Lovely's Profile Shot & Life

Hey everyone... I've been a bit quiet,  I know. I have some posts coming up but, nothing is really ready to be posted yet. I'm in one of those moods. I redid my profile and a friend of mine asked me to do a profile shot for her. Thought maybe I'd show you all.

Here's the before/after composite.

I did a little bit of Liquify, some work on her hair and hairline, a little skin smoothing, some lighting adjustments and some shadows etc.. Her name is Lovely.  I'm still not quite satisfied with her hair and may mess with it some more before I'm totally finished

Her skin is from Al Vulo - Mimi in milky, hair by Catwa, necklace and earrings by Gossamer jewelry, top is by Sn@tch.

Here's how it looks at the moment.

 

I'm no great photographer or photo editor like some of our artists in SL but I think not too shabby.

Rainbows and Unicorns...

I'm sorry I haven't really posted for the most part of the last 7 days or so. That's not really like me. I've been sick and what I thought previously was the flu turns out to be... dun dun dun.. aspartame poisoning/allergy/reaction/ye gods this shit made me so sick I wanted to die.  I won't go into a lot of detail about it because a) reactions to aspartame such as is found in many artificial sweeteners and artificially sweetened items are widely varied, b) I don't want to get sued, and c) It really is up to each individual.

I will just say that for the better part of three weeks I have been gradually getting more ill, I'd think I was getting better, go back to the product that was making me sick and each time be a bit more ill. I thought it was this dreadful stomach flu going around but no... it's this other thing.

Here is just one of dozens of articles about the dangers and/or reactions/side effects insert word of your choice .. of aspartame. I am a recently diagnosed, as in not even quite three months ago, diabetic and was using the product in question as a substitute for my usual intake of sweet tea, lemonade etc. I am from the US South and I really kind of dote on my tea but I'd rather take my chances with sugar than go through the horrid stuff I've gone through recently.

It honestly was so bad I considered doing an sl picture of my avatar barfing but then I decided that was too gross.

So I'm settling for talking about Unicorns barfing rainbows. The below art is by MokonoLovesMochi on DeviantART.

 

I was going to dress up as a unicorn and get a rainbow prim to have coming out of my mouth but to be honest, I'm literally too tired to do it. My unicorn outfit is a former limited edition from QE that's no longer available and was cute as hell. It's already got a rainbow tail and such so it would fit right in. I just don't have the energy.

I did a little search on the whole trope/meme of barfing rainbows and evidently it started back in 2006 when a blogger talked about a visit to Little Tokyo and described packaging as looking like someone vomited rainbows all over it. Source.

Everyone seems to be gearing up for St. Patrick's Day and here's a little headshot of me sporting a bit of lime green in honor of all that green beer a lot of people will be drinking in a week's time.

 

I feel really guilty cause I haven't done a lot of anything so, here's also one shot of the total look and again I apologize for my lackage ... it couldn't be helped.

Bigger views 1 and 2

"I look like a refugee from the 80's"

The title of this post is something I said to a friend as I was changing clothes. I had been lamenting how I feel that often system layer clothing in sl recently seems to be suffering under a delusion that a body suit is a dress. And also that there seems to be a general fear of flexi. In my opinion, flexi could really be used to accentuate mesh, especially in cases where a fit is trying to be made over an attachment like a booty.

So, when I got dressed, using a really nice body suit and leggings that I'd won in a midnight mania at Virtual Attire, I started layering on other things. I ended up wearing a belt, a shredded flexi skirt and a jacket.

Thus bringing up the comment from the title.

Here's a shot of me and my friend on my pier shortly before he showed me around some animation places. We ended up trying a ton of dances at There In Spirit, which was a new to me dance place. Had a nice time just chatting and trying animations.

I have a kind of a rant or an opinion about a few things since it's now Friday and the weekend brings with it a ton of sales and events to hit up. As I was running around at various places, I couldn't help but have this thought over and over. So I'll post on that separately. Do want to also offer a shout out to Seraphim SL which does yeoman service in terms of letting people in SL know about sales and events around the grid. I check Seraphim regularly and it saves me missing out on a lot of good buys as well as just missing out on seeing cool things.

When I finally get my layout worked out here, I'll be putting Seraphim on my blog roll for sure. (this was not a paid endorsement, lol)

Energy Levels Low

I had a lot I wanted to talk about, but at the moment I'm feeling pretty drained energy wise so that may wait longer than I had intended.  I'm an introvert and even interaction on SL can sometimes leave me feeling pretty exhausted.

I did the Rose Princess Hunt, which is a hud hunt. I enjoyed the hunt mainly because of the great landscaping scenes involved. Of which more later. Here's just one of the pics I took because of the humor involved.

And here's a thought on being an introvert which I found meaningful.

More soon.

Blog bizness and a quick shout out...

If you've visited before then you probably are wondering if I've lost my mind because I keep changing my blogger template layout - which incidentally keeps making me lose all my gadgets and blogroll etc. Who knew?

This is because I keep either finding something wrong with the template or deciding I want something different.  (Incidental side note, I did a search for the origin of the quote... "It is a woman's prerogative to change her mind." and though this sticks in the mind in almost folkloric kind of way, I could find no origin or author... the best I came up with was a White Diamonds commercial from the nineties which had the tag line... "It's a woman's prerogative to change her mind... and a man's to change it back." Let me just add I think this whole thing is rather sexist and everyone changes their mind based on new information and new experiences and so they should. As one's world view changes, one's opinions must change too)

And so it has gone with the blog thing. I learn more and realize I want a different template. So the blog layout is still a work in progress.

Also, because I'm a vampire... in my case being  a Twilight-like sparkle-pyre would be just fine for me. I realize most "true" vampires scorn this sparkle thing but hey... I'm a sparkly girl. No really though, I am kind of a vampire, I have sleep problems and often end up staying up half the night and not sleeping until the sun begins to peer up over the horizon.

But because I'm a vampire, I went to House of V last night. At 3 am eastern it wasn't too crowded, they had a good DJ going (hey Dracona!) and I got to try out the dances in my new ao - of which more later.

I also met some charming fellows for once, and had a lovely time chatting away. So shout out to M and I. *waves*

Here's a quick snap of me as I was coming home from clubbing. Next post will have the details of my fabulous outfit.

Click here to see the largest version of the pic, since the blog layout doesn't really allow large sizes.

Friends Gone Away...

Second Life has a funny way of magnifying certain things. It can magnify your faults into glaring horrid flaws... and it can magnify your charms... your best features in a lovely way that's almost transformative.

I think that's one of the beauties of Second Life really. Real Life interaction is so fraught with face to face anxieties where chances are in SL, your avi looks pretty good and you can be sitting in your pajamas with sleep still in your eyes and halitosis irl and who's gonna know. In rl, a date has so much... static ->... "oh let me fix my hair, did I brush my teeth, what if she/he hates this restaurant"

So what you're left with, if you also leave aside the tendency of some to fake it and try to make themselves "cooler" than they are...is the real deal. The essential you. What you say. What you do. How you say those things. How you do those things. If you have a sense of humor. If you are human. If you have compassion.

And it's easy to fall into like with those things when you meet a person who is.. in a word ... charming.  I think it's interesting how... human biology makes us still seek the most physically attractive person. (In a nutshell hormones are involved, for women, we are attracted to those who would make the best hunters, i.e. guys with muscles, brains and testosterone. For men, they are attracted to those who would make the best breeders.. i.e. those with good supplies of estrogen etc. There was a study on this, it was extremely cool.. but I digress. )

But left to ourselves with mind to mind interaction, leaving biology out of it, we are attracted to different things totally. For me, it's often a supportive, loyal, funny, compassionate, intelligent kind of person.

This differential between biology and personality is why so often rl meetings go wrong. At least that's my theory. You can mentally adore someone who does nothing for your hormones. It's a heart breaker.

Again, I digress.

The point is... these friends that you make... in online situations... they go in and out of your life in a way that's so painful.. because sometimes. They just disappear. There's no goodbye. There's no knowing... what happened. They are just gone, leaving a void that... eventually heals over, but you never really completely become reconciled.

And yet, we are such communal creatures. Nobody can live in a void... again there have been studies. We need human interaction, even if it's just online. We need to know we are not alone in the world. We need to make contact.

I know I do. And tonight, I'm feeling so sad about a dear friend, a charming friend, someone I really loved... who has disappeared into the great unknown. Stopped writing emails. Stopped coming online. I know they had health issues... God forbid that they passed away.  But I miss them. This person was important to me. And I am just starting to reconcile to the fact they are probably not coming back.

And I'm sad.

Long Time No See

It's been ages since I did a blog post. Partly that's because of real life things - about which more below - and partly because I just haven't been in SL that much.

My best friend and more than friend hasn't been in SL much so I really hadn't had a lot of reason to be there. If you're reading this Paul, I miss you.

But, I'm coming back in world again.

I gave myself a make over, one of probably a million that will happen during the next three months.

 

Photo taken at my island area, I'm wearing Sn@tch sweater, Gawk trousers, Mood Jewelry - I think they are closed now, Catwa Hair, Hush skin, appliers, lola's mirage, luck inc's phat ass, slink's casual hands, pink fuel's pout lipsticks. - click the pic to see it correctly sized

I have an addiction, oh noes!

Hello, my name is Petal and I'm an addict.

To what you ask? Hair. Skin. Shoes. Clothes. Jewelry. More or less in that order. Much of the time my reach exceeds my grasp when it comes to these addictions. This probably defends my inventory from severe addiction overload but oh! If I was a Lindenaire... there would be no stopping me.

What brought on this confession? Oh, well...Catwa released Jessica Rabbit hair... and Jessica Rabbit costume and I am in love. What else? Ploom is having a sale on hair for the next week or so, 13 percent off! Wasabi Pills released some great new hairs too. One makes me look like one of those German beerfest girls, all I need is one of those beerfest dirndls to complete the picture. I'm sure other hair makers will get into the act too because I swear they all plan on when they decide to torture us poor addicts with releases just when we don't have two pennies to rub together.

Haven't they heard there's been a Gov't shutdown in the US? *pouts like I'm five*

I have a strict budget for my SLness, I have a very generous amount I spend in sl every two weeks ish... but I always blow through it so fast. *sighs*Candy fair pretty much ripped through a good part of it. Then there was Fameshed which had some things I've been hankering for since the first of the month, then there was Collabor88. You see my point?

I also bought two skins, several jewelry items, about four fatpacks of shoes (because I don't like wasting money by doing it piecemeal), lots of clothes etc. *sighs* I don't think this addiction is ever going to leave me. It's so much fun!