To Chain Reaction: As far as sitting in the helicopter if your sim is the only adult/teen home, I have this bug now, only with cars. If my sims have kids at home and they want to woohoo in the car, they have to call the nanny in... to 'hoo in the car... in their own driveway... It's annoying, and stupid, since they're not going off the lot. I don't have AL yet and this has been an issue for awhile with my game. I assumed it as some sort of safe guard in case you accidentally hit "go to community lot."
To Hannahspring: The Pets phone does that in my game, too, and as I said to Chain Reaction, I do not have AL. If you have CEP, that might be what's causing the problem, but I can't be for sure.
Also, I no longer have the options to date and do a lot of things (toss football, gossip, tell inside joke, etc.) which is annoying. From what I'm reading here, it sounds as if I may need to store my saved games elsewhere along with all my CC and do a total reinstall of the games. I have taken out all hacks/CC and tried the game without them, but the options do not reappear.