Cape Albacore 15 - Nothing Interesting Ever Happens to James; Baby Boom & New Residents

 Cape Albacore 15 - Nothing Interesting Ever Happens to James; Baby Boom & New Residents

 I spent a few days with James Russell. He's a cop without a partner now that Myra Burkhart has passed away. She's not the only one. The old folks are dropping like flies. James opened the obituaries and discovered many of his old friends and neighbors (and his dog's Zeke's friends) had passed away.

Farewell, Mr. Boots, you destructive son-of-a-gun. 

The Dawkins' daughter Karen inherited her childhood home. 

I wonder who will move into the big manor now.

Talented musician and a bit of a recluse. 

Mother of orphans. 

Who will move onto Mackerel Island? 

Ted was LeRoy's dog and Zeke's best dog friend. It looks like Slade Speegle has lost his wife as well.

Condolences, dude. 

It will be a different town without these characters, but the town will continue. I checked the demographics and there are still a LOT of elders and the town is short on babies, toddlers and children. I've got a plan - I'll explain later. For now, let's get back to James. 

One of the opportunities James got to improve in his job was to learn the martial arts skill. The only place I could think of where that could be done was at Rocco Sample's garage. (Later I learned there was a board breaker station at the festival grounds. But I thought the gym could use a training dummy, so I placed one there for James to use.)

James is still carrying a torch for his best friend's girl Jessie. 

She calls him a lot, so maybe she feels the same way. Or maybe she just sees him as a friend and has no idea how he really feels about her. 

After his workout, James decided to stop by Mirabel Palace to see if anything was going on there. He found Seth Askew out dancing with Jill Dodge.

A while back, I dropped my simself into the world. I'm living in the fisherman's cabin. I like to drop myself in, but I seldom play as myself. I prefer to see where my story goes autonomously. Anyway, here I am, so I sent James over to introduce himself to me. If I recall, James is a bookworm and so am I, so I wondered if we would hit it off.

However, it seems that I have an eye for Slade Speegle, who figured. We had a good conversation about gardening, however.

Then things took a turn for the worse.

Maybe James isn't a bookworm? Or I don't think he's well-read. Who knows. 

I guess it's time for a drink and time for James to go home. 

Little Zeke is an adorable little man. However, this is his last night in Cape Albacore. So long Zeke, old friend. 

"Why???! He's my BEST FRIEND!"

Poor James! He put the urn on his bedside table and tried to get some sleep. 

He had work in the morning. However, he was just dropping off to sleep when he became victim of a home invasion!

Nasty Clarence Wooten tried to steal James' stuff! Luckily James had a burglar alarm. However, he was too distraught to confront the culprit.

Never fear, one of James' coworkers was in the neighborhood and took care of the matter.

Clarence must have known things would go worse for him if he resisted arrest, so he waited patiently out by the police car while the arresting officer checked out the house and made sure James was okay. 

No sooner had the police car driven away when James had yet another late-night visitor.

Shauphezh admired James' well-kept front flowerbeds. But she was surprised to see that the back needed to be weeded.

James sensed someone was poking around the backyard and went to investigate.

"Well, you might as well come in, everyone else has."

"I just had a burglar here a few minutes ago. Luckily he was arrested and taken away." 

"And Grim was here and took my dog away!" he sobbed. 

"There, there," Shauphezh said, maybe tomorrow you should take the day off and go out and have some fun." 

James thought that was a good idea. He needed a mental health day after a night like this. He called his boss and told her he was sick. 

"Thanks Anna!" 

James loves to swim, so he thought he'd go to the gym and take advantage of the pool. 

A call from Jessie made his day a little brighter. 

While he was swimming an enjoying the hot tub, I looked around the gym to see what was going on. Frank Carranza was having a disagreement with Doug Lilies, who seemed to be thrilled to receive the abuse. What a weirdo!

 

I also spotted Noah Dawkins in medieval garb trying his best to master some ballet moves. I wonder if he's part of a musical the community is putting on. 

James wanted to sing karaoke, so we went over to Past Time so he could get it out of his system.

Here he found little Sassy Norrel, and got his doggie fix for the day. 

And guess who else showed up.

There didn't seem to be any hard feelings about the other night. He told me about his dog.

Maybe we'll be good friends down the road. 

The guy in the leather jacket is Raul Askew, the only son of Yvonne Askew. I gave him some big-boy pants to go with his jacket, but before that, he and James sat down to eat and talk.

James told Raul about Zeke's demise, and Raul sympathized with him, say his mother had recently passed away, and because he's still a minor, he wasn't allowed to stay in the mansion and had to move in with shirt-tail relatives. 

James sympathized with him and asked him what he did to cope with the loss.

"I spend most of my free time getting lost in video games," he said.

"That sounds kind of unhealthy," James responded.

"Yet, here we both are hanging out in an arcade." Raul pointed out.

On a side-note, I learned that Story Progression placed Raul Askew with Frank and Holly Carranza and thought, "Well that's random." Then I looked at his relationship with them and Frank was listed as his stepbrother. It took me awhile to figure it out.

 This is a bit complicated, but this is how they are related.

At first I thought it had something to do with Bubba Askew and Staci Carranza producing Buck Carranza, but Bubba is Raul's great-uncle, so that didn't fit.

However, Yvonne Askew and Davis Thornton are Raul's parents. Then Raul's father married Staci Carranza, so that makes Raul a stepbrother of Buck, Raymond, and Frank.

I guess since Davis was never really part of Raul's life Raul moved in with Frank and Holly instead of Davis and Staci. 

Anyway, James' next stop was home to pick up his sailboat, and after taking a brief ride around, he sailed over to the Jurassic Waterpark. 

Jessie called (again) to see how he was holding up.

While they were chatting away, I got a notice that Kia was at death's door. 

I get a lot of these messages about children being placed with family or friends, but they don't have children. I wonder if they have pets that are removed. Anyway, I went to check on her to see if she had children.

Her family tree has only her - no husband and no kids. However, her relationships panel shows that Elton Strickland, the town crooner, is her boyfriend. I thought it would be nice if she left him her house since he's been living in a very small apartment at H Halibut Homes. She tried to invite him over so she could ask him to be her roommate.

Let's hope she lasts until morning. You could be missing out on a great opportunity, buddy. Kia called him the next morning . . . .

This is what Elton is missing out on.

Kia went out on her paddle boat one last time.

A few hours later, Grim came calling.

I experimented with my mods hoping to get more families to move in. This would be a good family house. I usually get single adults. 

One of the last lots added to the world, Dolphin Cottages, is yet to be explored. It consists of seven buildings: two single family homes - one 1-bedroom and one 2-bedroom, two NPC houses, and three common area houses that include a small gym, laundry room, arcade, small party room, an indoor pool, a recreation room, a front office and a small movie theater. It also has a playground for kids, a community garden, and a soccer field. 

The sole inhabitant, other than NPCs, was Alfred Abel, a food merchant at the Firehouse Cafe whose dream was to be Leader of the Free World. 

Once I took control of him, he autonomously quit his job and went upstairs to the firehouse training room and practiced giving speeches. What a go-getter! He is a bit of a potato-face and there was another NPC at Dolphin Cottages that look almost identical, so I took both of them to CAS to adjust their facial features to make them look more distinct, so he may look a little more gaunt or chiseled in subsequent screenshots. 

Alfred is family oriented, clumsy, a heavy sleeper, charismatic, and friendly. He chose the two-bedroom house to sleep in, so I made that his house. He had a wish to get married, but he doesn't know many people and has no love interest.

I had recently received a notification that Brittney Franklin, who lives at H Halibut Homes and works as a private investigator, had a baby girl and named her Carol. I'd like to reserve the tiny apartments for single sims without children, so I moved her next door to Alfred. I was kind of hoping they'd hit it off, and since he's family oriented, they might eventually move in together. Brittney isn't married to the father, and the father is an elder. I gave Brittney a makeover and got her some new outfits more appropriate for her new life. Carol aged up to a toddler shortly after Brittney moved into the one-bedroom house. I put a crib in the bedroom for Carol. 

After Carol got her ride on the bee, Brittney put her down in the sandbox. There were toys there, so I thought Carol would stay put and play, but nope.

She crawled over to the gym and sat and watched TV. Her traits are light sleeper and artistic, so I don't know why she chose this activity, but no matter. Brittney joined her. 

It wasn't long before Brittney wondered if the subject matter of the program was appropriate for a toddler. Time to put the kid to bed. 

Alfred's favorite object is the keg. He spends far too much time with this activity. 

To be fair, the keg is quite popular.

I stuck with the Dolphin Cottages people long enough for Brittney to solve a case. During that time, her baby daddy asked her out on a date, but then stood her up! He had invited her to the little coffee shop at Port Nemo.

I thought she would make fast friends with the barista, but they are both avant garde and decided to accuse each other of being sellouts. 

She completed her investigation for one of the Marks family members then treated herself to an ice cream.

As I mentioned earlier, the town has a lot of old people but is short on the young'uns, so I decided to play "pollination technician" and had some couples get with it. Love Day is just around the corner after all. 

I started with Seth and Sammy. Their tiny house had a crib already. 

I spotted Sammy out at the festival grounds with Broderick, teaching him to walk. So cute!

On to Frank and Holly. 

Raul didn't seem too excited when he heard the news. I guess he doesn't really want a squalling baby in the house. 

Raul tends to spend most of his time outside anyway. It's pretty out here.

The Valencias took matters into their own hands. Good for them!

They had a baby girl and named her Heather. 

LeRoy and Bianca had a baby girl and named her Beverly.

Buck and Karen must have had a honeymoon baby - a girl named Tasha. 

Now back to H Halibut Homes for a bit.

I just watched a video about how to make NPC doors, but before I did that, I didn't want Elton Strickland having the H Halibut Homes all to himself, so I started looking around for potential roommates. Apparently the roomate service wasn't available to him, so I checked Elton's relationships to see if there were any potential candidates. I thought Damien Hurato might be a single guy, so Elton invited him over. It was a definite NO!

Not only was he married, but he was a walking liability. I thought about moving Elton out to another house, but the guy only had 7000 simoleons. He needs to work on his career more. I sent him to the small performance park, but discovered there was no performance floor on the stage and no proprietor. The stage is just one tile too small to accommodate the performance floor. I might enlarge the stage at a later time, but for now Elton just performed for tips - he earned 84 simoleons.

He and Damien played a game of horseshoes, then Elton went to Mirabel Palace to audition there. He was told to practice more - he wasn't quite ready to be a performer there. 

As for the roommate issue, I decided to add some of my favorite singles from past games as Elton's roommates. I added Matilda Cattiwaller and her four cats from Emerald Valley; . . . 

Saul Goodman, the shifty lawyer from Adventureland; Guadalupe Coy the child refugee who grew up in foster homes and dreams of having a family of her own, from Toledo; and Santo Bobo, the aspiring actor from my deserted island challenge (who then moved to Adventureland.) 

I think Guadalupe was already set up as being in the political career when I added her, because I don't remember sending her to apply in this game, but I learned later that she was in the political career here as well. Santo immediately wanted to get a job at the film studio, so I sent him over there. He really loves the star's trailer and decided to sleep there rather than come home.

As for Saul, I am still waiting for him to show some interest in getting a job, but so far nothing is showing up in his wants that is job-related. This is weird because every time I switch to a different household and the wants are empty, the first thing the sims seem to want is to join a particular career - even if they already have a nice job that is aligned to their lifetime wish. The second thing they all want is a planter bowl. I usually pass on these wants unless the sim is unemployed or has some kind of gardening lifetime wish and has the space needed for a planter bowl. 

But Saul doesn't seem to think he needs a job. He was milling around Cuttlefish Mews in the morning, along with several senior citizens, waiting for the bar to open. By 1pm the place was hoppin'. 

Our friend Damien was the life of the party.

Seth Askew, now a senior, is wondering about the state of the world now that the younger generation is starting to take the reins.

It's Love Day, and the residents of H Halibut Homes are out looking dates. Elton had the wish to kiss someone, but I guess paying 5 simoleons at the kissing booth doesn't count. He was out of luck this Love Day.

Matilda Cattiwaller went to the festival, and she and Hector Lance took a shine to each other.

Santo Bobo wanted to get an elixir, so I sent him to the elixir shop where he bought a skills booster. 

He then tried his hand at glass blowing, but failed. Not enough elixir, I guess.

He had worked up an appetite, so he went over to the coffee house for a bite to eat.

There he met Chloe Fisher and found her intriguing.

Guadalupe wanted to learn how to fish, so I sent her to the dog park to fish the little pond there, but it was frozen over. Instead, she met Alfred Abel and learned that he too was interested in politics.

They were really hitting it off until Brittney came on the scene and tried to steal Alfred away from her.

Guadalupe autonomously one-upped Brittney by offering Alfred a massage.

I was curious to see which girl would win his heart, but he up and "poof" disappeared. Some kind glitch I guess. 

Guadalupe has a guitar and some skills from the previous game and entertained the dog park visitors.

Shortly after this, the portrait panel started glitching out showing only Elton Strickland no matter who I selected. I even tried switching to a different household, but the problem persisted. I logged out and will log back on at some point. Hopefully the problem will fix itself. If not, it's been a good run.