Writing the Sonnet

Today is Mother’s Day in the United States, and I thought I’d take a second to honor my mom here.

My mom really should have had a girly daughter, but she ended up with me, a geeky gearhead more likely to pull apart an engine with Dad than to go shopping for makeup with Mom. I should state upfront though that Mom has never complained or acted like there was anything wrong with who I am. It’s just that I can easily see her having a lot of fun with a girly girl trying out a million hairstyles and twirling about in party dresses.

Oh, wait a minute. That’s me in Second Life. Thank you to SL for giving my mom the daughter she never had, I guess. I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned it, but I share a lot of my SL photos with my mom. When I played Sims 2 a lot, I’d always send my mom the screenshots and stories I came up with for them, so it just seemed natural to do the same with my SL shots. She really enjoys seeing what I’m up to in SL, and she loves that we have these girly moments to share. The fact that mine are virtual doesn’t seem to matter.

Today I’ll be showing Mom three different outfits that I feel capture a certain quality of her. The first look was built around the Marion hair from Exile. Mom has seen that hair in other shots of mine, and she really loves it because it reminds her of her own big hair days. I kind of saw this as a classic glamorous look and imagined Mom maybe dressing up like this back in her days as a singer in the 1960s. Interesting note is that these photos were taken at the Bayjou Theater, and my mom actually performed at the Bijou Theater in our hometown. It’s fitting because my mom is a superstar in my eyes and one of the classiest women I know.

Hair: Marion in Mink - Exile
Skin: Becca in Cream - Chai
Eyes: Intense Brown/Aqua - Sin Skins
Lashes: Tipped Vanity Lashes - Sin Skins
Dress: Silk Organza Dress in Ires Pearl - Armidi
Earrings: Black Fleur - Paper Couture
Necklace: Lady Cameo - Boing Fromage
Nail Polish: Plum - Adam ‘n’ Eve
Shoes: Silver Dhali Bow Platforms - Armidi

This second look was still a dressy one, but a little stronger with the emphasis on red and black and a few more jewels. My mom has a huge personality and loves wearing red, so this felt like her to me. The big guitar I’m standing on is another nod to my mom’s love of music and singing.

Hair: Helena in Twilight - Exile
Skin: Vedette in Cream - Chai
Eyes: Intense Brown/Aqua - Sin Skins
Lashes: Tipped Vanity Lashes - Sin Skins
Dress: Red Parisian Beaded Dress - Armidi
Earrings, Necklace, Bracelet: Classic Pearls set - Exile
Nail Polish: Rogue - Adam ‘n’ Eve
Tights: Opaque Black Tights - Fleur
Shoes: Black Leather Slinky Stilettos - Maitreya

The final look is a little more relaxed with the black gingham and double buns with ribbons, and this is actually reminiscent of how she dressed me when I was little. This is a reminder of my mom’s love of home and family and her ability to make the simple pleasures of life seem more important than anything else. I also had to sneak in a bouquet somewhere for her.

Hair: Kylie in Chocolate - Exile
Skin: Brisque Freckle in Cream - Chai
Eyes: Intense Brown/Aqua - Sin Skins
Dress: Lissy - Ivalde
Earrings & Necklace: Double Cherries set - Artilleri
Bracelet: Pink Lily Bangle - CreamShop
Bouquet: Innocent - BareRose

So there you have a little SL-enhanced glimpse of some of my mom’s amazing style. It’s the least I can do after her putting up so well with me being just like my dad all these years.

I happen to hang out with some amazingly creative and talented people, and like the best talented people, they start making you think that maybe you could do something too the longer you hang out with them. Right now, I’m in a bit of a lull with work and school, so I have more time to try some new things.

I’ve kind of been all over the place. I made a really ugly bracelet, played with some animations, and pulled apart some scripts to figure out how they work. I also took a few classes in SL that ranged from a scripting introduction to an overview of creating various water effects with textures and scripts, and I figured out how to make a sculptie candle that uses a particle effect to create its flame.

I’d really like to figure out some natural-looking poses and animations just because that would make me a little less insane about hunting for ones that work with my shape. The thing that really seems to be sticking with me the most, however, is scripting. It just seems to make sense without a whole lot of effort on my part, and while I’m still very much a beginner, it’s not hard for me to see myself getting better with a little practice and more digging around.

On top of just having fun learning a few new things, it’s been really nice to have people around me who get just as excited as me about the stuff I’m doing. They ask about the classes and ooh and ah over the things I show them. Adding that social aspect to it makes the learning that much more fun, and I like feeling like I have more things to share now.

Life has been a bit of a whirlwind lately, but it’s all good because it’s just carrying me from one fabulous thing to another. Last weekend I got to spend some time with one of my favorite people shopping, and while we were out and about, I got an IM from someone I didn’t know. “Hi! I saw your photos at the Ivy Falls Gallery, and they’re great!” So while I’m beaming just from that random comment, she goes on to say that she helps with a small gallery that likes to do artist meet-and-greets once or twice a month and she was wondering if she could contact me at some point to discuss that more.

At that point, I fainted in real life, and I have no idea what happened next. Oh, okay, so that isn’t exactly how it went. I told her I was definitely interested, and if anything actually comes of that, you can be certain you’ll read more about it here. At this point, I’m just excited that she contacted me at all.

Also, I’m now employed in Second Life again. Serra Anansi, Seneschal of Winterfell, posted to the Winterfell group that she was looking for an assistant a couple of weeks ago, and it sounded like a nice fit for me. I was talking with Kavar when the notice came through, and I mentioned it to him as something that might work for me. He immediately said that sounded like me and that I needed to apply. I was back and forth about it because while I was interested, I figured I didn’t have a shot as it seemed like something a lot of people would jump at.

To make a long story relatively short, I did decide to contact Serra about my interest in the position. Late last week, we touched base and discussed the position a bit more in depth, and then this weekend, I officially started in my new role as her assistant. I have to say it has been a really great experience so far, and I like tying myself a little more closely to my other home sim. There’s a lot of wonderful stuff happening in both of them, and I’m very happy to be a dual-sim citizen these days in Ivy Falls and Winterfell Ebonshire.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t also mention here that I have some amazing people in my life. It can be easy for us to look at ourselves and what we do and think we don’t have much to offer, and it’s really a messed-up way to present ourselves to the world. I hope that each one of you reading this has at least one person who picks you up when you’re wallowing in the mud, affectionately bonks you on the head, and helps you look at yourself through his/her eyes. For someone as thickheaded as me, it takes a lot of bonks sometimes, but I’m getting it. Thank you.

I just have to mention here that Linden Lifestyles picked this photo of me as a fairy for their Flickr Pick this week. It was a wonderful surprise, and thanks to everyone who has sent me congratulations about it. Maybe I’ll need to do some more fairy shots soon to celebrate!

There’s so many happy things going on lately that I’m not even sure where to start. I guess that’s a big part of why I haven’t been posting to the blog lately. A lot of the good stuff has a common theme though, so I’m just going to start there. The common theme is Ivy Falls, a beautiful sim owned by Rekka Berchot and managed by Kere Delcon.

If home is where the heart is, then Ivy Falls is definitely home for me. Two of my closest friends live and work there, and now I also rent an amazing castle there as well. I still own my land in Winterfell and don’t intend to give that up any time soon, but I find that I’ve very much been in an Ivy Falls state of mind recently. You can see an outside shot of the castle to the right, and I’m sure I’ll do a post soon that’s a more involved tour. I’ve decorated it a bit more sparsely than my Winterfell house, but it also reflects a certain part of me that maybe isn’t quite as visible elsewhere.

Ivy Falls is also now home to some of my in-world photography in an exhibit at the Ivy Falls Gallery. It’s my first exhibit, and the whole experience has been really exciting. When Kere first asked me to share some of my shots there, I was honored but I didn’t feel like I had anything to display. He then spent some time with me going through all the photos in my Flickr stream and picking out a few of his favorites, and it was a really good experience for me to hear and see what someone else liked about them. Between that and the general encouragement from my friend Kavar, I’m noticing that I seem to have found the joy in documenting my experiences on Flickr again. A few people have told me I seem more myself lately, and I feel that way too.

You can see part of the Ivy Falls sim in the above screenshot that I snapped while playing with Windlight. I’m honored to say that shot is being used on a couple of signs within the sim and on the Ivy Falls website. It was also used in an Ivy Falls promotional video, and you can see Kavar and me dancing in the Ivy Falls Amphitheatre in that video as well. Kere made the video, and it’s amazing like everything else he touches.

I’m feeling this wave of positive and creative energy flowing around the people I care about, and it makes me so happy for all of us.

It began as just any other day in that virtual world that I may or may not be allowed to name here. And that’s a tongue-in-cheek reference to the trademark discussion that’s been discussed everywhere lately. I signed in for just a minute and then ended up spending the entire day hanging out. Good company always seems to just suck me right in, so my plans obviously got turned upside down a bit, but I was happy for the change.

Kavar and I decided we would check out some retro/vintage sims for screenshot opportunities and general exploring, but first we wanted to go gift shopping for some friends. We didn’t really know what we wanted to buy, but we started out by looking at Pillow Talk. That’s always a fun place, and the tire swing calls out to me whenever I’m there. We liked a few things while we were looking around, but we didn’t buy anything. One day, the big apple tree and tire swing will come home with me, but today wasn’t that day yet. It doesn’t really fit with the land and home I have now.

Then we did a big switch in themes from the country look of Pillow Talk to the much more urban Hysteria. There we found much to play with, and of course, we blended right in with everyone else in our outfits. It was the banana’s lucky day obviously to get such snazzy people for a visit.

So we dressed for a day of sophisticated retro exploration, and we ended up on tire swings and banana teeter totters. Can you believe the nerve of him getting us so sidetracked? No wonder we ended up having a huge argument at Hysteria. I’m sure it had nothing to do with me being insanely curious about what an “argue” poseball would do. A most random but thoroughly enjoyable way to spend the day.

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve seen a few people blog about the items that they couldn’t live without in Second Life. Of course, I can’t find any of those posts now to link to them, but they got me thinking about the things that make me feel like me. The most basic item is simply the shape I created, which makes sense. But what else goes on that shape to really make Brandy Rasmuson look like Brandy Rasmuson to me? It’s no surprise, I guess, that the answer to that has changed over the year or so I’ve been in SL. The screenshot below shows off some of the items that most feel like Brandy to me right now.

After my shape, I think the biggest items are the hair and skin for me. I’ve been wearing the Brandy hair from Exile as my default hair since Kavar gave it to me for my birthday in January, and the blackmix shade is the one I wear the most. I just really like the way the red and blonde mix with the black. Although I have what seem like a million skins, I keep coming back to the Chai Siyu skin in Cream. It just feels right.

Eyes really make an impact as well, and until recently, I was wearing the Intense Brown/Aqua eyes from Sin Skins (left close-up in above screenshot) almost exclusively. Then Kavar released these amazing Prism eyes at Exile (right close-up in above screenshot), and I haven’t been able to take them off since I tried them. I almost always wear prim lashes, and the ones I wear the most are the Tipped Vanity Lashes from Sin Skins. I’ve also been wearing my piercings from Magika so much that they feel like an integral part of my look. One set includes an eyebrow piercing and a lip ring, and the other set has multiple silver hoops in both ears.

Everything else in this outfit are things I wear often but aren’t worn practically daily like the items I’ve mentioned up to this point. One of those that you probably can’t see that well in the screenshot is my Sin Skins Glitter Manicure in Black. My dark blue jeans from Exile have become one of my favorite pairs of jeans because I love the depth and color of the texture and because they just look comfortable. A hoodie or sweater is pretty typical too, and this Heartbreaker one from Reaction Girl is one I often grab when I just want something quick to wear to go shopping or exploring. My Shiny Things black Flare Oxfords and charcoal knit socks go with just about everything, and they get pulled out of my inventory quite often.

I’m going to come back to this topic in a few months to see what feels most like me then as opposed to now. Right this moment, I can’t imagine the core items like my skin and hair changing, but I guess that’s why these are the things that most feel like me now. Who really knows if that will change in the future?

I honestly don’t know where the last two weeks have gone. I’ve been busy in RL and in SL. This week is a light week for me in RL, so I’m hoping to spend some time just relaxing, and I may be in SL a little less for the next few days. I’m just going to play that by ear.

One thing I’ve been wanting to do is to share another voice post from me. I was going to divide it into multiple parts because it ended up being about 45 minutes long, but I never seem to get around to doing that, so I’m just including the link here. I suggest right-clicking and saving it to your computer if you want to take a listen. My friend Kavar enjoyed it, but I think he’s a bit biased because he’s the one who gave me the questions this time. If any of you have questions you’d like to ask me, feel free to IM me or leave a comment here, and you might hear the answer in another post. I’m really enjoying the voice posts, and I’ll probably do more in the future as long as I can come up with things to talk about.

These are the questions provided by Kavar:

1. In SL you live on a themed sim. What are your thoughts on roleplaying?
2. What are your other hobbies outside of second life? What else fills the quiet times for you?
3. If you could create things for the game, what would you choose to make? What items do you feel are lacking in second life?
4. If you were to switch to another second life race or av type, what would it be and why? What about it appeals to you?
5. If you could live anywhere in the world, where would you choose to call home?
6. What is an important cause for you? If you had the resources what organization or movement would you choose to help?
7. What music or genre do you like the most?
8. What is your biggest guilty pleasure?
9. What is your favorite kind of food?
10. What is your favorite kind of pizza?

So yeah, I’m here and really wanting to post, but just not doing it for some reason. There are many things vying for my attention at the moment, which is both good and bad depending on my mood at any given moment. Anyway, the one thing I really want to talk about is my rezday. Yep, I turned 1 year old in SL on February 12. Some of you might have seen photos from that day on my Flickr stream. It ended up being a blast. So many lovely people thought of me and let me know I’m special to them, and really, you can’t ask for more than that.

Because this is my SL blog, it seems like a good place to reflect on my first year in SL and look ahead to what I’d like to do in the next year. Yeah, reflecting in your blog. What a concept, eh? Anyway, I’ll begin by sharing the earliest photo I can find of my avatar. I signed up for SL in February 2007 but didn’t find time to sign in until that May, and within an hour or so, I looked like that photo. I changed the color of that default purple shirt and found a few freebies, but I still looked rough. I was having a horrible time figuring out how to make a bigger shape I could live with, so I signed back out again feeling a bit frustrated. Then I had the brilliant idea that perhaps other people had written about such problems, so I did some searching. While I didn’t find anything that really helped with the shape stuff I was struggling with, I did discover a lot of SL blogs that I still read today. The one that got me back into SL in June was Whole Lotta Rosie, and that’s when SL really took off for me.

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Rosie posted another update about what’s going on with her and her mom. Lounge of Dreams had a benefit for Rosie and her family last night and raised over L$45,000 in addition to holding a few moments of silence to send positive energy together. There is still a donation box in the club for anyone who wants to donate, and anyone wanting more information about that can IM Camthan Hax.

I personally think the most amazing part of all of this is how so many of us who have been touched and blessed by Rosie are reaching out to our individual networks and asking for prayers, positive energy, meditation, candle lighting, etc. Rosie’s friend Marx Dudek has created a beautiful prayer and meditation garden dedicated to Rosie’s mom. You can go there any time by yourself or with groups of friends to pray or meditate, and if you’d like to join the vigils that Camthan Hax has been putting together, then just IM him to let him know. We all encourage you to take photos while you’re in the garden, and if you do, you can share those in a Flickr group called Prayers for Rosie’s Mother. It’s just one way for us to make sure that Rosie knows we’re here for her and will continue to do what we can.