February 29th

Don’t feel bad if you don’t understand the Outer Sim system for reckoning time & date — it turns out that even the Outer Sims themselves can’t get it down perfectly. What happens is that the great wheel of their calendar gradually gets out-of-round and, by the end of about four years, it would go entirely pear-shaped if they didn’t make repairs, a process which takes an entire day.

(I’m talking about the popular solar calendar, the Gregorian one — not the Mayan one, which is soon to expire anyway. Incidentally, some Outer Sims are quite agitated about that. As if the Mayans had set up a booby-trap to exterminate their descendants after hundreds of years just by numbering things in a certain way. As I said, these Outer people really do not have it all figured out.)

Proposing Marriage
In some places, tradition holds that women may propose marriage to men only on this day, or (more leniently) only in years that have such a day. A man who declines must pay a fine to the woman. I suppose that the whole rest of the time, according to that tradition, women may propose only to other women.

I shall not be proposing to any boys today. Boys… it’s not that I dislike them, but I can’t picture liking one enough to risk being permanently stuck. Perhaps if the fine were quite large and the boy were quite certain to refuse my proposal, then I might give it a try. But that seems like it would be mean to the boy.

Oh, if there were a boy both very rich and very obnoxious, it might be a good idea for all the girls to propose. Presumably he can accept only zero or one of us, and then all the rest would certainly be entitled to the fine. If some girl is accepted who doesn’t want to be, then I hope she is permitted to break it off upon payment of a similar fine, which could be funded by shares contributed by the others. I think it could all be made to work out.

The Mod the Sims Calendar
Despite my poking fun at the Outer Sims about time zones etc., they’ve gone and made something very nice for us: a calendar, done in their style but made from lovely photographs of Sims. There are versions for Sims 2 and Sims 3.Calendar hanging in a Sim home.You hang it in a Sim’s house like any other object, and it can show any of their twelve incomprehensible months (each with a different photograph.) Go look at it, it really is nicely done.

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