Kids Today

The Teens – Angel Docker, Erica Charles, Oscar Fleming, Charlie Harris, and Clementine Flint – met up at the park after school to, you know, just hang out and stuff.

Three questions, though:

Was that Charlie Harris, the active Sim who lives in Evergreen Harbor, or Charlie Harris, the clone?

Who’s Oscar Fleming?

Is Clementine Flint a Teen now?

Yes, Clementine Flint has aged into a Teen.

Her mom, Mary Anne, threw a birthday party. Clementine thought it was just okay, but she was too polite to say so. Erica Charles was the only other Teen there. Of course, her mom’s girlfriend, Ava Middleton, was there. And so was Clementine’s namesake, Clement Frost.

There’s a girl in Clementine’s class named Chipmunk Adams.

(I know that sounds like a name I would come up with, but I swear that Chipmunk Adams is a completely system-generated NPC.)

Ava Middleton: “Clementine, your mother says you’ve been off in your own world lately. Honey, you know you can come to me and talk about anything… anything at all.”

Clementine stopped by Ava’s apartment after school.

“So, um, yes, there’s this Sim at school that I kind of like…”

Clementine and Ava talked, and when Clementine got home, the ghost of Elise Andrews was there.

“…her name is Chipmunk. Can you believe that?”

Oscar Fleming is the newest member of the Daisy Hovel Commune. He’s a Teen, and he goes to most of the same classes as Angel Docker and Erica Charles.

The Commune doesn’t have many rules but it does tend to encourage Teens to go to school and do their homework.

Oscar had a major crush on Angel, but he’s been made aware that Angel and Erica are a rocksteady couple.

No one except Charlie Harris is sure if that was the Active Charlie or the Clone Charlie at the park.

Charlie Harris has convinced her clone to change her outfits, but only slightly.

The point, of course, was so that Sims could tell the two of them apart more easily.

Charlie was Charlie’s date to the Prom, and not just as friends.

Harrison Harris thinks: “Well, it’s unusual, but as long as my daughter’s happy…”

Harrison met a Sim in the neighborhood. Her name is Madalyn Kidd. They’re building a friendship, for now.

Mary Anne Flint: “Yes, Ava, I know you love your freedom, but I’d like you to consider joining households.”

The State Of Things, Almost July 2024

It occurred to me, very recently, that my hunt for platform Fare Ambassadors is flawed. They’re checking fares only on the Downtown Transit Tunnel platforms (and the trains, of course). My commute includes only one of the four Tunnel stations, and only twice a day, at rush hours. That’s a narrow sample.

And, it occurs to me, those times my fare had been checked on the train from Capitol Hill Station to Downtown, those might have been Fare Ambassadors heading for the Tunnel platforms. I don’t know. It’s just a guess.

On my morning walks up the hill, I see a lot of people out walking their dogs – some very large dogs. It didn’t used to be that way, in this neighborhood of apartments and condominiums. I’ve written about that before. But, this morning, I saw something I’d never seen before.

A car pulled over to the curb and parked. The driver got out. I wasn’t paying much attention. There wasn’t anything unusual at that point. Then I saw that the driver had a dog on a leash, and had started a walk. The driver had driven their dog to a random spot in the neighborhood to have a walk. What was going on there?

Theory 1: The driver lived in an area that wasn’t inviting for dog walks. Theory 2: The driver and the dog were going somewhere together, and the dog asked to pull over for a rest stop. I think Theory 2 is more likely.

I am obsessed with Billie Eilish’s latest album, Hit Me Hard and Soft.

I came down with something this past weekend. I slept through the latter half of Saturday and most of Sunday. I called in sick on Monday, and slept through the first half of the day.

Over the weekend, I watched a couple of videos from a YouTube channel named Nicky Furmage. A British couple visited Seattle for the first time. They stayed for two days before continuing up to Alaska. They saw several sights. They also walked from Westlake to Columbia Tower, commenting with amazement, several times, on how quiet the city is, while admitting that it was a Sunday afternoon. (I thought to myself: Well, yeah.) It was an enjoyable couple of videos.

On Tuesday, I watched a video from Walk Signals. He walked from Pike Place Market, up Pike Street to 15th Avenue, then down Pine Street back to Pike Place Market. It was a very noisy, loud video. It was obviously filmed on a weekday. What a difference a day makes, eh?