Finally back...

What are we proteswting again???

After subtle hints, small encouragement, gentle remonstrations, and finally a hearty kick in the backside from Tanarian (sisters ARE allowed such, after all), I have returned to the blogging world. You would think after all these years that she would have learned that subtlety rarely works on me. But then again, you woul also think that I would have learned to listen to her the first time she makes a gentle suggestion. Too many times have I failed to do so, to my own loss. Ah, well, such is the way of things. At least I do learn lessons, from time to time.

The holiday season has comeand gone with much activity and very little fanfare. I should like to attribute my absence from this venue to that activity, but truthfully it is due rather more to overall laziness. Plus, Cefin and I were both sick for about a week of his school holiay, which served merely to provide focus to our laziness.

Things in general - I have been fooling around on the lot at Harborside, trying out different things here and there. I finally have the inside of my tent settled to my satisfaction, it is colorful and cosy. I have had some friends come to visit there, most recently the ever delightful Ms. Elvehjem and Empress, I mean lovely Ms. Burton. We chatted for much longer than any of us intended, but it was time well spent. Making friends is always a good thing, and when those friends happen to be neighbors, so much the better.

Have I mentioned lately that I LOVE Harborside? I love Steelhead in general, and its denizens.

I did not complete my perambuation of the breadth of This Land I Call This Land because of perpetual distractions. I finally did get back to Image Nation and cleaned up on Ms. Agatha Sungsoo's marvelous eyes, though. I got at least eight sets, and passed them along to friends for Christmas, New Year and 12th Night, so that they might be equally impressed and go back to visit the shop themselves. We have so many great merchants here, I feel disloyal going anywhere else for my needs. It seems every time I look up, there is a new shop - this makes me happy! With luck, soon I will NEVER have to step outside the borders of Steelhead.

I suppose I am too much of a shopping fiend for that to truly happen... I =do= still venture into Caledon and sometimes to places where There Be Dragons on a search result. And I have even been known to dabble in other time periods and other species! Most recently there, I have acquired a number of gorgeous mermaid outfits, and have had fun playing in my little bit of inlet behind my property, and a very few other places. I have made friends with some wonderful mermaids, and have several sub-folders with ladmarks and other items for this new venture. Anyone interested in joining me in underwater excursions is welcome, though I find that I enjoy underwater explorations in solitary mode far more than those on dry land.

Consulate staff have recently taken a few impromptu shopping "field trips" which have yielded wonderful items added to my already incredibly bloated and disastrously disorganized inventory. MAU's & MEJ's has unique and well-crafted hair styles, and I picked up 5 or 6. Prices there varied from $60 to $250, but even the more expensive ones were well worth the investment. I got "Undine" for my mermaid explorations; the long hairstyles are irresistible. And for the unsuspecting, what they call "pink" would pass for "purple" most places. Adjacent to MAU's & MEJ's are a variety of other interesting shops, mostly of Asian orientation. I got a cool Japanese garden altar, plus some nice freebies or nearly-freebies.

The worst news in SL is that Shenlei Flasheart is closing out her Prim & Proper business. While this decision on her part has led her to slash prices on her merchandise which is a large part of the reason my inventory has swollen to well over 17K items, I am very disappointed to see P&P leaving SL. I have had the pleasure of meeting Ms. Flasheart on occasion, and found her to be a delightful person in addition to an extremely talented artist and artisan. I heard the rumor about her shop and IMed her so that I could hear it straight from her fingers, and alas, it is all too true. I do not know the circumstances which led to her decision, but I do hope that she is not abandoning SL altogether. I wish her every blessing and success however she jumps, and hope that the rest of us will be once again blessed by Ms. Flasheart in the future. Even if she abandons the Victorian thing (which I admit can be somewhat stifling in its conventions), most of us =do= engage in other activities. When we find an artist we love, we will follow....

Speaking of artists we love, after our P&P blitz, the field trip moved on to Skye Qi's Vintage Reproductions. We were fortunate enough to have Ms. Qi herself drop in on us - when her hat was admired, she gave us each one, and custom altered them to suit each of us! I am always amazed by the kindness of people in SL (and always determined to pay it forward). I spent several thousand lindens between those two shops, and miss the lindens not a whit.

Another fantastic place I have been to is the garden shop of Ms. Soleil Snook. She also had some difficulties in her shop caused by other people and by the vagaries of the grid, but I think has everything back to normal in all of her locations. I am beginning my serious landscaping purchases for the property, and anyone who is looking to do the same should definitely visit Snook's. I have already purchased the most incredible arch covered with red and white roses - it is astonishing in detail and very dramatic from any perspective or distance. Clearly the product of a talented artist with no fear of hard work, and I am VERY fortunateto reap the very reasonably priced rewards of Ms. Snook's labors. I also bought a beautiful bench with poseballs already set in it, and a treerose. But the most exciting thing I found was STRAWBERRIES! Absolutely perfet bushes covered with mouthwateringly beautiful ripe berries. The asset server and I were having some ongoing discussions about what was and was not going to work (when the asset server is down, it only relates to what goes INTO your inventory, not what goes OUT of your linden balance), so I was unable to spend nearly as much time or money as Ms. Snook's shop deserves, but I will be back. Repeatedly, and I highly recommend it to everyone. I believe she also does cut flower arrangements, but I did not get that far. And Valentine's Day is coming up.... I always find that a living thing is some much a better gift than cut flowers, personally.

I have also been shopping AOs and dances - I think I have a sufficient supply of dances I like that I will be able to invite Frau Lowey to a party at which she will be required to do naught more than enjoy herself. I know it will be a novel experience, but I am optimistic that she will adjust to it quickly enough and just have fun instead of worrying about details. She deserves it!

Had an impromptu New Year's Eve party, which went quite well. My brother-in-law Allium showed up to help balance the male-female ratio, and served as host in my absence due to RL commitments. Ms. Weatherwax and I were discouraged by the lagtastic events already scheduled, and decided to what-the-heck just set up a dance floor, set out food, get some music going and invite our friends and Steelhead at large. Once we got the basics in, we called on the ever-efficient Frau Lowey to assist, and between the three of us, I think we set up a heck of a bash. The turnout was sporadic, but very happy. The core who were with us at midnight SLT was a gift for the new year - good friends and family.

I have tons of photos which I am in the process of uploading to Picasa on the web so I can link them. I don't have names to assign to the people; anyone who wants to chime in and say THAT'S ME! is welcome to do so. Taking names is on my To-Do list, but it's not very high on that list, regrettably.

I missed last night's Steelhead Town Meeting, and haven't been able to get all the way through the minutes yet. I was aving some computer issues that took me....three hours to comletely resolve, including changing to a new mouse (which even with the software my computer couldnt find), updating Windows, downloading other stuff, and much crawling around picking up dog hairs from the floor with my clothing in efforts to fix and not kill the CPU. It's still a bit wonky (think there's a registry issue, it won't shut down properly) but at least I can do what I need to in my usual slapdash fashion.

One of the reasons I haven't finished the meeting minutes is because there was discusion in the ISC chat about a banking protest taking place... so naturally I had to go check it out, which meant that I had to dress appropriately. It really takes a long time to get a saloon girl outfit just right. The protest was probably one of the most boring things I've ever been to, but it was interesting ina bizarre way. Ms. moo Money was there carrying a sign - she passed me a sign which was promptly eaten by my inventory. While trying to find the sign, I ran across Paderthorn's women's suffrage set.... which I couldn't set down on the floor so I attached it to myself.

I am sure I am missing all kinds of other things I wanted to tell everyone about, but suffice it to say that I shall make every effort to be more diligent in posting my pithy comments, absurd observations, and silly photos here, in the future. (I say that so often...)

Your comments welcome!

Myfi