Eye Care for Animals
808 N. Hayden Rd.
Scottsdale, AZ 85257

Phone: 480-990-3937

Fax: 480-990-0924

Dog’s name: Penny
Owner name: Patricia Stricklin

Veterinarian: Dr. Wasserman

She is going for the surgery tomorrow, assuming he will agree to do it without the payment up front.  Please keep her, and us, in your thoughts and prayers, and thank you for anything you can do to help!

No, not that kind.

I’m a really private person for the most part. I like to be left alone in quiet to do my work on SL, and work is what I log in to do. Every now and then I’ll hang out with my friend Akiko, but she (usually, haha) knows how to respect my space when I need it and let me get things done. As a shop owner, I’m sure I’m not alone in having met many chatty people when I’m in the store doing other things, and almost inevitably at the end of our talk, they want to be friends, and I’ll usually oblige. After that time, though, usually I never hear from them again. Not so with a small minority.  If you’re up for reading a wall of text involving a minor drama regarding a Space Invader of the clingy stalker sort, please read on – I’m feeling kind of freaked and in need of perspective that isn’t that of the little social recluse that I am. (Sorry fashion planet, I see that apparently the More… break doesn’t work on the feed *sigh*)

One member of this chatty minority eventually got offlined by me. I am generally really non-confrontational and as much as Aki would like to call the offline button “the drama button” I think de-friending someone is more noticeable and bound to elicit comment, making me end up having to fess up that the person has annoyed the crap out of me to my wits’ end. Ahem. No, I’m not very diplomatic, either. :P

Anyway, many months passed and this person didn’t message me. After sending out a group notice last night she figured out I was online and the IMs started right back up – she seemed to take it as a challenge – that if I don’t want her to know when I am on, well then! She’ll just have to track me down and force me to hang out with her! O_o I wish I was exaggerating. After a minute or so of “how are you” type small talk, she asks if I am at the store (the usual obvious hint that if I happened to be, she would want to come over and have me be her captive audience again for a few hours while she shows me all her outfits, plays me all her gestures, tells me what I should and shouldn’t do with my store, and quizzes me on where to go for various things in SL *head explodes*) so I just (not thinking) said No, I’m at my workshop. Period. No hints that she was invited. MOST people would take this to mean “Oh, she’s working, doesn’t want to be disturbed, gotcha.” She goes, “Where’s your workshop?” with one of those mischievous smileys after it. A silent “NOOOOOOOOO” rang out in my head and, trying to remain nice but firm, just replied, “It’s my private place where I work.” Again. No invitation. A pretty blatant “You won’t be coming here” I would have thought. I quickly then said I had to go and eat (which was true – I also have some sort of guilt complex about excusing myself under false pretenses, so I was glad I’d left dinner late) and went offline.

When I came back, she’s passed me a folder with a picture of herself in my workshop on a project I was working on still, with a notecard saying “I think I found your workshop (mischievous smiley)  Oops, I don’t think I was supposed to get this yet” and an item – which was now unusable to me because she’d bought the only copy and then transferred it back, making it no copy to me as well – that I’d had up there and set for sale for 0L but was, at the time, empty. Granted this item wasn’t a big deal to reproduce, but I’m sure had it not been empty it probably wouldn’t have been returned.  I immediately got irate.

Why is this person, after being told the place was private, going out of her way to track down my private workplace and invade it, playing around in it and taking things that were obviously not set there for someone to take, being as they were in a PRIVATE place, and then sending me pictures of it? Given, this isn’t a super secret location or anything, it wouldn’t take much thought at all to find it, but I have never had anyone not have the decency to just leave it – and me – alone. I was angry enough that timid quiet little mouse that I am I even sent her back an offline message telling her that I was mad – and then kicked myself afterward because it STILL wasn’t at all assertive and I felt sure that if hearing a place was private wasn’t enough to deter her, neither would my displeasure. She didn’t even apologize.

Now, offlined or not, I basically have no escape from her if she wants to come back whenever. My husband immediately told me to just ban her, but I hate doing that – I always have this fear that if I’m not nice to someone they’ll go and tell all their friends about how not nice I am and no one will ever come to the shop again – I have a small enough following as it is. Instead Akiko gave me a security orb for the area, but I never trust those to really help. I’m just not sure what else to do. Am I just blowing things out of proportion here? Is it not really as creepy and freak-worthy as I am feeling? I know there is no privacy in SL, so am I just overreacting to the discovery and invasion of my sacred alone space? Has this happened to anyone else? I’d love some perspective here. :S

Anyway, so I have made three hairstyles, each based on an anime/manga character, in trying to keep to Onigiri’s fandom roots.  They’re adapted a bit, mostly in the bangs, so they’ll look better in SL, since generally the stringy pointed anime bangs look isn’t very flattering in SL (or RL, for that matter, haha) but I generally kept to the original character’s overall hairstyle. I will be sending out each of the three styles in the usual update group special color (a deep metallic purple called Poison) once the fair starts!
The first style is called Saber, and is based on the style worn by Saber in Fate Stay Night.  This anime I haven’t actually seen, but I have had requests for it, so here it is.  Enjoy. ^_^  Look for the unveiling of the next style in a few days!

Shape: Custom, not available for sale

Skin: Elf*in Skin – No longer available

Hair: Magika – Curl – White A

Necklace: From the Starlust Motel lobby – {Violet Voltaire} Starlust Horny Necklace (CHEST)

Earrings: Available from Frop! as part of a gift outfit in the Keys to the VIP hunt – Frop! ducky Earrings

Bangles: .:TrOuBlEd ReBeL:. -  CuPcAkE RaVeR BaNgLeS (May have been part of a hunt?  I’m not sure.)

Hat: Humby Designs (a gift from the Keys to the VIP hunt) – [HD] Goffer Cap Black Tartan

Clothing: 4Eva Gutta (gift from the Keys to the VIP hunt) – .!:{904}:!. s!de.[]<ix

Yes, I really did like that VIP hunt!  If you haven’t done it already – it is worth the 200L and then some!

Today while hanging out with Aki at the store a guy walks in demanding freebie anime eyes. I do have one pair but they are part of a 1L freebie female anime avatar, so I thought, he’s a guy and can’t use the rest and he says he’s broke, so I will be nice and give him these for free.

Evidently today’s lesson is if you give someone an inch they want 10 miles. He proceeded to eat up over an hour more of my time ranting about how he can’t find anything in SL – when I suggested Xstreet he rambled about how it’s like searching a warehouse (um, okay) – and complaining about how the stuff he does get is not good enough. He was waving around some freebie weapons and sporting other freebie stuff, so I’m thinking, hm, no wonder. He claimed the only way to make money in the game was escorting. I told him he’s looking at a pair of people who make their living in SL designing, and he just got very argumentative with me, even when I suggested a number of other ways he can make money. It ended when, after half an hour of trying to help him make work for him a pair of wings I gave him, he demanded (not asked – I don’t think he knew how – evidently that I would bend over backwards for him by now was taken for granted) I modify them to suit the look he was going for, and ran off to find a picture, it hit me:
He came in demanding free stuff.
He got free stuff – four things, all of which cost me money and were available in the store for SALE (or at least for 1L) but I wanted to be helpful and gave – no, I don’t know why – and the promise of another thing he claimed he couldn’t find for less than 450L that would only take me two seconds to make, or would have before he piled on extra demands for it.
He did not thank me for a single thing I gave him.
He complained about every single thing I gave him.
He didn’t want to hear any positive suggestions I had for helping him.
He was unlikely ever to shop at my store again, since he was a guy and aside from my eyes and arguably, wings, nothing in the store could be considered unisex, much less for men.

And I hightailed it out of there.

Why can’t people just take a gift, or good advice, or being treated kindly in general, with good grace and say thank you? What is complaining when someone helps you going to do to benefit either of you? That sort of encounter just sours me on being kind to anyone.

But while everyone else is looking gift horses in the mouth, I’ll throw my hat in the ring and say, why is everybody using this strange sculpty “butterfly” in their creations lately – it has six wing nubby bits! Butterflies have four wing sections! This sculpty kind of looks like someone stuffed an unfolded cloth napkin in a napkin ring and called it a butterfly. I’ll make a free sculpty butterfly for you creators to use if you’re averse to making your own. I <3 butterflies, and I <3 your creations, minus the scary butterfly. Would you use it if I made it? O_O

I released an update of sorts to my old mary janes in the store.  The new pair has different highlighting and a distinct sole, and is scripted with 13 textures and menu-controlled tinting to a variety of presets or any color of your own making.  If you preferred the old style, though, don’t worry – they’re not going away. :)

Eep!  I nearly forgot that I was planning to give credits for the stuff here.  I was made more aware recently that pose artists in particular get left out, so I’m leaving credits here:

Shape + Eyes: Custom, not for sale

Skin: Laqroki – Tess #6

Hair: Cake – Brooklyn in Blonde

Clothes: BareRose – Black Mist and White Mist, respectively

Poses:

Left: Voflo Writer (no shop listed in picks? Couldn’t find it.) – cutieX))39

Right: Cake – cake.fp.stand.1450