I went to bed at 10:00 last night, right after Nash Bridges--a repeat, and I have to admit that I actually fell asleep before it was over--so I woke up fairly early this morning.

Bob was off, too, but although it's pretty unusual for him to be off on a Saturday, it doesn't usually work out too well for us to try to do stuff together--I had a bunch of errands to run, and he didn't really want to tag along, and I needed to do some shopping, and he wasn't interested in that, either, and he had his own errands. So he took off fairly early.

He had breakfast out, then went looking for a belt, didn't find one, but did find a new wallet, came home briefly, then went back out to go sit at Barley's, the neighborhood brew pub, to have a couple of beers and watch some sporting event or other.

I spent most of the morning downloading stuff for The Sims--a washer-dryer combination, plus shelves for the laundry room, some new lamps, Oriental rugs, couches, and wallpaper. I also downloaded a couple of houses.

Last night I tried to build a house from scratch, but I just couldn't do it. I don't know whether I don't have the patience, or just don't have the spatial skills, or what, but it was so difficult and it was making me so stressed out, that I gave up. I need blueprints. That's what I need people to make--blueprints, not houses. If I just had a blueprint to follow, I could do it. I guess I need to fire up Visio at work and start playing with it. I should really duplicate our house.

So anyway, today I went to SimFreaks and downloaded a couple of houses. Some really big houses. HUGE. Here's the trick for getting a house you can't really afford--move your Sims onto an empty lot first, then import the house. Even with the money cheat, there's no way to get any more money until you're actually in a house, so you have to be creative.

I created a new Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi "family" in another neighborhood, or, as I like to think of it, an alternate universe. One in which Qui-Gon isn't a zombie. They also had an ethic stereotype houseboy--Chin--but only for a day. It was completely my fault--I forgot to buy a smoke detector, and he was cooking a meal on the first day, and went up in flames. Obi-Wan called the fire department, but by the time they got there, it was too late, and all that was left of him was a little pile of ash and a pewter urn.

Fortunately, he had a $50,000 insurance policy.

Well, not really, of course--I wouldn't want someone who was playing the game to think they could kill someone off and collect their insurance--I just pretended that was the case and used the money cheat to give them $50,000. Eek. Once you start down that path, it's hard to give it up . . .

They were able to buy a bunch of cool stuff--two computers, an iMac and a G4 cube, and a big screen TV and a trash compactor and a really cool stereo system. And a new stove, of course.

Obi-Wan got a job as a psychic friend, and was soon promoted to tarot card reader--he's wearing a black suit with a big gold medallian now. Qui-Gon hung around the house for a few days, but finally got a job of his own on the journalism career track--he had to start out as a typesetter, but he's since been promoted to games reviewer. Not much pay, but you do get your name on a byline, and it's a start.

Speaking of which, I got my copy of Things magazine with my article in it (Issue 13, Winter 2000). I was very pleased with it. I hadn't known what to expect, whether they were writing an article about me, or what--they'd just asked if they could use some excerpts from my journal where I'd written about The Sims.

As it turned out, they had taken several journal entries verbatim and turned them into an article in journal format called "Journal of an Obsession" (one of the reasons I was a little afraid to see the article, frankly). They also used some of my screenshots of the game.

Things is a British literary magazine, book-bound with stiff covers. This particular issue came complete with 3D glasses so you can turn its cover into a three dimensional picture of a menacing dinosaur.

A very impressive publication. I'm quite pleased to have contributed to it.

I should mention that I've gotten a few broken StorTroopers again--they just come over as broken images. So if you've sent me one and it hasn't shown up on the page, please feel free to send it again. Since I have no way to contact the people who send them, I always feel badly when they don't work.