Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Stop Looking at Me!

Regrettably, I Didn't get a snap of Sweetie's prim head.
But just imagine this box covering her face. 

Written 20 June, 2007

Stop Looking At Me!

One of Sweetie’s more endearing traits is her shyness. When it strikes, she is entirely aware of her body, which, of course, makes me even more aware of her body. So I consider it a good thing. (even if her body is nearly a thousand miles away).

When Sweetie is in a shy mood, she doesn’t want me to look at her. “Stop looking at me!,” she says.

At such times, she may pull a prim over her head to restrict my gaze—and, being Sweetie, not just any prim, either, but a tastefully-textured, tweaked, and finessed prim. That’s just Sweetie’s style.

Instead of her face, I get to see a series of textures dance across the surface of the prim that is covering her head.

But Sweetie is overcoming her shyness.

For six months months now, she and I have been chatting in Skype and over the telephone. What a joy to hear her voice when I first awaken, and just before I fall asleep!

And now I can see Sweetie as well.

That’s because her new Mac laptop has a webcam built in. Skype very kindly shows me a video of her.

Except when she’s in a “Stop looking at me” mood. Then she turns the webcam off. But that doesn’t happen very often.

Sweetie has been looking around her apartment for a webcam she has stashed somewhere, but for two reasons—first, because I think she should install it on her own PC, which has no webcam, and second, because I know the condition of her inventory in Second Life (think 1000 objects in the Object Folder, all named “Object”)—I began to think about buying one.

One day last week, while we were chatting, I idly looked on eBay, and there it was—a Logitech webcam, zero bids, opening bid. $.25, S&H $8 US, closing in less than one minute.

I signed in as fast as I could and placed a bid for $5. Then I refreshed the screen and woo hoo, I owned a webcam! I had snagged it for a quarter.

I paid immediately through Paypal, $8.25.

When I got home from Monday, Brown had left a package on my front stoop. And yes, it was the webcam.

I installed the software, plugged in the camera, and suddenly I was looking at myself. And 30 minutes later, Sweetie and I were smiling at one another in Skype while we breezed around the grid.

I’ve never had my image streamed live before, and my usually imperturbable demeanor was perturbed.

I was aware that I was doing my own “Stop looking at me!” with gestures, resting my head on my fist and covering my face with my hand every few seconds.

And even if I hadn’t been aware, I soon would have been, for Sweetie gleefully pointed it out.

By Tuesday, though, I had grown blissfully unselfconscious and more or less ignored the little window showing me as I smiled at the bigger one with Sweetie’s visage.

Such a pretty visage, too!

Sweetie, live, thanks to the Internet!

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