Enough is Enough

I wasn’t planning on doing this quite so soon-  but as I’m about to move a very long distance away from Shadetree, am either on-schedule or ahead-of-schedule in doing so, and what little salient commentary I have or wish to share about RL is limited to dumb-ass one liner posts about bubble-wrap, it seems obvious that it’s time to shut this puppy down.  So consider it shut down.  I declare the Interregnum over.  Goddess grant me the strength and the perseverance to make sure that whatever comes next isn’t twenty times worse.

Interregnum the Site will be left as an archive in this subdomain.  I have no plans to replace it with another site at this time.  There is a very nice forum, the Amber Horizons neighborhood forum, which I am the Administrator of, and which has recently been reopened after migrating it to my server;  if I choose to post anything in the near future, I will be posting it there.  The threads on the forum containing Second Life and Myst Online: URU Live content are publicly viewable by Guests, without registering, but any personal posts I make will probably be put in an area visible only to Members–  which I mention only because registration is currently closed to new members, pending replacement of the existing captcha scheme with a new one that spambots haven’t cracked yet.  ;P   If you are not already registered as a member there, and want to be, e-mail me [ace @ the root directory of this site];  I can set you up an account and password personally, with a minimum of fuss.

see ya ’round the campfire

Ace*

Take That

Major props to Church for helping me decimate four closets, two bureaus and the entire kitchen.

W00t!

I Guess They Have To Do It Sometime

What, do lawyers all take their vacations the same week in August?

Freedom Rising

All the books mentioned in my previous post have been welcomed with open arms at the care center where Opal is receiving her physical therapy.  The seniors and other full-time residents there are starved for new reading material, and anything they’re not interested in, the staff is happy to find homes for or take themselves.  Bullseye.

Uriel helped me haul all the books there.  He and his wife are going to rent a truck, and take the couch and all the bookcases, plus possibly take the rest of the furniture, too (except for my computer chair and table, unless it turns out in the final hour that those two things won’t fit in my car after all.)   We got the antique Russian pine cabinet into the back of his car and sent that home with him today, rather than have him drive away empty.

Next up:  kitchen, closets and bureaus…

Now I’m Pissed Off

What kind of fucking world do we live in where libraries are tepid about taking donated books?  I have a considerable collection I have to get rid of–  and I’m not talking about shitty paperbacks with the covers ripped off here, I’m talking about well-kept paperbacks and softcovers, nice contemporary hardcovers, art books, history books, fiction, non-fiction, you name it–  and the Shadetree librarians are looking at me like I’m offering them severed fish heads, saying, “Welllllll…    if there’s no textbooks…    and you bring them in just one bag at a time…  and there’s not too many at one time…  or overall…”  Fuck you!  FUUUUUUUCK YOUUUUUUUUUU.  How about I put them in a trebuchet, light them on fire and launch them into the parking lot?

God damn.

Strangely Enough

… Jack is apparently studying Ancient Mesopotamia at his summer camp, and mentioned in the car this morning that he was designing a board game where the player would assume the role of Gilgamesh, and attempt to climb to the summit of the Hanging Gardens.

I was not aware of any of that when I published the quote below.

sigh

Dragonia goes home tomorrow night.

I’ll Never Know Anyway

I want to say that someday people will look back on early 21st century medicine with a mixture of horror and amusement, on account of its primitiveness.  Only I imagine that the advancements that would make such a perspective true might also render the daily state of human affairs sufficiently alien to me that I would regard them as horrifying.

Time Loop

Dragonia arrives tomorrow.  In her opinion, she is leaving today:  she will be flying out very late tonight–  her tonight.  But she is actually flying out so late, that by the time she does, her tonight will be very, very early in my morning.  And then she will arrive later in that morning.  Which will then be our morning.  Presumably.

Meanwhile, the Empress, who in a burst of kindness agreed to drive with me to the airport to get Dragonia, arrived at my apartment to do that very, very early this morning instead of tomorrow morning.  Leaving me very confused.

She’ll flay me for putting that here, because she’ll think I’m making fun of her, but it was ultimately very funny.

Persona Non Grata

I love it when I throw a question out there on Facebook–  ostensibly a “social networking” question, the kind of mild query for opinions that takes very little time to respond to, and doesn’t involve anything embarrassing or personal–  and no one responds.  Not even to say something funny.  And by “love it”, I mean, “find it mildly annoying”.  Other people do that all the time, about things they want to know, and they get feedback.  What’s wrong with me?

On the other hand it was a query for opinions regarding good free Windows-based SSH applications, pursuant to the activities I described below.   So I suppose it’s remotely possible that no-one who happened to look at Facebook that day had any idea what the hell I was talking about.

Still.

Happy Father’s Day

Jack and I are spending the day crushing various demonic entities and inferior civilizations under our boot-heels.  And also seeing “Super 8”.  And maybe eating some chili dogs.  There should be chili dogs in there somewhere, I think.

I also pop-quizzed him, as I am wont to do, as to what The Most Important Rule In the Entire Universe is, just to make sure that he hasn’t forgotten.  And he responded correctly, “When girls come over, make sure the bathroom is clean.”  So I have not been negligent in my paternal duties.

Fire of Unknown Origin

Two and a half hours of random crap streaming on AH Radio, starting at 9 PM Eastern/ 6 PM SL.  Daft Punk, Luscious Jackson, Citizen Cope, Beastie Boys, Zero 7, A Tribe Called Quest and a lot of other stuff produced by shakin’ my music collection upside-down into a pan.  You know the drill.

Vintage

Vintage is fun.  Aside from that fact that every fashion designer in SL seems to go through a retro period, there are a number of small groups that use their sims for accurate historical reenactment or roleplay, plus larger groups that co-opt the designs and looks and music of yesteryear for their own pastiche.  So you can sail the seas in the Age of Sail, dance at a Baroque Masquerade, walk the battle lines of the Napoleonic Era, darken the alleys of a hundred Victorian cites, quaff a drink in Weimar Berlin, stroll the boulevards of Old Hollywood, drag-race Midwestern streets in the 1950s (theoretically all in the same night)…  and with a little bit of effort, you can look the part while doing each one, often very economically.  (The exception seems to be if you want to be a Gibson Girl.  The Edwardian period is madly under-represented, probably because it’s sandwiched inbetween the Victorian era and the Roaring 20s, two larger timespans that most people are more familiar with.)

Most of what you see me wearing in this picture cost nothing.  The flapper dress, gold belt, skin, hair, necklace, bracelet and earrings (invisible at this angle) were all free, acquired by me at various points in the past, either through my own initiative, or via tips from friends that they were available.  The shoes I already had (ironically, they’re the same ones you saw me unboxing previously);  I just changed their color.  Ditto for the eyes.  I bought the eyelash layer for L$25 off Marketplace, after an informative discussion with Dragonia as to whether or not my normal prim lashes were appropriate for the look, and the eyeglasses from Hatpins for $L125, since I’d had my eye on them for a few months anyway.  Final cost:  L$150–  about 60 cents US, and paid for out of my profits on texture and object sales from Tiphareth Designs.  I’d call that a bargain.

—

On the other hand, it is possible to overdo it in pursuit of the Free.  Ivey Deschanel of Sn@tch had THIS to say on the ugly evolution of freebie hunting, and that was three years ago.  Behave yourself.  And if you’ve got the L, and you like somebody’s work, cough up for it once in a while–  especially if they’re catering to your niche-passion under-represented section of the market!

Year 4

I wish the fucking Interregnum would just end already.

But I’m Not Gonna Post That on Facebook

I like bleach.  It’s simple and it kills shit.