How do you play your game?

I bounce around every household in my town. I usually customize my worlds heavily including lots of CAW building so I don't really like random townies. I use twallen's mods also. I make five or so huge families with several generations spread around the world, usually 3 or 4 households per family name. (I start with grandparents as adults with young adult children all married, then move each family out and make them have kids). And then I watch them intermingle with each other as I go to each family. I know this probably sounds bad but I love to make each family a certain skin color (sometimes alien) or certain characteristics, and after a few generations it is fun to see how the town has evolved and who has married who and what traits have survived. I also set the story progression mod (I think thats the one) to use hyphenated names upon marriage so I can better keep up with who marries who. Sadly the worlds usually get pretty big and laggy this way. But I really enjoy watching my town as a community interacting and growing. That, for me, is what sims 3 is so good at.