March 8, 2013

Good morning & happy Friday! A great & perfect day yesterday that could have only been made better by catching up on stuff that I have backed up in my to-do list. BUT, I still got everything done of yesterday's. All my needs for a balanced & happy life were covered & to put it in Sim terms ... Hunger: Check, Social: Check, Bladder: Check, Hygiene: Check, Energy: Check, & Fun: Check. I had a boiled egg for breakfast & then went to work on the housecleaning. I cleaned the toilet, neatened my nightstand, watered the plants (which got me distracted & cleaning up a mess that Kyle left outside when he did me a favor & washed my truck) which left the truck dirtier than when he started, mud all over

the front porch & walkway, muddy shoes on the front porch, the card that came off of the new hose nozzle just dropped in the middle of the walkway, the pressure not released from the hose after he turned the water off, & one heck of a time-consuming mess for me to clean up. This is why I'm not too excited when someone offers to "help" me with anything ... it usually just created more work for me in the end. After the

cleanup outside that stemmed from simply watering the plants, I did the dishes (which Kyle has finally agreed to take off my plate (no pun intended)), wiped down the counters, dusted the living room wall decor, mopped the closet, blew the dust out of my knitting machine, fed the pets, & swept my office. Once the housework was done I got the mail & then went to work on eBay, checked facebook & took my game

turns, spoke to a friend on the phone for a while, picked Kyle up in Princeton & we had lunch while we were out, I checked yearly & made some plans w/ Pete on that subject, took the dogs out, pulled up monthly & gave Kyle the chore of waxing all the woodwork, showered & then loaded up Sims. I completed the nursery in Breckenridge (1st pic), & then started up a new game called - PEACE -. That was the

name of the lot when I downloaded it. I loaded up Cornucopia & went into edit town to place -PEACE -. I couldn't find it. Whoever created it had that name on it in the description, but the actual LOT had no name at all. I have several like that, where people forget to put the name on the actual lot. I had no idea which of the dozen or so lots was the one I was looking for, so I had to switch out of the game & log into

the Sims Website to look at my favorites (I favorite every download so I can reference & find it later) with the exception of one night where I downloaded about 3 lots but the favorites button wasn't working. Guess what? This was one of those 3. I searched for it by name in the exchange, but there were over 35,000 hits (their search engine STINKS for that reason). After wasting much time, I finally realized that I might be able

to find it by checking my downloads tab in the game launcher. There it was. FINALLY! It remembers the name from the description, not the lot name that might be different or non-existant. I matched that thumbnail to the thumbnails in my list of lots in the game & found it. I placed the lot but Pete was already home so I saved it & didn't get to actually play yet. I made dinner & we watched some TV, but when he went to bed I came back in to play that game I started up. I live many different lifestyles through my Sims, from poor & poverty-stricken & struggling all the way up to rich & living in a mansion. Well, THIS house is the largest of all mansions I've ever played. Holy crap! 4 stories of HUGE. there's even a room dedicated to cats! There's more bedrooms than I'll ever need, 2 or 3 massive kitchens on different floors, rooms dedicated to learning all types of different skills from the basic art room to drafting, to wine making. There's a screenshot of the front of the house & then 4 more screenshots of every floor. Getting around in this house takes forever. If you're in the bottom left & where you need to go is the upper right, you better have a lot of time to get there. I've already had to abort mission a couple of times because it was time for work. The house includes a beautiful pool out back, a very expensive race car, & some of the most beautiful content I've seen. There are many televisions & stereos all over the place. Fully furnished it's worth over $800,000 ... the most of any lot I've played. The bills are around $8,000 twice a week. WOW! The Sim I created for this game is Michael (1st gen). The poor guy is unlucky, family oriented, frugal, dramatic, & brave. His 1st choice for a career was firefighter, but you need to stay with them all the time in that career & I can't do that after the 2nd generation ages up to school-aged, so to be nice & give him a chance to fulfill his lifetime wish, I gave him CEO instead. He can do that one on his own as I'm playing other generations. He likes egg rolls, custom music, the color aqua & is a Pisces. His furry companion is an American Longhair cat named Neo (1st gen). Neo is playful, shy, & adventurous. After getting a job in the business field, Michael met Meredith Mitchell (his boss). While they were dating Meredith became a vampire (glad I have a LOT of space & bedrooms in that house, she's going to live a very long time). They've had trouble in the relationship though. I've occasionally seen a Sim invite another Sim over & then have the other Sim accept, only to immediately say something has come up & they can't make it, but Meredith does it EVERY time. It's very difficult to advance in the relationship when the Sim you're dating never comes over. Meredith has commitment issues which isn't helping either. After a while Meredith held a party at her place & invited her boyfriend Michael. FINALLY! Once they were face-to-face I was able to advance their relationship to the point of engaged. The private wedding option wouldn't show up though & that too is unusual. Why can't we get married? After hours of interactions of all kinds, from friendly to funny to romantic, the private wedding option FINALLY showed up & I added it to the cue to get that done. Mid que Michael gets hungry & walks away from Meredith to go prepare something to eat. While he's in the middle of that Meredith asks him to leave due to the late hour. So close! At least they're engaged now. It could be another week before I get it to the next stage & remember, each game day equals 1 year for a Sim, so he's already spent 5 years just to get engaged to her. Another possible 7 (or more or less?) to actually get married? Ugh! Michael is doing great at work though & has already received a couple raises & promotions, which he REALLY needs to pay for that house of his. He started out with the standard $16,000 & has paid the bills twice already leaving him with only $3,000 after getting paid from work. It's Friday night / Saturday morning in the game. When Monday rolls around I'm going to have to use a cheat to pay the bills. I hate using cheats, but this house is worth it. VERY beautiful! I like living vicariously through my Sims in houses like this one since I know I'll NEVER EVER own anything even remotely like it in real life. Only celebrities own homes like this one & I mean the BIG celebrities at that. When Michael went to bed on Friday night I closed down the game, took the dogs out & then headed to bed. The Sims 3 Website is down right now, so all the Sims stuff that normally gets mirrored on my Sims blog will only be here today. This morning I woke up to find that Pete had taken my truck to work, which he said he was going to do but it's still weird to look outside & not see my truck. I took the dogs out & here I am. Spring ahead an hour on Sunday morning at 2:a.

7 Habits aren't a set of separate or piecemeal psych-up formulas. in harmony with the natural laws of growth, they provide an incremental, sequential, highly integrated approach to the development of personal & interpersonal effectiveness. They move us progressively on a Maturity Continuum from dependence to independence to interdependence.

A coin toss isn't exactly random. A Stanford math professor proved that a flipped coin will land as it started 51% of the time.

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Every woman should be the queen of her own household.

Longest-reigning queens in the world top 10:

1. Queen Victoria of England, 63 years
2. Queen Elizabeth II of England, 61 years as of 2012
3. Queen Wilhelmina of Netherlands, 58 years
4. Empress Wu Chao of China, 50 years
5. Queen Salote Tubou of Tonga, 47 years
6. Queen Elizabeth I of England, 44 years
7. Empress Maria Theresa of Hungary, 40 years
8. Queen maria of Portugal, 39 years
9. Queen Joan I of Italy, 38 years
10. Empress Suiko Tenno of Japan, 36 years

MTV’s highest rated series premieres (1993):

On this day in 1993, the Music Television Network (MTV) airs the first episode of the animated series Beavis and Butthead, which will go on to become the network’s highest-rated series up to that point.

Beavis and Butthead offered audiences rude and crude buddy humor in the tradition of The Three Stooges, Cheech and Chong, and Wayne and Garth of Saturday Night Live and the Wayne’s World movies. The titular main characters were two teenage boys living in the fictional town of Highland; they attended Highland High (based on a real school in creator Mike Judge’s hometown of Albuquerque, New Mexico) but spent most of their time eating junk food, talking about girls and--most importantly--watching music videos. Beavis and Butthead alternated between animated storylines and clips of actual music videos, which Beavis and Butthead commented on in their signature bone-headed style, punctuated by sarcastic comments and grunt-like laughter.

Judge first drew his two main characters for an animation festival, where an MTV producer spotted them and picked up an episode for its animated showcase Liquid Television. After signing Judge on for 65 episodes, the network began airing the show on weeknights at 7 p.m. and 11 p.m. Critics were divided in their response: Some praised Judge and MTV for effectively skewering a big part of the network’s own core demographic--young men who watch music videos--while others cited Beavis and Butthead’s lowest-common-denominator humor as evidence of an overall decline in the quality of television.

Despite the mixed critical response, the show earned MTV’s highest ratings. It also sparked a heated controversy over the influence of TV programs on impressionable young children, especially after an incident in 1993, when a mother blamed Beavis and Butthead’s well-documented pyromaniac tendencies for inspiring her five-year-old son to set a fire that killed his two-year-old sister. In response to the uproar over this tragedy, MTV pulled four episodes off the air, cut all references to fire and moved Beavis and Butthead to the 10:30 p.m.-11:30 p.m. time slot, claiming they were simply targeting an older audience.

Regardless of its dubious influence on young audiences, the success of Beavis and Butthead prompted MTV to launch a spin-off program featuring the boys’ nerdy female classmate, Daria Morgendorffer. Daria first aired in March 1997, eight months before Beavis and Butthead ended its run. Judge later created the Emmy-winning animated series King of the Hill for Fox and directed films for the big screen, including a feature-film version of Beavis and Butthead, Beavis and Butthead Do America (1996) and the cult hits Office Space (1999) and Idiocracy (2006).

Queen Victoria had the right idea when she was quoted as saying, "The important thing isn't what they think of me, but what I think of them." -Now that's a queenly attitude!

Raise the desk of a co-worker 6" off the ground, using bricks or other platforms under its feet.

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There's an interesting item in the paper today. It happened in Saudi Arabia. 70 Saudi Arabian women were arrested yesterday. Do you know why? They were driving cars through the streets. In Saudi Arabia did you know that women aren't allowed to drive automobiles? ... Women did it as a protest & the police apparently 1st realized there were no men in the cars when one of the drivers pulled over to ask for directions. -Johnny Carson 1990

What's the best way to motivate yourself to be physically active after age 40?

(a) Join a gym

(b) Adopt a dog

(c) Cut out a photo of 1st lady Michelle Obama's biceps

(d) Hire a personal trainer

Answer: (b). In a recent Canadian study of people up to age 80, dog owners were found to walk about 300 minutes per week, almost twice as many as those without a canine. The dog owners were also significantly more likely to follow through on an "intention" to walk, because who could say no to that face?