A (long-winded, rambling) love letter to a friend

I'm working on a blog post called "The Five Things You Need in Your Inventory," but it has absolutely nothing to do with SL fashion or living essentials or anything like that.

My inventory is now at 97K, and no matter how much time I devote to paring it down, it takes a mere week or so for the number to rocket back up a couple of thousand items.

I did the math and the math hurt.

If I want to get my inventory down to, say, a manageable 30K, I'd have to delete about 1,000 items a day for the next 70 days.

Oof.

So I considered closing my eyes and deleting almost everything in one fell swoop. My inventory is categorized by years and then subcategorized by ridiculously named folders: "Unicorns," "Cupcakes," "The Virgin Mary," "Bad-Ass Outfits," "Clothes I Like," "Hair I Probably Will Never Wear," and my favorite early-2008 folder: "Punk/Goth/Neko/Japanese Street." What the hell? Apparently as a noob I decided that ALL those styles fell in one category. ("Japanese Street"????)

I thought about deleting all of 2008, but then I'd be deleting some real classics, like vintage Eshi gowns and pretty much everything Tres Jolie sold that year.

So now I'm back to the game plan of separating my vintage quality items and THEN deleting all of 2008.

(This post is thrilling you, huh?)

Add to that the fact that I haven't been in world much lately. So, um, I'm not really making much progress anyway. But at least I'm not buying and shoving more things in my inventory at the moment!

In my real world, have an editor who's running me ragged -- which is a GOOD THING, Martha Stewart -- and I joined a local group of paranormal investigators, which sounds totally geek squad, but we answer calls from families (and businesses) with supposedly haunted houses and we take road trips to historic haunted hotels and it's totally, totally my thing. We use a lot of equipment like infrared cameras and electromagnetic field detectors and electronic voice phenomena recorders, so it's totally scientific, y'all!!! (Laugh -- no, I don't take it too seriously.)

Plus, one of the "ghost busters" is kind of special to me. ;)

Hey, I also have a job interview with Linden Lab tomorrow! *waves to the people at Linden Lab in case they're checking out this blog.* (God help them -- and me -- if they are.)

It's not really an interview yet; more like an "introductory conversation," and it's been rescheduled a couple of times, so I'm pretty sure they're not screaming my name the minute they leap out of their beds in the mornings, but I'm still excited about it, purely for the fact that it will be the MOST FUN conversation about a job that I'll probably ever have.

And no, I'm not moving back to Arizona for the Big Fancy Job Opportunity I recently mentioned. Thank you to those of you who've been asking, though. It just "wasn't a good fit," as they like to say in the job search realm.

Um, so back to my inventory. I got a wild idea to only keep five things and delete everything else, so then I started trying to figure out what those five things would be.

Once I do, that'll be a really cool post, huh?

HA HA HA! I'm such a dreamer.

If I actually had the cojones to do that, the first item I'd keep without a doubt would be The Bunny. The Bunny is particularly meaningful to me because I bought Bunny after reading about him in the first SL blog I ever discovered, SLFix (oh gosh, I guess that blog is called Moonletters now). Welcome to the world of blogs and letting them seduce you into buying things, little noob! :D

The Bunny actually was one of my first SL purchases. Since then, through all my changes, friends who have come and gone, broken hearts, moments of joy, weird body shapes, funky-looking skins, interesting *cough* home decor and bad hair days, The Bunny has been the one thing that's remained consistent in my SL life. I could get into a big story about how The Bunny reminds me of a giant stuffed rabbit I had as a child, but I won't.

At the moment, The Bunny is patiently putting up with my "Cute Emerald Is Gone and Who the Hell Is This Rock Star-Wannabe Chick with Way Too Much Makeup?" phase. I got sad when I looked through my SL photo album last night. I started out looking so cute and joyful. Now I'm looking rather generic and . . . well, old. A change is gonna have to come.

Anyway, last night I pulled out all my photos of The Bunny and compiled them in a separate album. So without further ado — and wow, sorry, that was A LOT of 'ado' up there — please join me in my photojournalistic walk through time with The Bunny. The pic way up top is the most recent: glammin' it up in Nicky Ree's new fur coat and leather pants.

My very first rental, a skybox after the (first) breakup with Jon. Unfortunately it used to be a skybox associated with an escort service, and way too many men (and women) had landmarked it and were scaring the hell out of me by manifesting in my living room several times a day. Thus the "Do Not Enter" sign, which didn't really help.

Sometimes The Bunny and I would sit and watch strangers TP in . . . and then quickly get ejected.

Feeling melancholy (in my favorite Amanda Bolero dress)

Surveying some Vain Ghostbuster Hunt gifts in my simple little beach house, back during the good old days when gridwide hunts only occurred about three times a year and, as such, were exciting. I kind of miss the innocence and simplicity of my life back then.

That day when half the stuff in my house disappeared, but thankfully not The Bunny! ("Less is more!")

I'll say it for you, Meara and the WTFug gals: "Oh. Honey. No."

Jon and I get back together for a short-lived . . . well, whatever it was, and The Bunny tries to adjust to sharing the spotlight with Jon's damn duck.

Emerald attempts to go Neko for her birthday . . .

. . . and then changes to the FIRST TULI SKIN (weird line on my face courtesy of my stupid computer) that ever looked decent on me, complemented by Zaara fashions.

Sorry, but it's the ugliest dress I've ever bought — and it was 800L to boot. I bought it because a fleeting friend of mine asked me to help out her struggling designer friend. Don't get me wrong, I'm a nice person, but I'm not doing things like that anymore.

Acting the fool and kind of loving it.

Celebrating a shoe . . . and my double-jointed ankle.

Um, the sexy SySy's dress is Win. The attempt to pose is total Fail.

If I were to narrow my "Five Things" challenge to just clothes, that skirt made by my friend Aisuru would be a close contender.

The Bunny gives Emerald a pep talk before the Steam hunt.

Dear Bunny,

Thank you for being a friend. If I didn't sing so off-key, I would totally bust out "The Golden Girls" theme song right now. I never thought I could get so fond of a pixelated rabbit. Cheers to many more years, many more bad skins, many more horrible hairstyles, many more wince-inducing fashions, and many more trippy little houses together — even if my time in SL eventually diminishes to a one-year reunion type thing.

In love and gratitude,

Em

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Hey beautiful readers, if you've made it to the end of this post, thank you for reading. Watch for my Five Things post coming in a few days. I may try to turn it into a meme then, although I'm not sure if enough people read this blog anymore to spark meme success.

And now I have to go write something brilliant about a media buyer. WOOO HOOO!

Bunny aside, I really love you guys too — each and every one of you — and no, I haven't been drinking Budweiser.

XXOO
Em