Antonio Monty's Family: Week 1

This is the start of a somewhat long stay in Veronaville. We're here for the Monty clan, and as you know, there are several households to spend a week with, beginning with Antonio and his children. In my game, I have placed them here at No. 30 Poet Place, one of the typical Veronaville houses. 

According to the household biography, "recently widowed, Antonio must either give up his job at the family restaurant and use his savings to raise his twins Beatrice and Benedick, or hire help and keep the job he loves. What will be his role in the family feud that may have cost him his wife?" 

We are to believe that there is a family restaurant (has anyone ever found it in Veronaville?), and that there is a mystery behind the death of Antonio's wife - but in all the years I have been playing this game, I have never found any indication for the cause of Hero's untimely death.

The house comes with a rather grand fire place and little else, making it necessary for the family to be very careful with the just over 2,500 Simoleons they have in cash. 

Upstairs is no better with just the cheapest toilet, shower and sink. Luckily, as an Executive Chef, Antonio earns 1,200 Simoleons a day. Therefore, even if they have very little to begin with, the family with be able to gradually improve their furniture and decor.

Everyone is off to school or work first thing on this Monday morning anyway, and by the time Antonio is back from work, he can afford to buy a fridge, dining table with chairs and cheap beds. The lounge will have to wait for another day - the children have to do their homework sitting on the floor. 

Even a reasonably good cook can find making a meal on the cheapest stove difficult! 

But there is no way he will let the food go to waste, and everyone is hungry enough to eat what they get. 

Antonio is a Knowledge Sim with the lifetime want of maxing out all his skills. For his personal bio, Maxis once again picks up on his wife's mysterious death: "Committed to his children, Antonio is determined to get to the bottom of his wife Hero's death. And what will be his role in the family feud that may have cost him his one true love?" 

Benedick is the youngest, and according to Maxis, also "the gentler half of Antonio's twins. Sensitive and kind, he may some day be essential to solving the question of his mother's death." 

Beatrice is described as "the more outgoing of Antonio's twins" and as "quite the firecracker. But can she be as sweet as she is sassy?" 

The children will be teenagers before the week is over. 

Their first day at the new house comes to an end with the siblings peacefully sleeping in their new beds. Antonio retreats, too, as soon as he has finished the washing up and had a much needed shower. 

Antonio has Tuesday off... and Wednesday, and Thursday. It means that he has plenty of time to do all those little jobs around the house and garden as well as be there for his children, but it also means no income until Friday evening. With two sets of bills due before his next salary, he has to make a decision. 

He ends up selling Mr Humble's computer and the tattered old map he found while digging in the garden. 

A desk and chair for the children's homework are bought before anything else.

Not long after the children have left for school on Wednesday morning, lightning strucks the hibiscus tree in front of the house, and it catches fire. I keep Antonio busy indoors, hoping the flames will soon die after having consumed the tree, but the fire just keeps burning. 

Passers-bys stop and shout hysterically, and because I fear for the children when they return from school, I finally give in and have Antonio call the fire brigade. 

Not just one, but two firemen turn up, and quickly put out the fire. Now instead of doing all the other stuff Antonio had in mind this morning, such as reading the paper, raking the leaves and preparing dinner for himself and the kids, has to wait - he needs to sweep the ashes first, and of course needs a shower quite badly. 

But the day takes a turn for the better when both kids return from school with their first A+ reports. There's one proud Dad in Veronaville today! 

"Morning Bea!" - "Morning Ben!" It is Thursday, and an important day for the twins.

When they are at school, Antonio lovingly makes a berry pie for them.

It is their birthday, and he invites their grandparents over as well as their aunt Bianca. The lady in the pink cap and shirt is Emily Lee, recently graduated from uni - she happened to walk by before the party started and was invited to join the family. 

Bendick receives a phonecall from Oberon Summerdream who wishes him happy birthday; the two families are friends. 

Beatrice as the older twin grows up first. My dice rolls for her aspiration to be Romance, and she fancies herself as future Rock Goddess.

Her little brother is not so little anymore, is he! Antonio and Isabella jump with surprise :-D Bendick's aspiration is Knowledge, like his Dad's. But he does not want to follow the family tradition and enter the culinary career; instead, he dreams of becoming Chief of Staff at Veronaville General Hospital - maybe his Mum died of an illness, and that makes him want to enter the medical field? 

On Friday afternoon, Hal Capp walks by shortly after the twins have finished their homework. Beatrice's wishes are all about flirting and dating, but Hal proves to be the opposite of attractive to her, and so all they do is talk for a while until she sends him on his way. 

The twins have plenty of time on their hands on Saturday, waiting for their Dad to return from work. They invite their friend Puck Summerdream over.

Once Antonio is home, he orders a taxi and rewards his children with a trip to a restaurant, the Oresha Family Dining. They have really worked hard all week and never complain about their frugal life in their sparsely furnished home. 

So far, Antonio has not expressed any romantic interest; he has been too busy raising his children, working and taking care of household matters. But here at the restaurant I have him "scope room", and to my delight, Demi Love, a townie with a playable surname, catches his eye. Unfortunately, she is always either having dinner or talking to someone else or going to the toilet, and so Antonio never really gets a chance to meet her. 

Meanwhile, Benedick meets and greets Hermia Capp.

Back home, Puck is still there (he was not made part of the outing since - as usual - I forgot that I'd have to form a casual group for visitors to accompany my playables to a community lot). He has just jumped into a heap of leaves but now, with his hosts returning, quickly rakes the leaves back into a neat pile.

Sunday is not only the day of this winter's first snow fall, but also Family Day for the Montys: Antonio's parents Isabella and Patrizia are invited over, and of course the boys Mercutio and Romeo, Antonio's nephews and his children's first cousins, are coming along. 

Benedick and Romeo get along very well, and while they are catching up, Romeo's girlfriend Juliette Capp walks by. She is delighted to spot her sweetheart unexpectedly, and even more so when Benedick welcomes her. Unfortunately, Mercutio argues, pokes and slaps her every chance he gets, and apart from Benedick and Beatrice, nobody talks to her. I am not sure Romeo even notices her at all! 

Anyway, it is good to have the family over, and the week ends on a positive note. With Antonio's work at the restaurant and no spending apart from the weekly bills and the meal at the restaurant, there are now over 6,000 Simoleons in the bank; with careful buying, some improvements can be made to the house next time I play here.

John Mole - Week 1

After a relatively long stint in Bluewater Village, we are visiting Desiderata Valley again. 

The Sim to focus on this week is of course John Mole, seen here as a child with his parents James and Lucy. (Sorry about the tiny pictures - something went wrong with the pre-made pictures for John; while some pictures are intact, for others there is only a thumbnail in the folder, no snapshot.)

Next, Maxis shows us John as an angry teenager, talking to an elderly lady (his grandmother - we are to believe that she raised the boy after his parents, both high profile special agents, mysteriously disappeared). 

Here the two of them are again, John now grown up and obivously doing his Nana proud by following in the family tradition, also becoming a spy.

I am not certain who Maxis means for these people to be; maybe they are fellow spies, or the top agents who have been training him. 

Be it as it may, one day John sets eyes on Sharon Wirth (obviously at a museum or gallery), and is instantly smitten.

The last of the Maxis-made pictures shows him kissing Sharon's hand. In his relationship panel, she appears as his crush, and if you remember when I played the Bell family (where Sharon lives, Hannah Bell being her sister), they were sort of an item, too. 

Upon entering the lot, I find John at his telescope, obviously enjoying his spying. 

His family biography says that "watching others is what John does best. Will he finally learn to live his own life?" His personal bio elaborates, telling us that "John comes from a long line of highly intelligent, highly trained and mysteriously disappearing intelligence agents. Will he learn to live his own life rather than spying on others?" 

His house looks a little too small to be forbidding, but the garden is surrounded by a high wall, making it impossible for anyone walking by to look in.

Only the ground floor is playable. Through the front door is a sparsely furnished living room with a computer desk and book shelf. Clockwise, doors lead to the kitchen with a single chair at the small dining table squeezed into one corner, John's bedroom (holding no wardrobe but an exercise machine), to the back garden with its tiny pool and a telescope, and last but not least the bathroom. 

John has a little more than 3,000 Simoleons in cash. He currently works as a Crime Scene Investigator, but would love to become Media Magnate - suitable for a Popularity Sim like him.

Therefore, on this Monday I have him look for a job in the Media career. He does not find one and so shall remain in his current career for the time being. 

Trent Traveller and Tara Kat make up his welcome committee. By the time John has made a platter of sandwiches for his guests, moved the dining table and added another two chairs, Trent has already been in the pool and comes in for the meal in his wet swimming trunks. Tara pretends not to notice. 

Later, the phone rings and John is invited for an outing. I choose Will's Garage, since I can't remember when I last played this hobby lot. 

It was Robert Kim who invited John, and his wife and son (not pictured) are there, as well as an unknown townie who seems to like Cynthia. 

John makes a batch of hot dogs and afterwards joins the other visitors to the lot to watch some sports on TV. Although this is a hobby lot for those Sims who love tinkering, nobody does any tinkering at all - they just chat, watch TV, go to the toilet and so on. 

It is rather late when John says good-bye and takes a taxi home, having to work the next day. 

"How nice it would be if there was an opening in the media career today," John thinks when he wakes up on Tuesday morning. Alas, there is no opening for him, and he goes to investigate some more crime scenes instead. 

He is a diligent worker, and nobody would guess that he'd actually prefer to do something else. A promotion to Surveillance Operator is welcome for the bonus, if not for the career as such. 

He has not yet made it from the car pool to his front door when Sharon appears on her own accord. 

No need then to invite her over for a small celebration! John serves spaghetti with meat balls and pulls out a bottle of sparkling wine from the fridge. 

Good job that on Wednesday, John has to be at work only at 2:00 pm. This gives him enough time to do rake all the fallen leaves in front of the house and in the back garden into neat piles, and he even manages to eat a plate of yesterday's leftover spaghetti before the car pool picks him up. 

Thursday follows a similar pattern: Before work, John rakes leaves, trims the hedge and pays the bills. After work, he rings as many of his friends as he can before it is too late to make phone calls.

Friends feature high on his thoughts and wishes - he is a Popularity Sim after all.

On Friday morning, less out of a desire to advance in his current career and more because it is autumn, when Sims typically wish to gain skills, John acquires a mechanical skill point before work.

It pays off the same day - he returns with a promotion to Reconnaissance Communicator and the career reward, which he uses instantly until a message pops up, saying "This sounded a bit like a ghost", and he puts the device away on his own accord. 

Still in his PJ bottoms, John takes care of yet another hole that has been dug by a stray dog in his front garden on Saturday morning. 

After work, he invites one of his best friends over. Marcel Jocque brings along Issac Bell, whom John knows as Sharon's brother-in-law, of course. The men have a game of kicky bag before their host serves Mac & Cheese. 

John sleeps in on Sunday and then spends the rest of the morning catching up with house work. Now that it is winter and no leaves remain on the trees, he can well clear away the piles of leaves. 

He cleans the kitchen on his own accord and then feels ready to throw a party. 

And a party it is! While you can only see Sharon here, all his friends turn up: The Kims, Marcel Jocque, Edward Contrary, Natasha Una as well as the Bells. Shortly after this picture was taken, Sharon jumped into John's arms on her own accord, and their relationship went from "crush" to "in love". 

Pizza, anyone? 

The party is not a roof raiser, but everyone has a good time. Not even a clogged up toilet can dampen John's spirits when he goes to bed that night. 

He may not yet have found his dream job, but at the moment his friends seem to matter more to him than that. After his schedule did not allow for much time with them during the week, the party on Sunday was a good way to catch up with them all. 

Is his relationship with Sharon going to mean for them to move in together at some stage, and will he find a position in the media career eventually?