farewell to second life (for now? forever?)

little by little Second Life and First Life conspired to bring me out of the virtual world.  complications with SL's software quirks brought down TSMGO, The Show Must Go On, and i couldn't find anything as fun.  i quit working, so my scheduled changed.  the people i knew and loved dropped out of SL as their lives changed.  Osprey died.  yet i kept my land for lucy and mudpie, kept premium membership, my homes. the software changed again and changed again and mesh came in and who knows what now.  i finally this year dropped my premium status gave up my land and homes, and at my new house in First Life , out in the wilds, the internet is sooooo slow it is hardly worth peeking in now and then. so i'm cutting the cord. 

when i log in for some reason now, i am like Rip van Winkle.  everyone is a stranger, nobody from before is around.  i am wearing out of date clothing, out of date body in fact!  i've come from the past.

LETTING GO OF HOLDING ON

many many years ago i spent happy hours in Second Life and started this blog as my Second Life blog.  gradually SL changed and people more and more used their SL as an extension of their first life, instead of a way to play with personalities, bodies, worlds totally different.  my blog too became a blog of my first life, mostly because my FL became more interesting and i spent less time in SL.  the last couple of years i've spent almost no time in SL, but kept my land, my houseboat, my stuff, because i loved it.  but yesterday i finally did it.  in the interest of not spending money on something i don't even use, i gave up my houseboat, abandoned my land, and reduced my avatars down from premium to freebie accounts. 
this was soooo sad!  especially taking all my stuff out of my cozy houseboat... my plants, my bed, my tea set, my woodstove. 
but now i feel liberated!  i can go into SL and wander homelessly as i did when i was a noob, sleeping in parks, changing clothes in libraries, wandering into people's weddings.  i don't even know if there are still libraries in SL.
now that i pay nothing for SL, we'll see if i use it more!

surprise frog package *sniff*

froggy things arrived by post
two of the things i love the most
two funny books! for laughs or napping
all in wondrous froggy wrapping!

from Osprey, a fellow doggerel lover,
a lover of silliness and surprise
a person of remarkable energy and humour and passion,
the funnest and most creative time of my life is due to her.
it changed me for the better.

now she is on her way out the door,
into the next something or nothing,
a light will go out in our world. 
she plans her exit for the solstice,
to steal off in the darkness while everything sleeps.

all of us who knew her will carry a little of osprey within us, and feel joy and loss when we think of her -- and i have her books!!

i had some Lear and Carroll and even Don Marquis, and all those funny books, but of  Belloc i only knew to be kind and tender to frogs!  osprey wanted to further my education in this respect, and as she will have no more use for these books, i am so happy to receive them.

 the synchronized unicycle and knitting drill team at an early rehearsal

trying out firestorm

taking firestorm out for a test drive -- toady's class sounded like a good way to do it!  
and it was a fun class, lots of tinies there, making a little spaceship that follows you around.
not only that, but another tiny can sit on it and have a ride!

everything in firestorm was right where i looked for it, so they really did make it like phoenix.  it was fun to be back in one of toady's classes.  she is amazingly good at working with a bunch of exuberant unruly tinies!

toady looks scary but she's a good teacher!!

we play with our spaceships after they're all done

i do get the feeling that firestorm's perspective is a little strange -- everything looks further away sooner if that makes any sense.  maybe it's a setting somewhere. i'd like my view to be flattened in a bit, less depth.

phoenix to firestorm -- i did it

second life is so off my radar these days, i seldom give it a thought except to go in once a month and pay mudpie's houseboat rent and check on lucy's property.

i noticed a sort of urgent message from Phoenix.
apparently it is now imperative to migrate to the Firestorm viewer.
i've been meaning to for a couple of years, but keep thinking "why not just give up on the whole second life thing?"

yes, why not?  i guess i had so much fun there for 4 or 5 years, it's hard to cut my ties.  nostalgia for a virtual world,  now so changed as to be barely interesting at all.

anyway, i did the surprisingly painless upgrade.  it seems while i've been procrastinating, so have many others, and Firestorm just worked harder and harder to make a version more like Phoenix, just for us diehards.

everything seems to work except lucy's grass and money pile are white instead of green! (click pictures to see them really big!)

where's the grass?  and the money pile isn't green either

the other colors seem ok -- nice that the ugly across the way is gone

all is well in haven shire at mudpie's houseboat

and there are some new businesses in the neighborhood

from "brushes with"

from "brushes with" by emily toder
the last 6 lines of the book:

I got back in the house
my woolen farmprint pajamas of petting zoo textile
I let them on me
and they hung on me
ways I have managed to sleep after this
vary little

(reprinted here without permission! sorry! but her little book is a favorite of mine, and it comes from Tarpaulin Sky Press)

suddenly i remembered the feral clothing museum that Osprey created in Second Life, and i wanted to add a picture of it because these lines remind me of it.  but alas, the museum is gone, vanished in whatever mysterious disaster  took away Cowell and Salazar as well, and i can't even find any old pictures of it!

tea and film discussion

snowing like mad today. yay!
i love the bright sunny days, but more snow will be fun.

a friend and i met in a tibetan teahouse to discuss the movie SAMSARA, which he sent me a copy of.
a profoundly disturbing film.  has anyone else seen it?  we can find a teahouse with more pillows.  (maybe somewhere warmer, too)

mudpie's unmeds

i mentioned briefly in a previous post that mudpie is making placebos for friends for such ailments as colds, anxiety, sleep problems, and even arthritis.  she is qualified to do this because she has a nurse outfit she sometimes wears in second life on hallowe'en.

turns out she's ahead of her time. a recent article in Harvard Magazine tells of the serious research being done with placebos...why they work so well!!  even when subjects know they are placebos! 
or do they?  it's WAY COMPLICATED and you can read it yourself if you wish to by clicking here .

one of my favorite parts is that they are also experimenting with the doctor side of things to see how different behaviors and attitudes affect the patient's recovery.  
in one experiment practitioners were "...required to touch the hands or shoulders of members of the third group (of subjects) and spend at least 20 seconds lost in thoughtful silence."

the lost in thoughtful silence part amuses me no end. next time i'm at the doctor and she becomes lost in thoughtful silence as she ponders my symptoms, i'm afraid i'll start laughing!

mudpie posing for her picture for the label of the pseudoceuticals

 and being photobombed by her pet mouse

 

meanwhile back in raglan shire

mudpie is ready for xmas in her cozy houseboat.  there are nice cottages available, but this is perfect for me!  almost perfect -- if only my shire had a road or a canal right to raglan shire!  

waiting for xmas can get boring, so the tinies have constructed a race track!  mudpie is hooked on racing and has made the scoreboard for 2 days in a row -- (but now everybody's getting better so no longer on it)

 and one other thing -- mudpie's gone into the placebo business in first life.  lots of studies show them to be effective, and in a recent study they worked as well as drugs even when the patient was told they were just placebos!  
i'll try to get a picture of this great new product before they are all snapped up.

Les Miserable by Theatre on the Hill

(click any picture to enlarge)

 minding her own business in her pumpkin-head psycho nurse hallowe'en costume, mudpie got a message from Skyblue Earthboy that Theatre on the Hill was doing Les Miserable (which they've been working on for a loooong time!) right now!

(scene 1)

 she tp'd right over and sure enough the seats worked for tinies too!  hooray for tiny power!  my snapshots are not very clear, but you'll get the idea.

(the flames were wild and crackling!)

 the singing was beautiful, and the sets stunning. the acting was a bit robotic in places, but perhaps that's as good as it gets.

ordinarily i don't go for seeing something in SL that would actually be better in RL, but i'd never seen Les Miserable, and i did enjoy the music.

(the river flowed toward us!)

 michael heard i was the only tiny attending and came to be my wingman, as he put it!  as you can see we are both mesmerized, even tho he was watching on his CELL PHONE!

actually i have no idea what the plot was about, but still it was lots of fun with lots of good energy in the troupe. made me miss Lucy's days on the SL stage!

castle cats

lucy's second life cat went missing.
i finally rezzed another one
fluffy turned up lost in the castle!
now there are two, fluffy and fussby.

they play together -- and when lucy's not online
they really like getting lost in the castle.
lucy put some chairs down to block the door
it works!

it came from curio obscura

been so busy i never get to second life.  today there was a sale at curio obscura and mudpie made a trip in-world.  mudpie's pet mouse, and lucy's pet cat are always very happy to see them!  i feel guilty leaving them alone so much.  they rush over eager for a pat or some company.

see mouse? click to enlarge!

mudpie bought a tentacle.  hope it doesn't catch mousie!  stay away!

OH NO IT's GOT ME HELP MOUSIE RESCUE ME!!!

i'm all stretched out!

WOOTSTOCK 2012

it's one of life's great pleasures to have people show up at the house on a saturday or sunday summer afternoon and sit on the porch all day and talk.  i love it!
this weekend we had drop-ins both saturday AND sunday.
only teeny drawback -- it was WOOTSTOCK IN RAGLANSHIRE for only ONE WEEKEND!
fortunately i had my stock and wooted too, because i got to the last concert of the weekend after all.
it's worth it for the music alone, and the costumes are outrageous.
here's a few snapshots:

onstage - dj's - the guru and the diva?

mudpie rocks out in coveralls while others 'peace out'

hippy on hippo

fireworks finale - this doesn't do it justice

tripping on no-mesh

due mostly to laziness and non-inspiration, i still haven't upgraded to MESH !!  as more and more people use it, my view of second life has become more interesting. fewer cookie-cutter barbie and ken avatars, idealized houses and furnishing, and more CRAZY LOOKING STUFF

Osprey, who has never been cookie-cutter, is becoming less and less human to me, and wearing clementine's herring boxes for sandals.


 the fabulous SL9B lotus stage was, to me made of legos *smile smile*   and some of my fellow meditators look like pieces of cheese.

 and what are these things for sale? Buddhas? to me they are like beautiful stones. i admit i'm having fun.  like wearing distortion glasses.

SL9B tinies and poems

mudpie's listening to her poem AGAIN with a handsome bunny who happened by.

she's so excited that her poem is in one of the 'shrooms at the tinies' exhibit area for SL9B (Second Life's 9th birthday celebration).  mudpie's written many haiku, but she didn't realize how complicated an ode is to write when she started it!

tinies are friendly and fun and love waffles, but lots of them are also poets!

here's mudpie's poem:

ODE TO WAFFLES

waffles glow in shades of golden.
roundness is a waffles contour.
small square holes for butter holdin'
into which we syrup's font pour.

you can eat things on a stick stuck,
vegan vegetarian local,
sandwiches or hot falafels,

you can fry food in a mix up,
mew for cheezburgers - be vocal,
but for me -- i can haz WAFFLES!

 

 

life on a boat

 flying is so very useful when for example hanging the pleasant sounding windchime mudpie made in toady's class !

 

 nothing quite so nice as life on a houseboat in the summer in Raglan!

 

long dark monday

yesterday i happened into second life just in time to listen to an hour of "The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul" in Raglan, thanks to Shady Fox's Sci-Fi Radio Theater.  

definitely, i thought, i must re-read this for the nth time, soon!

this morning, monday, is overcast, barely 60 F, rainy off an on, that is to say cold and dreary in the way that makes it hard to even get out of bed and no amount of coffee seems to help energize the day.  finally i went to the bookcase and took down "The Long Dark etc" and sank into a big chair. 

ahhhh blessed relief!

reading the first sentence "It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on earth has ever produced the expression 'As pretty as an airport.'" was like sliding down into a warm bath.  

no other author understood so well as Doug Adams the kind of book that makes a cold dreary damp rainy day feel like a gift!

riding the hedgies

Raglan Shire's 2012 Artwalk comprising 4 sims is quite a hike.  but YAY they've provided hedgepillars to ride around all the hedges hung with art!
a bumpy ride, but soft.  hedgeslugs would be smoother riding, but what a mess that would be for the walkers.

gaudy gaudhi house

(click to enlarge)

i never heard of the architect Gaudi until i was sent some pictures from Spain.

omg - can this be real?

someone must have recreated his buildings in Second Life -- that's what people love to do.

sure enough, i found a recreation of gaudi, and even some copies of gaudi buildings for sale. 

here is one installed on a friend's plot of land.

up to no good

could this be mudpie?

this doesn't look good!