So I’ll be hosting Mary and Joseph, and the way it will work is that Petronella Piers will hand the figures off to me, and then I will probably be handing them off after my event to another virtual parishioner, Harper Ganesvoort. The house is in the late stages of the third rebuild, and I think I’ll be ready by the 6th to have friends over who can help me warm it up.
All are welcome to come December 6th at 3pm SLT at my home in Tintafel.
There is an old Mexican tradition called Posada in which the young people of the community would dress up as Mary and Joseph and go from house to house in the village. They asked for a room for the night and announced to the people that Jesus was soon to be born. A full scale nativity play was then acted out on Christmas Eve at their church and the stable scene was completed with Mary and Joseph.
This tradition is celebrated nowadays with figures of Mary and Joseph being hosted in different places each night of Advent. When they stay in a place it offers a chance for a party for friends and family of the host. The form this takes varies but may include worship and carols and a telling of the message of Christmas and perhaps food and drink. It’s more important that it’s a time of gathering together than that it is something elaborate.
The building project took a turn for the better today, I hope; although my friend Mistletoe was dubious, I tried using a type of prim called a “sculptie” today to replace a wall or two, and liked the result well enough that I ended up replacing almost everything except the kiva-like circular room and the floors/ceilings.
Sculpties are pretty weird – they are apparently “stitched” toward a center point to pull the edges in different directions. At least, that was the term used on one of my edit/build screens. So I pushed and pulled and cloned one little 0.5 cubic meter “rounded cube” into what you see here.
I’m still learning how to manipulate the shapes and there’s a ton yet more to learn about how to do things more accurately and with less “hands-on” dragging and stretching. But I’m pretty happy with the result, and I’m reaching the point where I need to make sure that everything is linked up and “stored” safely in my inventory. I will probably pull back on some of the extra prims (decorative beams, etc.) if necessary because some of the “STEAM hunt” furniture that I like so much is pretty intense on prims. So far I haven’t had to buy any textures (or learn how to make them and upload them) but the ladders are kind of thrown together anyhow at the moment.
And I still need to get a colorful awning up on the second floor terrace, because the Albuquerque house had a patio awning, and it’s pretty much required (there’s a funny memory associated with it). It’s all to do with memories of home (although some of the memories are actually details from my later childhood in Utah; little things left around the house as if momentarily forgotten).
Invitations for the party should go out by tomorrow, I have some time between RL events. And then I’ll need to figure out how to do the “random gift giver” thing (saw a script somewhere) and get some furniture made or pulled out of inventory.