6.03 The Weekend Before Finals

It felt like only last week that Jess had been in overdrive preparing for mid year exams, and now, final exams were fast approaching, Jess looked at her exam day schedule for the fifth time this morning. she only had to miss one and the whole year was shot down. 

Study overload had caught up with Jess again, it was the last weekend before exam finals and Jess was in desperate need to blow off steam. Mia took her to the favorite pub, and then after a few drinks to unwind, on to -Tribal-, one of her Mia's favorite party spots. From behind her a deep voice, "Hemoglobin shooter, and another one of what ever the lady is having", the voice ordered the barman.

Jess looked up from the -Tribal- bar into a pair of the most intense blue sparkling eyes she had ever seen.

The handsome face was framed with long blonde hair, and his skin town was almost the same as hers. Jess spotted a pair of pearly white canines between the blood red lips.

Jess didn't believe in love at first sight, not even when she was sober, but the tall dark and handsome hunk behind her challenged her beliefs. Jess tore her gaze from his face long enough to thank the barman for the fresh drink and turned her bar stool for a better look at her mysterious benefactor.

"How about we head over to the bubble table for introductions?", suggested the Vampire smoothly. "I don't do bubbles, uh, well, I've never actually tried.", stammered Jess, sliding from her chair. "It's much quieter in the corner.", suggested the smooth Vampire as he took Jess' hand and lead her over to the bubble table.

Mia and the Vampires wing man looked at each other with an apologetic grin and followed feeling like third wheels "I'm Daniel, the wing man", offered the shorter male Vampire. "I'm Mia, the engaged and unavailable best friend.", Mia stated in a firm but friendly tone.

Before long the group was doing strawberry bubbles, and the Vampires wing man was frequently bringing fresh rounds of drinks to the table.

When Jess and Mia decided that they where far too bubble headed to continue, the small group moved back to the bar. The barman was considering cutting the two girls off for the night, but the two vampire boys paying for the drinks were generous tippers and it was otherwise a dead night. He and his girlfriend who was also working the bar had bills to pay, so he led the behavior slide for the moment.

"This is my jam!", Jess cooed dragging Mia on to the floor for some girl talk. "So whadda you think, is he hot or what?", Jess gushed. "He is, and his friend is not to bad either, but I have plans with Shelby, I'm going to ask him to marry me, and live happily ever after. I'm not going to throw that away for a one night shag.", admitted Mia, who was far more intoxicated that she had ever been in her life. Normally Mia could drink all night and still walk a straight line, but she had never hit the bubbles this hard before.

"S'right for you!", Jess slurred as if trying to dance and talk was hard work, "You have a Shelby, I haven't had a boyfriend since..", Jess tried to count on her fingers,"Since never!", she finished.

"Aghhh, I gotta pee!", muttered Jess, staggering off to the toilets. Mia was about to follow her, as is protocol, when Daniel the wingman stepped up to her, "Hey this dancing thing looks like fun!", he said, taking Mia by the hand and twirling her. In her current state Mia was easily distracted and didn't notice as Jess' mystery Vampire followed her to the bathroom.

"I hope you don't have any regrets from last night?", asked Khalilah with concern. "When I found you on the couches this morning, you where practically half naked, totally wet and fully drunk. I put you little girls in your jammies, but you are both a bit big to carry upstairs and tuck in.", continued Khaly.

"Sorry Khaly, it was a totally wild party, and we had no energy left by the time we got home.", Mia apologized, even though she didn't remember coming home last night. "As long as your home safe, that's the main thing.", sighed Khalilah with relief. "Now John will be here with my boys in about twenty minutes, and I don't want my boys to think we run around this house all day in our underwear, even if we sometimes do, so shoo, go get dressed!", Khal smiled, even though she used her motherly authority figure voice.

"Hell, I can't even remember his name, just that he was so damn cute. One thing though, I'm not a...vegetarian any more.", Jess giggled. Mia gasped "You lost it to a guy whose name you don't even know?". "Hey, I'm sure I knew it at the time, but after he shagged my brains out..", Jess admitted.
The conversation ceased as Khaly made her final inspection round before her children arrived.

"Should you be studying?", asked Jess, lifting her nose out of a text book. "Serio-lusly, gunna be a game dev dude! This am study!", Mia laughed.

"Wait was that Joanie, meek, mild, fun is a dirty word, boring is a standard by which to measure ones self Joanie?", Mia asked Jess as Joanie streaked by between them and Carlee. Carlee looked on in shock, not that someone was parading through the halls at high speed naked, she had seen plenty of that during the year,  but Joanie was so square that her corners where sharp enough that you could cut cheese with them.

"Definitely one for the record books!", Carlee uttered as she headed for the diner room.
"Caffeine overdose?", Mia suggested to Carlee. Carlee just shrugged, "Yeah, probably pre-exam temporary insanity."

"What are you working on?", Jess inquired, although Mia was on top of her schoolwork, Jess was concerned that she wasn't doing anywhere near enough study this close to final exams. "Ah, just some geeky game idea stuff I want to show Shelby when he gets here.", Mia answered, rubbing out a circle with her thumb and redrawing it elsewhere.

Mia had a few other things that she wanted to show Shelby as well.

The two former imaginary friends ended up playing show and tell,

in Nicole's room and in Nicole's double bed.

With two days to go before exams, the science faculty put in a request to the technology department to manufacture some complex replacement parts for their multi purpose, multi function, group research project machine, or GRP 9000. Mia and Jess both immediately volunteered to help in the process.

With final exams tomorrow everybody was dealing with the stress in different ways. Mia played games, and Jess reread every lecture note she had written for the year.

Khalilah just hoped she hadn't wasted a year of her life only seeing her children on weekends while chasing her dream of becoming a renowned DNA Profiler.

Halfway through the night the power went out. This was the absolute last chance to study before the morning's exams and the house was full of people pulling out there mobile phones to provide reading light.
Jess had better night vision than anyone and volunteered to examine the breaker switches. She reset the appropriate switches and the thankful sighs of a half dozen frantic students congratulated her as they continued their last minute studies.

"You go girls, Knock em dead!", Khaly chanted as Jess and Mia set out for the first exams of the day. "Thanks, best of luck to you too Khaly", Mia replied as she followed Jess out through the doorway.

Unlike Mia, who had a lengthy breaks between each of the three exams over the day, because of her double degree in Technology and Fine Arts, Jess' exams where back to back over the whole day. As one exam was finishing, another was starting, even with Vampire running speed, there was no room for error. Jess had to finish each exam early enough to get to the next exam room on time or risk being locked out and missing an exam.

Jess looked at the questions on the first exam, she rolled her eyes, she could answer all of the questions, go get a coffee and a croissant for breakfast, and still be at the next exam five minutes early. Hopefully the rest of the day worked out the same.

Mia had to wait an hour and a half after her last exam for Jess to arrive, Mia introduced Jess to bowling, which Jess surprised herself by being good at.

Jess and Mia continued back to the dormitories to see how everybody else felt they had done in their finals.

"Get your drink on now because once we hit -Tribal- tonight, dancing only, no drinking and definitely no bubbles.", Mia reminded Jess. Jess was hoping to see her mystery man again. Jess and Mia filed out the door with everybody else from the house, even Joanie, as they headed out for the night.

Jess headed straight for the bar upon arriving at -Tribal-. She spotted a familiar face in the barman and edged through the crowd to talk to him. He leaned in to take her order, "What'll ya have?", he asked. "Hey, I don't know if you remember me from a week ago? It was a dead quiet night!", Jess began.

The barman who didn't really have time to be overly chatty looked at her, "You and her, the girl with the blue bob?", he asked, spotting Mia at Jess' shoulder. "Yeah that's us, I was wondering if you've seen the guys we were with that night?".

"Yeah.What'll ya have?", said the barman flipping the days newspaper on to the bar in front of her. Jess caught the headlines. "Better make it a Black Mood, no make it a double, actually, make it a triple!", Jess said numbly as she recognized the two faces on the front page. The barman raised an eyebrow but mixed the drink anyway. Jess held the paper up so Mia could read the headlines over her shoulder. "Known Criminals Found Murdered. Police Have No Leads At This Time."




Authors note:

And uni is done! I usually lead all my pictures with text, but I didn't have any pictures left!
So... I added some more CC, because I'm a CC junkie, and I got to get my fix. Knowing that adding even more CC was a masochistic adventure, I cleaned saves, tweaked settings and even deleted the world cache (after making a back up.) my Midnight Hollow_sims.package at the rime was 150mb, now it keeps swelling to 500mb plus. The end result was a major slow down of the game, even worse than usual.

Here's a breakdown of my average attempt to play the sims this week. Hit Play Sims 3 on steam list, wait 2 minutes, Hit 'Play Sims 3' on the sims three launcher, wait three minutes, see the Maxis logo pop up, wait three more minutes. Select a Save, wait 31.5 to 32 minutes for it to load. (Best load time ever-26 minutes). After my current save has loaded, it then takes an average of 90 - 95 seconds for the Nraas popups to show, telling me that EA SP is off, and Nraas SP is in. Sometime in the next 60 seconds, I can start accessing my slow motion sims. It seems to me that accessing the menu to change settings or edit my town has a 50/50 chance of causing my game to CTD at present.

I can deal with the slow motion, but the crashes before I can save the changes I've made for the story are rather aggravating. I really don't want to have to jump to a new world already as I have midnight hollow reasonably well set up for this generation. Fingers crossed, it sorts it self out, as I've checked every download with Custard, every package with Delphy's Dashboard, triple checked my settings, and done everything I can think of to make the game cooperate with my CC intact.