George - Chapter Twenty: New Beginnings

****Some possible NSFW pics. ****

****George****

I stood in the bathroom and looked at my reflection in the mirror. I didn’t usually stress over what to wear, but today was a big day; it was my first day of work at the hospital. I had always tried to dress professionally when I worked at my practice in Appaloosa, but I could have dressed however I liked since it was my own. With now working for someone and meeting with patients who didn’t know me, I felt I needed to make sure I was presentable. I was finally satisfied with the image that stared back at me and I opened the bathroom door. The sight I saw made me smile; Steph had woken up and was cooking us breakfast.

“You don’t have to cook breakfast.” I tried to reason with her.

“Nonsense! It’s your first day! You can’t go to work hungry.” She argued. 

“But you worked last night.” 

“So.” She stopped what she was doing and turned around. “You can stop trying to convince me to not make you breakfast, it’s not going to work.” She said and smiled at me.

I laughed and decided to make us some tea while she finished cooking. 

“Are you nervous?” She asked as we sat down to eat.

“A little.” I admitted. “But also excited.” 

“You’ll be great!” She enthused.

Some notes before the next chapter

I debated about including these notes in the actual chapter but I decided to put them in a post. I'm planning on posting the next chapter today or tomorrow but before I do, I thought I'd share one of the reasons it's taken me so long to post this chapter.

My game was running slow, and when I say slow, I mean sssslllloooowwww. It would lag whenever I tried to turn to get a better view for a picture and if I went into CAS. . .I literally wanted to pull my hair out for how long it took to load all the clothes/hair.

I was desperate to get the game running smooth again so I started looking up how to compress package files. I was a little skeptical if it would actually work, but I figured if it didn't, I could always just go back to the old way the files were stored and begin pulling my hair out again.

I was beyond happy when after compressing files I started the game (took little time), loaded a saved George game (again, took the fraction of the time it had been before compressing), and went into CAS. . .It was almost like I had a brand new game! 

With that, I realized that I might be able to turn up some of the graphic settings on the game; one of which was the sims details. And oh my goodness!!! It was like I was seeing them for the first time!!! They still look the same, just clearer and you can actually really see Steph's freckles!!!!  (it's not like the one time in Bridge's generation where I tried a new skin and they looked too different).

George before:

George after:

Steph before:

Steph after: 

So after this, if you're looking at George, Steph, Trev, any of the characters and are thinking "They look different." That's why. If anyone is interested in doing this, here's the link to the website I referred to  when I was trying to figure this all out.

Martine's Blog

I will warn, that if you do this, it's recommended that you not compress worlds, mods (the ones that change the game), and any sims store content. (I also didn't compress lots). It's also a good idea to back up your download folder and packages folder before attempting to make any changes to them (that way if something messes up, you have the original folders to put back into the game).

And while I was poking around trying to find info about compressing files, I stumbled back across the "anti-glare" lighting mod and some other color lighting mods. I don't know why I fought this for so long, but I finally gave in and installed them and some may notice a difference in the sky and that the annoying glare is gone from the pictures (Thank God!).

Here's the link for the anti-glare mod: 

Anti-glare Lighting Mod

And here's a link to the lighting mods: 

Burnt Waffles Lighting Mods


Just thought I'd pass on this info in case some readers were interested.

Thanks so much for continuing to read this story.

George - Chapter Nineteen: Welcome Home

Three days had passed since I had interviewed for the job at the hospital. I hadn’t expected to hear anything immediately following it, but as the days went by I found that I was more and more anxious about hearing from them. I hadn’t realized how much I wanted the job until I told Steph about it and once I realized it, I had trouble thinking about much else.

One thing that helped keep my mind occupied was packing. I had returned again to Appaloosa to finish packing up the last of my stuff. The next time I returned to Bridgeport it was for good. Steph, Ethan, and Charlotte were coming in two days to help pack the last little bit of my things and then the next day my stuff was going in storage at Bridgeport until the new apartment was ready. We still had at least two weeks before we could move in; in the meantime, I was going to be staying at Steph’s place. As I was finishing packing up a box, I heard my phone ring. I hurried over to answer it but was baffled by who it was. I didn’t recognize the number but it had the same area code as Bridgeport and even though I normally didn’t answer numbers I didn’t recognize, I chose to this time.

“Hello?”

“Dr. Davila?”