Personal space

Last week, I started uprooting some of the Linden plants on my parcels in Aglia and Zeuzera and replaced them with prim plants and trees from Organica and Botanical. I've been reluctant to make too many changes in Aglia because I want to preserve that parcel's history. Well, at least its history as it pertains to me. :)

For now, I've set down autumn trees which will change in a few months. Or maybe not, depending how I feel. And I'll probably reroute the stream and switch to better sculpts for the water. In any case, the re-landscaping is not quite done. And I won't be touching the main structures, like the glass house, the deck, and the gazebo. At least, not yet. I feel some pride in the fact that they've withstood time.

My neighbors in Zeuzera saw the changes I made to that parcel and noticed that I've updated the dividing wall. I met them when they first moved in, when they asked if I would smooth the dip in the terrain at the border of our parcels. Later, they purchased the parcel I had a bit north when I needed room in my tier. They wanted to purchase the rest of my parcel in Zeuzera but I refused. It is my buffer, in a sense, protecting the main parcel which is the first land I bought. When my neighbors saw the updated wall, they asked if I could remove it instead. I had made the walls transparent on their side, so I didn't see a reason why I should remove them.

To their credit, they've done a wonderful job with their parcels. There are layers of landscaping areas and lovely hidden nooks among the foliage of the trees and rocks. But the sculpted cliffs that surrounded their paradise was transparent from my side yet showed strips of some of the faces perpendicular to the border. And it looked ugly from the wrong side. I explained this and they agreed. Instead, they offered to landscape my parcel as well.

I'm sure they meant well with that offer. And I thanked them but declined. Besides the issue of choosing between opening up my parcel so anybody could rez on it (so I would have to waste my time checking if newbies had left junk on the parcel) or adding strangers to my private group (which would reveal some alts that I don't want revealed), I felt insulted by the offer.

I have never said anything about their trees overlapping at least a meter into my land, which makes me feel like they were invading my personal space. It's not as though my parcels look awful. One of the things they said when they moved next door was that they liked the fact that I built a garden. And for them to build right on my land and impose their idea of a garden on me feels insulting.

I'm sure that's not their intent. They were probably just trying to be nice. But that makes assumptions about what people want out of SL. They probably assumed I just want a pretty place to live in. But it's more than that.

The end result doesn't matter as much as the process itself. I don't just want a pretty place. I want a pretty place that *I* built and put together, using pieces that *I* choose, placing them where *I* want. Only then can it feel as though the space were really mine. This is not a public parcel, although I allow people to spend time in it. It is there for *my* pleasure, not for anyone else's. And, therefore, it should be just the way *I* want it to be.

In fact, I don't spend much time in that parcel anymore, because I had moved my workloft to another sim, and the pavilion I set up for me and my lover is in yet another sim. But I keep Aglia and Zeuzera because they have personal meaning for me. And, because of that, those spaces are more *personal*.

It's not the space or the object or the avatar that matters, but the meaning we associate to them, the emotions that get attached to them. A virtual shrub of gardenias is just another pretty thing until a lover gives it to his beloved. A gazebo is just another nice place to sit in, until friends gather in it and share wonderful conversations in it. A song is just another pleasant sound, until a man dedicates it to a woman because it reminds him of her.

It is the same with these parcels.

Un mes

Well, there were 31 days in August, so this is Day 31. Very few of my previous lovers have gone past the 30-day mark. And none of them had spent hours with me almost every day. And the last time I had sex almost everyday for a month was a couple of decades or so ago.

This one is very different and could very well last a while. Sure, it's mostly about sex. But it clears my head! No tantrums, no storms, because I'm satisfied.

If nothing else, I'm learning Spanish. In fact, I've learned how to make the "ñ" on my keyboard. (It's Alt-0241.) Of course, the words I'm learning are words like conejos, potro, yuega, perro, perra, polla, pelotas, coño, follar, .... *giggles*

In the red

In light of EmeraldGate, I went searching for new Second Life viewers. And after installing and uninstalling a few, I've come down to two:

* Imprudence, which allows me to log into Inworldz as well. (More about Inworldz below.) Purple tag color.
* Emergence, which is a scrubbed version of Emerald. Red tag color.

I have both installed, but I may be using Emergence in SL primarily, for several reasons: a) It has the Emerald features that I want and it generally feels more stable than Imprudence. b) It has LordGregGreg Back's personal guarantee that the code is safe because he only included Linden Lab code and open source code that he had personally reviewed.

I have interacted with LordGregGreg only once because of an Emerald bug that affected my customers. I don't know much about him. But, after more than a day of reading countless blogs and forums and watching interviews and listening to voice chats in YouTube, it seemed to me that LordGregGreg had the most integrity in the whole lot. Even though his name is mentioned in the Phoenix project, he's not the only developer there.

So, I've gone in the red.

Now, about Inworldz. I've been invited to bring Mer Betta there twice. And mfpwtff also tried to convince me to try it. Well, I've tried OpenSim and I haven't logged in there again. Same with Blue Mars. But, LL's upcoming Display Name feature seems to be going forward anyway, in spite of a large number of people bringing up serious concerns about identity theft and its effects on the reputations and businesses we've built inworld, I'm starting to look elsewhere again. I might even just close up shop. I don't know yet. For the measly amount we earn inworld for the tremendous amount of work we do to earn it, is it worth the additional stress of worrying if someone is out there with your name over their head and wreaking havoc and ruining your business? We have enough trouble with copybots and copycats, do we need one more thing to keep us awake at night?

Four

Yep. Four. Still here.

Exclusivity without the promise of

I'll call him "Rapido" because he talks fast.

I met him two weeks ago at Sweethearts, actually. I IM'd him first and, soon after, I got other IMs. Then someone asked me to dance a split second before he did.

As a matter of principle, I went with the other guy who asked me first, but he turned out to be in his 20s and we didn't have anything to talk about as soon as we hopped on the pose balls. So I excused myself and explained that I was already chatting with someone when he asked me to dance and I felt that I made the wrong decision. The 20-something was surprisingly very gracious and he understood. I IM'd him again the next day, apologizing, and he was still very gracious. Whoever he ends up with will be a very lucky woman indeed.

Anyway, Rapido smiled when I said I was free again for that dance, and we went to Sunset Jazz, where there was less lag. We chatted only for about 15 minutes, then he excused himself soon in order to talk with a friend. I figured that was it. He friended me but I'm still being a hermit, so I turned off my status for him too.

Then a few days ago, I decided to go to Franks. I needed company. Franks was as laggy as usual, but I saw a yellow dot on my mini-map and it turned out to be Harper, so I waved in IM. After a brief exchange with her, I saw another yellow dot farther towards the corner and it turned out to be Rapido, so I said hi.

I asked him why he was just sitting there and not dancing. He said he was waiting for me. Uh-huh. LOL. But I needed flattery that day, so I went along. After struggling with the lag, he tp'd me to his rental place instead and we danced for a bit.

Well, it turned out that he's not just a fast talker but a fast mover too. Not that I minded. After sex, he said he had to work and he gave me a link to a radio station. I didn't quite get what the significance was. I thanked him and said I was listening to my own music. He laughed, then he had to go.

Back in my work loft, I tried the link anyway and heard a man with a rich full baritone voice, speaking in Spanish, and some music. The radio program reminded me of radio shows I grew up listening to, with the announcer interrupting the music every so often. The music was fast and had a strong beat and it really wasn't what I enjoy listening to, so I turned it off after a while and went back to listening to Il Divo.

I thought he would be gone the rest of the day, but he logged back in after a couple of hours. I realized that was him on the radio. So, we talked some more and had sex some more, until I was so tired. I logged off at 5:45am.

I usually outlast the men. They log off long before I do, and they don't need as much sex as I do. But I think I've met my match.

The next day, we had sex again before his show. But this time, he logged in using the computer inside the studio and sat with me throughout his show. And this time, I listened. Because I told him that I didn't like the music, he played Frank Sinatra's "Strangers in the Night" and mentioned my name on the air, challenging in Spanish that if I didn't like Frank, then I didn't like the music. When he found out my RL nickname, he mixed it in with other trivia during the show. And he repeated it a few times. I was blown away. After his show, we continued chatting and had sex again.

That's been our routine everyday for the past four days, from 11pm to 5am or 6am. Talking, laughing, learning about each other. He's learning English and I'm relearning Spanish.

And we're defining our boundaries. He's very demanding. He wants exclusivity, for one. After thinking about it and remembering my last affair, I said no. I would give him exclusivity anyway because he fulfills my sexual needs, but I won't promise it. He asked why. I said it's because I've seen way too many men in SL cheat on their wives and their partners. It's not so much because I want to have sex with other men; it's that I don't want to worry if he's having sex with other women. If we're not exclusive, then I wouldn't care if he does. It's not the sex itself that ruins a relationship, but the lost of trust. This way, there are no promises to be broken, because the promise wasn't made in the first place. He laughed but he understood my point.

So, theoretically, we're not exclusive. But, in practice, we are. At least, for now.

Gone

I honestly don't know what happened. All of a sudden, he was avoiding me, he was logging in only when I wasn't in, and he wasn't responding to either emails or IMs.

He had done it to someone else before. Once, when we were chatting, he said he was ignoring a friend who sent him an IM and not responding at all. He said they were meaningless. So, I figured, this time, I became one of the "meaningless".

So, when I finally caught him online, I said my goodbyes as civilly as I could. In a monologue, because he never responded. He probably already muted me by then, like he did his ex.

I don't think I jumped the gun too soon, although my instinct was to run away as fast as I could. But I gave him the benefit of a doubt for almost a week. That was almost half the length of the affair itself.

I had been in a similar situation in the past. Opened my soul to another, who suddenly decided to stop talking to me for no apparent reason. Well, not apparent to me, at least. It was very painful then and I'm sure some of the pain this time around came from that first incident.

I sent him a copy of the monologue by email, just to make sure. I was already hiding from everyone since the day before, to be a hermit for a while. The next day, he removed me from his friends list.

That was last week. I'm still being a hermit.

132.25 kilometers

That's how far I ran this weekend on the Relay for Life track in Second Life. That was about 15.5 laps, with each lap taking 8,500 meters and approximately 45 minutes.

I was up all night, since I had out-of-town friends visiting yesterday, and it's easier at night anyway. Of course, I took breaks too.

This year, I prepared for the hourly themes. But, when one of the DJs on the music stream reminded us of Kimmera Madison's RFL gown, I kept an eye out for it and bought it when I passed by the vendor. I decided to use that instead for the Formal Wear lap, just before the Closing Ceremonies.

Kevlin (who wanted to show me his new shape) tagged along with the "Walk and Talk" for a while. Hans (who came as a cute little ferret) was planning to, but work called his attention and he never got back. Vann came just briefly. But all of them got a luminary. The MODA models joined me at 8am today and we sashayed our way through the lag in our gorgeous gowns. After the Closing Ceremonies, I did one more lap, but, this time, dancing.

What's awesome is that, during the RFL, all the oldbies come out of the woodwork. So many familiar names on the track. Not just friends and acquaintances either, but also people whose names I've only seen as creators on prims.

As of 11am today, the total amount raised was US$214,211.

And, oh, yeah, unlike last year, I already have a boyfriend. ;)