Some days feel better than others...this is not one of those days.

Okay, so this will be a downer of a post. Not having posted in a while, I suppose I should put this off, but it will be mercifully short and I will have fulfilled my writing requirement for the day.

So today was simply one of those days. We all have them. A day that, while you cannot exactly pinpoint the reason, nothing quite fits. Nothing quite feels the say it should. The day just sucks. And, unfortunately, it is only half over.

I'm not saying it was a horrific day. Nothing like the day most of the South experienced last week. Not even close to that. And yet, I've yet to feel a smile coming on since I got out of bed. I am sad, mad, depressed. I'm unmotivated to do anything that would resemble work. I am...stuck.

But work I must, and so I will attempt to move again. This time maybe out the door...

Next post will be better.

Let's do the time warp...again.

The freakiest thing in SL is not that you can fly, that your neighbor is a werewolf, or that men sometimes refer to you as "hun."

No, the freakiest thing is the SL time warp. In Second Life, a conversation can take all night, marriages can begin and end in a week, and at four years old, you are no longer young, you are middle aged.

It is really hard to explain, but those who have experienced it know that what I'm saying is true. Time passes both eerily fast and amazingly slowly once you log in. I know people who have met, fallen in love and gotten engaged overnight. Relationships tend to end as quickly, probably due to do the ease with which you may extricate yourself from an unpleasant situation. But I digress. The thing is, the speed at which these relationships form is rarely actually felt by either party. They seem to experience it in slow motion.

I've experienced the SLTW when I am doing something as simple as changing my outfit. This simple task, seemingly taking place in minutes, can in reality suck down hours of your time, especially if you are doing it in the evening. You find yourself, more often than not, logging out at two AM, wondering how that happened...again.

So I decided to invest in a little tool called "Time Out." You can download it at http://www.dejal.com/timeout/

It is a "Break reminder tool with micro-breaks" according to the company. It is for Macs only, and it is very cool. It literally dims your computer monitor at designated intervals (I set mine up for 20 minutes), reminding you, visually, to get up, stretch, eat, go to the bathroom, whatever, but GET UP.

I was amazed and excited ...initially. I would get up, stretch, etc. But then, inevitably, I started hitting the snooze button. And eventually, yes, I turned it off completely. I just couldn't take the pressure.

Still it is a very good tool for those who need an extra boot to get off the box.

And who knows, maybe I'll turn it back on, when I have a minute.

Who I am and what's my connection to Race Bannon? I'm glad you asked.

I'm living in a virtual world and I am a virtual girl (apologies to Madonna).

Seriously, this blog will be from my perspective as a resident of the virtual world of Second Life. For the most part, I'll just be documenting my experiences and thoughts as I attempt to make sense of the world around me and my own place in that world. I am attempting to make my RL (first life) living there, so I will probably refer to that life from time to time, but for the most part, I want to keep this purely Second Life.

However, I will take a brief detour into RL to explain the title of my blog.

So...Race Bannon?

Yeah...Race Bannon.

I blame him for the fact that I ended up in Second Life. He was the was the sexiest male cartoon character on television when I was growing up. He co-starred, for those who don't know, in the animated tv series, "Jonny Quest" and he made my little girl heart go pit-a-pat.

I mean, come on!
- Tall, handsome, and rugged, but intellectual enough to hang with Dr. Benton Quest, scientist extraordinaire, and secure enough in his masculinity to play nanny to Jonny and Hadji.

- His voice was to die for and his judo-chopping, jet-flying, khaki-clad body, AND movie star gorgeous looks were more than enough to keep me watching every week.

- He had a "mysterious past" and a "mysterious old flame" named Jade, who manages to pop up in a couple of episodes just in time to save his butt, lay a passionate kiss on him, then disappear into the night (for me, the "disappear" part was her best feature).


To a young girl in the 60's, Race Bannon's cartoon status hardly mattered. He was still sexy. Well, as much as I could understand sexy at, oh, how old was I ? Ah, thank goodness for Wikipedia! I was six years old and Race Bannon had rocked my still very new world, 2D or not. I just knew that if I were a cartoon, he would so be my boyfriend. Just like, oh I don't know, Archie - the cute redhead of comic book and Saturday morning animated TV show, fame. He had red hair and he played a guitar in a band. Sigh. Still, I wasn't too serious about him. The fact that he was too dumb to see Betty, not Veronica, was the girl for him kept him from being Mr. Cartoon dream boy.

But what about the Saturday morning comic book hero guys, who might ask? Superman? Batman? Well, the truth is, those guys were not, well, real enough to be cute to me. They were too, um , cartoon-y. Of course that doesn't explain my attraction to Ben Grimm, The Ever-Lovin' Blue-Eyed Thing of Fantastic Four fame...but there's no accounting for taste. Anyway, the only super hero who held my attention was SpiderMan, and that was mainly because he was cool and funny like, you got it, Race Bannon.

So, did I go "in world" to Second Life to find my Race Bannon? Hardly. But I did want to live in that world a cartoon world. Not the world of Bugs Bunny. That would be just weird. I just wanted to be a cartoon cutie-pie. Like Josie and the Pussycats. Like Judy Jetson. Like Archie's should-have-been-girlfriend, Betty. Smart, funny, and cute as a button.

So that's it? Is that all I wanted? Well, no, I don't think that I still have what I want straight in my own head, that was part of it. But I got much more than that in SL and have made a good life for myself. And though I've never met a man who lives up to Race Bannon there, maybe its because I'm not looking. Guys come and go in SL, but the ideal guy for me came along in RL long before Suzy was born.

So that's it! My first blog post. I hope that , in the weeks and months to come, I can keep you interested. I think Suzy's life is pretty interesting.

And, yeah, she's pretty cute too. Race Bannon would definitely take a second look. :)

Peace