You say it's your rez-day?

Well, it's my rez-day too, yeah! Well, actually...tomorrow, November 13th, 2007 is, to be exact. It's hard to believe it's been a year, although when I look back on pictures like this of little innocent October, ready to take on the grid...yeah, it's been a long time!

Back then, I honestly did not think I would become so hooked on SL, and especially not so quickly. In fact, I was reluctant to try it, believe it or not. Of course, I'm happy I did. I really feel like it's added something positive to my life, and I've made friends with many people that I would otherwise probably have never met. I'd like to thank you, all of my friends and readers, for adding to my SL experience, and for sharing it with me. I look forward to the future and hopefully even more rez-days to come.

Rez 'em if you got 'em, part 3

Well, the first couple of months were a time of huge growth for me in SL. I was learning more how to do things, interacting with a lot more people, and of course altering my appearance and spending money. Veruka was and important part of all that. I referred to us as "buddies"; we shared a bond that went a little further than friendship, though it wasn't quite a relationship. We still spent most of our time either clubbing or shopping and occasionally exploring, and we pretty much always did it together.

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When Ravenwear was looking for models, we both applied and were both accepted. That was pretty exciting. However, Veruka also had an alt, who was an exotic dancer, and she gradually spent more and more time as her alt than Veruka. Here's one of the last photos I have of Veruka and I together:


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Unfortunately, our paths were diverging. She wanted to spend her SL as her alt and be an exotic dancer and stay in the club scene, and I didn't want to do that. Things are fine between us and we do still occasionally check in on one another, but we definitely live separate lives now.

Then I realized I needed friends, stat. Thank god for Flickr. Flickr was where I met two of my now-closest SL friends: Kriss and Jezebella. It was just the right change of direction I needed. This more or less brings me up to the present. My next "history" post will be about the evolution of my avatar.

Rez 'em if you got 'em, part 2

It didn't take me long before I was roaming around places other than Dublin. Actually, in the photo in my first post, I'm in New Paris. My friend Ostara was doing his own exploring and would tell me about places to visit, such as the Space Museum and Amsterdam:

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Yes, that's my tender newbie self in a "red light girl" booth. I'm wearing a Public Image Ltd. tee shirt which Ostara made and gave to me. Anyway, it didn't take long for the "pros" to show up and make me feel uncomfortable, so I tp'd away. That was probably the most interesting thing I found in Amsterdam. I'm not sure if I've been back since then, actually.

I did a bunch of exploring on my own, and it wasn't long before I went to a club. The first club I ever went to was The Vortex, and they were playing EBM that night. That's where I met my first real SL friend, Veruka, who was only a few days older than me:


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Despite Veruka's initial uncertainty about my gender (??), we immediately hit it off and spent the night bouncing from club to club, finally ending up at Club Ambience. She also gave me a bunch of clothes so I would have something to wear other than the "defaults" I was sporting:


(click on the photo for a larger version)

Clubbing, Club Ambience, and Veruka were three important parts of my beginning days on Second Life. Veruka and I quickly grew very close and did most things together, as you will see in my next post.

Rez 'em if you got 'em

Right...I have to start somewhere, so I may as well make it the beginning. After hearing my RL friend Ostara (that's his SL name) gush about Second Life, I decided to at least give it a skeptical try. I started my Second Life account on November 13, 2006, but I didn't really start using it until a couple of weeks later. I was limited to using my work computer (an Apple G5) during my lunchbreak because my home computer's video card was about 7 years old and wouldn't run SL. No, I'm not kidding.

After a couple of days I got the hang of things, but things really started happening for me once I got a new video card for my home computer. That meant I could be on for more than an hour at a time, in any state of dress and also intoxicated if I so pleased. So, one night after getting stoned and possibly drunk as well, I took my avatar from as close as I could possibly get to looking like I do irl (using sliders) to this rather cute (imo) ghostly cyberpunk chick:

Yes, I thought I looked rather good, shut up. The photo above is the earliest photo I have of my avatar. The one that I used at the very beginning is gone forever. How sad. Not really.

I spent the next couple of weeks more or less stuck in Dublin at an Irish pub called The Blarney Stone, due to the fact that I didn't know how to get around teleport issues that we were having at the time. Obviously, I did finally figure that one out, and LL also fixed the issue eventually anyway.

And this seems like as good of a place to stop as any, to be continued sometime soon. I'm sure you can't wait.