So thanks to kawaiibishounen I am now probably going to be addicted to The Sims Life Stories. It’s what The Sims should have been from the beginning - you can guide them through all parts of their lives, not just going to work and earning money and reaching the top. They have specific desires and lifetime goals and everything. Plus you can still build their houses, and it all runs nicely on a laptop! You can even have other programs running at the same time. It’s awesome.

Unfortunately I’m not playing it right now. We came over to the in-laws’ house because they are going on a road trip tomorrow, and we were invited to say goodbye and stuff. I brought my laptop to make sure I could connect to their network, but I didn’t bring the game CD because I figured it wasn’t needed. Nope! You needs it, precious, you needs it. Ah well…I’ll play when I get home, probably. Riley is just back from her first day of work; I made a Sims Stories blog to post screenshots for fun.

I forgot to mention the funny part about winning bingo at Tortilla Flats on Monday night. I was already halfway through my second margarita when they passed out the bingo cards, but I was very careful to mark off the right numbers - if you called bingo and had it wrong, your entire party was disqualified. Two people had already called out bingo before me, but both were wrong. When I called out that I had bingo, we overheard from another table:

I was going to put this in tomorrow’s quicklinks, but I decided it was worth its own post, especially because you have to do this in order. These are all YouTube videos.

First, check out Patrick Stewart Alphabet, which I found thanks to hobbitblue.

Next, go to The Picard Song. You might want to turn your speakers down, this is kind of loud.

And finally, The Sims Picard Song. Also loud, but funny!

(Unfortunately none of these are accessible to deaf viewers…I really hate that. Sorry!)

Today I finally got to go to Six Flags Great Adventure! It’s in New Jersey, and every time I’m on the turnpike I see the sign, but I’d never been before. It was more crowded than I was expecting, so I didn’t get to go on the two major rides - Kingda Ka, which is currently the world’s tallest and fastest coaster, and El Toro, which opened earlier this year, both had lines far too long for my taste. The Kingda Ka line would have been about 60-90 minutes for a 28-second ride, which isn’t an effective use of my time! I did get to ride several other coasters, as shown in my updated coaster count. We didn’t end up going through the safari because we were tired at the end of the day, but also I’d seen the safari area while on the lift hill of Medusa and I wasn’t very impressed.

The most memorable part of the day was when my friend :R: convinced us to go on the log flume. I don’t normally go on water rides, because I’m almost never there in a bathing suit and I don’t ever have a change of clothes. But I figured the log flume doesn’t get you as wet as the river rapids, so it would probably be okay - and :R: had sat out a few of the coasters so I wanted him to get to do a ride he wanted. I sat in the front with :R: behind me, and A sat in the rear seat with C behind her. When my lower legs got soaked after the first tiny drop, I knew it was a bad idea to get on that ride! Sure enough, when I climbed onto the rotating platform after it was all over, I was drenched. I looked like a wet cat who’s very insulted that it’s been given a bath! I never did dry off the rest of the day, and when we got to our hotel room I peeled off cold clammy jeans and hung them up to finish drying.

I did get a couple of souvenirs - a shot glass, and :R: bought the on-ride photo from Medusa and gave it to us.

If you have a jar full of coins, I highly recommend Coinstar’s new coins to certificates program. If you ask the machine to turn your coins into cash, they charge a service fee of 8.9% of the total amount counted. If you have it turned into an eCertificate for Amazon.com, iTunes, Starbucks, Borders, Pier One Imports, or a few other places, the coin counting fee is waived completely. I just brought my giant jar of coins in, and here’s what I had:

Dollars	1
Half-Dollars	0
Quarters	239
Dimes	172
Nickels	164
Pennies	1036
Total	$96.51

Not bad, eh? So I now have an Amazon.com gift certificate for $96.51. A tip for those of you who bring in your coins, though - before you hit the “I’m Done” button, check the reject bin at knee level. After I had already completed my entire transaction, I discovered the reject bin held 25 quarters, 10 nickels, four dimes, and 20 pennies, for a total of $7.10 that didn’t get counted. It’s worth trying any rejects again just to see if they’ll go through, so don’t forget to do that before pressing the final button.

Okay, we are officially weird. A has gone into a Freecycling frenzy, and here are two recent listings:

OFFER: Four X-ray films of a cat
Well, these are four X-ray films of a cat. Perhaps you are an extremely creative person and want these for a project, or you want to play a practical joke on your doctor?

OFFER: Inflatable hot pink plastic poodle
Well, this is a multi-use item: scares cats and creeps out my 23-year-old sister. Perhaps it’s the festive bow and red eyes; perhaps it’s the haunting wheezing it makes when it’s squeezed. Has a loop on top for hanging as a…decorative item. Or for Halloween.

I went geocaching with my dad today! We went to Savage Park, which is near where he lives. We started out by finding the Northbound Trading Post, which is located at the only rest area along I-95 between Dale City VA and Maryland House north of Baltimore - a distance of about 100 miles - and so there were a lot of people around. The GPS led us straight to the right area, and I didn’t even have to touch the foliage to spot the cache. I’d been meaning to pick this one up for a while, so I was glad to check it off my list.

We headed to the park next, where we found four caches - all of the ones up at the Wincopin end of the park. I’m not sure which one was my favorite - they were all pretty good. I think the nicest location was Hog’s Heaven and it was a nice cache too. I left a couple of stuffed Neopets toys from McDonald’s - even though people usually deride McDonald’s toys being left in caches, I am pretty sure that Neopets is popular enough to be more valuable than the other stuff.

I would estimate that we spent a little over two and a half hours walking around in the park. It was pretty good exercise, as there were some hills to go up and down, but as we approached the car I realized my knee was hurting (and it still aches). So we skipped Bunch of Savages in this Town, a micro at the far end of the park. We went out for lunch, and nobody harrassed me about bringing my own food, which is nice. I didn’t sleep well at all last night, so I went home after lunch. But I had a really good time! I’m looking forward to geocaching with my dad again soon. (You can read his post about today here.)

I successfully placed my first cache today! I am still waiting for approval from the local volunteer, but Meadowlark is settled in place on the grounds of the Meadowlark Botanical Gardens. (It looks like that link won’t work until the cache is actually approved, but if you’re interested keep checking - or I will probably post again when it has been approved.)

I wasn’t sure what I was going to leave as a First-to-Find prize, but at the convention I picked up a set of pizza dice with the intention of making them a humorous FTF prize. They didn’t quite fit in the container but I managed to squeeze them in. As change for the pizza dice I received a $2 bill, so I marked that for Where’s George and put that in the cache as well. I’m so nervous about it getting approved, and I can’t wait to hear the first reports of finding it!

Since the earliest days of roller coasters, the name Giant Dipper has been used for wooden coasters across North America. Between 1924 and 1930, five roller coasters opened under this name; today, only two are still operating, both in California.
Read the rest of this entry »