That is all.

I don’t think I will… but I want to. So very, very badly.

She sent all of us a message about it on Facebook. Unfortunately, she also invited another girl whom I had a falling out with and refuse to speak to now because of it. The three of us were all best friends for quite a few years until recently. Still, while seeing this other girl at her party would have been uncomfortable and awkward, it wouldn’t have stopped me from going.

What DID stop me from accepting the invitation was the location… she’s having her birthday party at a male strip club. Errrrmmmm… no thank you.

As most of you know, while my Sims may get up to all kinds of sordid and promiscuous affairs, I myself hold very conservative views about a lot of things (not all, but a lot). This happens to be one of those things I have a very conservative view about. I just think that sex and/or sexually-related displays should be kept between two grown adults who love each other very deeply and things like strip clubs, pornography, swingers’ bars, prostitution and other such things cheapen the act of sex and objectify the human body.

So I told my mother I don’t feel comfortable going to a strip club and so will choose to politely decline my friend’s invitation. Ironically enough, my mother got angry with me for being so prudish, apparently. She said that strip clubs aren’t a big deal and that I need to get a life and get out more. Uh… isn’t this conversation a little backwards? Shouldn’t the teenage daughter be yelling at her mom for not letting her go to a strip club?

So… am I a bad person for not enjoying looking at naked strangers? I don’t think so. I don’t know when it became a bad thing to think that sex/sexually-related activities is something special and private that wasn’t meant to be shared outside of a committed relationship between two grown adults who love each other.

I didn’t put down my friend for wanting to go. I didn’t lecture her about my conservative views. I didn’t say anything other than “Well, that’s not really somewhere I’m comfortable going, so I’m going to have to decline the invitation, but maybe we can get together some other time and have lunch or something for your birthday.” Pleasant enough, right? I think so.

So… if I don’t put down people with differing views, if I don’t lecture them about how my views are “right” and theirs are “wrong”, if I recognize the fact that my views aren’t technically right or wrong and purely beliefs that I’ve developed because they make me feel comfortable and safe… why am I a prude or some kind of bad person for having them?

It’s not wrong to not enjoy that kind of atmosphere.

Of course, if by chance, I was all “Oh yeah, let’s go for it! I love strip clubs!”, I’d most surely be labelled as a slut. It’s so frustrating. Why are women ridiculed for protecting their virginity, then called a whore once she does decide to give it away to someone?

Ah well… that’s an entirely different topic and I’ve begun to ramble, so I’ll end this here.

I am NOT a prude or a bad person just because I don’t like looking at naked strangers!

He ignored me.

Asshole.

A few days ago, I received an offer of admission from a university I applied to! I was accepted to the other two I applied to as well, but they were only fallbacks in case I didn’t get into the one I wanted. I was starting to get really worried, because the deadline to accept/decline both of my other offers had passed and I was forced to accept an offer from somewhere else and I still hadn’t heard back from the university I really wanted.

Thankfully, this university accepted me, anyway, and I was allowed to cancel my other acceptance and accept this one!

Now I am laden with financial stress, but I am so happy I’m finally going back to school!

I’ve been job-hunting, applying for student loans, registering for campus tours and applying for residence. I am more than ready to go back to university and get it right this time around. I know it’s going to work this time, because I love the location of the campus, the school and the classes are small and they’re known for treating their students like people instead of numbers, unlike the last hellhole I was stuck in. It was like one giant rat race there. No one cared about each other, everyone was always rush rush rush everywhere and if you couldn’t keep up, oh well. Too bad. You’re just a number to them. I hated it. Having trouble with my relationship didn’t help matters, either, or the fact that the school went on strike.

It’s going to be different this time around, because I don’t have a boyfriend to drag me down or hold me back like the last time and I’m staying FAAAARRRR away from guys while I’m there. No time to deal with all of that crap again.

So, please forgive me if updates to my blog become very scarce come September. I’ll be adjusting to a lot and focused on school. It’ll be the first time I’ve moved out on my own without relatives and I’ll be making all of my own decisions like an adult for the very first time. I’m really excited, but I know it’s not going to be easy to adjust to. I’ve been pampered, sheltered and babied by my family my whole life, but I’m ready to finally grow up and be an adult.

I won’t go into details, but I got in a fight with my ex this morning, who basically told me that I was crazy and accused me of using my anxiety disorder as an excuse to act nuts. I still don’t know why he suddenly blew up at me after not talking to me for quite some time and seeming to be happy to see me when I first said hello to him this morning.

I did apologize for whatever I apparently did that was crazy but he’s of course ignoring me and I expect he will continue to ignore me for the next few months. That’s what usually happens every time we talk, regardless of whether or not we argued. As for me, I’ve said my apology and he can either accept it or not, but I’m not going to continue to beg.

Anyway, this has made me quite upset. I’ve been rather stressed out since the argument and was planning on playing the Charms today, but I don’t know if I really want to play the game anymore today.

He’s not a bad person. Just frustrating to deal with, and very hard to get over, since he is such a good guy.

I wouldn’t be posting  this here if it weren’t for the fact that I’m rather isolated from my RL friends right now. Schedules just not working out and lack of transportation and whatnot. I needed to vent and to explain why I’m online and not playing the Charms like I promised.

Those of you who’ve been following my other blog lately know that I’ve started up the Charm Legacy again. I’ve put my other challenges on hiatus for the sake of finishing this challenge, but don’t worry. I’ll start them up again once I finish this legacy that has claimed my soul for the last… eight months. Yeah, about eight months. Sheesh, I’m impatient to finish it, already! Tiari finished her legacy challenge in half the time I’ve spent on mine and I’m still only at generation five. *headdesk*

Anyway, I finally bought WA. I am enjoying it. I don’t think it was worth $50.00, but I am still enjoying it all the same. I’m one of the few Sims payers who was able to get all her CC and mods working with her game the first time after installing WA so I am lucky. For once, TS3 didn’t vomit all over me.

No horrible glitches… so far… *fingers crossed* I do have an annoying graphics problem since patching to 1.8. Basically, my pools look messed up and Sims disappear when they swim in them and some of my fencing looks weird now. I went to Intel’s website to update my graphics card, but it just told me my card was up-to-date and when I tried to install the latest series of graphics cards manually, I got an error message saying my computer doesn’t meet the requirements to install that card update, so I guess I’m shit outta luck.

Otherwise, things seem to be doing okay… though I cringe, hoping the TS3 Gods and Goddesses didn’t hear that and decided to fuck with me for shits and giggles.

In other Sims-related news, I bought the official Prima guide for TS3. I do like it a lot, even though I already knew most of what was in it. It’s very pretty and comes with a poster of Sunset Valley. The poster pinpoints where all kinds of collectibles can be found in the town, which I was ecstatic about. That was one thing I didn’t know before buying the guide. There are a lot of typos in it, but the author, Catherine Browne, has a charming sense of humour and makes reading the guide enjoyable. I’d recommend it if you have $25.00 to spare and you’re an avid Sims 3 fan.

I also purchased SimAnimals for my Wii. It looks like it’s for little kids, but I doubt a little kid could get past the third level of this game. It’s hard. Extremely hard. Trying to balance the ecosystem so all the species live peacefully with each other is no easy task. I really, really enjoy it. The animals are all adorable and it’s a lot of fun watching them interact with each other and playing with them. You unlock different areas by keeping your animals and plants happy. You boost the happiness of the area by earning medals. You earn medals by completing goals related to that area. It could be to grow a certain kind of plant to attract a specific animal, or to have two animals be friends with each other or to help two animals mate or to get a new animal to move into the area. It’s been keeping me entertained. By the way, if anyone has this game, I’d appreciate some help. One of my goals is to get a weasel to be friends with a mouse, but the weasel just keeps eating all the mice I introduce him to. He’s not hungry, either. He’s eaten three of my favourite mice and it’s making me sad.

Okay, well now time to listen to my new Taylor Swift CD and bum around the Internet some more. My hours at work got cut again. I work a grand total of seven hours this week… yeah… fan-fucking-tastic. I am SO not happy about that.

• Started up TS3.
• Played the Messovitches.
• Played for hours. Got a lot done. Got 3 points for a new death, and rebuilt the house from the ground up. It took forever. They actually had a really nice house after that. It was kind of small and boxish on the outside, but it had a very nice interior, in my opinion. I was pretty proud of it, considering they only had about 30, 000 to work with to build and furnish the whole place.
• The triplets (well, really just Alli-Mae and Annabelle, since Abby Jean doesn’t live there anymore) had their birthdays.
• I throw a party and invite Mary Sue, Cletus, Adrian and Abby Jean. Alice is upstairs sleeping at the time. She sleeps during the day because she works at night.
• I suddenly notice that Ignacio is flickering in and out of sight when he’s getting a snack from the fridge. He’s a child by now. I think “NO! NOT…” I click upstairs to check on Alice and groan. She’s stuck in her bed.
• I try resetting all the Sims then moving them out and in again (I heard that worked for another girl who got that glitch), but ended up with a perpetual processing screen. I had to reboot my whole fucking computer.
• I’m a retard and didn’t save anything I’d done, so the dead Sim was still alive and the house was still the shitty one floor craphole Gretle built. Ignacio was still a baby and the triplets were far from their birthday. I rebuilt the house again identical in proportion and style to the last one (thanks to the screenshots I took the first time), killed off the Sim again (the Sim died by accident the first time, but I killed them on purpose the second time, because it’s not my fault a glitch took my points away from me) and played on triple speed until birthdays again.
• The same shit happens on their birthday.
• I reboot again. Thankfully I saved just before their birthday, so I didn’t lose anything, but the same shit happens again.

So I’m fucking pissed off as hell. Not only does the game crap out on me over and over again, but it also craps out on me on the day my third generation heiress becomes of age to have children and bring in generation four. I was planning on ending my next chapter right after Annabelle pops out her first kid (or two or three… I hear Sims who are born as a twin or triplet have a higher chance of having a natural multiple birth without you influencing the pregnancy. In my experience, this appears to be true). I guess this isn’t going to happen as soon as I’d hoped.

So what’s my plan?

My plan is that I’m going to manually uninstall my game (I’ve never done that before, so I’d like to know how to do that, as dumb a question as that might be), then reinstall it again and keep doing that whenever TS3 decides to take a steaming dump all over my save files. I will also make frequent backups and save every 24 Sim-hours so the game won’t fuck anything up too bad again.

Should I have to be putting up with this shit and going through all this work to play the game?

No, of course not. It’s fucking ridiculous. I could bitch to EA about it, but when has EA ever been helpful to anyone exsperiencing game problems? Um… never. They’ll blame it on my mods, even though I’ve had no mods on my game since reinstalling. The fact that other people are having this same disastrous problem means that this isn’t us being dumbasses with our game; it’s EA being dumbasses when making the game. Will they ever admit that? Of course not. This is EA we’re dealing with, after all.

So that’s my shit. As you can tell from all the cussing, I’m pretty fucking angry. I did warn you I have a foul mouth in real life.

It’s just so annoying! I hate the vanilla EA story progression. People play musical houses so much, it’s dizzying; they move into huge mansions even when they’re poor and it just swallows up people for no reason even though they’re still working in town and still have friends in town. Not to mention the families it will just decide to kick out of town completely, regardless of whether you were planning on proposing to someone in that household or not. The worst part about it is I’m not being notified of any of it! I’m not being told who’s getting married, who’s having babies, who broke up, who’s getting jobs/promotions/demotions/fired, who’s fighting with who, who got eaten by a shark and died or slipped on an ice cream cone and died. It fucking pisses me off. I know nothing anymore! I’m terrified to move anyone out now, for fear of what horrors the EA story progression may wreak upon them.

In my Crazy Challenge, I moved Mary Sue out of the house and stuck her with some old ladies, figuring she’d chill out there for a while, then inherit the house when they died. If she happened to get married and move somewhere else before then, perhaps have a few kids, oh well. That’s just as good, too. That’s what Indie Stone would have done. What EA Story Progression did was swallow her up! Seriously! She still has a job in town and she’s still in her siblings’ relationship panels and she can still visit them and go places with them, but she isn’t actually living anywhere in the town. It’s like the game turned her into a Townie from TS1 and TS2! What the fuck? I can understand that happening if I moved her out using the “kick out” option, but I didn’t! I specifically plopped her into a house with three old ladies! The three old ladies are still in the house, but Mary Sue isn’t!

Ugh! Playing The Sims 3 is just not fun anymore without Indie Stone keeping everything nice and orderly in my town for me. It’s just too aggravating not knowing anything that’s going on and having no control over it. I’m a control freak in my game. I have to be in charge of EVERYTHING, otherwise, I have conniption fits.

I would just throw TS3 in the bin until someone decides to take over Lemmy’s Indie Stone Mod, however long that may take (Lemmy said it doesn’t look promising that the mod will be updated anytime within the next year… at least, that’s what I heard he said), but Rad pointed me to the most exciting and hopeful news I’ve heard for TS3 yet.

Apparently, someone called twallan is remaking Lemmy’s Indie Stone mod! It’s going to do everything Indie Stone does and more, except… wait for it… get ready… IT’S NOT GOING TO BE A CORE MOD! WOO HOO!!! Those of you who are afraid of core mods, but desperately want something better than EA’s shitty Story Progression may have found your answer at last.

There’s a whole thread for it in Crazy Town forums. Right now, the guy’s just gathering ideas and suggestions; trying to gauge what we liked about Lemmy’s Indie Stone and want to keep and what features we’d like to see added to a future version. So far it’s looking good. He says that most of what people really want to see in the new Story Progression mod is doable without core modding. I don’t know anything about modding, myself, so I’m trusting that he knows what he’s talking about.

I’m so excited for this! It might just keep me hanging onto TS3 long enough to get this mod and fix everything that’s driving me crazy.

Yup! Sims sunk into their beds! Doesn’t Juliana look so comfortable? Yeah… I don’t think so, either. Sims started disappearing, too. I guess it wasn’t the Increase Household Limit option that screwed up Tiari’s game after all, since I haven’t had AwesomeMod for a very long time and never had that option enabled when I did have it.

I refused to restart in a new neighbourhood because I didn’t want to lose Josiah, Christopher, Jimmie, Ellie, Thomas, Vivian, Jasper, Frank and Mandy. I just ended up saving all my screenshots and my save files and then uninstalling the game. When I reinstalled it, not everything got erased, though, but I’m hoping that’s okay and it’ll still work.

I also was so sick of having such disorganized CC. I couldn’t find anything I wanted and didn’t know what anything looked like or where I got it, so I just deleted everything and decided to reinstall it all from scratch. I was suddenly very glad that I made that Resources page on my blog so I could remember where I got everything, haha. I won’t be playing TS3 for a while just so I can get all my old CC back. I miss it and can’t play without it, especially the hairstyles. It’s going to take a long time, though, because I’m organizing it all like Tiari did. Read her blog for more details on that.

Anyway, I only played a few minutes of the Charms after reinstalling it so I can’t say for sure whether it worked or not, but I really hope it did.

A little off-topic, but I want to thank everyone who commented with kind words of comfort on my last post. I’m still not doing very well, but it’s nice to know that there are people who give a damn about my feelings, even if I’ve never met them before.

SPOILER ALERTS

Okay, the following contains spoilers about the Charms, but I need some help, so if you don’t mind reading some spoilers for the sake of helping me out, read on.

1. Every once in a while, I’ll scan over all the relatives’ houses in the neighbourhood to see if anything had changed. I scanned over Josiah’s house to see that it was empty. I assumed he must have died, so I had Thaddeus go over to the cemetery to collect his gravestone, but it wasn’t there. I searched every other house to see if he’d moved, but nope. I have Indie Stone, with emigration turned on, but I also have emigration alerts turned on, too, and I never received a popup saying he’d moved out of town. Is there some sort of limit as to how many gravestones the catacombs can hold? It does have quite a few after four generations of playing.
2. I moved out Parker, Katie, Marina and Melinda to make it easier for my computer to run the game. The huge lot with all that stuff on it plus a huge family just kills it and it lags so badly, it takes hours to get through a couple days. Thoroughly not fun. After I moved him out (using the Kick Out option), I scanned all the houses in the neighbourhood to see where he had moved to so I could take a screenshot for the Extras section of my next chapter, but they weren’t anywhere to be found. Why? Does it take a while for the game to settle them somewhere and have them show up in Edit Town? There were a few empty houses left in the neighbourhood so I don’t think it would have kicked them out of town completely, would it?