Tag: boots

New Shoes (a silly little post)

I was running errands the other day and just happened to find myself next to the shoe store. I didn’t think I NEEDED any new shoes, but I thought I’d check out the stock, see what was new, see if there was anything on sale, see if anything appealed to me. After all, we are changing seasons which does mean less warm, toe-showing weather and more wet, soggy, keep-the-feet-dry weather.

Amazing as it might sound, I found THREE pairs of shoes that appealed to me. And slippers to replace my favorite no-skid Penn State socks. Some of you are new to my blog, and don’t know me from my SecondLife days. In those days I was renowned for my spike heels and steam-punk boots. I do still have most of those shoes and boots, but I’ve found lately that my “beach” persona has been more dominant. I’ve been wearing sandals, flip-flops and top-siders all summer and I’m loathe to give up the ambiance. I have 2 pairs of top-siders – one faded, stained sea foam and the other pink. Neither seemed right for fall, so I had to indulge in a new color. The other pair, although they look kind of like slippers, are so comfortable that I couldn’t resist. I NEEDED a pair of fall shoes that weren’t boots. You will probably call these boots but as they say, if the shoe fits, buy it. 🙂

4 new shoes
please note that I do still like buckles and metal on my footwear!

OOTD20150616

Just returned from Las Vegas, Nevada. *laughing* IS there any other Las Vegas???? Saturday night was spent at the Fremont Street Experience. Fremont Street was the original “strip” in Vegas before the current strip – with all the amazing theme resort casinos. Fremont Street has Glitter Gulch. The Golden Nugget. Tony Roma’s. Now a 5 block stretch of Fremont is covered over with a huge arch which hosts an incredible light display every hour. There are music stages in the street, vendors, drinks, casinos, lights, food, and people EVERYWHERE in the street. People dancing in the street. Drinking in the street. Taking a million pictures in the street, because there are dozens and dozens of denizens dressed in costume. The tourists are dressed in a complete spectrum from bathing suits to full coverage and the costumed regulars – well – let your imagination run wild. I loved it. It was when the 2 furries passed me that I realized why I was so happy and why I felt so comfortable. Fremont Street is the closest I’ve ever been to experiencing SL in RL. There are mostly naked people, furry people, oddly shaped people, people in every kind of outfit you can imagine, people in thongs and pasties and high high heels, people with ‘wings’, superheroes. I loved it. I walked about with a huge smile on my face, wishing that I’d had on some of my Ahuva shoes. Most of Ahuva’s outfits are way too tame for Freemont street, but I do have a few that would have had tourists paying me to take my pic with them. *grin* Oh yes – shoes….. *bigger grin* shipped home TWO pair of cowboy boots. Ahuva does Vegas.

Neeeeeeeeeding Boots

I don’t always have to be enticed from my skybox. Sometimes I am DRIVEN out by urgent NEED. I decided I wanted a more risqué look. I have one friend whose avatar is always on what I would call the risqué end of the spectrum. *grin* I figured if she could do it, so could I. Well, okay, NO ONE can do it quite the way SHE can. But I figured I would do an Ahuva-version.

I knew what I wanted. I was going for a gold top, gold boots, gold jewelry and black pants. Except… I didn’t have any gold boots. And I didn’t have the “right” gold jewelry. I assembled what I could and called Dale in to check it out. We agreed that my boots, wonderful though they are (I LOVE my Bax boots – don’t get me wrong – they almost always work for my outfits) weren’t quite the look I wanted. Dale was playing with inventory, trying on different outfits. I liked one set of boots, so we tp’d to that store: Dark Eden in Olive.

I was in boot heaven. *grin* After much deliberation, I settled on the Vagabond boots in black. Of course in black. I ALWAYS buy black, it seems. In my atomic closet I have THREE pairs of black suede boots. Okay, I have purple also. And others in leather. But I do seem to have a special affection for black boots. After buying my boots and wearing them, I decided that I liked them with that top and pants, I no longer NEEDED gold boots. We wandered about the store which was a LOT of fun! All sorts of goodies. Dale’s inventory was increased by many indulgences, including a great mega pack of tops in many colors and variations. Had we found it again in time (that is, before I spent more money), I probably would indulged as well. It was too late for me, however, because I’d found the discount area. I indulged in another mega pack: the Nyx boots mega set – 9 pairs of boots, INCLUDING gold!

We also found the room with furniture! Dale has taught me well – always sit everywhere. LOL. So I tried out the chair. I liked it, it had some good sit selections. And you can get a good look at my Vagabond boots! I love the carton. I think I really have to go back and buy the carton, the poses are so cute. There is a pose sitting on the cushion, back against the carton. You can kneel on the cushion resting your elbows on the crate. Or, of course my favorite, lie down and relax on your belly on the crate!

I still thought I needed a gold necklace. I IM’d Calli to ask where I should shop. She sent us the taxi to come to her so she could check out the outfit first. When she saw what I was wearing she told me she would not wear gold with that. We discussed possible options and she said that my steampunk collar would be fine. *grin* (I bought the collar at Le Petit Prince on LPP, but neither the sim nor the store appear to be with us anymore. 😦 ) With that, the three of us settled down on the grass to chat. Perhaps we were tired, perhaps we were truthful, but a great deal of our conversation dealt with the lack of civility among SL (and net) citizens, and the perceived lack of honesty and clarity from LL. O tempora o mores!! But you cannot keep the three of us down for long, and we did cheer ourselves up and laugh before saying goodnight!

What is So Rare as a Day in June?

my turn to leadDale Innis wearing shoes or boots – THAT is rare!! *grin* But I managed to convince her to slip on a pair of boots this evening. She looked so great, but was dancing in socks. 😦 Oh no, no, no!!!! So I gave her a pair of boots and she did me the great kindness of wearing them. Doesn’t she look HAWT?????? OMG, Dale – you are way cool! 🙂 She actually changed outfits to match the boots! I want to see the other pair sometime in my life also. LOL

I had to ask Dale why “rare as a day in June”? After all – there are 30 days in June. Not so rare. She explained that it meant especially nice. Well, that fits too. Not only is it very uncommon to see Dale in footwear, but she looked VERY nice. *grin* I googled later and found this description as well: rare = marked by an uncommon quality; especially superlative or extreme of its kind

And of course, we are all quoting from James Russell Lowell’s poem, “The Vision of Sir Launfal”. I had to look it all up. *grin* That is why I’m putting this here. Because although I knew “What is so rare as a day in June?”, I didn’t know anything else about it. So this is my lit lesson for the day.

We were dancing to the music of Komuso Tokugawa. OMG. He is incredible. Absolutely phenomenal. Blues rocker. What a way to spend an evening in SL. Thank you, thank you, thank you Komuso!!

Dale in Boots

Snapshots from Yesterday

This is NOT the post I intended for today. *grin* Now doesn’t that make me sound organized and thoughtful? As if I actually PLAN for my blog. 🙂 I really really want to post about the Crown and Pearl. I had so much fun there last week. But yesterday was a real treat for me in the way of seeing friends. So often we only get to wave at friends in IM. Then you look up and realize it has been days since you actually talked. That’s why today’s post is a snapshot of my stolen moments with friends.

zazeks wingszazek and I so rarely get time to play. We have hunted Easter eggs together, visited AM Radio’s The Red and The Wild together. But mostly we only exchange a few words in IM and then one of us has to run. Last night we actually had time to talk, catch up on life. 🙂 zazek is doing something that I can’t do. Even if I were capable of doing it – I probably would not be brave enough to do it. zazek began blogging a few weeks ago. “So?” you might ask. “Doesn’t EVERYONE blog these days?” Maybe. But zazek is not writing in her native language. I only know one language. I have a smattering of others but certainly no competency. Even if I KNEW another language well, I doubt I would be writing in it. So zazek has my great admiration and respect! Her blog is fun to read, too! *grin* Check it out for yourself.

torturing primsDark and I used to have time to dance and party and fly planes. Then somehow my schedule got totally out of control. We chatted periodically, but rarely ended up in the same SLURL. Yesterday we were chatting about building. I am still fairly intimidated by manipulating prims. I simply do not understand path cut and taper and shear. I know, I know – you all tell me to “try it, play, experiment”. I do not learn that way. I like having another human being nearby who can answer questions. Dark tp’d me to a sandbox to give me a quick introduction to torturing prims. *grin* I did my best – teasing a pink torus. But you can see that Dark REALLY knows how to torture prims. 🙂 It was a quick start, but he’s promised we can do it again. YAY!!! Thank you, Dark!

welcome home OuraOura got home yesterday. *hugs* Welcome back, Oura. I missed you. We started in immediately on girl talk, catching up on the week’s events for us both. I told her about my escapades at work, trying to move my AO and boots and hair over to opensim. We started inventory diving – looking for any fullperm boots and clothing. LOL. We tried on some pretty amazing outfits. bearsI promised her I would NOT take pictures or blog, so you will simply have to imagine the wet T shirts that we found. Is that okay, Oura? Can they use their imaginations???? Oura also noticed that my bear either smokes or the room was excessively cold, causing breath condensation. 🙂 Being in a silly mood, we somehow decided that the bear was indulging in a post activity cigarette. *grin* twinsSince none of the other bears were smoking, there is still some mystery here. We ended up standing on the bed, swapping freebie outfits, finally finishing the evening as twins.

I guess I haven’t mentioned work in the last few days. I’ve been involved with the usual building for the demos. We’ve been meeting with others trying to learn more about opensim and developing in virtual worlds. We’re making great progress, imho. We plan to begin demo’ing to folks next week. I’ve been attending meetings in a variety of virtual worlds. As you know, I really get tired of being “dweebie”. A friend wrote and gave me an AO that works in opensim, another friend taught me how to build my own AO in SL using the ZHAO. I bought poses and FINALLY understand (somewhat) what happens in my AO. Maybe I will finally have the courage to toss the 2 poses I dislike. 🙂 I have different hair as well. life with an AO,hair and bootsI have been learning to wheel and deal with builders and scripters. I’ve also been friending coworkers and enjoying all the cool lectures and such that are available. Have I mentioned recently how much I enjoy my job? And now I even have boots and hair.

Appearances Matter

I wrote this post a few days ago, before the LL price hike announcement. Maybe this is a good time to post this, maybe this is terrible timing. I’m not really sure. But this post explains one of the reasons why I like being in SL and why I view it as a positive experience, despite the occasional blip.

Reading through endless blogs and following links, I ended up back on Hamlet Au’s blog. He mentioned the Stanford Study, research done in 2006 by Nick Yee. The study was way more than I could handle in my greatly-fatigued state, so I am relying on Au’s summary. Basically, and I am copying this directly from Au’s blog: Yee “found that people using physically attractive avatars tend to exhibit more self-confidence, both in-world… and in the real world.” I’m no scientist/psychologist/expert, but I am a human being. 🙂 And I’d have to say that my own experience supports Yee’s conclusions.

My father died 2 years ago. Although it was not unexpected, it was traumatic. I aged years overnight. I felt that I had become the front-line troops. That the security and well-being of my entire family depended on ME. Everyone in the family suffered greatly when we lost my father. Many emotions and issues surfaced. I realized that I had to grow up emotionally and psychologically or my life and my marriage were going to spiral down into depths from which they might never recover. I’ve already directed you to Botgirl Questi’s blog and her mention of Byron Katie. I am not familiar with Katie myself, but judging from Botgirl’s comments, the philosophy sounds much like the one I managed to embrace and internalize. There is no question that I was able to save my sanity (and thereby my health and the well-being of my family) by changing the way I look at life.

I have learned to really like myself. I have learned to look at others and accept them for who they are and what they are and to throw away my demands of what they “should do/be”. (Okay, my dear son – this does NOT apply to you – I am your mother. I have a FULL set of expectations for YOU and your behavior. Sorry. That’s my job! 🙂 ) Anyway, the point here is that I have reached a stage where I like who I am. And yet…. I still have issues left from those wonderful teen-age years. 🙂 C’mon – we all do. 🙂 But I have discovered SL.

Here in SL I can choose what parts of my RL existence are emphasized and which are played down. Ahuva is me, I am Ahuva. There is no difference. One of my SL friends has great difficulty believing that I am so “immersed”. I’m not really immersed. I simply am. But let’s face it. Ahuva NEVER wakes up with any physical aches or pains or zits or other aggravations. Ahuva’s clothes fit perfectly, or all it takes is a mild edit. She can dance all night in stiletto heels and look fresh and relaxed and pay no price the next day. Ahuva and I both react to stress by buying more boots. 🙂

Since Ahuva IS me, since she is doing what I like to do, being who I am, Ahuva is inside of me in RL. I walk about and I am She and She is Me. I walk like Ahuva. I feel the same confidence in me that Ahuva exhibits when she moves about inworld. I feel a lot of that buried teen-age angst dissolving. As Ahuva’s appearance has been tweaked and modified, so has my RL appearance. I hear again and again from people about how “great” I look. I look and sound younger. I have much more energy and excitement than I’ve had in years. I look hot. LOL (You GO girl!! ) I’ve lost weight. I went back to wearing my hair a different style. I have a picture posted on my social network that shows us side by side. 🙂 We are NOT identical, but everyone sees the similarity, the connection. (And Ahuva’s profile has been updated too – forced her to be a little more honest about what she was doing inworld 🙂 ) I was doing okay before SL. But Ahuva and I together – we are really quite a team.

Channelling Imelda Marcos

Confession time. I channel Imelda Marcos. I LOVE shoes. I REALLY LOVE boots. Now in FL sometimes atomic reality interferes with these loves. My foot and the shoe aren’t compatible. My wallet and the shoe aren’t compatible. But in SL – oh, I am in boot and shoe heaven!!!! I was prancing about in my brand new Lola boots the other day, having agonized over which pair would be my treat for that particular shopping trip. My friend S pointed out that for $20 I could buy most all the boots and shoes I wanted. I said that I understood that but she was SUPPOSED to be admiring my self-restraint! She laughed and ask Why self-restraint? I told her because it was good practice. 🙂 More importantly – buying boots is like eating fine chocolate. You want to savor the experience. You want to taste every last little molecule. You don’t want to blunt the effect by hurling some other sensation on top of the chocolate sensation. Mmmmmm. Draw it out. Enjoy it. Let it linger on your tongue. Same with boots. 🙂 Get one new pair. Buy an outfit to show off the new boots. Wander about. Strike a pose. Dance. Make those boots one with yourself. 🙂 Oh yes, my boots are akin to a spiritual experience as well as a totally sybaritic pleasure. Shoes are good too, don’t get me wrong, but to REALLY make my day – give me a new pair of boots!!!

So now I wake each morning and I want to wear Ahuva’s boots!!!! I look in my closet and there are boots, but they are not as nice as HER boots!!!! I want my SL boots in RL!!!!! I NEED my SL boots in RL!!! I can’t stand this deprivation anymore!!! I WILL succeed! If I don’t respond to your emails or IM’s or your phone calls you know where I am – I am googling boots! 🙂

Shopping Expedition

I realize there has been a looonnnng delay since my last post. Can I claim that I was resting on my laurels? 🙂 The truth is that sometimes, no matter how strong the siren call of SL, FL is first. And that’s what this week of silence means. So I want applause for my sense of responsibility, keeping my priorities straight and all those other things some of you think I need to remember. 🙂 And when I tell you I went on a mega-shopping spree on Saturday to get ready for Shenlei’s Rave Saturday night, I don’t want to hear about it! I spent mega-hours and mega-L$. I had a blast!!!!

So Shen’s invitation says “Theme is universal (interpret as you wish – science fiction, space odyssey, steam punk)”. This is simply too embarrassing. I know what science fiction and space odyssey are. Steam punk??? Clueless. Whatever did we all do before Google??? According to Wikipedia “Steampunk is a subgenre of fantasy and speculative fiction that came into prominence in the 1980s and early 1990s. ” Okay. So what is steam punk fashion??? Googled that as well. According to the NY Times Steam punk fashion is “an adventurous pastiche of neo-Victorian, Edwardian and military style accented with sometimes crudely mechanized accouterments like brass goggles and wings made from pulleys, harnesses and clockwork pendants, to say nothing of the odd ray gun dangling at the hip”. Hmmm. I started searching inworld on Steam punk. I really wasn’t having much success. I found one possibility, but it didn’t really thrill me. I tp’d from place to place, store to store. Met hardly a soul and found almost nothing worth marking. I was beginning to think I’d have to go back and settle for the red outfit that didn’t thrill me.

Bona Fortuna smiled on me. Shenlei logged in. I IM’d her and told her I was looking forward to her party but had NOTHING to wear! She sent me some LMs and told me about SLexchange. SLexchange.com is a site where you can search for SL items without being inworld. I followed her LM to Steam Forge inworld, to the store Legacy. Check out the landscaping – gets you into that Steam Punk mood, does it not? I immediately found an outfit I liked (I had help from my significant other picking out the outfit – thanks Hon!). But it was only a top and a skirt. I still needed boots and accessories. I was searching away on SLexchange for Steam Punk. I found belts and boots and wings and all sorts of fascinating things, many of which were on sale in Steam Powered Nuts, a store in Steam Forge. So I wandered over to SPN and browsed about. What cool stuff!!!! I did see an intriguing ray gun or two. 🙂 But I really didn’t see boots that fit my mood.

So I tried to buy boots through SLex. Do you remember one of my very first posts when I began this adventure? My coworkers who had done SL kept telling me “it’s easy”. NOTHING about SL is easy. Have I made that clear?? LOL. Perhaps it’s me, but nothing nothing nothing in SL is easy. 🙂 And nothing related to SL is easy. I had to register and enroll and activate an SLex account in order to be allowed to contact the boot vendor. This meant that I had to give email information and get an activation code and go inworld and find an SLex terminal. What a colossal nuisance!!!!! So I did all of that and located a terminal and tp’d there to activate my account. 🙂 And who should be sitting outside the building with the SLex terminal but Shen!!!! LOL. I explained my problems with trying to buy boots and yet again Shen rode to my rescue!!! So thanks to Shenlei I have the coolest boots!!! I got confirmation later that day that these boots were indeed cool. C, one of the NCI team, always has fantastic boots and jackets and accessories. I love how she looks. So when C complimented my boots and asked for the LM, I was quite pleased to share it with her.

I had my outfit, I had my boots, I knew where I was heading for a choker. I decided that I needed new hair as well. Checked the bank balance – yep, still had something left to buy hair. 🙂 Now here is where I broke from the steam punk genre. My every-day hair was probably better suited to steampunk than what I bought. But I couldn’t help myself. LOL. Have you noticed I have very little self-control when it comes to indulging myself in SL??? Following more of Shenlei’s tips I headed to Analog Dog. Guess what – it WASN’T easy!!!!! 🙂 I’d gone skin shopping a few weeks ago with I so I knew about demo’s. I’d totally forgotten how one buys an object that also has a demo for sale. The demo is hilarious. I bought the demo hair, wore it just as you would anything. But there is this big huge wavy box above your head shrieking DEMO to the world! With the skins – the word “demo” is plastered all over. No shoplifting allowed in SL! 🙂 I IM’d 2 women standing in the store and asked for help. One of them kept asking to bite me (yes, sigh, another vampire) but helped me inbetween bite requests. The other helped without asking to bite me. 🙂 I finally figured out from their comments and my memory that I needed to click on the color palette for the hair, not the picture of the hair. The hair comes in 3 different palettes. So I selected one, handed over mega L$ and now I have really fun hair for special occasions!

Boots, clothes, hair. Accessories!!!!! I fell in love with a treasure hunter’s belt. 🙂 How could I not?? A sextant, a periscope, a flintlock pistol and a little mouse in a red pouch! Who could resist that purchase? Certainly not I. Fell in love with a collar that had lots of gadgets attached also. Interestingly enough, neither was at Steam Powered Nuts or Steam Forge. They were both in a fun store, an old junk factory, on Le Petit Prince (/LPP/223/69/31 for anyone who may be interested).

Now I had it all! TP’d back to NCI where my friends were all having a fishing contest and showed off the outfit. They gave the NCI seal of approval. 🙂 I was all set to party! And that, my friends, will be it’s very own blog. Because I have NEVER been to such a wild and stimulating party!! I never knew I could dance like THAT!!!

Spending My Allowance

I got my first Linden allowance yesterday! Whee! I figured this was akin to my first RL paycheck – it should be spent immediately before it had to pay for something sensible. 🙂 But what to buy?

I was supposed to meet a friend inworld to quaff some beers and hang out. I rifled through my closet trying to figure out what mood I was in. Apparently I was in a Beautiful in Black mood. Slipped on my jeans and shirt, dug out my leather motorcycle jacket, found some funky jewelry. But I had nothing to wear on my feet. Shoes are VERY important you know. Someone once described shoes as jewelry for the feet. 🙂 Works for me. I had black stilettos, but they really didn’t work. So I tp’d over to the Freebies dungeon. I wandered about there, but didn’t see anything.

So I tp’d back to the boardwalk. Someone there had dynamite black boots on. I asked where she had gotten them. She told me but added that boots were everywhere. I mentioned I’d been being cheap (because it WAS cheap, not frugal) and she said that good boots would run me $L200-300. Ah Hah!!! My allowance!!! So I did a search on boots. I read the list of stores, picked one that looked suitable, and tp’d over. No question that the boots and shoes in that store were better looking than the freebies. I wandered up and down the aisles enjoying all the possibilities. Finally I decided on a low-cut pair of black boots for $L200. I handed over my money and changed shoes right there and then! Nothing like a new pair of shoes to perk me right up!!

In the meantime my friend logged in. Seems we couldn’t get together until later that evening. Uh oh. I was sooooo tired. There are only so many nights in a row I can stay up til 2am in SL before I crash in RL. Last night was crash night. I did TRY to stay awake. I updated the “My Notes” page for all my contacts. I organized some inventory. But it was useless. I stretched out in my beach chair, closed my eyes and logged out.