How did you start your first save?

I started with a new single adult sim, one based on one of the sim kids in my game of The Sims 1. I settled her in Verona and got to know the game, then made my sim-self and his wife. I didn't play Pleasantview for..FOUR YEARS, because my first install was on an older computer that ran things slowly, and I wanted to enjoy that neighborhood the way it was supposed to be enjoyed. After Verona I made a couple of other neighborhoods using default maps, but once I had my new machine, I could use SimCity 4 to create custom maps, and made a "real" neighborhood -- one with municipal buildings, parks, that sort of thing. It looked like a city instead of just a green area with houses and streets.