Tag Archives: LeeZu

Back in My Own Bed

No place like home

It’s funny how good it feels to sleep in your own bed again after traveling. It is not that any of the places I stayed had uncomfortable beds. They were all lovely, but sure enough, back in my own bed, I slept longer with fewer interruptions. Why? I think it must be the sounds. At both my sisters’ houses it was just too quiet. No cars passing, no sirens, no garbage trucks at 5 AM. Instead, it was silent except for the chirps and rattles of the martins, the long whistles of the cardinals and orioles, and the shrieks of blue jays. My one sister is quite a birder with special houses and feeders, though it was kind fun and frustrating watching a squirrel carrying off the oranges she put out for the orioles. This bed is from DRD, part of the wonderful romantic collection released for The Arcade. The lovely letter and rose petals came from Fancy Decor at The Arcade, but it is more fun to pretend they came from a long lost love.
Continue reading

Gemütlichkeit: A Feeling of Comfort & Coziness

Gemütlichkeit (German, n.): a feeling of comfort, cosiness, homeliness.

Gemütlichkeit is a world I picked up from this wonderful web site I found the other day. Even it it means you wander away for hours, I want you to check you out. It’s a collection of untranslatable words. Words that convey concepts, that have no equivalent in our language, at least not in a single word. It is fun.

Gemütlichkeit (German, n.): a feeling of comfort, cosiness, homeliness.

I am wearing the dress I wore in my last blog post, in a print this time. It comes in a solid or print version with six options in the texture huds. My last post was nothing but head shots, so I wanted to show you the back which is just so adorable. The house is the San Clemente from Barnesworth Anubis. It’s a great house and I will show you around inside, but the name makes me think of Richard Nixon, since that was where he was from.
Continue reading

Cooking and Eating at My House

I live in Barnesworth Anubis’ Classic Brownstone which has a huge kitchen/dining room. I contemplated using it for a roller rink, but well, that would be silly. Instead, I have a formal dining table on one side, a casual nook for solitary meals and a fabulous kitchen. Here’s a tour of the space and the Christmas decor.

Tis the Season

The focal point is the dining table and chairs from The Loft. They were released in October and remain a favorite because of the powerful statement their sleek style and form deliver. The come with gorgeous place settings and I imagine will serve well throughout the year. The NOMAD Baubles Tree from The Arcade is a modern and minimalist bit of decor and the Schadenfreude Festive Cheese Snack was a gift I found under the tree at The Arcade
Tis the Season

I’ve tucked the Swedish dining table chairs and candelabra from Nomad into a corner for a less formal place to drink some coffee, read the paper or grab a bagel. The fruit bowl is also from Nomad. All of those items were released in November at Collabor88.  The lovely red cuckoo clock is from Fancy Decor and was released in a panoply of colors at The Arcade. The washbasin planter and hedge are from Trompe Loeil and is also at the Arcade. The chalkboards I repurposed from floorplan and Willow’s Astrology Chart, replacing the chart with some chalk art I found on the internet and tinting the frames red. Many of the frames sold at events are modifiable and will allow you to replaced their pictures with your own and some, like this wonderful one will let you change the frame’s color and size. Over the table is a big chalkboard from Clutter. They have released several different ones for the holidays. Below that, you can see Trompe Loeil’s JOY letters, a part of the holiday decor collection at The Arcade.
Tis the SeasonOn the left, you can see the black Christmas ribbon from The Loft for the Botanical Christmas tree at Tannebaum. I thought it would be fun to use it as a sculptural tree on its own. For me, it seems a fitting complement to the dining table and chairs. On the wall, you can see the sign I made using Riders Mesh Factory’s Neon font rezzer. Riders Mesh Factory makes all sorts of fonts and to make your own words, you just rez their contraption, and follow the directions in the blue window. They are really difficult directions like press Start and press Finish. The other decor on The Loft’s Baxter buffet that matches their Baxter table and chairs will be highlighted in closer pictures.
Continue reading

NPISL

141111_001
One of my favorite groups back “in the day” was Bettina Tizzy’s Not Possible in Real Life (NPiRL). Tizzy gloried in the freedom of Second Life® creation – unshackled from the laws of Euclid and Newton – free to create anything they could imagine. Of course, Second Life has its own laws that result in some things common in real life becoming Not Possible in Second Life. Something quite simple in real life can become very complicated, even impossible, in Second life. One of those things is fringe.
141111_009
Fringe is one of the fall’s hot fashion trends and promises to be an even hotter item in the spring. However, the physics of SL are not fringe-friendly. Of course, we could have flexi-fringe, but after two years of not having our clothes fall through our bodies, I think that is not the solution we want. We know from reports that flexi-mesh is not even under consideration right now. So I am excited to see Sunami Beck of Emery look for a work around. It’s not perfect, perfect is impossible, but it is a valiant effort that works pretty well overall. This fringe dress is a la page fashion – and it looks great. You can find it at Collabor88 with a bundle of coordinating loose sweaters like the on I am wearing.
Continue reading

You Got Me Singing

141003_001

One of the rules I live by comes from Voltaire, who said “The perfect is the enemy of the good.” A similar idea is attributed to Confucius, “Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without.” I really took this aphorism to heart when a friend of mine was writing a book on dismantling racism. I was reading, editing and helping him find illustrations. The book was ready to go for a few years before it was published because he kept trying to perfect it, looking for a better example, a more perfect metaphor, a stronger anecdote, a better adjective. I ended up making him a sign on a huge poster board with Voltaire’s quote blown up big and stuck in on the wall by his desk. It still took him another six months to let it out of his perfection-seeking hands.

141003_003

I was listening to Leonard Cohen’s newest album, Popular Problems. His 80 year old voice is rough, dry and imperfect, but those imperfections give it such an emotional resonance that my skin prickled and raised goosebumps and my eyes became hot with emotion ready to brim over in tears. While listening, that quote from Voltaire came to mind again and I had a small epiphany. The perfect is the enemy of the good in another way – not only does the search for perfection paralyze us, but it also does not move us emotionally. Thinking of another Canadian singer, Celine Dion has perfect pitch. Her voice is flawless and strong and she has never once moved me emotionally. Even singing songs with sentimental lyrics, she leaves me cold and I don’t care for her at all. Perfection is not beautiful, imperfection is.

Continue reading

A very, very fine house

My House

from left to right: [we’re CLOSED] summer flowers and shrubs, Silver Birch from Studio Skye, Lark – Desert Retreat Deck – Painted, [ba] hollyhocks, Trompe Loeil – Brooklyn Carriage , Sway’s [Door Mat] international, [we’re CLOSED] tree 01D spring

I do not move houses very often in Second Life® or in real life. It is just too much work. However, when the Brooklyn Carriage House came out at Collabor88 last month, I could not resist its bright red doors and fine brickwork. I finally have everything arranged, but will be moving shortly. I thought I would share before I pack it all up. I love the house and how it looks, but I guess my four year old computer really cannot handle such an open floor plan where everything fezzes all the time. I need rooms and walls that limit the textures my computer has to handle, so I will be on my way to a more traditional space. That is totally a reflection of my computer’s age and is no criticism of the house – which is gorgeous, very, very gorgeous.

My outdoor decor is pretty limited, just a few shrubs and bushes from We’re Closed, a couple trees and the gorgeous deck from Lark that was released at The Liaison Collaborative a few month’s back.

Continue reading

Games People Play

jun26_001

 

When your television reception varies depending on the cloud cover, you tend not to get addicted to watching any particular program since you never know what channels you will receive at any given time. We lived too far from town for cable and did not have a satellite dish, so we did not watch a lot of television. Instead we played a lot of games, including dominoes. It was not the family favorite; that was whist. We also really liked canasta, cribbage,  and Scrabble® . But Dominoes had its rotation in the games we played during those bitterly cold winter evenings. I have a game ready in my living room anytime you want to play.

jun26_003My outfit is playful today, a flirty little top with a print of license plants from Osito that I bought at Fashion For Life last week and a bi-color leather skirt from NYU for Fameshed this month. This skirt comes in all sorts of colors and I was hard-ressed to choose one.

 

Continue reading

Busy old fool, unruly Sun

0429_008

BUSY old fool, unruly Sun,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains, call on us ?
Must to thy motions lovers’ seasons run ?
Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide
Late school-boys and sour prentices,
Go tell court-huntsmen that the king will ride,
Call country ants to harvest offices ;
Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time. Continue reading

This is Real Life

0322_002

The princess dress from Adore & Abhor was released to celebrate their sixth anniversary. It is rich in design details including a sheer overskirt, a lovely ribbon belt and a cameo collar.

Let me start with a confession. I do not hate Shopping Cart Disco’s SL Secrets. From sociology and evolutionary psychology, I understand the role of gossip in defining community norms and values. It is possible that anonymity allows more viciousness than we might see in first life, but given the many stories about young people driven to suicide by online harassment on Facebook® and Twitter® coming from  non-anonymous classmates, I think that  anonymity is a smaller factor than we might think.

Sometimes the secrets make me think, sometimes they make me laugh, sometimes they surprise me. Secrets often spark discussions on Plurk® and I suppose they do on other social media as well. Sometimes I agree with the secret-makers, sometimes I do not. One thing most secret-makers have in common is an idea of how the world should be and they want us all to know it is out of alignment with their standards.

Today a secret maker repeated the all too common “Get a real life” mantra that always seems so ironic coming from someone whose emotional investment is Second Life® is so powerful they are compelled to create anonymous secrets to share their opinions. This time, the “Get a real life” message included an insinuation that purchasing from SL creators could be contributing to their mental illness by promoting an attachment to this second life over their first life.

I think the secret maker is wrong on all levels – because while our first and second lives are distinct and often separate, they are both real.

Continue reading

Fashion and Furnishings

mar01_004

This gorgeous new Belted Dress from Gizza demonstrates how much textures affect clothing. Giz Seom made this with a casual, everyday argyle as well as this glamorous club-hopping snakeskin. The argyle has a turtleneck collar as well while the snakeskin has a jeweled necklace that I decided not to wear – going for something simpler. You can see the options from the vendor picture below.

GizzA - Belted Dress Colors

Mar01_008

Meanwhile, The Arcade has inspired me to have a vacation home in the mountains. The lodge from Scarlet Creative is a snug, small little cabin which is what you want. You don’t want such a big vacation home that you spend all your vacation cleaning. I have been decorating it with lots of items from The Arcade, including the wonderful ISPACHI wood carvings. There were some excellent electric signs from Seven Emporium and you can assume what you will about the one I chose.

Continue reading