Cooke Week 6: Job security

Last week, the Cooke family started businesses and maximized logic, while patriarch Julien had a midlife crisis.

The Cooke family currently includes:
Julien, Popularity/Fortune elder and owner of Cooke's grocery.
Jan, Romance/Pleasure adult and owner of Lonely Hearts Club
Juliette, Romance/Fortune teen and owner of Juliette's Flowers
Jerome, Family/Pleasure teen and owner of Cooke Family Restaurant
Beau the bulldog

Jan kicks off the week by wishing for a job in the slacker career. A job as projectionist comes up and she takes it.

Julien takes advantage of her absence that evening and invites Katy over while the kids are sleeping.

Apparently he's having second thoughts about his infidelity, because he rolls the want to study couples' counseling and does so as soon as she leaves.

Jan comes home promoted to Projectionist and still blissfully unaware of her husband's transgressions.

On her second day of gainful employment, Jan gets fired. So much for that.

She promptly becomes an elder, but I don't have any good pics of her birthday.

The next day, Jan was joking around with the handsome young Derrial Tam (who tagged along when his brother Hoban, Juliette's boyfriend, came over) and Julien apparently felt the need to stake his claim, because he autonomously leapt in her arms. Insecure much, Julien?

Juliette is wishing that her parents didn't have to be SO embarrassing.

During the second half of the week, Juliette takes center stage. Here she is becoming an adult.

She goes out on a date with Hoban and then he comes back to the house and I make him selectable for a cute proposal scene out by the rose trellis.

You know it's true love when you have one Romance Sim and another with Romance secondary and they both get a positive memory.

I have no idea what Jerome did this whole week. Apparently nothing interesting.









Progress toward challenge:
Taxes collected: $2750/$46,170

Cooke Week 5: Midlife Crisis

Last week, the Cooke family got a dog and were very successful in business. 

The Cooke family currently includes:

Julien, Popularity/Fortune adult and owner of Cooke's Grocery

Jan, Romance/Pleasure adult and owner of Lonely Hearts Club

Juliette, Romance/Fortune teen and owner of Juliette's Flowers

Jerome, child

Beau the bulldog

On Monday night, Jerome grows up into a very serious-looking teen. He becomes a Family/Pleasure Sim with the lifetime want of reaching his Golden Anniversary. He wants a woman who wears cologne and has custom hair...definitely not a stinky woman.

Random picture: Jan somehow ends up playing with two wolves in her pajamas.

Apparently nothing else of note happens until Friday, when Lonely Hearts Club reaches Rank 10!

Jerome uses his parents' money to buy a restaurant (cleverly named Cooke Family Restaurant), and his parents and sister get it up to Rank 1.

Jerome stays home so he can maximize his Logic skill.

Juliette has been working at her flower shop off and on all week, and on Sunday it reaches Rank 3!

Later that day, Juliette follows in her little brother's footsteps and maximizes Logic.

Julien is supposed to become an elder Sunday night, and his aspiration is a bit low, so I fulfill his want to invite over Katy McGaw. Then he wants to flirt and make out with her! (In fact, they both want to woohoo, but I cut them off.) I make her a playable and move her out to her own place to see what will happen.

A few hours later, Julien has a birthday party with his family as if nothing has happened.

Progress toward challenge:

New community lots: 1

New Sims: 1

Careers opened: 1/3 Business, 2/8 Science

Taxes collected: $4200/$30,920

Cooke Week 4: Rank 10!

Last week in the Cooke family, the grocery store was wildly successful.

This week, the family includes:
Julien Cooke, Popularity/Fortune adult, owner of Cooke's Grocery (rank 8)
Jan (Tellerman) Cooke, Romance/Pleasure adult, owner of Lonely Heart's Club (rank 3)
Juliette Cooke, child
Jerome Cooke, toddler

Jerome becomes a child on Monday night. He likes the makeover I give him. (His personality: 10-1-6-9-9. What is it with nice kids in this 'hood?)

In due course, Lonely Hearts reaches Rank 5.

A portion of the profits go toward fencing and furnishing the back yard. (Julien's OTH is actually Nature, not Cuisine.)

Then Jan invites her friends Ivy and Ben to move in. You may recall that they autonomously started crushing on each other during the Tam update. Once playable they quickly fall in love and strike out on their own. More on them later in the round.

Then it's time for Juliette to become a teen. I make her Romance/Fortune and she rolls a LTW of becoming a Hall of Famer. That should be doable; all we need are 8 residential lots so we can make a second NPC community lot. (At this point I had already made a military base due to the fourth playable family, whom you have not met yet.)

"I remember when she was just a baby," Julien reminisces over cake with his wife.

I leave the Cookes for a little while to play other houses and when I come back they have acquired Bobo the bulldog. I change his name to Beau to fit the French theme.

Over the weekend Julien takes Juliette to the store to teach her the ropes. While it's still slow she works on the register (eventually getting her bronze badge).

Juliette is desperate to go on a date, so she calls up Hoban Tam. She has negative bolts with him, but you can't be too picky in a small town.

Oddly, they jump to two bolts as soon as they fall into crush.

Julien gets distracted in the middle of cooking salmon and starts a fire. (I tried to stop him, really.)

By the end of the week, the club has reached Rank 9.

And Juliette helps a confused Scott Tam to push the store up to Rank 10!

And at the ripe old age of 14, Juliette makes a call and starts her own business, which you will see in the next update.

Progress toward challenge:
Jobs opened: 1 business
Fires: 1
New community lots: 1
New Sims: 2
Taxes collected: $2600/$17,250

Cooke Week 3: Customer Satisfaction

The Cooke family includes:
Julien Cooke, Popularity/Fortune adult. He is unemployed but owns the highly successful Cooke's Grocery.
Jan Tellerman Cooke, Romance/Pleasure adult. She is also unemployed and runs the Lonely Hearts Club.
Juliette Cooke, their baby daughter

Week 3 in our second household also begins with a birthday--Juliette becomes a toddler. So far she looks a lot like her father but with some of her mother's coloring.

The next morning, Jan discovers that she is pregnant again. She is not enthusiastic.

On Wednesday morning, Brandon forgets where we keep the potatoes and the resulting star pushes the store to Rank 5.

On Thursday afternoon, Jerome Cooke is born.

And that night, Juliette becomes a child. Jan tells her all about how in the morning she's going to get packed off to school and won't be able to bother her mother for 6 hours straight.

Back at the store, Julien attends to various customers while the Tams smooch behind the cash register.

Friday night, the store reaches Rank 6.

On Saturday, Juliette invites the Tam kids over to play. (She and River are good friends despite a several-year age difference--when you're the only two girls in the entire town, you can't afford to be picky.)

Later that day, Jerome becomes a toddler. I think he and his mother have the same serious little mouth.

On Saturday, the addition of many new features pushes Lonely Hearts Club to Rank 1.

Meanwhile, the store reaches Rank 7.

The three elderly garden club memebers (Tiffany, Matthew, and Joe) will stand around for hours talking and blocking the cash register. When Julien encourages them to buy something, they get huffy and lose stars.

I solve the problem by putting a bench in front of the store, where people can sit and shoot the breeze without getting in anybody's way. It works surprisingly well.

By the time the week is out, Julien's store reaches Rank 8.

And Jan's club reaches Rank 2 and then Rank 3.












Progress towards challenge:
New Sims: 1
Taxes collected: $2500/$7300

Cooke Week 2: Popularity

The third "CAS" Sim for Serenity Valley is Julien Cooke. I didn't make him, of course; I am lazy and so I decided to use Sims out of the Sim bin.

Julien is Popularity/Fortune with a LTW of 20 Best Friends. One of the first things he does, sadly, is quit his job as a fast food shift manager, since Culinary isn't open yet.

Also on his first day in Serenity Valley, Julien opens Cooke's Grocery, which is, you guessed it, a grocery store.

The first three customers are all women, but Julien doesn't find any of them particularly attractive.

However, he has two bolts for Jan Tellerman here. She's romance, but he's popularity, so it could work.

Julien goes home, where nothing remarkable happens, and then on Tuesday the store reaches Rank 1 thanks to Goopy here. Julien picks the cash prize.

Tuesday night, Julien asks Jan out on a date to Tam Arcade. It goes well.

On Wednesday the store reaches Rank 2.

Wednesday night, Julien invites Jan for a home date and ends up asking her to move in. She brings $3000 and a job as a hostess that she has to quit.

In the wee hours of Friday morning, the store reaches Rank 3.

A few hours later, Jan finds out that she is pregnant. She looks less than thrilled.

Later, Jan uses some of the prize money from Julien's store to open a club, thereby opening a position in the Slacker career. One wonders what the patrons think of a heavily pregnant woman tending the bar.

Early Sunday morning, the store reaches Rank 4. Note to BACC players: Grocery stores rank up REALLY REALLY FAST.

Julien and Jan would be perfectly happy never getting married, but I want the baby to carry on the Cooke name, so I force them under the arch as soon as Julien gets back from the store.

Juliette Cooke is born later that same morning.

Progress toward challenge:
Jobs opened: 1 Slacker
New community lots: 2
New Sims: 2
Taxes collected: $1300/$3900