Well. That was a Monday, now wasn't it?

Ever just have one of those days?





Something that was a long time coming happened finally today. Even when you know something will eventually happen, it really kind of sucks when it does. Sucks more when you find out certain things. :( So needless to say, I was in a really unhappy, un-zen, overly emotional state today.

But luckily, my SLife is pretty blessed. I went and did a shift of being an in-store model at SySy's with Emerald. We learned that not only are we pretty, but we are terrific salespeople. LOL I would have taken a picture, but unfortunately I've been having issues and Em's feet looked darker than her legs and I just couldn't do that to her.

Once in a while my friend Bon pops up out of nowhere with landmarks for places that I can go explore, but this time he popped up with a landmark to a store that was having a sale. Since I am more apt to spend money when I'm upset, I ran out there. I was surprised that I had actually been there before. I ended up buying a castle. C'mon, it was on sale! And fabulous! I actually really really like it. I will probably never use it, but I have it. I'm going to blog it for my style blog tomorrow, along with a pack of skins I picked up. But here, you all get one photo of the skin with a little photoshop work. You'll see the unedited ones tomorrow. Believe me, it didn't need much touching up at ALL. It's so pretty.




I've been setting up a little outdoor ice cream place because.... well, I don't know. I have the ice cream set and I wanted to do something with it. lol Sophia, Sehra, and Bone stopped over for ice cream. And yes, that is me doing the keg stand. What?! It was a tough day!










So really, even though most of the day was not awesome, I still consider myself pretty lucky. I'm hoping when I wake up in the morning, I can shake off the bad and just go back to concentrating on all the good that is in my SLife. :)

Explorations: Whimsy

At some point on Plurk, the place Destination Station was brought up. Destination Station [which always gets me singing "Conjunction Junction, what's your function?"] is a place to go to find places to explore in Second Life. I'd never been there before, so a couple of nights ago my friend Marnix said we should go do some exploring. I've been telling myself for ages that I just HAVE to explore more, because I spend entirely too much time on the island. [But why wouldn't I? It's beautiful. Want to live here? IM me!] So I strapped on my backpack and we went off.





First impression? Pretty cool place! Second? Hey...this isn't so much Destination Station as it is "Oh, hey, I've been there" Station. At least for me. :) I was really kind of surprised that I've been to most of the places listed. We decided to visit the sim of Whimsy, which Marnix has been to and knows the owners, but I had never been there.

Whimsy is a pretty awesome place. It's very tropical and there's a big volcano!





You do a lot of walking on Whimsy. I suggest it's probably better if you're on voice while you explore. We weren't, so we had to stop every so often to type. LOL But even stopping is ok because it gives you a chance to look around. We made the volcano erupt and I even sacrificed myself to Pele, the volcano monster or god or whatever. I don't think it took, though. Mostly I just got dumped in the lava.

To get down from the volcano, you can walk, or use a zipline to get down. Naturally I opted for the zipline.




The best part [in my opinion] is that there's a big train ride that takes you around the island, even underwater!! I LOVE rides in SL. Anytime I don't have to walk or drive myself, I'm totally totally happy.







It was really just a lot of fun out there! Really just an amazing sim. Next door is the sim Whimsy Kaboom where the Robot Sanitorium is. We didn't go see it that night, but I went back on my own today. It's a whole other post, though. :)

Chit-Chatty

I really need to start blogging every day. I think sometimes the reason I get crazy is because I don't write enough. Which is really funny because I write a lot, but I don't write enough.

I think I need more island space. LOL! That's funny because for ages and ages, my part of Bluebonnet was just mostly empty. I could still see all the old stuff on it in my head and I kind of just couldn't bring myself to make many changes. I know, I know. :-p But little by little, things have been changing and the more I do, the more stuff I put down, the less it becomes the old place and more it becomes my place. My renters are amazing and they all have such individual styles. It makes the island so much fun to look at. I have my new little beach home corner, and then the Hillbilly House from RC Cluster [because every island needs the redneck place], and my friend Merrick created this really touching sculpture dedicated to the military, so I set up a little area for that as well. I'm thinking about making more of a "resort" type area on the beach rather than just the fiesta zone, although that will remain because as far as builds I've made, that's the one I love best. But a new friend of mine made a smaller pool for me and I want it to get some use. I have ideas. :) Whether I'll see them all come to fruition, I have no clue. But we'll see how it goes. :)

A couple of weeks ago I was racking my brain trying to figure out the name of "that mall that's built kinda like a RL mall." Turns out it was Fashion Mode - which is now in the blogs again because it's closing down. Good grief. Dear business owners, please read Tymmerie's blog on marketing. If people can't remember your name, they can't remember to shop there! Of course, out came the people saying "Well, the shop owners didn't do anything to get traffic to the mall."

Hey, guess what? They don't have to. Look, here's the deal. Anyone can make a mall in SL. It's really easy. All you need is some land, free prims, and the ability to make some stores. Heck, not even that. You can buy prefab mall vendor stalls. After that, you need some people to fill those spots. People don't rent mall spots just for the heck of it. They do it for exposure and sales. But they usually have a mainstore, too, and that's where the majority of their money is going to come from. If they rent from you, they're really doing YOU a favor because you get the money. Most people I know prefer to just shop at the mainstores because there are more items available 90% of the time. If I shop at a mall, it's usually to help the mall owner, because a store will stick around if they make back their rent for a place. Usually. HOWEVER, it's not up to the store owner to drive traffic to the mall. It's up to the mall owner! The store owner drives traffic to their mainstore. That's only right. The mall owner wants traffic at their mall, they need to do something to get people to the mall and pray to whoever or whatever they pray to that the people buy something once they're there. Once that big "Grand Opening" of the Fashion Mode mall was over...I never heard about it again. So 4 months later, it's closing. Looks like whoever was marketing that mall dropped the ball in a big time way. Which is too bad, because it was rather cute.

And what is UP with the new Second Life website?!??! Omg, I almost died when I went to check my account earlier and it was all different! Then Xstreet was all messed up and we couldn't enable mature items and it was a big mess. I don't know if I like the new SL dashboard thingy yet. But well, it's there. So I guess it's get used to it or stop looking at it. LOL

Speaking of messed up, does anyone know a fix for this damn high-res photo glitch?!




Obviously I did not mean to take a snapshot of her feet when I was very clearly focused in on her body because her prims were all messed up. I'm using the Emerald viewer, which I love love for all the features, but hate hate for this glitch. It's easier for me to Ctrl-` than it is for me to pull up the snapshot window and save and all of that mess. I couldn't very well ask her to stay put and not adjust anything while I caught her picture again!

Hmm...did I write enough?

Don't call me THAT!

So I got hit on tonight.

If that doesn't seem like a huge deal, for most people in SL, it's not. But I don't really get hit on. Whether I'm giving off a "Yeah, no" vibe or if it's just because I don't wander around encased in latex and showing one random boob, I just don't know. When the girls, in an attempt to cheer me up earlier this month, took me out to a ... well, dirty location, I didn't really get the IMs that they got. I was IMed by only about 3 guys, all of them told me what a beautiful avatar I had, and that was about it. [Well, except for one that I actually held a conversation with.] Anyway, when I DO get hit on in SL, it's kind of a shock to me.

A few months ago, I'd gotten a very random IM from a guy saying hi. I don't think he actually KNEW me. How he even found me, I have absolutely no idea. We'd say hi here and there, but never had much to talk about and I wasn't interested. Tonight he IMed me and out of boredom, I let him come over to the beach. I was about to log out anyway, so it was really just going to be a say hello, see each other in world for the first time ever type meeting.

Within the first five minutes, he called me "hun." Twice.

DO. NOT. CALL. ME. HUN.

Unless you know me very well, that is. My close friends can.

He mentioned that the beach was nice, and I told him that I'd built that area because that part of the island looked bare. And then? He said... he wished that I was bare.

...

...

!!!

My only response to that was, "Um...lol."

Luckily he crashed, and when he came back he was stuck floating. But before he left the beach to try to un-float himself, he said he should take me on a date sometime.

Why do I not see that happening?

I'm going to bed.

Haha, I made you read nothing.

I haven't done much blogworthy in the past few days. Most of my time has truly been spent on the island standing around while I do things in another window. I still have one parcel of land available, so if you're looking for land, IM me in world.

One thing I did do yesterday was browse the XStreet marketplace. This is a common thing for me. I LOVE shopping without going anywhere. If you aren't an XStreet shopper, you're missing out. I click on Marketplace and see what the top sellers are every single day. Right now a bunch of the top sellers are $50L hooker clothes, but there's usually other great deals. Tons of designers put out promo pieces for $10-$50L. I've gotten countless landscaping items for the island and skyboxes that I never use this way. But yesterday I saw a $50L hair. I wasn't really sure who it was by and I really didn't even know what the hair looked like. But I was in a shopping mood, and it was cheap, so I bought it. Turned out it was from Red Queen, a brand that I didn't have anything from before but I'm semi-familiar with because I went to the store with Sophia once.

The hair was huge, black, and was a really different look for me. So I threw on some other stuff in my inventory and went out to the Error sim to play around. As I was posing, a newbie trailed me around briefly saying hello. It was annoying because she kept getting in my shots, but it made me laugh too because in the physical world, if someone just suddenly started following you around saying hello and wouldn't get away, you'd probably scream or they'd get a face full of pepper spray.

So I caught a couple of pics and used my new tablet to play. If you've never been out to Error, I highly suggest you go. It's really a beautifully bleak sim. There's nothing to DO there really, but it's nice to look at.







I'm off to go visit my parents and maybe do some RL shopping. I hate RL shopping. SL shopping is so much more fun and everything fits or can be adjusted without having to go to the alterations place and have some woman look at you like you're crazy when you tell her you need it taken in at the top because your boobs are too small and let out at the bottom because your butt is too big.

Um. Not that that's ever happened to me.

Have a great Saturday!

Love Thursday

Like my fancy pants handdrawn sign? LOL! I got this wacom today as a gift and I was trying it out. I'm not especially artistic, but I wanted it, so I got it. I won't subject you guys to too many of my horrible drawings. I might make you read my bad handwriting a lot, though.

Anyway, my Love Thursday today isn't about my new present. Today it's about one of the most important things in my life. My little baby, Holly.





I've talked about her in here before, but it's been a while. Holly is my little apology gift, my little shelter baby. My RLBF and I had gotten into one of our extremely rare fights, and instead of telling me he was sorry, he told me to go to our local animal shelter and pick out a kitty. My RLBF isn't especially romantic or demonstrative and while we don't fight much, when we do he usually just buys me something as a way to say he's sorry. This was one of my better gifts. :)

Holly is really my life at this point, since I don't have kids. She sleeps in front of my keyboard, she plays fetch with balled up plastic bags, she sleeps on top of my head most nights. Other nights she sleeps like this.




She's a pretty pretty spoiled princess. She didn't like drinking out of a bowl on the floor, so she has a short juice glass next to her dish, and a glass on my desk, too. Only filtered water, please. [We won't talk about one time when I caught her drinking out of the toilet. Even princesses slum it once in a while.] She likes to take her naps in a nest of blankets on the couch. She is the ruler of the house.

But c'mon...if you woke up to this face...wouldn't you give her everything she wanted too? :)

Live Your Dream

I hear this phrase a lot in regards to SL: "Live your dream."

What does that even MEAN? What if my dream is directly opposite of your dream? In a way, I am living my dream. I've always wanted to write, and now I have this blog where I can write all day long if I want to. I long admired the writing of the snarky folks at Television Without Pity and even more so of the girls at Go Fug Yourself. So working on WTFug has been like a dream to me. And although people get bitchy and say that we shouldn't be doing that kind of thing... well hey, I'm living my dream.

When I hear people say "Live your dream," they usually are throwing it to someone who is just so opposite of what they are or do in the physical world. The nekos and the men playing women and playing a kid when you're 43. The ones who have purple skin. The ones with huge wings. The ones in the middle of a clothing store butt naked with a ballgag. Hey, you're not going to see THAT in the middle of Wal-Mart!

But what if your dream is not like that? What if your dream is to have a pretty little house, on a pretty little beach, with nice normal furniture that don't contain 25 ways to spank someone?





What if you don't want to fly everywhere like some crazy bird, but instead want to ride around on fun vehicles? What if it's your dream to laugh until you cry because the person driving the truck is a bad driver and if it had been in the physical world, you would have died the moment she got behind the wheel?





What if your dream isn't to live in teacups or trees or spaceships, but instead you want to put up fun little houses you find that aren't really all that out of the ordinary? And then you invite people over to just hang out. Not do anything out of the ordinary...just hang out.







To most people in SL, I guess my dream seems kind of dull because in a world where I could be a cat with feathers and a pig's tail, I choose to be human 99% of the time, without the need to roleplay that I'm a sparkly vampire, or anything like that. I choose to surround myself with friends that are beautiful and talented, who do things besides camp or beg. If I need to dance, to be held, to be complimented - it's all right there. I am living my dream of being me, but a better me. You may call it boring, but I call it a dream. It makes me happy. I'm never mad when someone says that I should be doing more with my SLife, or they get angry at something I've said in a blog. It's all part of it.

Live your dream in SL...but don't be angry when your dream doesn't correspond with other dreams or you end up in a blog because your dream was to come in and go shopping wearing nothing but a cheap thong and blinging heels. You live yours, and I'll live mine. They may not match up, but there's room for both. :)

Episode 975: The one where there's not all that much to say

I can't believe I haven't written so much this year. In my little blogger dashboard thing, I've written over 1000 posts. Some never made it, some got deleted later. So this is the 975th posted one. Just 25 more to go to prove....that I talk too much. :)

Last night I had the opportunity to sit and chat with some of my friends that rent on my island. I have to say, I'm really loving how lately we're becoming more like an actual community rather than just people who happen to live on the same island. We ride cars around and trample peoples' flowers and bounce off houses. It's really a lot of fun. It's just kind of like we know that if we're down on the ground, we're accepting visitors, but if we're up in the air, that's our private location and private time. I think almost everyone has a skybox or a platform for working at this point. It's just really nice.

Oh, if you're looking for land, I do have one parcel opening up on Saturday, so just IM me in world. 3680sqm, 842 prims. $5500/mo or $1375/wk, whichever is easiest for you. Best neighbors in the world. :)

I always kind of like this time of year. Summer is winding down and my brain starts gearing up. [At least until November, the "emo rollercoaster" month. :( ] I have ideas for parties, for WTFug, for my own blogging. It's kind of amazing how different things are right now compared to last year when I was still partnered and wasn't even dreaming of owning an island. LOL It's been a learning experience, that's for sure.

Hmm...speaking of parties, I need to get my butt in gear and build the party room for tomorrow's Toybox party. Um, not THAT kind of toybox. LOL Dolls and action figures and other childhood toys. :) I have an idea in my head of how I want it to look, but just doing it is going to be the hard part!

Hey bro...does this make my butt look fat?

Have you ever noticed that you usually see a group of girls in SL hanging out together, but it's terribly rare to see guys do the same? Well, straight guys, anyway. :) Not that they're not out there, these good guy friends. The ones who IM each other to say "sup dude" and go out together to explore places or shoot each other. The ones who go chill at clubs and hey, maybe they even go check out new stores together because one of them FINALLY found a store that sells decent male hair. I know they're out there.

But mostly, my male friends just outright dislike other men in SL. They don't like their attitudes, they think they're smarter than the other guy, they don't like their avatars, they don't like that other girls like them, blah blah whiny-man-cakes.

I have to wonder why this is. When I ask my male friends who is on their friends lists, it's usually 99% female and a couple of men thrown in there. Are guys just not able to BE friends in SL? Do they only have female friends because it makes them feel like "men" to have a collection of women? Is it something else? And you have to realize that it makes it extremely hard on your significant other if all your friends are female. Even if we're not jealous, we do wonder. Flip it around. If you were dating a girl and every single one of her friends was a male...well, it would bug you too, wouldn't it?

Personally, I think there's something wrong if a man doesn't have at least one male friend in SL. Just someone to chat with and talk about sports or computers or chicks or wherever their interests may lie. I'm not asking to see bromances all over, but just have someone you can talk to. I know my life would be so terrible without my girlfriends. Is it just not the same for men?

Just something to ponder for today. :)

Oh that does NOT match!

A few months ago I got a blog idea and signed up on Avmatch. That's a dating site for SL avatars, like Match.com. I threw a profile together, saying everything I'd want in a guy in SL. It was pretty harsh, actually, but I didn't really intend on meeting anyone off of there, so I didn't really care. But then I started dating someone and kind of forgot about the whole thing. That, and most of the profiles were pretty horrible.

Yesterday I was on Plurk and bored, so I decided to go back over to Avmatch and see if anyone would bother writing me. About 30 seconds after I'd made my profile public, I got a note telling me I had a nice av. Wow. Thanks. I quickly went back into private.

The people on Avmatch fall into a few categories. The ones looking for SL only, the ones looking for RL too, the ones who look like hell, the ones just looking for SLex, and the ones who are really pretty.

Unfortunately, the really pretty ones are few and far between.

Most men look like this.





They're almost always topless in at LEAST one photo, almost always covered in ink, and almost always have no idea how to type/spell/use punctuation/write a good sentence.

Of course, sometimes they attempt to lure you in with crappy emoting. I am a woman who loves someone who can emote well, so when I see this mess, I laugh and laugh and laugh.

And oh yes, he's topless, of course.





The women aren't usually much better. They will, however, usually use a "professional" photo. Notice I just said professional, I didn't say good. But most of them try wear their "smexy" outfits and freebie poses from 2005.




Like the men, a lot of the women can't write. But they'll try to tell you what a wonderful person they are, or how badly they've been treated in the past. Why it would be a turn on to know that someone can't keep a man, I'm sure I have no idea. One of the top things that any self help book tells women about dating is that on the first date, DON'T bring up all the crap from your past relationships. It's boring, the guy doesn't want to hear it, and it usually makes you look pathetic. Save it for the second date. But the women on Avmatch don't seem to mind, because they'll tell you right away.

And oh yes, they're almost always "drama free." However, not bling free.





I'm sure that matches are made on Avmatch. In fact, I know at least one couple who met on there and are happily partnered now, so it's definitely not a bad thing. But it's definitely not something I think I'll be using in the future except for comedy purposes.

If I don't get banned from there for writing this post, anyway. :)

Beachin' It Up

I always thought I'd like to have a home on the beach at Bluebonnet for myself. In fact, one of the things I told Noel when we were discussing what I wanted my house to look like is that I wanted it to not just be a skybox, but also able to use it on the ground. But I like living in the sky. It's private and I feel safe up there. Plus, my home is just beautiful. It is my escape.

But sometimes I do tend to get lonely up there. And as I watched the people who rent on my island setting up their beach houses and running into each other [sometimes literally], I started to think more about setting up something small for me to hang out in on the beach. I have a treehouse and a mushroom house up on what I think of as Fantasy Hill. It's where I have my glowy grass and my Happy Mood bunnies. [The bunnies never did come back up into the sky with me. They said they preferred it down on the hill. It's a pretty place, so I can't say that I blame them.]

So a few days ago I started hunting down beach houses. I must have looked at 80,000. I toyed around with the idea of just building my own, but then that led to wanting to hunt down textures. Finally I just decided to pull out one of the beach cottages that Emerald & Sehra used to live in and setting it down. After all, I knew I liked it, I'd already modded it, and it matched the cute open beach cabin that Sophia had set down for me some time ago. The beach cottage is originally from Tres Blah, but as I said, I'd modded it before the girls moved in so long ago because the original is reeeeally small. After a quick glance at Xstreet for some trees, I think it looks perfect on the corner of the island.





Naturally I'll want to do more landscaping, and I need to figure out how to decorate the inside, but I'm happy. I'll probably do what I always meant to do and fix the windows so they tint as well. I modded the house a bit yet again to make 2 more windows on the other side of the house so I have a view to the ocean, and I found a soft pink wall texture to do the inside with.

I have a couple of things inside the house, a table and a big oversized chair, but I am going through all my furniture to see what I really want in there. And if you see the hot pink in the window there, my new renter & friend Marnix left me some pretty tulips!

Speaking of gifts, last night a new friend of mine gave me a beta copy of a pool he's been working on. At his store, the pool was big, it totally fit up there. However, when I rezzed it out...





Yeah, it was bigger than my house. LOL! Not that I need a pool when I have the ocean, but...you never know.

Anyway, for the rest of the week, except for freebies and gifts, I'm on shopping hiatus. The main reason is because I've been shopping like crazy the past couple of weeks and now I have no idea what I have. LOL It's terribly sad. But right before I went on shopping hiatus, I ran to Kookie to get the limited time $50L Yuki heels. And let me go on a little fashion bitch here for a sec. Well, first, check out the invisiprims on these shoes.




I'm standing like, a foot off the ground and they're just...covered in it. The shoe itself, although rather fetishy [c'mon, you'd never be able to walk on them!], is lovely. However, they follow what's becoming a growing trend in footwear. The shoe is attaching to the lower leg and the invisiprim is attaching to the foot. You know what happens then? You can't wear pants with PRIM CUFFS.

I have few fashion absolutes. I like prim toes but I'm not against plain avatar feet. I'll wear a system skirt because I'm slender enough to do it without needing a skirt shape very often. But I will not wear pants without prim cuffs. And these new shoes make it impossible!

So what's the deal? Why can't the invisiprim be attached TO the shoe? There's got to be a real reason, right? Please someone explain to me.

Back to landscaping and decorating. :)

Oh hey, I have pics.

This week was filled with ups and downs. I won't be sorry to put it behind me, that's for sure. lol And I don't plan on being one of those once a week bloggers. That's not me. And obviously I have been blogging over on my review blog, but over here's it's been quiet because I've been quiet. It's to be expected, I suppose.

But, one really awesome highlight of my week was that my crazy friends surprised me AGAIN with a birthday party! AGAIN! I was so shocked. :) And so so happy because truthfully, I'd been blue all day and I *almost* didn't show up. I had thought about just going to bed. But I'm glad I didn't. :)









Thank you soooo much to my adorable friends for doing this for me. You don't know how much I appreciated it. :)

Most of the week was quiet for me. Not a bad thing really, but I'm not sure if it was the best thing. Anyway, I got to just wander around the island, check on my residents, and....encounter a T-Rex.






I love my renters. They come up with the best parcels. :)

I've been playing with windlight and pictures a bit too. This one [well, not this exact one, but similar] was chosen as an Editor's Choice over on Snapzilla, which was a pretty cool little thing to see.




And this one I was playing with while I was out at Avielandar's Neverland, a very pretty sim that my friend Bon told me about. Best part is that you can drop posestands, so I was able to get this shot while "standing" on the rocks. I wouldn't have been able to otherwise because the rocks are phantom.




It's late, and I'm exhausted, so I guess I'll wrap this mostly pointless blog post up. Hopefully this week I can get back into my groove. :)

I really can't sleep

I can't sleep. :( It's been one of those nights. It's not a secret that I've been dating someone the past few months. He is my best guy friend, someone that manages to compliment me and make me believe what he says is true, one of the few people who makes me talk even when I'd retreat and be quiet. But tonight we decided to end things just because what we want in SL isn't meshing together. I have a very specific idea as to what I want, and he never lied and said he'd be the one to fill it. It was...heartbreaking, to say the least. But I think, and he agrees, that it's for the best in the long run. And we still keep our friendship, which is so much more important to me. <3

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I really need new headers for this blog and for Ch'Know Style. Add that to my To Do list.

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Speaking of my review blog, I'm starting to get itchy about it. I can't seem to keep up with some other bloggers because they IM designers IMMEDIATELY on release days [or before] to ask for review copies. That just...I don't know, it seems so unclassy to me. I can't imagine going to my favorite designers and asking for free stuff to blog. So by the time I see that there are new things, usually a dozen bloggers have thrown it out there because they smooze and ask for things. Is that really how it's done? I have either bought what I blogged or it was given to me by designers who enjoy my writing or like me as a person. I don't have it in me to pretend to be someone's friend just to get free stuff and it's really starting to make me sick to see other bloggers who do it. I mean, if they ARE your friend, genuinely your friend, that's ok, and goodness knows in the subset of SL I am involved with, people are either bloggers or designers. But I see a lottttt of fake friendships based on what one person can get out of another lately. Is getting the very latest style that important? Maybe it is. And hey, if that's how you do it, do your thing. Your $L balance and wardrobe are probably much better than mine.

But I know there's the reverse side. I've seen a lot of designers say that they don't want to bother bloggers and would prefer to be asked for review copies. And that's nice, too.

I'll just put it out there: If you're a designer and you want me to blog your stuff, just throw it at me. If I like it, I'll blog it. If I don't, I won't OR if you really want, I will and I'll say what I think should be improved. Or you can let me tell in private and then yell at me for not liking your stuff. :-p I blog pretty much everything.

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I guess I should try to get some sleep. I've been sitting here the past 2 hours watching the finale of Dawson's Creek and crying when Jen dies.

Oh, you didn't know she died?

Oops.

I'm on a boat! Or a kayak, whatever.

In the physical world, I'm stuck at home today. Actually, I've been stuck at home all weekend due to the fact that my brakes are grinding. Yeah, they HAD been squealing. But now...they're not. I know, I know. I just figured I had some time. :-p But since my RLBF hasn't allowed me to drive anywhere [except today when we dropped my car off at the repair place], I've been in a pretty foul mood all weekend. I probably should apologize to some people since I've been short with pretty much everyone who has encountered me, but if you can't be moody with your friends, who can you possibly be moody with?

Last night Sophia & Skyhawke showed me their new kayaking stuff that they bought for their island. It's no big secret that in the physical world, I'm NOT outdoorsy and I'm NOT very athletic. I have never once been camping. I even asked to stay out in my backyard when I was a kid, and my mom thought I was nuts. Sky is, however, one of those crazy Ironman athletic types who just this past summer paddled for miles and miles and miles down a river in a kayak. I tease and call him and Sophia "hobos" that go sleep outside and eat beans that they cook in a tin can, but I completely admire them for their love of the outdoors. Even if I do think that they look like this while out there:





I kid, I kid.

They said I could come over and use their kayak stuff whenever I wanted, so late last night when I was supposed to be taking blog pics for my review blog, I wandered back over and decided to paddle around. It was really so peaceful and I got to think while I paddled around enjoying the scenery.









After I finished my ride, I was looking for a good place for a full body shot and then I discovered something. They were holding out on me!!





So naturally I had to go skydiving. Or parachuting. Whatever.





Although I know that SL kayaking is probably nothing at all like the real thing, I did really enjoy it and will probably be bouncing over to Sacred often to paddle around. In many ways, it's better for me than the real thing because if this had been in the physical world, I would have probably only gotten slightly away from the dock before my arms started hurting, or I'd get my big butt stuck in the kayak, or I would have rolled over and went head first into the water.

But at least I probably wouldn't have done wheelies on my head.





Probably.

Creators Stamp Rally!!

The big talk this weekend was the start of the Creators Stamp Rally, Summer Choice! I *think* this is the 3rd CSR event, but don't quote me on that. They only do 2, a winter and a summer one. The winter one was my first time and I had a total blast doing it. But like a lot of people, I was pretty confused as to how to do it. And I've seen a lot of questions about it this year since it's getting a little more coverage, so I thought I'd put together a little post on how to do it. :)

The CSR is NOT a hunt. In order to obtain a Stamp Card, which is what you will definitely need, you need to shop at one of the participating stores. There are 20 of them, which you can see on the CSR website. The cards are transferable, so if you have extras, feel free to give to your friends. But to get a card, go to one of the participating stores and buy something. Most of the stores have items marked with the CSR logo so you KNOW you're getting a card, but some places put cards in all their items. If you're still not sure, try to edit the vendor pic and look inside to see if it's in there. :)

Once you get your card, you can either wear it [it attaches to your hand] or you can attach to a free HUD spot. Personally, I like attaching to HUD spots. I had 3 cards to stamp after buying 3 hairs at Uncleweb Studios, so I attached them all to some open HUD spots and moved them around.




That sheep avatar I'm wearing, btw, is a CSR gift from DPyumyum, which I got without having to stamp things because my friend Meara gave me an already stamped card and I ran out to get it. :) Thanks Meara!

If you don't want to wear the cards on your HUD spots, you can definitely attach them all over your body. However, don't attach a bunch and still attach more than 10 facelights. Then you just look like a doofus.




Yes, every circled prim was a light. I inspected. Thank goodness I don't have attached lights turned on.

Anyway, however you decide to do it, get your cards on. You can wear as many as you have room for. Since I only had 3, we're good to go.

Go to one of the participating stores and look for a stamp machine. They're not usually too hard to find, although in laggier areas I find that they rez last for me. But considering pretty much every store participating is a good one, you won't mind looking around. :) Once you find the machine, just touch it with a left click. It'll tell you in chat that your card has been stamped. As you can see on my cards, I'm stamped!




Then you just keep going around to all the stores that are on the website, finding the machines, and getting a stamp. You can go in order, or not, it's up to you. Sometimes if I find that I'm stuck in the same pattern as someone else that I don't like, I switch it up to avoid them. Hey, it's how I roll. But the important part is to get all 20 stamps. It can be fun, and you get to meet people. Unless they're like these people who decided to take a dance in the middle of a store.





Once you get all 20 stamps, take your card(s) off and head over to the Event Hall. It will probably be laggy, so just chill and wait until everything rezzes.




Then go up to an empty prize vendor booth...




Find your card in your inventory and rez it out on the little space in front of you. Yep, just drag it from inventory and drop it down. That easy! It says right in front of you where to place it. Then the card will slide into the slot and the prizes will pop up. I recommend you go to the website first to look at them all in more detail to decide what you want before going to the vendor booth. You have a couple of minutes to look and decide once you rez your card. Only one card can be rezzed at a time!





Once you see which prize you want, left click and touch it. It'll pop up bigger on the prize booth and you can choose yes or no, depending on if you want it or not. :)




Once you've made your selection, it is delivered to you. Then you can rez another card, or run home with your prize.

Remember, the cards ARE transferable, even the stamped ones, so if you have extras it's very nice to offer to your friends. Especially your friends who maybe don't have the money to buy something from the participating stores and wouldn't get a card otherwise. And I really like almost all of the prizes this year, so it's definitely worth the time to do it! :)

The Creators Stamp Rally is going on from now until August 31st, so go shop and get stamped!