Christmas Archives - My Two Lives

Purry Catmas!

December 24, 2018

I don’t have a picture of Eliza and me for a Catmas card picture but I was able to take a picture of my Second Life avatar and my in-world kitteh for a card so I wanted to share it with everyone.

For those curious, here are the credits on what everything is. Where possible I provide a link to the item in the SL Marketplace. Otherwise, I’ll provide a link to the in-world store the first time I mention the developer.

Mesh body: Maitreya Lara (In-world store)
Mesh head: LeLutka Cate (In-world store)
Hair: LeLutka Lumen in Pitch
Eliza: Kitty AIO UnLeashed 6.4c (Release) Blk & White
Outfit: Lune~Bleue’s Santa’s Helper (In-world-store)
Jewelry: Amacci Jewelry’s Whiskers earrings and necklace
Hot cocoa: A Christmas gift from Chic-Chica via a user group I’m in
Location: Novatech’s TARDIS Console Room, Tennant Redux, high above my property in Barthelmessgrange

I hope everyone has a safe, happy, and love-filled Catmas/Christmas or whatever it is that you celebrate at the end of a year. Just remember, even if you celebrate the holiday all by your lonesome, whether by choice or because your circumstances require it, you are one hell of a creature, and you’re important because nobody else in the world is YOU!

One Holiday to Rule Them All

November 21, 2015

(I wrote this for my sister’s site two years ago, and since her site is no longer available I’m reposting it here.)

Like so many people this time of year, I hate when retailers roll out their Christmas merchandise as soon as Halloween is over. I even made an avatar a couple of years ago that simply asks, “One Holiday at a Time Please.”

When I went into my local CVS the day after Halloween this year to take advantage of the Half Price Chocolate Day specials I was surprised to see that all the space that had been dedicated to Halloween products and candy were now filled with Christmas merchandise, mostly candy. The lone exception was a simple shelf width of Halloween candy. That shelf was empty by the end of the day and Christmas candy had already filled the empty space.

As I was talking to a friend about it that evening I came up with an idea. Instead of having six holidays spread from the start of fall to the end of the year, let’s instead have one big holiday that extends from 31 October to 1 January. The name of this combined holiday?

Hal-giv-hanu-mas-za-year.

I know that’s a mouthful, but it does what retailers want to do anyway and make all these holidays one big celebration and marketing opportunity:

Halloween
Thanksgiving
Hanukkah
Christmas
Kwanzaa
New Year’s Eve

I know people will be angry with me, saying each holiday should be its own celebration, and families can celebrate each individual holiday as they choose to do. But I ask you to look at it from a marketing perspective. This way all new holiday decorations can be created for the continuing holiday and this way we won’t be kvetching because Christmas decorations push out the skeletons and tombstones instead of making turkeys and horns of plenty follow the graveyard decorations. Plus, if you use an advent calendar think about how much fun it will be for the young tykes of all ages with an extra month worth of doors to open. What do you guys think? Are you going to join me in wishing people a

Have a Very Happy Hal-giv-hanu-mas-za-year!

(For those who don’t know me that well, my tongue is quite firmly planted in my cheek, but as Aaron Altman says in Broadcast News, “I’m semi-serious here.”)

[Updated] Give the gift of an ebook from Smashwords

December 16, 2013

(Updated 30 December to include screenshots from the newly redesigned Smashwords website. I apologize for not having these screenshots posted sooner.)

So many people have ebook readers and love them, and for those that do some of the best gifts you can give them are more ebooks. Except not only do you have to decide which ebooks to give them, but you also have to make sure you give it to them in the right format for their device. If you’re an iPad user and the person you’re shopping for is a Kindle or Nook user any ebooks from iBooks could be useless to them, and vice versa. But Smashwords has just the thing for you.

(Full disclosure: Smashwords distributes my ebooks to iBooks, Barns & Noble, Kobo, Diesel, and many other ebook stores. They can also distribute to Amazon’s Kindle store but I upload my ebooks directly to Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing program.) more “[Updated] Give the gift of an ebook from Smashwords” …