i won at charades twice in a row

So, this isn’t the first post I’ve made about Glitch, and with luck, it won’t be my last. Think of all the facebook games that you’ve played (or that you get hundreds of requests from your aunts for), and now imagine that they were all awesome! This isn’t anything you haven’t heard me say before, but hear me out.

So firstly, I gave you an overview of what the game was like last time, so we’ll skip that part. Now I’d like to tell you a bit about what’s been going on with the game.

You’ve heard of flickr, right? Of course you have, because you have me added on there, don’t you. Well, before it was acquired by Yahoo, it was co-founded by Stewart “stoot barfield” Butterfield of Ludicorp, who later went on to start up Tiny Speck, and begin development on Glitch.com. They made waves in the browser-gaming world when they announced that they were unlaunching, and going back into beta. That was right about the time that I joined up.

my old-style weeaboo house in groddle meadow

Since then, we’ve all come a long way. For example, during this beta, the game switched from using experience points to a process called Imagination. Instead of just serving to level you up, Imagination also exists as a form of currency, with which you can purchase character upgrades. You can buy anything from a larger brain, to more energy, to being a great gardener, or even being more popular with the ladies! Okay, I made that last one up. But they should totally add that feature.

Another major change is to the housing system. Where before people would save up between 2,000 and 50,000 currants (Glitch’s ingame currantcy – oh the puns) to buy a piece of real-estate in a residential area off of a public street, now Glitchen are automatically assigned a house and street of their own! These exist in the glitchen’s imagination, which makes for an interesting paradox, but more importantly, makes Imagination a very important change – you’ll use it to upgrade your house and street to make them larger. The reason I’m writing this right now instead of playing more Glitch is actually because they are in the process of migrating over to the new housing system.

adorable and slightly monstrous

Then, there’s also the personal changes that I’ve been through. Or, my Glitch has. Now no longer the prosaic Miss Buckets, I am Abby Cadabra, no relation to any children’s book characters or anyone on Sesame Street.

Abby is essentially completely different to Miss Buckets, except that owns the same clothing. And house. And actually is the same person. Glitch. Whatever.

But she hasn’t just grown a pair (of antlers), she’s also grown as a person. Glitch. Whatever. Miss Buckets was a partier, eager to seek out companionship, drink booze, and make a name for herself. Abby Cadabra likes to spend more time in her imaginary home, making babies. Er, baby animals. In a completely non-reproductive fashion. She likes chatting in Global, exploring new areas, and is an expert damn fox-brusher. She dislikes drama and people who steal from others.

artist's rendering of abby cadabra

According to a dev, Glitch is planning on being re-launched to the public in “weeks/months, rather than years,” and I admit, I have my reservations. I love the controlled economy, the fun updates and changes all the time, and most importantly, the comparatively small community. Right now, Glitch has a small-town feel. More often than not, people I pass on the streets of Ur are people I at least recognize, if not know well. I’m not looking forward to that changing.

That said, it’ll be a new adventure. More players means more potential friends, and how can you argue with that?

Find out more about Glitch at the official site. Or, follow them on Facebook or Twitter.

I’m still not over it.

a shot of the castle at Divinity's Reach at night

Guild Wars 2 and I…we had something special. It never refused to let me log in (like it did to a lot of frustrated players), ran like an absolute dream, and hooked me in faster than any other activity I have ever partaken in in my life. Save none. Not even sex.

Seriously, you are talking to one satisfied-ass customer, right here. Now, there are plenty of reasons for this, and basically all of them have to do with the immense amounts of detail that have already been put into the game. If you watch this video on dynamic events and NPCS, you’ll begin to get an idea of what I’m talking about. However, you really have to play to understand. Imagine you’re in a major city – Lion’s Arch, and you’re bored of hitting things with arrows or customizing your armour. Why not go explore the sewers? I did. Imagine your surprise at discovering the creatures that have a small civilization in the sewers. Imagine finding a pipe that leads further down, underwater, and following it until it’s end (but not before you befriend a giant fish). You reach the ocean, and after a brief meet-and-greet with a whale, you discover not only the submerged remains of the old Lion’s Arch (from GW1), but also an underwater city inhabited by the Quaggan (a pudgy dolphin-frog race). Now, try to imagine that kind of depth and beauty in literally any other game you’ve ever played. If you can even come up with a somewhat close match, I want to know about it. And I’ll bet it still doesn’t have a vertigo-inducing diving board that you can do flips off of.

so i made a human instead

To my chagrin, this first beta event excluded the two races I was really interested in, the Asura and the Sylvari. Despite this minor disappointment, I had more fun exploring the world, assisting random strangers, and collecting animal companions, than I did in both the first Guild Wars and FFXI combined. My character, a human ranger named Lyra St Valentine, never knew her parents, but was adopted at a young age by the nobility of Divinity’s Reach. In addition to playing the story of the game, and doing quests for others, you also get to play out your own character’s storyline (which depends on choices you make during character creation and, to a certain extent, in the game itself). I was pretty tickled with the storyline aspect, although Lyra spent most of her time shooting bandits in the face or just exploring.

In the next beta weekend event, I plan to spend a lot more time in the WvWvW PvP (I did basically none of it this time around, although I did do the ‘tutorial’ area), and dedicate the rest of my time to taking amazing screenshots and exploring, with some quests tossed in here or there.

ArenaNet has not set a firm release date for Guild Wars 2, though most GameStops are announcing sometime in June. However, further beta weekend events will take place until release, in addition to stress tests. These are open to pre-purchasers (not: NOT pre-orders! You have to pay off the full game, and get the code from the vendor) who have registered their accounts.

i have them all on rotate (with my skyrim rainmeter skin)

If you still want more, check out my entire collection of screenshots from the GW2 beta weekend event. They really show off the beauty of the game, and there are a LOT of them that couldn’t make it into this post. Not to brag too much, but many of them also make badass desktop wallpapers.

Find out more at the Guild Wars 2 official website, and the Guild Wars 2 official facebook. Additionally, you’ll be able to find some pretty excellent screenshots on the ArenaNet team’s Pinterest (including mine, heehee!).

i am clearly awesome

Eyeballing doesn’t even look like a word to me after writing this.

So, you think you’re pretty good at eyeballing things? You get a lot of headshots in Modern Warfare? You knew you could get that couch to fit in through the front door without even measuring it?

I consider myself a pretty good eyeballer, even though if you’d asked me yesterday: “Do you consider yourself proficient at eyeballing?” I would have said, “Huh?”

Nevertheless, when I saw this link on reddit, I had to try it out for myself. You can observe my awesomeness there to the left. You’ll note that for the very last test (result on the bottom right), I erred by 0.0 units. Aside from a cute anime face, that means I got it exactly right. Of course, having completed my magnum opus, I quit and took a screenshot.

So why not give it a shot, yourself? Spend a few minutes (or hours) trying desperately to measure up to that Hawkeye person (damn you, Hawkeye!), and post your results here! Because as I’ve just recently found out, it sucks not to have anyone around to show your success to. Awwww.

The Mighty Eyeballing Game

miss buckets

See that thing here on the left? Yeah, that’s me. Or, that’s me in Glitch, anyway. I’m Miss Buckets, I’m Abby Cadabra, a level something-or-other Glitch with a propensity for bingeing on No-No Powder and Hooch while I garden and cook. I like shiny things, and Mab is my chosen giant.

If you don’t play Glitch, most of that probably doesn’t make a lot of sense. And that’s okay. A lot of stuff doesn’t make sense even when you do play (word to the wise, don’t drink Essence of Purple unless you’ve got some free time). And that’s okay, too. Glitch is a 2D, sidescrolling MMO sort of game. You can buy property, create and sell goods, garden, raise animals, be a hunter-gatherer, smack people with planks of wood, and leap really, really high.

bow before my might

There’s loads to do, including getting a TON of achievements for doing things as awesome as helping to build the world, or as arbitrary as jumping up and down 111 times. It’s excellent for anyone who is kind of a completionist, or who loves item-collecting games.

But I’d be doing it a disservice if I didn’t mention that the greatest part of this game are the players. While there are always a few bad eggs, the overwhelming majority of Glitch players are unbearably awesome. I’ve met complete strangers who let me into their house and let me fondle their goods. People I walk past will sometimes just hand me really rare items. People in this game go out of their way to make it better for others, by organizing events (via the forums) to help out new people or just get together and have fun, by leaving items in secret hidden places for excited new adventurers to find, and by planting expensive seeds in community gardens so that everyone has a shot at growing their own herbs, etc. It’s hard not to just friend everyone you meet – because everyone is that great.

Right now, Glitch has gone back into beta (I signed up literally the day before they regressed) because the developers at Tiny Speck realised that they’d been a bit too ambitious, and needed some more time to perfect the system. As such, it’s currently invite only. However, I have two invites that I can give out, and I’m sure that I could obtain more if necessary. So, if you happen to fancy joining us, we’d be happy to have you! And if you’re already a member, you should add me as a friend!

yeah, it's badass

So, I recently had the lovely experience of watching my best friend play through Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception. I didn’t play it myself – I am a platforming wizard, but I’m not good with switching between that and combat. That, and my best friend is possibly secretly the God of Video Games, because I think he died all of ten times throughout the whole game.

Which we beat in one sitting, coincidentally. My brother and friend and I sat on couches to “watch the movie,” with snacks and backseat gaming goodness.

So, anyway, the game itself: WAS AWESOME! I have to admit that I remember the motion being a bit smoother in the second game, but I also experienced some voice-syncing glitches, so I suspect my PS3 may have just been having a bad day. The rendering of the characters was absolutely beautiful, but it was nothing compared to the backgrounds. There were a few times that I was shocked when the characters appeared on screen, because I’d forgotten that it wasn’t real footage.

The story itself was excellent. While I found the second one (and the first, to some extent) a little too supernatural at times, this was perfectly tasteful in its allusions to otherworldly things: it was nuanced rather than IN YOUR FACE OMG ZOMBIES. The characters were well-fleshed out, even the less major ones. The game surprised me by making one of the characters claustrophobic – it was an attention to detail that I wouldn’t have considered, and I was really impressed. Side note – I totally didn’t realise that Chloe’s voice actress also does the voice of Morrigan in Dragon Age: Origins. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, considering that Alistair’s voice actor did a role in Uncharted 2.

One critique I have to make regarding the game was the combat. Not the system itself; the controls seemed fairly fluid and the only issue we really had was accidentally picking up the wrong gun instead of ammo 147380432 times. No, the problem was that there was so much of it. Some scenes were really exciting, but others dragged and dragged, and you just wanted it to end so you could get back to the spectacular story (or to puzzles or chase scenes!). They keep throwing battle after battle of 20-30 guys at you, when really most fight scenes would be plenty exciting with 5-10 guys. You start to wonder how on earth the baddies are affording nice black suits for all their henchmen. You also wonder how many 7′ tall, 400lb guys they hired (really, could have at least given them different faces). After a while it felt like the developers either thought “we can make the game longer by making them kill more guys” or they couldn’t think of any other way to make combat harder as the game progressed.

In defense of the development team, I greatly appreciated the few bones they did throw us – having Drake shout “Why are they shooting at me?! Don’t they know we’re sinking?!” made what might otherwise have been an issue worth complaining about into a meta-game joke.

tell me you don't see malcolm reynolds here

Speaking of voice overs, the actors in Uncharted are far and beyond some of the greatest voice actors, hell, actors period, that I’ve ever had the privilege of listening to. Their interactions are so natural that one wonders how much is adlibbing – or if they were even given a script at all! You can easily imagine them just told what happens and then made to act it out on their own. It’s fantastic. I highly recommend at least renting the game – as we’ve showed, it can be beaten in one sitting. However, purchasing it means you get the badass multiplayer as well! Admittedly, Battlefield 3 just came out, but if you’re looking for a change, the multiplayer in Uncharted 3 is pretty damn solid.

I’m looking forward to the movie – I swear to God if Drake isn’t played by Nolan North or Nathan Fillion, though…heads will roll.

canvas is backlit to avoid glare

Yesterday I was blindsided by the immense need to paint a squid. Gashi, my long-suffering and wonderful ex-boyfriend, and I were out running errands when it crept up on me that I really wanted to paint tentacles. And eyes.

Now, I am not a painter at heart. I can do a fair turn with some india ink in varying states of dilution, but in general, coloured paintings and I don’t have a lot to say to each other. Yesterday was the first time I’d had any success with mixing enough of the right colour, and more shockingly, I also had success mixing a second batch of a colour I’d run out of!

I’d thought I was done with this painting a couple of times when it would grab me again and say, “WHERE DO YOU THINK YOU’RE GOING, HMM?!” For the record, I’m not sure how you yell “hmm,” but then again, I am not a squid.

front-lit to show glitter and for effect

On that note, neither is my painting. It has the eye of a squid, but the body of an octopus. Thus it is a squidtopus (oh look, a portmanteau on Tuesday! ). It is also sparkly, because it demanded to be painted with iridescent paint, and after that I thought it really wasn’t much of a jump to add some glittery accents to it.

I also tried something I rarely do: using a lot of paint. Normally I’m pretty sparse, just enough to cover the white, but this time I let the paint stand in for texture in a lot of places, used it to delineate between tentacles, etc. You can see a bit of that in the backlit photo, but not much.

we all do, mom

I don’t care what hilarious World of Warcraft machinima videos set to Avenue Q songs you’ve been listening to, everyone knows the reason that the internet was invented was so that people could share photos of their cats. Yes, I know I just made a post about lolcats, but this is different. These are not lolcats, expertly-chosen photos of animals in compromising positions paired with hilarious repartee. These are your grandmother’s cat pictures. Grainy, overexposed, possibly taken with a cell phone. Cute, but never really capturing the essence of why this animals is fantastic. Unless you’re this immensely talented actress. She’ll take any cat photos you have on offer.* These are the cats the internet was designed to host.

Oh, and stories. I like to brave /an/ on 4chan every now and again out of boredom, and tonight there was a jewel of thread: “Post weird things your pets do.”

Now, sometimes I think my cats are the craziest creatures ever, until I remember that other cats also exist. Not everyone realises this base assumption: that animals are crazy bastards. As such, there were a few fairly tame “quirks,” like:

My cat doesn’t use the cat perch unless she wants cat nip.

or

One of my dogs will bark and move its legs as if it’s running when she sleeps. My other for some reason likes to get in trouble no matter how many times you tell her no, she will even look at you to show you what she is about to do.

Man. Talk about weird! I bet only 80% of the rest of the species do those things! I shouldn’t complain, though, because some of the posts were downright worrying:

My cat occasionally walks like a crab. He will turn corners by drifting.

and

my cat likes to eat vaseline. I have to move it to the top shelf every time she gets into my room, I don’t know what happened to the cap.

Although partially worrying about the second is that contributor’s apparently frequent use of vaseline.

In any case, I tend to try to check myself when thinking about my cats as especially bizarre, and it’s true that a lot of their strangeness was echoed in that post, like Cubby’s love of muffin wrappers, the habit Blaster has of scratching everything BUT the cat litter when he’s done using the litterbox, and a non-cat related weirdness regarding a suicidal loach (really, how many people other than me and this dude can have owned a suicidal loach?). However, there were some things that weren’t covered, which I feel would be unkind to keep to myself.

this is him

Let’s begin with the primarily sane cat, Cubby. Cubby/Cubs/Cubbers/Sir Cubbington is the younger of my two cats, he’s a black-on-black tabby with occasional white tufts (his siblings were identical to Blaster) who weighs in at a solid 20 pounds. He’s essentially the definition of gentle giant: you could do anything to this cat and he wouldn’t raise a finger to you. I can bathe this monster by myself without him escaping or me incurring injury. You can turn him upside down and use him like a barbell and he’ll just look at you with sad acquiescence. “It’s okay, mom. I trust you, mom,” he seems to say. “I don’t like it, but if you say so.”

see, i can even do this to him

Cubby is not without his assertive moments, though. While he tends to let out a terrified mouse-like squeak when frightened, he will insist on having some things his way, or else. For example, he will not be left out of the bathroom if it’s time for a shower. Cubby is a thirsty cat, who will in every case choose to drink hot water (not warm – hot) over cool or room temperature water**, and the shower is his favourite place to get it. He will perch himself precariously on the rounded edge of my tub and stick his head in to drink the water as it falls.

sadly, this is what most of cubby's pictures look like

Furthermore, he demands a sacrifice of water wrung from my hair to drink before he will quit the bathroom. Apparently hairwater is delicious, because lately Blaster’s taken to haunting the bathroom during showertime, as well, and nibbling at my hair as I dry off.

Perhaps most notable, however, is Cubby’s breath-smelling fixation. It began as he was a kitten, when I would cuddle with him in bed. Back then, he was small enough to sleep next to my head without suffocating me. This is no longer the case, but Cubby can’t take a hint. He loves to sleep with his face under mine, but a) that makes my face itchy, and b) he also takes the opportunity to mark his mouth scent on my lips, which is gross. So, to keep our faces apart at night, I would discourage him from coming closer by blowing in his face. He was deterred at first, but eventually he started taking that advantage to sniff out my latest meal. Soon he would come up and sniff my mouth without prompting. As time wore on, it got worse and worse until nowadays he will, in fact, actively force his head into my mouth to sniff, and will then “lick” my breath. I’m still trying to break him of this, but goddamn if it isn’t funny. I’m going to be an awful mom.

"i know i'll regret it, but i have to touch that tummy!"

My other cat, Blaster, is the “bad kid” of the family. From kittenhood, he was so feisty he was essentially untouchable. He doesn’t like to be picked up, he doesn’t like laps, and he used to shrug off petting as well. This is a tremendous irony because Blaster is, in all seriousness, one of the cutest cats I’ve ever seen (although he photographs averagely), and is freakishly soft (like a bunny, I am not joking), to boot. In recent years, he’s become more open to affection. He will allow himself to be held for a short time, during which he becomes “mappy.” I do not know if this emotion is exclusive to Blaster, but it involves him purring like a madman, thrashing his tail about angrily, and meowing in piteous fashion until released. Once released, he seems to undergo rapid amnesia of the whole event, and immediately returns to normal. He then enjoys being petted on his face. Not his head, his face. As in, if you place your hand over his eyes and rub it vigourously back and forth, he’s in heaven. He also likes when you stick your fingers in his ear, and he loves noogies.

lookit those eyes

However, he has a thick rebellious streak. When I am sleeping against his wishes, he will find any local crinkly thing and poke it with one paw while watching me eagerly for a reaction. If crinkly things are unavailable, he will hop onto the bed and scratch the wall beside my head until I yell at him. Should I be so heinous as to fall back to sleep, he will then lay patiently next to me for a time, thwapping me with his tail, and systematically pulling all my belongings off of my nightstand with one deliberate paw. One. By. One.

Why is he so dedicated to getting my attention, you might ask (because this is certainly not limited only to times when I’m asleep)? It could be a number of reasons, the primaries of which are these:

Feeding time. Times vary between 9-9:30AM, and the same PM. Blaster is a very punctual eater. When eating, he daintily grabs one single piece of cat food from his bowl, turns to his right, and eats the piece over the floor. If the kibble has corners (or is an X-shape), he will eat all but one corner, and leave that on the floor in favour of a fresh piece. He is less insistent on it now, but he used to refuse to eat until he’d been petted. Once you began petting him, he’d bend down and eat his food while meowing. “HOMP OM NYOM MYOM HRONCH NYOM NYOWM.” Now he only nudges the hand that feeds him violently enough that kibble ends up all over the floor.

only blasters get to sleep, in this household

Lonely Time. Lonely time occurs from 7am-8am, and from 7pm-8pm. During this time, Blaster employs his usual methods to annoy me into paying attention to him, but as soon as I give him even the slightest hint of love, he turns into a purring maniac and flops bodily down onto me, demanding petting until he’s done being petted.

Post-Feeding Time. Occurs within three hours of Feeding Time. Not content to have been petted or to have nuzzled earlier, Blaster will not rest or waver from his mission until he gets someone to drop what they’re doing, follow him into the kitchen, and observe him eating some more of his food. He, I am completely serious, meows when you stand up, and will wait for you until you actually follow him into the kitchen, where he will look up at you to be sure you’re actually watching him, and then he’ll start eating. If you try to leave before he starts eating, the requirements for Post Feeding Time have not been met, and the process will begin again.

However, he does have his endearing points. He likes to rest with just his head underneath the couch skirt, and the rest of him sticking out in plain view. He recognizes my wake-up alarm (a honky tonk piano song) as Cuddle Time alarm, and will run to my room from upstairs to obtain cuddles, even if I’m just listening to the song on my laptop. He also hates the smell of chapstick, and will bat away all offending sticks of Burt’s Bees with squinting eyes. He’s also a conversationalist, and will meow (or at least open his mouth) every time you pet him. He does tire of being copied, though, so if you keep meowing back at him, he gets irritated and either attacks or leaves. Actually, that last sentence applies to most of my dealings with Blaster.

That’s a fairly in-depth overview of what I feel is strange about my cats, befitting the statutes on the internet in both length and inclusion of pictures that are grainy, blurry, or overexposed. You now have the highlights of a Day in the Life of a crazy-cat-lady-in-training. Whether my cats are unique in their peculiarities remains to be seen, and so I turn to you, internet:

ITT: Post weird things your pets do.

* I could absolutely write a whole entry on that video alone, although most of it would involve caps lock and the “lyrics.”

** We thought he might have a medical issue, but it turns out no, he just really likes hot water.

i'll do anything

So chances are, if you’ve ever been on the internet, you’ve been to i can has cheezburger at least once. Or if you haven’t ever been on the internet, you may have seen their book, or bought their licensed underpants (they don’t exist, I checked) or something. In any case, I think at this point pretty much anyone who can claim to live in a first-world country is familiar with the cheezburger network, or at the very least, cheeseburgers, which are delicious.

can't say no to a well-placed TLC reference!

I am going somewhere with this, I promise. Somewhere fantastically shameless, in fact. To hone in on the point, if you’re aware of ichc, or lolcats (which originated on 4chan, I believe, and were originally dubbed “cat macros” *pushes glasses up nose*), you have probably made one. Or had an idea for one. Now, internet memes, like folklore, are authorless. The guy who originally thought that a grey Persian-mix cat looked desirous of improperly spelled beef patty sandwiches has no name, and claiming authorship of a cat macro makes basically no difference. You know the “ok wut is ur wishes” macro? Probably not, but yeah, that one’s mine (and saved from ignomity by anonymous, thanks guys).  Me telling you that doesn’t really mean anything to you. Nevertheless, I feel the need to point out that it’s the case, as I suspect many other lolmakers (or whatever is the hip term for people who put words on animal pictures is) do as well.

i wish buzzkills had been more popular

Even the funniest macro can’t really earn us the recognition we’re vying for in this day and age. There may never be another “I haz a flavur” cat. Short of being the guy who invented lolspeak*, I doubt that any claim to trendsetting in the image-macro-making world will turn any heads.

Yet, here I am, making a blog post to show off my “LOL”s, as they are so appropriately dubbed.

* I am absolutely tickled to announce that the alternate name for “lolspeak” is “kitty pidgin.” My whole life just got 20% cooler.

>Hey

>hello?

Waiting for me, from a screenname called geordielouise; I assumed a female Star Trek fan. I later got messages from both Geordi AND “ibpapasgirl” who, I am sorry to say, reminds me unerringly of potatoes, due to my year and a half of Spanish class. Thanks to my rapid devouring of all the Sherlock Holmes stories recently, I was able to deduce from the timestamps and the font colours that they were the same person, on different screennames. I gathered that they checked an alternate screenname to see if I’d blocked them.

No one on livejournal had any inkling as to their mysterious identity, but I received the suggestion to just wholesale block them. I was tempted, but unfortunately I am too soft-hearted to rule someone out completely without ever talking to them. Especially Star Trek fans. I am so, so pleased that I did not block them.

Today I managed to catch ibpapasgirl as soon as she messaged me. We had the following conversation:

ibpapasgirl is available 1:30 am
ibpapasgirl 1:30 am
hi
me 1:30 am
hi there
sorry i always miss you
ibpapasgirl 1:30 am
Hey what’s up? 23/F here. u?
me 1:30 am
essentially the same 26 though
how did you find this screenname?
ibpapasgirl 1:30 am
Hmm. Have we chatted before?
me 1:30 am
i was going to ask you the same thing
ibpapasgirl 1:31 am
Oh ok. I wasn’t sure. Anyways… Whats up?
me 1:31 am
not much. melting in the heat XD

ibpapasgirl 1:31 am

Oh Im like sooo bored. Theres nothing to do.
Ohhh wait. I got a idea. Have you ever watched a girl strip on cam? :-X h
me 1:32 am
ah. you’re a robot, then
ibpapasgirl 1:32 am
A bot? not hardly babe. Are you?
me 1:32 am
if i am, i am the most eloquent bot ever
ibpapasgirl 1:33 am
A bot? not hardly babe. Are you?
me 1:33 am
o rly
bot?
ibpapasgirl 1:33 am
Welllllll…. Do you wanna watch me strip on cam? h
me 1:33 am
not really
ibpapasgirl 1:33 am
Yeah? Ok you have to signup through this website that my cam is linked trhough so i cant be recorded ok?
It only takes a second babe and its free. k?
me 1:34 am
actually i said no
not interested
ibpapasgirl 1:34 am
http://girls who are sexy and not robots.com/nikki ok go there then click on the gold JOIN FREE button at the top of the page. ok?
me 1:34 am
i’m still not interested
ibpapasgirl 1:34 am
Also it does ask for a credit card when you signup. But DONT worry
me 1:34 am
let me guess, it doesn’t charge right away
ibpapasgirl 1:34 am
It dosent charge the card at all. Not even a penny. Its just to make sure your over 18. k?
me 1:34 am
oh wow, what a great deal
i’d have to be a fool not to
ibpapasgirl 1:35 am
K babe well hurry up. When you get logged in then view my cam and we can have some fun :-X h
I also have some toys ;-X but you have to tip me some gold or take me in private to see those.
me 1:35 am
oh really, toys?
like, power rangers?
or like my little pony?
ibpapasgirl 1:35 am
Hey lets talk on there my aim is messing up.
me 1:35 am
aww but i want to know what kind of toys
are they like action figures?
or plush?
maybe GI Joe?

me 1:36 am
or like board games! i love board games
wanna play risk?
hello?
nikki?
dang, you got me all excited and then left me hanging  

Such a tease. Nikki, if you see this, and you change your mind about those board games…well, you have my screenname, babe.

(PS – I seriously never thought I would use the “potatoes” tag more than that one time…)

i'm finally learning how to use this thing

After my very short excursion to Pets Springs in my previous post, I was actually able to head out again the next day and get some better photos. I dressed up again, as well, but the outfit-related photos will be posted on my fashion blog instead of here. That’s why I have two, after all! That, or possibly masochism. It’s hard to tell, sometimes.

The weather here in Wisconsin has been absolutely preposterous. We’ve literally gone from 97 degrees Farenheit to almost freezing temperatures in the span of two days. Whoever doesn’t think that weather patterns are getting messed up clearly does not live in the US Midwest.

hello, little guy!

The down side to ridiculous weather, aside from the weather itself, is that I never want to do anything. Weather changes make me achey and grumpy, and I don’t want to clean or work on my blog or do anything remotely productive. I just want to sit on my computer and play The Sims. Forever.

However, this Sunday my sister has planned a trip to go with a few friends to the House on the Rock. My unimaginative stepfather calls it “the biggest museum of crap ever” – but it’s got loads of what people would probably call “curios” if people were inclined to actually call things that. They’re not all “authentic antiques” (my stepfather’s complaint), but many of them are replicas of antiques, and furthermore, even if they were new in 1959 (when the House opened) – they’re technically antique NOW. So nyer!

btw these are the actual colours - i don't doctor

But I digress. This second visit to the park was blessedly much cooler than the sticky 90-odd degrees of the first day (actually it was a tad chilly!), so we were able to stay longer, and I actually had a memory card and battery life in my camera, so I took approximately a millionty bajillionty photos.

I think I’m about ready to make the jump to an SLR, although not financially so. I never really considered myself much of a photographer, but I’m honestly beginning to enjoy it more and more. That moment when you look at the preview screen and you realise that the picture you just took is WAY better than your expectations is kind of addictive. I probably get far too excited about it, but ah well. It’s nice to have a hobby that only costs a tonne of money once in a while instead of all the dang time!

With that, I shall let you get to the gallery portion of this entry: