Reading between the tines

Uh oh, now Mariam has a fork stuck to her hand.  It's even more interesting when she tries to do other activities with that hand...

Hmm, maybe I can mass market a fork as a bookmark... Oh, wait, it's already been done.

Sleeping in the bathtub

Loren has been working pretty hard the last few sim days.  Having three children and a fourth on the way can make a sim go to work less than clean and arrive home completely filthy.  But if there's one thing that modern sims do, it is multitask, so Loren takes a nap in the tub, satisfying both energy and hygiene needs at once.

I guess the tub has built-in features to prevent sleeping sims from slipping underwater and drowning, but I don't see how the tub's bubble jets can really get her clean if she doesn't move around much.

The strange case of the sliding wall door

One of the big upgrades in build mode with The Sims 4 is the ability to move around and plop down fully made rooms.  I tried using this feature to build a house only from premade rooms, but something still isn't quite right...

The door from the dining room to the kitchen didn't update the wall well enough.  This house was built only with premade rooms that are preinstalled with the base game, so this isn't a custom content issue.  On seeing this, I tried moving the door and furniture around, but it wouldn't display the open archway correctly no matter what I did.  The sims living here didn't seem to mind since they walked through the phantom wall section without any problems.

Come inside and see my painting...

Christie is still very involved in getting her painting done.  Now she's trying to convince a townie to come inside to see her painting, still with the brush stuck to her hand.

The brush might not stick so thoroughly if she was actually using paint instead of paste.

Painting her lunch

Christie is a collector.  She wants to collect everything, but knows that she has to create the paintings before she collects them.  But she's mixing the cooking skill with the painting skill when she eats...

The paint brush got stuck to her hand when she went to make lunch.  Maybe she wants to slather some barbecue sauce on her meat...

A two-fisted drinker?

It looks like Mariam's loner trait isn't that much of a problem, but there might be something else brewing that could be.  While entertaining guests she poured two for herself.

There seems to be something a little sinister with the mixology skill...

Strange shadows in the bedroom

I tried watching for a fun screenshot opportunity that would be appropriate for the holiday today, but didn't see very much that I would consider bonk-worthy.  The best that I got in the last couple months of simming is this curiosity (which I would classify as a lighting bug) showing some unusually shaped shadows near the romance light.

The lighting system in The Sims 4 has always seemed a bit dark, but I don't see anything in the room that would cast these triangular shadows under the window, especially when the baseboard on that wall is compared to the baseboards on the two adjacent walls.  This scene was captured in the default the large corner bedroom of the Parkshore house in Willow Creek.  I only added the romantic reward light from TS3 Late Night to the room.

Glued salmon

It seems that sims will often carry things completely wrong.  Here, one of the sims I created, Piper Wilkins, has a plate of grilled salmon she's just prepared.

She's supposed to have it in her left hand, but it got stuck to her right hand instead.  Good thing she used the extra-sticky oil to grill her meal today.

Light a fire under it

When The Sims 4 was released, like many other simmers, I spent a lot of time playing different families and learning the ins and outs of the new version.  As a bit of a foodie IRL, I made a foodie sim and leveled her up through the basic and advanced cooking skills.  One of her dishes turned out to be hot enough that the stove burner followed it around the kitchen.

It's a little hard to see, but that bright blue circle under the counter is the stove burner animation.  I was half expecting the kitchen to erupt in flames from this.

The magic floating rocks of Oasis Springs

The sims I am playing right now live in Oasis Springs.  I built a house for them on the vacant lot there, and when they're not busy with skill building or off at work, I have one of them run around the neighborhood on a collecting spree.  Off at one corner of their neighborhood is this unusual rock formation...

Those three rocks are floating above the ground.  I don't think this is a hint at future expansion packs; EA probably isn't going to resurrect the Harry Potter Makin' Magic pack, but you never really know...

Ariana is not impressed

Wow, it's been a while since I last posted.  It's also been a while since I've had some free time for simming.  My sims did not disappoint as we see here. 

Ariana Wilkins, a family friend of my current sim household, stopped by to hang out.  Manuel is not making a very good impression on her today...

She's just missing the crossed arm pose, but she got the smirk right.