Trek across the lake

One of the highlights from our visit to the cottage this past weekend:

Lying in the middle of a frozen lake in Algonquin Park, listening to the boomBOOM muffled cracks of the ice.

When cracks started appearing around us, I got a bit nervous:



Jeff reassured me that the ice was safe and the cracks were only on the surface, and I decided to believe him. It was the easiest crossing we've ever had. Though we had to be careful of our footing, it was fun to slide across the smooth surface, the expanse of smooth ice stretching around us in all directions.



When we got back, I found a package waiting for me from Sib! More on this soon.

Happy birthday, Jeff!

Photo above: Jeff with his first keyboard. :-)

It's my hubby's birthday today. As part of my present to him, I gave him a little head-banger wind-up guy I got in NYC as well as a coupon saying that I'd do all the after-dinner dishes between now and the end of the month. Sadly, the wind-guy only banged his head twice before it broke! Sigh. Jeff says he's going to fix it.

Jeff and I have been married 17 years, yet I still swoon when he walks into the room. How sappy is that? We've had our ups and downs, but for the last few years they've mostly been ups and I can't help feeling that things are only going to get better.

Happy birthday, sweetie.

New Year parties, friends, and Virtual Evil Squirrels

My friend Iain and me. Photo by Walter.

Jeff and I brought in the new Year with some of our friends at a party hosted by Reid and Luisa. Played boardgames and Guitar Hero, caught up with friends, ate way too much. Many thanks to R & L!



'Twas great to get together with friends at our place and elsewhere. I got together with my friend Cathy, who has moved from Calgary back to Toronto - yay! And she'll be living just a few blocks away -- double yay!!!

Allison, Jodi and I had our annual Urban Tapestry gathering as well as continuing to do prep for FilKONtario. Gifts I received included a yummy-smelling Vanilla Spice toiletries set from Jodi and some gorgeous hand-made chainmaille from Allison You can see the earrings she gave me in top right of this photo.

Also explored Second Life some more. I decided to sign up for a Premium Account so that I could get live chat help as well as be able to buy a wee plot of land to call my own. You can see a picture of my house below, taken while I was chatting with Dwen Dooley (filker Dan K. in real life):



My most recent exciting SL discovery: it's a new way to display, read and buy books. I recently visited Robin Sojourner's Library in SL, for example, where he/she allows visitors to browse nicely formatted e-books for free, and buy them if users want to take the books away from the library.



I have to find out how Robin formatted the e-books in the library -- they look so real, and users can flip through the books and read the text as well as go to the table of contents. I now have two new books (one about Alpha Channels, and the other about Textures) sitting on a coffee table in my virtual house. :-)

My most horrifying recent SL discovery...there are SQUIRRELS!!



Meanwhile, I find it interesting that NONE of my local friends use Second Life. Like me, several tried it briefly but then gave up. I'm beginning to suspect that a lot of one's SL opinion has to do with the first few visits -- it's a shame that the first experience a typical user has in SL is the Help Island, where everyone is confused and you get accosted by avatars who want to bite you or sell you something or make crude remarks. No wonder so many first-time users get turned off for good.



It also doesn't help that media coverage tends to focus on the party aspect, and the fact that avatars can have virtual sex in non-PG areas. Plus it's true that a lot of SL focuses on shopping. BUT believe it or not, it's entirely possible to spend all your SL time in areas that are focused on topics other than shopping or sex, and still only have explored a fraction of SL's potential.

I've been checking out Dusan Writer's Metaverse blog, whose author is interested "in the metaverse and identity, education, visualization, and collaboration." Most of his posts focus on education and business, but from time to time there will be a more personal post like
Come Inside, I'd Like To Show You Something.

Also found the following video interesting, which was included in a recent Washington Post article about Second Life: