Yet another sporadic update!

Ooog, Tuesday already! Thankfully it's a short week this week, we have Friday off for the 4th of July holiday, since that falls on Saturday this year.

WoW happenings over the weekend..

Saraabi finally transferred to Cenarion Circle. She has yet to tank anything, but there she is. A bit more committed to doing her Jewelcrafting daily, as well as a number of others, including the Argent Tournament. She'll be an Exalted Champion of Exodar soon I think! I need to work on running instances with her more though. I'm out of practice with her rotation, and I'm afraid that I'll mess things up. But the only way to get back INTO practice is to actually run stuff. So I'm going to have to suck it up and just go and hope for the best.

I also started her on fishing, so that she'll be able to do the Dalaran fishing dailies, and also supply herself with buff food at some point. She started out in Stormwind, and then moved to Ironforge, since I didn't see any reason for her not to try for Old Ironjaw. Asara has yet to catch that crafty little bugger. Imagine my surprise when an achievement popped up before she'd even caught 50 fish. That's not even since achievements came out, that's ever.

Inspired by this success, I logged Asara on and took her out to Terokkar Forest for another try at Mr. Pinchy. All through BC that crusty crustacean evaded her, and the few tries since Wrath had come out had left her empty-handed as well. So cue yet more surprise when, on the fourth Mixed Highland School, what should pop up in the loot window but Mr. Pinchy himself. And on my first use, voila! Mr. Pinchy's Magical Crawdad Box! That leaves two very difficult achievements for her to do in order to get the Salty title. One is to fish up a rare fish, and the other is to win the Fishing Extravaganza in Stranglethorn. She'll be fishing herring pools in Northrend for a while now in hopes of either a. the Dark Herring, or b. a Sea Turtle mount. Or maybe both!

Finally, last night my little Cenarion Circle Warlock (Rootbeer) hit level 30 and learned her Felsteed. And I boggled when I looked through her spellbook and couldn't find the summon spell. Only to have hubby look over my shoulder and say, "Um, honey, I think it's in with her mounts." Oh yeah. Right. Gotcha. Tonight he said he'll help her get her felhound.

It's been pretty quiet on the home front for the most part. Andy's enjoying his vacation, he was building with hubby's massive box of Legos yesterday. This weekend will be a bit of traveling, as hubby heads out to pick out fireworks for Saturday, and also we'll be attending my brother's birthday party for his daughter. Thankfully we'll have Sunday to recover, because this month is going to be absolute madness for me at work. Everyone in my department has at least one or two days off this month. I think I have four days that are not dedicated to covering for someone. Yee-ha.

So many things to talk about!

Firstly, let me say a big Happy Birthday to my friend Gracie!

Secondly, it's hard to believe that Michael Jackson is gone. I grew up with his music, in fact, I have several fond memories of dressing up with my friends and dancing around the living room to the Thriller album. I hope that people will remember him for his music and not for all the mess of controversy that followed him around over the past several years. Time will tell, I guess.
And yes, I'm sorry about Ed McMahon and Farrah Fawcett as well, but it's Michael Jackson's death that hits hardest of the three, so that's the one I'm dwelling on right now.

Thirdly, it's finally Friday. Thank goodness.

Fourthly, it's frickin' hot as heck outside, and I'm ready for that to be done. We're all crowded into one room in the house right now, to save energy on cooling the whole thing. Even a couple of days of decent temperatures would help.

Fifthly, if that's even a word.. I'm taking a tip from my friend Tisha and bolding the main topics of my little paragraphs, in hopes that it will help y'all read the parts of my posts that you're interested in. I know I have people coming here for wildly different reasons, so let me know if this helps sort things out please :)

Sixthly, last night when I got home from work, I hopped on Asara and instantly got a group invite from my guild leader. They were running a quick hit on Emalon before starting Ulduar for the night, and did I want to go? I checked with hubby first, and he said he didn't mind, so off I went. Fifteen minutes or so later, I had a new achievement, and we were looking at some loot. My guild is a bit different from others with regard to this, at least from what I've gathered. We actually earn DKP for it, and are required to spend it if we want a piece of tier gear that drops. My guild master says that tier is tier, no matter where it comes from. The PvP gear is on free roll though, as long as you can use it. We're welcome to PUG VoA if we want a chance at tier gear for free though. But if we run with the guild, it's by guild rules, which is fine by me. I don't have any DKP anyway, so I figured I'd just go for the emblems, and to experience the full boss fight, as I hadn't done that yet.

So imagine my surprise when he drops two sets of hunter gloves. Imagine my even greater surprise when winners are announced and I'm one of them, along with my class leader, even though there were four hunters there all told. I guess either the other two had them already or didn't want to spend DKP on them. The only downside.. is now I have to regem Asara yet AGAIN because the new gloves (and the new bracers I bought from the guild bank last week) have a lot more hit on them than my old ones. Time to get Saraabi out and go mining! :) Then she'll be off to Cenarion Circle to join hubby's druid and my baby alts over there!

Lovely Long Weekend :)

So, it's Monday, which means weekend recap! This is going to be a long one, as I had Friday off last week, so I've got three days of fun to share with everyone!

Friday started at the mall, as a friend of hubby's just got married, and we wanted to get them a gift card. After we picked that up, we did a bit of wandering around the mall, where I got some new white sandals and a new dress. Let me just say now, I adore that dress. It is so comfortable and breezy, I would wear it all the time if I could. Unfortunately, dresses at work are a no-no, so I will just have to wear it at home for now. We then hit up the mall cinema and caught an afternoon showing of The Hangover. Which was absolutely hilarious. I almost hurt myself trying not to be the annoying Person Who Laughs Louder Than Anyone Else In The Theater. Out of the main characters, I have to say that Alan (played by Zach Galifianakis.. say that one three times fast!) was my favorite. It's hard to put into words why I loved that character so much, but at least part of it was how he delivered crazy lines like they were absolutely normal things to say. "Tigers love pepper. They hate cinnamon."

Later that evening, hubby went out to hang with a friend, so I had the house to myself for a while (the kids were spending the weekend with my parents). I hopped on WoW, and was puttering around on Asara when someone asked in guild chat for DPS for an alt run of Ulduar. The run had been advertised on the forums, but I hadn't signed up because I figured I was woefully undergeared. But opportunity was knocking, so I figured I'd at least give it a shot. I whispered them saying that I would go if they really needed the extra people, I was available, though my gear wasn't the best, and I don't know the fights at all. A few minutes later I got an invite and made my way out.

In the end, we only got Flame Leviathan down. We tried Razorscale a few times, but had several different issues causing failure each time. We got him grounded twice, but on one attempt we'd lost too many DPS to stray adds or The Bad (tm), and on the other we lost tanks too quickly. So we went over to um.. I think XT? It's the one that throws tantrums in a very annoying whiny voice. Anyway, I'm not sure what went wrong with that one, but we did one attempt, and when that failed, they called it. Either way, I'd had a good time. I got to see the inside of the instance, which was good, and I got a couple of achievements for the Flame Leviathan fight as well, even if it didn't drop any hunter loot! :)

Saturday was a pretty low-key day. Hubby and I got some WoW in, and at the end of the afternoon Mezzaluna and Rhonson were level 71 and working on Dragonblight quests. Then my brother-in-law's wife called, and we went out to dinner with them at Sonic, followed by an evening of Mario Party 8 on their Wii. We were having so much fun that we stayed up until about 2 AM.

Yesterday was yet more WoW, as the Midsummer Fire Festival started. I spent the morning on Asara visiting all the fires that she hadn't gotten to last year. I don't think I'll be able to get her the Flame Warden title though, as I'm almost positive I won't have enough blossoms to purchase the whole set of gear for the dancing achievement. I did get the juggling one, though, and I already had the horde cities and Ahune from last year. So I'll do the torch-tossing dailies as much as I can, and buy what pieces of the outfit that I can, and stow them away for this time next year.

The afternoon belonged to Mezzaluna and Rhonson again, and they got to level 72 before we called it quits for the night, and retired to the living room to watch a movie before bed. We sometimes have trouble deciding what movie to watch, so hubby decided to put a little random chance in it. He counted our movies (125!) and had me do a /roll in game before I turned WoW off. It came up at 108, and that's how we chose what movie to watch. Perhaps I'll make up a spreadsheet so we can fill in the names of the movies, and save some counting for next time. Plus we can keep track of which ones we've watched recently, too!

The one thing I didn't do this weekend was transfer Saraabi over to Cenarion Circle. The cost proved to be a little too steep with the extra spending we did at the mall. I will move her eventually, but it will have to wait another week or so. Not a big deal. I have also decided to try and wait out the issues that Asara's guild is having. Mostly because she's still only getting logged on for dailies anyway, so it doesn't matter too much right now what guild tag is over her head. For now, at any rate. If I get back into a situation where I can raid again, I might rethink this.

And now it's Monday, and back to work. Sigh. I'll close with a Whistler tidbit from last week.

Normally he keeps the oldies station on during the day. He says it's because it comes in the best out of all the stations, as we've got a cruddy old radio with no antenna, and we're in the middle of the building, so it takes a strong signal to get through. On Thursday I found out the other reason. He had the local rock station on for a change, which I really enjoyed. Someone asked me later in the afternoon why we were listening to it, because he couldn't whistle along! I thought back through the day, and true enough, he had been unusually quiet all day, because he didn't really know many of the songs that were played. So not only did I get to listen to music I actually like, I got to do so without a lot of extraneous noise. It was pretty awesome.

Guild Dilemma

I have no idea what to do, and I need some advice, if anyone has any.

I'm pretty set that I am going to transfer my paladin to Cenarion Circle this weekend. My concern now is what to do with my hunter. The guild she has been in now.. she has been in it for almost as long as she has existed as a character. However, there are indications that the guild is falling apart. Again. They're still recruiting and still managing to put together 25-man raids, but that's not so much of a concern for me, as I'm not raiding, and I don't know when I'm going to start again. The problem I'm having is that there are very few people still IN the guild that I consider to be friends. My guild leader, definitely, he's the biggest one. But everyone else, not so much. There are people I talk to from time to time, but that's about it. There were a couple of other people I'd consider to be friends, but I found out that one of them left the guild last night.

The whole reason I stayed in the guild after I stopped raiding was because it's where my friends were. But last night I was on for a bit, and everyone I had an actual conversation with were people who either are not in the guild anymore, or were never in to begin with. So I find myself in an awkward situation. I never thought I'd even consider putting Asara in another guild. Yet here I am doing just that. Another friend and ex-guildmate has a raiding guild, and has said in the past that both hubby and I would be welcome to join if we ever wanted to. It seems to be the guild where most of my ex-guildmates have gone, so I'm guaranteed to be around people I know and can talk to.

The problem is that my guild leader would probably never speak to me again if I changed guilds before the guild itself disbanded or whatever. So I am really torn on this right now. I told my guild leader the other day that I was probably going to transfer Saraabi off the server, and got no response, even though I assured him that at the time I had no plans to move Asara anywhere, and in fact intended to resume raiding with them if/when my schedule allowed. I don't know what to think of that, if he's just busy with RL, or overwhelmed with the changes and people leaving, or what. Hubby took his characters out a week or two ago as well.

Maybe I'll just leave things be for a little while longer. See how the transfer goes, and maybe talk to my friend in the other guild about putting an alt in there for a bit to see what it's like. What do you all think?

Weekend recap!

Firstly, thank you everyone who has been clicking my pony! He's nowhere near the front-runners (a couple of people are pushing 200!), but I appreciate all of you taking the time to visit him :)

We had a pretty quiet weekend for a change. Stayed close to home, played some WoW, watched some TV, gave my daughter a bath when she covered herself in sauce from her Chef Boyardee ravioli lunch... I should have taken pictures, she was a mess!

I've started server-hopping a bit in WoW. Those who have been reading may remember that hubby and I made some horde characters on Cenarion Circle at the end of our Recruit-A-Friend time. Well, while we were working on that, my mother-in-law decided to come back to the game, and started some characters there as well. And transferred over one of her higher-leveled Alliance toons as well. Hubby has now transferred his level 80 druid, and I have started a human warlock named Rootbeer.

I am tempted to transfer Saraabi over as well, as the guild we are in over there is a small one, and of the level 80 characters, there isn't much available for tanking. Hubby is trying out feral to possibly be a bear, but if it doesn't work out, Saraabi is already decked out for tanking heroics. Plus, it would be kind of nice for her to be needed. She certainly isn't where she is now. For that matter, neither is Asara, but it would take something major for me to take her from Malfurion. It's just where she seems to belong.

What do you guys think, would it be worth it for me to send her over? $25 seems a bit much to take her away from SI, but at the same time I could see her working her way to MT of something somewhere.. maybe. I just don't know! XD

Something new to click!

This little guy is one of the ponies I own on Pony Island, a pony sim game/community. They're having a summer festival over the next week or so, and one of the contests is to see whose pony can get the most clicks in that time. The prizes are different adoptables, and Pony Gold (aka site currency). I'd love it if you guys would give him a click a day!

Reconnecting is so much fun!

Yet another great weekend!

First and foremost, I finally finished my review of Arthas for SQT. You can read it here: Arthas Review. It probably took me much longer than it should have, but it's hard (for me) to do a book justice without rehashing every plot point and saying what I liked or didn't like about it.

Secondly, on Saturday afternoon I finally got Numae (my druid) to level 50. She still has a ways to go before she can get going in Outland, but it's a big milestone for her, as she's been stuck at 49 for what seems like ages. Shortly thereafter my phone rang, and it was hubby saying that the car had died, and thus began the Great Battery Adventure.

Hubby and the kids had gone out to do some grocery shopping. They were in the drive-thru at McDonald's grabbing some lunch when the battery petered out. So they went searching for a pay phone to call me. They finally found one at Meijer, so hubby called me and bought a new battery while he was there. I had to borrow my sister-in-law's car, and headed out there to pick them up. When I finally found them (not setting up a meeting place on the phone was a big oops there), we headed back to McDonald's, where I took the kids inside to get lunch while hubby changed out the batteries.

He got the old one out, but the one he'd bought was different from the one actually in the car (even though it was the one recommended by the book at the store for my make and model of car), and the positive and negative poles were on the wrong sides, so he couldn't hook it up. We all piled back in the other car, took the cold groceries back to the house, then it was back to Meijer to exchange batteries, and off to McDonald's again to get the new one installed.

Thankfully that one worked, and we all made it home afterwards without any trouble.

On Sunday afternoon I got to hang out with some old college friends of mine. My friend Lauren was in town from Chicago for a retreat, and we hung out at one of her friends' house. We were also visited by her old roommate Dania, who I hadn't seen.. probably since they graduated in '01. We spent a couple of hours chatting and catching up and reminiscing, and it was really great. Much laughter was had over old jokes and stories, as well as new ones. The only downside was that hubby had scheduled time for us all to get pictures taken that day, and I completely forgot. Perhaps they'll let us reschedule... oops! :)

Lastly, Mezzaluna and Rhonson made it to 70 last night. They're questing in Borean Tundra right now, looking forward to 77 and flight! I really have to start saving up gold now, I've been doing quite a bit of spending lately on Mezza's trade skills, trying to keep them up with her level. Her tailoring is right on track, but her enchanting is lagging behind a bit. She needs 8 more points to be at Northrend level, and it's going to be difficult to not buy the materials she needs to get it there!

Looking at the Sky on Friday

A couple of my good blogging friends run weekly memes, which I generally am horrible at participating in. I had a good run with Mo's Manic Monday, but lately my posts haven't been much more than me rambling at length, and I keep forgetting to check what the word of the week is, even though I have the MM blog on my reader. So sorry Mo!

Tisha runs Looking at the Sky on Friday, which I've wanted to do for a while, but I just don't take that many pictures, so I've never had anything to post.

Today I do!

Last weekend hubby and I took a drive down to Dowagiac to visit Mo and do some shopping at his store, The Wren's Nest. As we hopped on the highway, I got this shot of the Grand Rapids skyline. Check out those clouds! :)

All right, all right! :)

Suspense time is over.

We have a flowering tree in our front yard, and a few weeks ago I noticed a blue string hanging near the trunk. Upon closer inspection, I found a bird nest sitting on one of the branches. A few days later, there was a tiny blue eggshell on the ground near my car. I've kept an eye on it ever since, but mostly the mother robin has been sitting on it, and she gives me quite the evil eye if I get too close!

However, Tuesday afternoon she was out getting dinner for her babies, and I was able to take these!



Aren't they just the cutest little things?? I'm still not sure how many are in there, but I'd guess three or four. I can't wait to watch them learn how to fly!

I wanted to share! BUT...

I can't.

Not right now anyway.

Why?

I don't have my pictures. I took pictures of this really awesome thing in our front yard, but the camera software is on hubby's computer, and when I emailed him this morning asking him if he would upload them somewhere so I could use them in a blog post today, I got a big long whiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine.

So you will have to wait to see this really awesome thing, and my even more awesome pictures.

I have never been so proud of my camera work.

Honest.

I have mastered the Schools of Arcane Magic!

...with a little help.

I caught on to this achievement on the day they broke Wintergrasp, and the server was restarting every few minutes or so. I got three or four books that day, and would check on the spawn points every so often over the weeks since, and eventually joined the server bookclub channel. Nobody was very helpful on it though, occasionally someone would mention a fake, but I'd be playing for hours, and no one would say anything about any book spawns. So either people were missing them, or maybe they weren't happening, I don't know for sure. I only remember one time Abjuration spawned and someone said something, only for me to find myself fishing in Wintergrasp with my hearth on cooldown, and no way I could make it back to Dalaran before it despawned.

Regardless, for the past two weeks or so I've been down to one last book. I'd gotten into the habit of logging off next to the spawn point, just in case. And wouldn't you know, yesterday evening while I was at work, hubby logged in and there it was. He didn't know if I needed it or not, but he clicked it, and ta-da, achievement! So when I got home, I got my book out of the mailbox, ported up, and got my little familiar pet.

Quite the rush of achievements lately! I'm working on another one now. I'm honored with Timbermaw, but I've gotten exalted with Sporeggar and Kurenai, so last night I started smiting furbolgs. I was happily surprised to find that I was getting 20 reputation for each one, and 40 for High Chief Winterfall. Last time I was out there, I was only getting 5 for each, and 15 for the High Chief. So considering the fact that I'm already Honored from the time I spent up there getting my Winterspring Frostsaber, and bead turn-ins, I should be Exalted pretty quickly. That will get me both "They Love Me in That Tunnel" and "The Diplomat", and the second one comes with a title!

Fun-filled weekend, wahoo!

Boy were we busy this weekend! The kids went to visit my parents, so hubby and I hopped in the car and took a bit of a road trip. We headed down to Dowagiac to visit my good buddy Mo at his store, The Wren's Nest. After a bit of a chat and a walk down the road for some ice cream (yum!) we headed back home for a little while. A couple of hours later we were back on the road, headed to Muskegon and the drive-in. We saw Terminator: Salvation and the new Star Trek movie. Both were good, though I fell asleep in the middle of Star Trek! It wasn't that the movie was bad, it was that the first one started at 10PM, which is already perilously close to my usual bedtime.

Of the two, I have to say that I preferred the Terminator movie. I'm not a big Trekkie, so I got kind of confused about what was going on with the time travel and whatnot. Plus it was very strange to see modern actors playing the parts. My sister-in-law is very much a fan of Star Trek though, and she said it kicked ass. I don't know why I had such trouble with these younger actors, but the newer Star Wars movies didn't bug me at all. I think maybe I just need to see it again, when I'm not so tired.

Sunday was WoW day, plus a little bit of house cleaning. I did Asara's dailies first, fishing and cooking and Argent Tournament. She finally picked up enough Valiant Tokens to become a champion of the Gnomeregan Exiles. That plus a couple of cloth turn-ins got her to Exalted Champion of Gnomeregan (and 20 Exalted Reputations), so she headed out to Steelgrill's Depot and bought all seven Mechanostriders. Learning the 6th also earned her the "Leading the Cavalry" achievement, and an Albino Drake!

A little later, hubby joined me, and we quested Mezzaluna and Rhonson around Blade's Edge Mountains. They dinged 67 not long before we logged out for the night. One more level, and they're ready for Northrend. They grow up so fast! *snif*

The kids came home happy, but tired. My dad had gotten Whitecaps tickets from someone at work, and so they'd all gone to the game. We had a quick dinner, and off they went to bed. This is Andy's last week of school, he's got a half-day on Friday, and then he's done for the summer. We already did our big vacation for the year, so it'll be a lot of lazy days at home for him. Next year I'll have a third week of vacation, so maybe we'll take a big trip next summer.

Ewwww... the Whistler was just chomping on some Fritos, and decided he had to talk with his mouth full. He spit a bit of chip out almost onto my desk. Gross.