The Sims 2 Presents: Foster's Valley!

[Lynnie]

Sounds like it's maybe Memorial Day or Labor Day, as both are in "summer" land on Monday and there's no school, no mail, and no (regular) paper delivery. Wow, so we lost everything that happened before, and are now starting from the beginning? Sorry Cass. Hope things go smoothly from now on.

Haha, I love Claire checking her reflection out in the mirror. And what did IL end up painting?

Lynnie: "Ugh! Jimmy, put your pants on! What's wrong with you!?!?"

LOL!

[Cassini90125]

Originally Posted by Lynnie

Sounds like it's maybe Memorial Day or Labor Day, as both are in "summer" land on Monday and there's no school, no mail, and no (regular) paper delivery. Wow, so we lost everything that happened before, and are now starting from the beginning? Sorry Cass. Hope things go smoothly from now on.

Haha, I love Claire checking her reflection out in the mirror. And what did IL end up painting?

LOL!

Sims don't actually have any holidays. There are holiday decorations available but that's it. You can dress them up in holiday outfits and pose them with the decorations for photographs but it's for show only.

No losses this time, by the way; all memories and skills are intact. Only the calendar and the clock got changed. The house is slightly out of synch timewise with the rest of the neighborhood but that's it; it doesn't affect the game in any way.

Imaginary Light painted the same painting that Sparky did several pages back, which is the game's default painting at that skill level. The Sims 3 game will supposedly take personality into account for such creative endeavors and have more variety. We'll see eventually. As for Jimmy Montero... you don't want to know.

As a side note, the newest expansion pack, called Free Time, has glitches, nearly as many as Bon Voyage did. No surprise there. What makes this situation a bit different is that the patch that EA released for the game was even worse; so bad in fact that that they pulled it from the site without explanation. Incompetence in action, sinking from sad to pathetic.

[Fomalhaut]

Ow.

The mirror scene was cute; I've nevers seen my Sims do it, but I can imagine Gabe doing it... I need a doctor. Now. I'm having hallucinations!!!

Dress me as you wish I looked when we meet (as I hope one day we will), and it'll be okay. But nothing too revealing, right? (I never wear that kind of stuff anyway...)

[xxxClaire]

I can juggle! And I love the mirror thing.

[Cassini90125]

Originally Posted by antgirl1

*crosses fingers* Pleae be Wilt, please be Wilt...

Can't be. Sorry, but for some reason the game designers made it so only adults and occasionally elders get stuck on Welcome Wagon duty, and the game thinks Wilt is a teen, although we know he's not and I play him as an adult within the game's limits. Doesn't make much sense, really; if a house is full of teens I'd think including a teen on the Welcome Wagon would be a good idea. I have seen teens on the WW on three occasions, but all were probably the result of glitches.

Originally Posted by Fomalhaut

Dress me as you wish I looked when we meet (as I hope one day we will), and it'll be okay. But nothing too revealing, right? (I never wear that kind of stuff anyway...)

The oufit is in your PM box but you already know that. I hope we meet one day, too.

Originally Posted by xxxClaire

I can juggle! And I love the mirror thing.

Lameoid that I am, I trimmed the pic, shrank it, and turned it into an avatar.

The Welcome Wagon showed up promptly at 12:15 PM, and as noted above there was no Wilt:



From the left: Madame Foster, Samira Marville (Stevie's mom), and Luanne McBride. No Amanda Blue for a change, either. Kind of disappointing for me, as I like Amanda. I like her a lot. She's even got her own storyline now, although it doesn't involve Foster's so you're not likely to see any of it. On the other hand it's just as well that she's not here, because whenever she turns up on a lot she's such an enormous distraction that I sometimes forget to take pics of anyone else. (Mind wanders...) Yeah. Jekylljuice went out to greet everyone and caught Luanne in the act of being rude:



"Don't bother me, old woman," was her response to Madame Foster's greeting as she headed for the swings. Surprised, Madame Foster turned to Jekylljuice for an explanation:



"What the heck was that about??" she asked. "Just ignore her," Jekylljuice replied. "She's got a temper and an attitude but she's okay if you stay out of her way. She's PO'd because she doesn't want to be here."
"She could've stayed home," said Madame Foster, annoyed.
"Not if the Bandrowskys ordered her here to keep an eye on us. Don't ask, I'm not supposed to talk about it. C'mon, let's go get some lunch. Lynnie's making chili!" With that she headed inside with Madam Foster close behind. Lynnie was indeed making chili:



And quite a lot of it, too. Feeding ten people requires a lot of food. Don't ask me how she's managing to balance that bowl with just one hand; if I tried that I'd drop it long before I got anywhere near the dinner table. Madame Foster seated herself as some of the other residents hurried to join her. xxxClaire, however, needed some prodding:



Jekylljuice: "Um, Claire, it's lunchti-"
xxxClaire: "Not until I get to level six!!!"
I have no idea what "level six" is, or what game she's playing; it involves skiing but that's all I know. xxxClaire did indeed make it to level six a few minutes later and joined the gang for lunch, where Linestra was speaking enthusiastically about her love of the violin:



If I ever install Free Time she'll have an opportunity to actually play a violin, but for now the icon represents an interest in music in general, not a specific instrument. Note how the food is flying at Madame Foster's end of the table. Hungry, Madame? Not everyone was at the meal; Imaginary Light was still working on her painting, determined to finish it, while x_dummkoff_x and Samira Marville, well,:



Free Time also puts an end to adult Sims fascination with the swings, makes children find ways to amuse themselves other than by cleaning the toilet, and makes a few other "under the hood" alterations to the game to encourage more age-appropriate behaviour. I'm not installing it until Maxis uploads a patch that works and Eric updates the InSIMenator, period. xdx and Samira did eventually get around to eating; it was starting to get late at that point so Lynnie got dinner preparation underway:



Lynnie cooks, Linestra cleans, and the rest pitch in to help out here and there. It's a little chaotic but it works well enough for everyone. In the brief period between meals various minor things went on; the TV got watched, videogames were played, and people generally found ways to entertain themselves and each other. And while Luanne McBride was busy watching the TV an important conversation took place outside:



"Hey, Madame Foster, got a sec? Listen, I really want to thank you for dropping by. Really made my girls day to meet you," Sparky said.
"Oh, no trouble at all, dearie," Madame replied with a smile. "You have a fine group here, very fine indeed."
"More on the way, too. Can I ask a huge favor of you?"
"Of course."
"Well, here's the thing. My girls don't know that your show has been cancelled but I'm sure they'll find out tommorrow. They're going to be upset. It would make them feel a whole lot better if you could swing by with everyone from the House later in the week, I know they'd love to meet everybody. It'd be a dream come true for all of them."
"Oh, dear," was Madame Foster's unexpected response. "I'm not sure that's a good idea."
"Huh?" This was clearly not the response Sparky had been expecting. "May I ask why not?"
Madame Foster sighed. "It's complicated," she said. "It has to do with the show."
"Hey, if you're worried about us giving away details of the remaining episodes I can assure you that anything you or the rest of the House tells us will be kept strictly confidential."
"It's not that. It's just... they don't know."
"About the cancellation? How come? Wouldn't you all be the first to hear about it?"
"No, Ms. Read. What I mean is, they don't know about the show at all."

I didn't see that coming...

To be continued...

[Lynnie]

Wow... So no one at the Foster house knows they've been taped living their every day lives? No one at the Cassiman house, either? Isn't that against the law?

Cool, we've all met Madame F now. Yay! And I hope she still manages to get everyone at her place to come over to the NF place. Heh heh, and she liked the chili I see.

Nah, I say you're never too old to swing on swings. I've always loved them. I still love them! Only thing is, I tend to get motion sickness much faster now than I did when I was a girl. I can literally start getting nauseous. It makes me kind of sad because I just LOVE swings!

[jekylljuice]

Wow, is this a Truman Show-esque conspiracy in the making?

Anyhow, yippie! I got to meet Madame Foster. That's certainly put me in a good mood for today.

Also, Sparky regards us as her "girls"? Aww, how very touching.

[Fomalhaut]

This was sweet. Poor Sparky... Come on, Madame Foster, just a visit!

Love this. Can't wait for more!!!

[xxxClaire]

Originally Posted by Cassini90125

Jekylljuice: "Um, Claire, it's lunchti-"
xxxClaire: "Not until I get to level six!!!"

Wow. That's so identical to my reality...

[antgirl1]

Originally Posted by Cassini90125

"No, Ms. Read. What I mean is, they don't know about the show at all."

Bloo: We've been on TV?? AWESOME!!