--that it is St. Cecilia's Day. I can take no credit for this: I had totally forgotten it myself, but was reminded when I attended church today (Feast of Christ the King.)



(St. Cecilia, Guido Reni)


Anyway, I thought you might enjoy all that. I carry around a lot of extra material in my skull as a hazard of being a nearly constant tourist to seventeenth-century England.

I haven't been able to play too much: I had a lot of grading to do. I was a good girl and got it done, so I'll be catching up on Legacy Comments tonight and perhaps playing a bit.

Enjoy!

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Part Two will follow in a few days, if I'm lucky. Work is slowing me down. Enjoy!

 I haven't been all that well, BUT I have an update nearly sorted out:  a two-parter.  I have a filler slide or two to shoot, and then I need to write it up.

I can't exactly predict when it will be done.  I just got my first load of grading/commenting to do, and this will slow me down a bit. The grading will keep up through December, too.  Nevertheless, it's some nice progress, especially since I've played Elaine up to teen and her elder brothers are all in college.  

Generation Nine almost in college!  Yay!

My most recent heiress teened up! Here's Elaine.



I'll leave her Aspiration and LTW as a surprise for now.

I like her in the more normal clothing, but if her brothers are in medieval clothes, I'm kind of stuck.  On the other hand, I may wind up putting them in something--more Maxis, let's put it that way--and if I do, I have a bit more leeway.  Anyway, she's in pinky hearty stuff, no matter what, and luckily she looks good in it.

Parsifal and Gawaine have to go to college right away.  They are really, really close to aging to Adult--within three days, and that's really unusual for me.  The only reason I waited was for Elaine to be a teenager.  She has nearly all her scholarships, too, so probably she'll only spend the weekend at home and then go to college--long enough to have some fun, buy a cellphone, and get the Connections Perks from Daddy.  

Would someone be willing to extract Gen Nine for me?  I'm always a bit paranoid and I have a weird werewolf memory and that always makes me worried.  The only thing is that whoever does it will either have to have a game from before AL OR be able to  put the Sims up on the Exchange.  Saving Sims to file, at least as a SimsPack, means Macs can't install them.  

I've packaged the lots as files, and I removed all the CC except for the skins on Telemachus and Nausicaa.  I did that because I'm not sure what happens if you remove the custom skin off an alien.  Probably something dire and they'd probably have that skin with question marks or numbers all over.  

They're an interesting generation.  

Otherwise, it's been a really busy and stressful time.  I'm getting ready to leave for Virginia early Tuesday morning.  Getting ready for travel always makes me nervous and I'm even more so because last time I left, the catsitter didn't know to come.  She does know this time and we called to confirm AND she came over on Friday, but I'm still feeling paranoid about leaving my babies.  And guilty.  Cats always make you feel guilty.


I'm caught up on most legacies and getting there with the BRRL!  Can't wait!

 To Stacie, and also to Jamie and Dicreasy, whose birthdays I shamefully missed because I dithered about worrying that I had no time to shoot a proper card.  Happy birthday to all of you!  

The next update is about half written.  It's going to be very long but it's full of nice kiddie pictures so I hope no one minds.  I'd hoped to be finished before school started, and I'm close.  

The first day is tomorrow.  It's going to be weird and tomorrow I may tell you why.  Classes start on Thursday.  But I'm happy that I finished my syllabi, and that was a pain because I had to adjust them all to reflect the furloughs.

I have been a busy bee.

Did anyone see Dr. Horrible on the Emmys?  It was fun!

I have over two hundred pictures, so once I'm done sorting them out, I will be dividing them in half. It's not exactly going to be a Part 1 and Part 2, just 250 pictures is a lot.


I apologize for being so slow.  I had a fellowship proposal to write up this week, and those are pretty complicated.

School starts Monday, and frankly, I am really depressed about it. For one thing, evidently there is talk about merging my department with another one. I don't mind "English and Foreign Languages," but "English and Foreign Languages and History and Psychology and Sociology" sounds as though it's nothing to be taken seriously. And would you want a graduate degree from a department like that? Seriously?

For another, trying to figure out my syllabi is a serious bummer. Do I cut assignments? If so, which ones? If I do, how will I live with the guilt? If I don't, am I allowing the University to pick my pocket by giving them 150% work for 90% pay?

The LA Times today suggested that it would be a good idea to extend furloughs for the UC into next year. Oh, yeah, sure sure we understand that UC faculty are only paid modest amounts, but surely there won't be a "mass exodus." Translation: it is so hard to find work once you are tenured that they pretty much have us over a barrel, so they can carry this on indefinitely. Meanwhile, students are ANGRY. Some of them are going to protests and getting arrested. UC students don't like 32% fee hikes. CSU students, sadly, are used to it by now.

And Monday I get my ten year service pin. WHOOPIE. I already agreed to wear an "I don't want to strike" T shirt. And I am first in line.

What can you do, huh? I'm baking a pie. I figure that might help me, anyhow. And I've been playing. And . . .

well, here is Elaine.







 

I've been playing a lot lately, actually, I'm just really, really sloooow. And of course I do not want to spoil anything, but I do have a few pictures of the Gen Nine kiddos that I thought you would enjoy.
( Picspam! )

I don't know how soon an update will happen.  I've been crazy busy but I did want to get a bit done before school starts next week.  I've also decided to play some of the reverse-Pleasantview families.  What's the point of having them if you're not going to play them?--plus maybe some of the kids will hit it off with the Legacy kids or the Romans, and at this point, I might as well send some of them to college.  The neighborhood is practically brand new, so the character bloat has hardly started yet.

I'm also almost done with a super-sekrit project.

 The Squeaky Clean Legacy, 16.3.b: Romanes Ite Domum II</div></div>

 I'm working on the next update, but it's like pulling teeth.  I'm not sure why.  Every slide is sheer misery.  I think the format may be throwing me off.  I know that sounds odd, but it's true.  The captions don't seem any dumber than the old ones were, but then I look at them and think "DUMB."  I finally decided that dumb or not, I'm finishing and it goes up anyway.

I'm probably just cranky because of the stuff at school.  I don't think I'm going to say any more about it right now.  Let's just put it that I will probably be a lot poorer in the fall--a LOT poorer--and that to add insult to injury, I'm being asked to vote to allow them to do it.  I'm trying not to think about it right now, figuring that I'm pretty resourceful and that I've been poor before and can cut back on stuff, and that I have two lovely cats and what more does a girl need, anyway?  

I picked up the car.  They finished with it and a lot of it was covered by my powertrain warranty.  I would say "it could be worse," only I don't want it to GET worse, thanks very much.  

I wonder if anyone has ever written a horror novel set at a university?

Also, just read *Good Omens,* and it's as good as everyone says it is.

Onwards for a bit less pink and squeaky and a bit more oddity.

And now for a long-awaited wedding. . . 

 

 

And now for a big bumper weddingpalooza!

And at last, it is time for a wedding that everyone has been waiting for seemingly forever.

Stay tuned for the rest of the update!

More this way   ---->>>
 

Who knows when the Exchange will go back up, right? And I'm sure you'd like to see wedding pictures as much as I'd like to show them.

The rebuild, the switch of neighborhoods, now the Exchange, the first chapter in LJ format--it's all part of a series of SNAFUs, and not even the worst of them. And that is why this chapter of Squeaky Clean is called:

In due time, Penelope proposed to Dinadan again, and all was in line for a set of long-delayed weddings.

This way---->>>

I've been wanting to say something about this for a while, and after Secret #30 onsimsecret , I thought now would be a good time.  For those of you who can't be bothered, it's mostly about how "misogynistic" and "puritanical" dicreasy 's Legacy is, but it ends "at least you can't claim to be a feminist.  You either, PB."

Well, it's hard to respond to something that specific.  The narcissist in me is righteously pissed off to be tossed into an afterthought like that.  Moving along.

Yes, I do think of myself as a feminist.  I'm not going to back away from the "f-word."  All feminists don't agree about everything.  For example:  I think single-sex education really has a place.  I went to a largely female college and an all-female college in Britain and I think it was good for me.  Some people would think that's anti-feminist, because don't I want equal opportunity?  Oh, well.  I do strongly support LGBT civil rights, and I think that's pretty clear without getting all preachy. 

As for the ethics of SC:  ( if you really want to know. )
I don't like to get more specific than that.  I think that obvious morals are really dull, and I want different readers to be able to find something they can like and relate to.  Besides, I have to maintain SOME kind of mystery here.  I might get more explicit when SC is done, but right now I'm too busy resuscitating my neighborhood and my Legacy to do that. 

PB

 So I'm working away, and among other things, I am preparing to teach Milton's Paradise Lost next week.  And I really enjoyed Jamie's post about Aria and you-know-who.  Which means you are going to get some Cecil meta.  

This is probably only spoiler-y if you haven't read the latest chapter (2/14/09).

If you did read the latest chapter, some of you may have been surprised by Cecil's, um, "employees."  But the suggestions have been there at least since last year.  ( Which way I go is Hell. . .  )Anyway, I thought you'd enjoy that, and I hope I didn't wind up revealing where this is going to go.  I always think that, and then it turns out not to have been true.

PB

 Because all the cool kids are doing it, and because I am a shameless copycat, and because I am tired of re-uploading to the Exchange for the same reasons everybody is, I've got some Goodytwoshoes here.

I ought to say that I wouldn't have these guys at all without the hard work of other simmers, especially orikes13 and ndainye . 

Cecil, Cecilia, Sophia, Lytton, De Beers, Sunny, and Mortimer also seem to be on the Exchange, but you never know, right?

( Sims, CC links, pictures, and other goodies. . . )

This won't tell you who Mr. Goodytwoshoes #8 is going to be.  It will, however, tell you why there are three contenders for Penelope's hand in marriage.

( longish technical musing-- )

Anyway, if anyone else wants to do something like this, my advice (aside from simply, "don't"), is to try to have a reasonable pool of sims to pick from.  I may have to go shopping for some extra Romance, Pleasure, Pop and Fortune Sims.  I don't have a lot of those.  And leave yourself open to chance and random stuff.  That's where the good parts of Simming lie.

It may take a while for the next update, but I shot an important scene that amused me very much.  We'll see how it came out.

PB