Thursday!

Thursdays are my favorite regularly-scheduled SL days.

I try to always attend the Radio Riel Theater at the Clarendon Observatory at 7:00pm (New Babbage sim), and aside from that it seems I'm usually able to find some adventure or other afterward.  Not sure why it works out that way, but it's become something I look forward to very much.

There are always one-off events, or events that occur less frequently, but I can't make them with such regularity.  Wednesday and Thursday nights are very good for me though, I'm almost always available, so this is something I've begun to plan for.

So.....yay for Thursdays!

It's almost October...

So I decided that the cemetery needed some sprucing up.  My goal was spooky, but not cheesy.

In daylight:

At night (the light is coming from lanterns):

The Engineer's Ball

Tonight was the annual Engineer's Ball at the newly-reopened Piermont Landing.  The new build is pretty amazing.  I'd not seen much of it when I first rezzed in, but when I walked out I saw how majestic it is.

Kaylee asked me to dance while at the ball, which we did for quite some time, before I asked a newly-arrived dark stranger from Mondrago if he would dance with me.  Apparently in New Babbage, the women need to be direct when they want to dance, otherwise they're going to be dancing alone or with other women.  Which isn't always a problem, but....well, sometimes you want to dance with a gentleman.  *shrug*  At least some of us do.

In any case, this particular gentleman is from the land of Cala Mondrago, a Middle Eastern steampunk culture that has recently been revived in exile.  Long story.  The short of it is that it's an exquisite and exotic environment compared to my sooty hometown, and one of my best friends, Bianca Namori, happens to be the Sultana.  This particular gentleman is very close to Bianca and her fiance.

Following the ball, I met him on a rooftop in Mondrago, where we drank wine and discussed our homelands. At some point he popped back to New Babbage to show me a new business being prepared to open, and I took this pic before I joined him:

It was a lovely evening, but alas, everyone in the world seems to be in a timezone where it is later than here. Eventually everyone dropped out and I found myself alone on my wall, watching leaves fall in the park.

*insert sad horn here*  "Wah-waaaaaah"

But not to worry!  Kaylee is in my timezone, so she and I sat on the wall together for awhile and then popped off to more cheerful locations.

Stupid globe.  Interfering with my social life.  Pfffft.

"So, Junie...what did you do tonight?"

The answer to that question just keeps getting stranger and stranger. 

And I love that!

One of the things I adore about SL is that you can be serious, reproduce real life in some way, play it by the rules of the real world, but you can also toss all of that out the window and shoot squid at people.  The more random, the more fun it is sometimes.

Take last night for example.  What did I do?  Well, first I went to the Radio Riel Theater and listened to George Carlin on the Jon Stewart show for half an hour.  Then I wandered around The Gut and noticed a new tree made of gears that were falling to the ground like leaves.  Naturally, I tried to climb it, but failed miserably.  Some time later I ended up laying on the ground in my cemetery trying to decide which decorations to put up for October, before Jed showed up and the conversation turned to the most effective manner with which to dispatch a zombie. We stood in the graveyard shooting at the crow with increasingly powerful firearms until Kaylee showed up walking on her hands and dressed as a jester. I put on my Harley Quinn costume and we did backflips around the cemetery for awhile.

Tonight?  Put on a dirndl dress and dragged Jed over to the Oktoberfest party Edward was DJ'ing in Bay City.  All total we didn't stay more than 15 minutes before heading over to Muirsheen Durkin at the Brunel Hotel back in New Babbage for the Foot Tappin Friday party.  Afterward a bunch of us sat around in the bar chatting when Leia put on a bunny costume in an attempt to convince Vic to teach another language class.  I put on my pink bunny jammies, and before you knew it, everyone in the bar (except Vic) was dressed as a rabbit and we were dancing again.  Eventually we had rabbit tinies, rabbit furries, rabbit jammies, a demon bunny and two very LARGE rabbits occupying the bar.

Did I mention that the trolleys picked tonight to stage a minor revolt? (As if THAT'S unusual...but still.)

I was the last to leave the bar tonight.  Goodbye, Muirsheen Durkin.  Sleep well, bunnehs.

Boudoir, dresses, and baking

I recently found a merchant that is on my list of favorites. I'm eager to go see the inworld sometime since discovering it on Marketplace.  The store is called Boudoir, and it is fabulously couture and whimsical.  Not really steampunk, but much of the merchandise definitely has a dark edge to it.  Products include dresses, hair, lingerie, hats, and shoes.  A few examples:

Moulin Rouge Dress

Baronesse Castelli Hat

Yummy Me!

This last one always makes me think of a Professor Elemental song, Sweet Cold Colation.  (You really have to hear it to fully appreciate....it's a riot.)

Elemental:

Darling! Sweet heart I'm home!
The Voyage was a success. Nine years later here I am.
Hmmmm...

Wife:

Do you like my dress of cakes?

Elemental:

I'm ever so peckish

Wife:

You like it? You like it alot?

Elemental:

I don't suppose I could just...try...

Wife:

No! Frankly no, you'll never touch me again!

Elemental:

Before I take elevenses, professor stays to play the wrist
A cakey dress, a sexy miss. I best not make a mess of this.
If you cover my love with your truffles and dumplings,
I'll cover you up with my custard and something.
I'll spank you on the Battenburg (oooh). Try your icing, quite superb!
So lets fly my pretty songbird, I can't wait a moment longer!

Las tres amigas

And hilarity ensued...

(Me as Harley Quinn, Bianca as Poison Ivy, Leia as Catwoman)

During our little photoshoot, I put on an AO that had a skipping animation.  I had bought the animation for myself, because, well, sometimes I feel like skipping.  It was perfect for Harley though, especially when I was wearing my gigantic hammer.  Leia had her Catwoman whip and found some great "catty" animations to go with her character as well.

Afterward, the three of us went and did some steam hunt locations.  In costume.  No great prizes, but it doesn't matter.  It was fantastic.

Breakfast in Babbage

I love Breakfast in Babbage.  Not only are the events riotous fun, they also give me an excuse to buy costumes. :-)

This month's theme was Villains, so Bianca Namori, Leia Rossini and I dressed up as the three Batman woman villains. I was Harley Quinn, Bianca was Poison Ivy, and Leia was Catwoman. 

Breezy Carver suggested that we all go to the Town Hall meeting at 1pm dressed in our villain costumes.  :-)

Good times, good friends

Two good things last night.

First, the Persian/Farsi language class at Bianca Namori and Akidami Swift's Language Academy.  The school was recently set up and has been offering a variety of classes in different languages, led by different instructors.  You need to have voice enabled to hear the instructor pronounce the words being taught, while following along on a notecard.

It was a great deal of fun, and I would love to go back whenever a class is being offered in a time slot I can attend.

After the class I wasn't sure what to do with myself, so I did a little tinkering on my build.  While I was there, my friend Matthieu sent me an IM to say hi.  He hasn't made it in-world very often during the last month, so it was a delight to see him.  We spent the rest of the evening sitting around and catching up.  He made me laugh and it was good to see him. :-)

I'm looking forward to the next few days because there are a number of things happening.

• Thursday:
• Radio Riel Theater at The Clarendon Observatory, 7pm

• Friday: 
• Foot Tappin' Friday at Brunel Hall, 6pm

•  Saturday: 
• Breakfast in Babbage at The Clarendon, 8am
• New Babbage Town Hall at City Hall, 1pm
• Language class with Victor Mornington, 5pm

I've been going through a bit of party withdrawal since the Kraken Festival wound down.  I've attended a few dances outside of New Babbage since then. Although they were fun, I left with a new appreciation for how comfortable I feel in New Babbage, and how much more I enjoy events there. It's home.

Pictures!

The construction site on my new parcel.  It's going to be a workshop of sorts.

The workshop in progress.  It's about 75% complete.

My cemetery!  The only thing I've added is the crow.  A cemetery needs a crow.  You can see him flying in the first pic, and perched on a headstone in the second.

An aerial snapshot with my parcels outlined.  I like the fact that they're all very close to each other, but not adjacent.  I have to walk a little bit to get to each one.

My new hair.  :-)   When my brain got too fuzzy for building and texturing, I went shopping.  I ended up with three new hairstyles, but this is the one I decided to keep wearing.

And finally, a new modeling portrait by Bianca.  She is still working on her portfolio, and I'm happy to get some fun portraits.  And I adore this outfit - the roses make me so happy!  (I still need to make a separate post about Bianca's studio now that she has rates available.  Coming soon!)

New real estate

I'm a happy landowner.  Recently I purchased two new parcels in the Academy of Industry sim of New Babbage.

The first is an old cemetery on a triangular lot.  Several ideas for the plot crossed my mind, but I think I will just leave it as a cemetery. It adds to the atmosphere of the sim in my opinion, and it's off in a corner anyway. Anything I build there wouldn't really get any traffic. Besides, a cemetery doesn't use many prims, and I can use them otherwise.

The newest parcel I bought last night.  A small lot opened up near my house, and I've been giving it consideration over the last week. After deciding that I want to keep the cemetery as a cemetery (prim farm), I knew that I wanted another spot to build on.

My plan is to build something more steampunky than my house. A heavy industrial build would be out of place in Academy, so I'm thinking just a workshop of some sort is in order. I found a model that I like and sketched it out in prims on my mainland parcel earlier last night. I'm really excited to build it now.

I definitely want this build to have some moving parts. At the moment I'm thinking a roof that opens on a hinge like a greenhouse, but we'll see. This will challenge me to work on my scripting skills a bit, which I haven't used much since coming back.