Winter Things- Stacey Cardalines Reporting...

 

Most people hate winter, but I'm not one of them. I love snow, cold, and all that other stuff that turns people off from the Cruelest season. If I have firewood, drugs, and remaining vacation days, a blizzard is one of my favorite things. I may be twisted, but if the normal people can't throw snowballs at each other, eff 'em.

I like winter on SL even more, because SL isn't cold unless you open the window to your computer room in January. I went to a winter sim today, and- as you can see from the pictures- I had no problem at all casting aside my business dress, putting on a hockey shirt, and climbing snowy mountains with nothing but pantyhose on my legs and heels on my feet. That would equal frostbite in the real world, but in SL, it just meant that Stacey had less things to do in her inventory.

I set out to find a snowball fight sim today, but there aren't many of them, and the ones that exist have it somewhere that I couldn't locate. I gave up, but the sim I gave up on it at had ice skating, so I figured WTH? 

The sim is called "Christmas Skate Rink And Holiday Market Christmas Shopping," which is the kind of name that made me think that the sim owner may be ESL. I checked, she isn't, and she appears to be a Vampire. That might seem odd, but Vampires are/were people too, and there's nothing in the Vampire manual which prohibits vampiric enjoyment of winter sports. If Dracula went to Alaska instead of London, I don't think Van Helsing would have beaten him. I went to the sim during sunlight hours, so I'm safe. It may turn into Salem's Lot after dark, I don't intend to find out.

This vampire had a skating rink, so I was all in. I'm a terrible skater in real life. This is embarrassing because I live in a hockey state, but it is what it is. I can only skate if there is a much larger person standing right next to me who might not fall with me if I lose my footing and panic-grab for his arm. You don't see figure skaters wearing hockey helmets, and if that sort of competence/confidence exists in a woman somewhere, the very balance of nature demands that there must also be a klutz woman walking the earth who screams in a panic a lot and falls before she gets on the ice. I fill that role in nature.

I was a hockey cheerleader, both on SL and in (real life) high school. It's easier on SL, where I could wear next to nothing, and where the hockey league carved out a large section of the arena for the cheerleaders to operate in. We were sort of our own show, somewhat akin to that old "I went to a fight and a hockey game broke out" joke, just with dancers. The only time I was on the ice was when I posed for the league calendar.

In high school, we were kept in the bleachers and reduced to stomp/clap-type cheers. We were mostly just trying to keep warm and not get hit by errant pucks. The girl right next to me got a puck to the nose once, and I'm still somewhat haunted by it. It did damage. She went from Prom Queen level to maybe a step above Sea Hag in one deflected slap shot. If you can imagine a blonde, rich-school 110-pound cheerleader with a Toucan Sam nose, that was the end result. I felt badly for her, but better her than me.

Either way, skating wasn't required of me as I performed these services. This is a good thing because the Traumatic Brain Injury that would have resulted from me pursuing skating never came about. Otherwise, this article might read "Cambot dongo at the banana patch" and- denied a career in journalism- I might have resorted to a life of crime. Fortunately, for all of us, it never came to that.

Becoming an expert skater on SL is as easy as jumping on a poseball. I started off in skates, but I got my skates at a sim where they assumed everyone was 6 foot 8, so they looked silly on me. I'm pretty short. Any game like SL that relies on the willing suspension of disbelief (I can teleport! I can carry 30,000 item inventories around with me!) will survive me skating in heels. I did have a hockey sweater on, so I score points there.

They have casual singles skating, pairs skating, and trick skating. You can bang out some pretty cool moves with even the simple menu. I didn't try the pairs menu, as I went to the sim by myself. I do my dirt by my lonesome. The pictures of me skating in this article are mostly from the Trick Skating menu. I didn't fall once.

They also have a little market there with some cute things. Some of it is Christmas-themed, but not so much that you think you went back in time a month. I was a big fan of the campfire with the warm-your-hands animation. You can kill some time at this sim, both touring and skating. It is one of the few vampire-owned skating rinks that I choose to recommend.

If winter comes and goes and you haven't gone skating, I can't even do business with you, dog.

Christmas Skate Rink And Holiday Market Christmas Shopping = http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Loon/46/189/106