I haven't posted very many stories about my very first Sims 2 sim, Ransom Zoom, or his household. Many of the interesting incidents happened back when I wasn't good at taking pictures yet; and Ransom and his wife Marisa are both Fortune aspiration, and Fortune sims aren't known for their interesting and dynamic lives. *8) Also the children have both moved out (Georgia long ago, to be with her wife Jane Danvers, and Hermes more recently to college after a mostly uninteresting childhood). There was that stretch when Peran Nolstovski lived with them, but he got sort of bored and went off to Rooms to Let. So.
Things are pretty quiet in general at the Zooms. Ransom's lifetime want is to earn 100,000 Simoleons; he's not very close to that, having retired young (before I installed the University expansion and knew what his lifetime want would be). I could get him a job via the No Age Discrimination hack like I did with Marisa, but for the moment I'm resisting. I could also use the new NightLife Orb thing to change his aspiration, but that's not likely to help much.
So Ransom spends his time painting pictures and writing novels (the main way that retired elders can make money); a side effect of this is that his Wants are mostly about painting pictures and writing novels, and since those things take a long time, his aspiration level tends to get low. Does Nightlife help any with this problem? We'll see.
Marisa flourished in the underworld; she started at Bank Robber, but with the skills developed in her previous Hall of Fame sports career she had no trouble rising in the ranks, and after getting more or less daily promotions for awhile, she Arrived.
Marisa has always been more social than her husband; I wish he would get aspiration points from meeting people and stuff the way she does.
Just before we installed Nightlife, I had Marisa painting pictures that Ransom could then sell (during novel-writing breaks); fortunately selling someone else's painting gets the same aspiration as selling your own.
But then with Nightlife, we discovered dating. An obvious tack to try with Ransom.
And when those ran out, we did it again...
I don't know if this strategy will work long enough to get Ransom to his Lifetime Want (or if I'll get tired of it, or it'll for some reason stop working, first), but at least for now I foresee lots and lots of those rose bouquets cluttering up the Zoom residence...
(Various pieces of custom wall art above from The Sim Republic and Sim City Gallery.)