The meme this week from Strawberry Singh was in two parts, the first of which I did in my previous post. Because part one of her meme was an idea from a good friend of hers, in her second option she asked if we’d like to blog about a close friend in SL as well. I usually bypass any blog challenges that ask us to talk about our closest pals in SL, not because I don’t know anyone – I count some really wonderful folks among my friends  – but because I’ve never really gotten to know anyone well enough to become close. I often regret that, but I suppose it’s an expected side effect of being too socially anxious to attempt to go beyond just exchanging greetings and small talk now and then.

So, while it’s probably cheating to count him as such for the blog meme, I think I’ll gush a bit over my husband because he’s most definitely my closest friend in SL, RL, and any other L we can think of. And I think his avatar is a cutiepie too, so I just like to share his pictures.  😀

It was my hub’s idea to come into SL in the first place. He’d heard something about it early in 2006 I think, but at the time we were busy with our wedding planning so investigating SL wasn’t a high priority, and I was more interested in playing The Sims anyway. By the time we were ready to look at SL again we began to read everything we could find, and we were pretty well equipped for what we found in world. Still, he sent me in first to see what I thought. A couple of days later he rezzed in world as Natureszen Writer (or NZ for convenience.) I recall being really annoyed that he picked a different last name than mine. The nerve!

We must have spent almost two weeks on Help Island.  I’m pretty sure nobody else stayed that long just wandering around and practicing how to do stuff, but we thought we’d be prepared. And it was relatively peaceful there. Then we finally set out for the scenic mainland… Ah, the good old days of the particle clouds and spinning ad blocks. We took a seat high up so we could enjoy the view.

Within a couple months we had land and started building. By October we’d sold the first parcel and bought a bigger one so we could build even more stuff, including our tree house. When I say ‘we’ I mean mostly NZ, while we both enjoy building a lot he has delved further into trying to model things than I have.

We were fabulously stylish in those early days, of course.

Almost all of NZ’s style is his own work. I might point him to stores now and then, and I did tweak his shape a little so he could fit into mesh, but for the most part he knows what sort of look he wants for his avatar and he sticks with it. We sometimes treat our alts as characters and let them explore different styles, but we both tend to treat our original avvies as our virtual representatives. He’s said that NZ’s look is a reflection of the goals he sets for himself, much as Raven represents my goal for becoming a more fit, active person.

If I can get him logged in he’s always ready to explore, and sometimes he’ll even park himself on the poseballs so I can take cute, cuddly pictures. Of course the minute I’m not looking he’ll notice something elsewhere he has to check out and he’ll poof away in an instant. He makes up for that by finding fun toys to play with. 😀

I still have high hopes of eventually working up enough confidence to make SL friends who share interests and hobbies in common, who I can hang around with and chatter and goof off.  But I will always consider myself pretty lucky to already have a best friend at my side. 😀

Song o’ the day ♪