The Bookacy Family Alphabet Journal

As I suspected, this week was on the busier side, with errands in the evenings and the Finnish Father's day in the weekend (I went to visit the parents). I didn't really have the concentration for my TS2 stuff in the evenings, but instead I played my TS4 legacy on a couple of evenings at least. I suppose finishing the first generation and installing a new pack got me pretty excited on that, too.

I meant to continue the documentation while on the road in the weekend, but it was too dark in the car for that and otherwise I didn't really have time. Well, I'm not on a deadline for that so that's alright.

The upcoming week should probably be less busy, at least I think so. So well, we'll see how it goes but I hope to have some progress on the TS2 side of things too.

Lots of progress this week, I've been on a roll!

Let's see. Last time I was talking about sending some teens to college and then taking a backup. Yes, I managed that, early in the week actually. I was just so close to my backup point that I just went ahead and did some grow-ups and makeovers like Monday night, and set the machine to crunch a backup on Tuesday. I've also been queuing picspam little by little during the week, right now I'm set for well over a month. A little bit to queue yet, so that's something to do next week.

Now in the weekend I took to building set number two for the plotty interlude, a school. I'm pretty far along, too, done lots of building and decorating. It's a fun little project, I've never built a school before. I'm having especially fun with the specialty classes, like cookery and arts. I'd like to include at least a computer class yet, although I'm kind of running out of space. Also, the set is probably way overkill for the purposes of the interlude, but I figured I might re-use it in the future, plus building it is fun. We'll see if I can complete it next week, it's kind of getting there. Though I may yet look for some cc that would be nice, I'm probably going to need some for the next set anyway.

While building, I've also been documenting my TS4 legacy. Today I got all caught up with that, so I played ahead again. My heiress is allllmost a young adult, so I'm very close to completing my first full generation. That one is fun too, I'm still enjoying playing the family. Again I'm considering sharing it, but I always feel like I should play and write ahead more, so as to not give myself another thing to worry about updating-wise.

All in all, a very good simming week. Next week I may have some errands to run, and guests coming over in the weekend, so probably less simming then. But I hope to get at least something done.

As I suspected, last week was so busy that I didn't do anything simming related at all. It was for a fun reason though: I had a couple of vacation days in the end of the week and had a nice trip to Netherlands for a bit of an autumn break. It was quite a successful trip, and the weather was great throughout. It was pretty amazing to see +25 C and sunny weather in October. All in all, it was a nice break.

Now this week should be less busy, and I hope to see some simming at least in the weekend. I suppose we'll see how that goes!

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.