strangetomato | Extras: Natasha Una (plus health update)

My flu is still lingering, keeping me up at night and preventing me from doing fun things like joining the party for a Christmas tree hunt on a sunny Saturday morning with a fresh beautiful snowfall. The SO went with some good friends of ours, while I stayed home and cleaned up instead. It's a good thing I stayed, though, because it was tough work (I told them they really "earned their balls" for hauling those trees out of the woods) and also cold enough that everyone ended with a bit of a chill, despite all the layers and the snowshoes, etc. They brought over some homemade soup and stayed for supper, which was nice after being shut in and quarantined for over a week.

I'm not sure how things will go with my advent posting, now that I'm getting my health back. I'm going to have to focus my energy on my real Christmas preparations, but I might post a few more things. I think it worked out pretty well, even though I failed at making it an actual advent calendar (surprise, surprise). I hope you enjoyed what I did post, anyway. Anything I didn't complete will just get posted in the new year, once it's ready.

I do have some pics to share from my random playing during the sick days, so I'll share a few with you. I had a blast playing with Natasha Una, for one. She's one of my favourite sims. I gave her a makeover again with one of simgaroop's new hairs and some awesome plumb-bob earrings I found.

Aren't those cool earrings? ^_^ I'm really liking this hair on her, too. It suits her, and it's not so far off from her original look in the sense that it's still long and pulled back. I always try to stick with the original feel of the character when I make them over, but in Natasha's case, I try to pull her away from that FT hippie look (which I was never a fan of) and into more of a funky (yet flakey) artist look. I like to dress her in mostly purple.

She's such a pretty sim. I tend to gravitate towards the S3 + red hair combo.

Here she is in her studio. As you can see, she does all sorts of artistic things. She's very well-rounded that way. She made those curtains herself. (Perhaps exploring the idea that there's no such things as "bad colour?" :P)

Oh, Natasha...

She's so pleased with herself.

Here she is in the Mostly Modern Art gallery, which she owns. For anyone who enjoys playing with OFB, let me tell you that art galleries make great businesses, especially if you have high priced works and the full buyer discount. (If you can earn that discount in home furnishings that came with AL, even better. Buy cheap at home, then bring it to the store in your inventory!)

I was thinking about the connection between John Mole and Natasha in her bio. They don't actually have any chemistry. I toss some of that up to the laziness of some of the implied stories in latter EPs. Stuff like "Will stress come between them?" and "Will her husband get fat?" are less than inspiring as far as suggested stories go, but that's what you get in Desiderata Valley. John is also already smitten with someone else, so I choose to interpret John's impact on Natasha's life in a less romantic way. I'm still turning it over in my head, but I might work it into my story, given that John's already in there and Natasha will turn up in relation to other artist characters anyway. What other links might there be? Hmmm....

(There I go being creatively "lazy" again. :P Sorry, couldn't resist...)

Oh, Natasha! A woman after my own heart. XD Any lady who unrepentantly lets 'er rip like that is okay in my books. Nothing disturbs me more than women who say they don't fart in front of their husbands. How do they LIVE? Women fart, people. And they poo. As a culture, we need to accept this fact.

Part of her gas problem might be related to all the grilled cheese eating, which makes no sense, because cheese usually does the opposite to your system. I am a professional cheese eater, so I know, okay? (Not really, but I do love the stuff.) As a former vegetarian, I will say that it's more a diet devoid of meat products will always up the amount of gaseous vapours in your life. I used to fart in my sleep! Come to think of it, they should have made that a part of the vegetarian trait in Sims 3, but I don't think they did. Too bad. It would've been really funny. I also think sims should react more to farting in the game. Wouldn't that be a hoot?

Okay, enough about farts. :P

Back to the grilled cheese, I went for Natasha's "Eat 200 grilled cheese sandwiches" LTW, which is the first time I've ever done that one.

Here's the proof of my success! It was actually very, very easy, if not a little mind-numbingly repetitive. The key is in conjuring the grilled cheese. As long as the sim's energy is above a certain point, you can conjure at will. With grilled cheese sims, they get aspiration points for eating grilled cheese, so as long as she stays in a high aspiration level, I just alternate her between the energizer and the conjuring. If she stopped rolling wants for eating grilled cheese, it's usually just a matter of serving some or something like that. Easy as pie, errr, grilled cheese.

Her next want was to become a visionary, appropriately enough, and I left off playing with her at the Conceptual Artist level (which is how I envision her character — with all sorts of wacky grilled cheese conceptual art). I also got her up to maximum skills in pottery, sewing, and flower arranging (it was fall, so she learned quickly). With perma-platinum aspiration and the energizer, it was pretty easy.

My poor sims hardly ever sleep. Heheh. Hey, if I had an energizer, I'd stay up all night doing things, too!