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Post by rad on Aug 10, 2010 13:08:22 GMT -5
Am researching a few potential places and discovering you lot over there define 'small town' very differently to us Brits... your 'cities' aren't even as big as our 'small towns'!
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Post by dbloveshermac on Aug 10, 2010 13:17:42 GMT -5
Well, we've got more room to spread out! :-)
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Post by rad on Aug 31, 2010 9:33:16 GMT -5
Question for non-Brits: do you understand the term 'gaydar'?
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Post by thelunarfox on Aug 31, 2010 9:41:37 GMT -5
Like being able to tell if someone is gay? Yes.
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Post by meowzbark on Aug 31, 2010 13:22:15 GMT -5
I grew up in rural Delaware. It's about as far south as you can get and still be called a northern. Heh. I grew up in a small town. My high school had 800 students (about 90 in my graduating class) from towns within a 20 mile radius. I had to walk nearly a mile with my best friend to the bus stop because it didn't come down my road. There were about 15 high school students in my town but only 5-6 of us were located downtown.
Our town was big enough for a fire station but not for a post office. Post office was a 10 mile drive in the next town over. We had a lot of people who owned summerhomes in our town and those that bordered the Delaware Bay. Mostly city people from out of state who wanted to have a place on the water. They didn't socialize with the locals much. So many of the expensive homes were abandoned during the school year.
Everyone knows everyone. They know what your mom does. What your dad does. A lot of people were first or second cousins (I wasn't because my family was originally New Yorkers). The place to be after school was Wal-mart. If your town was big enough for a Wal-Mart, that was something to brag about. (The funny part was there was no Wal-mart near the school....) The State Fair is HUGE. My facebook was on fire for an entire month with posts concerning this. It happens in the summer for a week and it's the only time when A-star singers and acts will come to the state. Also there's a plethora of competitions for best in show. From crafts to cooking to crops to cattle. And finally it's the only time where there's a themepark in the state. The nearest permident themepark is an hour and a half drive to either Maryland or New Jersey.
As far as accents...we talk like the people on the news but slighly slower. The farther south in the state the slower you talked. Hence the nickname "Slower, Lower Delaware." It's like bunnylita said. Northerners call us rednecks or hillbillies and Southerners call us city folk.
1) No buses around town. There was one bus that made a stop off the highway 5 miles outside town (my brother rode his bike to it daily) and took you either north to the state capital 30 mins away or south to the beaches and hour away. Bus stopped every hour or so and was never on time. First stop about 6am. Last stop around 6pm.
2) Bus was $1.10 for a daily pass.
3) Exact change only. Plus tips.
4) Yes.
5) It's not unusual to leave your ID in the car or at home. As long as you know your drivers licence number, you weren't in trouble if a cop pulled you over. No one has a passport. Millitary IDs are very common. Air Force base nearby.
6) There's a fair amount of chain stores in the general area, but they're very spread out. McDonalds is about 20-30 min drive between stores. Same for Wal-Mart. Most of them are off the highway. Downtown there are no chain stores only local businesses. What we call downtown - a single road that's a mile to two miles long with a firestation, sometimes a post office, a local store/restaurant, and a bunch of victorian style homes.
Also, 25 mile speed zone with a cop waiting to pull you over. Towns hired off-duty state cops to get so many tickets an hour. It was common for you to get a ticket for doing 26 or 27 in a 25. So there was ABSOLUTELY no speeding in any small town. For larger towns that bordered the highway (yeah, only main road through the state..State Route 13), if the sign says town limits of whatever, DO NOT speed until you exit town limits. Local cops are brutal. They get most of their revenue from speeding tickets.
7) Until recently liquor stores were closed on Sundays and holidays. Now they're open on Sundays for limited hours. Always owned by a middle-eastern fellow. For alcohol there's beer, wine, and liquor. People who drink liquor are alcoholics. People who drink beer are social drinkers. People who drink wine are refined. Haha, truth!
8) Bars are open from morning till 1am. If you go before 5pm, you're a drunk. There's also no open-bottle law in Delaware, which means that everyone in a car can be drinking alcohol while the car is operable except the driver.
Another thing. Directions. People never give you crossroads (corner of main and smith street). They tell you the nearest store to the place. "It's half mile behind Uncle Jerry's gas station." Where do you live? "I live near Wal-Mart."
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Post by rad on Sept 19, 2010 12:25:59 GMT -5
The shots for this new chapter aren't going to be all that, I'm afraid. Even with free will off, the sims just would not sit still.
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Post by rad on Sept 26, 2010 17:28:35 GMT -5
So, I installed Twallan's Woohooer mod today and I think it's going to be a lot of fun to play with that when I start a 'hood up. It adds a little bit of the chemistry stuff in, and, out of curiosity, I set it on the sims I was planning to hook up before I'd done any of the hooking, and turns out they were very much into each other indeed. Have been shooting an extra to go alongside the new chapter, based on one of mdp's prompts, and things got rather steamy indeed. I blame lunar and Rachel. Their decision to go all sexay recently is clearly rubbing off. Hmmm, bad choice of phrase there...
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Post by raquelaroden on Sept 26, 2010 21:08:03 GMT -5
LMAO at your phrasing. I can't wait to see these steamy shots! You are going to put them up, right?
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Post by celebkiriedhel on Sept 27, 2010 0:32:50 GMT -5
Ooo yes please! I love steamy shots!
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Post by rad on Sept 27, 2010 19:40:32 GMT -5
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Post by celebkiriedhel on Sept 27, 2010 19:49:41 GMT -5
Hooo Boy! You gotta love naked butts! I know I do! <fans self>
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Post by Stacy on Sept 27, 2010 20:05:26 GMT -5
Nice pics! Very well done. Can't wait to read the story that goes with them. And dang girl, how big is your screenshot folder? Nearly 5000 shots?
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Post by rad on Sept 27, 2010 20:47:55 GMT -5
5000 is what it's at now, which is excluding The Kyoti Legacy, The Lazarus Dispatches, the first few chapters of Operation: Population, the first couple of generations of the Dayes and the short stories I did for VSS prompts, all of which are on my external drive.
I need to move the current folder onto my external HD soon, it's becoming a pain to find the shots I need.
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Post by rad on Oct 25, 2010 18:22:36 GMT -5
So I've taken a bunch of shots for Taken and I'll probably have an update up in the next couple of days, but it's hard to know whether to let the plots in the classified location tangle up in the updates or to keep them clean (e.g. a chapter for one subplot, another chapter for a different one). At the moment I probably have two or three updates' worth of material... but how to order it...
Anyone waiting for a Dayes of Our Lives update, by the way, don't expect anything til the end of the week or the weekend. Haven't played with them much, and what I have played has just been lots of the same. Have all the shots for a Halloween OP update and that'll be up before the weekend.
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Post by rad on Nov 15, 2010 19:33:07 GMT -5
Request for help from Americans - what do you guys usually do to celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas? Are there different customs in different states? (My US characters are from West Virginia, Wisconsin and South Carolina) I had friends who lived in Phoenix and said Christmas decs usually went up after Thanksgiving - is that right?
Is Thanksgiving celebrated in churches etc as well (i.e. how we might celebrate a Harvest festival even though it's a more secular event) or is it purely a secular festival?
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Post by dbloveshermac on Nov 22, 2010 10:46:09 GMT -5
Hey! Thanksgiving is the one holiday where people are usually expected to be with family, probably even more so than Christmas. There is usually a big meal with three or four generations of family siting around a table, although there might be a "kids' table" in the den or kitchen. There MUST be turkey (there's even such a thing as "tofurkey" for vegetarians), and there's dressing in the South or stuffing elsewhere, cranberry sauce, sweet potato casserole, and pumpkin pie.
Most Protestant churches will have something special for Thanksgiving, maybe a Wednesday evening dinner and praise service or something. My church participates in a three-church community Thanksgiving service. The emphasis is on giving thanks to God for the blessings he gives us. It's not likely that a church would have a service actually ON Thanksgiving, unlike Christmas.
Other details: traffic is TERRIBLE on Wednesday. Lots of people watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade on tv Thursday morning and then football games (big rivalries play) in the afternoon. Friday is a BIG shopping day, and people start putting up Christmas decs that weekend. Some stores already have decs up before - grrrrr.
Does that help?
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Post by rad on Nov 22, 2010 19:15:01 GMT -5
Thanks db, you rock! Would most people travel a long way for Thanksgiving if they lived far from family - do you get several days off?
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Post by Stacy on Nov 22, 2010 19:56:47 GMT -5
Thanks db, you rock! Would most people travel a long way for Thanksgiving if they lived far from family - do you get several days off? Depends on where you work. My mother doesn't get anything off. I get Thursday only off, but quite a few people are taking vacation days Friday. The schools get three days - Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Some people might travel, if they liked their family and had money and vacation time. OMG - thought about editing "my mother doesn't get anything off" but decided not to. *innocent look*
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Post by thelunarfox on Nov 22, 2010 21:11:56 GMT -5
Stacy-- *is proud* Some of us are rubbing off on you. Yeah it does depend on what kind of job you have, but many would indeed travel far to be near family for Thanksgiving. Most jobs only give you Thursday off, and sometimes reduced hours on Wednesday. (Like I'm working earlier so I get off work earlier and then have most of Wednesday and all of Thursday with my family.)
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Post by rad on Nov 23, 2010 9:20:10 GMT -5
Thanks guys. I guess it's going to be a real surprise what this week's update will be about...
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