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I'm not sure how back I am yet this time. This past week has been hectic, filled with cousin's weddings, cousins picnics, family dinners and school assignments, and the next two weeks aren't looking too hot, either. And with the Sims 2 still not able to run, and the Sims 3 seemingly taking over the community (even though we swore it wouldn't), I am sort of losing interest in it, anyways. I'd love to still be around, but with real life looking the way it is right now, I don't think I'll have much time for my hobby. You may still see me around, and I'll try to check in about once a week for some SAVIOR stuff (which I know has been Trust for like, three weeks now. I'm working on it. To be fair, I haven't even been near a computer for a week.) I have also just noticed that the new RR is up and running - good to see June writing!
Now I just have to find the time to read/comment on all the updates that have been put out since I dropped off the face of planet
~Jane~
- Location:Blue Mountains
- Mood:
blah
I also dissappeared for a while, as many of you may have noticed. Our internet ran out. It was a combination of Youtube videos (mainly Britain's got talent) and iTunes shopping (mom got gift cards for her b-day), legacy reading, downloading firefox, and my sister's new found addiction to flash games = more than 20 GB a month. Allow me to take this time to winge about the internet packages (or lack therof) that are avaliable and affordable in this country - specifically in the Mountains. In North America we paid $19.99 per month for hi-speed - and our limit was so high we never once reached it. Here we're paying triple that and we have a limit. When that limit runs out, our internet slows to 64 kbps. Argh!
But with the shiny that is brand new and 4 GB RAM, internet browsing isn<t so painfully slow as it has been for the past while. But, my parents intend to be more controlling when it comes to the time I spend on the computer. The new shiny is in my room for now, since I'm the only one with a decent desk, but I'm not sure how long that will last.
As for my writing projects I think I am finally happy with where I'm going with Wyn. As for the next chapter of ADFL - Goodness knows when that will be ready! And the school picked next week for half-yearly exams, so all the time I could be spending with the shiny (okay, it needs another name) is being sucked into studying. Grr.
Personal announcement: I probably won't be moving back to Canada within the next 5 or 6 years. Sad, I know. But my parents have decided to stay for another 2 years to get my Mom her citizenship, etc, and in 2 years I shall be off to Uni, which is much cheaper here than in North America. Not that I have any idea what I want to do.
I can tell you one thing: I know I want to finish High School. This move has really thrown my system out of whack so much, it's annoying me to no end. My brother, sister and mother are returning to Canada on June 24th. I get to stay until August so that I don't miss out on as much schoolwork, and dad is staying for work. I'm not sure how I feel about this. He is definately the more agreeable of my parents, but he's also the stricter one - especially when it comes to schoolwork. But since he works long and wierd hours, and there is a 2-week school holiday in the middle of July, it does mean I'll hopefully have more spare time - especially without siblings with whom I need to share the computer.
So yeah - I'm off to study more trigonometry (fun!) and try to be not interested in the new laptop. My parents want the living room tidy, too. And I really want to name it (the computer) now...
So has anything changed in the community that is the sims 2? Is the exchange back up? Have people gotten over their not-posting in simspiration? How is Sim Scenes coming along? Has anyone succombed to the lure of TS3 yet? How about SAVIOR? Anything happening over there? I feel oh-so-very out of the loop again...
~Jane~
- Location:home
- Music:One Life to Love
Well, I have an English exam tomorrow. Need I say more? If I can find anything to keep me from studying, by golly I'll do it.
( So last night it was this. )
I guess I go back to English stuff now...
~Jane~
- Location:home
- Mood:
frazzled - Music:bevAcqua - the cry
Just thought I'd let you all know that I have Internet again, (Yes, Dad actually went out and got wireless for me!) So I'll be around more. In time for quite a few updates, I see. I know what I'll be doing this evening.
There's also a *gasp* secret about me. It's should have made me mad, but when I saw it at my Aunt's, I posted a quick comment then flounced off to church. I don't think I would have even remembered it much at all. I tell you, SimSecret is one community that really doesn't mean anything to me. I read the secrets when I'm feeling particularily stupid and I need a reminder that there are even stupider (is that a word? it is now.) people out there. No offense to secret makers.
I did mention leaving the Comm, but I'm far too addicted to it right now, so I don't think I'll be leaving forever any time soon. I just need to re-establish my priorities, (and stay out of the off-topic section). Y'know, church and schoolwork comes before simming and all that.
And since the whole family is excited to use the internet, my sister is kicking me off so she can use it. We're expecting the new laptop by the end of the week.
~Jane~
- Location:desky
- Mood:
excited
I can't really complain. We were using someone's open connection, so I guess they got smart or something and decided to password protect it. I've been bugging my dad about getting our own internet for the two months we've lived there, but since he could check his e-mail without a hassle until now, he hasn't bothered.
Who knows, maybe this is just what I need to get my updates written - nobody else's legacies/picspam/entries to distract me. :P I will miss it all, though. Hope to be back online with y'all soon!
Anywhoo, hopefully you'll hear from me again, sooner rather than later...
~Jane~
- Location:Auntie's House
- Mood: blah
I should really go to bed if I want to be sane in the morning, but I'm not, so there.
You see, my parents decided it would be fun to go to the Sunrise service at the Sydney Opera House this morning. Sunrise=6am. We live in the Blue Mountains, meaning the train ride into the City is about an hour and a half, when you get the all-stations train (like we did.) In short, I was up at 3 am this morning. I only did church twice as opposed to three times on Good Friday. 6 am at the Opera House; and again at 9:30 at Wesley Mission, downtown Sydney. Then another train ride back to Penrith, my Aunt's suburb, where we spent the rest of the afternoon with Easter dinner, egg dying, hot tubbing and watching that Ducks hockey movie that came out like 20 years ago. Disney or something - it was a very strange movie to be watching on Easter Sunday.
Then we finally came home and everyone was meant to collapse in bed, but I had just finished the final official Chapter of the Fitzhugh Legacy, so I really wanted to read the Epilogue, and then the Christmas Carol, and then I caved and read the first chapter of the Apocalypse. I'm sorta feeling guilty about it - Eddie, Lala, and Donita have updated in the past few days, and I've been too busy reading this one to read and comment on theirs properly. I will get to it, I will. But for now, I am also feeling very accomplished.
Some of you may have heard about my computer woes. The gist of it is the graphics card is being really stupid. I could play the sims if it was only for myself, but the graphics card seems to be getting worse, even if I pull all my CC, and cut down to only one neighbourhood in the game at a time. So everyone go and set all your graphic setting to the lowest level - my game is reverting to that, even when it's set to the highest. I've given up on shooting scenes of any sort. The game has also reverted to crashing whenever I try to invite sims to a lot. As I said, I pulled all my CC and surplus neighbourhood files, and nothing is working.
There is hope, though. My dad double-checked some of the documents he received from the government. My brother, my sister and I each qualify for a $750 tax refund at the end of the financial year for technology purchases (part of Kevin Rudd's plan to save Australia from the recession or something). So I went and found an affordable computer on the dell website that would run the Sims 2 smoothly (I hope). I bargained with my parents, cleaned my room, applied for the job at McDonalds that I was meant to apply for weeks and weeks ago (got a reply asking for an interview not 24 hours later - let's face it - one place that I will always be able to get a job at is McDonalds,) and I *think* come my dad's next paycheque I will able to order the computer.
So I've been writing. Not for the Desjardines, though I know I need to work on that. But for Wyn. I love Wyn. I played her for a full ten minutes before my game crashed and I love Wyn. I'm really hoping I'll be allowed more than one album on the exchange or something, because I think I've gone too far above and beyond what the others wanted for spares. I probably also nearly drove Lark insane with questions and AIM chats. But I'm really quite proud of how its turning out. (for those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, look for the Boolpropian Round Robin Legacy in "Legacy Stories" over at boolprop.)
So that's me right now. And score, this is actually partially Sims related! So what has everyone else been up to?
~Jane~
- Mood:
tired
Turns out that it only gathered words from my last entry,,,so this is a "Music to My Ears" wordle...
Um, yeah...
I'll try again when I actually have a Sims 2 related post...
~Jane~
- Location:Canberra
- Mood: crazy
About a year ago, I wrote this story for my English class. At the time, it was my best work (I'm especially proud of my last legacy chapter now, though). I posted it on boolprop, and got a couple of comments on it.
But today I got some feedback from my current English teacher, and I decided I wanted to know what anyone else thought. Bumping the post on boolprop would be necromancy, so I decided to post it here. I'd love to hear whatever anyone has to say about it!
It's a complete, standalone 'short' story. So even if you haven't read my legacy, you will understand it.
( It's Music to my Ears )
Thank you to anyone who took the time to read that!
~Jane~
- Location:The Mountains
- Mood: chipper
- Music:The Dance of the Cucumber -- Don't look at me like that!
Sorry I haven't been around much. The update is slow coming, because I was stupid. I went and played the main house, got Emily pregnant, and then went to shoot the scene that *should* immediately follow the phonecall when we find out that Jan's missing. But it didn't in gameplay, and it really doesn't in the storyline. And I can't re-shoot the scene because the twins are now toddlers. So I retreated into writer's block mode - sorta.
- I've found a really fun community on livejournal, sim_spiration , so I've sort of been writing stuff on there.
- I've been slogging my way through Marina's Fitzhugh legacy very slowly, as well as add a whole bunch of legacies to my 'to-read list' (Candi's back with an Apocalypse!).
- And then there's School which continues to get in my way - no matter what continent I'm on.
- And, to top things off, I very stupidly told the maintenance folk for the Boolpropian Round Robin Legacy (boolpropproject) that I'd do a spare story for Wyn (If I can get her to download properly. Stupid lack of EPs.). Thus putting the Desjardines on a brief hiatius. I hope my readers can forgive me!
Some brighter news (for me, anyways). I'm probably going to get a new laptop within the next three months. There's something-or-other happening in Australia that means I'd get a full tax-refund (or something like that - correct me if I'm wrong, Jo) if I purchase a new computer while I'm here. We're supposed to be going back to Canada in June (provided that my Aunt doesn't die), so we would have to get the computer before then. But I'm still excited at the prospect of downloads and vacations and freetime and, and...
So yeah, that's why I haven't been around much. Oh, and thanks, Kiara, for posting to Savior. With all this stuff I'm doing, I'd been worried that it would get forgotten - I'm glad it hasn't.
~Jane~
- Location:my desk
- Mood:
busy - Music:crickets chirping
Yeah, real powerful!
- Mood:
confused - Music:Zero - Hawk Nelson
Since no one told me of they had any issues with the name, I went ahead and made the community "SAVIOR" (yes, American spelling) Simmers and Authors Victorious In Our Redeemer! Thanks, Leon!
The community can be found here.
~Jane~
- Mood:
hopeful - Music:Heart Song - INY.
Okay, so I got a few replies from people over at boolprop about starting a group for Christian simmers. Here's a post where we can have a sort of a group discussion about our plans:
- Mood:
contemplative - Music:Zero - Hawk Nelson
After Chapter 6 was such an overlode of information all at once - I decided it was about time I posted one of those infamous 'Behind the Scenes' journal entries.
I feel bad saying this, but this chapter was one of the easiest for me to write. It helped that I was in a writing mood, and generally feeling to - antsy? - to load up the game. Writing in WordPerfect (which I am still using, even after chapter 4) can be left alone, dropped, picked up, and dropped again throughout the day. Plus, it's less risky when the parents are home. They peek into my room and see that I'm busy typing away at something rather than wasting my time on a stupid game that will turn my brain to mush - or something like that.
Most of the chapters I've started writing 3 different times, not being sure how to start, or coming up with something entirely different. This one was no different. In my original outline, Jan would have delivered a child (I wasn't counting on twins) and run off, much like she did in this chapter - except it would have happened at the end of Chapter 5. However, when I had written Chapter 5 to a certain point, I decided that I would go over the slide count if I tried to cram everything in. I still wanted to torture you with that cliffhanger at the end of a chapter. When Jan threw me twins, and once the initial panic wore off, I started looking for ways I could fill in some of the time.
Here is where I started having troubles. Not in the writing itself, but afterwards.
June told me about Lucy Peppers loosing a chapter due to a reference to terrorism. She told me that I would be lucky not to get reported to Maxis about unsuitable content. I panicked, but didn't quite know what to do.
Here is where "The Clique" came in.
I posted about my worries in the "What's happening in your legacy right now?" thread. I got a simple reply from Professor Butters about possibly changing it so that the unsuitable content wasn't there. No, that's the meat of the plot. I can't really do that without re-writing the whole thing.
So she read it, and sent me a PM with suggestions. Orikes did the same thing. I was wowed. I made the changes they suggested. No bedroom was implied, so those of you who read it later might not have understood entirely what happened. And I took out the references in the conversation with Komei at the end, too. It probably doesn't flow as well as it had, but I'd rather keep it on the exchange with slightly lesser-quality writing than loose it altogether.
For me, this was proof that there are no cliques on boolprop. There are groups of friends who know each other and whatnot, and who read each others legacies quite a bit. But they are all willing to help you out, and answer any questions you may have, regardless of how good your story is, or how long it's been around. I knew this already, but now I have a testimony of my own to prove it to be true.
That's all for now. After I reply to the remainder of the comments on boolprop, I get to play Joseph's house. With Jan officially out of the picture for a while, I don't know if Joseph or I will make it out alive...
Happy Simming! (Yeah, right!)
~Jane~
- Location:My Room
- Mood: busy
- Music:33 Miles - One Life To Love
New Chapter is up! Because I caved and used an unsecure connection.
Hurry up, parents! I need internet!
~Jane~
- Location:My Bedroom
- Mood:
accomplished - Music:Praise You in this Storm- Casting Crowns
First thing's first. I am doing a very bad thing right now. I am stealing someone else's internet. There's an open connection in this complex, so-o I'm taking advatage of it.
Don't get me wrong, I know how unstable they are. We're not doing anything like online banking or stuff like that. We're basically just using boolprop, livejournal and the exchange.
I won't upload anything on this connection. Even though I will likely have my chapter written and ready to go, I probably won't upload it until I have secure internet (I might take it to my Uncle's place and hijack his internet this weekend). Which won't be until Rose gets a hobby other than Facebook. I think they're fine with me & my hobby (legacies) for now, since I have a job and I've been going to Youth with my cousin lately.
What a change, from our little group of thirty or so who met once every three months for a weekend, with a simple sound system set up in a church basement to this big, 1000 people auditorium of a church! But I've joined a small group, where I am the youngest at 16. The oldest is 28 (I think) but most of them are late teens/early twenties. Everyone says I seem older than 16, though. Not sure if that's a good thing or not.
Anyways - this was meant to be a quick legacy-related post...
I recently read the "My Favourite Things" legacy by Jules/ihearthenrygale127. And it really got me excited about my own plot, in a way that will be clear shortly. Her girl, Summer, is running around my neighbourhood as we speak, and she's looking for someone very specific.
If you're reading this, Jules, I got a little carried away with having Summer in Desjardine's Springs. Sorry if you don't like what I did! Oh, and please get that next chapter out soon! I need to know what happens next!
Everyone else, if I can keep my siblings away from the computer long enough for me to get some stuff done, and convince my parents to let me spend time on the computer, update soon-ish!
~Jane~
- Location:My bedroom
- Mood: tired
- Music:Rebecca St-James - God of Wonders
So-o we've been in Australia for 2 and a half months. A month and a half ago we started looking for rental houses, and we finally got approved for one. Yay?
( A House and Spiritual Stuff )
( Australia's Worst Ever Natural Disaster )
Lots to think about, anyways. Oh, and I'm working on the next legacy chapter slowly but steadily. Are you excited? Good, 'cause it'll be awhile.
~Jane~
- Location:Werrington County
- Mood:
worried - Music:Stephen Curtis Chapman - You Make All Things New
Behold:
Huzzah!
I think the next chapter will be up soon-ish. It will likely be short, because, well, it just will be.
Enjoy!
~Jane~
- Location:Werrington County
- Mood: giddy
- Music:Brian Littrell - Grace of My Life
Then I went through my downloads folder that was now on my desktop and found all the things that I was actually using. Not the stuff that I was saving for a future kid, but the stuff currently being sported by gen 2. I ended up with 4 hairstyles and 5 outfits. That's it. I did put my default replacements back, too, because I like 'em. It even solved the constant crashing, which made me go Yay! I did, however, loose my ceilings. So I had to go in and delete a bunch of house plants. I'd love another EP so badly, but I'm sure this poor old computer would die if I tried to install anything other than more RAM. Hopefully I can buy a new one in a year or so. Maybe in time to join the Round Robin Legacy to the fullest!
( And now, what I know you've been waiting for... )
I'm not sure if I'm going to make the oldest heir or not. I know it either has to be firstborn male or firstborn female, because of the names. For example, in Gen 2, in our documents, we only have Pierre-Louis Desjardins Charbonnier married Marguerite Gratton. Each were my ancestors. So I could have chosen between Pierre-Louis and Marguerite. Joseph was eliminated from day one, because I simply don't have an ancestor named Joseph in that generation.
I had said that I would just pick the oldest, but for now, I'm really not so sure. I guess I'll wait until Generation 3 grows a little more. Anyone have a say?
~Jane~
- Location:Werrington County
- Mood:
indifferent - Music:Chris Tomlin - How Can I Keep From Singing
But anyways, here it is.
Oh, and look at my new avatar! I was bored with writing the other day, so I made one of each of the Gen 2 kids.
( Behold the shiny... )
Anyways, if I don't go to bed quickly, my sister will not like me much. Oh, and happy Australia Day, Jo and Decite! (and anyone else who wants to be wished a happy Australia Day, or who I forgot lives in Australia!)
~Jane~
- Location:Canberra
- Mood:
creative - Music:Draw me Close - Michael W. Smith
Well, everyone is doing it, so I'm going to join in.
A) People who have been tagged must write their answers on their blog and replace any question they don't like with a new, original question.
B) Tag eight people. Don't refuse to do that. Don't tag who tagged you.
( Meme )
I'm going to tag mysterymusic7, musicdreamer7, junebug_13, and joandsarah. I know that's not eight people, but since no one is being really picky about anything - well I'm not going to be picky, either.
- Location:Werrington County
- Mood:
bouncy - Music:Nevertheless - Sleeping in
