Whew, what a day. I took a day off from work to get caught up around the house post-move, and I’m so glad I did. Yesterday I was wondering if I had enough left to do to justify the day off, but I sure proved myself wrong there! I’ve been working on unpacking, sorting, and cleaning since 10:30 this morning. None of it took long or was terribly dramatic by itself, but put it all together and I had a full day. Since I still have two days of weekend left, I think I’ll call it quits for the day and goof off this evening. :)

*Frantic Waving*

Hi, guys! So, I’ve been all kinds of missing from the folks who normally read this blog. SL hasn’t seen me log in for weeks except to pay my rent, I’ve been more or less silent on Twitter, and I had to shake the dust off my blog here before I could write on it. So where have I been?

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, RL has me busier now with a full-time job and a house hunt, but I’m happy to announce that we should be moving in to our own place within a week. Hooray! Finally things can settle down on that front.

Besides that, I have to confess that I’ve started playing World of Warcraft with some friends from work. It took years to convert me, but I’m finally playing and enjoying the heck out of it. My frenetic playing there is just a phase though – soon enough I’ll be back to alternating between that and other things such as SL.

Phaella, my Night Elf priest, riding Stormclaw through the Wetlands in the Eastern Kingdom

Thiishi, my Draenai hunter, flying over Bloodmist Isle

I must confess, I miss the versatility of SL photography. Taking screenshots in WoW just doesn’t compare.

A bit of this and a bit of that seems to be about all I have time for lately. Last night I logged into Second Life for a brief time, just long enough to say hi to some friends and start work on a jeweled sword. This evening I did some preliminary design work for an iPhone app I want to design, but realized I don’t have the patience after working all day to do any actual programming. The other day I did something similar with a website project I’m thinking about. I played some Fallout 3 the other night but paid the price for it in the morning with a case of the yawns that wouldn’t stop. It doesn’t help that I’ve been getting headaches a couple of times a week from the pressure changes here (I assume), or that I hardly feel rested after sleeping on our pathetic excuse for a bed while our real one is in storage. But listen to me complain as if I’m not enjoying myself here. That isn’t it at all; I just marvel at how little time there is for personal pursuits now that I’m out in the “real world” again. Somehow days didn’t even seem this short when I was working 35 hours a week and going to school full time, and that with an active social life! Maybe I was just used to it.

The hubs and I went to Red Rock Canyon today for a scenic drive and some photo ops. The desert is growing on me. I got some good pics from the turn offs along the road – I can’t wait to go back and get some from along the trails. May have to wait a few months for the weather to cool down, though. Maybe by then we’ll have a better camera. *crosses claws* Anyhow, here are a few of the pics. Click them to go to my Flickr set and see the rest, as well as larger sizes.

Well, Vegas has proven to be a busy thing. Between in-processing on the base, house-hunting, job-searching, and getting to know my new Mac (not to mention that this has all been done in blistering 100* weather), I’ve been pretty pooped by the end of each day. To all my SL and RL friends and loved ones who haven’t heard much from me lately: I’ll be back soon! We’ve put down offers on two houses, I’ve applied for four jobs, and we’ll be temporarily moving into base housing later this week. Let me just say in closing that Vegas isn’t so bad – in fact, it’s pretty darn nice, as long as you stay in the right places. :)

Shopping in Vegas
Originally uploaded by Shards Of Blue

We went to walk the Strip yesterday, but ended up spending all our time in two of the massive indoor malls there, the Fashion Show Mall and The Forum Shops mall. Fashion show was fun, but it’s the Forum Shops that made a real impression. It is connected to the Caesar’s Palace casino. The theme inside is one of ancient grandeur, with huge marble statues of ancient gods and heroes surrounding great fountains. The shops are all of the highest quality architectural and decorative design and kept me ogling. I don’t even know how large it is, exactly, only that it must span blocks, and is two and even three stories in some places.

So, we’re at our Vegas hotel now. Driving around the neighborhood, I can only think of Fort Walton Beach on steroids – and without the beach. The Strip itself sits as an island of height among uninspiring shopping centers and cheap hotels. Little plaster buildings squat in scalding flat sand while the sun beats down hot and unmerciful. Locals wander the streets between supermarkets in short, painfully tight shorts and low cut blouses or, in the case of many of the men, shirts and pants so baggy it’s a wonder they don’t fall off. Honestly, it really isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. I’ve been warned, for instance, not to go out after dark in most parts of the city. The entire area was clearly originally formed from an overflow of opportunists who wanted to cash in on The Strip’s gambling focus in the form of small, seedy little casinos, liquor stores, and “adult” shops. Of course now there are supermarkets and fast food restaurants and Walmarts, but it still isn’t exactly what you would call either wholesome or beautiful.

On the upside, there are stark, rocky mountains set against the wide horizon, providing a welcome change from the flat landscape of northwest Florida and, as I learned on our travels, most of the South and Northwest. Although the desert landscape would have seemed bleak and unwelcoming to my northern California eyes, I find its stark beauty compelling after my recent view of scrubby palm trees, flat beach, and impenetrable and uninteresting Florida woods in Ft. Walton Beach. The natural beauty is, unfortunately, tarnished in my immediate area by the aforementioned scar of the greater Vegas town, but it doesn’t take too much driving to leave the city behind. I’ve been told to visit Mt. Charlston and Red Rock, though I don’t yet know much about them.

The base itself is far nicer than Eglin. The facilities are newer and the landscaping more interesting, though I find this surprising seeing as most of it is rock. I had no idea a rockscape could be made so visually appealing just by varying the color and size of the rocks in different patterns. The BX is much larger both in the actual Exchange store and in the adjoining mini-mall strip.

This brings me next to base housing. The houses are of three age groups: The oldest are from the ’50′s at least, and are almost identical in apparent wear to the ones on Eglin. The only saving feature visible from the exterior is their slanted tile roofs instead of the hopelessly ill-maintained tar ones at Eglin. These are being demolished and replaced with great expediency according to the hubs’ sponsor. The next age group were built in the ’90′s and are a clear step up in both design and wear. Our sponsor has one of these so we were able to see inside this style. We both agreed we would be satisfied with one of them if it was offered. Although it appeared that many of these units are empty, there is a waiting list one to two months long to get into base housing. Finally, the newest houses are being built to replace the first group and are in process now. These are lovely two story units which I only saw from the road. The downside to these newest houses is that they are on the other “half” of the base, separated by a civilian street. This means that you need to cross a main road and show ID when entering either side of the base, an annoyance which will clearly be frustrating if done multiple times a day. The hubs exclaimed emphatically at least three times that they should have built an overpass for on-base cross traffic.

To back up a bit – as far as the journey itself, there isn’t too much to tell. The scenery was incredibly uninteresting for 95% of the four day trip. The only, and I do mean only, point of note on that score was our crossing of Hoover Dam and its containing mountains just east of Vegas. The mountains are beautiful in their baldness and the dam itself is set in the striking Black Canyon. A huge bridge is being constructed over the dam to relieve its considerable congestion (think rush hour on a windy, sloping road in 100 degree heat with only two lanes), and is a sight befitting its formidable architectural companion. I feel privileged to have been able to see it in its unfinished state. The rest of the car ride passed uneventfully with us buried happily in Harry Potter audio books. If you decide to pick any up, be sure to get the one read by the British dude – he does an excellent job.

 

On the way, we also visited a friend of ours from the City of Heroes MMO. We visited him and his wife and three kids for most of a day after a “short” three hour drive from Louisiana. I intended to pull out the camera, but of course inevitably forgot. We stayed the night before setting out on an 11 hour drive the following day, this being the longest stretch.

The cat took it remarkably well for the most part, though he was pretty mad at us each evening. I’m sure that the Rescue Remedy for pets we gave him each morning helped immensely. He didn’t act drugged from it, just considerably calmer, a state far preferable to the confused and uncomfortable one produced on cats by traditional sedatives. We let him walk around the car on a kitty leash when on long straight stretches of highway or at rest stops, which seemed to help relieve some of his feeling of unjust incarceration. For the most part, he simply returned to his carrier after a brief exploration and went to sleep, apparently satisfied that his carrier was, in fact, the most comfortable spot for kitties in a car after all. (This no doubt was because our car was packed nearly to bursting with all the stuff we wanted to have with us for the next month before we get a more permanent house.)

Tomorrow morning we plan to walk The Strip while it’s still cool and probably quiet. We did take a quick drive down there today just to get a peek at the place, and some of the hotel casinos are just as impressive in person as you would expect. I will admit that the overall effect isn’t as grand as I had expected, but I’m sure it’s more so at night. We’ll visit it after dark on a weeknight after we’ve had a chance to see it leisurely during the day. (I’ll take better pictures then, too.)

Say it ain’t so! I spent the day out in that thing they call the Real World, and when I finally got around to logging in tonight, it was during their planned outage. Wow, a whole day without SL! Nuuuuu! XD

Got a new wallet today at the local Coach outlet during their Memorial Day sale. Yes, I finally own a Coach product. I’m not huge for designer names, but I do like the Coach style and the knock-offs just don’t cut it. My old wallet (a knock off, hehe) was getting ragged so I went on a quest to find the Right wallet to relpace it. I went into nearly every leather, shoe, and purse store in the outlets and gave them all an honest chance. The Coach store was one of the last stores, and at first I thought it was yet another bust, but then, I saw it! *cue music* Shiny white with black trim and blue interior lining, with the right layout of pockets and coin purse. It was not only the only thing I saw all day which I liked all aspects of, it was also one of the cheapest items in the store – not that that is saying much in Coach, really… Yay for a pretty new thing! Sparkly, shiny!

We also bought the hubs two new pair of pants and saw Star Trek for the second time (with free passes, w00t!). Yup, just as good as the first time; can’t wait to own it. :D Oh yeah, and I started out with eggs benedict for brunch, noms! So overall, I had lots of fun with the hubs and later also a good friend of ours. The day was certainly well worth braving the Memorial Day crowds and the heat.