My tractor's cute, but not really sexy.

So after a while at The Cornfield, you run out of things to buy with your cornbucks. I mean, things that actually help you in your quest to kill monsters and collect corn. I would LOVE LOVE LOVE better weapons, better armor, a bigger corn basket, things like that. But, there are prizes you can spend your cornbucks on. I got a trophy, a necklace, and this stupid chicken that does NOTHING special and gets freaked out if I cross a path. Stupid chicken.

But...there was a tractor that I had my eye on. It's 5000 cornbucks, which is kinda pricy for a little prize, but I definitely have the cornbucks to spare. Look at it!




I attempted to run it in "advanced" tractor mode, but I couldn't really figure it out, so I had to go back to basic mode.

Not that it mattered. Advanced, basic, remedial... I'm a horrible, horrible driver in SL!




After I managed to get out of the pond, I sat on our porch for a while. I really haven't done anything with our porch because ... Well, mostly because I'm lazy. LOL! But also because our porch is just a slab and some steps, no cover or railings. I wasn't quite sure what to do with it. After thinking a little bit about it, I rezzed out a fresh copy of our house and yanked some of the railings from the back deck and put them in front. Surprisingly, it worked out pretty well, and made a more defined spot for an outdoor couch and stuff. No pics because I was just playing around with ideas out there since autumn will come to Bluebonnet next week, and y'all KNOW how much I adore decorating for the fall!! Pumpkins EVERYWHERE.

But, while I was sitting there on the porch, I got up close and personal with my head.




I keep feeling like I need a change simply because most of the bloggers I know change their skins and shapes very frequently and I do not. Makes me feel like I SHOULD. But...I like my face. I like my skin. I'd hate to change it up and not be satisfied, you know?

Anyway, bedtime!

Even fairies have to take a bath.

The girls complain about their chores sometimes. But hey... guess who did her chores tonight with noooo problems?




It's ME! *laughs*

I don't usually do the choreboard chores because I do other things, but sometimes you just gotta show your kids how it's done! And yes, I'm still wearing my wings from the party. They're too pretty to take off!! Maybe I'll be a fairy forever.

Well...or at least until my next fashion blog post.

I just realized that I never showed you guys the decorations that the family left in our dining room for my birthday. They were ninjas and set it all up, and then when I finally logged in on Thursday, I ALMOST didn't see it! I had gone directly to my bedroom to change for scouts and if the girls hadn't been downstairs, I might have missed them entirely until much later!




Isn't it all just so festive?? Pretty soon I'm gonna have to pick it all up but...not yet. I like it there.

It's definitely bedtime. Tomorrow starts a brand new week!

A Beautiful Birthday

Oh my gosh, I'm exhausted! But it's a good exhausted. Tonight, my family threw me a birthday party! It was supposed to be a surprise, but they had to let me know about it so that I'd actually be able to be there. *laughs* It was a BEAUTIFUL affair!! Here's a few pictures!








There are tons more, which you can see in my birthday Flickr set. It was really just awesome to be with my friends and family. My sister did a fantastic job decorating and DJing! It made me so happy to just be with everyone that were nice enough to come. And it was super fun to go out to The Cornfield after the party, still dressed in full fairy queen costume, to kill some zombies and get some corn! :)

But this fairy needs to rest her wings now. Goodnight! ♥

And yet another one.

So today was my birthday. I wasn't really looking forward to it. I know. Me, the girl who loves birthdays to the point of needing to celebrate twice in a month. But when you lose someone close to you, you always think random, little thoughts. "She would have been this old this year. I just turned this age and when she was this age..." Etc, etc.

I turned older than my sister this year. I mean, technically, I reached that milestone last November. But our numbers were the same and I could just NOT think about it. Now I'm older than she ever will be. In some ways, it feels like I reached a goal. I don't know why, but it does. In other ways, it just makes me sad. She'd probably laugh. Finally the baby sister is old. That gives me a minor amount of comfort. But the whole thing has felt very weird to me and I've been extremely off kilter the past week or so. Sad. Angry. I've cried a lot. I've snapped at people who have done nothing to me. In a big way, it's a relief that the day is almost over because I can move on from it.

My online friends, though... God, what would I do without them? What would I do without these people that call me family? They have been amazing. I've been surprised with all kinds of things, AND they are throwing me a party on Saturday night!! I'm so lucky and blessed to have them.

So I was going to show you guys pictures of the decorations in my house that the family put up. And I was going to show you pictures of our Bumblebee meeting tonight. But I actually got inspired! This is a picture I've been wanting to do FOREVER. Almost 3 years, which is like forever in SL! *laughs* But I couldn't find all the pieces and of course my skills aren't awesome. But I'm really happy that I was able to finally do it because I love this song and I find myself humming it a lot when I'm in SL.

Smiling out loud
Sailing through clouds
Life is so new
And all I know is that I'm drifting towards you

So don't get in the way
I want this feeling to stay
Just let me keep falling, falling

So don't catch me now
I just wanna keep on falling somehow
So don't stop me now
I just wanna keep this going somehow
Keep on falling

Kagami

A few days ago, I read a NWN story on the game Kagami. NWN calls it a Japanese horror game, so while I was intrigued, no WAY was I going alone. No. WAY. I am probably one of the biggest 'fraidy cats in the world. So I mentioned it to the family to see if they wanted to go, and of course they did since we love exploring new areas.

We had 2 thoughts about it going in. 1 - That it would be super scary. And 2 - it would be very anime in nature. Since that's what we thought, some of us dressed up for the outing.




This reminds me of 2008 me so much. *laughs* Just updated 2008 me.

The anticipation of being scared made us scream a lot. The story was pretty decent, with cutaway scenes and being moved around with the HUD. But... it wasn't really scary. It also wasn't very anime either, but I still enjoyed my costume. It took us about 3 hours to complete the 2 parts of the game, and there were a lot of frustrated groans because we didn't always understand the next step to take, but it was a nice thing to do with the family.

Also, my great-niece Sophie found her new dad. Now to get Bella to agree to marry him. *snickers*




He kept standing around me, so I had to take a picture. I'm not that super small. He was just really big.

All in all, I'd say if you don't have much else to do with your SLife, head on out to Kagami to play. Be sure you keep your scripts low or you can't get the HUD! It's only open until August 31st, so less than a couple of weeks left to play.

We Need A Maid.

It's kind of a running joke in our family that I don't feed my kids. My sis is actually tons better than I am at having mealtimes with her kids, and sometimes we tag along and Abby will steal something to bring home. I swear this is not on purpose!! I just haven't been able to MOVE around to fix anything to eat! Besides. We ate BBQ one day on the deck. Am I supposed to feed them every day? *laughs*

But now that I can move around in the house, I expect we'll have meals more often. At least, that's what I was thinking...

Tonight marks the return of the Bumblebees and Sim Scout meetings! [If you're a kid and want to come, the meeting is at 7:30pm tonight!] Since I am the den mommy again for this scouts season, I headed to our kitchen to whip up something for the after meeting snack.

Welp.




I use our kitchen so infrequently, I had NO IDEA what was going on in there!! Is this from Mother's Day??? Are they going in there and fixing snacks with food from who knows when it was bought?? Good Lord, we are one step away from ending up on an episode of Clean House. [I'd say Hoarders, but the rest of the house is pretty clean.]

*sighs*




Where are your favorite places to get food in SL? I've heard there are restaurants, too. Do you all know of any? Let me know! I'd like to feed the girls more often so they aren't in the kitchen making an unholy mess.

But the Bumblebees will have a snack tonight. So...there's that.

So Much Better!

Hey, it's a Berry meme! I couldn't resist doing this one because as I mentioned earlier, I also got a new computer this month. Although, after looking at her new set up, mine is definitely not as fancy! That's okay, though. She does way more pics than I do. :) I'm just thrilled to death that I've been able to hang out with my family, run around for hours, do gyazo gifs, and no crashes and barely any lag. It's awesome!




1. Share any of your computer specs (video card, memory, etc..) Click here if you don’t know any of those things or just share the year you bought it.

* I fully admit to being the least techy type person ever and I have no idea what any of this actually means. My computer is a Dell Insperion 3847. Processor is Intel Core i5-4460. 8GB of RAM. Video card is nVidia GeForce GTX 550Ti. I have Microsoft Windows 7 64-bit Service Pack 1.

2. Which viewer do you use most often?

* I use Firestorm, the 64 bit one now. I've heard the official SL viewer is good these days, but I need to use a viewer with RLV because the girls use the Yuus/Nuu HUD and it's required for that. I don't like to have more than one viewer installed on my computer at any time because I've heard switching back and forth a lot can lead to inventory loss. But again, I'm not techy, so that could have been a load of smoke. :)

3. What is your FPS (Frames Per Second) when you have your graphics on ultra?

I turned it on Ultra to take this picture and it booped on down to 7.2 FPS. That's probably not awesome, huh? LOL! But when I have it on high and don't have shadows on, it's 80 FPS. I only turn on ultra to take pics, so I guess it's okay. Turning shadows on tends to make tiny mesh look gross [as you can see on my glasses] so I don't have shadows on too often. If there's a setting to make tiny mesh not look icky, please let me know.

4. How often does Second Life crash for you? Is it usually just a viewer crash or your whole system crashes? What are you usually doing at the moment of the crash?

* I have not crashed once since getting my new computer!! Before, with my old one, I couldn't turn around in our house without crashing. I couldn't even be IN the house half the time, and forget it if other people were around me. If I was anywhere with a sim surround? Pfft. That was almost an instant crash unless I could derender it real fast. It seemed like sometimes all I had to do was breathe and I'd crash on my old computer. This one is sooooooo much better!!!!

5. Do you know of any tips or tricks in the settings that would improve performance?

* Well, on Firestorm, I tend to disable the bridge thinger and not wear it. On my old computer, that helped a lot. Also, I turn off the HTTP textures thing. I don't know what that does, but I know on my old computer, it helped. I also don't have on anisotropic filtering most of the time, unless I'm taking pics. And I don't know exactly what this does, but I uncheck the "Enable Streamed VBOs" box, too. Supposedly that helps. I'm not sure where most of that is on any other viewer, but on Firestorm it's under the Hardware tab under Graphics in your preferences. Even though I probably don't HAVE to do any of that now, I still do it kind of out of habit.

If anyone knows how to make my antialiasing look better, though, please let me know. For some reason since getting my new computer, I feel like I lost a setting or something because I have the AA at 4x in my viewer and it's not QUITE as smooth as on my old craptastic computer. And also, please help a girl out and tell me how to make mesh look better when shadows are on! It's sad when my necklaces get all crazy looking, you know?

A Corny Celebration

Thursday marked a really special day for me. It was my one year adoptiversary! I know, right? One year ago, Lolita and Rune asked me to join the family, and it's definitely the best thing I've ever done in my SLife! The family has changed over the past year, we've had our ups and downs, but on the whole, it's been pretty darn cool. We've done so much together, and I know there is so much more to come. It's really funny. I have done loads of things in SL. I've been a blogger, and a model, and a DJ, and a landlady. Going back even further, I've been a club manager and a dancer and into a whole other kind of scene. But I feel that this is what I was really looking for. I am at my best being a wife, mother, and sister. It's funny how that works, huh? Of course, I was a really different person a few years ago, so maybe even if this had been dropped in my lap, I wouldn't have been ready for it. Luckily, it came at a time where I could not only appreciate it all, but thrive in my new family.

So we decided to celebrate our one year, we'd head out to The Cornfield!! Only right before we were going to go out there, my computer started restarting itself. I know. My brand new fantastic computer! The first time, I thought it was a fluke. Then it happened again. And then again. And then I went yelling "HELP!" through the house and my bf came out to see what I was yelling about. Turned out that the wireless thingy inside the computer went on the fritz and was throwing it all off. Once he fixed that up, I was good to go. Only it was late, so no corn last night. :(

But, we headed out tonight, and it was so much FUN! I wasn't able to get a whole bunch of pictures just because being at The Cornfield requires a LOT of running, but here are a few I managed to snap.

Okay, this one makes me laugh the most. There is an outhouse out there to hide in and when you sit on it, your view goes out the window on the door. So I'm in the outhouse, a zombie is coming, and little Payton is right there!




Abby and I were ready to kill zombies and collect corn! By this point, I'd collected so much cornbucks, I was able to upgrade myself with some armor.




My sister looks so elegant in her box hat, right? [And I dunno what Takeo (aka Captain Corn) is doing back there. I just noticed him in the pic when I was putting it up!]




We stayed out there a good 3 hours but it barely felt like it because it was just sooo much fun and of course we always have the best time when we are together! By the end of the night, Takeo had made the top scorers list and I hadn't crashed even once. So we did the dance of the joyful!





All in all, it was a pretty awesome night. I wish that Aldwyn could have joined us this time around, but I'll have to take him out there when he gets a chance to actually sit down. He needs to collect 2000 cornbucks to get all of the armor like we have! Next up, we have to collect 2000 cornbucks so we can get a better weapon. That chainsaw will be mine!! Takeo is already halfway there with 1000 cornbucks, but I need 800 more. I can do it!

It's definitely bedtime for me. Happy one year to my family! I love you guys! ♥

Just As Good As Always

In my RL, long hot baths are not really possible. Even long hot showers aren't great because my skin hates me and gets itchy, dry and gross. I don't usually mind in the summer because it gets so hot here sometimes that even our cold water comes out lukewarm. But there are times I want to take a really long, super hot bath and I have to ask myself if I want to be itchy for days afterwards or nah. The answer is usually nah. *laughs*

But since my skin in SL is beautiful always, I got a chance to relax in my mermaid tub, which I FINALLY was able to put out because I wasn't lagging like crazy!




Yep! Even in SL, long baths are just as good as they always were. And as silly as it sounds, it really was relaxing for me.

I don't know if you guys read New World Notes, but there was an article today about Cube Republic and he said that SL has really helped him manage his trigeminal neuralgia - which is a really nasty chronic pain condition. Read the article, it's short but good. But what Cube said made a TON of sense to me.

As I've mentioned before, I was diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder many years ago. I don't respond well to most medications that I could take for it. One drug that I do take when it gets super bad, I have to take half of the pill, even though it's a very low dose, because a full pill will leave me almost unable to function the next day. SL, especially in the past 3 years [although not as much in the past 6 months with my computer issues!], has been instrumental in allowing me the chance to manage my anxiety without medication. Or at least, with a lot less medication. :)

In the past couple of days, I've been reminded of the help that SL gives me. I can distract myself with pictures and exploring. I can laugh until I cry with my family instead of growing increasingly frustrated that I can't run around with them. And I can set up an oasis in our home where for a few minutes, I can just soak in a tub that won't leave my skin itchy afterwards. And when I get into bed tonight, I can think about all of this and feel less anxious. Even if I only get 5 minutes of relaxation, it's so so so worth it to me.

It's All About The Corn!

If you're interested in adopting, and adopting a more dedicated child, you have to ask yourself how much you'll be able to do with them. Even in SL, kids get restless! My kids, bless their hearts, have been pretty understanding about my computer issues but I know there have been nights where they were totally bored just standing around with me, even if they said they weren't.

Luckily, that's not a problem now! Abby and I went shopping at a few stores earlier and she said that now I'm not acting like a tired out mom who doesn't want to do anything. *laughs* Nope! I did have to relog once after doing her pics since I had been really working the computer, but honestly, I was only a little bit laggy. I think it was more out of habit than anything else.

Tonight, the Zanzibar clan headed out to The Corn Field! If you're a long time reader of my blog, you'll remember that in 2008 when I first heard about The Corn Field [which I said was new, but I was wrong], I so badly wanted to go! Then in 2009, they opened the place up so people could come take pics and stuff like that. Well, it's back! But it's totally different this time! It's a GAME.

First you start out at a portal place [much like in the Linden Realms game] and walk on through. After you say yes that they can put attachments on you [say yes!], you're outfitted with a HUD, a basket, and a good plank of whackin' wood. Why whackin' wood? Because there are MONSTERS!! It's supposed to be the souls of griefers past! *laughs* And there's some thing that Aldwyn called Mr. Potato Head that's got a candle on top of its head. But you don't have time to stare because your mission is... to collect corn!

Yes. See. Along with whackin' monsters, you have to collect corn in your basket! The more corn you collect, the better it is because you turn them in for Cornbucks, and Cornbucks can be turned in for better armor and weapons, or just some prizes. You'd think it would be easy, but it's not really! If you get hit by a monster a couple of times, you're sent to a graveyard and you lose all your corn! Not your coins, but your corn! I was trying to run to the barn to turn in my corn after I maxed out at 20 pieces of corn and right before I got there, a monster beat me and I lost all my corn! Plus, being that you're in a corn field, it's awfully easy to get lost. But it was so much fun!! And I didn't crash once!

The girls definitely had a great time and are eager to go back. I want to go back to get more corn!

Oh, and it's kinda cool for pics out there, too. You know, if you're into that kind of thing. I just wouldn't advise standing around for long, though, unless you like being eaten by monsters.




You can see more about The Corn Field here:

How Sweet It Is

So for the past couple of years, I've been working on a computer that is painfully outdated. The video card was decent enough and all but it was just too old and patched together with bits and pieces of extra parts. Heck, I was still working with Windows XP despite the fact that everyone was scaring me by saying I NEEDED to get at least Windows 7 immediately. But I made it run and I made it work for me because unfortunately, the budget just didn't allow for a new computer. At least, not a new computer that would run Second Life any better.

The past few months have been rough. Any thing I've done with the family has been done with a lot of crashing, or I have to derender EVERYTHING around me to just stay with them. All the pictures I've shown that I didn't take from someone else's Flickr have been done with my computer grunting and wheezing next to me. But I kept going because I love SL, I love taking pictures, and what else could I do? SL helps me more than any drug when my anxiety gets really bad, especially since my anxiety attacks usually happen at night when I can't go out for a walk or anything. I love it.

But even with my love for SL and my family, I've been getting more and more discouraged. All the decorating I did in our house was done slowly and with a LOT of freezing and crashing and I couldn't really be in the house anyway. It was easier to be out on the beach, but not that much easier. I couldn't visit my girls' rooms or go see the Oleanders or go shopping at any events until almost the last day. Staying up on my platform was basically becoming my SLife. I started to just not want to log in at all.

I've been hoping for the past few months that maybe for my birthday this month, I could talk to my RL partner about a new computer. But a few weeks ago, we had to have work done to our house that put pretty much everything out of the budget for a while. The joys of home ownership, am I right? *laughs* So I put the thought of a new computer out of my head and tried to figure out how to make mine chug along a little longer.

However, I forget that my RL partner pays more attention to me than I realize sometimes.

This morning I was getting myself ready to head out to see my parents for the day when a very normal-for-us thing happened. I heard a THUMP! Then a DINGDONG as the doorbell rang. Then VROOM as a truck drove away. My RL guy is kind of an Amazon freak so we get packages delivered almost daily. [these packages almost never end up anywhere except in the living room, unopened. I dunno.] On my way out the door, I noticed the big box on the porch said DELL. It's not too uncommon for computer equipment to end up on our doorstep due to his job. For the briefest moment I thought, "Wouldn't that be nice if it was a new computer for me?" But I put it out of my mind because I knew it couldn't be for me.

But guess what? IT WAS!!!!

When I got home this evening, he came out of his office and handed me a box. "This is a power supply. You need to open up this big box, then open up your computer and pull out your video card and hard drive. Then pull out the power supply in this computer and install the rest. Good luck."

Well. *laughs* I'm not the most technical girl in the world, which he well knows, so he DID most of it because I was unscrewing things that didn't need to be and obviously I don't know where everything goes. But I did help!

After installing a few things and then going to get dinner, I was ready to get into Second Life.

Holy... I'd forgotten how FUN it can be! My sister pulled me over with them and for the first time, I didn't have to immediately start derendering her landscaping. I could cam all over their land! I could run around with the kids! We went shopping and I was able to chase Riley all over the sim! We went to look at hair and I was able to do Gyazo gifs for the first time ever! We went to try out dances and I had no problems! After I said goodnight to them, I was able to go shopping, then do to a blog post with shadows! I could run around our house and then sit and enjoy it.

I'm so so happy right now. And so dang grateful that I'm as loved as I am - in both worlds.