Sponsored Event: The McMillan Ball

Poster by Kahvy Smith

Tonight's the night, you have waited for a whole year. It's time again for The McMillan Ball, a formal dance at Second Pride. Tartan's are highly encouraged for this event.

Ballroom dancing until your feet fall off to music by DJ Kahvy Smith and charming hosting by Garrett Smith.

This event is sponsored by Bock in SecondLife.

The McMillan Ball, Today at 2-4PM SLT

Bock in SecondLife is happy to invite all of it's readers and their friends to The McMillan Ball at Second Pride Festival, today between 2-4PM SLT.

The ball will be lead by DJ Kahvy and his host Garrett. Don't know the dances? No worries, just follow Kahvy's suggestions in local chat.

We suggest you come in formal attire - and tartans are highly encouraged - but no one will be kicked out for attending in jeans or beachwear.

The ball will take place at the main stage of Second Pride (SLurl).

It's Pride Week!

The Second Pride Festival starts today!

I will be there and to flaunt my pride and my colors, to meet old friends and new ones and to enjoy as many of the events as I possibly can - given the restrictions set by timezones. However, as I have wisely planned my vacation to start at the same time as the festival I should be able to be on later than usually.

You can find the festival schedule of events on the Second Pride website here. (Please note that the schedule is subject to change, so check it every day to make certain there haven't been any changes affecting your plans.)

The events of the first day include the opening ceremonies with
4-6 PM - DJ Wes at the main stage (SLurl)
6-8 PM - DJ Shep at the main stage (SLurl)
8-10 PM - DJ Regi at the main stage (SLurl)

Besides these scheduled events there are lots of other things to do and enjoy on the three sims.

The Second Pride Parade is tomorrow Saturday 10 AM-12 PM (noon).

The parade starts after one of the most important events of the Pride Festival, which of course is The McMillan Parade Ball, 8-10 AM at the main stage (SLurl) with The Smith Boys (DJ Kahvy and host Garrett).

This is a formal event so dress to your teeth! Tartans are highly encouraged, but not required. This event is sponsored by Bock in SecondLife.

Ballooning at the Blake Sea (Updated with SLurl)

The invention of the GPS (Global Positioning System) and its adaptation and application for civilian use have improved my quality of life with at least 5%. It has saved me countless of hours of being lost and searching for the correct direction to go and of making excuses for being late.

I actually like getting lost sometimes, because then I get to go places and meet people I wouldn't have encountered otherwise, but most of the time I simply want to get from point A to point B as fast and easily as possible. Of course I have used written directions earlier and sometimes even maps, but it is so much easier to find your way with a GPS.

My lacking of sense of direction has undoubtedly stopped me from certain activities in first life, and perhaps even in SecondLife. 

 After the party at Whim - Part Deux yesterday evening Tomais suggested that we and Guyke should go ballooning. I was a little hesitant, but allowed myself to go along with the idea. Afterall "Home" is only a teleport away in SecondLife.

First we went to buy some amazing balloons. They were sold for L$10 and parachutes for L$0 by a fabulous creator who had left SecondLife after being dejected and upset by some changes Linden Lab had made to Marketplace. You can get the balloon and parachute here Abbotts Aeronautics (SLurl).

We promptly unpacked the balloons and Tomais took us to a location at the Blake Sea to start our adventure. First we simply had to - of course -texturize our balloons, which was easy with the beautiful textures that Tomais provided and a texture-HUD. (In the middle of the trip I felt adventurous enough to change my balloons texture to the McMillan tartan and Guyke changed textures too, which is why you see our balloons with different textures in the pictures.) That being done, we were ready for take off.

Tomais was an excellent instructor and was completely calm the whole time, although he himself crashed and had to relog in the middle of it all. He found us easily and hitched a ride on my balloon for the remainder of the trip. I felt very safe with his voice in my ears telling us how to maneuver the vessels, what speed and height to set and which direction to fly. 

A cute ass I happened to see over the sea 

Ah, I knew I recognized it!

We had a fantastic time up there in the air, but at some point we would have to land and I was a little worried about that part. What if I made a total fool of myself and landed us in the middle of the sea? Tomais shared some misadventures that had occurred the first times he had tried it, no doubt to take away some of our worries of feeling like fools.

Le Petit Prince

I needn't have worried though, because I did a perfect landing on the small island that Tomais had chosen, well apart from dunking the two of us in water briefly before hitting the designated landing spot dead-center. I was jubilant and elated over my fantastic achievement, Guyke was thrilled too because he also had a safe landing, but not as wonderful as mine. (I will never confess to Guyke, but between us I believe I had some really good beginners luck going for me there.)

OhioMike's Kilt Party

Tuesday evening (4-6 PM SLT) it was time for OhioMike's Kilt Party at the Second Pride Festival with Mike's hubby Hotboy as DJ, of course. I simply had to go, because - as everyone who knows me knows - I love tartan's and firmly believe that there isn't anything sexier than a man in tartan.

At a tartan party it is proper and fitting to come in your tartan, naked or splashed in colors. (Bear suits are acceptable if the person is completely covered in the skin.) Coming to a tartan party in anything except the three options mentioned is a social blunder of a magnitude equivalent to showing up at a royal wedding in dirty jeans and a torn t-shirt. Special dispensation for faux pas' from the rule are given to
1) Americans
2) Stunning beauties
3) Extreme youth and
4) Diagnosed idiots.

The venue was full of hunky men and a few women when I arrived. The music was loud and good, the DJ was loud and the crowd was loud, lewd and fun.

Benja & Ryce (Special dispensation by points 1 and 2 of the rules)
Benja being a Spaniard should know better, but his beauty saves him once again

Petr, Ty & Vaan

Myself and Marcellias

An unknown beautiful American man (Special dispensation by points 1 and 2 of the rules)

Please note! The party was open to everyone, in kilt or not. I just made up the rules and special dispensations to tease my friends Ryce and Benja.

Parading the Colors

When I put in my order for the McMillan tartan with full regalia for my buddy sirhc DeSantis, the beautiful designer Elle74 Zaftig ordered her seamstresses to work at full speed. With the delivery of sirhc´s present she also gifted me a full new outfit of the newly designed version.

I absolutely love it, so after the photo exhibition I took a walk around the estates. Although it was a windy evening the cold breezes didn´t get at my ba...uhmmm testis, not much anyhow. All was calm on the sim and all the animals were accounted for.

On the picture you see me parading the clan-colors next to a jar made by the artist Second Renoir. She is according to rumor actually a well known artist in first life also. She is also the first life sister of Mrs. Blanche cbreak.

I have quite a few of those jars placed around the sim, they are great focal-points.

My First Vampire Wedding

Of course I know a few vampires in Second Life, who doesn´t? Vampires, ogres, demons and all kinds of scary creatures are rampant in SL, along with some angels and furries too. But tonight was the night I was going to take part in my first festive event among the creatures of darkness, rather than just visiting a vampire sim.

The dress code
I had been thinking of this function ever since Orchid Arado and Yannis Martynov sent me the invitation to their wedding. The bride and groom asked for goth clothing in the invitation, but both of them told me to turn up in my family tartans anyway. They both know me well, and are accustomed to my tartan fetisch.

As a good guest always should, I wanted to follow the guidelines anyway and had thought out a brilliant plan to accommodate both the asked for attire and my fetisch. I was going to buy the beautiful Balmoral tartan at my favourite tartan store in SL, Bellissima. The Bellissima store is owned and operated by the supreme tartan maker Elle74 Zaftig. She has been a friend of mine ever since I first custom ordered my family tartan, The McMillan.

The Balmoral tartan is black, white,red and grey and would fit the goth theme nicely I thought. Unfortunately when I went to the store I found that Elle had moved it and had not yet set up all her tartans at the new location. What a blunder on my part, I should of course have talked to her when I got the idea instead of waiting til the last hours before the ceremony! Anyhow I ended up going to the function in my family rags.

The gift

I thought long and hard on this issue also. What was a good gift that both of them could enjoy? Then I remembered the "TenderLove 3.0 Animator" by Kizmet Kidd. (Uhmmmm no, she is not a friend of mine - yet!).  This was the perfect gift I thought.

My heterosexual friends, both women and men, praise it highly and tell me it is the most realistic, thoughtful, intimate sexual experience.

I found it on Xstreet, yes I am shopping there again altho I swore never to do so when they decided about the new rules, but I am simply to lazy sometimes.

Now I encountered a new obstacle! The damn thing was no transfer, which meant I just couldn´t simply buy it and wrap it up and give it to one of them. Instead I had to wait for one of them to come online before sending it. But to whom should I send it, Orchid or Yannis?

I called for a crisis conference in the swedish group chat "Swedish People in SL", the people there are awesome and have always come to my aid whenever I needed it. After some discussion I was told by the girls it would be best to send it to Yannis, as the guy needs to get on the HUD first anyway.

So when Yannis came online about two hours prior to the ceremony I sent the gift to him. I also made two gift boxes to give to each of them after the ceremony. The gift boxes only contained a congratulatory message and informed both of them about the gift I had already sent to Yannis. The message ended with the three rules I think should guide every relationship in SL, or RL for that matter.

1. Respect yourself

2. Respect your partner

3. Respect the love you have for each other.

There! All preparations were done and I was finally ready for the event.

The ceremony
I arrived to the venue of the ceremony about 20 minutes early, which was lucky because the lag was terrible from the start and didn´t get better as more guests came into the sim. I was at the venue in total about 120 minutes and still after all that time some of the textures and avatars hadn´t loaded.

I had to pull down the drawdistance for fear of crashing, which had an adverse effect on the quality of the pictures I took but I will post them anyhow.

Entering the church I met the largest assembly of vampires, ogres, demons and other monsters that I have ever encountered. They all looked amazingly beautiful with some of the most creative avatars I have seen. I felt a bit like "fresh meat" or "fresh blood" but they were all in non-combative mode and very nice to me. There were a few others in human avatars, but all of them had the vampire-titler over their heads giving their health status so I guess I was the only non-vampire present.

The master of ceremonies (above)

The ceremony was rather traditional, albeit with a few minor deviations. Not unlike many other similar events in SL, the guests found the need to constantly interrupt the ceremony with "emotions", speach or sounds, even if they had been asked to shut up already at the beginning.

Still it was a very beautiful and touching ceremony! Orchid and Yannis looked stunning, as they always do. I was happy and relieved to see my hero finally taken into safe harbor in the loving arms of Orchid!

Love you both, guys!

Have a long and happy partnership for many, many years to come!