I joined Second Life back in 2005 or so. For a while I didn’t have a computer that could do it at all so I only played at friends’ houses. Then I had a computer that could do it, but not well, so I got frustrated and gave up on it. Now I’m back, thanks to aleja, and I’m getting more involved! (This is only in the last few days, even.) In fact, I just bought a home. Yup, I’m now a Second Life homeowner, paying RL cash for a virtual plot of land. Oh well, it’s not much. I did always kind of want a home…I was a total vagrant before. Anyway, here are some pictures of my renewed second life.
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I am making a real quick post from my new phone. To my amazement, AT&T actually came through with an unlock code - I thought for sure they wouldn’t. But they did! Unfortunately I had already given up on them and ordered another Curve, already unlocked, with the intention of returning this one. The seller said they were willing to mutually withdraw, but then checked their records and saw it was too late - it had already been shipped. Fortunately A isn’t killing me over it, she knows I’ll sell the other one when it gets here. Anyway, new phone! Ta-daaaaa.

I just bought a fancy new phone. A very fancy, state of the art, not crippled by T-Mobile, phone. I bought a Blackberry Curve 8310 in Titanium, and it is my dream phone. At first my wife said I absolutely couldn’t buy it, but she finally relented! Instead of getting me a PS2 for my birthday (she’s running a tad late on it), she is contributing the $90 cost of a PS2 to my purchase of the phone. I got an AT&T version off eBay, and you can buy unlock codes on eBay too, so I will be unlocking it and putting my T-Mobile SIM card into it.

My bill will go up by $5-15 when I switch to the Blackberry plan, because it doesn’t include unlimited texts like the Sidekick, so you have to pick the 400 ($5), 1000 ($10), or unlimited ($15) text plans. I got it on a trial basis, from a seller who accepts returns for any reason for 7 days. When I had the T-Mobile Dash a few months ago, I knew within a few days that I didn’t like it, so I think I will know for this, too. If I decide to keep it, I have to sell both my GPS device (there’s one in the phone) and my Sidekick 3 (don’t need two phones). It won’t be SUPER easy to do geocaching with the Blackberry - there’s no ideal application for it yet - but it is possible.

The phone has everything I want except WiFi, and I don’t really NEED that because I’ll have the unlimited data plan and I have cell coverage everywhere except my house. But we might be moving to my in-laws’ house soon (we are still house-sitting, but we are going to ask if we can stay in the spare room where we are now) so I don’t have to worry about it, they have cell coverage here.

Well, my 27th birthday could have been more enjoyable. I had a great time relaxing in the hotel room, but I felt vaguely sick part of the time - oh well. Dinner at Inn of the Seventh Ray was fabulous, though I am making a late New Year’s Resolution to never visit such a pretentious restaurant again. If I’m paying $25 for my entree, I expect more than four ravioli squares. (I had wanted the butternut squash risotto but it wasn’t even on the menu.) I don’t mind paying high prices for a big plate of fancy food, but paying high prices for a TINY plate of food is ridiculous to me. I enjoyed everything I had - Oregonzola Blue Cheese Tart, Cauliflower and Red Pepper Soup, Vegan Mascarpone Ravioli, and Mascarpone Cheesecake - but the prices were just appalling. Dinner for two, including four courses, one glass of wine each, tax, and tip came to $175. Ouch.

The waiter who brought our receipt was not our usual waiter, and he said “happy birthday” to me. I wondered how he knew it was my birthday, and I figured it must have been on the bill. How tacky, I thought, to charge for a single birthday candle on my cheesecake! But when I checked the paper, I was tickled to see that we were actually charged $0.00 for “1 fire soup” - I guess that’s just how they noted the candle! How funny. There was a new age shop on the premises, and I had A buy me an $8 pendant with a little glass vial of pink fairy dust and a silver fairy wrapped around the vial. I think it’s adorable!

Tomorrow is our grand tour where we do all the cliché stuff - the Hollywood sign, the Chinese theater, etc. I am NOT looking forward to going home and having it be all cold and yucky. I know some cool stuff will have arrived in the mail though, so I am at least looking forward to that - and to grabbing and squeezing the first kitty I see!

Today I went to Disneyland by myself. I was going to take today off and go tomorrow, but I read that MLK Day is coming up and it will be getting busy, so I figured I’d go sooner rather than later. It was fun, and I will write more about it tomorrow. Right now I am just writing to share a funny thing that just happened to me.

I decided I wanted to have a drink, so I went over to the 7-11 two doors down and bought a bottle of wine. I checked to make sure it had the twist-off top. I paid for it and brought it back to the room. After peeling back the outer wrapping, I discovered…it was not a twist-off top after all, but a regular cork, buried in the bottle! Remember, I’m on vacation…of course I have corkscrews at home but nothing here. I tried feebly poking at it a little bit but of course the cork didn’t budge. My wife suggested I take it down to the restaurant in the lobby, which has a poorly-stocked bar but was sure to at least have a corkscrew. So I took off my pajamas, got dressed again, and brought down the bottle; there was a corkscrew right there on the bar but I didn’t want to use it without permission. The host asked from halfway across the room if he could help me, and I beckoned him over. “I bought this at the store, and I thought it had a twist-off top, but it doesn’t! Can I borrow your corkscrew?” He handed it to me, and I proceeded to fumble with it…because I don’t actually know how to use one! He saw the trouble I was having and kindly did it for me, even removing the cork from the screw and giving it back to me.

So I now have 1.5L of 18 proof wine from some local winery…hey, I said I bought it at 7-11, right? It was only $7.50! Now I can actually enjoy it, because it’s OPEN. Thank goodness.

Mischa keeps having bad dreams. He woke up hissing a little while ago, and just now he was growling in his sleep.

Today we went to the outlets at Leesburg; it was more crowded than I would have liked, but less crowded than I expected. I needed to go to Lane Bryant to exchange some jeans I’d gotten in Rehoboth Beach - you can only return them to another outlet store, and I hadn’t felt like hauling ass to Leesburg before today. But I got the jeans in my size, and bought two sweaters and a long-sleeve fitted t-shirt. I almost bought a cute semi-formal minidress, but it just didn’t do anything for me. I also got a bunch of underwear - I tend to wear mine until they literally fall apart, and A had deemed that I only had about-to-fall-apart underwear, so she made me buy lots more.

Also, she put me on a strict diet. She introduced it in a kind of toppish way - or maybe that’s just how I read it, being a sub type - and so I’m following orders. It is like having my own personal diet coach who goes out to eat with me and everything, which is pretty cool. Right now I’m appalled by how little I get to eat, but I know it’ll get easier with time. It’s just frustrating right now. I think we started on Thursday morning? It feels like forever!

Oh, and my lolrus shirt arrived today. Woo!

For those of you who missed it in the paid post, I’ve got a new phone on the way. I bought a T-Mobile Dash on eBay. I’ve been underwhelmed by my Sidekick for a while, and the Helio Ocean doesn’t have certain capabilities I need, so I looked around and decided on the Dash. I just called T-Mobile and asked about switching plans; because the new data plan requires a few days for setup, I’ve already activated it so it’ll be ready when the Dash arrives. I’m a little annoyed that the wifi will only work with their hotspots, it costs $20/month for “Hotspots at Home” which lets you use any wifi network. Switching to the Dash will cost $15 more per month, because that’s how much unlimited SMS costs - the Sidekick plan has it built in, but the Total Internet does not.

I’m planning to try the Dash for up to a month. The keyboard is much smaller than the Sidekick’s, so I want time to get used to it and decide if I like the phone before I sell my Sidekick 3. The Dash cost me $181 including shipping; if I decide to keep it, I will post my SK3 on eBay for buy-it-now $181 with free shipping, and it will get snapped up fast, I think. I’ll probably do the same thing with the Dash if I don’t like it, too. So we’ll see how it goes - I am looking forward to trying it!

I have been looking around lately for T-Mobile phones, because I discovered that the Helio Ocean is not all cracked it’s cracked up to be. (No ssh? No thanks!) I was looking at the MDA instead, and I glanced at the Wing and some Blackberries. But I really ended up with my heart set on the T-Mobile Dash. I read dozens of reviews and the pros seem to outweigh the cons. Plus I would have had to transfer my contract to someone else if I had bought a Helio, this way I don’t! I was really amazed to see that A1 Wireless has the Dash for free if you’ve never been a T-Mobile customer before. (I’ve been a customer since 2002, so the lowest Dash price I could possibly have qualified for was $150, but I bought the Sidekick 3 in May.) A1 also offers one-year contracts, so you can get a reduced price on any phone without locking yourself in for two years. But since I’ve already done that, I ended up buying the Dash on eBay for $181 including shipping. I’m not committing myself to it yet. Once it arrives, I will have T-Mobile switch my plan to the Dash plan and then I will try it for 2-4 weeks. If I like it, I’ll make a Buy-It-Now auction for $181 for my Sidekick 3 (free shipping) and it’ll get snapped up right away. Same for the Dash if I don’t like it!

Marlee Matlin was named to the Gallaudet Board of Trustees!! *dies*

I’ve started buying clothes for the size-16 woman I am, not the size-8 woman I wish I was. This doesn’t mean I’m giving up, but it means I want to wear cute clothes now and not look like a dork while I’m waiting. Here’s some Torrid stuff I bought.

bought on eBay for $11.50

$16.49 + $34 + $28