I had a nap earlier, and something happened. In that drowsy buffer between a state of full awakeness and being stoned into slumber, the digits on my wristwatch began to flicker and the display went all unstable: it looked like parts of the numbers peeled away and faded into gray nothingness until a previously readable time was an absolutely blanked state. Too tired to figure out what was going on, I closed my eyes again until really waking up some time later. Shortly after rendering myself upright, I looked back down at my watch and was surprised to see the numbers materializing again. I shook my wrist but the form came back by itself, reading a blank 12:00.

I don't know what this means, but I've reset my trusty Timex chronometer and corrected the time again. If it was a matter of the battery going dead, the watch would likely still not be… ticking away. Meanwhile, Mr. Jangles the mouse still runs rampant in my house, watching me while I am on SL then flitting away behind the wallboards. And this is the state I exist in.

I am SOOO thrilled I was able to log in speedily once more — big props out to the Lindens. My first stop after the Welcome Area was to go to Water?+ Torrid's house, and then from there, catch up on some sights I'd been wanting to check out previously — there are pretty Fachwerks in Neualtenburg (speaking of delightful texturing), and the ground there has yet to be mapped back to snow. It looks awkward with grass! 7 of them…?7, what a number.

Do you know the wonder of the one-prim lamp? It's one of my favorite primeconomy tricks, done with careful manipulation of a basic torus. Delightful textures will add a lot to the basic structure, much like how a penguin with a bonnet is cuter than one without.

Genna Banjo has opened up a shoppe titled Soundscapes that, appropriately enough, sells sounds. You'll have to hear them for yourself. Sound is all too often the unfortunate bastard sibling of graphics that's relegated to the back room and muted. Along with visual improvements in SL, I hope there will be future audio ones — vehicle drone loops not annoyingly going out of wack –?putt-PuTt-PUTT! — from?many meters away?would be a?welcome fix.?I got myself a couple of nice environmental atmospheres. I'm thinking of going deep into the forest and playing the urban ambience one. Just softly (because I still have hyperacusis), but feeling the concrete pulse run deep through the heart of the greenest tree, and realizing some things aren't so different after all.