Metamorphosim

Greetings, everyone, and welcome back! Hope you're doing better than I am today! I've been exercising faithfully since the new year began, trying to eat healthy, and (ugh) getting plenty of sleep, all in an effort to improve the overall quality of my life. Well, I'm not sure how long I WANT to live if it means not getting to eat fatty, disgusting food or stay up late at night playing games or watching Chris Farley movies, but whatever. The worst part of all of it is the exercising has given me more energy, and got me wanting to be active and do stuff all the time. Well, what the heck good does that do me when I work a stupid job where I sit in front of a computer for nine hours a day?!! Aargh…bring on the gristle and fat burritos…

We had a bit of a soap opera moment our last few posts as we witnessed the rise and fall of Leon Jackson (some would say he had it coming). I guess it ended with him rising again, but not till after he'd learned a valuable lesson - don't try to date two women at the same time, and if you break up with one of them, at least let them know about it. Well, anyway, one of the victims of Leon's poor dating practices was poor Debbie Kearney. Yes, first there was a maid named Amy who married Clarence Andrews, and went on to have a happy, productive life. Then Debbie took her place as maid, and it seemed she might be headed for the same happy ending, till Leon drove her away by inviting too many people to live on his boat.


And she's STILL wearing the maid uniform!
When Debbie first moved off Leon's boat, she moved to what's known as Sim Dump #1 (go back a few posts if you missed it, I don't wanna' explain it all over again). There, she met the Fitch family and some other weirdoes, and accidentally "scoped" Gia Fitch, causing her to become confused and like both men and women. The Sim Dump was nobody's first choice as a place to live, though, and Debbie eventually heard that Jack Daniels was "renting" the ample empty space in his house, and so, in she moved with the Daniels family. Shortly after moving in, she decided to ditch the maid uniform in favor of some old clothes Amy Andrews left there, and colored her hair red so people would stop mistaking her for the maid and asking her to clean the toilets. Jack and Regina Daniels threw a party to welcome Debbie, and everyone drank a lot and acted stupid.


Now everyone can mistake Debbie for Amy instead...
Yes, nobody knows how to throw a party like ol' Captain Jack. It's well known that pirates always have the best rum at their tiki bars, even if they don't practice piracy any longer (at this point, Jack had long ago given it up in favor of a career as a chef, followed by his current job as a school teacher). Debbie wasn't the only guest renting space at the Daniels home. Austyn Strange, who you may or may not remember from the triple lightning incident at the Wilson house, was living with the Daniels family as well. Unlike Debbie, Austyn had no confusion about his romantic preferences. He liked the dudes, and he wasn't afraid to admit it! Unfortunately, the "dude" he liked the most was Jack Daniels, who was all about the chicks, and happily married.


Austyn: "Jack, baby, I'd set sail with you any day!"
While I can clearly trace back to the moment when Debbie scoped Gia and established herself in the sim universe as "bi", there's no explanation for how Austyn came to like guys. I think, though, that selecting that suit and white face makeup on a guy triggered something within the simulator that said, "this sim will be gay". I dunno. At any rate, Jack's party raged on into the night, and it was a real smash, despite the fact that nobody walked more than 20 feet from the bar out front (except for the occasional pee break, but some folks just peed right where they stood). Well, the Sim City cops must have a radar that detects when a party is going too well, because sure enough, Sim City's finest soon pulled up to spoil everyone's fun.


Having once been a cop apparently gets Regina nothing...
Well, the stupid cop sent everyone home, even after they all pretended not to see him. It's a good thing all these sims walk to each other's houses, because with all the time they spend hanging around the bars at these parties, things would get ugly if they all tried driving home at the same time when the cop sent them away. Debbie decided she wasn't ready to call it a night yet, though. She wasn't completely satisfied with her transformation yet, and some wisenheimers were still asking her to clean the toilets (maybe they noticed her maxed out cleaning abilities). She headed on down to the local clothing store and did some browsing for a bit. She ran into Reavis Fitch, who she dated for a bit while living at the Sim Dump. Did I mention there weren't a lot of guy choices at the Sim Dump?


Debbie: "Why Reavis…has your chin gotten bigger?"
After spending multiple sim hours at the clothing store and shooting the breeze with Reavis for a bit, Debbie picked out ONE new shirt. One shirt. Okay, so she picked out some PJ's and a swimsuit too, but still, talk about your poor time management skills. She headed home and tried it on, but something still just wasn't quite right. She'd ditched the maid uniform, gotten clothes that didn't look like Amy's castoffs, and colored her hair, but her hairstyle itself was still a reminder of the "old Debbie", and had to go. And so, after experimenting with almost every hairstyle known to man (or woman), she finally settled on a new one, and the transformation was complete.


Debbie: "And yet, they STILL ask me to clean the toilets!"
Actually, for the most part, life around the Daniels house was pretty easy. Debbie basically bummed around with Austyn most of the day, since neither of them had a job of any sort, and often, she DID wind up cleaning, simply because she couldn't find anything better to do (nobody ever said Austyn was a laugh a minute). Regina was around the house all day long too, although, she was generally busy attending to tasks required to keep the house up and running, and her and Debbie didn't really "hang" all that much. Perhaps that's why she never discovered Debbie's true feelings toward her. So, we have Austyn in love with Jack, and Debbie in love with Regina. This is just getting weirder and weirder by the minute…


Debbie: "Woo! Lovin' the gray swimsuit there, babe!"
Debbie's first love was still the guys, and there wasn't much future with Jack or Austyn, forcing her to have to look elsewhere. Well, Debbie had her pink and white van from her days as a maid repainted, and dubbed it the "Mystery Machine". Jack put in a driveway, and thus, the Daniels family became self-mobile. It's sort of become a requirement that ever since I got Night Life installed, any sim family who could afford a vehicle had to buy one (bad news for those poorer families, given the ugly look of the less expensive car). It just took a house guest who couldn't stand the boredom of being home all day and wanted to go "guy hunting" before the Daniels' fulfilled their vehicle owning obligation.


Debbie: "Like, let's get out of here, gang!"
Debbie and Austyn were best buds by this point, so he was all too happy to tag along with her, with the agreement that they wouldn't fall for the same guy (and that the girls were all Debbie's if she felt the inclination). Of all the gin joints in all the districts in the area, Debbie, Austyn, and Regina, who'd opted to tag along, stumbled into Marty's. Word of mouth is a big part of the information network in Riverblossom Hills, and word had reached Debbie's ear that all the hot guys hung out at Marty's (what hadn't reached her ear was the news that all the ugly ones hung out there too, but someone chose to omit that part).


"Come on baby…let's do the twist..."
During this particular visit, there seemed to be a large number of "elder" guys showing up at the place, and everywhere the gang looked, there was white hair and sweater vests. Oh, well…you can't win them all. The blonde haired guy who spins the records about half the time was there, but he couldn't be bothered to step down from the DJ station without someone taking his place, and nobody felt like doing that. Eventually, a younger male did wander into the joint…but it was none other than everyone's favorite sim, Justin the Jerk! Well, Regina's spent her share of time looking through the telescope during the day, meaning she'd been confronted and poked by Justin a time or two. She decided Marty's was the perfect place to repay him for all the attention he'd shown her previously…


Regina: "This'll teach you to poke my boobs, pervert!"
Hmmm…I've been using the word "boobs" a lot in the past few posts. Apologies to those who are afraid of boobs. You know, I hung out with the real Justin a couple weeks ago during vacation…nice guy. I didn't tell him about Justin the Jerk. Anyhow, once provoked, Justin just answered back with some slaps and pokes of his own, and things started to escalate between him and Regina. Regina belongs to one of my oldest sim families I actually play, though, and there was a time when she was forced to exercise and meditate daily. In other words, she's very buff. And while, thus far, few people dared to get in a scrap with Justin the Jerk, Regina had no fear of such things, and rightly so…


Regina: "You might as well buff the floor with your butt while you're down there…"
So much for the "unbeatable" Justin the Jerk. That makes two fights in a row I've seen him lose, the last one having been to Clarence Andrews. Everyone laughed and pointed and made him feel bad and went back to what they'd been doing - scoping guys. Things were pretty slow in that department for a while, and every time anyone did the "scope room" bit, they'd just shake their heads in disappointment. Finally, though, someone did spot a sim that suited their fancy. It was Austyn…and he'd spotted the Grinch. And the Grinch was wearing an ugly black tank top. There's no accounting for taste…


Austyn: "First he stole Christmas…then my heart!"
Well, the bad news for Austyn is that there's a "Mrs. Grinch", and there was no room for a second. Great, so after hours of cruising for guys, the best one anyone was able to find had green skin, yellow eyes, and the hugest upper lip in all Sim City. And those are his good points. It became painfully obvious it was time to move on. And so, everyone piled into the mystery machine, and headed to Da Tiki Hut. At least there, even if only moderately attractive guys showed up, most of them would be in swimsuits (everyone was saying a prayer that the Grinch wouldn't be one of them). Austyn spotted his old pal, Antonio Wilson, and decided to see how things had gone with that dead dude in his back yard.


Antonio: "Well, right now, they can't figure out where he hid his will..."
Antonio may have hair issues, but he was still a step up from the Grinch. Unfortunately for Austyn, while he and Antonio were pals, Antonio had no visible interest in dating guys. Regardless, Austyn took up most of Antonio's time, so Debbie never got a chance to talk to him (not that it matters, since he's engaged to Aimee Andrews). Antonio wasn't the only guy making the scene, though - Leon Hartman was their too, flying solo, and looking at every woman in the joint with little puffs of hearts over his head. The sad thing is that most of the women in town look back at him the same way, feeding his enormous ego. Oh, wait…sims aren't supposed to be able to see those little puffs of hearts, are they?


Leon: "Claire, baby, why don't we give things another shot?"
Leon seems to have forgotten something…like the enormous amount of effort he went through to get rid of Tommy Wolf so he could finally make his move on Rinoa. Remember Rinoa, Leon? Yeah, I thought so. Leon still had a secret crush on Claire, which is funny, because he's the one who ended things with her so he could date Rinoa. The problem with all of that is that Claire was never around during any of Leon and Rinoa's romantic interactions, so the love they once felt for one another was still there, barely touched by time. In fact, last time Leon greeted Claire out front of their house, he grabbed her and stuck his tongue down her throat, moments before Rinoa came home. Debbie wasn't so impressed with Claire. She was still sore about the falling out they'd had over who was actually dating Leon Jackson, before he lost both of them. Claire putting on a bikini only seemed to make matters worse.


Claire: "I don't like you…bring back Leon!"
While Debbie and Claire were busy terrorizing each other, Regina met Andrew Pearson, who you may remember from Katrina Wilson's first blind date. I've said it before, but Andrew has some serious issues when it comes to interacting with people. The only interactions I ever see him initiate are rude ones, always directed toward people he doesn't know from Santa Clause (although I imagine he'd probably abuse Santa just as quickly). I don't know what his problem with Regina was, but just as with Justin, Regina knew how to deal with a bully, and decided to smack him around a little bit. Meanwhile, Austyn terrorized Antonio by chatting with him while Antonio tried desperately not to pee himself.


Regina: "Augh! What's your problem, you fat headed freak?"
Well, for all that trouble, nobody brought home a guy…but they had fun hunting anyway. At least Austyn got to chat with his old pal Tony for a few hours, while Regina amused herself beating up bullies. Poor Debbie just wound up arguing with Claire constantly about a guy neither of them really cared about anymore. That's sims for you…totally irrational, and I love it! Well, enjoy the fun while you can, because for every high, there must eventually be a low, and that low will come in the form of our next post (I think I warned about it a long time ago, but that's surely been forgotten by now). Stay tuned…you won't want to miss it!