Some time has passed since i last blogged here, so i\'ll update you on what i\'ve been up to.

I installed the awesome mod. It came highly recommended, so i figured why not try. I went to the mts site, read up on it. Downloaded the framework thingy, then the mod, and did the configuration thing.

I had created a new saved game, where i went to Riverview and moved out all the pre-made Sims from their homes, and then created my selfSim and a bunch of friends and moved then into town. I didn\'t want my friends to be having babies, or leave town, etc... and at the time the awesome mod was the only way to prevent that.

The first time i went to start the game after installing the mod, it crashed. I was expecting this, since it is a known issue, and i was aware it would happen. So i start again, and it loads fine. Yay! So i get my sim and my friends moved in, and i play a good 6 hour session, building a house and everything.

The next day, i come back... try to load the game, it crashes. Think to myself \"this is going to get annoying\" having to load the game twice everytime because of the mod... So i try again, crash. Again, crash, crash CRASH CRASH. Grr. I delete the cache. Check that there are no odd files etc... re-do the configuration thing... Crashy crashy.

So i gave up and removed the mods folder. Deleted it. Then, in my program files i found the Mad Scientist (monkey helper) uninstall.exe so i ran that. I saved my \"Saves\" folder to my desktop and reinstalled the game. The game runs fine now, but i still have the monkey helper chache files in my Sims 3 folder. So far no word on how to do a clean uninstall of the mod and its framework. So annoying. The cache files don\'t seem to be affecting the game though. My neighbours are spawning babies, and story progression is going as EA intended it to. Kind of sucks, but at least i can play my game. They seem to have stopped at one child each, except for the one with commitment issues and the other who doesn\'t like kids, they are childless.

The Peters family has been unplayed in a week. Since they had twins, i played one day, and Brooke and Rayne got so stressed, tired, hungry trying to keep up with all 3 kids, i was like... \"i don\'t feel like dealing with this right now\" and went back to my Vera sim... single, flirty, unemployed, having fun. hehe.

I\'ll be playing the Peters tonight though, since it\'s the weekend, and i don\'t have to worry about getting to sleep on time, and not getting too wrapped up in it.

I have other ideas for characters too. They\'ll each have their own saved game. I like that style of play, it seems to be the way it was intended in the Sims 3. As long as i don\'t focus on what i wish the rest of the neighbourhood was doing, and just go with the flow, i\'m happy playing one house per neighbourhood. It\'s too frustrating trying to go back and forth and having them do things that mess up your plans while you\'re not looking.

Save, and save often. If anything that bad happens, it can be undone. Happy simming!

So, yesterday i was home all day and not feeling well. I parked my butt on the couch and turned on the Sims.

I decided to create a new game. So i went into Riverview, and moved out all the households that were there. Then i moved in Stehy Sexxipants, Aimi and B.W. Young which were in my library and uploaded to the exchange. I also moved in Arthur, Fred and Tim, some friends i created computer geeks out of for the Sims, i also moved in Aaron, my fianceSim.

I proceeded to create a few more characters based on friends i have online. James Wormy, L.J. Crider, Splidge Turnipet, and Lazlo Deviant. They have all been moved into their own homes as well.

I gave my SimSelf another go. The first one i made is pretty, i like her, but more of a supermodel version of my real self, lol. The second one... i hate the blank expression of her Avatar picture, though she was fun to play. So, i tried again. Different traits, this time, played around a bit more. She\'s still not quite perfect though.

I\'d re-make her, but if i move her out of the house and move her back in, i have to redecorate, and ugh. So before i progress her too much i have to decide if i\'m satisfied of not.

I built her a custom house. A Sim version of my childhood home. In reality, the house was split level. You\'d walk in the front door, and walk down 3 steps into the foyer, and up 3 steps to your right for the living room, and up 8 steos straight ahead to reach the kitchen and guest bedroom.

So the stairs at the back of the house, in reality, would adjoin the dinning room, but in this case i had to take them to the 2nd level. So there wasn\'t a patio door on the \"ground\" level but i put one there for the sake of accessibility. The walk out from the basement didn\'t have a walkway above it, but it was necessary in this case.

The building tools are awesome, but i guess we\'re still limited and can\'t reproduce exact floor plans yet.

Here\'s a thread where i posted pics, so you can see what i\'m talking about.

http://forum.thesims3.com/jforum/posts/list/32077.page

If you guys haven\'t read this Sims blog yet, you must! MUST!

http://aliceandkev.wordpress.com/2009/06/09/alice-and-kev/

Just letting you all know that I just posted Chapter 2 of the Peters Lagacy story. It\'s a quickie.

Chapter 3 should be interesting. Looking forward to tomorrow night\'s Sim session.

So i decided to start a Legacy Family (As far as i know a legacy is 10 generations) I normally don\'t play a family that long, when the original Sim has accomplished everything i usually get bored and start someone new to control and mess around with.

With Story Progression i figured, why not try? I created Brooke and Peter, and started them off married, purchased a lot and started building their dream home. Little by little i add to the house.

Brooke is family orientated, so she\'ll be wanting to have babies. The house will have 3 bedrooms when i\'m finished, so i\'m guessing they will have to move to a bigger house once the simoleons start rolling in. They have no money right now. Every day when they come hom from work, i either renovate something, or buy a new piece of furniture for them. I just make sure they have enough to pay their bills. Brooke will be quitting her job to be a mommy, but will contribute to household funds by selling produce, paintings, and novels.

They haven\'t gone into town for dinner or entertainment. They eat \"quickmeals\" most of the time, though Brooke likes to munch on the fresh produce she keeps in her backpack.

They\'ve met people and made friends thanks to opportunities and such. They socialize with co-workers during their shifts. When their careers settle into a steady pace, and money is no longer a concern, they will be visiting their neighbours and having people over.

Keep an eye on my stories to watch The Peters Legacy unfold. (Chapter 1 already posted)

I got the screenshots uploaded finally! So check out Vivian\'s \"Confessions of a Gold Digger\" in my Studio page!

My little pregnancy diary has over 1200 views. Wow.

I\'m working on trying to upload the snapshots i took during my little Vivian game session yesterday. Vivian Von Tramp is a Sim a i created yesterday, after wanting to try the gold digger aspiration (oops, Lifetime Wish).

I took snapshots of the steps she took to achieve that wish. But i\'m having issues with the uploader. I managed to get quite a few of the pictures uploaded, but when there was about 8 left, the loader froze up. It hasn\'t let me upload anything else since, it keeps freezing after one. Ugh.

I did manage to get the Vivian Sim uploaded though, so download her, and see what you can do with her. Hopefully i\'ll have her story posted soon.

It seems the population of Riverview is in danger of going extinct in a few generations the way things are going. All the babies are BOYS!

Though, i assume adoption may give the people hope, i still find it interesting.

During her pregnancy, my Sim was spending time around town, seemingly not content to relax at home. I visited a few neighbours at their homes, and i came across a few toddlers, all boys. Aimi and B.W. Young appear to have a little boy, and even Stephy Sexxipants (who is meant to be a lesbian) had a little boy crawling around her living room and porch while i visited. I\'d assume she adopted, since there didn\'t seem to be an adult male around.

More investigating to come. Where\'s the force babygirl/boy cheat? I\'d love that.

Well, i had a good Sim session tonight. Nothing buggy happened, I didn\'t notice too much weird story progression side effects. I maxed out my journalism career, bought out the riverview Bistro and quit my job. (Nice to get money for nothing)

Maxed out the gardening skill. Getting alot of gardening related opportunities. I\'m currently trying to grow 10 excellent cheeses. You EA dudes are weird. Growing cheese.

I\'m also up to 7 in fishing skill, but i don\'t seem to be \"learning\" the baits. I\'ve caught a dozen or so different fish using random baits, but not much \"learning\" going on. I\'m guessing you need to use the right bait and catch a certain number of the right fish for it to be \"learned\". Anyhoo... lots of fun catching and selling fish.

Book royalties are fun too. No need for a Sim to work with all these options.

I guess the next step is getting knocked up and seeing how the whole baby thing is like this time around.

I\'ll keep you posted :D

So i finally decide to play the Sims after a 4 day break, and i play for like 3.5 hours, get a few promotions, only one step away from reaching Level 10 of the journalism career... and all of a sudden my screen goes black.

When the picture reappears it\'s the Windows Vista automatic updates screen telling me not to turn off my computer as it\'s loading updates 2 of 3.

(Insert curse words here)

So yeah, a 3 hour Sim session down the tubes.

Remember to save people. -headdesk-

Oh yeah, and just to top things off, while attempting to use the potty before going to sleep, i walk into the bathroom just to get dripped on from a broken pipe or overflowing toilet above me.

I must have been a bad girl.

So after playing the Sims on my free time for 4 days... I\'ve taken a break.

I haven\'t played since Thursday night.

Friday i decided to resurface and socialize with some friends on Skype before work. (Add me: MissVera882 - no perving please) Got home from work late and didn\'t start the Sims so that i\'d get to bed at a decent time, cuz i had a wedding to attend on Saturday.

Do you ever see the world in Sims as you\'re driving along and watching people? We\'re driving to Toronto, and we\'re going down this residential street, and i see this couple walking down the sidewalk, and some guy coming out of his house and stopping at the bottom of the porch stairs to wave to the walking couple. I literally heard Sim voices in my head.

Anyhoo, we left the wedding shortly after midnight. I had a horrible migraine. Tried to sleep it off, but it lingered on Sunday. My eyes were too sensitive to focus on the screen to play the Sims.  Now it\'s wednesday, and i just haven\'t gone back to it.

I think part of the reason why i\'m not rushing back to it is because of this story progression glitch with disappearing Sims. Maybe it\'s not a glitch, but it\'s sure not a fun feature of the game, that i hope they reconfigure.

See, when the game was getting ready to be released, my friend AtiyaAimi gave me the idea to create all of our IMVU group friends as Sims, and have them live in my neighbourhood. So i got them all to give me their Sim names, and choose 5 traits from the list. The plan was to move them all into the neighbourhood, so that my Vera sim would meet them and interact with them so i can post screenshots in our IMVU group.

Well, not much fun when you spend alot of time creating Sims to look like friends, and then move them into the neighbourhood, use the money cheat, move them out and into a more suitable house (cuz the starter homes are limited), then make my Sim active household, go over to their house, start developing the relationship, just for my Sim to wake up the next morning and their new acquaintance has left town.

Grr.

People are saying to turn story progression off. But, then what? Nothing changes? Hmm.

Anyhoo, that\'s my blog rant for now.