Saturday 10 July 2010

My hero

Round 27: Winter 2026
last update/next update

Claudia Kirby is 25 and Patience Draper and Josie Benton are both 24.
(Rose is 31, Jacob and Rob are both 25 and Troy is 23)

Narrated by Patience Draper

Earlier this month, I went back to Suffolk to attend Rob's graduation from law school. Undergraduates have their ceremonies in the autumn or spring but post-grads have theirs in summer or winter.

The ceremony started with a speech by the minister of education and got more boring after that.

I remember being pretty bored at my own grad, just watching hundreds and hundreds of people shake hands.

I guess law school graduation is just as dull.

Rob told me I didn't have to come but I wanted to be there for him. The complete dullness of the ceremony aside, he graduated summa cum laude so I wanted to make a big deal out of it!

I'm so proud of him. He worked his ass off delivering pizzas to pay his way through. If he never sees another pizza box again, it'll be too soon.

Luckily, he was hired straight out of law school, so he's already working at a firm in Exeter.


We wanted to go out to celebrate his graduate but I was completely broke and Rob's still in debt from his student loans. So we just stayed in and he made us dinner at his apartment. When we're both in a better place financially, we can go out for real.

Rob feels really bad about it but it's not going to be forever. Law school was expensive but ultimately, it's going to let him earn much more money than he could without it.

I've brought up the topic of moving in together, mostly as a financial decision but Rob is against it, for the mean time. He doesn't want me to take on his debt.

It's probably not a good idea right now. There's no way Claudia or Josie would go for Rob moving in with us and there's only just enough room for Rob in his apartment, without adding me. It's seriously tiny.

Speaking of Josie, she's almost finished her third year of med school and is really busy. She's still surgically attached to the computer most of the time.

Next year, she'll be an intern and she'll finally get to quit her job at the lab. She's really come to hate that place.

When she first started, she didn't really complain about it much, probably because it was still new. Now she says the entire place is filled with idiots.

I'm hoping we'll be able to hang out a bit more when she quits the lab. It seems like we only ever hang out early in the morning before I leave for work these days. If I didn't live with her, I'd probably never get to see her!

She's home weird hours. Sometimes she works nights, sometimes days. Sometimes she's not working and she doesn't have classes either, so she's home all day while Claudia and I are at work. Troy drives taxis right now, so he works weird hours too. If they happen to coincide with Josie's, they try to take advantage.

He's looking around for work in the gaming industry and he's losing motivation a little bit. Josie is endlessly optimistic about his prospects of finding a job in the field and gets him on track again.

If all goes well, I might be an aunt soon! Rose and Joanna are adopting and they're in the middle of a home study right now.

Rose came over the other day to hear how my interview with the social worker went. They're collecting multiple references from just about everyone she and Joanna know, to check that they're fit parents. And I was one of them.

I think it went well, which Rose was relieved to hear. This whole process is so nerve-wracking.

I wasn't sure what to expect from the social worker. Rose had told me that Joanna couldn't stand Tamara but I keep forgetting that there are a lot of people Joanna can't stand! Tamara seemed okay to me. I was still totally freaking out! I was so worried I was going to say something stupid and ruin it for them.


I didn't, thankfully. I think Tamara must have thought I had the nosiest roommates known to man though. Josie was hovering by the doorway for most of the time. Suddenly she had no work to do!

I don't know how many excuses Claudia found to wander through the kitchen while we were talking. They were so obvious! It's not like I wouldn't have told them everything afterwards anyway. It was nothing secret and I said all good things.


I never thought I would have become friends with Claudia but that's what's happened! When Josie and I moved in, I definitely felt like Claudia thought I was encroaching on her space and that she was suspicious that I was still hung up on Jacob. We've never really talked it out or anything. We just naturally got more comfortable with each other and none of that stuff seems like it's an issue any more.

It really has been so long since I've thought about Jacob in a romantic way. I'm really happy with Rob now, so I don't feel like I'm missing anything not being with Jacob.

I think Claudia and Jacob are better matched than we ever were.

I feel like I'm a totally different person than I was in college. I wouldn't dream of making moves on someone else's boyfriend now. I'm kind of embarrassed about the way I acted back then. I'm glad Claudia didn't hold it against me.
As much as I like the people I'm living with, I'm not as keen on the place I'm living. I love our house but I have never lived in the suburbs before and now I'm in the outer, outer suburbs.

There's like a silo that we can see from the living room window. A silo! This place isn't really me. I'd love to go back and live in Exeter, where I grew up and where Rob lives.

I'm hoping that I'll soon be have saved up a bit more of a nest egg to make that more of a possibility. I've started getting a heap of roles in commercials and even some print work - all of that pays much better than the bit roles I was getting previously.

Don't laugh! I got paid more than $800 for one day's work to wear this ridiculous thing!

Notes:
  • Title is from My Hero by Foo Fighters.
  • The graduation was kind of fun to do but I won't be doing it all the time. I was just thinking about my own (very boring!) grad earlier, so I stuck in something about Rob's The lot is really very laggy, as much as I like it.
  • I don't know how I had Pascal, Mina and baby Jonas living in an apartment the size of Rob's at one stage (when they were first starting out, they lived in his building). It is so incredibly small! They lived there for several rounds too. I must be less tolerant of tiny, tiny lots these days!
  • The simDNA cheat has stopped working for me. :\ I have no idea why. I have screencaps of the readout for all my current Sims but dammit, I need it for any new Sims too! If you've got any ideas as to why it might have stopped working, please share! Maisie? I know you had a problem with it at one stage. Do you remember what it was?
  • Patience's "print work" is something I'll be doing when I get around to it. Something Laura said on Twitter about the posters for her women's clinics made me think of it but I'm going to make up some posters for my bridal shop with Patience as the model. The ones I have now are pictures of real women and they look a bit out of place. I might make some for Naomi's boutique too and see if I can recolour those H&M clothing booths to put the posters on the sides.
  • These girls finally have more than $1000 to their names! I put Claudia into some major debt to decorate this place and managed to just pay it off last round and this round, they managed to earn $11,000 cushioning. I managed to get Rob to pay off his law school debt too. He had about $3500 left to go (it costs $16,000, which is half the cost of med school, by the way) so I noticed he was a Film & Literature Sim with high creativity, so I had him write a novel. After that and his promotion (I think he's a Law Clerk now), he was all paid up!

16 comments:

  1. Aww, these three are unlikely roomies, but they really make it work. I love how they kept coming into the kitchen during the interview, that's something roomies would do.

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  2. Thank the lord for hotel wifi! Now I won't die from Sullivan withdrawl :P !
    Haha, it's nice to see the girls all starting to stand on their own two feet. Rob's graduation looked lovely, it was cute to see all of the other graduates there too. Lol, Troy still can't find a job it seems :P I'm sure e'll find it soon.
    Lol, I agree with Apple Valley, the roommates walking through the room where the home study was going on, that's so what roommates would do :) Claudia and Jacob look like they're enjoying their romance too, so yay for them!

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  3. Apple Valley, yes, I really just stuck them together because I wasn't sure what to do with Claudia! Josie and Claudia have always been good friends but I'd never pictured them living together and especially not with Patience in tow. But it's all worked out nicely and they're fun to play together.

    Yeah, that's something sisters would do too. This sister, anyway! LOL.

    Tessa, lol, I saw in my stats that someone was reading from a hotel and wondered if that was you!

    I prepared way too many grads for that ceremony, considering how many you actually saw! But it was fun. Now I have to redress them all, lol.

    Claudia and Jacob are so much more settled now than they were a few years ago. Claudia lost her marriage and baby want though, due to that stupid vacation glitch that makes them lose their locks (she still had her vacation benefits from when she went away with Jacob during his update). Annoying. Oh well...I'm not ready for her to get started with that just yet anyway.

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  4. I love the idea of having Patience pose for some pics for the bridal shop. That sounds like something that'll be a fun photo shoot.

    The graduation ceremony did look good though. You seem to be having fun staging these pictures. That really adds to the entries.

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  5. Carla,

    Can one throw a graduation party for more than one person at the time? How do you get everyone to dress in graduation gowns?

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  6. I'm hoping that Rob stays in the picture. I like him very much. The grad party looked awesome. Is that a new lot or did you redecorate some old one?

    I've never lived with roommates but from what I've heard I think Claudia and Josie's behaviour during the interview is pretty common. I'm glad it went well though and that Joanna and Rose are well on their way to become parents.

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  7. Lunar, I think Billy has a Sim in his hood who appears on in-hood advertising, come to think of it! But I do remember thinking it sounded like fun. I find most of my Sims are quite attractive but Patience is one of the ones I think of as very traditionally attractive, plus her acting career hasn't quite taken off yet, so modelling is something she would be likely to do for extra cash.

    It is fun for me to set up these kinds of scenes. More interesting for you guys to read than me just talking about it too!

    lepifera, no, you can't throw a grad party for more than one Sim at a time (which is LAME but I digress). Rob is actually an adult, so he doesn't have that option anyway. I downloaded caps and gowns from TSR and I used those to dress Rob and several dormies for the occasion. It's the same way I do my regular grads, actually.

    Sari, Rob and Patience are quite keen on each other, so I think he'll be around a while.

    The lot I had the grad ceremony on was downloaded from TSR as is. All I did was delete all the fountains in a vain attempt to reduce the lag and change the colour of the wall on stage.

    Claudia and Josie just had to get all in Patience's business! If Josie was in Patience's position, I imagined she probably would have bitten their heads off but Patience is much more good-natured than Josie!

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  8. Glad to see everyone is friendly with one another, but not *too* friendly, and Patience sure has matured. I totally don't see her enjoying silo living, love the picture of her looking out the window. It wouldn't excite me ether.

    I really like Rob, such a good looking sim. My oh my do your sims pick the cute ones. ;P

    As for the simdna, man that blows. What fixed mine was Sari's suggestion to check my userstartup.cheat file (I believe that's the name), and I happened to have one. I have *no* recollection of ever making one... so I'm not sure how I did that, but that solved my issue. Maybe something similar is counteracting.

    Could always go and move half your downloads to your desktop, load the game and see if it's fixed, narrow it down. I hope you can fix it, I know how much you enjoy that aspect of the game, and it'd be a bummer to not have that for future generations.

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  9. About the SimDNA cheat, you might wanna go over the steps again in Jaydee's tutorial to see that the game really runs in debug mode. The allmenus cheat worked fine for me but the simDNA didn't until I checked my userstartup.cheat again. I hope you get it to work.

    I've been meaning to ask, how do you change all the townies' clothing (ie. for Rob's graduation party). I have to move them in somewhere before I can change their clothes, I was just wondering if there was an easier way.

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  10. Those three girls seem to make it work. All with their own life, and still trying to make some time for eachother.
    Rob's graduation looks so nice, it's good Patience went even though he said she didn't have to.
    I hope Troy finds a job really soon! I know how frustrating it can be, looking for a job, knowing what you want, and don't find one!

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  11. Are you going to share those bridal pics? I have those human ones too and they just don't look right.

    I'm so glad the girls are starting to move up in their lives. It feels so good when they manage to save up some money. And it's hard not to let them spend it too. lol

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  12. It's nice to see that Patience and Claudia are getting along now with no worries about Jacob. I can't wait to see Dr. Josie Benton (or Dr. Josie Clarke) be able to put all her studies to good use :). I hope Troy can get into the gaming industry soon. He seems like such a slacker compared to Miss Workaholic.

    That's a good idea to have Patience model for the different shops you have in town. That should look really cool. I need to become acclimated with making the paintings with SimPe again so I could do something like that in the future. I know it was pretty simple to do because I made a ton of paintings for a website a few years ago but it’s been about that long since I’ve even looked at the program. Can’t wait to see her photo shoots in the future!

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  13. Ha, I love how they kept coming into the room to listen in on Patience's interview. I'd probably do the same thing. ;)

    I'm glad that Claudia and Patience are getting along and they're not hung up on old history. Everyone seems to be really happy with their current relationships, so it's good that they've put everything behind them.

    I love the idea of Patience modeling for bridal shots! I know what you mean about the human pictures looking out of place in the lots. When I cleaned up my downloads a couple weeks ago, I got rid of all the human pictures and posters I had because I thought that same thing and so I didn't like using them.

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  14. Sorry for the delay in replying everyone!

    Maisie, ha, no, I'm not a silo girl either! Patience is feeling a bit suffocated living out in the sticks! She's one I definitely see moving to Exeter.

    You know what? I never made a userstartup.cheat either but I had one! It was in the Config folder and I know I've never put anything in there, so I don't know where it came from. But removing it fixed my problem, so thank you! I'd already tried the game with no downloads, so I was at a bit of a loss!

    Sari, thanks! It's fixed now but checking to see if the game was really running in debug mode was the first thing I tried. I'd even originally run a search for the userstartup but because I was searching for it in the Program Files folder, nothing came up.

    To change townie clothes, I use either the red alarm thing from DMA Sims (http://www.valdea.com - it comes in the Woohoo set) or Christianlov's clothing rack at MTS. The alarm lets you change their everyday clothes and is very fast (it changes them to their new clothes instantly). The rack is much slower but it has the advantage of allowing you to change ALL their clothes, not just everyday.

    Tanja, yeah, Claudia, Josie and Patience are doing okay, considering they got off to a shaky start, at least between Patience and Claudia.

    Poor Troy! I actually have him job search every time I have him over as a visitor at someone else's house! He's bored with taxi driving, the poor guy.

    Riverdale, hmmm, I hadn't thought about it but yeah, I could share them once I've finished them. I've taken a few pictures already but there are some I'd like to re-do.

    I know, it was so tempting to buy a few things for them! But they're not THAT rich and the money isn't going to seem like a lot at all once they start going their separate ways.

    Danielle, I'm excited for Josie to finish too. She'll be an intern next year and will be finished by the next time we visit her. But she's probably going to appear when Lia gives birth, in some capacity.

    It was fun to do Patience's photo shoot, which is a good thing because I have to go back and do some of it again! I think I might have Matilda do some too. She wants to be an actress as well, so it's something I can see her doing for extra cash.

    I guarantee you it'll take about two seconds for you to acclimate yourself with Photo Studio again! It's so easy!

    Shana, LOL, yes, I'd do it too!

    Claudia's not the type to hold a grudge, especially seeing Patience genuinely feels bad about the whole thing. The way she acted in high school college wasn't really "her" and Claudia can relate to that.

    I tend to go through my downloads as I play and my next task is to delete all the human photos! I don't mind English text but human photos look very out of place.

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  15. Oh, but I like silos, lol! But I see it's not her thing ;) Oh neat that Patience is going to be in your posters! Isn't that just a fun little detail to add? :)

    Congrats to Rob! Do we know any of those other graduates there? Or were they just extras? You always pay such good attention to your post-graduate Sims. I always forget about mine, lol!

    I love roomie posts! Even if they're not the best candidates to live together, I'll still be a little sad to see them move on some day.

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  16. Laura, I can see Patience liking silos as a novelty, maybe when passing through a smaller town but this is definitely not where she wants to live. She's a city girl.

    Ha, I hope I'm not talking up these posters too much! I think they're cute so far but they're nothing special. But I'm excited about the idea of doing other sorts of posters with my other Sims.

    Ha, do I? The post-graduate thing is pretty new to me. Let's see how I go six months down the track! As for the graduates, officially, you don't know anyone. None of them got serious enough with my Sims to be moved in as playable NPCS, so I'm just going to make them over and change their names. Unofficially, I can tell you that the girl shaking hands with Hanna is one of Amar's many, many conquests and the guy below is Trace, the guy Claudia slept with when she was still with Amar.

    I love roomie posts too. I don't think I'd play my hood without a few roomie households, now that I've had a taste. I think these girls have become pretty good friends, so it will be sad to see them all move on.

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