My office in the ITRT Retreat is located on the third floor of the treehouse. I had the most difficult time trying to decide how to furnish it. Did I really want a desk and chair in Second Life? What on earth would I do with them? I don’t even have a desk of my own in my Real Life job, but that’s a sad story for another blog.

So, since I love playing the piano, and I wanted something that absolutely could not happen in Real Life, I decided to furnish my treehouse office with my favorite instrument. After many hours of searching and playing, I decided on the Blueberry Hill version at Serendipity Studios.

The piano came bundled with several different candelabras that were absolutely beautiful but way too high prim to keep out on the floor. They will be saved for special occasions only. Wow, talk about transforming a treehouse!

The piano also came with a selection of 12 songs from the 50’s.

My partner in crime, Tyna, returned recently to SL, much to my joy, and she took a turn playing a lovely rendition of “Peggy Sue.”

So, please come visit us at the ITRT Retreat and teleport to the third floor of the treehouse. Have a seat on the piano bench and click on the keys to start the music. Have fun, and send me a picture!

Well, my good friend Tyna seems to have no time to join me in Second Life these days. She hasn’t been in world with me in what seems like forever. I’m growing lonely as well as tired of working on the retreat, not being sure if what I’m doing is even ok. So, since she’s not around, and since I’m getting a bit bored, it’s time for a change!

Meet Pammie Freenote, my new friend! She was just born today, so she still has on her new furry outfit. Cute, huh?

Pammie has a bit of a knack for interior decorating, so she went to work on Tyna’s office. She tried so hard to make it look like a comfortable, homey place. She even added a jack-o-lantern since autumn is just a few days away.

Hmmm, looks like she’s suspended in space above that chair seat! Don’t you just love the flamingo peering out the window? And where did that parrot come from? Looks just like the one I found in the apartment. Sure hope Tyna likes Pammie’s work, if she ever returns!

I’ve been working on getting the ITRT Retreat ready for primetime, and in the process, I’ve learned a lot about the more technical aspects of this vast new world. We needed a bridge, and I could not find one that wasn’t either too high prim or just too fancy for a woodsy setting, so I decided to try my hand at building. My first stop was Ivory Tower, a very impressive site containing numerous tutorials and examples for using the building tools already available in Second Life. After spending a couple of days with those lessons, I was able to create a bridge that I think will work out just fine.

Next came some exploration with the SL scripting language. We wanted to allow avatars to choose from a list of landmarks when they click on a prim rather than just giving them a dozen landmarks one after the other. I finally found an example that changed the chat window colors using llDialog, so at least I knew what the proper function was. After a few visits to the Linden Scripting Language Portal, I was able to create a dropdown type box with the choices as button labels. After that little adventure, I found that I had a wealth of free scripts from various sources that were easily edited to meet our needs. Many thanks to the SL community for doing an outstanding job of commenting and documenting every script I have opened.

Finally, all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, so it was time to lighten up a bit. We put two innertubes in the creek for folks to ride. The script had to be altered to allow everyone to ride, not just the owners, but it works now! I found a plastic float that I placed under the waterfall. You never know when you just need a nice relaxing float trip under a cool mist. In the Recreation Center, there is a tictactoe board on the wall, a beach ball that responds to touch, and a trampoline that bounces you up to the ceiling. There are other goodies free for the taking in each cabin and hidden in one of the caves.

OK, back to scripting….but I’d much rather be relaxing underneath that waterfall!

Well, I went on a trip overseas and Tyna developed our new property on EduIsland 3. Wow! What a terrific job she did! We now have a waterfall cave, another cave, a treehouse, three cabins, and a campfire. Tyna even terraformed the land so we have a stream flowing through the cave with the waterfall. Now the hard part begins…deciding how we can actually use this property for something for other educators to use, especially those folks in Virginia.

We spent several hours brainstorming and came up with the following ideas:

Treehouse ~ 3 levels: each of us will have an office and the other level will be a meeting spot

Cabins ~ a center for ITRT specific resources, an educational center, and a fun spot

Campfire ~ a relaxing place for impromptu meetings

Cave ~ bloggers cave

Waterfall cave ~ no educational purpose at present, but it certainly is pretty!

Well, maybe its purpose is pure fun, and at the end of the day, what educator doesn’t appreciate a little fun?

My friend Tyna and I got tired of not having a place to call our own, so we rented an apartment on Eduisland II. Actually, Laelia was kind enough to give us a tour of her place and answered lots of our questions about renting an apartment of our own. Before we knew it, we had moved into the apartment right above hers.

We started digging out furniture from our inventories to decorate our new digs. We have a balcony on both sides of the building too. Actually, we did have an awesome view of the sea, but the builders of the new ISTE island decided to put up a mountain right beside us, so that definitely blocked the lovely view. In fact, our building owner decided to move the entire building to the other side of Eduisland! We had to pack up all of our belongings and move to the new place. Our apartment overlooks a volcano which looks rather ominous in the evening, but I doubt if it will erupt any time soon. We are near the Discovery Education home and have lots of ISTE neighbors.