The Sims 3 is a different paradigm from the Sims 2. (-5 points from me for using a word so highly regarded in corporate buzzspeak.) Sims 2 was all about the neighborhood. Create as many families as you want, they will wait for you while you play in another household. I spent 4 years creating a custom neighborhood with multiple families and generations.

With the Sims 3, the world is open and dynamic. If you so choose, everyone in the neighborhood changes, evolves and ages right along with you, as you play your default household. You can add as many custom characters as you want, but idea seems to be that you focus on one household. And maybe because of that, you now can create separate “games.” Each game is a different world, unrelated to the other world.

I’ve had several issues with the game. Guitar boy, aforementioned crashes and an inability to update my game despite the fact I had installed no mods. (the forum kept telling me to uninstall my mods and then update.) What I did was deleted everything and reinstall. This meant I lost my family, which included guitar boy, but I was ok with that because something crazy happened to the triplets. Three girls, triplets, and when they aged from teenager to young adult, their faces stretched and they looked like a characture drawing of Dick Van Dyke.

It was unsettling to look at. I guess I like my sims pretty. So I created Poppy, a green thumbed natural cook and workaholic. This was the sim I was working with, collecting screen shots to tell you stories, she was going to be a Executive Chef, and was actually only two levels away from it, when the sims went BOOM. Again.

The Stepdot is visiting, and I set her up to play the sims yesterday. Once again, it is unusually hot here and the game crashed several times. She lost her household during one of those crashes, and when she went to save the new one, it gave her save over prompt/warning. I told her to go ahead, because I thought it was going to save over her last crashed game. But no. Apparently it was going to save over ALL GAMES.

No more Poppy.

I think the computer (a closed MacBook Pro hooked up to cinema display) was overheating again. Once she was playing without the cinema display, she quit crashing. Today I bought a desk fan to blow on my computer.