Golf & Shadows

Tonight, before Jerremy logs in, I decided to go get some landmarks for the two of us to explore when we get some time. One of the places I saw in the Destination Guide was the Cheeky Cow Golf Club - which has a holiday themed golf game set up. This looks kind of fun. I think Jerremy might like this place. You can rent a golf club and get the HUD for $1L. 

Obviously, I am still a bit fascinated by shadows. Right now, I can only get them to be very noticeable if I set the environment to 9 AM or 3 PM (I am just using what is pre-set in the viewer.) with no other Windlight tweaks. I am not sure if you can combine Windlight settings and shadows or not. I will experiment with this as long as my patience for crashing holds up.

The Annual Donning of the Antlers

I have had a tradition in SL for (OMG!) 4 years running now. That tradition is wearing antlers throughout the entire Christmas holiday season. Today, I decided it was a fine day to officially don my antlers.

Also, as you can also see I am still playing with shadows in my pictures. I only crashed about 8 times taking this picture - which coincidentally is the number of Santa's reindeer if you do not count Rudolph. (And I don't.)

Me & My Shadow

I ran across this blog post and decided to try playing with shadows again. I have been using viewer 2.3, but the last time I tried shadows I crashed immediately. In fact, I crashed as soon as I thought about using shadows. This time, I tried to think of puppies and rainbows as I made the adjustments in my viewer and it seemed to work.  And look at the result: I have boob shadows! 

Extra bonus? I was able to photograph water, too. (I have had trouble taking pictures with Linden water -- it comes out tiled with weird images on it.) Turning on shadows made my viewer lag so I think at the moment it would only be good for when I want to take moody, angsty photos. It does give a very "real" look to SL though, so I hope they can make it easier to run on our machines. (Who am I kidding? I will need a new Pixar/NASA level graphics card.) 

We are redoing the house and landscaping so the best view today was facing my neighbor's sim across Route 7. These chairs are set up so we can keep an eye on them -- some of them are Canadian. 

ETA: Hmmmm...there is a big line in the sand in both pictures -- but there is no line in-world since that is just ground. It almost looks like prims in the picture. I'll need to figure out how to fix that when I take pics.

Great place for a home and/or skybox!

Jerremy and I are trying to sell 3 parcels of mainland. In RL there is a "trick" you can use to help sell property quickly that takes a little leap of faith and a trip to a religious trinket store - burying a St. Joseph statue upside down on the property you want to sell. Well, I didn't have a statue of St. Joseph in my inventory. But I did have a Philip Linden statue leftover from our Halloween party. Close enough! I expect the land to sell any moment now.

Free Range

Today is Thanksgiving here in the U.S. I just ended a wonderful day of celebrating with my family. We have a tradition of going around the table and naming something for which each of us is thankful. Since I don't talk about SL to them, there are things I didn't mention that I an grateful for such as:

• Being able to dress up for every conceivable holiday!
• People who make things like sexy turkey costumes!
• Money to buy Lindens to buy things like sexy turkey costumes!
• All of the good things in SL like TPing and flying and being able to wear a turkey costume anywhere!
• Free time to be able to come in world!
• Being able to eat gigantic prim turkey dinners and still keep my amazing figure!
• All of the creative people in-world with me!
• People who read this blog! I heart you!
• My SL friends!
• Jerremy!
• People who come to our parties!
• In-world build tools and my building skills!
• Other bloggers of all types - fashion, diary, news, op/ed, travel, etc. - who make the SL experience richer for me.
• That SL time is only one hour different from my own time zone.
• Did I mention the sexy turkey outfits?

Date Night?

Hey! A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving is showing in SL! It's playing at the Lush Theater until Friday, November 26th. Going to see this would be such a fun SL date! I will have to see if Jerremy wants to see it!

Talking Turkey

I thought this turkey was very cute, so I brought him home from the store. It's a good thing he is cute, because he has zero personality. Boring. The longer we hang out, the sleepier I get.

There is a sleazy version of everything in SL.

I am all set to Plymouth Rock Jerremy's world. We are going to start celebrating Thanksgiving!  [insert inappropriate stuffing joke here]

While I was looking for some Thanksgiving stores and events in world,  I landed at Aero Pines Park & Recreation Area (which I have visited before on this blog). They're having a Thanksgiving Celebration Dance and Pow-Wow tomorrow (Monday, Nov. 22) from 4-10 PM SLT. If you go, wear a costume - from their note card: "SUGGESTED ATTIRE: Colonial, Pilgrim, Native American, Wildlife Avatar, etc. Turkeys and other fowl attend at their own risk!" They're even having a turkey shoot. I'm sharing this because it sounds like fun and it was one of the few Thanksgiving events I could find.

I might stop by -- if I can find an outfit that won't land me in stocks.

Jerremy would have been one bad ass pilgrim.

My wonderful husband, Jerremy Darwin, has done the very modern version of hunting for a turkey for Thanksgiving - he found a frozen one in the Marketplace! To reward him for his bravery and musketry skills (or the contemporary equivalent of knowing which key words to use), I shall don my slutty pilgrim outfit for him.

By the way, today is his Rez Day - so if you get a chance, please wish him a Happy Rez Day!

ETA: The frozen turkey was made by Cedar Bay Furnishings (Tibouchina Freschi, Krystine Qinan & Remington Pinion ) because I was looking for one! Tibouchina IMd me this morning!!! THANK YOU!!! And guess what? They are free and you can wear the turkey as a hat!!

What about a cowlambpigturducken?

Do you know that Turducken is the brand name of a child avatars' clothing line in SL? Do you know how much my hopes got raised when searching the Marketplace for the edible type of turducken? Do you know how disappointed I am that there is apparently neither a frozen turkey nor a turducken in SL? Do you wonder why someone would name a clothing line after a meat on meat on meat orgy of deliciousness? Me, too.

$1L Submarine

You are saved from a week long streak of grocery store posts. Jerremy and I went exploring last night. He was already in swim trunks so I suggested that we go explore somewhere underwater. We went to Atlantis. Oh - annoying thing: they had fly turned off!! Grrrrr! It is underwater, People Who Built the Sim - how can I pretend to swim if I can't fly? Oh well, I overrode that and flew anyway. (HAHAHAHAHA! Take that!) Eventually, Jerremy found a $1L submarine dispenser, got one and drove us around in it.

The buildings look pretty cool - there is even a disco. Unfortunately, after I found my way outside, I could not figure out how to get back in. I could have drowned!!!

I couldn't find a sitter.

I couldn't find a sitter when I went to look for frozen turkeys at CyberKitten Bakery & Grocery today. (And again - no luck in finding one.) So, Blocky had to sit in "baby jail" while I browsed. But while that is Blocky in the photo, that is not my cart.

Kidding! There is chocolate cereal and wine - how could it not be my cart?  

I'll be in the frozen foods aisle.

I'm on the hunt for the rest of my Thanksgiving holiday dinner. The one thing I need, I haven't found yet. I need a frozen turkey. I need a frozen one because while live ones are nice, I don't know how to kill one. I'm a city girl. I would let it wander into a damage enabled sim and hope for the best (or worst, as the case may be).

I've looked for a frozen turkey on the Marketplace and at all the prim food shops I know. Tonight, I found  a new grocery store, so I decided to visit and see if they had a frozen one. I had no luck, but I picked up a few other items and some Spam - just in case we can't find a frozen turkey in time.

Ummm...I think the checker decided to take her break in the middle of ringing me up. Stupid union rules.

Home Alone

Sometimes, our avatars spend some alone time. Every once in a while, RL tasks need to be done, so Jerremy and I park our avatars while we each do stuff we need to do. It makes us feel connected. But today, I snuck back in-world to take a picture of our avatars. I wanted to see what they are up to when we aren't around to supervise.

See how innocent they look? They were on their best behavior. Obviously, Jerremy and I are bad influences on our avatars. If we'd been with them instead of AFK, I suspect that there might have been nakedness, taking of the Lord's name in vain, gambling, wearing white after Labor Day and a lampshade on someone's head. As usual.

19 channels and nothing good is on!

I was in the mood to watch some in-world TV today. The comedy channel we get didn't seem that funny when I tuned in, so I am trying to find something good on the lifestyle channel. I haven't watched TV in world in ages -- even though we have a media room for it. I guess if we had more time, Jerremy and I would watch more - maybe even do a movie date night. Luckily, today was a lazy day so I have some time to check it out. 

There's that new shared media thing in the 2.0 viewer so maybe if I don't find anything, I'll see if I can do something with that. I have no idea if shared media will work on our TV or if I just rez a cube and watch Hulu on that?

Oh, could the media controls possibly be more hidden in beta 2.3? (They are sort of stuck up by the search bar but the little movie camera icon isn't there any more.) I keep going to Twitter to give feedback as LL has requested (#slviewer2) - but since I don't use the site for anything else, I think I'm just making myself seem whiny and complain-y to any Twitter friends I have. Forgive me Tweeters! (You can add me but all you are going to get is my Viewer 2 complaints.)

Sigh. I just realized that I am watching an infomercial. We can't even escape them in SL.

Two Weeks 'Til Turkey Day

I'm starting to do the same thing in both worlds -- check to make sure the silver is polished and that I have enough dishes and glasses for the Thanksgiving holiday in the US a couple of weeks. I think I am good. Now, I just have to find pretty table linens and clean the refrigerator. Well, The refrigerator in SL stays pretty clean, so I guess I should concentrate my efforts on the RL one. 

I get such a kick out of these little details in SL - it's part of why I collect prim food! Oh, this year, I upgraded my salad bowl. I should not be as excited about it as I am - but OMG I have sculpty lettuce leaves now!

Hi There!

I snapped this picture of Jerremy and me in our downstairs kissing spot - where we often say hello when we log in. <3

Won't someone think of the children??

I Plurked (Add me!) about my hyphenated display name yesterday and someone pointed out the burden that hyphenated last names will have on the prim children of SL. I didn't realize the impact this will have on our prim son, Blocky.

I wanted to change my display name back right away so that Blocky doesn't grow up feeling awkward -- but LL has that rule about changing display names only once every seven days. Well, seven days is an eternity in SL!!

Heaven only knows what damage there will be to Blocky's fragile, plywood psyche. He's Blocky Darwin with no hyphen. (And no middle name that I can recall. Hmmmm...) I blame myself for not thinking things through. Will the other prim children tease him? Treat him like he has splinters?

And what if we had hyphenated him? After a few generations of hyphenated-name-prim-babies growing up and marrying hyphenated-name-prim-babies, there will not be enough room in the display name field!! IT'S NOT SCALABLE! ZOMG!

It's ok, Blocky!! Mommy is going to remove the hyphen so she matches you and Daddy! Next week.

It's not getting any beta.

I gathered up all of my courage today and downloaded the 2.3 beta viewer. My main goals were more stability and anti-aliasing for pictures. (In 2.2 anti-aliasing is unavailable for some reason.) Anti-aliasing is still not available (Why???), but the viewer also comes with the fancy new feature of display names. (Because SL was not confusing enough, apparently.)

I bit. I'll try it. Not with anything crazy. My name is my brand - just as yours is your brand. However, since I usually wear a group tag that says Mrs. Darwin anyway, I thought I'd go ahead and use the hyphenated last name of Thorne-Darwin. Done. Now, I just have to get Jerremy to try the beta so he can see how fancy I am. 

I wanted to show the user interface in this picture so that you could see my new display name, but alas, every time I took a picture with the interface on, there were huge black lines across it. So, you'll just have to imagine how it would look. (I am standing in front of some pictures from our wedding to help you imagine.)

What are you going to do with your display name? Are you even going to enable them?

Ho-liday Costume

I have to admit that my interest was piqued when I saw a listing in search that said "sexy thanksgiving costume" when I was browsing the grid for holiday decor. I just had to TP over and see what it was. Well, there it is. My only surprise? I expected a slutty pilgrim.

I have come to realize that if it exists, someone will try to make a sexy version of it. Not just in SL. RL, too. Sex sells. I'm going to blame our DNA  - which will do anything to get us to make more of us.

Did I buy the costume? No. But only because I bought a slutty turkey costume from a different store a couple of weeks ago. But I am still in the market for the perfect slutty pilgrim outfit.

No complaints today.

I have no complaints today. Well, actually that is a lie. Jerremy and I only get a little bit of time together this evening. But that's my only complaint. But at least we get to be together at all and for that I am terribly happy! I'd be sad if we didn't get a good-night kiss in at least.

You know, I'd probably have him in more blog pictures if he ever wore more than a thong around the house. (I kid a little, but he did stay in the thong from his demon costume well past Halloween.) 

Complaint #1

I didn't want to start my complaining right off the bat. Today, I wanted to post about how Jerremy and I are starting to decorate our home for Thanksgiving. So, I went to some party shops and got ideas for themes like "Children of the Corn" (which would be easy to do since we already have some hay bales and corn stalks out from Halloween) or Hawaiian Luau (because why not?) So I took a picture of myself as I browsed happily for decorations. In fact, I took many pictures.

I thought this would be one of my favorite photos: 

Now, I am no photography expert, but I think you can see why I had an issue with how this one came out. 12 others came out just like it. What is the difference between the top picture and this one? A 90 degree turn of my avatar so that I could get some different things in the background. And I kind of wanted to get my foot out of the floor. That's it. No setting changes. And I crashed twice trying to get a picture. I won't even get into the other issues I have taking pics on the 2.2 viewer. *cough*antialiasing*cough*

Photography is one of the most popular activities in SL - it is a basic function and it has to work correctly for SL to be not only fast, easy and fun but make it worth our struggles and the money we put into LL's pockets.  

But I will take a big breath and go back to my decoration scouting....and getting ready to complain about display names.

I'm wearing my "I voted!" sticker.

It's election day in the United States, so I did my civic duty and voted. This means that my official pass to complain about anything political is renewed for another 2 years! Woo hoo!

In SL, we vote with our money -- so I have an annual pass to complain in SL. And really, every time I pay tier or buy Lindens I renew my pass to complain. So, I should complain a lot more than I do now.