15/365

Got this one in under the wire!!

Don't take my pics!!!!!!

I would just like to say that my photos that appeared in this post on the Herald were not approved by me for use. I was not asked if they could use them, and if someone else hadn't told me they were there, I probably wouldn't have seen them because I don't read the Herald unless someone points me over there to see something. If you want to use my photos, the least you can do is give me credit for them, even if they're just plain snapshots.

Anyway...

I've got so much I should be doing right now. lol

And hey! Did you know the Shoe Expo is going on? :) I'm doing a 2 hour set out there at 3pm SLT, if you feel like coming out to look at shoes and/or want to hang out with me.

Oh. It's 2:30. I guess I should get my ass in gear.

Lazy

If you didn't know, I'm one of the official Shoe Expo bloggers for this year. It was a REAL honor to be asked. It's even a bigger honor that I get to DJ for a couple of hours tomorrow during opening day!! I'll be out at the expo from 3-5pm SLT if you're interested in coming out to hang with me. :)

But in being one of the expo bloggers, I've also gotten more review packs dropped on me in the past 24 hours than I'm used to in a week. LOL! I know, cry for me. :-p So my big thing tonight is to start getting the shoes and poses I've so generously been given photographed and blogged.

The problem?

I'm lazy tonight. Utterly lazy.

So Sophia came to be lazy with me for a bit. And at some point, that big shoe and the awesome heels I'm wearing will be blogged.

At some point.



Ali's Thanks of the Day: I'm a continually grateful for the generosity of designers in SL. They give so much in so many ways.

14/365

I'm not one to ever ever complain about free swag... but I think I need to hire a maid, because I'm horrible about picking up my boxes.

13/365

It's almost over!

I just realized November is almost over. Not this Monday, but the next is the last day of my self blogging challenge. I don't believe I've missed a day so far. Even when I didn't have much to say, I managed to say something. One of the best things that's happened through this is that I'm coming out of my comfort zone a little more. I talk to people more, I don't make up excuses constantly on why I just can't go somewhere when I'm asked. Even if I don't stay very long, I still go. And my friends GET it. They don't take it personally if I leave early because they know that it's not anything against them at all. Years and years ago, when I was on other blogging sites [or journaling, as we called it then, since "blog" was still an odd word], we used to say that writing was the best therapy. The simple act of getting it out there was so helpful. And yes, sometimes you get bad comments for something that you feel, but that pretty much helps you grow too. [Or you can sink into a funk for a couple of days like I did, dust yourself off, and get over it. Either way works.] But really, the best thing to come out of this is that I've gained some new friends, and reconnected with some old ones. It's very wonderful. :)

I won't be sorry to see November gone. And it'll kind of be nice to not have to force myself to write everyday. But truthfully? I'll miss doing it each and every day. Although, with the 365 Day picture thing, I'll still be posting something, but you know, it's not the same.

So more work was done to my new place today. I am so so happy with the outside! The biggest problem is that I don't have a wall to sit on anymore, though. LOL! I need to dig through all my furniture and see what I have as far as couches and chairs go. Adorable Wilma came over and she made Christmas explode on my front lawn, so now I have even more decorations! However, I need a really pretty indoor Christmas tree. Does anyone know where I can find one? I would kind of prefer a sculpted one or a well made prim one. But mostly I want it pretty.

I also spent some time fixing up the little holiday area. Please feel free to come by Bluebonnet and skate on the pond or sit on Santa's lap. He's in the gingerbread house. I even have a little train you can ride around a tree, but it's not very pretty, so I'm going to get another one I saw somewhere...if I can remember where I saw it.

And hey, you can even skate with a snowman. :)




Ali's Thanks of the Day: Good or bad, I'm thankful for this blog. It's helped me through a LOT of stuff.

12/365

Finally!

Well, miracle of miracles. I found a house. :-p If you follow me on Plurk, you've been with me pretty much step by step of the Great House Search of 2009. [Thanks for not defriending me over that, btw.] The funny part? I was on page 300something of the residential structures listings on XStreet when my friend Chase told me that his house was from O-Magine and if I liked it, maybe I could IM the owner to see if I could buy it, since the store is not currently in-world. I turned to Xstreet and looked, and sure enough, you can still find O-Magine houses there. I saw a couple that I liked, but then a lightbulb went off in my head. I have a couple of O-Magine houses! I had totally forgotten all about them!

So I ran in-world and sure enough, one of the houses that I had seen listed that I liked was one that I had. What are the odds?




It's the Homestead house. It's a little primmy, and I was really hoping for a 2 story house with more rooms [this one only had 2 big rooms], but the style is what I wanted and I kind of love it. :)

I will admit picking up the old house made me a little sad. We'd set it down and I'd decorated it with high hopes...but stuff happens, so I can't moan about it anymore.

While I was starting to set it down, Lolita told me that there was a naked Santa at Shiryu's RezDay party. I had planned on stopping in at the party anyway, so that was as good a time as any!

Unfortunately, I missed the naked Santa, but I did have a chance to go snow tubing and sledding with Lolita and Boss before heading over to the dance floor. Naked Santa managed to turn himself into ... I don't know. The Silver Surfer? With cornrows? Yeah, I don't know. But he had started the Intan and was dancing alone, so I hopped up on the pink ball. [He may or may not have offered money for anyone willing to dance with him, but I never saw a $L. LOL!] Everyone was a bit quiet, so talking to him was kind of fun, up until I crashed out.




After I got back in world, I decided not to return to the party and instead go back to my house. I got it settled down, and did a little bit of terraforming, and modded the house a bit to fix the windows. Not that the windows were bad, but the placement wasn't working for me. I decorated the inside a bit, but it still needs quite a bit of work. I'm looking for a really great indoor Christmas tree now. But what I'm MOST proud of at the moment is how the outside turned out.




Isn't it just so pretty? The gorgeous lights are by my friend Aisuru and you can buy them at her shop, Beloved Custom Designs for the low low low price of $75L. Actually, there's 3 different kind of lights in the pack, so it's a great deal. They are the perfect lights for the picture I had in my head of what I wanted. And if you notice, even though it's a little dark, I'm sitting in a sleigh. It's so cute! My friend Layne Jewell made it, along with those candy canes. She doesn't have a shop, but sometimes she drops pretty things on me that she's been making. I think it's fab! I am just so so pleased with how the outside of the house turned out. I am not very good at decorating, so when I get something that works, I'm just thrilled.

But, again, I've stayed up way too late working on this, so it's most definitely bedtime!

Ali's Thanks of the Day: I'm thankful it's a heck of a lot easier to decorate for Christmas in SL than it is in RL! LOL!

11/365

In the south, we go viz'tin. So I went viz'tin over to Ms. Wilma's last night.

Houses, houses, everywhere...

Just as an FYI, I've turned off anonymous comments. :)

So, as into buying prefabs as I am, I find myself in the position of not having much that works down on the ground. I'm really more into buying skyboxes, I guess. I want a pretty house, that has nice textures, doesn't have a lot of alpha glitches [or texture glitches, for that matter], that is spacious and open, but with defined rooms, and preferably with a porch and hopefully doesn't cost half a month's tier, since I do change houses on a regular basis. You'd think with so many builders in SL, I'd be able to find something decent. I have been scouring the XStreet listings for 2 days. Everytime I see something I might like, I check and see if they have a demo rezzed anywhere at their store. I have been to SO many prefab shops tonight! For people who think that listing their products on XStreet doesn't work...let me tell you, it does. Without it, I never would have found even HALF the stores I went to tonight.

I don't know, I think I might just be OVERLY picky. I've gotten a load of freebie/cheapie houses just to check out layouts and styles.

I kind of like this vintage/coastal style.





But of course, I also love a good southern style too, with a big porch.




I've seen good houses, I've seen really horrible houses. I've seen houses that were barely textured, and I've seen them textured within an inch of their lives. [Hey, not every prim needs a different floral/striped/polka dot texture.] I've seen some cute and very inexpensive houses, and I've seen some where you really wonder if the creator honestly thinks that their library textured box with a door cut into it is worth $5000L.

But what I haven't seen is MY house. My perfect house that would make me happy to decorate and stay in. I'm home 95% of the time, my house must be somewhere I feel comfortable in. And yes, I still have my gorgeous house Noel built for me and Sophia decorated for me. But that is my private space in the air. I need a home for the ground and so far, I just haven't found the right one.

I think I know what this means...





I may actually have to build my own. :(

This...is not going to be pretty.

10/365

Who has time to be sad when there are snow angels to be made??

Hypocrite

Do you laugh at People of Walmart? How about Look At This Fucking Hipster or Look At This Douchebag? Have you laughed and pointed at the poorly made stuff on Regretsy? Do you look and think "What an idiot!" on Fail Blog and There, I Fixed It? And lets not forget the fabulous celebrity fashion disasters over at Go Fug Yourself! Or hey, what about the original? The SL Fashion Police?

I do get what you guys are saying. It's a little hypocritical of me to be kind of sad that people won't talk to me based on having a "normal" avatar [as if there was such a thing!] when I'm part of a team of writers that show blinging butt-baring bad fashion on WTFug. My posts are growing less and less frequent, as are most of the others, just because our interests and schedules vary greatly. The majority of our posts at this point are reader submissions. Oh yes, your friends are taking your picture and sending it in. But I guess we're all a little hypocritical because there's probably not anyone who hasn't giggled a little at at least one of those sites I listed above, or even just when you're out and about and you see someone looking odd.

We do want to do more tutorials, but they tend to be a little time intensive. Lash fitting was one that was brought up earlier today in Plurk, which I am more than happy to do once I get a chance. If there are any others you guys would like to see, please let us know. We also wanted to do some on crazy buildings & landscaping. At one point I wanted to do one on crazy Xstreet listings, but someone else appears to have beat us to the punch.

[Why it's ok to post a creation that someone put their time and effort into, but not ok to do the same to an avatar, which is also basically a walking creation, I have no idea.]

I guess the main thing is this: If you don't like it, don't look at it. There are many blogs out there I don't read for one reason or another. I don't go to their blogs and comment to call them names, or IM them to berate them. Now THAT would truly make me a bitch. If I don't look at the blog, it doesn't bother me. As my adorable Aisuru reminded me, the internet is not SRS BZNS, no matter how badly you'd like it to be. Even if you don't find it funny, someone else does, and that's just life, first or second. For every IM I've gotten threatening me, telling me they're going to call their e-lawyer on me for showing them in orange skin, or calling me names, I get one from someone who tells me I brightened up their day or made them laugh out loud at work. Those are the ones that keep me blogging, no matter which blog I'm on.

Oh, but please don't be scared to talk to me in world. I think THAT is what has made me more blue than anything else. The "omg, you're such a bitch" thing, I can take. Trust me, I've been called worse in my life and someone on the internet doing it now doesn't really bug me that much. But someone being scared of me? That makes me really sad. Usually when someone I don't know talks to me, I'm a little bit like a deer in the headlights!

Of course, that's a blog post for another day.

*sighs* I suck.

Ali's Thanks of the Day: A HUGE thank you for my Plurk friends who made me feel so much better earlier. They are the most incredible support system I have ever had.

I get bugged

So, there are two things that have been bugging me lately in SL. Not huge bugs, but little bugs.

I'm probably the queen of "Don't want to bother anyone." SL or RL, I don't want to bother anyone even if I'm sick, if I'm upset, if I need help, etc. I won't IM anyone or call them. But more and more I'm hearing people spending almost all their SL nights alone, no one to talk to, because they're like me. We are not talking to each other because we all think we're all busy! When did THIS happen?

I'll admit that sometimes I am busy. Sometimes I am doing photos, or I'm writing, or I'm....ahem...farming. :-p But I am almost never too busy to IM. I'm not the best conversationalist, but if you talk to me, I will usually talk back.

It makes me wonder how many people on my friends list are sitting there wondering if it's ok to IM me to just chat, and not just to ask me a question, which is what most of my IMs are. Unless it's Sophia, who is almost always in my IM box while we just talk about random stuff. She's almost the only person I do this with. Maybe my new challenge will be to just IM random people on my list to say hi.

Now, the second thing that really bugs me is something we seem to go through every year. What's with the pretty avatar hate?! I have friends of different shapes and sizes, although they're all pretty proportionate by choice. But when I read comments, such as the ones in this New World Notes post about how people just flat out won't talk to the "Barbie" style avatars...well, doesn't that make them just as much of a bitch as they perceive the pretty avatars to be? I'm more about proportion than I am looks. If you want to have your boobs to 100 and your hips to 10, uh, yeah...I might think that you need some help. But I wouldn't just NOT talk to someone because of their shape. I have a pretty avatar. I have worked hard to make my avatar into something I find pretty. Does it mean that someone might not talk to me because I'm slim and blonde? What kind of crap is that? In the physical world, I'm overweight and brunette. I am the girl who is overlooked at clubs, who has eaten lunch alone, who doesn't instantly attract people. But according to some of what I hear...in SL because I'm pretty, I'll be the girl who is passed over in clubs, who sits alone on her wall, who doesn't get the attention. But someone who looks different, in a bigger avatar, or a over-sexualized one, who is more of an "individual," [I freaking hate that. We're all different.] will get all the congratulations for not being a "Barbie."

If you won't talk to someone just based on them being what YOU term "Barbie," then you're just as horrible as you think the "model" type avatars are. Because guess what? We're all just people sitting at computers, usually in our pajamas or sweatpants, snorting with laughter over something stupid someone said. If there's anything I've learned in the past few months, it's that. :)

Speaking of pajamas, I just bought new stuff at Bath & Body Works today, so I think I'm going to take a shower and get into my PJs so I can go back to snorting at silly things in SL.

Ali's Thanks of the Day: I'm thankful for beauty in SL, but also for the incredibly silly people who are just like me - nerding out in front of the computer in our pajamas. ;)

9/365

Luckily ice cream in SL contains no sugar. I've been completely off of refined sugar, and most starches, for over a week now!