chemistry experiment

I spent the afternoon with my nephew doing chemistry experiments from a kit he got from his grandma for Christmas. We tested the PH of a bunch of household items (breaking news: orange juice is acidic and dish soap is basic) and then just found random things to add citric acid and baking soda to, trying to create a reaction like the one pictured above. When the kit said it was for ages 8 and up provided there was an “adult helper”, it probably counted on the adult being a bit more on the ball.

1880s Colorado Homestead

Tonight we drove down to find the Trail of Lights at Chatfield, which we saw a peek of as we were driving to Christmas Eve service last night. Unfortunately, it was 15 degrees and far too cold to do much appreciating of the beautifully lit gardens besides taking a handful of photos and then hopping back into the car. This homestead, built in the 1880s and currently decorated in the white, yellow, pink and orange hues of candlelight, is on the same grounds at Chatfield as the gardens.

Christmas breakfast

The first thing our family did this morning was enjoy Christmas breakfast together – apple pecan cream cheese stuffed french toast (this recipe is close), a breakfast casserole that incorporated a layer of hash brown patties like the ones McDonald’s serves and coffee with eggnog and Bailey’s. Needless to say, it was pure win.

Christmas tree

There are about 7 inches of snow on the ground in Denver and we’re snuggled up inside, baking and cooking for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and discovering just how many holiday beverages can be made with bourbon. (My favorite so far is the Godfather.) Please enjoy our Christmas tree, which looks lovely lit up in the dark. After a few more Godfathers, I imagine we will all be pretty lit as well. Merry Christmas Eve!

On December 7, 2009, five guys named Miguel, Clayton, Brandon, Kelvin and Josh, better known as the VIRTUAL FREAKOES, released their debut single, “I Can’t Wait”, a song originally performed by Hilary Duff who actually covered it from Brooke McClymont. The song was recorded in a rush and the video came out on the 10th; it was a moderate hit!

Now is the time for something new, a Christmas song maybe? A Christmas song for sure!

“Have Yourself A Very Merry Christmas” – Official Cover
“Have Yourself A Very Merry Christmas”, written by Clayton, the band’s DJ, was only recorded TODAY and its music video took only one take! Another “I Can’t Wait”? Nah! The boys prove they have talent as the song has a dance feel to it and its simple lyrics are all about positivity and the joy of Christmas…

To see the video:

Enjoy and happy holidays everyone!

Flight to Denver

Anna’s blue and white new home wasn’t my final destination for today’s flight (unfortunately. Thanksgiving in San Francisco was so much fun!), Denver was. I flew back to visit my family for Christmas. Pretty close to the last minute, I found a flight back that worked and I’m glad I did. It’s snowing here in Denver and they’re expecting more on Christmas Day. Between that forecast and getting to watch Elf on the flight, I’m pretty sure this is going to be an amazing holiday.

The Dayes wanted to let off some steam this Christmas, so as a special festive treat, they’ve decided to let you in on the goings on at their Christmas party…

We wish you a very merry Christmas and we’ll see you soon for Gen 3 spouse hunting!

The Basilica

I searched for a couple of hours tonight to find a pretty church decorated for Christmas. You’d think – or at least I did – that it would be easy to find one. Only after I called a friend who knows more about the churches in DC than Wikipedia does, did I come upon this one at his recommendation. It’s the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception and it is apparently the largest Catholic church in the U.S. What I can tell you for sure is that it is beautiful.

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iPhone: pretty girl

I’m a big fan of my girl and her pretty white coat, which is good as she’s a near constant fixture on my lap when I’m home. I can’t even pretend to mind – she’s such a sweetheart and so clearly appreciative of the attention. It’s what 3-packs of lint rollers were made for.

Welcome back!  For those that are unaware, I had glitchy badness going on – a lot of my CC didn’t show up post-patch, which I could deal with (and did) but then I had an issue with inventories not working and build mode’s grabby hand going all skew-whiff.  Fortunately I discovered this is an intermittent problem so I have been able to play after all.  Phew!

Koi has just turned teen and been given ‘childish’ and she’s wasting no time trying to fulfil super-popular through tag.  Not that she’s rolled it as her LTW yet or anything, but never mind.  Judging by this pic, her tag skills leave a lot to be desired, but apparently she’s racking up the friends with only a couple of games played.  This also reminds me I haven’t done a townie reseed since Sindy was a nipper and the town’s pretty sparse again, so next time I’ll attend to that.

She fell over in the park, though I didn’t get a picture, which was my first reminder she has the clumsy trait.  This trait appears to be useless.

I did, however, finally get the classic legacy shot of a clumsy sim opening drawers…

…and falling on her bum.  One day I will also achieve the eating cornflakes on the loo shot every other legacy has had.

On with the learning…

Eddie Kidd here is demonstrating something about sleep.  I wanted to test if heavy sleeper, light sleeper and that meditative trance sleep LTR thiny affected the length of times sims sleep.  I pulled Thomas, Harry and Eddie’s energy down to nothing and sent them all to bed.  Their beds are all equivalent in terms of plus ratings.  Thomas (who has the LTR) woke two hours before the boys did.  The twins woke at the same time.  So heavy/light makes no difference to length of sleep when exhausted, but the reward does – only it’s not a huge difference.  It does, I think, mean they can sleep through noise as well, but I can’t entirely remember.  Anyway, as an LTR it’s not that great, but OK.  I must test out the bladder and dirt defiant LTRs soon too.

Papergirl is 85 now and she was at level 8 journalism with a very tiny bit of her bar to max out before promotion, so I got her to invite her boss over and he lied that he was going out and to call back in a day.  Why do they do that?  Inviting sims over is a right pain in this game.  Not to be deterred,  I sent her over to his house instead.  They’re good friends so asking for promotion should be easy.

Except not when your boss dies one interaction before you ask him.

AAAARGH!

Because Eddie’s last trip overseas hadn’t got him to fulfil his LTW, I figured maybe he hadn’t gotten 10 snaps in France after all, so I sent him back.  He took Papergirl with him, because I remembered that when she couldn’t do journalism things there last time, she was a weather girl and couldn’t do them anywhere.

Turns out you really can’t do stories and interviews in France.

Oh well, she got to build her charisma up a bit and have some fun.

Eddie, meanwhile, took on some quests to keep me occupied while he took photos.  He slept in a catacomb – I hadn’t known he could do that but he got the wish to do it and so I obliged.

In catacombs there are moveable statues that you can push and pull in different directions.  I really struggle to get the things to go in the right direction, despite the allegedly helpful yellow direction arrows.  Maybe cos I use a laptop rather than a mouse?  Anyway, Eddie got wedged behind this statue and for no good reason he couldn’t push it back out of his way so I had to reset him.

At this point I was getting a bit fed up with France and decided to take some more photos and then go home.

By the way, this video of Eddie in China shows you why ghosts are not great travellers…

Then I noticed some odd things in their relationship panels.  Babysitter is showing as a teen, though she’s now a YA, and Sherry is showing as an adult, though she’s now (finally) an elder.

OH, and on the subject of Sherry, it turns out that Christen Bunch, the teen we met last time, is indeed her and Abe’s daughter!  I keep trying to send sims round to Sherry’s (she doesn’t live with Abe and they’re not married yet) to see if there are any other half-siblings but no-one’s ever home.

Koi is appearing as a toddler in Papergirl’s panel, despite her being a teen and the wish for her to get on the honour roll.

The ’see Koi age up well’ text refers to toddlers, though.  How bizarre.

When they got home, everyone was the right age again (phew) but the ’see Koi age up’ thing still referred to her being a toddler.  Bizarre.

You might wonder why I;m talking about when they got home already.  Well, I was getting mighty fed up of photography not fulfilling.  I am sure I’ve got way more than 10 photos in each location so I was resigned to it meaning the £25,000 of pictures had to be on the camera, not on the wall.

I hovered over Eddie’s LTW panel to see if the new patch had added any kind of performance meter.

Then I got very mad.  They have changed the panel text.  It used to say he needed to take ten photos in each location.  Now it says he needs at least ten photos from each location ON DISPLAY IN THE HOME LOT.  I could have saved several trips had I known this, EAxis.  THANKS.

Still, you won’t have to suffer the same way thanks to our learnings, I hope.

Eddie has now completed his LTW and then some.  And then some more.  This photo is to demonstrate what some of the different sizes and filters look like on the wall.  The panoramas are quite cool.

The second photo from the right is of townies in the dreaded grey overalls.  They were standing next to each other in the park and it made me laugh.

Eddie’s getting through his photography challenges but he can concentrate on doing most of those at home now, and I’ll get him a job in the mausoleum while he waits to age up and romance the babysitter (and maybe the Chinese fire ghost as well).

Piranha has maxed out the grocery store career and we were about $500 away from her LTW when I built more basement to sort out Eddie’s LTW.  D’oh.  So she’ll be with us a bit longer and is now working in business purely to earn   money.  I’m not too gutted about that, I don’t want her to go!  She’ll probably leave when the boys eventually turn YA.  As for the other Dayes, Thomas still hasn’t had the omni call and Sindy is essentially just hanging around until she dies.  Evel is at level nine cookery so should time her ambrosia-readyness just nicely.  I can’t remember what level she’s at in her career.  Harry is about halfway towards his LTW and is good friends with Chanel the maid, his future destiny (possibly).  Eddie meanwhile, is harvesting those money trees to make up for the money his photography basement drained from the Piranha LTW fund.  Considering we don’t have his LTW to bother with, he’ll be gardening a lot from now on to see if he can get his skill high enough for those elusive omnis.  Next time I play I’ll hopefully get the boys up to their birthdays, as it’s probably about time we started getting the fourth generation underway.

However, before that happens, join us on Wednesday for a special treat…

Kitchen window

I bet you got all fancy today and got out of your pajamas and did something more productive than watch movies back to back all day long, didn’t you? You should tell me all about it because my big accomplishment today was inventing a new way to cook eggs that includes chive cream cheese (it’s a little something I think you may want to know about, because it was delicious!).

The best part of getting more than 12″ of snow in D.C. is that the whole city shuts down because it’s totally ill equipped to function in those conditions. 39 Metro stations were closed today and then they stopped running the buses. It was a good thing I decided I wasn’t moving before the decision was made for me. In sum, the only dining establishment I visited today was my own kitchen, though Angeline’s had me wanting to visit at “hush puppy”.

What do you do when Mother Nature takes a big dump on your honeymoon plans?  Learn to snowboard like a boss!  Ok, so all I did was stand up long enough to fall catastrophically, but damn I had a good time.

See for yourself (pictures)

Sarah

I had such a fun night – Christmas parties, craziness (someone fell into a koi pond at the last Christmas party we went to…), mulled wine, chocolate gingerbread pie and live music. Going with Sarah to Meridian Park near her house after the last party for an impromptu photo shoot and to play in the “dcsnowpocalypse” is what made the night for me though. We met several new friends – the snow brings people together apparently, and what the flakes weren’t able to bond together, the Patron Silver one of them brought sure did.

MOO cards

Learning a lesson from the tragic loss of photos Anna had saved on her computer’s hard drive, I’ve been going through my own and having some printed. These are the first MOO cards I’ve ever ordered – making me only about two years behind the trend. They’re so much fun though and won’t be the last I get.

I’m repeating a post. I suppose this time around, it bears more meaning. There are very few things  more depressing than becoming a tag on my posts.

What have you most regretted losing?

Sometimes I have to stop myself from wondering if I made that story up. College, that’s years ago. Years. I don’t remember a thing. Why should I have retained this…memory of the first day? It’s very vivid, like a scene from a film. The color’s probably oversaturated, too.

I never had any sort of imaginary friend as a child, except…I might have.

Or maybe this is my attempt at some sort of tidy justification so I can move on. If so, I wish it would work.

I know I didn’t lose him. I left. I couldn’t very well have stayed, but now I doubt I’ll ever return to Friendship. Someone might recognize me.

What was it that I lost? He was a friend. My best friend, but isn’t that just a phrase i throw around?

I can’t think of a thing to regret aside from the fact that its dead, and yet I do.

Deleted.

And so it is that time of year for our Preseason predictions! Sounds almost like a football game calling them winners and los…. well you know what I mean. It’s all just so far removed from Reality but, assuming the process works for our new Bachelor here are our predictions along with some spoilers. You’ll have also visit www.TVFanSpace.com for the latest news and spoilers but from today ahead we’ll take a stab at the whole show so we can look back and see how close we came. … With thousands of Die hard fans sleuthing the net 24/7 the stories you’ll read over at the forum are often what hits newsstands many months later so you really should check it out. 

First of all there is the Bombshell Maxim Model Gia Allemand …..

Now that I have removed my chin from the floor we’ll move on to Sheila a beautiful blond commercial pilot. She’s got the right stuff and should be around a while but we all know that’s far too convenient. When you share too many interests its trouble.

Sheila the bachelor will be around a while! www.JakePavelka.net

Elizabeth is the Brunette wild card which we place at number 2. Jake said he prefered blondes but us guys now that at the end of the day you can have a mohawk and it’s just not gonna matter if the chemistry is there!  

Elizabeth Bachelor Spoilers

Rozyln the make up artist and Ali Fedotowsky the 25-year-old Advertising Account Manager from Williamstown, MA though are our picks this year for the top 5 with Ali being the next Bachelorette. ( Note, we are also anxious to see how the story line plays out with Ella Nolan though as well because it’s about time we had a single mom for the next Bachelorette!) Ali though seems to be the natural fit though if early predictions are worth anything.   

Ali Fedotowsky from the Bachelor

As far as an early prediction we are going for surprise even ourselves and drum up a really surprise end being that Jake Pavelka chooses Gia. Yup, I said Gia.  We also think there may be a chance that Gia turns the rose down and thats a wrap folks! I know, what a bummer that might be, right? ….but folks it’s also the only ending we haven’t seen yet so it sure would be shocking TV! Someone smiling down on Brad Womack right? LOL

It’d be a bummer for us viewers who love the happy ending sure so let’s hope whether it’s Gia and Jake in the end or one of the other ladies that there is a happy ending after all. Look a few of these ladies for sure to be amongst the last on Season 14 of the bachelor! If your curious to see how the spoilers come out join the TV Social Network and get in on the fun!

Bachelor Spoilers are at the TV Social Network www.TVFanSpace.com

I’ve spent the last few weeks figuring out my goals for 2010. And thanks to Bria Quinlan, I have a five-year plan now.  All this thinking about what I want to accomplish got me thinking about the characters of my current wip and their goals in the story.

My heroine wants to pay off a large debt she owes and prove to herself and to her family that she’s not a total screw up.  I’m still not sure what my hero’s goal is.  I’m thinking he wants to stay uninvolved with things outside of his closed off world, but that seems too dramatic for him.

So what are your characters’ goals?

coffee mug

People who are able to find joy in little things are my kind of people. Last year when Target put all its Valentine’s Day schwag on clearance I picked up this coffee mug. If this cup doesn’t make you smile, you may be a little dead inside. [And you should probably see someone about that.] My love affair with coffee would be going strong without this mug, but it certainly strengthens our relationship by the end of the work week.

iPhone: Cheers

I spent my night at The Passenger celebrating a friend’s recently completed school year. The Passenger is my new favorite place to celebrate anything or just to have drinks. The bar’s been much hyped, and in my experience there, it’s deserved. It does what it does well – which is make really good cocktails. I’m presently making my way through their bourbon syllabus. I can’t say it’s been a difficult course to slog through; I may even have to repeat my work. Just to be thorough.

iPhone: Donuts!

I’d say I probably go to a donut shop about four times a year. The last two visits were with Anna to Fractured Prune, because while I’m way more of an eggs and hashbrowns breakfast girl, who doesn’t find the Fractured Prune charming as hell? This morning I went to get some donut holes for our team, because at this point in the year, everyone can use a little incentive to drag in in the morning.

To learn more about Cycle 9’s Kimberly Leemans, visit her bio page here.

To learn more about Cycle 9’s Kimberly Leemans, visit her bio page here.