Friday 20 April 2001

Pic of the day: "You bought this ... this BULL?" (Screenshot from The Sims House Party.)

94.8% pure

Bought House Party, the second expansion pack to The Sims. It focuses on group activities, expanding on the trend from Living Large with many new items and several non playing characters. Making friends has been a bit of a chore in The Sims. To reach the top of the career ladder, you need friends. Many friends, in several of the careers. So you end up cooking for your neighors every other day and trying to chat with them inbetween them running between the potty and the espresso machine.

I have not got much time to test the add-on so far. The batteries lasted all of ten minutes. (We're talking about a Toshiba here.) Oh yes, the train trip. I almost have to tell you about the train trip.

***

You know when I enter a train, something strange is going to happen. (Note to self: Add to character sheet. "Weirdness magnet while travelling.") This time, weirdness did not wait until we got going. We did not get going at all, for 45 minutes. The doors malfunctioned. The loudspeakers malfunctioned when they tried to tell us what was malfunctioning. And I thought to myself: If this is an omen, it's not a good one ...

It wasn't exactly an omen. But they tried to run faster to catch up somewhat. Sadly, these trains are not made to run fast on these tracks. The effect was much like sitting in my grandfather's horse carriage with a panicking horse running off the road and out in the terrain. We the passengers were thrown up and down, back and forth. Usually train is a rather comfortable way for me to travel, but this was more like something from an amusement park, designed to be mildly scary. Of course, it does not exactly help that these trains run so slowly usually for a reason. Running fast tends to damage their wheels, until they suddenly break.

If I had hoped to get some much needed sleep, I should have taken a clue when I came in and found that my seat was at the very end of the coupe, against the wall. Could not be lowered. Not that I am sure it would have helped. At least I did not have anyone sitting beside me. Instead, someone had dumped a heap of luggage there. That's quite OK by me. But sitting upright while tossed like a salad is not the most sleep inducing mode of travel even for me. I sneaked some minutes during a quiet stretch, though.

We actually did catch up some of the time, though, and I arrived before I was expected. Cutie opened the door. "You were not expected to be here already!" she said. "Uh, I did not mean it that way." Isn't she cute? We talked a little bit, then drove and picked up SuperWoman.

***

I like it alone, but there is definitely some entertainment in people too. I tend to forget just how much. Today, the three girls were discussing the location of a particular shop in Oslo. The youngest started to explain how to go relative to the Condomery. Yes, the name is pretty much what it sounds like. It's a condoms and sex toys shop. I found it mildly amusing that this was the one location in central Oslo that they all knew where was.

Of course, this could be because I am 94.8% pure. And why do I happen to know this? Because I took the Purity Test. I was kind of surprised that I wasn't even purer than that. Several other posters on the Acid Reflux forum beat me, which I find kind of disturbing. Of course, those were generally much much younger, but still. There goes my sainthood, again.

I'm not sure how much I'm pure and how much I'm just (self) repressed anyway. The query did not do a good job to distinguish between the two, in my opinion. But I agree that if you finish that test, you are no longer absolutely pure... There were some pretty weird stuff near the end there. Be warned.

I'm not sure how symptomatic this is, but in all the weeks that Norway has had its own Big Brother show, I have not even considered looking it up, until I came here (here being at SW's place) and the girls had me look it up. Not that it is particularly exciting with a 56K modem anyway! :)

Of course, I can see worse things just by closing my eyes sometimes. Being male will do that to you, I guess. I think it's slowly getting better, though. :)