It's Not Exactly a Tree...

Just in case you guys hadn't looked lately - I'm over halfway to my goal of playing through 20 generations of Sims. You can take a look at the family tree here. As I was updating the page with the newest generations, I got to thinking .... it's not exactly a tree. When you see pictures of people's family trees on big genealogical charts (especially those charts that are trying to prove some sort of important something), well, they actually look like trees, because they show both sides evenly, or as evenly as possible.

I was going to include some sort of pictoral reference point here - maybe the family tree of some country's monarchy, but the more I looked at all of them, the more I realised that theirs don't really look like trees either... more like tangled, mish-mashed webs. 

My sims? Well, I mainly just trace the heir's line, and show who they married, and any siblings, but that's about it. A lot of the time I can't show any more for the spouses' own personal lineages, as they are usually random townies generated by the game who don't have any parents at all. If they do have them, it only goes back one generation, and that's not much to add to the tree. Plus it makes it messy-looking. *** Edited to say I went back and added all known relatives, just to make it as accurate as possible. It looks messy, but the completionist in me is happy. The link above should still take you to the updated version. ***

I'm beginning to think they shouldn't look like trees at all.

It's also really rare for me to marry off the siblings as well, but the one or two times it's happened I was sure to show at least their spouse and any of their children - but again, with only an eight person limit to households, and never mind the fact that most of the time I've got at least three, if not four generations in the house at one time, it's hard to include everyone and their siblings. Hence the reason why most of my generations are only children, because I just don't have room for more than one. Let's not talk about Aegon's children. That was a fluke.

Yeah, we'll just call it a family vine.

The Wibbly Wobbly Doldrums

I'm finding this time to be a bit .... slow. There's not much in the way of new games, unless I've just fallen out of the loop. I'm sitting here waiting for Starbound, maybe Wildstar.  I dont know. I've tried Rift, I don't know how I feel about it. I could try more console stuff, I guess. I feel so behind in all the releases, recent or otherwise. I've never finished Bioshock, or Red Dead Redemption, or even that last Prince of Persia game, whatever it was called.

Have I fallen out of gaming?  For several years it seemed to be all I cared about. Now that I'm about to jump headfirst into writing again, I don't know.

Is this what growing up feels like? I hope not. I know plenty of people who still game well into their forties - heh, even my mother, in her fifties, games a bit. Does that make them losers? People who found a hobby they still manage to derive satisfaction from after all these years? The cool people?

So what am I? Where do I fall? Am I destined to be one of those stodgy, 'mature' adults?

I suppose I'm  a bit young to be having a mid-life crisis. Or else too old to be wondering what I'll do when I 'grow up.'

 Also, this is the last time I type a post on a tablet. Erg, hate touch keyboards.

Anti-climactic

  I am going to start out with a warning: This Follows No Logical Order. If you are looking for a coherent post, do not even attempt to read this.

So here it is folks, the 100th post. I've been putting it off for a while, because I couldn't find something worthy enough of what I thought, in my own little head, the 100th post should be. Should I post about LotRO? Sims 3? Prince of Persia? Some other game I've never posted about? What about D&D? That made a promising couple of appearances, right? I even took some screenshots of a few games in preparation of this momentous post in preparation (I was trying to map out my post, but it never panned out. I could throw them all at you, without any context. In fact, I'll do that, to confuse those readers who only scan).

In all fairness, I suppose I'm having a hard time coming up with something to post because, in a way, I've been reconsidering my gaming habits as of late. Most of you mature people, especially my father, will probably rejoice at that statement. Its not that games have lost any of their appeal. Quite the opposite. They still intrigue me, but with work and becoming an 'adult' (blech, as if anyone ever wants to be one of those), my free hours are becoming increasingly precious, and when the choice comes between gaming and taking care of housework (because, newsflash, owning a house takes much more sweat equity than an apartment), unfortunately, housework has been winning as of late. Except today, when the weed-eater wouldn't start, so no yardwork for me today yay!


I'm also finding that my eyesight is getting older at a frustratingly exponential rate, and reading a book is much less stressful than raiding. I am the last member of my immediate blood family who does not have some sort of corrective eye wear, and the stubborn part of me refuses to get my eyes checked out of the fear that I might need something and my bastion of perfect eyesight will crumble away. Not sure if bastion was the right word there. 

 There's also the whole, unspoken but totally felt every day, nagging guilty feeling known as, I-was-an-English-major-so-I'm-obligated-to-read-books thing. I am running out of unread books on my shelf. This is a good thing? That, and it's NaNoWriMo. Not that November's ever helped before. Haven't finished a thing yet. Yes, I am writing a book. Slowly. Every year I promise I will have a book done by the next Christmas. It never happens. I am a liar, I suppose. Not that anyone cares. If anyone's still reading at this point I applaud you for for your persistence, and mourn the thought that if this is entertaining to you, you are more starved than I.

Thunderpig!

Regardless, I am still a gamer, there is no doubt about that (or there might be, and perhaps this post, this very blog, is nothing but my own attempt to self-validate a worthless, time-consuming and destructive habit). It is the nature of life, I suppose, to move away from things, to change and grow and move forward. Am I becoming one of those gasp! casual gamers? Stars above forbid. Heaven knows I'd be healthier if I wasn't convincing myself that sitting before a computer for multiple hours a day was a good thing. My rear end is testament to that, if nothing else gave it away before now. I have gained twenty pounds since my wedding day, and looking back, I know exactly what did it. Heck, I knew what was doing it as it was happening. I was knowingly being self-destructive. While I may not be any heavier than I have ever been (I am at my top weight, but I've been here lots of times), the thought that I can do better, I'm just not, is frustrating.

However, with Sims 3 taking up more of my gaming time as of late than the dungeons of LotRO, and with DnD relegated to a once-a-month-if-that thing, and with console gaming pretty much non-existent out of courtesy to my husband, and Lore-mastering with Squid dropping dramatically due to her college schedule, I find myself with little other than casual games left to fill the tiny gaps in free time that beg for entertainment. Especially since the book I'm struggling through at the moment keeps putting me to sleep. Why is it always the fifth book in a series that is the most boring???

Thoughts of starting a family are beginning to loom on the horizon, and with those thoughts come conflicting reports. Most people with children agree that with babies comes absolutely zero time for video-games, but a few have said that nap-time and nursing make for the perfect time to raid. Erm, who is right? Picturing myself breast-feeding while raiding is awkward.

I have always wanted to picture myself, my future self, as some sort of bohemian earth-mother with a lush garden in a wild, woodsy setting and naked children romping about in the yard, chasing each other with sticks. That dream doesn't leave much room for any type of video games, whether raider or casual. Honestly, how many women could get up in the morning, practice some yoga, indulge in a quiet cup of tea, cook breakfast for the family, spend time each day taking care of them and the house (which includes the never-ending mountain of laundry, which has a daily respawn), and then end each day with 3+ hours of gaming? I don't believe there are enough hours in the day. Something has to give. I just wish it wasn't this.

Perhaps that's why coming to grips with starting a family is beginning to wear on me. I want children, I believe God put me on this earth to be a mother, (now for the inevitable-) but, I also enjoy gaming far too much to simply drop it. Is it an addiction? I know many games are developed and marketed for their addictiveness, usually because continuing to play them also requires that you continue to pay for them.



Maybe this is me learning to deal with my stupid sense of leet-ness. For a long time, I was a casual gamer in full, and the thought of stepping into a raid was some lofty, unattainable thing. Then I was introduced into raiding by a very dear friend, and became aware of how much of the game I was missing. I also, as a by-product, learned my class better. Then, over time, I found myself looking down on people who did not raid. "Look at them, ewww. The soloers. The casuals. The non-raiders." (S'funny, I never said "Eww, the rp-ers.") Now I find myself without time, even without children, and I am being forced back into solo/casual mmo-ing. I am what I once was, and what I, more recently, placed myself above. Is this being put in my place?

I am ending my hundredth post here. No climax, no point, no solid ending. Sorry to disappoint.

Also sorry that you were expecting something in the first place.


 

Spring Steed and giant flowers

That is all.

The Farming Loop

To help out a fellow kinmate last night, I offered to make him some Bundles of Tea Leaves, which he would then give to someone else to make Cups of Red Tea for him to use - they offer a nice Vitality boost which can be very helpful before a rough battle.

It also didn't hurt that I hadn't gained any experience in Supreme Farmer yet and that growing this tea for him would give me a good amount of points.

So I bought 100 Tea seeds, some fertilizer and some water, and headed out to the field in the Shire. It was raining, but that was okay - I tried to think that instead of getting soaked it was helping the little tea plants grow.

I use 5 seeds for every plant, and each plant has the possibility to give me all sorts of items in return. The two main items I get though are the Poor Tea and Fair Tea Crops. After harvesting all my tea plants, I take these poor and fair crops to the nearest workbench to transform them into the Tea Bundles, and amazingly enough, more seeds.

So, 100 seed, 5 seeds per plant, that's 20 plants. Only, each plant can sometimes spit out up to five of each of the two types of crops. Which means, when I take those plants back to the workbench and separate them, I suddenly, instead of having no seeds in my bag, have 38 seeds. Hooray. That means I can go out and plant some more!

So I go back out (after buying two more seeds to make it an even eight possible plants) and plant my second batch of tea. This time I come out with 27 new tea seeds. So I buy three more and go again. This time I come out with 13 seeds. So I buy two more and go again. This time I come out with 7 seeds.

At this point I realized that I was caught in the vicious French Fry/Ketchup loop. You know, the one where you order some fries, and in the process of eating those fries, you run out of ketchup, so you get more ketchup to try and even it out, but then you finish your fries and you still have ketchup, and you hate wasting ketchup, so you go get more fries, but then you run out of ketchup.... you get the idea.

So yeah. I looked at those seven seeds, looked at that muddy field I'd been standing in for two hours, and then walked up to the little farmer hobbit standing near the field. Instead of buying more seeds to even it out (so I could plant *gasp* more tea plants) I sold those seven little seeds back to him and called it a night.

I escaped the cycle, but I think I might have wasted some ketchup.