Recall the search parties!

Yeah I know, I’ve been “missing in action” for quite a while. It’s something of a combination of that pesky real life and my computer annoying the <insert expletive here> out of me.

My partner and I are moving to Canberra in early February (yes I know, that’s very soon!) so an equal amount of time is currently being spent planning said move and me panicking about “all the stuff we have to do”, which is usually followed by me hiding in my study planning various sim neighbourhoods that I won’t have time or the computer power to get off the ground for some time. I’m discovering that I’m not very good at this whole moving business. Ben’s being incredibly calm about it all and is convinced that most things can wait until the last week. At this point I wouldn’t be at all surprised to hear him drawl “she’ll be right, mate” in typical Australian male fashion, which is weird when I’ve never considered him to be a typical Australian male before. I’m sure it would make me feel better, although I doubt it would actually help, if he would freak out a little with me as well.

I’m also discovering that I’m more possessive about “my stuff” than I expected I would be. We have to sell our unit and the thought of people wandering around looking at things and opening cupboards is stressing me out a little too. Not to mention that the removalists also help you pack. It’s not like I have anything that’s really private, it’s just that “it’s my stuff, dammit!”. I don’t go out to work so unless I’ve been ill the place is generally clean, neat and tidy, so it’s not stressing about having to keep the place immaculate while prospective buyers are visiting. It’s just that it’s my stuff and I don’t want people looking at it. How disturbingly childish is that? We have a psychologist friend who could probably point out that he’s known that about me for ages, but he’s too polite to mention it. At least he better be! ;)

So yes, moving/stressing stuff is taking up some time right now. Part of November was spent working on my NaNoWriMo story which didn’t go as well as I’d hoped and it wasn’t until the end of November that I figured out why. I had practically the entire story mapped out in my head and on paper, I could see my characters, hear their voices, knew their personalitie; yet actually writing it felt like I was attempting to pull particularly stubborn teeth. Finally I realised that the novel really needed to be written in first person from the point of view of one of my characters and not in the third person, objective style that I was trying to write it in. It’s a pity I didn’t have that lightbulb moment earlier, but at least I sorted it out eventually. For at least the first month in Canberra we’ll be staying with my parents who have a pretty pathetic internet connection and don’t have any games installed on their computer (unless you count Solitaire and Minesweeper!), so I expect I’ll have plenty of time to start over on my novel.

December flew by with one thing or another. Even though my family are nearly all in Sydney or Canberra and Ben’s in Canada, plus a lot of friends overseas as well, we ended up having more social engagements than we’re used to. We spent a few days down the coast just before Christmas as well which was lovely and relaxing. We took the opportunity to visit Seaworld for what might be the last time in many years. Neither of us had been there since we were children and it was one of those places that you keep saying to each other, “We really should go visit <insert place here> one day”. Ben’s hobby is photography so he got some great photos of the animals and luckily I managed to avoid him taking any of me so it was pretty successful really :)

My poor Lonely River neighbourhood has been put on hold for a few months. Our computers have both reached their limits and as my birthday is in early April and Ben’s is in February, instead of birthday presents to each other we’ll just combine our birthdays in March and buy ourselves new computers. I highly doubt my computer would be able to cope with yet another Sims 2 expansion and all that custom content that I love is already slowing my computer down to an unplayable level. My poor legacy family had good and bad news. The good news was they got their house rebuilt and it’s absolutely beautiful and perfect for them. The bad news is that because of this amazing new house I can’t play them until they’re living on a new computer.

To continue feeding this weird Sims addiction I’ve started up some clean neighborhoods and fooled around with creating a new Legacy which has kept me mildly interested until my founder had too many kids and I made the mistake of sending them all to university. I was tempted to kill some of the non-heirs off just so I wouldn’t have to play them for an excruciating amount of time. And of course I’m falling into the same trap as before by wanting to give my legacy family all sorts of cool, custom content. Finally, I figured a nice, short Asylum Challenge would keep me amused in my spare time without too much of a time investment and without any desires on my part to throw custom content into my game. Thankfully, I was right and I’m writing up captions for all the screenshots I took. I’ll post it after I’ve uploaded the last couple of chapters for my Lonely River Legacy.

So, boxes from the removalists are arriving on Monday (tomorrow eep!) which means that all this moving business really begins in earnest now and I’ll probably have to kiss my poor sims goodbye until we meet again with a better computer. Of course, when I have a new computer the poor things may still get neglected thanks to Vanguard being released. Ben’s been playing in the open beta (despite the chuggy computer) and it looks amazing even with low graphic settings. An immersive mmo with incredible roleplay potential has been very much overdue and I’m looking forward to it immensely. At the same time I’m looking forward to the next Sims 2 expansion as well. There’s also a few other games that I’ll be able to play on the new computer that should prove to be just as addictive as Sims 2 and Vanguard. I may have to clone myself to find the time to play them all!

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