Chameleonic Possessions

Second Life Blogs: My House Is Missing – Got Milk Carton?

I was in the process of moving things around and backing up my house yesterday (heard about asset server issues) and as I was taking the main building into inventory, it disappeared. It’s completely invisible, does not show up when I toggle Highlight Transparent , yet is not clickable or editable, and the walls and interior partitions are solid. The doors and windows were created by others and so they’re all still there and functional – which is good as I can’t walk through my invizibl wallz.

The parcel is group owned (my group), and when I checked the About Land/Objects tab, there’s invizibl primz there somewhere.

I was about to start building a new place from scratch anyway, and I just got the email about a Linden Home being available to me – is this a sign?

Well, about 2 weeks ago, I noticed some changes in my “home” region – land was selling and re-selling, the costs were jumping around, and the parcels across from my place opened up.

So I was going to buy the one that would have made a nice square with my 2 original parcels:

And then I went on vacation, and the land sold again and was consolidated into a bigger parcel, in a size too large for me. I could only buy something up to about 716m before invoking the next level of tier payment. So I waited.

After returning from vacation, and discovering the land had flipped yet again, I logged in to find some new stores…

Meanwhile, the weird landscape on the other side had also sold a couple times, and is now being marketed as a nice place with a moat and a view of my sexy neighbors’ rooftop playground. Joy, bliss, etc.

And then last night I was tinkering with the house, which had been neglected while I was learning to make jewelry and wasn’t really as nice as it had been, and I was tired of re-aligning the joins and whatnot. I went to take it back into inventory after linking up everything and copying the fireplace to possibly sell… and it just went poof. Disappeared. It’s invisible, but the walls are there, and the doors have to be used to get in and out. They lock, so no one can get to the teleport pad that goes to the teahouse. Meanwhile, I bought another smaller parcel that came up for sale in Tintafel at a good deal, closer to the store.

And another giant store went in on the sim behind me, so no view there, either. At least I can see somebody coming from any direction, but I’m kind of in a sexy canyon now. Meh.

And now look at what’s for sale behind me (before their back wall rezzes) – freaked me out when I teleported home just now, but now I think it’s kind of surreally cool:

And of course I got the email from Linden offering me a Linden Home… but I no longer qualify for it because I used up my extra tier to buy the new small parcel. Heh.

Is it a sign? Shall I rebuild near the shop and sell my original two parcels?

And darn, at least it looked pretty good for the party.

Not able to go inworld much these days – currently have a very slow Internet connection and don’t have access to home machine and GIMP.  However, I’m gathering some textures while my typist is on vacation in Maui, you can be sure! Mostly they will be plant and flower textures, plus whatever else that is interesting catches my eye.

Getting lots of ideas for necklaces, pottery, and other wearable art while browsing shops and craft stands, too. There’s beautiful work being done here by local artists – lots of fused glass, painted silk, antique beads, and big batik floral graphics are typical here. I’ve seen a lot of chunky semi-precious stone and “Tahitian Chocolate” pearls and also freshwater pearls, too – sometimes combined in interesting ways. I’ve been noticing in my RL travels that women seem to like “interestitng” necklaces, too, and will soon be learning to replicate some favorite pieces owned by friends and family members.

Can’t do much inworld – I attended a fundraising event a few nights ago and could barely move, so building or working with tiny prims is not currently a fun and relaxing hobby, more of a frustrating chore. Also, it’s not so easy without a mouse (although I do have a wireless one around here somewhere).

I’ll be taking more pictures tomorrow, not sure if they will make their way inworld, but with any luck I may have some tropical fish pictures to add to my haul. It’s hard to photograph underwater because you can’t really see what’s in the frame very well. What with the underwater parallax (the refraction of the water changes the angle at which light and images take as they pass through different materials like plastic, lenses, air, and water again on their way through the camera). But with any luck I may have some pictures of tropical fish to play with, too.

I’d REALLY like to get a picture of a Jackson’s Chameleon, which is often found here, but that won’t be likely until a trip into the subtropical forest later in the week, on the “wet side” of Maui.

Just as a taste, here’s what plumeria (ubiquitous inworld due to their presence in the standard Library of landscaping shrubs) really look like. More of that to come, too.

Here’s some Pink Plumeria…

… and the more typical White Plumeria, which can be found in nearly every yard, every hotel and condo landscape. The trees can grow quite tall; I saw some fine old trees in Lahaina yesterday that were at least two stories tall.