now i have land. i really didn't plan it this way.... my first plan was to snap up as much cheap "first land" as i legally could and sell it for an obscene profit. of course, linden labs did away with the first land program shortly before i went premium. probably because of all the people making an obscene profit from first land. which -- i must point out -- was not the newbies buying it, but the scammers buying it from them for the amazing price of 2L per square meter. yes, double your money back! what a bargain!
      okay, so the second plan went something like this: well, i need some of my own land to have a fixed location for my shop/vendors. land to have my slboutique server object sitting on 24/7 and not have to worry about picking up the server and shlepping it to another mall booth every now and again.
      and land is... expensive. and how do i even know what a good price is? and if i DO find a parcel with a good price, how do i decide if it is a good one that i will like? will it be in a mature sim with lots of smut all around? surrounded by ad farms? floundering in serious lag all the time? and by the time i go look at this nicely-priced plot, and figure out the traffic, and the neighbors and all... it'll probably be two or three weeks later, and someone will have bought it all up and turned around to sell it for even more money!

      one day, i went to a seminar on buying land. which wasn't actually given, because the speaker couldn't make it. but i got some notes, and in the notes was some tips on searching, and a really GOOD tip on reading the sim stats.
      so i plugged in 512 lots, max of 6k ells (i tried 5k, but no dice). sorted by cheapest, and went bopping around looking at plots, doing nothing more than window-shopping, really. nothing serious.
      and i ended up in some rainy, dreary, foggy place. cool for a gothic castle, i suppose. cheap because... its rainy, dreary, foggy, and rocky. mmmm... yeah. oh, and here was one i could see on the map was gonna be hell, because somebody cut up a buncha 16sm plots near it. forget that blight.

      finally, somehow, i ended up looking at one realtor's plot in some sim or other because i was curious as to their holdings (and these mythical <6K waterfront plots). and i noticed that about 80% of the sim was owned by one group, and was taken up by a large elven forest. another slice, between the forest and the strip of plots for sale, was owned by a group dedicated to responsible land development. even better, the sim stats were sublime! no lag, few scripts... no cluttered living spaces, no giant malls... this could rock! zooming the map out, i could see some nearby sims still in auction. (and a lot of plots in nearby sims all yellow and for sale.) must be a brand new class 5, eh?
      the thing was, this 512 plot i was looking at was a tad more expensive than the cheapest-most i WAS looking at. plus it was on the border of this nice sim, and across the border the whole sim was full of parcels for sale. who knows WHAT would go up in there? and who knows who would buy the parcels on either side of this plot.
      so i decided to landmark the spot and come back next week and see.
      and then i thought, next week, this thing is gonna be snapped up and even more expensive.
      and then i thought, no no no, i am going to have land maybe six months down the road or so. right now, my speed is 50-60 ells per week at a mall.
      and THEN i thought... the heck with all my really really BAD snap decisions, this looks right, it feels right, i've got the ells to cover it....
...so i bought it.


      i was alternately appalled and totally chuffed that i had land. :) by and large, i've grown used to the idea... and i'm still happy with it.
      my first plan was to dig a deep hole and put my shop in a cave, after paving over the hole with some prim ground. ah, well, that plan sucked. the forest floor didn't match the surrounding rock (make no mistake, im on a rocky hillside, not very grassy), it was flat, and the cave had a lumpy floor, and was cramped, and hard to move the camera around....
      so now i have version 2. my shop is on a sky platform (a nifty one, if i do say so myself), and the ground has a three-tiered slope. my yin & yang grotto is there, along with a swing. a waterfall and pool for sitting around. trees and plants.
      and i don't want my land to be some roped-off private residence (i'd never "live" in a mature sim, anyway. besides, im in second life, im WORKING!). i wanted a place the neighbors could enjoy as an extention of their yard, and people could ride their horses across from the next sim over to the elven forest. stuff like that. (of course, the fool realtors in the next sim jacked the parcel land heights up, and the north edge that i HAD smoothly blending there is now down a short cliff. have to see what the buyers do with it.)

      so my place is called Mythical Grove, located in Secret Smile. click the covenant stone for my land usage rules. and, of course, visit the sky shoppe. ;)