Saturday, July 7, 2007

One Hell of a Fourth of July!




Written 5 July, 2007

One Hell of a Fourth of July!

Yesterday was Independence Day in the United States, and I have to say it was the best Fourth of July I’ve ever had.

Sweetie and I started the day with our friend Peter, talking about dressing up as American Indians and restaging the Boston Tea Party—this because I happened to have picked up a free tea crate the day before.

We didn’t actually have a Boston Tea Party, but I went so far as to pick up a beautiful headdress (and some beautiful Navajo rugs) when we visited Red Rock Mesa.

It was a nice place and we had a good time until we blundered onto someone’s goddamned security system, which transported us all to our respective homes. I’ll be going back there and sending the owners a note to give them a piece of my mind about the seeings on their damned device.

But that was the only dark spot in a glorious day.

Sweetie, busy with the search engine, was looking for fireworks shows. She took us to xxx, where we found a team busily setting up a show for 5:00 pm Linden Time. We wandered about the National Mall, where various displays gave nonpartisan information on various legisltation before Congress. Television screens featuring vintage black-and-white videos from the time of Franklin Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower’s presidencies provided charming counterpoint to the web links to the legislation.

We made a note to ourselves to come back, then went exploring, minus Peter, who had to go to the ral world.

Sweetie found a notice about a regatta, and teleported us to an area of 43 interrconnected water sims. I rezzed a free boat and we sailed from sim to sim (and my attachments all stayed connected!). In an hour or more on the water, we saw beautiful island and pristine beaches, a conservatory which featured a mangrove swamp, and many marinas and harbors. Dozens of buoys helped us in our course.

Afterward, we teleported to the place where the Flying Tako is sold, and I bought a sailboat for each of us. By mistake, actually, by clicking too fast on what I thought were free goods, but it was a happy mistake, for I have the feeling we’ll spend many pleasurable hours on the water in them.

Then we watched a fireworks show at what turned out to be Hillary Clinton’s headquarters. (I couldn’t restrain myself when we passed a microphone on the podium and I grabbed it and said, “I would like to thank you all for coming out tonight for the fireworks show. Please remember to vote for Hillary, and make a donation if you can. Enjoy the chicken.”

Then we embarked on a tour of Second Life political headquarters—notably, Barack O’Bama and John Edwards’ plots.

From there, Sweetie teleported us to the Swedish Embassy, which was charminly designed and filled with newbies, several of whom rather rudely asked us who were were.

Sweetie answered straightforwardly, but I said, “We’re from another planet. We come in peace,” and then “Klaatu, barada nikto. That means, Klaatu, don’t blow up the planet.”

I guess the Swedish don’t have much of a sense of humor.

Several newbies asked us for assistance, and I gave them boxes of Pele freebies, which include flight assist, a dance bracelet, a notecard with landmarks to interesting places, and assorted other goodies. I was dropping outfits that don’t particularly like on one very short woman when she began ragging on an avatar who had just walked in, saying her hair was a mess.

The newcomer actually had a beautiful flexi hairdo and a nice skin. Her AO was a bit slutty, but she was otherwise very well put together, and I said so. I told her she should have better manners than to make unwanted comment about others’ appearance.

She stubbornly persisted in her criticisms, so I told her I was glad she had come to a place where there was a slim chance she would learn diplomacy—and then Sweetie and I went off to explore the embassy.

In retrospect, I wish I had orbited her sorry ass.

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Eight o’clock found us sitting on the a blanket at the mall with a bunch of our friends, who Sweetie had teleported in. I’m glad she did, for otherwise there would have been no audience for what turned out to be a spectacular display of fireworks.

We oh’d and ah’d and Sweetie and I busily clicked on the rockets and sparkle cones that kept getting set out. In the background one of our acquaintances spent all his time trying to explain to his furry girlfriend how to look at the fireworks.

After she show, most of those present teleported to the Dragon Skybar, where we danced and talked. One of my old friends came by too, with a woman whose profile read that she expected to be paid for her time in the company of gentlemen. A new friend from Caledon, Gloriana, was a lot of fun as she got on Sweetie’s dance pole in all of her Victorian finery (Sweetie and I promptly switched to slutty clothes for our table dances).

Afterward we all teleported down to Pele, where we showed off the volcano and rode the little train (which has been having all sorts of fun little catastrophes lately. Then we jumped in the well for a good 15 minutes, laughing all the while, then rode my little merry-go-round. We ended the evening with a drum-fest and a trip up to Boofhead Oh’s art studio, where I proceeded to burn a UPS truck and Sweetie proceeded to pull out her alternate avatars.

Our friend all seen safely off the sim, Sweetie and I retired to our House of 1000 Pleasures, where we engaged in another form of festivity.

It was a glorious, a most glorious, an absolutely glorious Fourth of July!

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