Sure is. I would be heartbroken if I lost my beloved XP tower or laptop to some problem. I want to say I've had my XP for nearly ten years, and it's been nearly seven years since it was last upgraded. It would be difficult to find new parts for it nowadays, especially with the type of motherboard it uses.

Back to game playing:
There are several marital happenings in Bellefleur:

Beau Broke (who went back to his wife after a long period apart-had kids..)has broken up with Kaylynn due to his resumption of his affair with Mary Sue Pleasant-who was bold enough to kiss him in front of Kaylynn while she was visiting their house. Needless to say, Kaylynn is furious and Beau has moved out to be with Mary Sue again-and no, it wasn't Mary Sue's fault. Beau himself visited her and they jumped right back into bed. They'd been apart for about 5 years. Nothing had changed.

Cornelia Goth is engaged to Gordon King. While Cornelia has had a long line of suitors, she decided to get engaged because Gordon, if nothing else, is smart and ambitious, but kind to her as well. Never mind about the 40 years age difference. He makes her feel young again. He doesn't notice her gray hair, either.

Diana Windsor proposed to Armand Borgia, and explained that "It looks very indecent for us to be living together without being married." He agreed to the proposal, and like a true gentleman, he married her properly in a church the next day. Now her ex-husband doesn't have to pay alimony any more. She is hoping to have children with Armand, even though she has 5 already. She's also putting money together to purchase a larger house. It would not do for them to live beneath their means.

Just a follow-up, being that mid-terms are finally over and I can go back to enjoying life:
Took battery out and put it back in, switched it on... still won't come back on. I'm hoping if I buy a new battery for it maybe it will work? I'm not sure. It's plugged in and the light even comes up saying that it's plugged in, but that's it. If not, I'll have to figure out some way of getting all my documents off and transferring them to an external hard drive until I can buy a new laptop/pc capable of running the game.
Guess it will be a while before I can play Sims again.

this is happening

Reads new Strangewtown, Here we come chapter.
Starts new Strangetown.

Thanks, StrangeTomato! I don't know if you read on MTS or not, but you're an amazing writer.

i made a business reach lvl ten when the game crashed -_-

Did you fully discharge the laptop? To do that, unplug it and remove the battery again, and then hold in the on/off button for at least 30 seconds.
@Bigsimsfan12

So, I found myself with time and at least some motivation to play, but I was not sure about playing my planned next household; I knew it would involve resurrection, and right now that's a touchy subject for me. (Real Life rubbish: I've discovered that being able to calmly contemplate my own death and that of people I am not close to -- and write/play grisly stories -- does not prevent denial that it can and will happen to people I care about. That denial can cause some massive mess-ups of the kind that require time travel/rewinding or resurrection to repair...I've already asked people I know in the physics department on the undergrad side of campus about time machines, so anyone here know how to get a Resurrect-O-Nomitron out into our world? And is someone who died of illness still sick when resurrected? NOT using it if that's the case!)

It was the uniforms that swayed me. I did feel like seeing if the recolouring (or really, tweaking) project I'd been using as a soother had worked, and felt I might as well play while testing it. So I loaded up the Beaker house, where my acquisition of a more-Sims-per-lot mod allowed Nervous Subject to make a call to his father...and where, as it turned out, my own aspiration level made me a bit of a weakling in choosing what wants were to be fulfilled.

Nervous being Nervous, he didn't even consider resurrecting Pascal. Asking for a vampire to return was something he didn't imagine working. Instead, he tried to make things better for Bianca Monty by bringing back her father in a way that he couldn't die again. And so, Patrizio Monty was the first zombie to be awakened by the Reaper's child. He was not happy to be called away from what he had expected to be an eternal vacation, and had some harsh words for Nervous before shambling off. Hera was crying in the pit, and Nervous picked up the phone again. He'd meant to ask for the maid he'd accidentally killed back, but when THE VOICE answered the phone, he started babbling about needing someone to look after all these kids... The Reaper kindly gave him the cowplant-knawed Kendal Lawson to handle childcare.The nanny was outraged at her condition, and stormed off after Patrizio. Both wound up in the pit with Hera, bewailing their condition while vying to be more attentive to the toddler. Kendal had no idea what she was doing there but figured this that her job was to care for any children in residence, while Patrizio, his addled state not improve by his zombification, decided that the blond toddler was somehow related to him.

Both zombies were very angry at Nervous, and followed him around after they'd changed and cuddled Hera. Nervous tried to explain how he was going to have Bianca's babies, but neither of them understood. Circe got out of her bath, came downstairs, and wasn't sure whether to remonstrate with Nervous for cluttering up the house or get one of these creatures strapped to a table. The thunderstorm going on added to the foreboding atmosphere... "Mummmmy! There's a fire!" came Demter's voice from outdoors. Ignoring the fact that it was daytime, Circe rushed to rescue her child.

The fire was out by the time she reached the cactus. The clouds broke, and scorching sunlight blazed down on Circe. On the terrace, Loki felt the searing burn and screamed for her to return, for Nervous to come outside. The zombies blocked the door, and bewildered Nervous wandered off upstairs. The dead eyes of Patrizio and Kendal were on the Reaper as Circe crumbled to ash. "PAYMENT DOES NOT ONLY COME IN MONEY. YOU HAVE MISTREATED MY CHILD FOR FAR TOO LONG."

Loki made it back to the kitchen, but the zombies were arguing over who was going to get Hera's bottle at that point -- blocking his way to the fridge. His scream of, "Subject!" distracted Nervous as he was about to tell Jim to stop bouncing on his bed and get a drink of water, but by the time Nervous got downstairs, Loki was ash. The zombies were disgusted, and in Patrizio's case, wanted to be taken as well. Nervous, seeing the Reaper again, shrieked and fell to his knees. "No!" he shouted. "I can't raise their children!"

"THAT WILL NOT BE A PROBLEM. HOWEVER..." Bony fingers were clicked at Kendal, who obediently trudged through the newspaper covering the archway. Checo Raimirez had been coming to demand of Circe a explanation as to why Lisa had died; he did not expect a shambling nanny to seize his arms and drag him into the castle. Inside, he was held over the pile of ashes by Kendal. Esteemed chef Patrizio Monty, still hoping for his vacation back, went for Checo with a knife. His blood dripped, then poured onto the ashes.

And so, when the Social Worker arrived to investigate the reports of neglected children, she found moaning grey-skinned creatures appearing to butcher a man in a suit, while a blood-smeared man was drinking blood from the neck of another on the stairs and a toddler played in a pile of ashes. Loki was back, but the Social Worker was removing all the youngsters, and Nervous had passed out from being fed off of and was unable to either be lectured or plead with her. Loki got the knife away from the zombies before they could kill Checo, and decided that the answer to this was to use that darned phone and get Circe back. Of course, by the time she returned -- not a zombie, thank you very much! -- the children were settling into the blue van. At least she was able to stem the bleeding and keep Checo alive, though she and Loki did discuss whether it would be easier to cover his disappearance than this fiasco. The also worried about what kind of reaction they'd get from Bianca if Nervous were to miscarry...

"Well, at least we know how to get the children back," Circe said as it got dark and another storm set in. "I wasn't involved in whatever she saw, and neither was Pascal. It's high time to have that Subject again." High time to have him back as a zombie, as she found them an interesting curiosity and was not inclined to squander money on him. As he returned in befuddlement, the same cactus that had been on fire earlier was struck by lighting again. Circe rushed toward it to freak out, then wandered back to the house to go tell Loki of her success after the rain put it out. Pascal leaned against the RoN, looking out into the desert. He wasn't sure what kind of state he was in now, but he distinctly remembered crossing paths with someone on his way back to the world...someone who he last remembered as being engaged to his half-sister. Pascal didn't see Chloe all that often, and he barely knew Paris Prince, but he couldn't let that happen with this much power close at hand...

The night's final addition to the growing pack of zombies at the Beaker castle made his reviver stumble backwards. Pascal had no idea of the circumstances of Paris' death, and while return as a zombie healed most damage to a certain extent, the effect of Hermia's errant gunshot was too great to be repaired. Half his face still a mangled mess, Paris looked quizzically at Pascal and wiped what he thought was sweat away from his cheek. It was actually blood, still liquid...

"Did I just die?" he asked nobody in particular. That pale, slouched figure across the patio looked nothing like the cloaked one in the hedge...and this patio was some odd afterlife, if it was that. He shambled into the imposing building and found himself in a lab full of zombies. "Well, this looks like a good party..." His plans for actually throwing a party were interrupted by Circe demanding to know who he was. "I'm Paris Prince, ma'am," he said, straightening his uniform with hands he now noticed were grey. "Captain Prince." Was he that unrecognisable?

"Since when are you dead?" Circe demanded, glaring suspiciously at him. He didn't really have a good answer for that, and she went on, "Ha! Your family never stops getting in trouble. Loki and I are going to take a bath, and that thing is going back to Malcolm Landgraab. Go bring in Pascal Subject and have him put his husband somewhere better than the floor. The he can go bury that stinking maid..." She looked Paris up and down. "What am I going to do with you?"

Nervous got his first bump after being awoken to crash on the couch. He wasn't the only one thinking of additions to the family; Patrizio had taken a liking to the children, and with the patrilinial tradition of the Montys, had decided to take Jim back as his own. He needed another son, someone he could raise without worrying about the burdens of the bloodline... His contacts in CPS were rather surprised to hear him again, but given that he had information only he could have...

((Yes, Paris returned only hours after his death, as Pascal wanted to make him a zombie as soon as he himself was one, and I felt like granting them that. I can't avoid being very fond of my CAS Sims, and Paris the born-to-die disposable fiancé for Juliette became so much more -- starting from when he ogled Chloe Curious the first day they met, as I'm fond of the Curious twins as well. I'd been feeling pretty bad about the cascading misfortunes of the Prince-Curious-Smith-Capp-Monty arc -- especially for Chloe getting dumped for reasons she didn't understand, losing the baby, getting burned in the hospital fire, and now being about to find out Paris is dead thanks to the Veronaville feud. Maybe it'll fix things if he crashes his own funeral to propose to her again? He returned wanting to throw a party and with no fury tainting his BFF relationship with Chloe, and hopefully losing him will end her much more significant fury toward him as well... I'm in a fixing-things mood, maybe because I feel that our world's Watcher has a twisted sense of amusement close to my own.))

Rotation 8 has rolled around to my Megahood and all sorts of things are going down with the Brokes. Beau Broke married his high school sweethearts Tessa Ramirez just after her graduation. He had already known her family for years, has a great relationship with all of them, and Lisa and Checo had been expecting them to marry any time. Nevermind that Tessa and Beau had both cheated on each other throughout college (Tessa with Jimmy Phoenix and poor, devoted Xander Roth; Beau with Lucy Burb, but only that one time, he swears). Tessa took her mom and best friend, Lucy Burb, dress shopping and married Beau that night in a beautiful outdoor ceremony at Malcolm Landgraab's Lovers Lane property.

Beau spent the night at the Ramirez house before departing back to university to finish out his last semester. Fast forward about a year, and Beau is on the cusp of graduation. His wife Tessa comes to the dorm often to visit with friends and spend the night. Beau is doing well in school, a philosophy major, focused and full of direction for the first time in his life. Then, he sees it.

The dormies are out at the new Mortimer Goth Memorial Park for a barbecue and he spots his wife making out with Don Lothario behind the bathrooms. He's gone. He starts screaming, crying, pushing past people for some solitude and space.

Friends Tina Traveler and Daisy Greenman spot him and trail after him to help. Tina puts her hands on his shoulders and tells him whatever it is, it will be okay. Daisy offers him a hug, a rarity. Beau redoubles and kisses her for the first time, ever. The party thins out and they all go home. Beau starts to flounder. He hits on every girl who passes by, starts a fling with Daisy, ignores her, starts paying attention to Tina, ignores her, then takes up dancing with a dormie he's yet to notice before. Daisy Johnson.

Three bolts. Oh dear.

Fast forward some more, and Beau has graduated with amazing marks. He says a sterile goodbye to his college buddies and packs himself into the cab to move into his mother's mobile home, yet again. His baby sister Amber is older, starting her college applications and interning at a big business firm. Brandi is married to some guy, Blair Kalson, and he's quiet, boring, safe. Treats her well. Dustin is long gone and absent from the family overall. Beau heard he had finally married his girlfriend Meadow and had a daughter. Brandi and Blair are adopting a daughter as well. Brittany Kalson.

Beau is deflated, conflicted, and still very married. He picks up the phone and asks Tessa over for the last time. He explains what he's seen and always known -- she's a cheater. He suspects she may just not be the monogamy type, but he is. She agrees. He dissolves their marriage and tells her she ought to go. She knocks over the trash can on her way out. Then he goes inside, picks up the phone again, and calls up that Daisy Johnson girl from school. She's not doing a thing tonight, she says, why? And he starts something new.

Oh, to the "disagreer" to my previous post, if you're not happy about Beau going back with Mary Sue Pleasant, I can tell you that his showing up at her house unannounced while I was playing her lot, was pretty startling. I didn't expect him to show up, nor did I plan on their jumping into bed at the first opportunity..I really did so want him to stay with Kaylynn. After all that time apart, I wanted him to stay the 'same old Beau' as before.
By the way, he was initiator of everything that happened.
He's not an innocent bystander. He wanted and planned for it.

I'm afraid that he disappointed 2 ladies: Kaylynn and me. I'm such a sucker for happy endings, and I think she is, too..

Spoilered for pictures:

is that a toddler in the foundation? Oh dear oh dear.

Ever since I had one of my Sims interact with a wolf, the wolf has been returning to the house every day just to come see her. As aggressive as wolves can be in the game, once my Sim starts rubbing his belly, he surrenders completely like a little puppy. Eventually when their relationship is high enough, the wolf will be part of the family.

working in real estate taught me that big developers offer blood sacrifices for their condo's foundations as they believed blood strengthens the building this is a rumor of course. I SURE HOPE IT IS.

last night I learned that you can edit an existing neighborhood's elevation and make your own beach lots Q U Q
http://modthesims.info/t/278903 oh happy day :lovestruc

so now my game has an edited version of perky island with perky beaches~ woot woot

@kanzen It's somewhat a common "belief" that they've done that for infrastructures both new and old here. It's generally chickens though.

Um, anyway! Don't worry, the toddler just glitched herself down there while she was playing with the toilet. I don't know how in the world she managed to fit in through the drain, but considering everything that's happened so far, I'm not surprised anymore. Thanks so much for the laughs, joandsarah77.

Interesting times in Monopoly. The Council has become very aggressive and after attacking several of it's neighboring countries, was involved in a nuclear exchange (in other words my hood failed). Fortunately, I'd become very adept and compulsive about note taking and record keeping, so I was able to recreate most of my sims and move them to another hood, the beautiful Elsewhere.

The story goes that the radiation has "changed" them. Some people are missing and will probably never be found. Some died. Many are severely changed in looks, and age spans have been altered.

We'll see how it goes.

Nothing, because my old laptop is FUBAR and this game doesn't play nicely on my new pc

Sorry about the hood, @smorbie1! I hope most of those murderous council people have been nuked, though I think it is a clever idea to continue the hood, and wish I thought of that when my hood blew up! Next time, I will remember this excuse.

And Thanks so much for the updates and laughs Sketching. :D

I finished up the fall rotation for my fantasy medieval 'hood. The first two deaths have now occurred. The first was at the Fisher house. Carl from the wood cutter's lot had married Tamara Fisher. Both were elders, but he was several days older than her, and both had children from previous relationships (Carl's son was an adult with children of his own, while Tamara's were teens and children). Every weekend, Carl's son would bring his family over to the Fisher residence for a Saturday dinner; Carl's granddaughters had become friends with Tamara's younger daughters. On the last Saturday, the Fisher teens made dinner for everyone while the adults chatted and the children played on the beach. After dinner, Carl played with the children. He had a lot of fun, but it exhausted him and he went to bed before everyone went home. The next morning, he woke up with a want for a date (pleasure sim), so he and Tamara had a quiet date while the teens sold fish and the children fished off the dock. Afterwards, Carl spent most of the day either helping the teens with the fish stand or socializing with Tamara. Near the end of the afternoon, he rolled a want to slow dance with her, so the two danced at the top of the hill overlooking their beach. They ended their dance just before 6 p.m., and Grim Reaper arrived with dancers to take Carl.

The next death was at the Ottomas household. The Ottomas family are currently dairy farmers with a small house, a larger barn, and a small dairy building that doubles as a store where David sells their milk, butter, and some vegetables. After Samantha had given birth to the first set of twins, she had become pregnant again (Samantha, Peter, and Dora all wanted a sixth baby). The multiple birth mod kicked in, giving them a second set of twins. The next pregnancy was a risky oops, but following the birth of baby 8 (fortunately, just one baby this time), both Peter and Samantha rolled wants for 10 children. Locking those might have been a mistake, but the house is chaotic fun. The first set of twins had become children shortly after baby 9 was born (leaving three toddlers and the new infant Samuel). Their birthday triggered more baby wants in both parents, and Sharla and Tommy both rolled wants for new family members - so Samantha and Peter tried for number 10. Meanwhile, Dora and Samantha were teaching the teens in town how to read (study) and David was becoming skilled at running a store. Sharla aged to teen (fortune, with a want to own 5 businesses), and started helping her brother. Neither of them will be attending university, but they might earn enough for the younger kids to go, and Sharla has almost enough to get herself an apprenticeship with either a weaver or potter. On the last day of fall, Samantha went into labour. Baby 10 was immediately followed by 11, 12, and 13 - all girls. I have the chance of quads set at 2% and these are the first in this 'hood. Of course it strikes the most crowded house - the toddlers were already taking turns sleeping on floor mats, the older residents take turns using the pallets upstairs, and if everyone grabs food at the same time half of them eat standing up. I don't have set rules on handling risky deliveries though I often roll for infertility, illness, or death, but with quads I was very tempted to kill Samantha outright. At the same time I wanted to keep her as I knew I'd appreciate the extra hands later. I couldn't decide, so I let fate (or the game) do it for me - I sent Samantha out to cloud gaze until the end of the day. I didn't see the meteor strike, but the sudden aspiration drops by all the toddlers made me aware of it. Sharla, David and Peter focused on helping the toddlers and feeding the infants while Dora comforted the children. Dora only has a day or two left; I suspect she'll die during the quad birthday dance.

Thanks, Justpetro. I'd been preparing for this ever since Destry Wade's twin showed up in the Fugly household. He was the only duplicate I had, and he was actually living a very different life from Destry. But, I knew the end was near.

I thought I had been careful, but I started that hood by unknowingly doing VBTs. I have all the important tools I need now, so I'm hoping Elsewhere will be their final home. If not, this may actually be a fun way to shake things up.

I purposely didn't try to copy the physical features of the sims. That way lies madness for someone with my OCD. But since they've all survived a nuclear exchange, I wouldn't expect their appearances to remain unaltered. I purposely made most of them really interesting looking.

Sadly, as with all governments, the baddies in the Council found a way to shield themselves when the bombs fell. They have survived intact. Interestingly, their first action was to declare martial law so none of their remaining citizens could leave. This was for citizens' own good, of course.

The Council has a lot of territory because they are a warlike people, so finding a new, beautiful home was really not difficult.

And, as an added twist, occasionally one of the dead people I had info on will be resurrected. that should be fun.

playing in my fallout themed uberhood and about to make rules for it

Emerald, I am SO interested in how you and doing this as it's something I've tried, and abandoned a few times before. Let us know about your rules and how it's going.

i'll have to put this into the whats going on in your game thread but in each town at least 2 families die should be a rule and about 3 buildings will be normal

I started another uberhood this week, with all the EA neighborhoods plus Peni's neighborhoods.

I've run up against a new problem: I've played the sims enough that I have certain ideas about how their lives should go and what they should do. Which is . . . less interesting than before. Part of it is that when I restart I play the same households first, usually. Part of it is that I have solid canon on who is to be with who in which ways for a great many sims, now, so the first rotation of play is making sure sims meet who they need to meet.

I haven't played with LGU attached much, though, and they seem likely to shake things up a bit.

Also, I decided that the three sororities and three fraternities are all the same fraternity and sorority, just different campus branches, so I'm teleporting in any greeks who don't have the right relationships to show up to toga parties. Well, now, that's a lot of bolts running around. Poor Mickey was spinning in circles last night trying to decide if he liked Jessie, Helen, or Heather better!