The Bookacy Family Alphabet Journal

Myshuno is here again! I thought I'd give it a shot, maybe it would get me into writing mood again. And in the previous years it's been fun. I've tended to get a Myshuno but not get any further than that. Well, every prompt written is more than zero prompts!

Anyway, I was meaning to say, if you'd like to give it a try, go ahead, it's fun! Also, if you haven't already prompted me and would like to, you can do so here. :)

You know, they usual: not dead, just busy.

There's of course work, but also, in four days or so, I'm defending my PhD thesis. And that kind of has a lot of stuff I need to take care of.

Speeches both in the defence and in the after-party, seating arrangements at the after-party, seating cards, finding out what everyone is eating and communicating that to the restaurant, taking the theses to the university, agreeing with the opponent about schedules... Fortunately things are under control, it's starting to look like I'll be done with everything in time. And also I suppose it's a good thing I'm busy with the arrangements, so I don't have time to panic about the defence itself. ;)

So yup, I'm still alive. I hope that's still the case after Thursday. :D

I'm now all settled in my temp place, and so far, I'm liking everything: the place, the work, all of it. It's been a while since I've been this content.

And I did decide to take the simming computer with me, my parents brought it with the car last week. It took a while to set things up (I left my screen at home and use the tv here), and for some reason I still don't have sound, but I can live with that. Just today I got internet set up on this machine, so I suppose I'm all good to go.

I don't necessarily have that much of time, especially in the nearest future, since some things about the defence still require my attention, but at least now I can make a bit of progress here and there in the evenings. So at least my sporadic picspams will continue. :) And I really should do that BTS some time... (Bad Katri!)

Slowly but surely, things will move on.

I should probably post a little bit of BTS on the last chapter some time, but in the meanwhile, you can have some rotational picspam. On my Tumblr as usual, and if you start from the top of that page, you'll get them in the reverse order they were posted.

Entry by entry:

Custer: 1 2 3 4
Jalowitz: 1 2
An interruption to admire some pretty hair
Cameron: 1 2 3

And finally, five more college makeovers. No more teens this time, but instead, we get young adults. :)

I already realize now that this year my gameplay resolution (have at least one sim graduate) will be nowhere near reachable, even if I don't take into account the fact that I may be away from my simming computer for the majority of the autumn. Oh well, at least there's progress, and this kind of progress where sims reach new life stages, feels especially rewarding.

I've gotten past Chris and Cyrus' wedding in the recap, so not much more left. Woo! Also, I'm on, like, 230 slides now. Maybe 240 or so will be the count after I add the rest. Whoops? I'm going to have to try and cut it down a little bit, it's pretty insane. But I suspect I won't be able to do that much, there's just so. much. plot. So I guess in the end I'll have to apologize for the length and let it be. (And try to do a recap sooner next time. :P ) At least it should cover everything important and get people thoroughly reminded/caught up.

There may be a bit of a delay yet, though. You see, my thesis finally came back from review (both reviewers recommending that it be granted printing permission, yay!), so I need to do the final fixes for it and wade through a lot of red tape and whatnot. At least it's a happy reason. :) And at this point, I'm so close with the update (well the thesis too) that I can't not make it eventually. :P

It's that time again. I've played a few households forward, so I'll give you some picspam links. Over at my Tumblr again, and as usual, if you start from the top of the page, you'll get the entries in the reverse order.

Entry by entry:

Bruenig 1 2 3
Chun 1 2
Mellon 1 2 3
Fairchild 1 2 3

We had 3 new teens, making a total of 31 who are teens or older. Whee! :)

Other than playing the rotation forward, I've been slowly writing the recap chapter, and I'm currently on 65 slides. The hardest part seems to be remembering what happened in which order. So I suppose a recap is really in order! And I'm still working on that new, shiny Downloads folder for when I'm ready to rebuild. I think I'm just about done with hairs, and I'm downloading clothes currently. It's a longish project, but I think the well-ordered shinies will be worth it.

So, about time to have some picspam and BTS for chapter 39, don't you think? I don't have all that much actually, now that we're back to a more observational style, I'm using most gameplay pictures. But I'll babble on for a bit.

( Picspam! )

I think that just about covers my BTS for this chapter. As a progress update otherwise, I'm sort of alternating between several things according to what I feel like at each moment. I'm writing the recap chapter, and I'm on 46 slides written currently, and storywise in generation A college years. I'm playing the winter rotation in Alphabetia (and noticing how much faster small households are to play than big ones). I'm also slowly building a new downloads folder, for when it's time to rebuild Alphabetia.

I'm noticing that I'm sort of running out of unique stuff for all new sims, especially hairstyles, but wouldn't want to download terribly much for the old 'hood anymore. And I'm noticing that it's going to take a long time to completely rebuild a downloads folder. But, it's going to be better organized, have less useless stuff, and I'll get to have lots of pretty things. So I think it'll be worth it.

It's a good thing I'm not in a hurry.

At long last, I bring you chapter 39 of the Bookacies! I did my round of editing and cover-making today, weeding out a bunch of repetition and inconsistencies. So it seems I've now made my CreMo goal, which is a first for me. :) Anyway, click on the cover to read, and both Slideshare and Scribd versions are available. As usual, comments are welcome here or on my Boolprop thread. I hope you enjoy!

Tomorrow is a busy day, so this is a bit early just in case. Happy Birthday, Lenny, I hope you have a great day!

My second week wasn't as good as the first week; I've been a little distracted and perhaps less motivated. In any case, I did write 16 slides worth of the next chapter, which is still progress. If I keep this up, or try to improve a bit, I should still be able to get to my primary goal. There isn't so hugely much left in terms of scenes, insofar as my current more observational style contains anything that can be described as such. (Actually, I'm not entirely happy with my writing for that, I'd want to focus on individual moments more to get to know the sims better, rather than just flowing through everything, but I'm not sure what to do about that. Oh well.) Possibly I can even get something done on the secondary goal.

I also played a little the other day. That's been slow going too, but at least it moved on a tiny bit. It was sort of fun too, which is nice. When I get through the Thayer household, it's time to send a couple of sims to college, post picspam and take a backup. We'll see how long that takes, with my current speed quite a long time probably...

Hopefully next week will be a bit more productive again.

Week 2 stats, as of March 16th, 2014:

Bookacy chapter 39: all shot, 115 slides written
Bonus:
Bookacy chapter 40: all shot, 0 slides written