Braving the ice storm

So . . . hey, it's been a fun weekend, huh? :D

I've been hiding in this fantastic Couch Cushion Blanket Clubhouse ($175L for the three-people version) from RC Cluster, waiting for everyone to calm the hell down.

I'd like to thank my friends, who not only have been extremely forgiving of some stupid things I've said and done in the recent past, but also for coming over and keeping me company today. (Shown above, Ali and Sehra)

I wondered why I got blitzed by IMs from angry Lemania Indigo fans today (instead of two days ago), but I now see that she finally commented on That Post over on Shopping Cart Disco. I said it in a lengthy comment over there and I'll sum it up briefly here: I didn't send my letter to Shopping Cart Disco. Apparently Tenshi saw this post mentioned in a Plurk.

I don't have any personal beef against Lemania Indigo. In fact, I shop at her stores. I've showcased some of her clothes in blog posts here. I'm not out to "chase a designer off the grid," as one person accused me of today. I just hated the concept of her current hunt. All I did was write her a letter and state my opinion in my blog here. I didn't throw a massive hissy fit.

And along those lines, sheeeeesh, remind me never to express my opinion in a public Second Life forum again. The formative years of my RL career were spent in newsrooms across America. I don't think a day went by when we didn't have an amicable debate about something. Yeah, occasionally those debates got heated, but they never got personal, with name-calling and "you deserve to die" type stuff.

I've been kind of astounded at how nasty some people get here if, God forbid, you have a different opinion than they do and you've got the balls enough to express it. I'm all for intelligent discussion or humorous satire. But during the past 36 hours, I've experienced some of the most childish insults and vile language . . . all because I simply stated an opinion. I don't expect the world to agree with all my opinions. But I also didn't expect the whole situation to SNOWBALL into a bunch of frenzied people who apparently get off on hatred and conflict.

So speaking of snowballs, I finally started chasing a dream today -- the dream of living in an icy SL paradise.



Yeah, that's not my cow.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

It started with me finally getting off my tush and packing up my little rented beach house. I was sort of sad. The aquarium came down. Fuzzy the Bunny got tucked away in my inventory. My landlady came over and helped me find all the random little prims that I'd unwittingly scattered all over my yard somehow.

My next-door neighbor threw a pie at us from her upstairs window, then came over and watched as I fiddled around with a bunch of snow patches.

The next thing I knew, Ali was making a radioactive taco:



Girl is talented. I'm gonna try to get that from her. And pass them out to my now-five loyal readers. (Sehra, sorry your hair was gray.)

Then my once-enemy-and-now-friend (does that make us frenemies? I've always wanted one) Sophia came over. If you're one of those brave souls who've stuck with this blog for more than a year, you may have caught some pained references when Sophia and I had a falling out a while back. I'm glad we finally patched things up. It's been a weird year.

Hell yes, Second Life is a soap opera and we're all livin' in it. (Thanks to Arabella for inspiring me with that analogy.)

So, um, Sophia came over and suddenly a Nativity, a bunch of other Christmas chaos and . . . a cow got involved:



Nice taco.

I set my stream to Christmas music and we partied like Clark Griswold.

People started stripping:



(Sorry Sophia, you never rezzed back there behind Sexy Sehra.)

Somebody had a MONSTROUS animated "give Santa a lap dance" thing. I so wanted this picture to turn out, but alas, Ali never completely rezzed either. She will definitely get what she wants for Christmas this year though:



She's the grey blob standing on Santa's lap. Everything can't always be black or white, you guys. These days, I'm walkin' in the gray areas.

Seriously, I blame my blotchy vision on all those GAWD-DAMN CHICKENS on our island. I'M SORRY, chicken people, but I never had this problem on the island before those chickens came along. Fashion shows, yes. My own house??? NO!

It turned out to be a fun day. Simultaneously during the impromptu Christmas party, I was watching the Chicago Cubs game (victory!) with my dad, and that was a happy moment too. Rarely will my father tolerate both me AND my laptop in his presence, but I think he was kind of touched that I sat down to watch the baseball game with him.

Sorry this post is kind of a gratuitous "hey, look at these really bad photos of me and my friends" post, but wow, I really needed one for a change. Today felt like the good old days, and I've missed those. I do not deserve these people in my life, but I'm so glad they patiently waited for me to return from my trip to Bitchyville.

Call me a sap, but today I learned that although friends may go through changes, those changes won't crack the foundations of a friendship -- at least not the good ones. There was a time when I believed my friends had moved on and left me behind. I was wrong. They were always there. I was just too stupid and self-absorbed to see it.

(And those of you who have this blog in your Google readers -- and wow, according to my stats there are 59 of you, WOO HOO! -- unfortunately got subjected to an even longer and more self-flagellating post, now set to private, on that topic yesterday.)

Anyway.

Come on over and see my icy wonderland sometime. It's still a work in progress. (And my neighbors are probably annoyed as all hell.)

Comments are being moderated for a while, but opposing opinions and/or random observations will never be turned away. As long as you don't insult my readers, you're all good. Anonymous comments also are allowed now. I didn't realize they were banned before. Oops.