Halloween at Angelwood

Last week we all gathered for an early Halloween party at Angelwood. Our hosts, Jordana Streeter and Aaronson Swindlehurst, threw a marvelous blast!! Jordana sent me at least 40 pics and I had some of my own. You haven’t seen anything until you’ve seen Lucy from the Peanuts gang pole dancing. Oh my, poor Mr. Shultz!!!! Linus was there with his blanket, Snoopy with his (her?) doghouse and of course, Charlie Brown – you blockhead!!!! We all had a wonderful wonderful time. I had no idea how best to post these pics so I simply ran them all together. Click on them to see the full photo. You know I never put up anyone’s name without prior permission, so there are no names here. Please – feel free to comment and identify yourself (or anyone else who wouldn’t mind being identified). I was there – but I was boring (no surprise there). I had no time to shop (gee, do you think it was because I spend every minute inworld landscaping???) so I grabbed my Steampunk outfit and headed over. Probably I should have gone as a pirate – maybe I could have snagged a dance with Jack Sparrow!!!!!

Enjoy! I wonder when wordpress will tell me that I have used up all my allowed storage????

Melissa Wanted Ducks

If Melissa asks a favor, I can’t say no. Thanks to Margie for the swan and Dale for the ducks! They are all paddling about happily in the river.

Mini Updates

I LOVE rocks!!! LOL. Added them to my landscaping tool kit. Although I am so weary tonight, I feel that if I never plant another flower that will be just fine. From the wall to the river is my work.

It’s time for a BUTTERFLY HUNT!!!!! YAY!!! Shengri La is having its monthly Ode jewelry butterfly hunt tomorrow (Friday, Oct 17). For all the details click here.

Details

Love and Sex are the 2 big draws in SL blogging (maybe in all blogging). I’m busy landscaping. But if you want the serious conversation, go to Bailey’s blog. She’s talking about lying and sex and love.

It’s the attention to details that makes SL such a wonderful place to inhabit. After days and days of planting flowers and trees and landscaping, that fact has been driven home. I’ve been having fun and learning a lot. I’ve been learning about rezzing objects, moving objects, stretching, shrinking and rotating objects. I’ve learned that I am a bit obsessive and compulsive about my work. Maybe some of you knew that already. I cannot walk away and leave the plant as it rezzed. I NEED to tweak it. I need to scatter the placements so that the plants are not in a straight line. I rotate each plant slightly to different angles so that the tops have a more natural look. I change the size of each one – some larger, some smaller. It takes me forever. But I can’t not do it. I tried to simply put a bunch of flowers in and walk away. I couldn’t do that. I HAD to make tiny adjustments to each one to differentiate it.

I have finally finished with the 6 flower beds. Now I’m making my way along the river. Ahuva Appleseed!!! I am planting weeping willows and weeping crab apple trees. I have cattails for along the shore. I have rocks to size and move and pile. I have weedy water plants along the shore (hey – maybe some lily pads????). Thank goodness there are some other people doing some landscaping as well, because at the rate I’m going, I’ll be done sometime in the spring of 2009. And the conference is next week. But trees and shoreline go much faster than tailored flower beds. Less tweaking is needed. Large open space is acceptable. But even so – I am compelled to fill in spaces with little touches of color or rocks. I went in this morning to take some pictures for this blog and I see that J and J have been very busy planting trees. And you know what – it looks great! Obviously they understand the macro view and are not obsessing about tweaking each leaf. There are trees all over. I couldn’t help but notice, however, that they all look the same………. Bad, Ahuva!!! Get with the BIG picture!!!!

I am sure that there are still more tricks to this than I have grasped. I have learned to group objects to copy but I’m not very good at it and I still feel compelled to change them. I’ve learned to flip plants in the middle of a group of plants in order to change the look and feel even though the individual flipped plant doesn’t show. There are things that happen when I try to move a plant or rotate it that I don’t know why they happen or how to stop them (note: these are not “good” things that happen LOL). I definitely need to get a building lesson (Hey Bailey – I’m going to take you up on your offer) and I need to learn about textures.

It would have been easier perhaps if I’d had more time to learn the nuances before the conference. LOL But I didn’t know that I was going to jump under that particular bus. It will be quite a relief when the conference has begun and I am done with this pressure to plant, plant, plant (that’s pressure applied by me to myself, by the way – no one else is “making me” do anything). I miss my life – both RL and SL life. I dream about this project. I think about it most of the time. LOL. I wish I could pull a Tom Sawyer and get someone else to logon as me and do some planting! I can’t wait til I can kick back, put my feet up, go into SL and NOT feel obliged to head to the work sim and plant. Soon, soon. And yet – I am so grateful that I am having this experience. It is great.

So there are many many many places in SL where the builders and creators get all the details right. The pictures in this post come from the library at Midsomer Island. If you go back and look at the picture of Darcey stretched out on the floor reading, you will see one black kitty sitting there watching you, and one black kitty reading its own book. But there is a third black kitty – a naughty black kitty sitting on the shelf, trying to catch itself a fish! I stood one night for awhile and watched her play.

Friends at the benches and beyond

First a shout-out to Chestnut!! What a FANTABULOUS link!!!! Ches blogged about Hocus Pocus’ Halloween hunt. You MUST get there! I went with 3 other friends last night and we had a total hoot!!! The streets were packed with people knocking on doors, getting unexpected results – some yummy, some very NOT yummy! LOL And that’s all I’m going to tell you – go experience it yourself! Good friends find you fun links!!! You’re the best, Chestnut!

My friends do like to change shape and size. Makes life much more interesting that everyone isn’t as boring as I am! Darcey showed up as a Totoro.

I don’t think these benches are going to hold up……

Speaking of which – did I ever show you the new benches? No more “bring your own chair”! Yay!

This last is not a friend. This friendly cow was floating in the air at a site I visited during a business field trip in SL. If I ever do decide to rent a place and call it home, I want a cow floating above MY house!!! Landlords, beware!!! (I’ll need to check the zoning laws…. )

My Coworker, Hal

Hi, I am HAL 9000, a Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic Computer.

Yep, floating above his head, is that description from 2001, A Space Odyssey. This outfit was soooooo perfect, right down to the pocket protector and the body gestures. I missed the shot where Hal pulled out his calculator and, you should be grateful, the shot where he was scratching himself in public. Sigh. Not only can’t we dress him up, we can’t take him out in public. Anyway, I am proud to call Hal my friend and co-worker!

Think Green!

I am obsessed. I have spent well over 24 hours in the last 4 days, working in my virtual garden. I IM’d J yesterday to tell her that I wasn’t sure if I loved her or hated her for giving me this opportunity. She merely laughed and said “Welcome to my world”. I have learned a LOT about moving objects. Failure is a great teacher! LOL I have a VERY healthy respect for all the SL landscapers. The two major flower beds are done – I added Orange Dahlias and Lambs Ear to the one that I finished the other day. I’m tried to work around the rocks provided in the original landscaping. The gardens do not match (different flowers) but they are similar. You and I know that by a real SL garden, these are nothing. But at least they are DONE, and maybe first-time SL visitors will like the color and effort, and hey – there are still 9 days til the conference – I can redo them if I get a major inspiration!!!!

Thank goodness RL is pulling me away for 2 days or I would be back in the flower beds. As it is – I am awake at a ridiculous hour, thinking about what I will do in the next set of flower beds and blogging about it!! I have my own gardening outfit! I can wear shorts, because I don’t have to worry about crawly icky things (my least favorite part of my RL gardens). Had to put my hair up so it wouldn’t get in my way. And of course, my inspirational t-shirt: Think Green!

So Very Fortunate

I don’t want to tempt fate, because I’m superstitious enough to know you should NEVER say good things without doing SOMETHING ritual to ward off bad fortune. But I feel that I really must take a moment to say why I can wake up each morning with a smile. First and foremost, I have the most wonderful family and I love them all dearly. I have wonderful friends and community and I am grateful to and appreciate each and everyone of them.

But this post is to say thank you to my co-workers and direct management at my job. They are the best coworkers and friends that you could find in your career. They are the ones who encouraged me to try SL and blogging. My manager gives me the time to volunteer on SL-based projects that do not directly benefit our part of the corporate world, but that do help the corporation as a whole. I am very grateful for that support. It has been wonderful fun (okay, part of the whole tree process was NOT fun ). Now it has become more than fun – the work is a complete joy.

I am GARDENING in SL!!!! Yes, that is right. I am landscaping flower beds in preparation for our conference (yay – flowers, not trees!!!). I logged on late last night because I couldn’t resist the lure of digging in the virtual dirt, planting virtual flowers. No broken finger nails, no sore back, no watering, no weeding, no worms!!! I am having the most wonderful wonderful time. Who knew?????? And I’m learning about editing items: rotating, position, stretching. This is reviving my interest in building.

I know that there are many many more beautiful places in SL. Obviously I am not a professional nor am I especially artistic. But I am so glad that I “threw myself under the bus” and volunteered for this task. Thanks to the friend who urged me to do so, thanks to my manager who allows me the time and offers support, thanks to all the friends who got me to this point, thanks to my sister who came and spent an hour landscaping alongside me. So here it is: my very first SL garden.

Starting point (not MY trees!)

My very first SL garden

Soothing my Soul

Sometimes when I feel stressed or overwhelmed or confused, I want to “run away”. At those times, even the beach is not quite the right answer. I don’t want to be with friends, I don’t want conversation, but I don’t want to be alone either. At times like this, I want to ride. Thanks to Shenlei, I can. And my faithful steed carried me through the meadows of Shengri La and through the orchards and along the coast line. We finally rested and watched the setting sun and the orca playing by the abandoned pirate ships.

Butterfly meadow

The beautiful water of Shengri La

Sunset into the waters

Playful orca amid the ships

Shengri La shoreline

Staring into infinity

Serenity

Female Artists

Most of this may be old news for all you “oldbies” out there. But who knows, SL is such a big place, maybe this will be new to you, too.

I just discovered La Reve because of a new post. Indagatricis is a relatively new blog. It is fiction inspired by SL places and things. I was reading it the other day and saw this post inspired by art in La Reve. I enjoyed the story and I found the art intriguing. I suggest you add Inagatricis to your blog list. I plan to visit La Reve as soon as time permits. In the meantime you can do as I did: google it.

I found a new vocalist that I REALLY enjoy. You know how much I like Grace McDunnough. I try to catch her whenever I can and belong to her group. I was listening to her sing a few nights ago at the Trax Live Music Resource Center (See Chestnut’s blog for more information about this wonderful new place.) Grace finished her set but I was sitting about chatting with friends so we stayed put, instead of tp’ing out.

Noma Falta came on. Oh WOW! Another great voice, this time doing the Blues and Jazz and rocking too! Signed up for her group right away!

I’ve been a member of Phoebe Ann Theas’ group for several weeks as well. Another warm, rich voice that can really put over a song. For my RL friends – if you join a group, you receive group messages about events of interest to that particular group. So I receive messages telling me when and where the artists I follow will be performing. There are also “generic” music groups. I belong to one of those as well – it sends me messages about live performances by a variety of artists.

My post wouldn’t be complete without mentioning Callipygian Christensen. Calli is a phenomenal photographer and artist. I had the great pleasure of spending some time with her in one of her galleries as she explained to me how she does what she does to SL photos. She showed me the pictures in the various stages of moving from great photos to great art. She has 4 galleries in SL as well as posting her work to Flickr. Calli has galleries at Antiquity Harbor (
Antiquity Harbor (73, 169, 23), Rasczak (Manzanillo Artist Enclave, Rasczak (239, 10, 21)), Caledon Cay (Caledon Cay (110, 76, 23) ) and what may be my favorite, at Shengri La (Shengri La (240, 167, 25)) where the gallery has four floors of portraits, landscapes, and erotica.

There are a lot of very positive, healthy things to do in SL.