Second Life Steals, Deals, and Freebies: Free Angel Wings!

If you act quickly, you can pick up a free pair of beautiful, Bento angel wings for your Second Life avatar. Join the Blueberry group for L$20, and check the group notices for a HUD. Simply attach the HUD and click on it, and you will be awarded L$350 in free store credit for Blueberry!

Of course, the sim where the Blueberry store is jam-packed with avatars at the moment, so unless you have a Premium account, or use a handy tool like the Teleport Hammer, you are unlikely to get in to use those credits before they expire in a week. However, you can easily get into the two neighbouring sims, and do some cam shopping! (Here’s a blogpost with all the information you need to cam shop. All you need to do is change a couple of settings in your SL viewer, and you’re all set to go!)

You’ll have to use your camera to hunt through the store to find the angel wings, though (it’s located to the right of the grand staircase):

These wings come in a variety of colours, and the package includes Bento and non-Bento (static) versions. Just right-click on the shade you desire, select Menu, then choose to pay using your store credits. Each pair of wings costs L$250, so you still have L$100 left over to put towards another purchase.

The wings are unisex and work just as well for male avatars as for female ones, as you can see here:

In fact, over the past couple of years I have been steadily using the generous Blueberry free store credits given away at various events like the Shop and Hop, to build a small inventory of angel wings for each of my Second Life alts! (Hey, you never know when a halo and pair of angel wings come in handy 😉 )

The credits are only good for another week, so don’t delay!

Here’s the SLURL for the Blueberry store, and the SLURLs for the two neighbouring sims (for cam-shopping purposes) are here and here. Like I said, you’ll have better luck with the latter SLURLs than trying to hammer your way into the main store sim.

Happy shopping!

Editorial: Somewhere Down the Road (Finding Comfort During a Coronavirus Pandemic)

Vince Gill and Amy Grant on last night’s Opry Livestream

I grew up listening to Amy Grant. I owned all of her vinyl albums in those halcyon, pre-compact-disc days, and my church youth group would always head out to see her perform whenever she came to Winnipeg. Even though I now consider myself an atheist, I still turn to her music for comfort in times of stress and anxiety, depression and despair. Her soothing alto voice in well-known songs is still a respite, an oasis, a retreat. Despite my change in circumstances, I am still an unabashed fan.

Many LGBTQ people, like myself, have complicated, convoluted, and contentious personal histories with organized religion. For example, I met my wife through that same Lutheran church youth group and, like the two well-raised Transcona Lutherans we were, we followed the dictates and strictures of our church and got married (I was 24 and a virgin). After a painful short marriage, and our separation and divorce, we both came out of the closet. (The dress my ex-wife wore for our official engagement photo was later donated to a Toronto drag queen.)

Last night, in an empty Grand Old Opry, Vince Gill and Amy Grant and their daughters put on a livestreamed performance (which you can watch here, the show starts at the 30:00 mark).

And I must admit I got chills down my spine when Amy sang her song Somewhere Down the Road, to which I know all the words by heart:

So much pain and no good reason why
You’ve cried until the tears run dry
And nothing here can make you understand
The one thing that you held so dear
Is slipping from your hands
And you say

Why, why, why
Does it go this way
Why, why, why
And all I can say is

Somewhere down the road
There’ll be answers to the questions
Somewhere down the road
Though we cannot see it now
Somewhere down the road
You will find mighty arms reaching for you
And they will hold the answers at the end of the road

Amy Grant, Vince Gill, and their daughters perform to a deserted Grand Old Opry

I hope that you also find some comfort in these difficult days, wherever that might be. Reach out to your friends and family, via FaceTime or Discord or Skype, to support each other. March has been a hard month, and April is going to be even harder.

I have kept my list of mental health resources during the coronavirus pandemic up-to-date as I find new items to share.