Second Squirrel

After hours of discussion, weighing pros and cons, recognizing the advantages or disadvantages of having children, Bard and I decided not to have children. The reasons we each brought to the table were many and varied but ultimately the choice was a mutual agreement. Second Couple will remain, just that, a couple - not a trio, not a quadruplet, not a quintuplet, etc.

However, being the loving couple we are, we both agreed our lives would not be complete without someone to bestow our love and affections upon. Nutcracker came to us on one of our many adventures in a sim far, far away. We had no idea how he would steal our hearts. He scurried up to Bard, tossed an acorn at his feet and stared up at him with that adorable wide-eyed expression of his. That was it. Bard and I looked at each other without saying a word. We knew in that instant we could not walk away. Nutcracker had us at hello.

After making endless arrangements for travel documents, transportation, shots, packing of prims and the like, we were able to finally get Nutcracker home to Merrywood. Little Nutter, as I like to think of him, has adjusted nicely to his new digs. Moreover he has proven to be quite the watch squirrel. He alerts us to visitors any hour of the day or night in the most clever way. Pitching one acorn against a tree to make a loud whack sound means a friend has arrived. Pitching two in quick succession is the signal a stranger of unknown origin is near.

Nutcracker's fierce protective nature is heartwarming. I think he understands how much we love him and he's now an integral part of our family. Bard says it is really only about protecting his food source. Whatever the reason I'm so happy to see the little guy each morning when I walk out of my front door.

I give you...Nutcracker!!!!!

Atia Likes Cannons!

We've been looking for a cool tall-mast ship (preferably pirate) to put in the harbor at Merrywood, so we visited the Black Spot Shipyard (SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Black%20Spot/145/108/25/?title=Black%20Spot%20Shipyard) and found some really good ones.

While checking them out, Atia manned the top deck guns and started blazing!

Turns out that Atia likes big things that go boom!

How can you not like a woman who enjoys weapons and uses them well? (and looks good doing it!)

God, I love a woman who loves the smell of gunpowder!!

~B~

We're Partnered!

Well, we finally went and done it - got "SL Hitched" - we are now officially listed as partners in our profiles. Not that it is any great stretch, seeing as how we are RL married and all, but it's a step. A wedding - a big, white, blow-out-the-walls wedding (that we never had in RL), is somewhere over the horizon, but for now, we have our names in our profiles and rings on our pixel hands :D

We spent the rest of the night celebrating at Dancien Grave's Club - "Baby Seals" - (http://slurl.com/secondlife/Hawks%20Landing/62/107/22) at his Cinco de Mayo party.

Adale, arriba!

Moving Day - An Atia Adventure

Atia is my love, my life, my reason for being. She is intelligent, witty, fun, strong, caring and beautiful.

She is also a bit of a klutz.

When we got our first parcel from Wildefire, we didn't get as much land as we wanted, and placed our castle on a small corner of the property, bounded by water on one side and very little room between it and the neighbor's parcel line. When more land became available, we snapped it up and now have a pretty good sized lot. This also afforded us a corner on the water, and we wanted to move the castle there.

Atia wanted to help.

I told her I could take care of it easily myself, please don't feel obligated. But she insisted. I relented, and this led to yet another Atia Adventure.

Always proper, she donned her work clothes in preparation for the heavy lifting and hauling. After all, our castle (a lovely Castle Tiberion from Elgyfu Wishbringer's Tin Teddy store) is a 40x40 meter three storey affair of stone and marble. So there was going to be some serious hefting to do.

She also smartly warmed up her avatar, to avoid muscle pulls and back trouble later. A few basic stretches and isometrics got the blood moving and her lovely body loose and ready to start dragging the building over the couple of hundred meters necessary to place it in its new location.

She really wanted to move it herself, so I started giving her tips about selecting and moving objects.


"OK Honey, right click on that first section and select 'Edit' from the menu"

"Like this?"


"Yep. Now, hold down the SHIFT key and click the next wall section. You should see them both selected."

"It's not working."


"Are you holding down SHIFT?"

"Yes."


"And when you click on the other section, it doesn't select?"


"Which button? Left or right?"


"Left. When I tell you to RIGHT click something, that means the right button. If I just say 'click' that means the left button."

"So, which button?"


"LEFT!"

"Don't yell at me. I'm trying to help!"

"I'm not yelling. So, hold SHIFT and LEFT click the next wall."

"Something happened."

Something had happened all right. The first major section of the castle front suddenly rotated about 45 degrees.

"You must have been holding down the CTRL key instead of SHIFT."

"Was not! I did what you said!"

I decided not to argue further. Moving Day had begun only ten minutes before. It was likely to go on for some time.

So I began explaining about the various tools and their key commands - CTRL for rotation, SHIFT for copy, etc. She caught on right away.

"Great! I can fix it now"

With those words, the Great Rotational Disaster of the Merrywood Castle begain.

First, she rotated the front back into correct aspect, but took her hand off the CTRL key (going back into position mode) and kept going so that the walls were set back 20 meters inside the castle interior.

Then, she moved the wall back to the front of the castle and rotated it on the X axis 180 degrees.

As she so often does, she said, "But don't I look good doing it?"

"Yes darling, you look wonderful!"

Next, she discovered the Z-axis rotation control, and experimented with its limits.

Then, she found she could control rotation with the value sliders, and began teasing me by setting the wall back in place meter by meter.

"You love, me...you want to kiss me.."

"Yes love, I do." (That and a few other things...)

So, she finally got the wall rotated into position correctly. But before I could start instructing her again on how to select the whole castle, she started dragging the single wall toward the new location, leaving it about 15 meters out in the courtyard.

"See how strong I am?" she said with a mischievous grin.

"Yes my sweet - you are a relocation goddess."

So then she grew bored and gave up. Luckily, the castle has a Faux Rez system, so I simply deleted it and re-rezzed another copy in the new location.

"You mean, we didn't have to move it? You could just throw a new one over there?" she asked with wide eyes.

"Yep."

"Then why did you make me move the damn thing?"

("Make me" move the damn thing. Uh-huh.)

"I just thought you could use the practice."

"Oh you did, did you? I'll give you some practice!"

I suddenly found myself orbited to the other side of the island, landing with an ungraceful thud into the water.

I forgot I'd given her quite a bit of instruction and practice with her MystiTool.

~B~