This document provides an update on the story "Already in Progress" and introduces several characters. It summarizes events in the lives of Descartes Tsvirkunov and his daughters Anastasia and Rebecca. It also introduces Sally Couderc and her return from backpacking with Troy. The document continues introducing more characters and their relationships while providing colorful commentary.

1. Hello, and welcome to the delayed release of Already in
Progress! As you may or may not know, I will be moving Any
Minute Now, just as soon as my landlord says it’s okay and
gives me the keys to the upstairs apartment. (The wait is driving
me crazy!) I’ll be moving myself instead of hiring someone,
which means that most of my time is spent decluttering,
packing, cleaning, or attempting to do all three things at once.
But I did want to get this update out for you before I went poof
with no warning, and hooray hoorah: here it is!
The next update on this – and indeed, on all my stories – will be
delayed an indefinite amount of time, though. I apologize.
And now, we return to our story: Already in Progress…

2. At the Tsvirkunov household, Anastasia and Rebecca seem to
be involved in some sort of friend-making competition. At least
one of them brings a friend home from school every day, and
they are generally platinum or high gold from either making a
new friend or becoming best friends with one they already
have.

3. And the girls have inherited the Awesome – they can even
convince their mother to play catch in the house!

4. Admittedly, they don’t have any gardening badges yet, but they
have successfully grown their own tomatoes. And they aren’t
Bland, either!
The silver badge belongs to Abbey.

5. Descartes has become an International Sim Of Mystery, which I
believe is one promotion away from his LTW of Dread Pirate.
Because he is Awesome, he has been promoted well above
where the numbers say he should be via chance cards.
Apparently, International Sims of Mystery maintain their
Mystery by dressing like Mafiosi instead.

6. Descartes’ opinion of his work uniform seems to be about as
low as my own, since he constantly rolls Wants for the skill
points he needs to be promoted, and is never happier than when
he is working on gaining them… somehow.
He occasionally rolls the Want to Make A Friend when he is
low for promotion, but his daughters are taking care of that end
of things very nicely, so Descartes rerolls that fairly frequently.
The other Wants are autonomously perma-locked.
Descartes is Awesome at skilling (of course), and as it turns
out, there’s only one challenge he’s not ready for.

7. Parenting teenaged daughters.
That’s Anastasia in blue; she’s a Popularity Sim. Rebecca is in
pink; she’s a Romance Sim. I decided to keep their same color
schemes going, as they seem to fit.
And I actually chose their aspirations randomly! I closed my
eyes and waved the mouse around for a count of ten and then
did “Eenie meenie miney moe” (with a “my mother” chaser)
beginning on the aspiration closest to where the mouse was
when I opened my eyes.
Not that you care about my methodology, but it wasn’t the
usual one so I thought I’d say.

8. Now, Amy Littledragon and Sally Couderc went to college at
the same time and graduated at the same time, but they were not
the same age. Sally is the younger by two days. To preserve
that difference, I played the Coudercs for two days before
moving Sally back in.
They all had the flu, so this is about as exciting as it got.

9. Of course, Sally didn’t just sit in the Sim Bin. She spent her
time backpacking in the mountains – with Troy.

10. Let’s face it: since Bon Voyage came out three years ago, we’ve
all seen the same basic things a million times. “Oh, look! Tom
and Janet are throwing axes! And they had a log rolling
competition! And they learned to slap dance! Oh, and they went
to a lot of trouble to meet Bigfoot!”
Instead of making this time number one million and one, I’ll
just point out a few things I didn’t know about vacationing in
Three Lakes.

11. For instance, did you know that “Talk” is an option when you
have two Sims in a tent? Or that if you choose it, you can see
their silhouettes on the tent?

12. Another new-to-me feature was that Sims in a log-rolling
competition can splash their opponent.

13. Generally speaking, though, you can assume that Sally and
Troy between them acquired every Three Lakes vacation
memory except “Met Bigfoot.” Sally and Troy both
autonomously perma-locked a Fear of Bigfoot, and I didn’t feel
like fulfilling the Fear.

14. Besides, anyone who can manage three bull’s-eyes the first
time she ever tries throwing an axe is not someone you want to
mess with.

15. SALLY: Hi, Mom! (hugs Lucy)
LUCY: Welcome home, honey. (wrinkles her nose) Would you
like to, ah, freshen up?
SALLY: Oh, I’d love to! We both would. Three Lakes only has
these cold showers and you have to put in a quarter for every
minute of water. I can’t tell you how much I’ve been looking
forward to a good long soak in a real bathtub!
LUCY: “We”?
SALLY: We. I told you about Troy, you remember? He’ll be
living with us now because (whispers inaudibly)
LUCY (shocked): Sally!
SALLY: Oh, pooh! Don’t be such a stick-in-the-mud. (waves
Troy over) Troy, come meet my mother!

16. TROY: Wow, is it good to be back in civilization again! Flush
toilets, real clothes, and refrigerators! (takes a big drink) That’s
a pretty dress – it looks good on you.
SALLY (demurely): Thank you. I thought it was the nicest
maternity dress in the whole store.
TROY: (spits half his drink across the table and shoots the rest
out his nose)

17. I may as well mention at this point that I have started making
sure that my Sims have pictures of their relatives in their
houses. I think it’s a nice touch, and it fills in blank walls well.
Some Sims will have more pictures, or more recent pictures,
than others, of course.
As you can probably tell from the plants at the edges of the
shot, this is Buttercup’s house, since that was the first house
where I put this new plan into action.

18. Let’s begin with the morning of a typical day.
JOSEPHINE: Ugh, Daddy, what are these supposed to be?
ALBERT: They’re pancakes.
JOSEPHINE: They taste like charcoal. (gags) They’re horrible.
Where did you learn to cook?
ALBERT: If you don’t like them, you know where the cereal is.
JOSEPHINE (quickly): No, I think they’ll be great if I put some
more syrup on them. Can you please pass me the syrup?
ALBERT: No. You already had enough.

19. Buttercup makes friends while the kids are at school and Albert
is at work. (She works from home, for understandable reasons.)
Although Oliver is Buttercup’s brother-in-law and has been her
brother Oakapple’s best friend since they were so high, she
didn’t get to know him much prior to the wedding. This is
mostly because she didn’t (and still doesn’t) get along with
Oakapple. As it turns out, she gets along fine with Oliver.

20. Cecil is making new friends, too. Frederic is his first non-
female friend. I’m not sure what that says about him, but there
it is.
Don’t recognize Frederic? That’s the problem with the way I
play – everyone ends up at the same point, but I don’t play in
order. Don’t worry: all will be cleared up soon!

21. After dinner and homework, Jo and Cecil play until bedtime.
Sometime they play alone and sometimes they play with each
other, but either way, their Fun meter is nice and full before
they put on their pajamas.
And the reason for the Walls Down? (For it is indeed
deliberate.) To show you just how small and awkwardly shaped
Jo and Cecil’s room is. I don’t know how they’re going to be
able to keep sharing as Teens but I don’t have space on the lot
to give them their own rooms.

22. Whatever it is I’m going to do, though, I need to figure it out
soon. They Grew Up in perfect sync once again this rotation.

23. And privacy is important once you get to be this old.
And speaking of houses that really don’t have enough room for
everybody…

24. Trixie’s house is so full that Dmitri is actually sleeping in the
hall. The family has a cubic ton of money and plenty of space
on the lot; I am just made of fail when it comes to rebuilding,
and I don’t want to split Tirtha and Trixie up.

25. I mean, just look at how close everybody is! It’s almost like
there’s no difference between the two families.
ARIADENE: (covering her face with her hands): Where’s
Dmitri? Where’d he go? (flipping her hands open) There he is!
DMITRI: (crows with delight)
ARIADENE: (repeats gestures) Where’s Dmitri? Where is he?
There he is!
DMITRI: (laughs delightedly)
ARIADENE: Daddy, when am I going to get another little
brother or sister?
ABHIJEET: Probably never, honey. Mommy and Aunt Trixie
are too old to have any more babies.
ARIADENE: Aw…

26. So, in an attempt to relieve some of the congestion, Abhijeet
spent some of that cubic ton of money on a surprise for Tirtha.
TIRTHA: What’s this?
ABHIJEET: It’s for you. So we can get the flower bench out of
the upstairs hall.
TIRTHA: What, you’ve got an extension to the house in that
little box?

27. ABHIJEET (V.O.): Not exactly, no.
But the deed to a flower shop is almost as good, right? At least
it’s somewhere to keep the flower bench and all the
arrangements Tirtha makes. And I don’t even care if the
business makes a profit.
Which is probably just as well, given how QND routinely
hemorrhages money. But I do want to have somewhere for my
Sims to be able to buy a nice wildflower bouquet without
having to spend hours and hours real time watching them gain
the necessary badges.

28. Now is probably as good a time as any to mention that
Ariadene has had a makeover.

29. So has Dmitri, and for the best of reasons: he’s now an
adorabubble Toddler!

30. And now that Dmitri is old enough to have a personality, his
father is starting to think about his future.
LEONID (V.O.): Zaika, I have met very nice man today, with
daughter almost same age as Dmitri. I am thinkink to arrange
marriage with his daughter for our son.
TRIXIE (V.O.): You can’t just arrange a marriage for your kids
like that! What is this, the middle ages? Nobody does that
anymore! And what if they don’t like each other?
LEONID (V.O.) (mildly): My parents arranged marriage for
me.
TRIXIE (V.O.): You were married before? Why didn’t you tell
me this?

31. LEONID: No, no. She is meetink me, this girl, and she is
calling it off. She did not like my eyeliner. And I did not lose
too much sleep because she looks like south end of northbound
hippo, with smell to match.
TRIXIE (trying not to laugh): The phrase is “south end of a
northbound horse.”
LEONID: Da, I know. But hippo is larger. And smellier. I have
much better wife now. (kisses Trixie) If children do not like
each other when they grow up, is not problem. This
arrangement is, is insurance.
Did I mention that Trixie is an Elder now? No?
Trixie is an Elder now.

32. And speaking of Elders… When I entered the Mifune Sanders
lot, Mifune was just standing there, unmoving, like this while
Eileen used the facilities. Eventually, she finished and he got
out of the tub, spun into his clothes, and went about his
business.
Then, with a good chunk of time left on his life bar, Mifune
apparently died. I knew nothing about his death until I got the
popup about his life insurance beneficiaries. Nobody else in the
house paused what they were doing to so much as sniffle at his
passing, so I figured it was a glitch, and quit without saving.

33. When I reentered the lot, this is the position Mifune was in. Just
as awkward, if completely different. Because it was completely
different, and because Mifune’s life bar still had a good amount
of space on it, I decided he was probably fine.

34. Alas, I was wrong.
MIFUNE: Hey, has anybody seen the timer?
GRIM REAPER: Ri… .ere, M.. San…s.
MIFUNE: No, not that one. It only does what, a couple
minutes? I need to time twenty.
GRIM REAPER: Thi. ti… .oes a .i..ti.., M.. San…s. .nd i.’. ou.
o. .an..
MIFUNE: Aw, nuts.
My best guess is that Mifune’s life bar was slaved to Eileen’s in
the UI. That happens sometimes when a couple was made in
CAS – or at least, it does in my game.

35. At least this time, people noticed he was gone.
Eileen took it pretty hard, and Venus howled all night.

36. Grief takes everybody differently, and in the case of Louise and
Charlotte, it took the form of dueling sponge mops. Seriously,
you have no idea how many pictures I have of them mopping
up the same puddles.
Let’s leave them to work out their feelings in private, shall we?

37. Mifune Sanders, 70 years old. Named after a Japanese actor
known for his work with director Akira Kurosawa, Mifune was
the only one of his family to have children. (His friendly
squabbles with Eileen Tang in college eventually led to true
love and an unexpected set of twins.) Mifune was a fan of the
work of designer Goopy GilsCarbo, although his devotion to
the entire GilsCarbo line led to a business that routinely
hemorrhaged money. Due to some sort of glitch, he died twice.
Rest in peace, Mifune.

38. Here we see another one of those fun family snapshots. As you
can probably tell, this is the home of nine-Nice-points Dante.
As you can also tell, the middle-of-nowhere handicap is making
it quite hard to decorate. Between the wall and the mirror, you
can see every piece of wall covering in the whole room.

39. This will probably be the snapshot that other people have of this
family. Dante likes to spend lots of time with his girls.

40. Although sometimes he has to compete with Amy for time with
Cathrynne.
Amy moved back in after college, as per my usual keep-the-
population-low policy, but there’s no room in the house for her
college sweetheart. (Remind me again why I thought breeding
cats was a good idea?) Since she keeps rolling Wants for him,
she’ll probably move out again next rotation.

41. There’s not as much competition for Cathrynne as you might
think, though, since Dante is a Horoscope Writer. He’s been a
Horoscope Writer since before he got married, and he’ll
probably be a Horoscope Writer for the rest of his life. I don’t
know what’s going on with him: I’ve gotten the same chance
card for him practically every other time he goes to work, and I
always choose the “Tell them to propose” option, which comes
with a promotion if it works. And it always does work, and then
the next time I check to see what level Dante’s at, he’s a
Horoscope Writer again. Either my game is glitchy or I’m
repressing the demotions.
And can someone please explain why a Horoscope Writer
needs to wear a camera to work?

42. On the last day of the rotation, Cathrynne Grew Up. I think she
looks more like her father now, especially around the chin and
mouth.
Cathrynne loves dancing, and will dance with anyone and
everyone. Her relatives are only too happy to oblige.

43. At the home of Oliver and Oakapple, the girls are making good
use of their time. Saigon applied for Garden Club membership,
and was accepted. The judges did not provide a wishing well,
and in fact barely provided any money. This means that I have
only two more chances at a wishing well, unless someone else
moves into the house.
I really don’t know what they don’t like, since every single
plant on the lot was Thriving and there are no flamingos.
They’re just picky, I guess.

44. Saigon and Fantine do not have a plant light to get them
through the night, since plant lights cost $2,000 Simoleons
each, and even with the Garden Club award the family bank
balance was at less than $1, 000.
However, that was enough to open an extremely basic (and
ugly) farm stand, selling the produce from the garden, the
orchard, and the pond. The farm stand not only broke even, it
actually made a small profit in the first play session.

45. Although Oakapple proved to be something of a liability.
OPINIONATED GARDEN CLUB LADY: How can you have
a zombie working here? That can’t possibly be hygienic! What
if bits fall off in the food? And he smells something awful!
THE DAUGHTER WHO IS THE OWNER OF THE FARM
STAND: That’s my father you’re talking about. If you don’t
like the smell, you can leave.
THE DAUGHTER WHO ISN’T THE OWNER: Yeah –
nobody insults my father. (grabbing the Opinionated Garden
Club Lady’s collar) Let me help you find the edge of the lot.

46. Oliver and Oakapple haven’t really contributed much to the
stock of the farm stand, either. Although Oakapple planted most
of the vegetable plots, it’s the girls who have tended most of
them, who have talked the plants into Thriving even when they
are crawling with aphids and Japanese beetles, and caught most
of the fish.

47. Oliver and Oakapple do try to help with that, but they just
aren’t all that good at it.

48. The girls have a silver and a gold Fishing badge, respectively.
You may have noticed that Saigon and Fantine seem to do a lot
of their outdoor things at night, and that is quite true. Since they
don’t have a plant light, they’re going to go into motive distress
no matter what. I figure they may as well make themselves
useful while they’re about it.
Besides, they keep rolling Wants to gain another Fishing badge
or catch a particular type of fish. I do try to keep my Sims
happy.
Well, I do the interesting ones, anyway.

49. Our last stop this round is the home of Eddie, Celeste, and
Frederic, where something very strange has happened.
This is Frederic: a happy, normal child. He likes playing on the
swings and being read to by Mommy and Daddy, and he
doesn’t care that he has an unflattering haircut and the exact
same outfit as Cecil. He doesn’t care, but I do, so I bought him
new clothes and sent him to the mirror to change his look.
At this point, please take a good look at Frederic’s eyes. They
have whites, yes? And even if you can’t tell the color exactly in
this shot, they are brown.

50. This is what happened after I went to fix his hair. Alien eyes!
His eyes changed as soon as I clicked on the mirror, and no
matter what I did after that, they stayed changed. I am not
necessarily objecting to the change – I was feeling cheated that
he didn’t get any alien features from Eddie – but I admit to
being just a tiny bit concerned that they spontaneously changed
like that.

51. He doesn’t seem to have suffered any ill effects, and his parents
aren’t particularly concerned about it, so I’m not going to
initiate another rebuild or anything. But I’m still baffled as to
what happened.

52. The other exciting thing to happen at Frederic’s house was that
a burglar broke in.
Now, Edgar may be Nice, but he is not Stupid, and the alarm
system went off right away.

53. The police showed up in a timely manner, and a rousing fight
ensued.
Two out of the three people in the household found it rousing,
anyway. I’ll give you three guesses as to who did not. (The first
two don’t count.)

54. EDGAR: Well! That was certainly exciting, wasn’t it?
FREDERIC (enthusiastically): Uh-huh!
EDGAR: Are you going to be okay to go to bed?
FREDERIC: Sure. Why wouldn’t I?
EDGAR: Well, you know… Sometimes people don’t feel safe
after a break-in. (quickly) Not that there’s any reason for that!
We are perfectly safe. But I just wanted to check and see that
you don’t need someone to hold your hand or stay with you
while you go to sleep.
FREDERIC: I’ll be fine, Daddy. But if you need a hug to make
you feel better, I can give you one.
On which heartwarming note, I will wrap up.

55. For those of you who didn’t recognize the blonde man in the
awesome mustache-and-sideburns combo, he is Old Adam, the
current head of household in my (un)Officially Wacky
Boolprop Challenge. You should absolutely go check it out.
[/shameless self-promotion]
Any clothing or hairstyles you haven’t seen before are Sims
Store items snagged from More Awesome Than You. Except
the sideburns-and-mustache combo; I made that myself.

56. On a related note, the reason Trixie looks so good even as an
Elder is that I downloaded a hack from Mod The Sims that
allows Elders to wear Adult clothing. Plus, she works out a lot.
I also downloaded some recolors of the ceiling tiles I had
previously added, but that should do it. I can’t think of anything
else I want that I can’t make for myself.
Until next time – whenever that is – Happy Simming!
**********
The Grim Reaper’s lines, in order:
Right here, Mr. Sanders.
This timer does a lifetime, Mr. Sanders. And it’s out of sand.