For the amount of time I spend playing this,you’d think I’d be fluent in Simlish.

One of my favourite games of all time would have to be the sims.
It started when I was about eight. While my mom was at work i basically lived at my basbysitter’s house. Rose (babysitter) had three teenaged children who are like my siblings, so when they would play on the computer, I would be playing with the spare controller or keyboard pretending that I was doing something. One of the games was the sims. To my 8 year old mind this was like a virtual doll house, i quickly became enamored.

The player must make decisions about time spent in personal development, such as exercise, reading, creativity, and logic, by adding activities to the daily agenda of the Sims. Daily need fulfillment must also be scheduled, such as personal hygiene, eating, and sleeping. If the simulated humans do not perform need fulfillment, they suffer consequences. For example, if they do not eat, they will die of starvation. If they do not go to the bathroom, they will wet themselves. If they do not have fun, they become depressed, and unwilling to do things. When Sims have low motives they are more likely to be nasty to other Sim characters by insulting them, slapping them and even attacking them.

Financial health is simulated by the need to send the Sims to find jobs, go to work, pay bills, and take advantage of personal development and social contacts to advance in their jobs.

The first game of The Sims has several limitations, most notably, when your sims had children, they would stay children. Forever. Also, adult Sims never age (or die of old age), and there is no concept of weekends. For example, adults and children are expected to go to work and attend school respectively, every day. In particular, adults receive a warning if they miss one day of work, but they are fired if they miss work for two consecutive days. Children can study at home to keep their school grades up. When creating your sims (people) you had a limited selection of clothing, and heads. You had to stay on your lot the entire time, and there were only 4 camera angles. (http://www.scubb.com/images/products/PC%2520the%2520sims%2520complete%2520colletion_box.jpg&imgrefurl=http://gamegame-gt.blogspot.com/2008_06_01_archive.html&usg=__Ujh3RK8qXGQUSABpqlEGtujr_9Y=&h=500&w=357&sz=38&hl=en&start=17&zoom=1&um=1&itbs=1&tbnid=kms8mGXu-ZwzgM:&tbnh=130&tbnw=93&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dthe%2Bsims%2Bpc%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Dactive%26sa%3DG%26rls%3Dcom.microsoft:en-ca%26biw%3D1003%26bih%3D592%26as_st%3Dy%26tbs%3Dift:jpg%26tbm%3Disch&ei=UufCTe2sF5OqsAOQ5OXyDw)

Then when I was around 12, the sims 2 came out, this was exciting because now the children could grow up! You could leave you house and go to places in the community! you could customize how your sims looked! and their genetics would be passed on to their children. Unlike the original Sims, where you could spend forever raising their skills, the aging system in The Sims 2imposes a time limit on this before your Sims die.

The main aim of the game is to lead a Sim from the start of life to death. Sims will need to build up skills and relationships with other Sims, so that he/she can be successful in their career. A player will also need to make sure a Sim is happy and well by fulfilling wants (including lifetime wants, avoiding fears, and fulfilling motives).

Sims’ personalities are also given an overhaul with each Sim having an Aspiration, Wants, and Fears.

The Sims 2 shipped with 3 premade neighborhoods. Pleasantview is a continuation of the original Sims storyline 25 years later. The new neighborhoods are Strangetown, a desert landscape with paranormal occurrences, and Veronaville, which is based on several plays by Shakespeare. Granted some of the expansion packs didn’t upgrade, for instance there is no making magic but it was a small price to pay for a continuing generation.

The people at EA though, well some how they were able to think of improvements. And out of that came The Sims 3. Seamless neighbourhoods were the big sell here, you were able to walk around the entire community rather than pick a lot to load. And you are able to customize the colours and patterns of nearly everything! Which sort of makes up for the loss of some cool objects like the spiral staircase. With this came a more quest style game where your sims are given opportunities and wants. They can also find things around the town. The expansion packs were pretty cool too. This game was definitely more goal oriented than it’s precedors. While the others were more like, as i said before, a virtual doll house, this one felt like you could win.

EA games then decided to go back in time, now that they had the tech for seamless quest based games, they produced, The Sims Medieval! As it was half price (sale lasts until May 6th) I decided to buy it. It took three hours to download and you can only play that version if you’re connected to te internet,  so if you are thinking of getting it i suggest ordering the hard copy. So far the game is pretty fun and there is definitely a lot of creative fodder to burn up in my quest for the ultimate kingdom, my only complaint right now is that you can’t save while the tutorial is running, and it runs whenever you open a new game. The tutorial runs until you finish the first quest but still it takes about an hour with it pausing all over the place to tell you what to do.

An overview of the games and available expansion packs:

                   – Livin Large – New Characters, Careers, Items, Features
                   – House Party – Ability to throw parties, themed objects
                   – Hot Date – New Characters, objects, and a Destination (Downtown)
                   – Vacation – New Destination split into 3 environments (Beach, Woods, Snow), Objects, interactions.
                   – Unleashed – Ability to adopt and interacte with pets
                   – Superstar – Can become famous entertainers, New objects etc.
                   – Makin’ Magic – can cast spells, make charms, travel to magic market through rabbit holes, New objects etc.

– University – Universities, Destinations (campuses) Young Adult age group, Influence system, Careers for graduates, characters, zombies
– Nightlife –  Dates, Outings, aspirations, ownable cars, Attraction system Destinations (Downtown) Character, Vampires
– Open for Business – Businesses, talent badges, Destination (Shopping Village) Robots
– Pets – <Speaks for itself, Werewolves
– Seasons – New Town, PlantSims (plant people kionda like elves/woodland creatures all look basically the same)
– Bon Voyage – Destinations (Island, Asia, Mountain), Bigfoot
– Free Time – Hobby system, lifetime aspiration system, new talent badges, Can learn ballet and alsmot any other extra curricular activity
– Apartment Life – Rentable apartments, reputation system, witchcraft system, Urban Characters, Witches & Warlocks

– World Adventures – Additions: new traits, skills, and furniture Features: quests, tomb exploration at three new destinations (egypt china france), photography, basements, nectar, fireworks. vacation homes, Mummies

– Ambitions – additions: new careers, skills (Inventor, ghost hunter, fire fighter, architect etc), traits, and furniture, Simbots Features: control within work (professions and selected careers), Laundry, Tattoo system

-Late Night – Additions: new careers, skills, traits, clothes and accessories, furniture, and cars  Features: bars, night clubs, penthouse suites, butlers, hot tubs, subway portholes, elevators, zodiac signs, new swimming pool design tools, height adjustment for wall objects and fountain tool. Vampires

– Generations (Basically everything they should have had in the original release of TS3) Additions: new playground equipment, new career, and new traits.  Features: pranks, midlife crisis, body hair, new types of celebrations (i.e. birthday/teen/bachelor parties, weddings), memories, graduation ceremonies, imaginative play, spiral staircases, water slides. Imaginary Friends

– Much different gameplay than the previous games, you controll a kingdom and each character is like an account in an MMORPG but without the load times in between. Read up on it here http://sims.wikia.com/wiki/The_Sims_Medieval

– You play as the watcher AKA God because people are dumb and in order for them to thrive you need to have a little control over them <- summary of opening. This is the only opening of the sims so far that i thought has been entertaining.

Cleanliness Is Essential When Godliness Is Improbable

I love reading comics, at least the ones that come free in the newspaper, online or in book form at the library. Ones that I don’t mind paying money for are few and far between but there are at least 3; The Far Side, Baby Blues and Sinfest. Even thought they are online I’d still pay for them because they are that funny 🙂
The Oatmeal is pretty good too but not spend worthy

Anyways another thing semi-related to the title (it involves showering….and swearing?) is Jenna Marbles!!

My sister showed me her YouTub videos and while being vulgar she sure is funny!

Background info: Vlogger and GoGo dancer with a Masters degree in Sports Psychology
Here’s the Vid let me Know what you think of any of the Links!

Mhurgfffl…. >:/

That feeling you have when it feels like you’ve slept for less than 5 minutes and you’re waking up at 5:30 in the morning? yeah, have that now.
Here’s how to achieve this lovely state of consciousness:

Starting Monday, wake up at 5:30, sleep in for 15 minutes because you did [nearly] all this last week, run to look for spare change because sleeping in lost time needed for making lunch, eat breakfast in car, go play squash till 8:30/9 (Note* hit the ball hard, because they don’t bounce! YAY! proceed to wish you were playing with an iron frying pan)

Proceed to school – Stairs are involved and must be walked up and down repeatedly while carrying a 10+ pound deadweight, remember to look good! 😀

Rugby Practice till 5 (Note* some people like to walk in drills while they think the coaches aren’t watching. Do not be one of these people, the coaches are watching. Repeat drill because of slackers)

Eat dinner while icing ankle

Shower then Braid hair (While your arms are burning from being above you’re head for an hour just think how awesomely strong your arms will be!)

Do math while your brain slowly loses power

Sleep

Tuesday:
Make bus (First time this month, Feel PROUD!)

School – see monday

Rugby – teach new players! (*<–highlight of day, do not read as sarcasm) after practice catch a glimpse of yourself in a reflective surface, scare self. Make a note to find hairstyle that does not involve sharp metal objects to attain non hobo style.

Dinner/shower/braid

Forget that [important]  homework is due friday while you feel good about yourself being able to answer the wheel of fortune questions before they add non given letters

Watch jeopardy, feel marginally less smart

sleep

Wednesday:

See monday until rugby (skid on non varnished wood floor while trying to hit ball in squash, miss)

Rugby – outside, run through snow banks, feel proud that you dressed well for the weather

Dinner/Shower/Braid
French homework

Sleep

Midnight – remember you promised to bake cupcakes on thursday back in february and have been planning said expenditure since
remember important homework due friday
remember that you have blogged once this month
forget above when asleep

Thursday:
Sleep in till… Just Kidding you are on auto wakeup and it is 6 o’clock try as you might you are not falling back asleep no matter how long you lay there

8:30 have decided to stay in bed until room temperature rises above 15 c and the polar unit have gone to work, since it is now 20ish c it is time to eat and etc.

time getting ready perfectly so that you will be ready to go at 10:30

Friend comes at 10:20, make friend wait until you are ready (at 10:40)

continue making bad prioritizing decision

go grocery shopping for supplies/ bake and decorate cupcakes until you have to work

work till 8
come home and remember homework that you remembered last night

Work on blog… fear for life,  shove stuff to weekend.  Read horoscope – plan to feel like figure 1 on friday…. maybe more like saturday

figure 1

Get ready for bed at 10:30 as past experience has told you that you do not function properly when having to wake up at 6 if you go to bed at 12 or later, you know that bruises ensue because of lack of foot coordination. Feel proud for taking precaution.

Friday* Subject to change

wake up at 6, eat, pack etc.
miss bus/ Make bus = 80/20 chance respectively
feel glad parents like you enough that they don’t make you walk, like cold for same reason

feel guilt for not completing annotated bibliography for english, try to remember what essay you are writing is on as you watch presentations, May have to sit through possible lecture

feel guilt for not completing children’s story, feel a little better after remembering you blogged

feel good that you completed french homework, try to remember how to speak french

… challenge and change hope for a movie

get home at 3:20, work at 3:30, end at six, dinner

friends come over, teach rugby and watch movie, talk a lot.

work on homework that was due today/shower/braid
look forward to sleeping in tomorrow
remember that you are waking up at 4-6 to go to grandma’s and maple syrup festival. Plan on sleeping in car, hope you don’t see anyone you only sort of know there as you feel like slothing and speaking as little as possible, limit words to grunts.

Sleep.

Muffins are Ugly Cupcakes

         While there are many recipies for many things, the best recipies are for cupcakes. They are muffins with a sickening amount of sugar on them. They are like muffins with fancy hats.  While muffins are the  over proctective hover mothers protecting their “temple” with SPF 90 and wicker garden hats, raising vegan/vegetarian/gluten free/sugar free children in the suburbs; Cupcakes are the ladies in the south, frying bananas and spicing up their gumbo, going to church to compete in the unspoken competition of who has the best hat. Both are good, one is even by far healthier, but if you were to have a party, who would you rather invite?

My friend just got a cupcake book from the library with loads of toppings to make your cupcakes exciting, 

I also just recently read through Martha Stewarts Cupcakes

I could feel a sugar high just looking at them.
Here are some examples from each book; First from What’s New, Cupcake? (which, I found out, is a sequel ((YES a COOKBOOK sequel ftw!)) to Hello Cupcake!) My Favourites from this book are the ones that look like other food. There are of course cupcakes that don’t look like other food in the book.

Main Course - Take out Cup Cakes!

Jelly Belly Kernels!

And Pie for Dessert! the "fruit" are smarties 🙂

 Martha Stewart’s look a little more classy but just as fun to make!

Candied Hazelnuts

Obviously we had to make some… this is what ours looked like

Too bad thinking about eating that much sugar gives me a headach

An ice cold blanket

A few weeks ago we got our first taste of snow. I was pretty pumped about this because i lovelovelovelovelove snow; then a terrible dry spell, which involved rain, made everything muddy brown and wet. But now  (stating the obvious) everything is accented in white 🙂 Lets get the snow days rollin!

Almost everybody i’ve talked to is happy about this wonderful fluff, yet there are some who absolutely despise snow. They hate the cold and the slush and the cold. They want it to constantly be 30 celsius which i think would be terrible.  This is Canada, we need variances in weather to maintain our culture of being some of the hardiest folk alive, next to the people in Iceland. Besides the cold and the slush, there really isn’t that much to hate about it, so here are some of the reasons why i love it:

Snow is the wrapping paper around an ugly sweater. It makes all the muddy brown, patchy grassed lawns covered in dead leaves and stick fragments look like smooth, puffy, sparkling carpets of  possibility in the way a nicely wrapped present makes you excited over what’s inside.

.. no matter how ugly...

 

Speaking of possibilities there are about 20 different outdoor activities to do in the winter

You can't do this in the summer.... the lack of snow would render it fatal

you can make stuff out of it

school stops because of it… as well as most traffic

you can live in it

you can eat it.

Multipurpose Weather!!

Why i will probably fail school

Procrastination

I could do my homework and study and all that boring stuff. or i could play computer games and read and all that fun stuff….  :S

www.buttersafe.com

but i figure that if this is where i end up i’d best study like a champion and get all my things done… so i will start tonight!!!! by doing my laundry, which has been sitting clean in various places of my house. Currently there is a load in the washing machine, a stack of clean stuff on my chair (we use the dining room chairs to store all our shit until dinner time comes around …or it overflows) another full basket of clean in my room and laundry covering my bedroom floor.  before all this happened i was of the idea that i should just accumulate alot of clothes.

i mean a lot of clothes, this way i wouldn’t have to do as much laundry whilst in uni! i deffinatly thought this was a genius idea.

obviously i haven’t thought this through, i thought i would be able to skip along with out ever running out of clothes. I see know how this was a stupid idea.  It started out fine; one load would be being cleaned as i put the other away, a continual supply of clothing, i would never run out 😀  

However.  More clothes = DEFFINATLY MORE LAUNDRY.  i have to put away my clean stuff, clean the dirty stuff and then put it away again.  <- which is normally what one would do with clothing.

 but now that i have so many clothes i am of the mindset that “oh i can wash those later, i still have clean socks available.”  <- which basically sabotaged my entire system.

so now im left with this

which i have to do when i get home.  as well as homework….

hmm i started this post by making it seem that i have a lot of shit to do, turns out i really don’t. Im  just lazy.

Cartoons are more real than real life

So I heard on CBC radio 2 as Bob Mackowycz was inserting little factoiods into my morning, slowly preparing my brain for the onslaught of knowledge that will ensue from my voluntary attendance of life,  that the reason Disney movies such as The fox and the Hound are able to bring tears to grown mens eyes more so than say Titanic is that in some skewed way, the cartoons are more relatable. Let me start a new paragraph to explain further.

Real life movies don’t bring us to tears as easily as animated movies because we see the real people and perceive whats happening as their life not ours and we are watching from afar, but in animated movies we see the lines that make up the face and project our own feelings as to what emotion the face is feeling.

I hope that makes sense because now I have something else to talk about, but don’t worry its related…

so this brings me to talk (type?) about a blog that has been spreading through my group of friends like an std on jersey shore.

www.hyperboleandahalf.com

the posts are super funny and very relatable, her vocabulary is extremely descriptive and all of this is heightened by her mastery of paint.

you can only be responsible for so long a period of time before you crack...

you could go through a whole post, just look at the pictures and still laugh.  but then you should read it because its even more funny that way. Another great part about this blog is that it provides a satirical look at life and overall good advice, so go ahead and learn seven games you can play with a brick, how to survive rural montana and a better use for girl guide cookies.

Just something to squeal about…

GEEE!!! 😀 

The guy who plays Robbie in ‘Angus Thongs and Perfect Snogging’ is

Aaron Johnson

As Robbie

who plays Kick Ass

Alter Ego

Everyday Nerd

 

and is now my version of Alex Pettyfer

for all of you who understand the implications of this, feel free to expel a girlish squeeble (the only word i could make up that captures the feeling in question)

for all of you who don’t, the best way i can explain this situation is that i will now be reffering to him as my husband. that is the best explination i can give, im sorry but it is hard to explain an inside joke. so, sorry you have spent your time reading this.

GEE! 😀

Who knew?

I don’t know you that well. i don’t know how you’ve changed in the last few years so i don’t think i will ever understand. did your view change from what i did know? from the person i knew you as before? then again i never really knew you.

but how could you lose your curiosity? is that what happened? how could you not want to find out what might happen?  who might you meet? sure the week ahead may be foreseeable, the same classes the same people, the same weather. but what about the next year? more stress? you could stand it. but then again, i don’t know you. im just glad that you have the choice to answer.

Something that bothers me…

One of the most common traits desired on people’s imaginary mate list (usually titled “My perfect boyfriend/girlfriend” but for these purposes let’s be gender neutral) is someone who doesn’t care what anyone thinks. Honestly? that’s the type of person you want to spend your time with? This is a terrible trait to look for in a person. Imagine having a conversation with them or trying to work out a problem

“(insert your point of view here)”

“you can think what you want i don’t really care”

BAAGHHH!! see how frustrating trying to have a conversation with this person would be? It would happen in any situation too, like over dinner? you would end up sounding like their waiter, they wouldn’t ask you any questions because they wouldn’t care! basically talking to them would be like trying to play baseball with a balloon.

For a normal person it would be impossible for them not to care about what anyone thinks because other people’s opinions help you form your own.  for instance think of your favourite movie,  you wouldn’t have been able to see that movie if other people hadn’t shared your opinion and cared about what you thought.

Besides, people should care about what you think, this is how blogging got popular, it also helps them form their own view of you. if someone didn’t care what anyone else thought they would be very self centered and quite honestly you would die of boredom after being in their presence longer than 10 minutes.

So if you must look for someone who doesn’t care about what anyone else thinks (perhaps/hopefully/instead you really mean a rebel? a non conformist?)  maybe try looking for someone who doesn’t care about what anyone else thinks, except for the people they care about. Besides this person seems much more healthy and interesting 🙂

Ninja

p.s i found spell check!!! 😀 it’s that little check marked ABC icon, this my friends is a beautiful display of my computer skills