Now we are seven

The Birthday Party is like any other family festivity: you find yourself tripping over dull relatives chirping the same-old same-old; (alleged) Funny Uncles come out of the woodwork, while sharp-eyed old biddies tut-tut at all and sundry. There's always somebody's dad making a long and boring keynote speech, and a lot of nay-sayers neighing about it afterwards, and pie fights, yummy. And the Attention-seeking Cousin is there with an inappropriate gift, and her Attention Deficient cronies are all ooh-ing and aah-ing about it, as if this doesn't happen single every time there's a get-together with a capital G.
This is why I don't do family dos, as a general rule. However, handsome hunk and part-time purveyor of cold drinks Eli Schlegal offered to tp me to UpsideDown and I couldn't say no.

It's in the TOS.
If you've ever wondered what the Linden Homes look like - you know, the ones touted on the 'Premium Account' ad? - wonder no more.  Here they are, in mini version. At least, I hope so. Not sure how those A frames can possibly be cam friendly. The designs reflect the same cutting-edge forethought that put 'Stop Animating My Avatar' in the 'Advanced' tab in 2.0. I took the weight off and admired the view, not sure what Eli's doing, you'll have to use your own imagination. Try to keep it PG or better.

We went to see Babel which is a translating device by Peter Stindberg. Particle words in a bunch of different languages were floating up into the air, very effective marketing tool for a wordlover like me, and there were lots of explanatory boards, which of course I didn't read.

It's obviously a brilliant piece of engineering, but in his profile Peter refers to RL as FL, which always sounds like swearing to me, so I didn't buy one, if indeed the device was for sale. My Competent Partner was whispering stuff out of context, and that distracted me. Plus I had clearly overdone it with the pixel punch.

The cool part of an extended-family kneesup is that you might come across new and exciting people. We popped over to sim Contradiction to see Sunman Loring's ubercool Frontier Spaceport display, it was fun just trying out the upholstery, maybe one day I'll be able to afford one of these babies for myself. Hint hint, Eli.

If that's not enough testosterone for ya, there's a giant ball machine right next door! *it's kinetic*!! Argos Hawks made this chaos machine in two bits in contrasting styles, in honour of the holiday theme, which you may have thought was Unbridled Linden-bashing, but that's more of a yearlong celebration than a Birthday treat.

Nice to see that Argos gives credit to a RL machine maker as well as to the SL creatives whose work is used in his installation - now there's a cause to get behind: giving credit where it's due, instead of tacitly passing off other people's work as your own.

I also really liked the machine called Timeline by GM Nikolaidis. When you click on the number boards, things magically appear in a way I'm not prepared to describe in this post, and there's a free gift. Try it out!
The unexpected goings-on continued when we got to Portucalis.

I had no idea Mr Schlegal was such a Portugeezer, he answered all my questions in surprising detail. We spent ages here, and tried all the activities indicative of the Land and its Culture, que graça! I hope the rest of you had as much fun at the party. It's easy - be careful not to make eye contact with the sermonizers, and keep circulating.