More fun with dimensions

This dimension is loosely based on Frank Lloyd Wright's Jacobs House. I've seen someone else do a spot on version of Falling Water, so I didn't want to do that yet the scenery cries out for Frank Lloyd Wright.

It started with one house--the red one perched over the top of the waterfall (and yes, in the dimension, the water flows, trees move with the breeze, there are bird songs--it's very realistic). That first red house is my take on Jacobs House.

But the dimension had an item count of 315 items and I hadn't used them all up. So I added the blue house. Then I spent in-game money and expanded the dimension so I could use more items. Then I added the green house.

Altogether I expanded four times and build a total of four houses. All have kitchens, a bedroom, a dining area, a living area with fireplace, views of the waterfalls and pools of water, and of course each house has a bathroom too.

Jacobs House kitchen

Jacobs House living room

Jacobs House from behind

Green house living room

Blue house living room

The good, the bad and the ugly

Facebook, that is.

I’m mostly a lurker these days—partly by design, partly because I’m pressed for time and have precious little energy for things outside of work and Kent. I’ll have to catch you up sometime with all the stuff I’m doing at work but for now, it’s enough to say the hours are long and I’m tired on all fronts when I get home.

I see the ugly—the vitriol posted either about world events like the bombings in Paris or the Syrian refugee crisis (what a bland way to describe that). I see the bad or maybe more charitably the stupid or inane—all the clichés posted over pictures of sunsets or mountains or of course cats.

But I’ve seen good too. I’ve moved so much and lost contact with so many people and Facebook has been a way to reconnect if ever so briefly and superficially. It’s like getting to find out the rest of the story, what happened after I closed the book.

One example is my friend, C. I met her the first month after my family had moved to Cape Girardeau when I was 14. Cape is a small town and fairly insular and making friends wasn’t easy. Most had been friends, no joke, for life. But C, who went to the local Catholic high school, lived near me and loved theater as I did. I met her in rehearsals for a play, all details long forgotten except for meeting her and also my first boyfriend, Mark. None of us drove yet, we were all too young, so C and I rode our bikes to rehearsal every day, up and down the hills of Cape.

She ended up breaking her arm in some freak accident at home, and had to drop out of the play—but we remained friends until after I’d graduated from high school. Then I went off to basic training and lost contact not only with her but with most of my friends from that time. I saw her again probably five years later, and life hadn’t been all that kind to her. She’d had a number of failed relationships and wasn’t very happy. Once my parents moved away from Cape, I never went back and had no idea where she’d ended up.

We reconnected on Facebook a couple of years ago, and I could piece together a sort of history for her. She’d clearly married at some point, and had four sons but wasn’t married any more. She had a bad health scare not long after we reconnected, and nearly died. I don’t know all the details but at some point she met a man and they became friends. Things evolved and they are getting married soon.

It’s been nice to see how things are turning out for her now. Sure, there’s no guarantee with this relationship but when are there ever guarantees? And this entire story sums up why the good of Facebook outweighs the bad and the ugly. 

How is it November 6 already?

I can hardly believe that November is here and that in just a couple of weeks, we’ll be seeing friends and family for Friendsgiving/Thanksmas. Or that I haven’t written anything in two weeks.

But isn’t that the way of life? If one area is crazy busy, then something has to give. Work is the crazy busy thing for me right now, which means I have not only less time but less mental energy to use anywhere else. I’ve moaned about this before but it’s still true—I write a lot in the course of my job, so if work is crazy, it’s as though I’ve used up all my words.

Here’s another way I know things are hectic at work. I play Rift and in Rift, you can have what are called dimensions. Think of them as three-dimensional landscapes that you can make look like whatever you want. I am absolutely addicted to my dimensions—I currently have 11, of which 9 are active and not used for storage—and when I come home during times like this, I log in and create a fantasy world. As Kent says, it’s like a pixilated doll house, and I do love creating doll houses.

I took some screenshots of one of my favorites I've been working on lately. Keep in mind that I built these structures from square and rectangle tiles, planks and other building components. Almost nothing in this house is pre-made (including the aquarium which even has a fish!).

Front of house with fountain on the left

Aquarium with fish

From the front door--there are candles on the fireplace

Stairs to the second floor

Kitchen

Second floor sitting room

Luxury bath

Second floor deck