It’s been a busy week. After a long break, the approach of fall meant I’d have more time on the weekends for inworld activities (the typist rides her bicycle and has other summer goings-on). I was thinking of a return to my St John shop, where I’d left several projects partly completed.

Then circumstances forced some quick decisions. The sim was to undergo a complete makeover. Would I continue, or depart? Make a clean break, or a fresh start? After stopping in at the shop to take stock, it was clear to me that I wanted to carry on.

All of the parcels were to be cleared by last Sunday of all prims, but I had time on Saturday. Sim owner Gabrielle Riel provided quick videos on how to pick up prims and pack them to be easily restored, but that wouldn’t be necessary for me; I planned to put down a completely different building, in a new orientation, so my vendors and doodads didn’t have to be restored to their original positions.

The parcel was cleared and I spent some time in a sandbox getting organized, trying out some old-school building, and also shopping for textures and looking at potential candidates for the new building on the Marketplace.

Most of the week, I spent messing about with prims – I bought 4 different buildings and tinkered with them. There’s something both relaxing and focusing editing someone else’s build, but frustrating too.

I settled on an old-style building called “French Quarter House,” but didn’t like how it was oriented; there’s a back garden with a little two-story annex that I ended up rotating 90 degrees, and I’m pretty happy with it.

The other candidate was a really big 3 story “New Orleans Bar House” that really had potential, but was a small footprint AND it was no copy. After spending a couple of days trimming out unwanted landscaping and garden furniture (all of which was no copy, but I saved it), the main house was mostly copy but some no-copy element remained somewhere. Finally, I found a no-copy animation in an innocuous barrel in the kitchen, and another no-copy texture in the back bar. Voila, the entire house became “copy” when those prims were delinked.

It has some really nice elements (beautiful front balconies with topiary plants) and some really not-great exterior textures; I went so far as to copy it and start to knock it into semi detached (still fits on the parcel) but decided that it was too big a project. I could make it work (using Anywhere Doors by Curio Obscura) for the upper floors and I may still swap it out later if I need more display space. And I could still grab parts (shutters that close, landscaping, the garden furniture).

In the end, I went with the French Quarter house that I remodeled; I have office space in the back, and will have minimal vendors out in the front building. Dhughan will also share space, with his walking stick vendors upstairs. I bought some Rustica furniture after reading about Maxwell Graf’s situation on other blogs – the funky patio set will look great out back. I do need to go through the house and trim prims, make sure that some elements are set up as convex hull, etc.

The other furniture I got from Rustica is one of his Craftsman sets; it’s one of my most favorite styles and it’s right in period with the era at St John Parish. As a part of this, some older prim based furniture I’ve been holding on to forever will go back into deep storage (and a lot more of it will be binned in another burning barrel of no regrets.

It’s weird being back after so long, yet it’s so familiar. The first night I was really back, it was a Talk Like A Pirate Day event that was a Radio Riel simulcast from the NeoVictoria sim. This amazing materials-enabled seahorse showed up. I have other pictures on my hard drive, need to get them on my Flickr page. I also need to remember to use my profile feed more, it’s handy to pull photos off of there.

That was so much fun, I went back for a Circus Night and Freakshow at my friend Kitty’s place in Bayou St John. The costumes were astounding, and the music was super eclectic.

I’ve been tinkering with some build tools and figuring out what I have and what I don’t, and rediscovered that before I went on hiatus, I had gotten most of my huge and overly complicated collection of textures loaded and categorized in a Kinex texture organizer. Some have complained that the creator, Kindred Skytower, hasn’t been inworld in months, but as a recent returnee, I’m still happy with the product – it really makes it easy to find something!

I’ve reconnected with some old friends and made some new ones, made some sales, and I’m getting the building bug again. There’s a lot of mesh work that’s simply beyond my sadly outdated skills in Blender; but I did manage to make mesh last year, and by God, I can pick it back up again. I’ll never be that talented or creative, but what I can do, I’ll do. It’s satisfying to pick things back up.

It’s also satisfying to move them around and rezz them somewhere else. And then relax.

There was talk on other blogs this week (I’d more or less kept up on feeds) about fellow Oldbies coming back to Second Life; once you “get it” inworld, you can never really leave.

So I’m back, again. I’ve got a big rezz day coming up and not sure what to do about it, but I’m here.