Ygraine Rossi and her family are continuing their Nickel & Dimed challenge. Ygraine goes on a successful first date with Remington Hiatt. Her daughter Genevive earns money from her job but struggles in school without studying skills. The family works to improve their home and finances through the kids' school and work efforts despite challenges from a bullying coworker.

1. Welcome back to Auspicious It Ain’t, my Nickel & Dimed
challenge! This challenge is pass/fail, and thus far I am passing.
For those of you who don’t remember (and I don’t blame you; it’s
been a long time), the household is headed by Ygraine Rossi. Her
children are Genevive (the elder, and a girl) and Beaudelaire (the
younger, and a boy). Ygraine is a Family Sim, and would love to
fall in love and get married. That is against the rules, but at least
she has arranged a good marriage for Beaudelaire with the
granddaughter of a prominent local businessman.*
*See Chapter 5.

2. Since this is the first chapter after the rebuild, there are a few
things that are different. Not the way anyone looks (since
joandsarah77 was kind enough to extract all my sims for me), but
other things, like the fact that it isn’t winter anymore, and the
family tomato plants have gone from being dead to being
nonexistent.

3. Some of the sartorial choices have changed as well. I could
remember everyone’s everyday clothing, and sometimes the
outerwear, but undies and athletics and formals completely eluded
me. I’m pretty sure Beaudelaire didn’t have a mascot outfit for his
athletic wear before, but since I can’t remember what he did have,
he’s keeping what CAS gave him randomly.
This is in keeping with my policy of keeping the random clothing
provided at age transition for this family.

4. The townies are not the same, and there is a new neighbor as well,
who you can see in pink, with the hat. The game generated some
very interesting townies this time around, and the random name
generator seems to have fixed itself: they are not all named
Abhijeet or Allyn! I was prepared to change names using the
SimBlender if necessary, but it turned out to not be needed.
I used the SimBlender and the Sim Manipulator to restore skills
and personality points that were lost in the cloning process. I
consider this quite fair.

5. Once I realized that I hadn’t set gender preferences during the
rebuild, I went ahead and restored them. Ygraine immediately
decided that one of the Welcome Wagon members was quite easy
on the eyes.

6. Ygraine is still in her old career path (Culinary) and as high as she
can get without gaining illegal skills (Drive-Through Clerk).
However, I installed a set of food stands created by bienchen83,
which are awesome for mall food courts, and the set included a
default replacement food stand worker outfit. This is generally a
good thing, since it means that the staff at a cake store won’t be
wearing tropical shirts, but it apparently also changes Ygraine’s
uniform.
I think I will leave the default in, but I thought you should know
why she looks funny.

7. Genevive was originally at the top of her Teen career, with a A+
GPA. I was able to restore her grades and to put her back in the
correct level of her career, but she hasn’t officially topped it
because she started with her job performance meter half-full. That
just means that she can earn the Overachiever scholarship again.
Since she needs $2,500 in scholarships to be able to attend Uni,
every little bit helps!

8. The kids did homework together, v e r y s l o w l y. It took me
longer than it should have to figure out the reason for the change in
speed.

9. In this ’hood, both Genevive and Beaudelaire were created as
Teens, and neither has Learned To Study. Due to time and need
constraints, Ygraine was able to help Beaudelaire with that, but not
Genevive.
I will make sure that Genevive gets Homework Help next rotation.

10. On Day Two of the rotation, Genevive brought a friend home from
work, and said “friend” decided that it was his mission in life to
torment Beaudelaire. Poking, pranking, and insulting were his
weapons of choice.
BEAUDELAIRE: Ow! Hey, um, maybe you’d like to try poking
someone else?
THE COWORKER: Nah, I’m good.
BEAUDELAIRE; Well then, maybe we could reschedule this for
some other time? I’m afraid tonight’s not really convenient.
Beaudelaire has ten Nice points.

11. Beaudelaire isn’t doing too badly at work himself. With that $500
bonus, the family was able to finish the second bathroom, and by
“bathroom” I mean “enclosed toilet.” Genevive did not earn a
bonus, but she did earn a salary, and I let her choose what she
wanted to buy with it. She Wanted a stereo, a stereo worth more
than $1,800, and a car.
Guesses as to which Want I fulfilled?

12. Something unexpected happened on Day Three of the rotation:
Ygraine was asked on an outing! I was expecting a lot of people to
come along, but no -- it was just Remington Hiatt here and Ygraine
herself.
Please accept my apologies for the darkness of this picture and the
next two. I think there is some color-conversion issue when I open
screenshots in my graphics program. Since this is too dark, and
since having queues in the upper left is not acceptable if it can
possibly be avoided, I will be experimenting with the color
conversion in future pictures.

13. Because it was just an outing, the meal was Dutch treat, but that
didn’t stop Ygraine.
REMINGTON HIATT: Wow, anyone would think you hadn’t
eaten in a week!
YGRAINE: Oh, I eat. But we’re on a budget and I have a two
teenagers. And I’m sure you know what hollow legs teenage boys
have!
REMINGTON: (makes a moue of agreement*, mouth full) Mm.
*A “moue” is a pouting motion of the lips and is always negative, but I have no
other word to describe that lip motion when combined with politely raised
eyebrows and an otherwise encouraging face. Suggestions are welcome!

14. After dinner, Ygraine asked Remington if perhaps there was a…
special reason he’d asked her to join him for dinner. The response
was affirmative.
Ygraine floated home, and went to sleep with a smile.
…However, since this was the evening of Day Three, that is where
we will have to leave this relationship.

15. But before we go here is a picture of Genevive getting the hug that
all my readers agreed that she so badly needed after her Myshuno!
entry.*
Until next time, Happy Simming!
*See “No, But You Can See It From There.”