Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Lot tour: ZZE Greek House

I apologize in advance for the fact that this post has about 50 pictures. And the formatting went kind of wonky partway through, though I'm gonna blame that one on Blogger.

The ZZE Greek House is located at 80 Crumplebottom Drive at Sim State University. As you all probably know, that house is the same as the Craftsman's Pride house located in the bin in the base neighborhood.


This is what ZZE Greek House currently looks like on the outside. I apologize for the gridlines. It also occurs to me that there really should be windows on the west wing over there; it looks weird the way it is now.

For the inside, I will first give you floor plan pictures.


The ground floor. From left to right, top to bottom: Greenhouse #1, pool, greenhouse #2. Then the hot tub room, a bathroom, the party room, and the eat-in kitchen.


The second floor. Women's dormitory and men's dormitory. Then the all purpose room, two bedrooms, and a bathroom.


The attic. It's all one big funny-shaped room except for the bathrooms up near the top. (The areas with grayish wood are under the roof and not in use.)


And just for the fun of it, here's the roof. The gridlines are almost helpful here because you can see how the attic area fits under the roof.



Now for the real tour. Imagine that you are a Sim, approaching this house from the sidewalk. In fact, you can imagine you're Random Blonde Girl there. (I have no idea who that is; she's not one of mine.) You will see the usual mailbox and garbage can by the curb. Farther on you will see a telescope and a red sports car. The telescope is mostly annoying, but it is useful as a holding area for Sims just getting back from class. (They come from beyond the sports car and go straight for the telescope and occupy themselves until I notice them and give them something else to do.) The sports car keeps my students from clogging their wants panel with "Buy a car" and allows them to fulfill that pesky Woohoo in Car want. (Why they want that when there are two perfectly serviceable beds just upstairs I'll never understand.)


If you go up the stairs you can see to the right in the above picture, you will come to a very boring, narrow porch and thus to the front door. Here it is.



If you turn to your right as you come inside, you will see a burglar alarm, an archway leading to a dining area (we'll see more of that later), and a flight of stairs.


If you then turn about 90 degrees, you will see the back wall of the room, with a door and some windows. That archway on the far right is the same as the archway on the far left in the previous picture.

This room is empty on purpose; it is used as a mingling area when the college students have parties.


If you turn a little more, you will see a door that leads to the bathroom, the Greek letter, and the stereo with a CD rack. 


Move just a little to the left and you see what is normally an open space in front of the stereo. Right now one of the ZZE residents has her cosmetologist's chair set up there. Just behind the chair is a door leading to the pool area, which we will see later.



There's not much to say about the front wall here. I think that's Sim State Dormitory across the street.



So, let's turn back to the left and go through that archway we saw in one of the above pictures. This takes us into the eat-in kitchen. Here all you can see is Maggie Landgraab sitting around in her pajamas at 3 in the afternoon, plus the chimney of the empty rental house next door.


If you go around the end of the table, you will be able to turn and see the kitchen area. You can also see that people sometimes do their assignments at the dining room table.



If you continue around the table, you can see the fridge more clearly (It looks like a fridge. Very exciting.) and the larger of the two archways that lead into the living room.



Between the two archways is a beige wall that just begs for a painting or something. 


And back to Maggie. From this angle you can see the telephone, which is almost always in use.


Next we'll go back through the living room to the downstairs bathroom. This bathroom used to be the kitchen. Yeah, it was seriously tiny. (I am reasonably certain that I left the walls as-is and just took away the arches and added doors.)


The door you can see in this picture is not the one leading to the living room. It leads to the pool area.


On the left side of this picture, you might barely be able to see the other side of that door. You can definitely see the dresser (which is down here so students can change into and out of their swimsuits more conveniently), the hot tub, the juice keg, and the trash can.


Same room, different angle. As you can see, there is a bar next to the juice keg. I don't know if drinking and swimming is the best idea, but let's pretend.


If you go through that gap in the wall, you come to the pool. There really are ladders leading into the water; they're just invisible for some reason. 


Here's another view of the pool area in which you can see more clearly how it connects to the rest of the house--there's the gap leading to the hot tub area, and then a door leading to the living room.


To get to the back yard, such as it is, you go out through this set of doors.


Down the stairs to the left is a greenhouse.


Mostly students grow tomatoes here, because those are easy to grow.


Down the stairs to the right is a similar greenhouse with orchard trees. They go dormant during winter even inside the greenhouse, which is silly.


If you go back inside and up the stairs, this is where you end up...a sort of landing between the two stairways, with a couple of doors and a random newspaper lying around. There are also, obviously, some easels.

Just beyond that second set of stairs is another door and then the lounge area--TV, video game console, bookcases, lots of comfy places to sit--and the exercise area.


A slightly different angle, from which you can see the chess tables.


The last segment of the room is dedicated to musical instruments of all sorts. You can see here the fourth and final door that leads off of this room.


Through the door off the music area is this room. It occurs to me that those windows should have some dark drapes. They let in altogether too much light.

That bed came with the house that Beata Riedmayer-Landgraab and Malcolm Landgraab bought some 40 years ago. Joan and Edith Riedmayer brought it with them when they came to college 35 years ago. Their daughters--Sarah Pons and Ingrid Riedmayer--have probably both slept in it at some point in the last 7 years.


Here is another angle of the room, in which you can see that there is a little panhandle on the room and another door hiding on the short wall.


That door leads to a bathroom. It is kind of boringly white.


If you turn around in the tiny space, you can see that there are two doors at the one end.


The door on the left brings you here, to a bedroom that is the mirror image of the Goth Room in terms of shape but very different in terms of decoration.


See? That bed was purchased by the original residents of ZZE shortly after they set up this house. Sarah's parents, Greg Pons and Joan Riedmayer, usually slept there. Sarah doesn't like to think about that, since this is the most comfortable bed in the house and if she thought about it like that she wouldn't want to sleep there.



The Blue Room opens out onto that landing at the top of the stairs. If you go through the other door off of that same landing, you come to the men's dormitory, which is also blue.


 There are four single beds in this room, but you can't see more than three in any of the pictures.


The room is also equipped with a dresser. And some more curtainless windows.


And a painfully bare wall. There used to be a bathroom there (Jack-and-Jill style, like the bathroom between the Goth Room and the Blue Room), but I got rid of it after one play session because I couldn't see it well from my preferred angle of play. (It was hidden by the stairs.)


If you go around those stairs and through the door near the lounge area, you come to the women's dormitory. It is the mirror image of the men's, but painfully pink instead of blindingly blue.


These dormitories were established during the reign of the Whitfill Brothers. (I think. I could be wrong.) At that time, there were 4 men and 2 women living in ZZE House, but 4 beds were put in the women's dormitory anyway. (You can only see 3 here, but trust me. There are 4.) In the most recent college round, there were 6 women and 2 men. Whoever didn't get a bed in the dormitory took one of the doubles.


The women have a dresser too, filled with the clothes of a generation of ZZE members.


And they have a blank wall where a bathroom used to be too. We're equal opportunity poor decorators around here.


If you go back out of the bedrooms and up the stairs, you find the attic, a room full of odd nooks and crannies, ancient furniture (that desk and bookcase were brought by Edith and Joan as well), and robot crafting stations.


Just to the right of the desk (to your left if you're sitting at the desk) is a mirror also brought by the Riedmayer twins and a mini-fridge of more recent vintage. Plus a trash can, because there's no point having a "if you want a bag of chips but don't want to go down two flights of stairs" fridge if you don't have a corresponding trash can.


If you look further into the little cranny that houses the fridge, you see that there is a door.


That door leads to a bathroom which is pretty boringly white.


This bathroom is rarely used, but in a house that usually has 6-8 occupants it can sometimes come in handy to have more than 2 bathrooms.


Directly opposite this bathroom is another bathroom. I didn't take pictures of that one because it really is exactly like and very boring.


Looking over the stair rail from the other direction one sees toy crafting benches blocking some perfectly good windows.


To the right (from the perspective of someone sitting at the Goth desk) is a long narrow space with lots of crafting tables...students can practice flower arranging, sewing, or pottery making.


In the opposite wing is the computer lab. In real life it would be utterly impractical to keep computers up here, since it gets very hot in the summer and very cold in the winter, but Sim computers don't mind. The Sims get blue sometimes if I make them do their term papers in one sitting in the wintertime, but that's not anything a workout at the treadmill won't fix. >:)

So, there you have it. A sprawling, overstuffed manor that has nurtured a full generation of college students. It's not the prettiest, but they're all rather fond of it by the time they leave.

Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Sim State University Class of 2046

Loosely based on what I've seen in places like Sullivan and Lakeside Heights. I just felt like pulling some of this out of the narrative posts and into this. Plus I am starting to get a teeny bit better at taking close-up shots of my Sims and wanted to show them off.



Gavin Dejackome
Major: Mathematics
GPA: 4.0
Honors: Zeta Zeta Epsilon Greek House member, Landgraab Society member, Big Sim on Campus award recipient
Plans: Gavin plans to reside in Prosperity Plains with his aunt, Melanie Tse, and his fiancee, Annie Riedmayer. He is looking for a job in the imports business.

Theresa Dejackome
Major: Art
GPA: 4.0
Honors: Zeta Zeta Epsilon Greek House member, Landgraab Society member, Big Sim on Campus award recipient
Plans: Theresa plans to reside in Prosperity Plains with her fiance, Malcolm Landgraab V, and his family. She hopes to have a career in architecture.

Malcolm Landgraab V
Major: Art
GPA: 4.0
Honors: Zeta Zeta Epsilon Greek House member, Landgraab Society member, Big Sim on Campus award recipient
Plans: Malcolm will reside in Prosperity Plains with his parents, local entrepreneurs Malcolm Landgraab IV and Beata Riedmayer-Landgraab, and with his fiancee, Theresa Dejackome. He hopes to work in the publishing industry and eventually start his own newspaper.


Ryker Owens
Major: Drama
GPA: 4.0
Honors: Zeta Zeta Epsilon Greek House member, Landgraab Society member, Big Sim on Campus award recipient
Plans: Ryker has received a land grant in Prosperity Plains and will be living alone. He is looking to get into the entertainment business.





Agatha Riedmayer
Major: Philosophy
GPA: 4.0
Honors: Zeta Zeta Epsilon Greek House member, Landgraab Society member, Big Sim on Campus award recipient
Plans: Agatha will be living in Prosperity Plains with her mother, Jill Smith, and uncle, Johnson Simpson. She is keeping her options open in terms of future employment.




Annie Riedmayer
Major: Psychology
GPA: 4.0
Honors: Zeta Zeta Epsilon Greek House member, Landgraab Society member, Big Sim on Campus award recipient
Plans: Annie plans to reside in Prosperity Plains with her fiance, Gavin Dejackome, and his family. She is seeking employment with the Sim City Police Department.

Monday, October 8, 2012

Week Five Part Thirteen: Sim State Dormitory + Zeta Zeta Epsilon Greek House


Annie Riedmayer: 18 years old. Aspiration: Popularity. Lifetime want: Become Captain Hero: Astrological sign: Aquarius.
Theresa Dejackome: 21 years old. Aspiration: Romance. Lifetime want: Become Celebrity Chef. Astrological sign: Libra.
Malcolm Landgraab V: 24 years old. Aspiration: Popularity. Lifetime want: Become Media Magnate. Astrological sign: Gemini
Gavin Dejackome: 21 years old. Aspiration: Knowledge. Lifetime want: Become Criminal Mastermind. Astrological sign: Cancer.
Agatha Riedmayer: 19 years old. Aspiration: Romance. Lifetime want: Woohoo 20 Different Sims. Astrological sign: Sagittarius.

Gavin is the last in my wave of Knowledge teens, as you can probably tell.




The Riedmayer family tree. I might have to start breaking it up into subfamilies. Anyway, Annie and Agatha are first cousins, and then Malcolm is Agatha's nephew (even though he's older than she is) and therefore Annie's first cousin once removed.



The Dejackome family tree is much more manageable. Gavin and Theresa were adopted by founder Rivka Dejackome and I pretend that they are twins. Their older sisters are recently married with young families.



Narrated by Gavin Dejackome

My sister Theresa and I ended up getting assigned to the same dorm as three other students from Prosperity Plains. I think the administration puts us all together on purpose. Anyway. As soon as we step out of the taxi Theresa and her boyfriend Mal--they dated in high school--were all over each other. I wouldn't mind that; some people are just into PDAs, but I'm pretty sure Theresa wasn't faithful to him and it bugged me that she was letting him think she wanted to be with him when she was with a bunch of other guys too.


The two other girls were Annie and Agatha Riedmayer. Annie told me that Agatha was her sister, but then later explained that they're first cousins but were raised together and think of themselves as sisters. Considering that I have an aunt who's not my aunt, I don't really care if she wants to say her cousin is her sister.







Annie was pretty sociable, taking the initiative to get to know all the rest of us. Theresa definitely encouraged me to spend time with Annie. I think she thought that if I got a girlfriend I would be less curious about her...extracurricular activities. Like a guy is ever going to stop looking out for his little sister. (She's only 5 minutes younger than I am, but that totally counts.) I did think Annie was quite nice, though.





At one point that first semester Theresa asked me to "help" with her term paper. And then she said she was going to the restroom and didn't come back for an hour. So I didn't help her the second semester.
Meanwhile, Annie was connecting with Ryker Owens, who was currently in charge of ZZE Greek House. Pretty soon all 5 of us were members of the Greek house.










Theresa also managed to make it into the Secret Society during her freshman year, which is a school record. Apparently she's really, really good at making connections with the other students.
I must admit, I'm not sure where Theresa ran off to all the time. I was perhaps getting a tiny bit distracted by Annie after all.











The next year, we all moved to the ZZE house. It was way better than living in the dorms. The food was better, there were state-of-the-art computers for everybody, all sorts of tools to help learn different skills...
















There were even a bunch of clothes left over from previous residents. Nobody had had the money to go shopping, so they eagerly raided the dressers and took what they wanted.


Time passed pretty uneventfully. We learned things, we all got into the secret society, we all eventually made Big Sim on Campus.

About halfway through our time at college, Mal and Theresa got engaged. I worried that they were going to regret it.







Theresa claimed that she had told Mal about her other lovers, but I'm not sure I believe that. She also said that she wasn't with anyone else after she and Mal got engaged. From the way she talked after that, I worried that she had picked Mal over her other lovers because he was rich, not because she actually loved him.


Anyway. I suppose that might have put the idea in my head, because within a year I had asked Annie to do me the honor of becoming Mrs. Dejackome, and to my immense delight, she accepted. I was blissfully happy.


Both of my older sisters had recently given birth, so they were unable to come meet Annie, but Aunt Melanie came. She and Annie hit it off right away.






Theresa asked a guy named Douglas to join our Greek House near the end of our time at college. I wasn't going to ask, but she made a point anyway of telling me that she never slept with him. He seemed very academically minded, at any rate, so I rather liked him.

Douglas Long
S4 skin, black hair, green eyes
Aspiration: Knowledge
Lifetime want: Become Prestidigitator (of course)
Astrological sign: Sagittarius


Even though he was several years behind the rest of us, he joined our study sessions and was actually quite helpful.


Just before graduation we had a toga party to which we invited as many of our family and friends as could come.

Then came graduation. It was easy for the five of us from Prosperity Plains; we were all moving back with our families or our future in-laws.


Ryker was the last to leave the Greek house. He wanted to stay in the area, but didn't want to move in with any of his friends and burden them--I doubt he would have been a burden to anyone, but I can understand that desire to stand on one's own two feet. Fortunately, Ryker found out a few months after graduation that his application for his own plot of land in Prosperity Plains had been approved. All the rest of us pooled our money and gave him some things to help furnish his new home, since he wouldn't have a lot of money to start out with. Maybe that was wrong, considering how strongly he felt about independence, but we had all become such good friends in our time together that not helping each other out at least a little was unthinkable.

Notes:

1. I was going to post pictures of the Greek House, but now I think I will do a more detailed tour in a separate post. It has changed radically over the years, but at the same time it doesn't change in the same way as the other houses in the neighborhood. 

2. I never would have thought that I could do a college post with a first-person narrator, but I think it actually  worked. I think it's funny that Gavin is so very different from Corbin, who narrated the post before this one.

3. I glossed over a lot of Theresa's escapades in the narrative, so here's a recap: I decided that I was going to shoot for her impossible want (30 simultaneous lovers) before she hit the end of her sophomore year, so that I could change her aspiration and get the prosperity challenge points for TWO impossible wants. So I had her purchase the cheapest community lot in Bluewater, threw in a double bed, and had her start inviting over every single guy she knew. (I used the college directory and the "network" business perk to get her more acquaintances.) She did manage to hit 30 lovers in time to change her aspiration to Fortune (new LTW: Become City Planner). I am so never doing that again, though.

Poor Agatha got neglected as a result of my getting burned out with Theresa; she had an affair with a professor but otherwise didn't get to do anything Romance-y. 

4. Ryker got a lot of stuff because I wanted to keep GH funds below 20k. I think they only take away funds if there's less than 20k per resident, but I am a control freak so I keep it below 20k just in case. Ryker was the only one who wanted for anything, since everyone else really did move back to established houses.