Looking Forward

Allie Phoenix is 45; Jimmy Phoenix is 46; Nicky is 18; Anna is 22.

April 2027

Previous updates here and here.



Allie Phoenix was looking forward to spring.



This year, more than ever, she was waiting for the snow to melt. During the winter the old boat sheds had been demolished, and the trees cut back, leaving them with a stunning view of the lake.

Or so she'd been told. All she could see of it, was snow and ice.

Views aside, there were plenty of other reasons Allie wanted winter over.  For starters, she missed her daily jogs around town.  She'd tried to keep them up at first...



... but in the cold, it was too easy just to hide out in a cafe somewhere instead.



Jimmy spent most of his time indoors, too, usually working on some story for the newspaper.



When he wasn't writing, he was always learning something new. Like how to repair televisions.



A useful skill when even new ones seem to break down on a regular basis.



He was also learning about bar-tending and mixing drinks...



... a skill both their kids appreciated, when they came to visit.



Nicky had been a frequent visitor, since leaving for college at the end of last year.

He'd broken up with his high school girlfriend shortly after, although he didn't seem to be taking the split too badly.

Anna finally had a job it seemed like she wanted to stick with, working as a stylist at a local beauty salon.


It wasn't quite in the fashion design field like she'd hoped for, but it was close enough for now, and the experience would hopefully come in useful when the ideal opportunity did come up.

A few weeks after getting the job, Anna and her roommate Penny had moved to another apartment. Allie was glad - their old basement apartment was dark and damp, and it had never been really suitable, but it was all they could afford at the time.

But now, along with Anna's steady income, Penny's boyfriend Gilbert had moved in a couple of months ago.



Anna's cousin and college friend Richard, and his boyfriend Steven, were also living in a small unappealing studio, a couple of blocks away....



... along with Steven's dog Jake, who seemed to be as much Richard's pet, now that he'd been living there a few months.



When a large apartment had become available in Richard and Steven's building, they had suggested the group rent it together.




They had all settled in together with surprisingly few problems. Penny and Gilbert took charge of the cooking as they both loved spending time in the kitchen...

Neither of them were particularly tidy cooks, so it was just as well that Richard seemed to actually enjoy cleaning up.



Kitchens aren't the only thing that needs cleaning, and the only real downside of the apartment was that it only had one bathroom for five people...



...and one dog.



They didn't seem to mind too much, though - it was worth it, Anna said, for the space and the city views.

As impressive as their view might be, now that spring had come Allie preferred hers...



She was looking forward to summer even more.

----

Wow... one month exactly after I decided to remake Richmond, here we are in TS3-land.

I'm not going to be acknowledging every new location in story (I'm more so trying to pretend nothing has changed, although I can't resist things like showing off their new lake views :)  ), but I'd already planned Anna and Penny's move in TS2. As much as I liked their building, the apartment wasn't really suitable, with Anna curtaining off part of the lounge as a bedroom, and Richard and Steven's place was so small I only have decent screenshots of the outside of it. I'd already found them all an apartment in TS2 but I hadn't been intending to move them just yet, had I not changed games.

Really, this isn't so much a story as an introduction to the TS3 incarnations of some of my sims. In my first real Richmond TS3 play session I played Allie and Jimmy for three sim days... and all that really happened was that Jimmy mixed a lot of drinks, and their brand-new tv in their brand-new house broke on two of those three days!

It was the kind of play session where I might not even make a blog update out of it, but I'd been pleased to see that the next household on my play schedule (ie my first TS3 update) was Allie's. She links the three main branches of my first Richmond family - a  half-sibling of the Pitts' and Greens, and fostered by the Centowskis. It seemed fitting that she should be part of this momentous occasion :)  Anna and Nicky were living with them at the time (I'd created the family in CAS together) so I decided to move them out to their respective households and see if things would get more interesting there.

They didn't.

Mini-update coming shortly, and it does relate to the ongoing story. I'm still learning screenshots, posing, changing facial expressions etc in this game, so bear with me if the updates are a bit gameply-heavy for the next little while. There is a plot in here somewhere.