphabetia. I played the first day out of five, so that's something. I should probably take a backup after this household, as it's the last one in the main 'hood rotation. We'll see if I get to continuing the set building somewhere in between too.

I don't know much about next week yet, but hopefully it'll be painless and hopefully there's a little time for sims in there somewhere.

This week, there was some progress again. Mostly in the weekend, during the week I was mostly busy and sticking to my routine.

I continued writing up the Broke household. It looks like I have about 100 pictures to go through yet, so not quite there but it's progressing. Just tonight I also played a little bit: the Cameron household had a quick rotation of one day next in line, so I went ahead and played that day. Mostly just relationship and token maintenance, and Sean continues to hang on at least until next rotation. (Generation B are mostly dead by now, but Sean is one of the few exceptions.) So all's good there, and I have more picspam to queue again. Only the Mendozas remain in the main 'hood rotation, too. I'm again very pleased with the new shorter rotation.

Even though I haven't been actually doing anything for it, I've been thinking about the apocalypse. I started collecting some apocalyptic cc, mostly just to see what I could gather. I'm considering rebooting the challenge (from when Sal is done with college) to see if that would re-spark my interest. Of course, I did do quite well the first time around, so re-starting is a new risk that I might actually fail with the first career lift, or do worse than I did previously. But there are a couple things that annoy me with what I've done game-wise, so... I could of course just plug in a backup and try playing again, I could always just revert to the current situation if that goes south. The dream thing is handy in that it would be no problem to explain the restart in the story.

I'm also considering a personal rule that I'd get a "save point" after every lift, so that if I'm not happy with how things go or just plain fail, I could go back to a previous lift rather than start completely over. I don't know if that might feel cheaty to someone, but seeing the plot-heavy story and the fact that I'm an apocalypse newbie, I'd be willing to accept that. This is all just speculation for now, but I am thinking about the apocalypse. The crazy challenge still tempts me, and I'd want to get to it, to really try to do it. For now, I'll let stuff brew and see how it goes. I do have a lot on my plate, so one thing at a time.

Alright, enough babble for one night. Off to bed now, and we'll see how next week goes. G'night!

I figured that since there's been very little progress during my vacation, I could skip weekly simming too. After I recovered from my flu, I had one week off at home, but with the heatwave ongoing, I didn't do that much. I mostly sat on the balcony reading, or re-playing the Portal series. After that, I spent two weeks in Cyprus, which also mostly consisted of rest and relaxation. It was even hotter than it was back at home (didn't exactly imagine this kind of a summer when booking the trip!), but with airconditioning at the hotel, it was quite nice.

All in all, not very much progress lately, but a tiny bit: during my week off at home, I was able to sit down for a little bit in the evenings and queued the rest of my picspam for the households that I've played. There's still more than three week's worth in the queue, so that's nice. I did take my writing with me for the trip, but in the end I mostly did something else during siesta, like reading or sleeping. Only towards the very end did I document a little bit on my TS4 legacy, so that's a little closer to caught up now.

I came home in the wee hours last night, and I'm still in recovery mode. I hope with a good night's sleep tonight I'll be somewhat awake tomorrow, as it's my first day back to work. Work of course means I have less time for hobbies and stuff, but as it seems that the heatwave has now passed, I think I'll be able to better sit down my desk and do sim stuff. And well, maybe after the relaxing vacation, there'll be more motivation too. One can only hope for some nice progress in the weeks to come!

Not quite as good progress this week than I've been having recently. During the week I've been a little distracted, and yesterday night was supposed to be reserved for sims, but then I got a nasty headache and spent the evening trying to recover from that. I did write a little bit for the Brokes both on Friday and today, but didn't get hugely far.

There's also a heat wave going on here, so I've been doing stuff like reading on the balcony. Apparently it's hot enough that even I'm feeling slightly overheated (and I'm always cold!), so just now I decided to turn off my simming machine for the night so that it wouldn't heat up the bedroom any more than it has. That's not a terribly common issue around here!

Anyway, a litle progress is a little progress so that's good. And I guess good weather is one of the nicer reasons for not having as much progress. One more week before my vacation starts, we'll see how that one goes!

Again, there was some progress over last week at least here and there. I continued playing the Brokes, and I'm having so much fun with that family! I now have my first uncontrollable teenager, and so far I'm managing fine with that. We also finally got to do our first yard sale, and that was all nice and lucrative.

I got to upgrade some necessities, make the trailer a little closer to how I'd like it to be, and now there's some money left over for stuff like buying food, clothes if needed, and I think also the two dogs that we need to have soonish. I have so much stuff in mind that I'd like this family to have because it'd fit the theme and the challenge, but I'm trying to take it slow so we wouldn't end up not having food or something.

I'm I think at Saturday morning now. I'm again kind of behind with the writing, as I got so excited about our first yard sale. But, that'll happen too, and the main thing is I'm having fun.

This week I don't think there's that much up, so maybe progress here and there. I can only hope!

Well, it turned out that I did have a bit of time for simming here and there, so there was some progress. I just finished playing the Jalowitz household, so there's two houses left in the main 'hood rotation. I think I might yet queue a little bit of picspam before bed, if my tense neck allows.

In addition, I've been also documenting my TS4 legacy a little bit. Maybe soonish I'll get to play that one again too!

Right now I'm not sure what I'll do next. I could go on with the Cameron household, it's only one day and all, or on the other hand, I could do a household of Lakewood for a change too. Decisions, decisions. Next week is juhannus (midsummer) week, so that might give me less time for sims, but we'll see how it turns out.

Well, there's been some progress at least in the weekend. I played another day in the Riley household yesterday and meant to continue today, but got kind of sidetracked. I kind of went on a minor downloading spree instead (oops), as there was some pretty pretty stuff that I wanted. Thinking about upcoming plot and staging, I found an excuse to download some build mode stuff that I've been drooling after. And also I downloaded some pretty clothes, my excuse being that I mostly downloaded for males, and even there predominantly for TM and EM, whose wardrobes aren't as extensive as those of AM and AF. Ahem.

In any case, I'm pretty happy for my new pretties, and I don't think I went too much overboard. I haven't downloaded anything in ages otherwise, so it's ok. Now when I was finished with my downloads folder, it was too late to launch my game today anymore, but I think I'm gonna catch up on documenting my TS4 legacy a little bit before bed.

So yeah, stuff is happening at least in the background, so that's good. :) We'll see about next week, a couple places I gotta be during the week plus I'm trying to get some excercise too now that I'm not sick for the time being, but I hope to find a bit of time for sims too.

No progress this week, so have a bit of real life instead.

As it happens, I'm once again sick. Started feeling slightly off on Monday, thought it was nothing and Tuesday evening I had fever. Headed straight to occupational healthcare on Wednesday (my workplace allows up to three days' sick leave just by letting one's boss know), as this is the fifth time within the year and I wanted to know what's up. The doctor said it was a flu virus, and it's apparently still normal to have five to six of those in a year. (A horrifying thought: if this is still normal, then there are probably folks who get this every year. That must suck so hard.) Things like changing jobs and moving to a new town tend to affect this stuff too: new town, new viruses.

This one's a weird bug. I might feel fine for hours at the time, and then bam, I'm suddenly all stuffy and slimy. I haven't really been feeling tired at least in the daytime, so all the more guilt for not being at work, as unreasonable as it is. I'm still getting stuffy as evening comes, and at least earlier today I had a bit of temperature, so back to occupational health it is tomorrow. Sigh. I was hoping I'd be healthy and get to go to work but it doesn't look great on that front.

So to sit still and not get any more of an overdose of Agatha Christie, I've been playing Don't Starve Together (by myself). I kind of feel like I'm overdosed on that too after five days, but I do have probably my best game ever going on, albeit with easier settings than default. Simming stuff takes the kind of concentration that I don't have right now, so a game I can just play is what I need here. I'll return to simming once I'm healthy again, though I may have to unhook myself from DST first.

Here's hoping I'd be back up and running sometime next week, with simming and otherwise. I'm pretty sick of being sick!