And if you don't know what all that means, never mind. It's virtual reality housework.

I don't want to give up entirely on my online commitments. I love designing virtual rooms. I have such a good time trying for maximum description with minimum space. I am lucky enough to have had a big part in writing the geography of both RiverMOO and ElderMOO; this means I got to shape the flow of rooms and create the architecture of the shared space. In the public rooms I am limited to one paragraph. But for my private rooms I can expand to two. Here is my current room at River:

Golden light washs across an airy room painted a pale yellow. Bright tropical prints cover plump cushions and pillows on wicker furniture. Bleached plank floors feel cool underfoot. Great branching corals are set like exotic forests around clear bottles. Each bottle is filled with seashells, coloured glass, sand, and tiny freshwater pearls. A saltwater aquarium takes up most of one wall; against another, a grand four-poster bed in the Dutch colonial style is made up in white antique linens.

A palmetto ceiling fan turns lazily in the center. Bronze bells sound their low tones in the wind when it gusts off the ocean. Through the window you can look down into the clear, cerulean blue shallows of the shoreline. The quicksilver darting of rainbow-tinted fish among the seaweed and anemones of the coral reef is hypnotic. At night, the pale globes of fishermen's lights scattered across the lagoon wink like tiny, fallen stars.

I take great pleasure in imagining different style rooms, trying to come up with just the right words to evoke the mood I want. Maybe that seems silly, a waste of time. I don't care. It's satisfying, and exercises my creativity. Many MOO and MUD users have no time for such stuff. They give it a derogatory name: tinyscenery. Tough nuts, I say. Design all the code you want, I'll be here working on my rooms.

The truth is, I'm a frustrated interior designer. That's why I read so many magazines like Architectural Digest, and World of Interiors, and Metropolitan Home. I adore decorating. I love changing things around; you may have noticed how often I fool with my diary's index page, and of course I'm always messing about with my hair's color and length. I move pictures and furniture around in my house all the time. If I didn't spend all my spare money on travel I might easily be the sort of person who redid her house every two years. You'd be able to remember when you came to see me by recalling what period I was influenced by.

"We stopped by during her Italian Renaissance period, remember? The heavy furniture that you kept bumping into? All those tapestries?"

"No, I think it was the Scottish Highlands period. I definitely remember tartan and some sort of great hairy wolfhound."

"That was her husband."

"Oops."

Well, it's certainly a possibility one of these years. Meanwhile, I'll keep working out color schemes and design ideas in virtual reality. It's so much cheaper that way.

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