Catablog

Kittens bought: 1 (good); Kittens unupdateable: 1 (bad); Cats lost in the vasty deep: 1 (bad)

Seem to be continuing to use this as cat blog although will also mention in passing that have spent more hours than can shake stick at in styling new home by Nordari, then taking pics of new home, then photoshopping them lovingly into composite pic, then uploading all pics to Flickr and listing provenence of each item in each pic in tedious detail.

Whole process was interrupted because kept hitting the prim limit for the island, which bearing in mind that island has 15,000 prims is not good news. Have had small clear out which cleared 700 prims (well at one point 800 prims since inadvertantly demolished part of main office building and had to spend ages rezzing whole thing then extracting bit needed to replace missing part. hey ho had thought had locked the whole building to prevent just such an error, but no).

Still, will need to do better than that before students arrive. Could be bye bye Hobbit House but think can just do a systematic prim-trim through whole island. Will be rather like trying to reduce 9,000 word article to 6,000 words to meet ridiculous journal word limits: if go through it enough times taking out odd phrases and words on every page (rather than deleting whole section, thus ruining structure and main argument) is much better. In this case for odd words and phrases read prim-heavy ornamental carriage clocks, beavers which swim round and round, floating mini-islands which dispense ice cream etc etc.

To get back to house decoration, why o why, you may ask. Simple answer is that there is contest for best decoration of this particular house. But to be honest it really is more about taking part than winning in this case. By time winner announced will have probably forgotten even entered since attention/memory span not at optimum at present (this could be because stay up all night decorating virtual houses).

Anyway, moved Quilt the cat into new home, to make it feel cosier, and then to add cute factor to pics, since noticed that comments on 52-weeks-of-colour posts seemed to rise dramatically when included cute kitty in winsome pose (see above).

Then suddenly gave in to whim of wanting another kittycat. Had had a sort of hankering after a Siamese and last week, to put off reading yet more draft dissertation chapters from Masters students (just like now, in fact) went on impulse shopping trip. Snapping up siamese could scarcely have been easier, a quick search on "kittycats", a TP to some sim or other with rows and rows of kitten boxes, and there you were. Whereas in Kittycats early days you were lucky to see a siamese under L1000, now appear to go for 100 Linden (or possibly less, but couldn't be bothered to shop around).

TPed home, rezzed kitten box, clicked it, endured 30 minutes of coy messages about kitten opening its eyes and getting its strength up and then - woomph - a tiny kitty. A tiny kitty with "Update Me" over its head. A tiny kitty that stoutly resisted to be updated however many Updaters I rezzed and activated (see pic). Assume that kitten box had been born ages ago and it just needed too many updates. In the end filed a report, and practically at once a new kitty dropped softly into my inventory, admirably free of any red lettering above the head.

Had meant to buy yet another female cat. And indeed thought I had. However, it slowly dawned on me that the gender sign above new kitten's head was NOT THE SAME AS QUILT's so realised now had male cat after all. Had already named kitten Amane, after a schoolgirl in an anime series, but though Amane would sound pretty gender-neutral to most people (it even has the word "man" in the middle), thought it might give the cat a complex, so renamed him Stone. This is after the Nordari house which is called "May a stone guide your way". Stone seemed a masculine sort of name, and Stone (the cat) is sort of stone coloured.

Not sure whether Quilt resents new cat (she is probably thinking "how come you are too mean to keep Silky updated and rezzed, but are spending same amount on frivolous new kitten? we aren't just for Christmas you know!" No answer to this except "Stone cute, Stone new, who was Silky again?") At any rate Quilt has twice gone missing and turned up Mitsy-like in the sea underneath the house. Am particularly baffled since can't see at all how she got down there: there don't seem to be any holes in the floor and the gully she gets trapped in is entirely under the house. Perhaps she fears that she will be forced to have kitten boxes. And must admit, am rather tempted to unneuter them both and see what emerges. Whatever it is like, it will be cute.

Moving

Land set to sale: all in Harm's Way (Moving. But not as moving as had anticipated, actually)
It's my tier date soon, so I decided I really must clear out my land in Harm's Way and at least try to sell it. Know that mainland plots are v. hard to sell at the moment, so set it at about 2000 Linden per 512 and will hope for best. In fact should have split it up into smaller plots, rather than one lump, perhaps will do that tomorrow. If it comes to it, will abandon it, since in the end that might be cheaper than continuing to pay huge tier.

Had only intended to move my new skybox home + its contents(which proved quite easy to do, except there is always SOMETHING you leave behind, can see in first pic that it was a shadow and a rug in this case, also a couple of the potted plants and a saucer). Then started taking & deleting at ground level and decided in the end was better to get whole thing over at once.
Have had some kind of plot on Harm's Way since summer 2007, and had this particular part of it since November 2007, so may be a shock to the remaining neighbour who has been there as long as me. Managed to go all that time without exchanging a word, I think.
It is a pleasant place, with a sloping grassy hillside ending in beach and water, which is obviously why I liked it. However have just not been spending enough time there, since the views are not nearly as pleasant as when first moved in, and have mentioned lag issues.
Thought would feel quite moved by all this deletion (even more final than RL moving, since in RL one does not actually root out garden and demolish house once have removed furniture, normally). But think must have mentally said goodbye already, or something.

As final act, sat under spreading cherry tree and listened to windchime. This was a present from Ishbel when I got my first home and it has become a sort of ritual to move that last.
It is installed in my new land, so it definitely is home now.

Creating

Hot tubs made: 1 (good): Grass patches made: 1 (good); Creative wall, um, created: 1 (good); Glass flower room created: 1 (v. good, at least I think so)

Am still involved in the Educator's Coop challenge to do a build. Deadline was going to be Oct 5th, but we seem to have a coursework extension, and this without normal procedure of faking a doctor's note or family bereavement. Grandma has done some really nice scripts so that on top level of our build there is a script in each corner. One is for group chat, one 2-person chat, one is a diary room and one will pose pre-set questions. Chat is captured on a website with a page for each session. V. cool.

Since no-one stopped me I spent couple of hours creating settings for each of those: flower/butterfly group area; Diary room; Oriental hot tub (for questioning, might as well be relaxing while you are interrogated) and urban area (as see-saw had already been put in and it looked a bit rusty). The pics show the group and diary room areas (some of which are changed for latest version) and then whole thing.

Wall is rather cool IMHO since I textured each side differently with bark/stone effect on the flowery side, and a photo of some street art in Copenhagen on the grungey side. Am also rather pleased with look of diary room. Used a SL picture twirled round a bit, for the texture, and effect is like a rather expensive pink glass decorative bottle I have. In fact wonder whether might be good enough to offer as freebie in forthcoming Juicy Sim birthday hunt.

Whilst looking for butterfly emitters in inventory, by mistake rezzed the blue butterfly emitter that had such problems with in my early days. Despite my intervening skills acquisition, when fatal blue butterflies started to swarm, and, realising error, I attempted to TAKE it:

a) removed section of floor by mistake; and

b) almost deleted various other objects, since emitter is invisible and had forgotten how to make invisible things appear.

Anyway, is OK now, as other Educators Coop members able to provide answer and blue perils are now back in inventory. Should really delete them altogether. Perhaps can give it to someone that want to annoy someday, though, so best to hang on. What is one item amongst 18,000 (latest inventory count) after all.