Happy New Year

Happy New Year Everyone!
I have survived a week.
I have had to replace the batteries in mum's wireless mouse and keyboard...a pile of updates have been done. But today I leave her house and take up residence in an internet free zone... gasp....

I have killed time reading my old blog entries. A few things strike me when I look back over them.

Most striking is how quickly the year has gone. I have been totally amazed to find things that I thought happened just a couple of months back were in fact at least 6 months and sometimes nearly a year ago.


Mmmm and the other most striking thing is how much of 2008 Second Life isn't in my blog. I made a fairly conscious effort to leave the drama out of my blog. Keep it nice and tidy for all viewers. The side effect of this is that I have a blog that whispers subplot to me as I read it.

There have been some really wonderful times and some pretty sad ones for me in the year of SL.
Lukos, who was my great friend at the beginning of the year got busy in rl and I almost never see him in sl anymore. I still get to chat out of world, but it isn't the same thing at all.

Other friends have had struggles in SL that are not my blog's business to discuss but I sometimes wish I could - just to acknowledge that they have been part of me.

The Open Space debacle has changed a lot of my relationships. In Winterfell, surrounded by the islands of my friends, it was easy to see a dot, know they were home and send off a "yoo-hoo" IM. It's still possible to keep in touch but that feeling of neighbourhood has gone. I have new neighbours. Great new neighbours but I miss my old ones.

But like I say... I am not going to turn my blog into a tears and tissues drama catalogue!

I also noticed that I haven't included a picture of the light house at Steelhead. How remiss!

Oh! And no pictures of me as a white tiger! Appart from the very first time I met Tzaizqan (pronounced Sye-can, but I have ruined by shortening to Taz !), he was mostly a tiger when I was getting to know him. Autopilotpatty Poppy asked him to be in her tartan photographic shoot so it was time for him to take on human form. I hatched a cunning plan and as his human form sat on pose balls for Poppy, I took off to Grendels and bought a matching white tiger to his orange one. It's a funny thing but I cant tell you what fun it is to pad through Second Life. To lie in front of the fire. Very fine indeed! Must drag Taz back to the AM Radio installation so we can sit in the long grass again and take some photos.

Something I was sort of regretting after reading the blogs was how the explosion of knowledge about SL building seemed to have slowed. I am building still but at the beginning I was learning so much it was thrilling mastering new things. I seemed to have slowed in the learning and have mainly just been plonking things around.
.....ahhh I will give myself a break! When I stop and think about it, I have actually been learning a fair bit about textures in the last few months. If you look at my newer homes, they are nearly all customised textures, most made from existing ones but tweaked and some completely my own. So I guess I am still moving forward, it is just more subtle. I just don't do subtle so well, ask Taz.

Enough navel gazing!... can you tell I am itching to be back in world... sad case!