12•12•12 & Sims 3 Skills Guide

Happy 12-12-12! Hey, I'm only going to get to say that ONCE. Yesterday was a busy day from the beginning. I went to the station early & took care of a bunch of things, left there & went to pick Kyle up from school & drop Josh off in town, Kyle bought me breakfast at McDonald's, I came home & finally finished my blog by ... well, it was late. I started it in the morning & it ended up being "the evening edition" again. Once

all that was done I went to work on the daily cleaning thing. It seems there was a problem with the way I've always done it, so I changed it a while back. The kids were using the excuse of "I don't like how it's randomized & assigned" ... so I took both the assigning & randomizing out of it. It just became a list of what had to be done. 6 1-word items. Each boy had 3 items. THEIR choice of which 3. Well, apparently THAT became a problem. My way didn't work. Their way didn't work. So yesterday Pete took a stab at it ... which required HOURS of prep work on my part to get it all set up. I had to reprogram all my daily cleaning code (personal Web site), then wipe the white board clean & start from scratch. THIS time, it's assigned but not random. 10 chores were divided up into 5 chores per child. For 7 days Kyle has chores 1-5 every day & Josh has chores

6-10. On Sunday I swap the names. Josh now has chores 1-5 & Kyle has chores 6-10 for 7 days. I really don't see how this is going to help. First they didn't like not knowing what they were going to get stuck with doing when they got home. Then they didn't like the other child getting to the board before them & "taking the 3 EASY ones", now let's see what the complaint will be with this one.  Anyway, the whole thing took up 2' x 2' on my large white board. I

had to spell EVERYTHING out. Previously, with the 6 single word chores, they kept claiming that after 16 YEARS of me bitching at them almost daily, they didn't know what the single word "KITCHEN" meant. SO, "KITCHEN" became "Unload dishwasher, load dishwasher, clean sink, & wipe down all counter tops" When 10 items are written out like that, it gets pretty long. When I finally finished all that, it was time for ME to get to work on the house. I cleaned the shower curtain, dusted the bedroom lights, checked to make sure the pets had food, dusted what misc. dining room decor I could reach (does NO ONE know how to push a chair in?!) Not my job, the person who has "DINING ROOM" this week has that job ... which also had to be spelled out. Clear all the stuff off the table, wipe the table, push the chairs in, etc. Sheesh, you'd think they were both 5 years old instead of 16 & 22. I should be grateful for what I have though. Thank you God ... they at LEAST wipe their own butts! I folded some laundry, watered the living room plant, & got the mail & newspaper (that was today, but I wrote it on the white board so whoever has that chore this week doesn't walk all the way down to the mailbox for nothing. I know, it's SUCH a long walk. When I finally finished all that I checked eBay & by the time I was available to go to the station for maintenance night it was 10:30p. Maintenance starts at 7. I think I missed it. BUT, remember ... I DID do a bunch of stuff there for a while earlier in the day instead ... just in case I didn't make it last night. Now, was me doing stuff at the station the REASON I didn't make it? Maybe ... but in past weeks that hasn't been the case & I didn't make it, so better safe than sorry. I started crocheting the final edge of the afghan & completed it last night. I waited until this morning to take a picture of it because due to the size, the only way to get the whole thing in 1 frame is to drape it over my truck & back myself down the driveway until I can get the shot. In the house, there's no room large enough to back up that far & get the whole thing in the frame ... well, in the living room ... but then there's also going to be 2 cats & 2 chihuahuas jumping on it before I can snap the picture, the big dog would walk into the frame, etc. Plus the lighting outside is MUCH better. I was hoping the sun would have hit it so you could see the beautiful gold glitter running through it, but the sun wasn't at the right spot in the sky to get that shot ... so, even though the picture is up there, it looks much better in person. :) I don't know what I'm making next on the knitting machine. I haven't decided yet. I checked Twitter & Pete finally got home around 1 in the morning. We had a quick dinner of mac & cheese since it was WAAAY too late to make that nice pork chop dinner I was planning. We got to bed somewhere around 3:a. I cut my sleep short because today was my day AND night off! With EVERYONE out of the house, it was Sims time! I built the master bedroom on Sapphire Point & then loaded up a new house I downloaded from a talented other. It's called Urban Legend. I ended up making a LOT of mods to this house. The way it was build wasted a lot of space & natural lighting. Bricked over windows, interior walls that served no purpose, & only 1 bedroom (I need a MINIMUM of 3). It looks SO much better inside once I knocked down all the unused walls & took the walls out that were blocking the windows. My living area has greatly increased & the natural lighting is wonderful now. It's a 4 level house (including the basement & rooftop area) & I have plenty of room now for all 3 bedrooms. I've already added the 2nd & I'll add the 3rd when the 3rd gen ages up to a child. I started out with Olivia. She has a photographer's eye, green thumb, is easily impressed, an angler, & frugal. She had 2 of the 3 traits useful for the Science career, so that's where she ended up. She likes cobbler, custom music, & the color hot pink. She's a Capricorn. Her furry companion is a Himalayan named Virginia. She's proud, destructive, & lazy. They started out in the summer with a nice 76° at 8:a. She met Kenji Midden at work & they eventually married, adopted Sammy, a Tuxedo mix who is non-destructive, to keep Virginia company, & had a son, Michael Midden (2nd gen). Michael is easily impressed like him mom & is a loner. He's an Aquarius who likes the color purple (not the movie, just the color), rockabilly music, & spaghetti w/ veggie sauce. He's also rebellious. Since Michael had no useable traits, I found myself wondering what can he REALLY do that's useful for his future? That started me on a quest to find out exactly what skills are available for Sims of different ages.

Toddler Skills (all hidden until they age up, then that skill starts off higher than zero):

Playing with the toy beg box or having someone read Counting For Those Who Cannot, Squares Are Not Triangles, or Being Smart For Fun & Profit all provide the Logic Skill.

Playing with the toy xylophone provides the Music Skill.

Having someone read Finger Painting 101, Handprints of the Masters, or Don't Stay Within the Lines all provide the Painting Skill.

Having someone read Bluish Eggs with Side of Pastrami, Frank I'm Not, or Oh the Destinations You'll Briefly Visit all provide the Writing Skill.

Children:

Children can also improve hidden skills like cooking muffins in the toy oven or working out in front of the television, but I wanted to concentrate on skills that show, not hidden ones. They are:

Fishing (by going fishing).

Inventing which is done on the Scraptronic Workbench.

Logic which can be read from the logic skill books, playing chess at a chess table, or playing chess on the computer.

Painting (from painting).

Writing which is done on the computer.

Teens & Adults:

I have not included skills from Supernatural or Showtime, the 2 expansion packs I wasn't interested in & don't have.

Athletic

Bass

Charisma

Cooking

Drums

Fishing

Gardening

Guitar

Handiness

Inventing

Jumping (Equestrian)

Logic

Martial Arts

Mixology

Nectar Making

Painting

Photography

Piano

Riding (Equestrian)

Sculpting

Writing

If I missed any, please let me know! :)

Now back to life outside the Matrix. I did my banking for the week & the LCFD Christmas Party is Saturday.

A lot of people wouldn't like it if Dave Ramsey designed a Total Money Makeover for America. Those who live off of other people's incomes wouldn't like him. He would do away with subsidies, & you'd be on your own. Government doesn't have any money it didn't take from someone else. I don't know that a government needs to have much in capital reserves. And government doesn't need to have a deficit spending, which is spending more than you're taking in.

Be flexible around the holidays. It seems as though everyone is traveling so if you can leave a day later or arrive a day earlier it could save you a lot of money on airfare or in time sitting in traffic. The best days for cheap airfare, even during the holidays, are Tuesday, Wednesday, & Saturday.

Don't say: "Now you're the man of the house."

Say instead: "Your father was an example to us all."

Get enough sleep. When you're tired, problems can seem larger than life.

GM announces phase-out of Oldsmobile (2000):

On this day in 2000, General Motors declares that it will begin to phase out the 103-year-old Oldsmobile, the oldest automotive brand in the United States. Oldsmobile had once been one of the most venerable and innovative American brands--Olds cars were the first to have decorative chrome trim, for example, and the first to have fully automatic transmissions--but a GM reorganization in the mid-1980s had drained the brand of most of its unique identity.

Lansing native Ransom Eli Olds created the Olds Motor Works in 1897. Ten years before (reportedly because he did not like the smell of horses), he had built a steam-powered car. After a factory fire destroyed 10 of his 11 prototypes, Olds focused on trying to perfect--and sell--the only car he had left: the small Curved Dash runabout. He was successful: the runabout soon became the nation's most popular automobile.

In 1904, the Curved Dash became the first mass-produced car in the United States. That same year, Olds investors ousted the company's founder. (Ransom Olds wanted to keep on mass-producing inexpensive cars that ordinary people could buy, while the investors wanted to build pricey luxury automobiles.) Four years later, Olds Motor Works merged with Buick to become General Motors. Within GM, Olds was known as the "technology division": it pioneered V-8 engines in 1915, chrome plating in 1926, the Hydra-Matic automatic transmission in 1937, and the Rocket V-8 in 1949.

Olds (it became Oldsmobile in 1942) was the most middlebrow of the GM "ladder of brands," squeezed between mass-market Chevrolet and Pontiac and luxury Cadillac and Buick. Despite a new slogan--"This is not your father's Oldsmobile"--that debuted in the 1980s after the GM reorganization, buyers eventually began to lose interest in the brand's offerings. The brand was also notoriously slow to react to trends: for instance, it was one of the last American carmakers to add sport utility vehicles--the most popular and profitable cars of the 1990s--to its lineup.

In 2004, four years after GM made its announcement, the phase-out of Oldsmobile was complete. That April, the last Oldsmobile--a cherry-red Alero--rolled off the Lansing assembly line and went straight to the R.E. Olds Transportation Museum nearby, where you can see it today.

How much farther away from Earth does the moon move annually?

Major difference between hardwood & softwood trees is their what?

A. Branches

B. Roots

C. Life Span

D. Seeds

Answer: D. Seeds

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Niveous:

Of or relating to snow : resembling snow (as in whiteness) : snowy.

The rabbit's niveous full allowed it to blend in with the wintery white landscape.

"Niveous" (from Latin nix, meaning "snow") is a rarely used word, but the vocabulary virtuosos of the past have found occasion to put it to good use. Take James Hurdis, for example, who in 1800 wrote of "cottage & steeple in the nivious stole of Winter grimly dressed." Today, you are most likely to come across "niveous" in spelling bees or word games.

What song was being performed when Justin Timberlake ripped Janet Jackson’s costume, exposing a breast, in Super Bowl XXXVIII’s halftime “wardrobe malfunction”?

“Rock Your Body.” Timberlake was singing the line “I’m gonna have you naked by the end of this song” when the incident occurred.

Which of these are monuments in Washington D.C.?

The Empire State Building, the Lincoln Memorial, the Jefferson Memorial, Grand Central Terminal, the Statue of Liberty, the Washington Monument.

Which rank is the highest?

A. Vice admiral

B. Fleet admiral

C. Admiral

BCA. 1 of the last fleet admirals was "Bull" Halsey, whose motto was "Hit hard, hit fast, hit often." Should have been an NFL coach.

Which vitamin was discovered 1st?

A. Vitamin C

B. Vitamin A

C. Vitamin B

You snore so loudly that the people of __________, miles away, are convinced giant __________ live in the sky.