January 2007 Archives

I’m a long time Sims addict. It started innocently enough with the original Sims and all of its expansions and it has gotten worse with the Sims2. Well at least I can admit my problem, right? Anyway, the Sims2 is very open ended, at least on the PC, and so normally I’ll play a lot for a month or so after a new expansion and then after I’ve played through all the new content put it on the back burner for a while. Over the holidays I discovered two new things that have renewed my addiction to this game:

• Challenges – Basically a set of goals to try and complete. Something along the lines of creating a family that spans ten generations for example.
• Storytelling – This has been a part of the Sims2 from the beginning and I kept meaning to try it and I’ve just now gotten around to it. The game has a built-in screencapping ability and photo organizer so you can create a scrapbook of your Sims2 family.

The players who enjoy the challenges also encourage the writing/sharing of the stories behind them and in keeping with the spirit of posting more to my web site, I’ve created a new area for the Sims2 stuff (this way those that don’t play or don’t care to view it can skip it) and called it  From the Neighborhood (which probably makes more sense to Sims players). The photoalbums are hosted from picasa (at least for now) because it was convenient for adding the captions etc. If you click on the embedded image, it will take you to my album on picasa, where you can view them as a slideshow (the way I’d go) or however you like.

Its the first day of 2007 and first I’d like to wish everyone the very best. 2006 wasn’t the greatest year for me personally, but I still have much to be thankful for. I have a wonderful, loving husband, great friends and a job that pays the bills. Yet, there are some major changes on the horizon for me. I hesitate to call these “resolutions” because if my past history with new year’s resolutions is any indicator, they will be forgotten in about two weeks time. And some of these are very important to me, so I’m putting these out here so I’ll be less likely to let them fall by the wayside. Feel free to drop me a note to nudge me if I don’t post progress on a somewhat regular basis.  Placing them behind a cut to spare everyone’s eyesight.