Yay Freebies! And a Sidenote

I just want to again thank all the many designers of SL who participated in yesterday's Rez Day party for Fashion Consolidated Group. Despite the problems created by a stampede of probably hundreds of avatars to various places, I think most of us had a jolly good time. I think most of the designers did too as many were on hand to hear a chorus of thank yous from we the grateful! (I know there were a few who were less polite and grateful than they should have been but I was in many places where we all said thank you as we came and went.)

I haven't had time yet to go through everything that I got even!

I do want to say one other thing, and then link to read Alicia Chenaux's excellent soap box post about the same thing. Not to belabor the issue as reported on a certain freebie blog, but a comment made there - if we "freebie obsessives" bought something now and then, store owners wouldn't kick us out" really got my goat.

Nobody has to explain why they do or do not spend money on SL. No one has to justify it to anybody else. If you can't understand that getting a bargain, or getting a gift from someone (and that's what freebies are) is fun - well I can only say I feel sad for you because you are really missing out.

Ironically, I was in the store that Creamy mentions namelessly and saw her moments before the incident. As it happens, I spent close to 1K at that same store after picking up the freebie there and got invited to their update group this evening. So much for the notion that freebie hounds never spend money, eh?

Now, here's the link to Alicia's much more insightful comments if you're interested.

OMG!

Soooo many freebies, soooo little time and now sl wants to be all crashy and stupid.

I am so sad!

I already missed out on some stuff!



I do want to take a moment and say thank you to all the many many designers who took time out to put out their gifts in celebration of Fashion Consolidated. It is much appreciated by me and I'm sure many other people!

Modeling, Revisited.

A quick update here to be fair to the lovely people at MODA Modeling. Mirrabella Schumann got in contact with me yesterday afternoon while I was out of world and hopefully as soon as classes begin, I'm there! There was a mix up with even though there was a script error she still got my applications, yay! Plus, SL is playing silly buggers it seems and hiding people in the people search. They can be found, however, in the all search. Thought I'd mention in case some of you are having trouble finding people through the people search.

By the time I got back online, my messages had capped and I missed Mirrabella but also Licentious Malady mentioned one of the MODA models had seen my blog and passed it along. A comment was left also for follow up, and thank you very much Licentious.

So, first steps accomplished! Since I'm young still, -only 4 months- I hopefully will have an interview today.

I blogged about receiving this gown as a gift in a previous grid filtered post so here is the picture again. The gown is by Nicky Ree, hair by ETD and shoes by Aphrodite Creations. Tasha skin by RAC.



This pic is viewable in larger size on my flickr page. Click through to the all sizes option.

Soooo Much to Write Here!

Okay, since I promised, here's an update on me and Mr. Coolname.

So much has happened I'm not going to tell you everything. In the words of Inigo Montoya, "There is too much, let me sum up!"

Mr. Coolname continues to impress in pretty much every way in terms of being practically perfect as far as dating material. He's smart, witty, appreciative, complimentary, warm, funny and understanding. He listens when I talk (with a few little exceptions, lol) and also draws me out of myself. He wanted to hold my hand so much he went and bought a little hud so he could. How sweet is that? We've talked about each of our real lives a little, something that I'm not generally enthusiastic about, but it gave us each a little more understanding of where the other person is coming from. I found myself opening up about things and he made that much easier and more pleasant than it might have been. There were one or two rocky moments when I had to explain the virtues of saying you're afk and how much I hate the sensation of being ignored. ;)

Despite this blog, there's a lot I do hold inside because I'm basically rather shy. The blog is more of compulsive journalism, lol, than anything.

I've got some pictures here of things from yesterday. Mr. Coolname is pretty well-traveled and also interested in history so he tends to seek out things in SL in those veins. I'm happy to tag along and hold his hand, especially when there's so many places yours truly has not been yet. ;)

Our first visit was to somewhere (sorry I forgot to get lm or slurl, I'll try to edit that later) that attempted to recreate Ancient Rome. I thought the builders did an excellent job.

Here are a few pictures of one courtyard we were in when I looked over the balcony from the marketplace.









Mr. Coolname was called away after buying me the beautiful toga I am wearing in the next pictures so I paused to take a few snaps. :)



The hair, btw, is Vivian from ETD and I thought it set off the outfit very nicely. My only complaint on this lovely ensemble is that I wish they'd used flexi a bit more. Then again, I suppose togas are meant to fit close to the body.



I edited this second pic to make the red darker, I like the effect very much.

At this point, I too was called away and so we didn't regroup until later that evening.

Mr. Coolname and I share a passion for dancing and we both belong to one or two Jazz clubs. -Specifically Frank's and Jade's Jazz Island-. He had received a notice of a red event at Frank's and invited me to join him there. This was a great idea except for one small problem. I didn't have a red dress. Red heads and bright red don't usually go together. Mr. Coolname scoffed at this minor detail and we proceeded on a shopping expedition. We ended up at Nicky Ree, where I couldn't help but pause and sigh over the gorgeous Winter Flame ensemble. The full set is way out of my normal shopping budget so I was prepared to pass it by for something a bit more affordable.

"Do you really want this dress?" inquired Mr. Coolname. I replied in the very definite affirmative.

"Come here then," he said. "Forget about it," he said.

Yes, that's right folks, Mr. Coolname bought me the Winter Flame ensemble in the red color. I cried all over him. He didn't seem to mind. ;)

Here's me in the dress.



And here's us dancing together at Frank's.




I'll apologize now for being spammish since I have another post to do and also I don't know how to cut my posts for iheartsl.com. If someone has some tutorial on that, please pass it my way.

Last, but certainly not least, gentlemen - run, do not walk, to Tymmerie's blog (Girl Wonder Speaks About SL) where you can complete an important poll on what men look for in women in SL.

As ever, if you would like to see these larger sized, you can go to my flickr page. Click through the part where it says all sizes and choose the largest if it isn't on there already. As I've said before, I'm thrilled to get comments and to exchange blog links. So don't be shy!

Daemon Spammage

Saw this a couple places, thought I'd do it, whatdya think?

Isn't Insomnia Grand? And Modeling?

This is a post I was planning anyway but I was waiting for tomorrow. Technically it is tomorrow so I guess that'll do. Since the delightful and lovely Ms. Alicia Chenaux asked me were I and Mr. Coolname still seeing each other. Let me just put that to rest by saying that yes, we are, and more will follow on that soonish.

Over the course of my time in SL, I've become really fascinated and intrigued by the notion of Sl fashion models. I love the fact that there is such a profession in SL because it's one of those fantasy professions for many of us, I think, and I would be willing to guess it's much harder to do than it might look in videos or at shows. The more I thought about it, the more I felt that I wanted to do that. (I've thought about getting a job more than once to help offset some of my spending but since I don't want to be a stripper or an escort and I'm still working on content creation, I wasn't sure what direction to go in).

But, I've decided I want to make a serious attempt at modeling and so, my first step was that I went to the Moda Fashion Showcase to apply to the Moda Modeling School. My guess is that a school can teach me a lot and also according to the MODA info, I'd end up with a portfolio, etc. However, I've applied twice and both times I get a script error that makes me think that my application is floating around in the digital world somewhere and not reaching the intended recipient.

Here's me applying the second time. I think I look svelte and glamorous!



I dropped a notecard on the Director of Admissions at MODA but I never got a notification that it was accepted and now I realize, she probably gets 84985308644570965793 notecards. I also know I'm a little bit young for their admissions limits but I'm determined on this and I'm in a quandary for what to do to see that my application gets where it needs to go. I'd like to at least maybe get an interview!

Meanwhile, with the assistance of Alaska Metropolitan (of Metro Models) I got the names of several photographers who might be willing to take some shots in order to have something to show in contests and so on and the name of the extremely talented and lovely Ms Ryker Beck (of Rykerized.com) popped out at me. She is every bit as nice as you might think and she took the following shots for me. I am so impressed.

I resized these to fit on my blog but you can see them in their full glory on Flickr.










The last photo is my favorite but I really think all of these are wonderful and I'm so happy Ryker was willing to take them for me!

Evolution of an Avatar

I'm guessing that by now there may be some mild curiousity as to what I look like. If i were anyone reading this *I* would be wondering.

Here are a few shots representing the incarnations of my avatar. I have a few more also but this is mostly of the ones I kept for more than a day or two. If you'd like to see bigger versions *you pervs* you can look at my flickr page.

Version 1 - this was pretty soon after I rezzed, note the freebie hair and I think this was a freebie skin too from the wonderful Minnu Models skins.



Version 2 - I changed my shape a bit and got this lovely hair from Analog Dog. I think this is also a skin I bought from MM.



Version 3 - This is fairly recent incarnation, Tuli s4 skin and etd hair. I made quite a few changes to my shape here, most very small.



And this is me now - again some small changes here to my shape but not a lot. Hair by Cake and skin by RAC.

This is just so i can add this tag to my blog

Nothing to see here, just need this so I can filter onto iheartssl.com as recommended by the wonderful Ms. Creamy Cooljoke.

Lookie!

I found this while reading through Kitty Lalonde's blog.

I got curious after seeing her pr0niness on the Mean Girls blog. *coughandi'mcuriouswhereshegotsuchaparrentlyhighqualityanimationscough*

So, um, have some instant personal analysis.

You Are An INFP

The Idealist You are creative with a great imagination, living in your own inner world. Open minded and accepting, you strive for harmony in your important relationships. It takes a long time for people to get to know you. You are hesitant to let people get close. But once you care for someone, you do everything you can to help them grow and develop. In love, you tend to have high (and often unrealistic) standards. You are very sensitive. You tend to have intense feelings. At work, you need to do something that expresses your personal values. You would make an excellent writer, psychologist, or artist. How you see yourself: Unselfish, empathetic, and spiritual When other people don't get you, they see you as: Unrealistic, naive, and weak

What's Your Personality Type?

Befores and Afters

Here's a peek at my house, sort of before and after. The before is actually pictures of one of my neighbors houses which is still very sparsely furnished. Love the piano though.

The houses are identical except for a few variations in flooring.




This is the front of the house. Above is the neighbor's house. Below is my house.



I think the way they do rental property on this particular estate is kind of weird. They let you choose a house like the houses already on the island but if you say you don't want the house, they don't give you those 60 or 70 prims to build your own.



Above is the before. Below is the after.



I still have some things I want to do to my house, especially the yard but I'll get around to that.



Above before, Below after.




Here's a few more After shots.



This one is of the entryway, it's an awkward space so i made it kind of like a foyer.



And this is as if you were walking into my bedroom. LOL



And this is of my bathtub area, and I built the tub. I bought one of those Enkythings ones but there was some kind of weird texture problem so I built one myself with a little tinkering. Those are pillow talk pillows in it and that towel is too. I made all the rugs too.

I have to give a shout out to Xandi Mars of Del Sol Open Market where I got most of the living room furniture and the chairs in the bedroom. She was so nice and made that swing thing for me to match the rest of the set and then retextured the chairs in a darker tone at my request.

If you would like to see these in bigger size, I refer you to my flickr. Don't set too much store in my appearance there though. I've already changed it, eep! The evolution of my avatar will be some other post.

Blah

Kinda run down tonight ya'll, what's up with you?

PEE ESSS

I added some linkages and will happily trade more of same, just leave me a note.

Second Date Ness!

Okay, I'm going to pre-empt the second installment of my tale with this cautionary advice.

Boys (and I do mean boys) whose shape is closely aligned to that of the Incredible Hulk who try to get you to try out those kissing pose balls after about an hour of knowing you, are bad news.

This, unfortunately is one of my neighbors. I seriously have fears that he's going to turn into a stalker :(

I'll just zip on past that.

Remember Mr. "Coolname"?

You guessed it, we hooked up again around 6 pm ish. To my delight, he had bitten the bullet, as it were and broke down and become a payment info on file member of society and hunted down hair he liked better. (I think he did a few little tweaks to the rest of him too but who's counting?)

Why was I so delighted? First, it showed that he was interested in his own avatar appearance. I cannot understand anyone not investing in their own avatar. That's you! That's your representation to the rest of the SL world, what better thing could you possibly spend your time or money on? I recognize that freebies for the male type persons are a lot fewer on the ground than they are for women and that's definitely unfair and no fun but I reached the decision to spend money on myself within a week. (The shopping bug not withstanding, it's really all about some self respect and self esteem in my book.) That's my story anyhow. Plus, I figured this move meant he was planning to stick around. I've met quite a few people who found the learning curve and the adjustment to sl harder than they could really deal with.

Ahem.

One of my adventures earlier in the day with Mr. Hulk - the neighbor - was genuinely fun, in that he mentioned riding horses. Now, irl I'm very scared of horses. Big them, little me. But woot, in sl I can be an expert rider. Well sort of. So we went to this place where they had a demo but i rather easily sprung for a Chestnut of my very own and we went riding. I was lagging badly at the time so it wasn't as much fun as I had hoped :/

So, when Mr. Coolname came around, I mentioned it rather excitedly and he suggested he go with me, grab the demo and he come riding with me. So we did. The lag was much much better, or maybe the company made me feel better about it ;) We rode over most of the sim, stopped for some poses including a great sunset! and watched some jumpers. I can't for the life of me figure out how they do that, but it was fun to watch!

Mr. Coolname is rather frank about his er...lustiness, it's right there in his profile. LOL. And he mentioned during our ride that while jumping around his first day he stumbled into an SL Brothel. I know, the mind boggles. But aparrently a dancer there gave him a dance and he commented on how he couldn't figure out how she could dance so smoothly. I knowledgeably piped up with, I bet it was a sine wave dance. I love sine wave but I gotta say some of those have stripper written all of them in big red ink.

So, our next stop was sine wave where he promptly told me that some of the girl dances were entirely too gay. I escorted him to the boy dances where he proceeded to enjoy himself thoroughly and then shamefacedly reported that at least one of the dances was from Backstreet Boys and he hated the fact he actually knew that. LOL (I did warn him the girl dances were girl dances, I didn't make him get on the pink balls!)

By this time, Mr Hulk the neighbor was aparrently having issues and was pestering me so I reported to Mr Coolname the same in tones of exasperation. I then dragged him to Pillow Talk to ask him a very important question. Cuddling on a pillow talk pillow does not necessarily communicate that I want to go bump prim and pixel nasties kthanx, or at least that was my story and I was sticking to it! So i consulted Mr. Coolname on the matter. His judicious opinion was that I *might* want to neck, but not get married. I had to argue over the necking, after all, I don't know what the pillow does til I sit on it do I?

;)

*cough*

Around this point, I got a notice from the LVS subscribomatic that was movie night and they were going to be showing Transformers. Now, Transformers is a silly silly movie but I thought it was pretty novel to watch a movie inworld so I prevailed upon Mr. Coolname (Who had already seen said silly silly movie) to come with me. It wasn't crowded and everyone was very welcoming and sweet. We proceeded to watch about half the movie before I said, um, even I can't handle the level of dumbness. *g* But, we agreed, we really needed to find an sl drive in!

I suggested a refreshing shopping pitstop and grabbed the Harlowe hair from Cake. Pics forthcoming. After a brief interlude of club hopping and doing some kind of extremely heinous and therefore laughable grinding dances we retired to my house. We proceeded to talk for over three hours. The so-comfy pillow from pillow talk gets my vote on best pose set for talking.

Somewhere in there I introduced him to a few kisses from Bits and Bobs (in order to compare to Pillow Talk don't you know?) and my neighbor aparrently used his extra security Hulkness to determine I had a man in my house. And im'd me to tell me how jealous he was. My reply was....well really that's unprintable. Guys, ever heard the song You Don't Own Me? It so applies.

Mr. Coolname on the other hand, continues to score high with me on all levels. ;)

Randomosity Scores!

This post has been pre-empted by this newsflash.


I met someone.

I met him while doing my usual hunt for freebies crawl. I usually end up going through all the Freestyle notices to go hunt for stuff. In this case, I was spending some time in the morning, going through things I missed on the weekend of moving. I was hunting for silks that were supposed to be free at the Collar Me Sexy store.

The store, if you haven't been there, is huge and the silks were being reluctant to be found. I decided to ask in the Freestyle Chat group if anyone knew where they were. Nobody did, but a man happened to answer with a rather amusing name and feeling in a flirtatious mood, I commented on it.

One thing led to another and we bantered (note: bantering and/or flirtation should be a required skill.) for some time until he had to go attend to other things.

At the time, even though we friended each other, I assumed nothing much more would come of it, since frequently this has been the case.

Boy was I wrong; later that evening I signed on to an immediate greeting. This scored points with me also. I had mentioned that I'd just moved into my virtual home and I invited him to come see it as we also talked about going somewhere for dancing.

He was very flattering about how I looked and about how my home looked. Is there anyone who doesn't love compliments that sound sincere? I doubt it; I certainly was not immune.

As I knew he was a very recent new resident, I was unsurprised that my new friend was still looking a bit newbie around the edges, though it was obvious he'd done his best. He was wearing a tux for example. Let me tell you something, those guys over at Are We Not Men? have one thing right. Confidence, composure and intelligence far and away outweigh hot pixels.

My new friend continued to charm with conversation, with appreciation and flattery. We explored a couple different clubs, tried out every dance animation we could find and changed clothes a couple of times. I had a lot of fun and I flatter myself that he did too. And, when I tentatively brought up the subject of better pixel hair, he accepted the comment with good grace as well as allowing me to show him a couple of options without going to a big expense right then. The result was that he acquired new hair last night that pleased him.

We both were beginning to tire for different reasons and regrouped at my place for a short kiss and cuddle to end the evening. Ah, the thing Aretha's been singing about for 40 plus years. Respect. A pleasant and even romantic evening and a cuddle animation does not equate to instant sex! My pixel heart goes pitter pat!

Why am I up now? Insomnia strikes again!

Why?

Cause it looked like fun and cause I wanted to have a place to put some things like pictures of my new home and pictures of stuff i built and arranged for my home and oh yeah, pictures of me!

I don't have a particular desire, like only dressing in free clothes or keeping my spending to a tiny amount though I certainly admire everybody who contributes to me finding great free stuff!

Oh and any gentlemen that may come by, I refer you to Alicia's list. You can read it here and I totally think it should be required reading for many many male type persons coming in to SL Plus, it's cute!

I'm still trying to figure out what I want to look like so hold on in case of changes to appearance. ;)