Hi all! I’m sorry I haven’t posted anything in ages; I was on vacation for awhile, and I’m finally getting back into the swing of things (just before University Life and Sim City come out! Whee!). I thought I’d better continue with my Whimsett Cove posts — I’d really like to catch up to where I am now before too much time passes!

In my last post, I introduced best friends Mark Zinella and Blaine Hughey. Mark and Blaine live right across the street from Coralyn and Lexie, in a modest New England-ish ranch home.

If the house looks a little too nice, it’s because it was actually Mark’s mom’s house. But she passed away recently (of old age — she had Mark very late in life) and left Mark the house (and cat). Mark had been living in the basement anyway, so all he did was move his bed upstairs and then ask his best friend Blaine to move in to help cover expenses (darned monthly bills).

Here’s a wider shot:

(The temperature rose just above freezing the day I took this pic…poor snowman!)

Mark has done a good job of keeping up the house, although the interior is still pretty outdated…

I went all-out 1970s in the kitchen/dining room…

Here is Mark’s room (which used to be his mom’s…he moved up here from the basement when Blaine moved in)…and Mark’s pet chipmunk, Rascal!

Blaine’s room was previously a guest room/junk room with some awful floral wallpaper that both Mark and Blaine found hurl-worthy (even more so than the rest of the house) so they replaced the wallpaper with something equally questionable but more to their taste, and turned the room into some crazy psychedelic rock/hippie lair.

Gotta love lava lamps.

Now for Mark and Blaine’s favorite part of the house — the basement! It’s where they hang out, play video games, watch movies, pretend to be rock stars, etc.

The boys are a bit typical in that they’re into sports, cars, girls, rock music, etc., but they’re also quite sweet and rather dorky.

Here they are jamming while Mark’s cat Toffee looks on…Toffee was created by the fabulous Booboo (I’ve been downloading a lot of her stuff lately…the llama pictures are hers, too).

Toffee makes me laugh…I saw her watching Mark play the drums, and when I zoomed in, this was the expression on her face:

Toffee: What the Friskies is that noise? You call that music??

Toffee: Let’s see what Mark’s doing. Hey, not too shabby…I can groove to that…

Toffee: Hey guys, can I sing with you? You need a lead singer, doncha?

Toffee: HEY GUYS YOU’RE LOOKIN’ AT THE NEXT KELLY CLARKSON HERE!

Toffee: Ugh, they don’t even speak Cat. Idiots.

Continued on page 2…