The cold season

Ever since reading about the Charlatan coat on SL Men on December 11, I sidled around the vendor, undecisive whether to buy it or not. I showed it to my sister Chey and my friends Elusyve, Gina, Ramo and Tina who in turn loved or hated it. Which did not exactly help to decide for it. Then Chey considered recommending it to her Sweetie, since both where looking for coats (read more about Chey's recent coat madness here, here and here ). Of course if Chey's Sweetie would wear the coat, I would not buy it. But I kept returning... sneaking around it.

Tonight, Chey asked for the landmark to the coat again, since she wanted to buy it as a present. I teleported her to the shop and she tried to figure out if it is trans. Finally she bought it, and I begged her to put it on, because I wanted to see it on someone. But she declined, saying it's not right. All of a sudden Ramo appeared:

[12:00] Cheyenne Palisades: Peter, I'm afraid this is an ambush
[12:00] You: Oops?
[12:00] Cheyenne Palisades: We are here to wish you a merry christmas and to ask you to accept this present from the two of us
[12:00] You: uh?
[12:00] Cheyenne Palisades gave you [CIVVIES] "Charlatan" Coat (mod/trans/nocopy).
[12:00] Cheyenne Palisades: hehe
[12:00] You: Awwwwwwwww!
[12:00] You: Oh wow!
[12:00] You: Oh my!
[12:01] Ramotswe Nagy smiles
[12:01] Peter Stindberg gulps
[12:01] You: Oh... wow
[12:01] Cheyenne Palisades giggles happily
[12:01] Peter gives Cheyenne a big hug.
[12:01] Ramotswe Nagy likes to see peter speechless
[12:01] Cheyenne Palisades likes hugs
[12:01] Peter gives Ramotswe a big hug.
[12:01] You: You shouldn't have!
[12:01] Cheyenne Palisades: Yes, we shoudl have
[12:02] You: Wow, thank you!
[12:02] Ramotswe Nagy: of course we should
[12:02] You: Am I supposed to leave it until Christmas?
[12:02] Cheyenne Palisades: Any man that goes four or five times to look at a coat is serious
[12:02] Cheyenne Palisades: No, put it on.
[12:02] Cheyenne Palisades: Let us see you in it
[12:02] Ramotswe Nagy: yes do it now!!!!

Thank you, thank you, thank you you crazy women! I love the two of you!

More than 25 groups

I blogged about this a while ago already, but I'm more than willing to join the effort of alpha bloggers Veyron and Vint to give this issue a bit more publicity.

Check out the issue MISC-208 on JIRA, log in with your SL name and password, and vote for this issue. Goal is to get at least 500 votes, that's only 94 from now on.

You know you spend too much time in SL when...

... you are at your companies Christmas dinner, watching some of the restaurant staff squeezing their way along a Christmas tree half-blocking a door, and wondering why they don't simply set the tree and door to "phantom" and just walk right through it.

Rezbians

I've been intending to blog about the apparent large number of lesbians couples in SL - and the (from my perspective) apparent rejection of male avatars by many female avatars for a long time. However, Kit Meredith has written a very long post about it, and I can agree to many of her thoughts about the topic. So while I let my own thoughts simmer for a while, maybe you enjoy Kit's post in the meantime.

Good hair day

The first "real expensive" thing I bought was prim hair. I harvested money trees for weeks, sent my avatar camping while I attended to other things, went to events where prizes were given out (preferably when there was a CampMaster in the vicinity as well), and finally bought, after long consideration, "Spike Brown" by Adam and Eve (~250L$).

For a while now, I felt that it was time for a change. As an experiment I put on a freebie hairstyle I still had in my inventory. The hair was more messy, and pitch black. I got all kind of reactions along the lines of "I liked your old one better" (Tina) as well as "It was about time you changed it" (Sonne). So I kept on looking, trying demos, browsing blogs. But the male hairstyles I found were all either extremely dull and boring (think "Ken"), or were intended for broad shouldered warrior/barbarian type of avatars with a glistening sixpack under their leather coat. In short: not at all what I looked for.

Before Sonne turned her back on me, we've been looking for hair at FNKY/Cake, where I saw a hairdo explicitly listed as "unisex". I went there with my talented photographer friend Gina the other day, who was looking for new hair as well, and she in fact bought the style called "Rumor" and it looks great on her. That made me thinking. A hairstyle that works both on men and women. Hmmm....

And I started to look into the female hair sections of the shop. And a world opened up for me. Of course not all female hairstyles work for a male avatar. I did not even bother to try any long haired, ponytailed or curly styles. But there is a whole lead of great short hair styles available, and a lot of them worked on my avatar. Cake's "Rumor" and "Dawn" by Adam and Eve were among my favourites, but in the end I settled for "Luth" bei Elika Tiramisu Designs (ETD).

The other day I told all this to Elusyve, and she smiled and surprised me with having the same hairdo in her trademark red. I took the opportunity for a photograph, so you can see it really works on both of us.

Bottom line: Guys, don't be afraid of looking at female prim hair! And a message to hair designers: you are missing an opportunity here - offer suitable hairstyles either as unisex, or put them up in the male section too!

Plywood Man for sale

My wise older sister Chey gently (ahem) nudged me to put some of the items I developed in the past up for sale. Being notoriously good at not finishing things, I used my involuntary sick-leave to tidy up some of the projects. The first item, which will be availabe both in Chey's new shop Flights of Fancy as well as on OnRez, is the full avatar Plywood Man. I created that one when sculpted prims were introduced, as a hommage to the old style prims. Enjoy!

More JIRA issues worth voting for

Found another few ones:

• SVC-114 Inventory loss
• VWR-890 Categories in Friend's List
• VWR-1080 Span cleavage