My Strangetown was about to blow up when I did some fun SimPE finagling and have since kept it alive.  By doing so, however, I somehow copied all of the pre-made EAxis sim families and some of the townies that I had married into my CAS sims.  So, I wound up with an alien Chloe who was married to my self sim's kid who had their own child and another alien Chloe who I hadn't played. Both showed up in the family tree with the same parents, sibs, extended family, etc, but depending on the path I used to access the various families I would get either the played Chloe or the new Chloe to show up.  Because of this snafu, the game allowed Chloe's son to marry his half-niece because the son was accessed via the played Chloe and the niece through the virgin Chloe.  So, I fixed the dual character problem in SimPE, but now I have a family tree that doesn't branch.   
 

I finally got SecuCRAP off both my desktop and laptop (I had Pet Stories on the laptop and therefore SecuCRAP).  I did notice that after I went through all the steps, my screen saver/power settings were changed on both the laptop and desktop.  Instead of going to a screen saver like I had it set up to do, the power settings made the computer shut down/hibernate after 5-10 min of inactivity.  Not that it's a big deal to change the settings back to "never," but I thought it was interesting to note at least.

Speaking of Pet Stories, does anyone know where I can get a good, reliable, no-cd crack sans SecuCRAP?  I went to gamecopyworld and there was a no-cd crack listed, but I don't do much ARR-ing and I'm not sure if the file is reliable or not.  Anyone have a good source for one?  I went ahead and uninstalled PS from my laptop, but if I could find a good SecuCRAP work-around I might go ahead and re-install it.

This is why I'm waiting for the patch and various hacks to correct this before I buy this expansion.  Plus, I just installed zOMGPetz and Seasons a few weeks ago (had to finish my thesis and graduate before I got to play), so I'm still learning the ins and outs of those two. 

Do you have to take the whole fam with you when visiting community lots or can you leave one person behind?  That might keep the room rate/vacation days from double kaching'ing?