I did get started on washing the deck, but got only about 1/3 of the surface done, and some of that needs another go-over. It got pretty bad last year. It's a job that'd be a helluva lot easier if I wanted to shell out for (buying or renting) a power washer, but investing in the cleaning and sealing products seems like enough debt to rack up over this preservation effort.
I've been playing with the Sims again a little lately. No,
Thing is, even though the Mudville house has been there quite a while in Sim time, and (as you Simmers out there may have noticed) you get dramatically fewer "strangers" coming to visit after the first little bit, Lisa Mudville keeps getting visited by two versions of Holly, neither of whom she's met. One is the Holly for whom I built a big house with gardens and a helluva sewing room, while we were still together in real life (there's a house for Just Me, of the Me family, too---that version of me lives across the street from this version of Holly). The other is the Holly who lives with Lisa in the Us family, whose house is the closest replica I could make of this house I'm sitting in, created shortly after we bought the place. I don't visit that household any more. But its Holly and the other Holly (one in a white shirt and jeans and one in a sorta dusty purple shirt and jeans) keep dropping by the Mudville house. Persistently. For (Sim) weeks there's only been one other persistent dropper-by "stranger" in the whole neighborhood (which has probably 35 residents, only 8 or so with whom Lisa Mudville is acquainted)---a hip-hoppy-dressin' guy who I think is Grendel Orphano---but he hasn't been by lately. Just Holly, and that other Holly, ringing the doorbell over and over again while I don't answer it.
It's sort of the opposite of real life. She's not a-ringin', and if she were I'd be a-answerin'.
Tonight I think I'll be watching In a Lonely Place, 1950, Humphrey B. 'Ll let you know.