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I am sitting in my corner office at the lake house. When the kids are playing, I have midday turned on but when it’s just me, I tend to go for midnight.

It’s my virtual office in the virtual lake house in a virtual world. And I was referring to virtual kids. And the virtual me.

Things are finally settled. Home is a region called Lakewood on the Germany-based virtual world, Metropolis Metaversum. I am using the hosting company, Oliveira Virtual Lands, based in Brazil. I placed my order one afternoon and a few hours later, my regions were online. There were a couple problems getting things running but tech support was very responsive and in less than 24 hours time, I am writing my first blog piece while sitting at my desk in my new virtual home.

In story, Artie and his Dad, that’s the other me, Paul Milkwood, spend summers at The Lakehouse and come up often on weekends in the spring and fall.

My second region is Fun Town. It’s presently under construction. The idea is to have a town that looks like you made it in your den - if you had a den the size of a movie set, using building-block style colors. It is something from your imagination but something very basic. It reminds me of Saturday morning cartoons on TV when I was a kid.

I’m planning to have a freebie store which will have items I make in the course of building the town and settling at the lake house. There will be a few other shops and a few homes and a couple of other features such as a library, a bank and a farmer’s market. I’m not going to try to include everything a big city or small town has because there just isn’t enough space.

Fun Town might be a place from Artie’s imagination or it might be a place his friend, the budding super hero Kid Virtual, takes him to with his superpowers. I’m still working out the story that goes with Fun Town. I know some of The Lakehouse story from having it online for three months this past summer when I first began The Artie Project. (It doesn’t really have a formal name, I just made that up now.) I’m really just beginning to formulate the story of Fun Town but I figured out one thing for sure, in Fun Town, it is always 3:00 p.m. AST - After School Time.

I could go on and on right now but I’ll just leave it there for the moment.

Glad to be here.

I feel at home already.