I’m dancing at Club Gearz in #SecondLife with my friends in Steelhead Bay  listening to the radio stream on SciFi.com. My landlord Fuzzball Ortega is a DJ there and he streams live on Fridays for a regular community dance. The first half of the set is always weird stuff he finds. The chat went like this:

Now playing: Baltimora – Tarzan Boy (Original Hit Version)
Lelani Carver: isn’t this… the yodeling gargle mouthwash song?
Stereo Nacht: Hehehe!
Fuzzball Ortega: Yes
Now playing: Blue Swede – Hooked on a Feeling
Lelani Carver: Heh heh heh LISTERINE on a jungle vine!
Lelani Carver: this song got a nice boost when it showed up in the Guardians of the Galaxy
Stereo Nacht: Do I hear a theme? 😉
Lelani Carver: this really was a week for survival.
Stereo Nacht: Aw…
Andrea Jones (andreajonesms) entered chat range (18.91 m).
Stereo Nacht: X-D
Lelani Carver: LOL i’m on the radios!

This last was because when Fuzzball paused to do a station identification, he mentioned my yodeling gargle mouthwash wisecrack on the air. Earlier, he played the “Coming To Take Me Away,” which I memorized in junior high… so yes, I sang along.

It’s been a hard week in RL, and a somewhat frustrating week in #SecondLife what with alarums and excursions (had to take spouse to the ER several times, recovering nicely). When I did have time to do my virtual farming stuff and attempt to sell the stuff I’ve “grown,” nothing was selling. I hate making the sales announcements, because everyone else is making the same constant group ads. So as detailed in other posts, my exit strategy is to “cook everything down” and sell much higher value items that have concentrated energy, or have collectible appeal.

This morning, before work, I gritted my teeth and posted about a sale item that I’d made last night – about 75 “meals” priced at $L2. Immediately, someone started buying them, one at a time. I sent an IM and offered to box up the remaining, and a deal was struck. I received payment, but my customer never received the box of virtual victuals. GRRR! SL!!! So I refunded her money and opened a ticket with SL support. Had to take her word for it; I didn’t give it to her in a way that’s logged by the system in a way that’s mutually verifiable. And her partner IMed me, too. Had to make that good before I could log in for my actual, real life job. Bad start. I opened a support ticket for the lost item, but don’t have much hope. The system did log that I gave my customer an item, but not the name of the item. Eh, it’s probably a loss. We’re talking pennies.

But then, things turned around a little – someone else came into my virtual shop during the day and went on a buying spree, probably getting ingredients. But I noticed that she bought 2 items that should have been priced at $L50 but sold for $L5. Some kind of glitch with the scripted vendor, GRRRR.

Later on, I checked the group chats for the DFS stuff and someone mentioned they were looking to buy a specific item, the ‘Mother’s Day Forever Maple Tree (sap)” that’s usually priced from around $L2400 to $L3500 as a “rare collectible.”

See that yellow maple in the picture? That’s the very thing, and I had set it for sale for $L2500. So I IMed the gentleman – I’ve seen him in the chats, talking about collecting stuff for his and his wife’s estate.

After some lowballing and discussion, we agreed on a price – less than I’d hoped but more than I’d paid for it 2 years ago. So I’m happy! Survived the week! Sold a silly collectible virtual tree! Win-win! Threw in some buckets of sap that I won’t have to cook down into molasses for “rum.”

And the tree is gone, too.