I Don't Wanna Grow Up

I was playing around on the Internet today and found a cute cartoon... it fits me perfectly!
I now have "an itch" to build a fort tonight (ok, I always feel like building one, but now I actually plan to) - I will post pictures later...

Sims...

I am embarrassed to admit that I got Sims 2 (a “life simulation” game) for the Playstation a few days ago.

It took me a while to figure it out, but I created a character for Travis and me. Since I was only given a few choices, I set my Sim’s “aspiration” for romance and Travis’ for knowledge (the other options were creativity, wealth, and popularity). I then built a house for us to live in and all of our new “neighbors” keep stopping by to visit… the problem is that they’re all women! I am now worried that all of the “other women” are going to make my Sim unhappy. Maybe I should have picked popularity instead of romance as my aspiration, since so many people want to hang out with us.

Another problem is that I didn’t set our neatness level high enough when I got to choose our characteristics. Now the Sims spend most of their days setting dirty plates, newspapers, books, and more on the floor. This is frustrating for me! Since I can only control one of them at a time, the other one is usually making a mess that I will eventually have to clean up. This must be how parents of multiple kids feel… I’m grateful that I didn’t create more than two characters.

Other than the messiness, the game is a fairly realistic, so Travis (the real one) laughs at me whenever I play it. In the game, Travis gets moody when he is hungry and I get distressed when my entertainment level is low (which means, I am bored). I even got a “sad bubble” over my head that showed a picture of a TV, so I had to buy one to appease my Sim. Travis even ignores me in the game in order to read a book, which makes sense because I picked knowledge as his aspiration, but this is way too much like our real lives! He was actually sitting behind me reading a magazine when this happened on the game…

So, here’s my problem: you have to keep your Sim happy for it to stay alive. Travis’ Sim is perfectly content to hang out and read, but my Sim needs romance to be happy. I now need to figure out if I can flirt with a different Sim, or if I have to pursue “Travis” to make my Sim happy (since I set us up together as a family). So here’s my big question, does it count as cheating if it’s done in a video game? Let me stress that I have no desire to do this in real life (and he does put down his books to spend time with me), but my Sim may die if she doesn’t feel loved…

Rock and Roll Weekend

So, Travis and I had no plans for the weekend, but we kept ourselves pretty busy. We played video games Friday afternoon and Travis beat the “hard” setting on Guitar Hero before we left to play poker at Diggers (a sports bar and grill in Lawrenceville).

Here is a picture of my Guitar Hero:

On Saturday, we lounged around the house and took POWER naps (okay, I hoped it would sound more “rock and roll” if it was a power nap). After staying up late on Friday, we needed to rest up before going out to eat with Heather, Sarah, and Brandon. We went to the Longhorns near the Gwinnett Mall and our service was horrible. We even had the manager helping our table (the regular server was having difficulty keeping up), but he was useless… for example, four of us ordered a sweet tea as our drink and we all got water. We definitely did not get the VIP service that rockers deserve…

Here comes the “roll” part of the weekend – we got skateboards!

My mom and I went to Wal-Mart on Sunday and since I had been thinking about getting a skateboard for a while, I finally picked one out. Then, later that evening, Travis decided to get one too while we happened to be running an errand at Wal-Mart. I also picked up a set of kneepads while we were there – I’d rather look like a dork than have skinned up knees. Here is a picture of me getting ready to skateboard:

So far, we haven’t fallen, but I’m sure that won’t last long.

I Entertain My Neighbors

So I went home yesterday after school and it was cold and raining out. Not a huge deal normally, but I have to walk a 100 pound lab when I get home every day. I had an umbrella, but I felt bad thinking about Bailey getting cold and wet (he’s really spoiled, as you can see by the picture). Plus, I hate the smell of wet dog after a walk in the rain.

My quick thinking skills told me to make a rain jacket for him. Well, I have a regular jacket for him, but it isn’t water repellent. What to do? It’s a good thing I have worked at a summer camp – when you have, the obvious answer is to use a trash bag. Well, I put his jacket in a trash bag with only the straps hanging out and then I placed it on him. He looked confused at first, but he was fine once he was wearing it. Here are some pictures of him wearing his “rain jacket”:










I’d like to think that the cars passing by were slowing down to admire my inventiveness, but I have a feeling that they were laughing at us.

We Were Cavemen

So, last weekend, Travis and I went on a cave tour in Kentucky at Mammoth Cave. Not the regular kind of cave tour though, we decided to go on the “Wild Cave” tour. It was a six hour, six mile long tour that involves crawling through tunnels, climbing cave walls, and squeezing through nine inch spaces. If you have ever seen Travis, this worried both of us… he has big shoulders. He fit, though. Apparently, he was the maximum size that you could be and still fit through some of the holes… he said that it was an especially close fit on what they call the “bare hole.” I will leave it to your imagination as to why they call it that.

We didn’t take our camera because we were worried about having to carry it the whole time, but here are some pictures that I found on the Internet of where we were:

It was a lot of fun to see some of the places that not everyone gets to visit, but my arm muscles were a little sore afterwards from all of that crawling!

I'm Officially on the Internet!

So, I've never made a MySpace or Facebook page because I didn't quite understand the point of doing this - it would just be something else that takes up my time. I also never thought that I would create a blog... until I started reading Staci's. She is a teacher that works at my school and she frequently posts new things that she is doing, even if it is just a new lipstick color or something funny that she saw while out shopping. I have now realized that this will eventually make a great on-line scrapbook if I bother to keep up with the blog... we'll see.