Yearbook photos and random chatter

For Strawberry Singh’s 9th rezday she is doing a yearbook photo challenge!  Happy Rezday Berry!! She’s three months younger than me. Hard to believe I’ve been wandering around Second Life for nine years now, and despite my aging and increasingly grouchy laptop it’s still just as much fun as ever.  😀

yearbook_pic

Lately whenever I am logged in as Ravensong I have been sticking to tiny-ish avatars, most recently the unbelievably cute patchwork toy elephant from Abranimations, but I thought I’d be my old self for a few minutes to get a good pic. It was a bit odd to put the regular av form back on, lately I’ve felt a bit disconnected from Ravensong. I’m not sure what it is… though I suspect that part of my reluctance to be in world is that in recent months I’ve had the occasional mildly flirty guys begin to chat with me, and while they’ve all been unfailingly polite for some reason it freaks me out. I do occasionally enjoy having a nice chat, but it still makes me want to log off and hide (or I start talking nonstop about my late husband until my conversation partner finds a reason to dash off.) I’ve no idea why I am this way. Perhaps I associate this account so strongly with the time my hub and I spent in world that I can’t ever consider interacting with someone who might flirt, even in the most innocent fashion. A good friend once told me one of the reasons she chose to avoid human avatars in favor of being a full time tiny was because she had no interest in getting hit on. I suspect that’s what is driving my desire to find cute little avatars. I can log in, talk to my friends if they are on, tend to my landscapes, and all is peaceful.

On the other hand I can’t give up my shopping addiction, so I have been spending far more time in world with my alts, who have no friends beyond my RL connections, and who spend most of their time at shopping events, or standing around the house looking adorable, or trying out dances. 😀 They thought, since this was a yearbook meme, that they’d throw in their go at a fabulous shot, and said they were off to the prom. I hope they don’t stay out too late.

thenightout

Credits…

The yearbook pic

Hair: Dura Boys & Girls 48
Skin: League –  Erin Medium
Sweater: Purple Moon Creations
Eyeglasses: K_gs
Eyes: Ikon

The Couple:

Him:
Hair: Mina –  Gael
Suit: Deadwool – The Dandy
Skin: Nivaro –  Cunov Summertone
Eyes: Ikon

Her:
Hair: Magika – Honey Whiskey
Dress: Candy Doll Lara
Necklace: Maxi Gossamer Alexa black pearl choker
Body: Maitreya Lara
Hands: Slink
Skin: League Isla Medium
Eyes: Ikon

Me? Never! Ever!

*blows dust off neglected and nearly forgotten blog…*

Omg, I looked away from my blog feeds for a few days, come back and see that Strawberry Singh posted a Monday meme! ♥!!  You have no idea how much I missed those! And I missed this blog too, even though I have clearly neglected it for several months. Everything was turned upside down shortly after my last posts. The owners of my home sim had to let it go, then I found a new home and spent a couple months helping a friend by landscaping and decorating her meditation park and trying to make it a worthy successor to the old sim, and then I got a new (RL) job that has taken away all the excess free time I used to use hanging around SL. I still haven’t found my balance yet. And I really missed this blog, even if nobody but me looks at it!

I was really excited to see the new challenge, because it gives me a reason to come back here and write something! Yays! So here we are with Berry’s Never Have I Ever Challenge, and my take away from these questions is that I am an anti social recluse who would rather park my avvie in my house and try on different outfits for hours at a time, than go out and be sociable. Oh well. It’s all good! 😀

On to the questions…

  1. Never have I ever had sex, in Second Life. – A couple of times I had persuaded my hub to hop on poseballs to see what the animations would do, but we were never “equipped” so we just clicked through the different poses, got bored, and went back to building stuff. Sometimes I’ve logged a couple of accounts on simultaneously and I sit my avatars on racy furniture for giggles (and because my malt is darn cute and the perfect low maintenance boyfriend, lol) I suppose this is kind of like how you  can direct your Sims characters to make out and woohoo, and I suppose technically it counts, though I’m sure it’s not what people seem to mean if they talk about having sex in SL. If we mean an intentional encounter with another person, where you do text and emotes, then no, I have never done that.
  2. Never have I ever visited a sex sim, in Second Life. – Not that I’m aware of.
  3. Never have I ever been an escort or stripper, in Second Life. – Never to either.
  4. Never have I ever been in porn videos in Second Life. – Never lol.
  5. Never have I ever done things that may be illegal in the real world, in Second Life. – I have pushed friends off sky platforms and watched them plummet towards the ground. 😀  I suspect if I tried to do something similar in real life it might be frowned upon by law enforcement. I am absolutely certain that if I drove on a RL highway the way I drive when I get in an SL vehicle I would have my licence taken away lol.
  6. Never have I ever created an ALT for secret activities, in Second Life. – I have done this. The secret alt wasn’t for any underhanded purposes, though, it’s just to give me the option to shop or go sightseeing in peace and quiet and not have anybody know I’m online and IM me. Otherwise the majority of my alts are known to my friends and are for permission tests and to serve as models if I want to take posed pics with more than one avatar.
  7. Never have I ever had a one night stand, in Second Life.– Never ever. Geez, I experience enough social anxiety holding a mundane conversation about how bad the lag is on a given day. All you folks who have all this lively interaction with each other are about 1000x more outgoing than I will ever be.
  8. Never have I ever been part of a roleplay community, in Second Life. – So far I’ve never tried to RP in SL. I like the idea of storytelling but the thought of getting started is intimidating.
  9. Never have I ever discovered a new fetish, because of Second Life. – No, I haven’t.
  10. Never have I ever done things in Second Life that I wouldn’t admit to my friends or family. – Nah, I’ve never done anything that I’d be ashamed to admit, but I’ve given up trying to sell my friends on the idea of joining SL because they either don’t understand what it is or think it’s kind of silly for a grown up to be so into playing (what they perceive to be) a video game, so I rarely mention it anymore.

So there I am. What have you never ever done?

 

stuff

Hair: Dura – Boys&Girls*48
Sunglasses: Yummy – Miami Heat Shades
Ears: Mandala – Fantasy Elf Ears
Body: Maitreya Lara
Dress: Neve  – Laced Geo 
Skin: League Erin

Totally Immersed

He did appear to be quite immersed in the tour.

For the past day or two keeping up with the posts in the #immersivedrax tag on Twitter has  been fabulous! When Strawberry Singh gave us a FlatDraxtor meme challenge I had to take part. 😀  Here’s the problem though: where do you take a guy that is always up to date on the very best things that Second Life has to offer? It was quite a dilemma. In the end I thought I’d just give ImmersiveDrax a quick tour of my home platform.

Draxtor! Watch your step!

Of course one must never forget that sky platforms can be dangerous places, particularly if you are totally immersed. Always keep an eye on your immersed friends if they start to wander around. That first wrong step would be a doozy!

Don’t miss all the #immersiveDrax pics on Twitter. They are fantastic!

Distractions and Double Threat Memes

I haven’t been keeping up with the blog lately, again. Things were going along swimmingly, then RL decided to poop on my head right around mid March and I haven’t quite recovered. I didn’t really want to blog about how irritating it is to be laid off just when you were really starting to enjoy your job, or how even more irritating it is when after this happens you start having things around your property fall apart and the repair estimates make you want to hide under the bed. I tried log into SL a few times and at least attend meditation sits, which do sort of help with my focus and stress, but for the most part I just couldn’t get into going in world. Second Life, I love you to bits, but you don’t really lend yourself to allowing me to vent about my RL woes, or to escape from them by immersing myself in sharing new concert clips and flailing about with fellow fans over phenomenal set lists and awesome new pics and generally being a giddy fangirl.

It’s times like this you realize how fortunate you are to have good friends to lean on. None of them read this blog but I still want to just take a moment to be so exceptionally thankful for my little groups of friends in various corners of the internet, I can’t imagine where I’d be without them. All  have helped me survive the past year and a half (and the stinky past couple of weeks), they’ve listened to me ramble in dms and forum posts and on Skype, they’ve been there when I needed them. And so, thank you, thank you, thank you. I love all of you more than you can ever imagine. 🙂

Lately I may be back to myself. Or sort of myself. Or at least I thought I’d blog something because I really, really, really need to write. And so here I am. Yay!  I thought I’d catch up this week by grabbing the recent Berry memes that I’d skipped over. First I’ll try the The Double Threat Meme.

Two online screen names you’ve had: For the most part every username I had prior to about ten years ago was a total throwaway, I saw no reason to build a uniform online presence so I just made something up if I wanted to join a service, and forgot about it later. As a result I don’t even remember what most of my AOL usernames were (and I had a bunch because I kept making new ones and deleting old ones. But in general everything either of these two:  1) Some weird spelling variation of Rhiannon, I was determined to use that name in my early internet days, and so was everybody else it seemed, so unless I wanted to resort to adding numbers to my username, which I hate hate hate, I had to get creative 2) Some spelling variation of “fairy” coupled with a season.

Two video games you’ve played: 1) Various versions of the Sims. 2) Tetris. I loved Tetris.

Two things you love about Second Life:  1) My inventory! ♥  2) Seeing the cool things other people make.

Two things you’ve done in Second Life: 1) I built a replica of the air studio from my college radio station, I was always really proud of that.  2) I got to be a shopkeeper for a while

Two things you still want to do in Second Life: 1) Own an island! 2) Maybe learn to do mesh

Two things you like about your Second Life avatar: 1) They all have great clothes! 2) They’re so pretty. 🙂

Two of your Second Life Pet Peeves:  1) Random friend requests are weird when they appear out of the blue from someone you’ve never seen or spoken to. 2) The idea that I can’t transfer inventory between my own accounts has always been a pet peeve.

Two things you did as a newb that you’re embarrassed of: I didn’t really do much as a newb, I mostly just wandered around by myself and looked at stuff, and if I saw anybody on my radar who looked like they were coming towards me I’d tp out immediately.

Two of your closest friends in Second Life:  I have friends in SL who I enjoy saying hello to and chatting with, but still there’s not really anyone that I hang out or share things with in the way that I do with my closest friends (who are all also people I only get to interact with online, I do wish I could get them into SL but alas…) I often see bloggers talk about their amazing friendships in world and I wish I’d found that, but I guess I’ve just never met really like minded folks in SL. That’s entirely my fault, I let anxiety get the better of me and don’t really try, or even know how to find people who share my interests. In some ways the people in SL put me in mind of the cool kids in school who I just automatically guess will think I’m boring. SL people always seem much more grown up and interesting – they’re chatty, they’re sociable, they’re exciting, and I’m a total dork who never knows what to say, so I just stay in the background.
Okay, That was a bit of a whine. Whaaa.

Two of the most beloved things in your inventory: 1) The wedding ring set that I made for my avatar because I felt like she needed to be wearing a ring. 2) The aforementioned radio station is a grouped item in my inventory that I’m always afraid I’ll mess up.

So! My next goal is to get myself logged in and try to participate in something at Medici University before it goes away. My intentions when I joined were good, but all the offline stress just torpedoed my desire to do much of anything beyond consuming passive entertainment and pestering people to talk to me. Can’t do that forever though, it’s time to do something new and fun and different (I tell myself). Positive thinking ftw right? \o/

Now I’ll see how far I can get before I’m distracted by something again.

 

Mobile Meme-ing

It seems that this week OnLive decided to make Firestorm the only viewer for their mobile SL Go apps. Yay for that! Since they added Firestorm for the desktop app I’d been trying out SL Go for my aging iMac, and it works great, (even though the 720p resolution is frustrating on a higher res monitor) but I haven’t paid as much attention to the mobile apps because the only option was the official LL viewer. Now that it defaults to Firestorm I had to try it again. When I found myself sitting around waiting for my mother to finish up an appointment this afternoon it seemed like a perfect time to give it a test drive.

SL Go on a Nexus 4

If I look frustrated, it’s because I can’t figure out how to leave my house.

The only trouble with my experiment is I was trying this on a phone, and SL on a 4.7 inch screen is pretty darn tiny. It rendered fast, it looked great, and I wasn’t getting any blurring, but trying to select anything in the UI is not easy. Pinch and zoom, attempt to select, click the wrong thing anyway, zoom back out, try again… It was a challenge. I couldn’t get my landmarks to scroll so I thought I’d type a sim name in search and go exploring that way, but it didn’t feel like recognizing my on screen keyboard. With no handy landmarks I was trapped in my house, but hey, my house was rendering fabulously, so that’s something, I guess. 😀  I did try later on the iPad with a bluetooth keyboard and everything worked really well and looked nice, so yay for Firestorm on SL Go! If I ever have some need to log into SL late at night when I don’t have the laptop handy I can always grab the ipad and I’ll be all set.

Meanwhile, sitting around this afternoon also gave me time to take a look at the Monday Meme.  Strawberry Singh has a quick and easy one this week, and I couldn’t resist. Her instructions:

Copy and paste the following statements in your post and complete them writing down the first thing that pops into your head. Don’t forget to link your post in the comments (here).

I am… pretty awesome 😀
I want… to find the motivation to exercise regularly
I have… so much to be grateful for.
I wish… the concerts I want to see weren’t always so far away.
I hate… being laid off 🙁
I fear… the future
I search… for things often, because I misplace stuff a lot.
I wonder… if I’ve ever made a difference for someone
I regret… abandoning my diet just when I was almost at my goal
I never… thought I’d be a widow in my 40s.
I always… light a candle for my husband every night, just because it feels right to do so.
I usually… procrastinate
I dance… infrequently.
I sing… all the time (when I’m alone)
I often… log into SL, switch to Chrome to surf while everything loads, then forget I’m still in SL.
I sometimes… spend hours just trying outfits on my avvie and moving stuff around in my house.
I cry… a lot.
I need… to network and find a terrific new job
I should… go to bed earlier.
I love… blasting my car stereo at top volume \(^_^)/

I’ll add one

I will… get through this RL rough patch and move on to even better things!

Thanks Berry, hope you’re having a fantastic spring break!

Now and Then

This week’s Strawberry Singh challenge is the First and Recent Challenge. We’re to post our first blog pic, and a recent blog pic, so we can see the changes we’ve gone through.  Rather than grab an early blog pic, which would only be a couple years old, I went further back and pulled a shot from March  2007 , when I was just a month old. I snapped my now image earlier this evening.

I think I am still wearing one of the early newbie skins here, or possibly something from a freebie pack. The clothes were all from Little Rebel, and the hair was Gurl6. At the time I thought I looked awesome, although I seemed to be having some hair sizing issues here and it’s growing out of the sides of my face. There is just a bit of a difference between then and now!

When I was looking back through pics it was interesting to watch my fashion choices. In the early days I wore a lot of contemporary casual things, but I also went for a lot of costumey clothes, faerie wings, frilly ballerina skirts, or fantasy wear. At some point, probably with the rise of mesh, I stopped dressing in quirky outfits and started dressing very much like my RL self would if I were at my goal weight and had the cash to go on a shopping spree. I suspect it was because early mesh clothes seemed to be more real life fashion based and I wanted to try out the newest thing. I certainly love my avatar wardrobe, but I do miss my offbeat clothes sometimes.

Early on in my second life I wasn’t blogging, though I did start posting pics to Flickr later in the year. Then, as now, I took a lot of selfies, and then, as now, I never post most of them.  I’d like to think I’ve gotten better at composing images, I don’t tend to take so many clueless tourist shots where I’m standing idly in front of some build. I still flirt with the idea of doing fashion pics because half my time is spent just trying on outfits and admiring myself, but I haven’t quite reached that point yet. And I’m not really sure my avatars have that much fashion sense anyway, like me they just wear what they want. 😀

Berry also asked if we’d like to join in the DearMe initiative and write a note to our teenage self. As a teen I was fortunate enough to have a family who were always supportive and told me I could do anything I set my mind to. But like many girls who carried a little extra weight around, I was teased at school and terribly self conscious so I was always afraid to do anything that would make me stand out and be noticed, because I was afraid I’d look silly and be laughed at. So what would I tell myself?

Dear Me:

You are absolutely beautiful, talented, and creative. Don’t listen to anyone when they tease you, and don’t let them shake your confidence in yourself. High school may feel rough but hang in there, when you get to college it is all going to change and you’ll meet people who are just as weird and goofy and amazing as you are. And when you worry that you’ll never have a boyfriend – just be patient because you really will met your soul mate one day. Don’t be afraid to stand out, don’t be afraid to take chances and follow your dreams. Life is going to work out beautifully for you. ♥

Love,
Your future self.

I felt too cute and had to take a full shot. I splurged on the Maitreya Lara body and I really like how I can plump it up a wee bit more, especially when I’m in fitted mesh. I may even have to start wearing more skirts and dresses when it gets a little warmer. Yes, it is a quirk I have… if it is cold outside in RL I cannot bring myself to dress my av in summery clothes because hey, if I’m cold then my avatar is cold too.

The rare attempt at image credits 😀

Blueberry Shoulder Jacket & tank top
Maitreya Zipper-Skinny Jeans * #4 updated for Lara Mesh Body
Baiastice_London Sneakers-Print-PinkLace at the Arcade
Glasses: K_gs Sploit 1.03
Hair: Dura-Boys&Girls*48(Coffee)
Skin: League Erin Pale (no brow)
[mock]Smoothie LipColor [Burnt Peach]
IKON Horizon Eyes – Dark Gray-Green
Eyebrow/ face details tattoo layer my own