Asara's Mental Meanderings

Epic WoW Marathon! (plus news.)

2010-01-19T08:29:00.000-05:00

That was some weekend. (Warning LONG post ahead. There is some news for the non-WoW-minded down there, if you want to skip to the end.)

We spent Friday night playing Rock Band with hubby's sister, and stayed up waaaay too late. Saturday morning we dragged ourselves out of bed to get the house in shape for Emily's party that afternoon. After the party, the kids went to my parents for the rest of the weekend, and hubby and I buckled down to level our last pair of characters before our Recruit-A-Friend time ran out. It's important to have goals, right? :)

We started questing at first, mostly because our friend had not logged on yet. After a while hubby queued us for a PuG, just to get our Stockades quests done. We ended up leaving before it was done. It started out well enough, it seemed like the tank knew what he was doing, but he just kept pulling, no matter how many times the healer asked him to stop so he could get some mana. So the healer left. We pulled in someone new after a bit, but the same problems continued, so we left. We went back to questing, and finally a different friend of ours said he would run us, so we met up with him outside the instance, and were joined by an alt of our guild leader's wife. We finished that in short order, and then he ran us through Gnomeregan. I believe we called it a night not long after that.

On Sunday morning we were level 31 or 32. We quested in STV most of the day, with a couple of breaks to PuG two wings of Scarlet Monastery and RFD. Hubby got a few nice pieces from his Satchel of Helpful Goods, not so with me. Some "of the Bear", some "of the Bandit", only one "of the Sun". I did pretty well in the dungeons themselves though, so I can't really complain. We had some interesting adventures in STV though. It was Fishing Tournament day, and about ten minutes or so before that started, we headed up to a little island off the coast to discover it for a quest. On the way, we passed the Horde town, and I must have walked a bit too close, because I got flagged for PvP. Oh well, right? It'll wear off and nothing will happen, it hasn't before. Apparently the undead shadow priest we passed not long after had different ideas. He followed us for a bit, and as I was jumping into the water, he struck, and down I went.

I was a little miffed, to say the least. We played our druids for 60 levels on a PvP server and never got ganked once, and here on our "carebear" server... POW. Hubby came to my rescue though. He logged on his level 80 druid and came down to STV to avenge me. I was concerned that the priest's flag would wear off before hubby could arrive, so I went looking for the priest again. I found him, and wandered past like I didn't see him, then "accidentally" encountered a crocolisk and started fighting it. I was hoping he'd attack me again and refresh his flag. Sure enough, down I went again. But this time I was laughing. He was probably thinking, "what a stupid mage!" Little did he know what was in store for him.

Hubby arrived shortly after, and we set out to find the guy one last time. By the time we found him, my flag had worn off, so I was able to watch without fear as hubby tore the guy apart. Revenge was sweet! He waited a while to rez, and took off like a bat out of hell as soon as he did. Not so fun when you're on the other end, is it, Mr. Priest?

The rest of the day was pretty uneventful. We took a break and went out for dinner (steeeaaaaak YUM). When we logged out for the night we were level 45. Fifteen levels to go and one day to do it, as our shared bonus would run out at 7 PM on Monday. We technically didn't have to get to 60 by then, because that account is paid for until some time in March, but we wanted to see if we could do it.

I had Monday off at work, and the kids were still with my parents, so we had the whole day. We got up around 7AM, determined to be 60 in the next 12 hours. We did a lot of questing, and by 2 PM we were 52. We gathered as many quests as we could for BRD (except one, oops), and started talking about getting someone to run us together so we could get everything done in one run and not spend the whole rest of the day in there running each other. But nobody was around. Then it hit me. I read quite a few WoW blogs, and a few people out there have done RAF accounts on their own, and dual-boxed them. So I decided to see if I could do that as well. I put my mage's session in windowed mode and opened up another one to log on Saraabi. It worked, and soon all three of us were in a group. I set my mage to follow hubby's rogue, and clicked over to Saraabi's window and started killing stuff.

It was weird but awesome at the same time. I would clear a room or a path, and then click over to my mage to pick up loot for quests and whatnot. It was awesome because we were getting triple xp for all of the mob kills, AND all of the quests we were able to complete within the dungeon. The most awesome part was at the beginning, when we did the quest to find Kharan Mighthammer in one of the prison cells. So we found him, then we were supposed to head back to Ironforge to talk to the king there, then return to the dungeon to save the princess. Normally we'd trade off summons and take turns doing this, but this time we had my mage, and she had a portal to Ironforge. So hubby summoned me first. Then I opened a portal to IF, and we both went through. We raced to the king, turned in our quest, and then I accepted the summon, which took me right back to Kharan's cell. I summoned hubby back in, and ta-da, quest complete and we still got our triple xp for doing it.

By the end of the dungeon we were level 56. Turning in quests got us to 58. So we ran Stratholme the same way, this time with my hunter in the lead so she'd be able to pick up Baron's horse if it should drop (it didn't, of course). We didn't get nearly as much xp from that run, but we hadn't picked up any quests for it either. My mage got quite a bit of loot from both runs, hubby only got one thing. There just wasn't much loot on the tables for rogues back in the day I guess. After Stratholme it was back to questing, because I was getting strung out from maintaining both windows in an instance with a lot of patrolling mobs. We had an hour and a half to get a level and a half. We ran around to cauldrons and through Andorhal time and time again, frantic to beat our deadline. Then suddenly, with about ten minutes to go, I looked at my xp bar, and the two quests we had to turn in, and noticed that we'd only need one to make it. We went back to Chillwind, turned it in, and DING! Total time played, 1 day, 9 hours. I couldn't believe that we made it.

OK NON-WOW PEOPLE HERE IS YOUR NEWS.

I have got a lot of non-WoW stuff going on right now. Not all of it is good, and no I really don't want to talk about it. At all. I need to make some changes in my life, and I can't be here posting like everything is fine when it really isn't. So... cue radio silence. I'm leaving here, Facebook, and pretty much every social on-line thing I have. I'm keeping my weight loss blog up, because I still need the accountability of seeing my weight in print every day to keep me going. But that's about it. It's been a wild ride, but you have to get off even the most fun rides once in a while or you'll vomit all over everyone. I don't like to vomit. I may or may not be back. It has been wonderful getting to know you all, thank you for spending this time with me.

Goodbye!

2010-01-15T08:33:00.000-05:00

Not a whole lot of progress on the rogue/mage last night. They're level 15 now, waiting for a run through Deadmines. A guildmate of ours said she'd run us through, but by the time we were ready it was raid time and she had to go to ICC. They're trying to get the boss down for the weekly raid. Two days so far and no luck. So instead hubby and I queued up for a couple of randoms. I was on Caelatria at first, but the queue was taking quite a while, even though I was grouped with hubby's tree druid, so I logged on to Saraabi. We grabbed a DPS from guild (a warrior) and hit the queue, BAM, instant Heroic.

We ran Nexus and got a hunter and DK, everything went well, no hiccups, though the DK tried to ninja-Need the Frozen Orb. Hadn't been watching the rolls as well as she should have though, because I hadn't rolled yet. I've read too many stories on other blogs about people dropping Need on the Orb at the last second. So I hit Need also, and won. She dropped group, and I offered it to the rest of the group on a free /roll. Nobody wanted it though.

Next up we grabbed one more DPS from guild (a ret paladin) and got Drak'Tharon Keep. The pug this time was a hunter. Who... stopped to drink a few times, even saying in party chat that he needed mana. Odd, considering that Aspect of the Viper regens mana, but I guess he didn't want to hurt his DPS or something. *shrug* At the time I couldn't think of a way to mention it without sounding like an ass (L2Viper NUB!), so I held my tongue and finished the run.

By that time they were done in ICC, but it was too late to stay up and run Deadmines, so we'll see if we can get in there tonight. I chatted a bit with the ret paladin before logging out, because he was doing crazy DPS the whole run, and I was just astounded. Like 4k even on the trash, pushing 5k on the bosses. It turns out he has only been playing for 4 months, which is just nuts. That good at his class in 4 months. Yikes. I'm going to get him to teach me how to play Ret so Saraabi can run as OT from time to time without feeling useless! XD

Pair Two is retired!

2010-01-14T08:30:00.000-05:00

My dwarf warrior and hubby's draenei shaman hit 60 last night. I have a new appreciation for the warrior class, though I have to say the rage thing got on my nerves a few times! If I could get a charge in before starting a fight, I had a good rotation and I could more or less keep threat from hubby's shaman. But if I got hit unawares, it was often quite a struggle. Odds are there are some abilities I wasn't using that would have helped in those situations, but I never really read up on warrior skills the whole time I was leveling.

Once she hit 60, I respecced her to Fury from Arms, just to play around with Titan's Grip. She looks pretty sweet with her axe and sword crossed on her back! But she's going into retirement now, until I can afford to transfer her from the new account to my main one.

We had thought that our recruit-a-friend time was up today, but I looked it up again last night to double-check, and it turns out we have until Monday. What? A whole weekend of time before it's over?

Enter Pair 3, my gnome mage and hubby's human rogue. It's a bit awkward, playing one melee and one ranged, but so far we haven't had too much trouble. They're level 11 already, after only two hours or so of playtime last night. It'll be a race to the finish to see how far we can get them by Monday night. Even then we don't have to stop, my account is paid for until March. We'll just lose the 300% xp bonus. My only problem now is having enough room on my main account to transfer all of these characters over! We're also talking about bringing over our very first pair, Mezzaluna and Rhonson, to Cenarion Circle from Malfurion. They're so close to 80, it just seems silly for them to sit over there not doing anything!

One thing at a time though. All of these transfers won't come cheap!

Happy Birthday to my beautiful girl!

2010-01-13T10:22:00.000-05:00

Happy 4th birthday, Emily! I love you!

Hey!

2010-01-11T10:02:00.001-05:00

I'm still alive :)

Last week was very, very busy. I was covering someone who was covering someone else's vacation... and I didn't have a whole lot of time to myself while I was doing it. There were many times when I felt like every time I'd have a minute to sit down and rest, I was getting called back out onto the floor for something. But I made it through, and I'm back to a normal schedule for the foreseeable future. There are no more vacations on the schedule until February, and that's mine. An extra-long weekend for my birthday. I'll be 32, which seems kind of unreal. I don't feel like I'm in my 30's most of the time!

On one of the worse days, I came home and started looking up Glee songs to cheer myself up. I was getting frustrated with the fact that none of them seemed to have video from the show to go with them, when suddenly hubby popped up behind me and had the Season 1 DVD in his hands. Happy Early Birthday to me, yay! I was super happy! So the rest of the week we had that on, to catch up on the episodes that we missed, and listen to the songs.

We have also been scrambling to finish out our Recruit-a-friend time in style. We got our alliance characters to level 51 over the weekend, from 32 on Friday. Most of that was done on Saturday, we ran some heroics and did a couple of mount runs on Sunday which cut into our leveling time a bit. We're working on getting all of the quests for BRD, so we can run that tonight or tomorrow. I really hope we can make it to 60 before our time runs out! I'm mostly enjoying my warrior, though it gets frustrating to have to work up rage if I can't charge into battle, instead of having mana or energy already available to do what I want to do right out of the gate. She's leveling Arms now, so if there's anyone out there with playstyle or rotation tips, please feel free to leave them in the comments. Her spec is a bit of a mishmash, but I tried to keep up with talents that would boost her DPS and rage generation. It's hit or miss right now.

That's about all, I'd better get some work done before the day gets away from me, my boss gave me quite the list of stuff to do now that I'm back to my normal schedule!

Edit: OMG I can't believe I forgot to mention this, because I about died when it happened. Guess who won the Kal'uak Fishing Derby on Saturday? You bet your sweet bippy! Camped out in Sholazar a few minutes before it started, and hit up one school in River's Heart, then had to go hunting for a second. The second catch from said pool... BLACKTIP SHARK! I couldn't hearth fast enough, and now have a lovely heirloom ring that I sent to my warlock, Rootbeer. AND... Caelatria is one rare fish away from her "Salty" title. Not half bad, eh?

Happy New Year!

2010-01-05T06:05:00.000-05:00

Yeah, I'm a bit late, I apologize. :)

We had a pretty good New Year, I got a kiss at midnight from the best husband in the world, and ended the night outside making snow angels with my son and my sister-in-law, giggling like a little kid. Yes, I'd had a bit to drink, but it was still fun!

Yesterday was back to work. Bah. I'm covering someone ELSE this week, so I still have to get up early, though not as early as I was last week. Still, things are pretty busy for me, so I hope you all will bear with me until I get back to a normal schedule and can post like I would like to.

I also want to mention, since the New Year is a time for resolutions, that I've decided for the third or fourth time that this year I will be working more to get healthier, if not totally in shape. My weight has gotten to a point that I'm no longer "ok" with, and I need to get something done about it. To that end, I'll be posting more on my weight loss blog (I bet most of you didn't even know I HAD one!) It's been two years since I tried this, but I really mean to stick to it this time. You all can help keep me accountable, ok? :) Seriously, leave me comments and yell at me if I don't weigh in!

I am going to try very hard to weigh myself every day and post it, so I can have a record of how I'm doing right there where I can see it. I'm sure I'll stumble quite a bit on the way, but like I said, I need to do something now, before it gets even worse.

SO... it's back to work now, I'll catch y'all on the flip!

I found this absolutely hilarious.

2009-12-29T15:18:00.000-05:00

Got an email from my hubby this afternoon about the next movie that we're due to get in the mail from Netflix. Through some strange warping of the space-time continuum, I was able to reply before it was even sent!

Spooooooooky email from the future!

I did not miss this one bit.

2009-12-28T12:11:00.000-05:00

Back to work after a lovely 4-day weekend. It was a BUSY weekend, but still lovely all the same! Thursday was pretty much Family Christmas Party day, with my parents and hubby's family, Christmas was Just Us day, at home with hubby and the kids. Saturday was more of my side of the family, we hung out with my brother and his wife. Sunday was "Oh crap, I have to go to work tomorrow" day. The kids went to my uncle's house for yet another family gathering, and hubby and I played some WoW. We finally ran the three new 5-man dungeons, those went by very quickly! They were fun though, and I picked up a couple of purples that I may or may not use. Still pondering that one!

So I got in this morning at 3AM and have been slowly getting through the day. I brought 3 cans of Coke with me, and it looks like I'll need every one! Two are gone already, and I'm about to crack into the third to help me get through the afternoon. The Whistler is in fine form, cursing at a caulk gun he borrowed from Maintenance to repair his scale with. He was struggling with it when I came in a few minutes ago, trying to get the end clear so he could use it. That done, he started squeezing the handle, but nothing was coming out. Somehow he punctured the back of the tube, and all the caulk was leaking out there all over the plunger. Now he's dashing back and forth from the scale to the sink trying to clean things up. I don't think I'll tell him about the stuff he's got on his clothes. See how long it takes him to notice. :)

And with that... it's back to work. I'll be working super-long days all week this week, so I apologize in advance if I don't have a whole lot to say!

Yeah, it's another video.

2009-12-23T22:58:00.000-05:00

I was going to post a video of Peter Griffin doing his "Ding, Fries are done" thing, because I'm still stressed out and am doing my best to preserve both my sanity and the reason for the season. I even had hubby look it up for me while I was at work to make sure it had the audio and everything. Then I didn't get it posted while I was at work, and I've been "helping" get the house ready by folding laundry pretty much since I got home. With the exception of dinner and a couple of random heroics.

ANYWAY.

I heard this on my way home, and it almost brought me to tears. Michael Crawford (of Phantom of the Opera fame) singing O Holy Night. If I had to pick a favorite Christmas hymn, it's O Holy Night. My church growing up had a liturgical dance group who would traditionally perform a candlelit dance to this song on Christmas Eve, and for 15 years or so, I was up there with them. There is something eerie and just beautiful about his voice, and to hear him singing this song... like I said, I was almost crying in the car.

If you need a bit of "reason for the season" yourself, I highly recommend this. HIGHLY.

Watch Michael Crawford - O Holy Night (1993) in Music | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

It's almost here!

2009-12-22T09:16:00.000-05:00

CHRISTMAAAASSSSSS YEAH!

I'm stressed out from family plans being continually in flux, all the stuff we STILL need to do to get the house ready to have everyone over, not to mention all the stuff we have to do in between family gatherings on Thursday, but I've decided I'm not going to let it get to me. I could sit and wallow and be depressed and angry, but Christmas is for family and love and happiness, and I need to remember that.

So here's a song that never fails to make me laugh, I hope it brings smiles to all of you as well!

So sleepy.

2009-12-16T10:19:00.000-05:00

The SYTYCD finale was awesome. There were so many amazing dances, I still can't pick a favorite. It was a tie between Jakob and Katherine's contemporary dance, and Russell and Katherine's hip-hop one. Though Russell and Ellenore were great in their paso doble too! I voted for Russell and Katherine... I can't wait to see who wins!

Andy had his Christmas musical last night. Last year every grade got a chance to perform a song. This year they sort of did the Charlie Brown Christmas play. They had five or six older kids playing the parts, and all of the other kids were more or less a chorus. All of the Kindergarten & Preschool kids sang Jingle Bells, but all of the rest of the singing was done by all of the kids together. The first graders all had decorated Christmas trees made out of styrofoam, so they came out and stood in front to represent all the flashy trees at the tree lot when Charlie Brown went to pick one out. Andy had a good time with that, he was dancing and spinning around. That was the only performance part that they got to themselves though, and I was kind of sad about that. There's always next year, I guess!

The scramble afterward was frustrating as well. They had asked at the beginning of the program that only one parent go to collect each child to avoid a giant congested mess in the hallway. So of course, when everything was done, people were leaving the bleachers and heading out into the hallway before the kids had even finished filing out. We waited until most of them were gone before even standing up, and lo and behold, congested mess in the hallway. Leaving the parking lot was an adventure too, people had parked wherever they could find space, and it was hard to get the car out of the lot without hitting someone who wasn't parked in an actual parking space, or was ignoring the flow of traffic to get to the driveway ASAP. Hubby said the parking lot is always like that when he brings Andy to and from school, cars going every which way to get to the driveway before anyone else. It really makes me nuts how selfish and impatient people are these days when they're behind the wheel. *sigh*

After we left, we took the kids to McDonald's for a Happy Meal treat, and headed home for TV time. After the SYTYCD finale, there was a new Gordon Ramsay cooking show. I watched about half an hour of it, but didn't really see anything that made me want to watch it on a weekly basis. Yeah, it's nice to see a side of Gordon Ramsay besides the screaming and swearing one he's shown on his other programs, but he was so rushed, the people he had in the studio were having trouble keeping up with his directions, what directions he managed to give anyway. The thing I like about other cooking shows is that they take the time to show you how to do things the right way. They might not get a whole three-course meal cooked in that time, but you learn how to do each of the steps in whatever it is they're making. He was just "put the oil in, slice the pepper up real thin, put your pasta in, turn it around, go go gogo, how are you doing, ok, quick joke about how his guest celebrity cooks are having problems, put the shrimp in the oil, go go gogogogogo!!" So yeah, not going to watch that again, probably.

Tonight I think we'll be playing a little Rock Band with hubby's sister, and maybe his sister-in-law as well. It's a good way to unwind and have fun, and the kids can play a bit too. Andy likes singing "Living on a Prayer", or "Living on a Planet", as he says. Emily likes the drums, so we put it on No Fail mode and just let them go nuts. Should be a good time!

And the gifts start rolling in!

2009-12-15T08:00:00.001-05:00

We sent through a big order on amazon.com last week, and the first two packages arrived in the mail yesterday! It's like Christmas early, even though I know none of the presents are for me, it's still awesome to get to open them all and see what's inside.

Not much else to report. I did some herbalism on one of my death knights last night. Hubby leveled one of his up to 80, and spent some time running random dungeons. After that, I watched some TV. ABC has a show called "Find My Family" that I've been watching. I missed last week though. They help people who have given kids up for adoption, or been given up for adoption, or just have lost contact with someone important over the years. It always makes me cry. I've been working on an application to be on it, too. I don't know what the odds are that they'd be able to find my birth mom (if they even chose my application), or even that she'd want to meet me if they did find her, but I figure there's no harm in trying. (For information on my search so far, see this post)

That's about all. Tonight is the finale of So You Think You Can Dance, and I can't miss that! Anyone out there who watches it want to venture a guess on who will win? I haven't really picked a favorite, but I loved Mollee and Jakob's waltz last week, I'm so sad she didn't make it through!

Druids are so OP.

2009-12-14T10:05:00.000-05:00

Our WoW time this weekend was dedicated to our horde Recruit-A-Friend druids over on Hakkar. When we started, they were level 38. As of the end of play time last night, they are level 54. All through questing too, we didn't run an instance all weekend. The next time we play them they'll be heading for the Plaguelands and level 60. Once they hit 60, we'll probably be switching to our alliance pair, which are back on Cenarion Circle and in the same guild as our main characters. This will be good, because one of the times I logged on to Facebook this weekend, a guildie from there sent me a chat asking where the heck we have been for the past few days.

We have yet to run the new dungeons that were released with the last patch. It seems strange, but I'm not really in any hurry to either. The day after the patch dropped, one of the guild death knights ran random heroics ALL DAY. When we logged off for the night, he had accumulated over 80 Badges of Triumph. Call me crazy, but I am just not that into the whole rush for the best gear RIGHT NOW thing. I am certain that within the next couple of weeks I will have accumulated enough badges through heroics to keep my gear up to date. From past experience, I know that the only thing that you get from that kind of badge mania is burnout. Besides that, I've been having too much fun running around Feralas with my hubby.

On the "druids are OP" comment, I have to cite an example. We both specced feral for leveling purposes. Hubby's spec is a bit more "bear", mine is a bit more "kitty". So if we end up in a bad spot, he can switch forms, and I can keep up the DPS or pop out to give him a few heals. We've also got two points in improved stealth. So yesterday we had pretty much run out of quests in Feralas, at least to the point where going back after getting our new class skills would be a waste of time better spent in a more quest-rich zone. So we hopped over to the Hinterlands and picked up every quest we could possibly find, and there were quite a few!

One of the quests we got was to kill Vile Priestess Hexx, who sits at the top of Jintha'alor. Jintha'alor is a multi-tiered area, and each level is crawling with trolls of all shapes and sizes. We stealthed through the whole place until we got to the mobs we needed to kill. Just getting that one quest done would have taken three times as long if we'd had to fight our way up there. And we knew when we got to the right level because druids in cat form can track humanoids, so we just had to check our mini-map to see what sorts of trolls were around. We killed what we needed to kill, re-stealthed, and hopped our way down out of the area, then headed back to turn in all the quests that we had done. No other class could have done what we did. A pair of rogues could have handled the stealth part, but a rogue can't heal another rogue through an accidental pull of five or more mobs. Crazy OP. And don't even get me started on flight form herbalism. Where does the bird put the herbs after they've picked them? I don't see any pockets underneath all those feathers!

Conundrums.

2009-12-10T12:46:00.000-05:00

There's a bit of wondering going on in this battered old brain of mine, but before I get into that, can I just say CURSE YOU, Random LFG, for giving me Oculus as the first flipping dungeon? *shudder* We got through it without too much difficulty, just one wipe on Eregos due to losing both DPS dragons to the first phase shift. Saraabi got her Northrend Dungeonmaster achievement out of the deal also. But STILL. I hate that place. It was a good thing I had hubby around to guide me through, because I've only been there twice before. He's got much more situational awareness than I have. A good portion of my miraculous tank saves have been in large part due to him pointing stuff out to me. So thank you honey! :)

On to the conundrum.

There was a Ventrilo meeting of the "officers" of our guild last night, of which I am one, and hubby is now another. There are a few of us with gear that's a level above the sort of raiding we do on a regular basis as a guild. Quite a bit of our lack of "progression" is due to new 80's wanting to come along on raids, so we zerg them through Naxx, or the first few bosses in Uld, so they can see raids and feel accomplished to have been there.

That's all well and good, but some people are getting tired of doing the same thing over and over, and feel that if we put together a solid team, we could probably venture on into bigger and better raid instances. All of us have alts that are at 80 as well, so we'd be able to use them to continue running Naxx and the like. They want to have a dedicated night (not always the same night, but just say one night a week) when those of us on the "raid team" would get together and work on some solid progression.

I'm not sure how I feel about being part of this.

On the one hand, I'm flattered to have been included. It's nice to be recognized as someone who knows more or less what they're doing, and can be a solid contributor to the guild. I like the opportunity to see more content, even if it means bashing our heads against a boss over and over again until we figure out what we're doing. I want to improve my characters, without having to run random heroics all day every day to grind out badges.

On the other hand, part of what got in the way with my last guild was the hardcore progression mindset. For the most part, I enjoy raiding. But I don't like feeling like it's a job, or, at the very least, obligated to be there each and every week. I'm concerned about the schedule as well, they're looking at running until 8:30 server, which is 11:30 here. Granted, it's only one night a week, but that's still pretty late in Carrie-land. I like to be in bed by 10.

I guess the best thing is just to wait and see when the first few get scheduled, and join in or not as my schedule allows. If they run some on the weekend, and some during the week, and there are enough people to cover the ones run during the week, it might work out. As long as I stay conscious of my personal priorities to my family and my job, and don't let myself get carried away... we shall see.

How's THAT for Loot-Fu?

2009-12-07T10:54:00.001-05:00

Not one, but TWO Swift Razzashi Raptors!

Hubby's dropped yesterday afternoon. But still no luck with Anzu, and no Swift Zulian Tiger yet either. We'll get there! I think from now on we'll invite some guildies along with us when we go to ZG, in case we get more raptors. :) I've also stocked up on Mudskunk lures for Gahz'ranka. Maybe we'll get a book of Polymorph: Turtle or two! If we do, I hope hubby won't mind me sending one to my horde mage. He already has a couple of different polymorph spells, but the turtle has always been my favorite.

In other news, Christmas shopping is almost done! Just have to send through the amazon order, and pick up a couple of things for the nephew and one of the nieces and we're set. The kids were real troopers this weekend, they did a good job of keeping up with us as we store-hopped. We took them to Chuck E. Cheese as a treat afterward. We also played a bit of poker with my brother-in-law and his wife, plus two of their friends. Good food and good times were had by all, though our pockets are considerably lighter! We have done this before though, and hubby and I made out like bandits, so I guess in the long run we're just making things a bit more even. Also, Andy got his hair cut, and it looks adorable.

Finally, hubby and I helped finish a guild run of Naxx-10 last night. No upgrades for either of us, but I got enough badges together to finally get Saraabi some purple bracers. She pulled off quite a good bit of tanking too. She was OT for a good bit of the run, well, almost all of it actually, and didn't have a whole lot to do. I was letting the MT take all of the trash, and basically playing melee DPS in prot spec, just in case the poo hit the fan. It didn't, so I was pretty bored. Near the end of Military I was taunting a mob or two out of the trash packs just to have something to do, as the MT bragged about his damage taken and how much greater it was than mine. Got my competitive hackles all up, which is never good.

I got my chance to shine at the end though. Sapphiron only needs one tank, and when asked how my DPS was, I simply responded with "it isn't." Saraabi has a DPS spec, but I never use it, so I wasn't going to be doing the raid any favors by switching. So they let me tank Sapphiron, and we one-shot him. Kel'Thuzad was interesting, to say the least. They put me on KT, and the MT took the adds. Things were going well until my hubby got ice-blocked. He was playing his tree, and healing the bejeezus out of anyone he could get his HoTs on. Unfortunately, nobody managed to heal him, so down he went. And people started dropping like flies. KT was at around 8%, and suddenly hubby said the MT went down. So I did what any tank would do, I grabbed the adds ASAP and kept on tanking.

And Kel'Thuzad fell, and there was much rejoicing, and gratzing me on my excellent tanking skillz. I probably could have been more humble at that point, but like I said, my competitive hackles were up, and I was honestly proud of what I had done. At the same time, I feel bad for basically showing the other tank up in a pretty spectacular fashion. He's been working very hard at tanking and he is doing a good job, he really is. The only real difference I can see is that he's a DK, and I'm a paladin, so while he's got avoidance that's better than mine, he's got no mitigation, so when he takes a hit, he really takes it hard.

Ah well. What can ya do?

Christmas Shopping mode is GO!

2009-12-05T00:44:00.000-05:00

I am a zombie... hurrrrr..........
Not really. It's just like going on 1AM and we did quite a bit of shopping today. A good portion of it was online, but there are some things that even amazon.com can't sell cheaper than Wal-Mart. Sorry amazon.com. I love ya, I really do, but that extra two or three dollars will really come in handy when all the presents are bought and we actually need, like, food and stuff.

We're actually almost done too. There are a niece and a nephew who still need some rounding-out, but if it's not in the amazon shopping cart, it's in the bedroom waiting to be wrapped. Oh, except for one thing that we have to go back to Wal-Mart for. We also did grocery shopping tonight. On the way out to the car, hubby kept saying under his breath, "Christmas only comes once a year."

Earlier in the day he was a bit more in the Christmas spirit, and he put together the following video. I made the background image. :) I'll leave you with this, I hope it brings a bit of the spirit to you also!

Oh. My. Gosh.

2009-12-03T13:37:00.001-05:00

I am still in shock, seriously.

A few weeks ago, wow.com held a contest to give away 25 wireless headsets. It was like a screenshot scavenger hunt. They gave clues to five locations, and the entrants had to take screenshots of their raid/group at each of the locations. Then they would do a random drawing from the entries who had their screenshots taken at the correct locations.

They announced the winners publicly yesterday.

You can read about it here.

And if you couldn't tell from the post title...

That's my devilsaur in the foreground of the picture.

THAT IS MY GUILD AND WE WON.
/dance

Ahhh, back to "Normal"

2009-12-03T08:31:00.000-05:00

The past three days I have been getting up at 2AM to go to work, thus the lack of actual posts. I barely recall what I actually did on those days. I think there was some WoW, and dinner, but the rest is a fog.

I remember last night though! Last night after dinner we put up our Christmas tree. I wish I had pictures, but our camera had gone missing, and when we finally found it, it was broken. So I think that's where my Christmas bonus will be going this year. It's not right to have kids and no way to take pictures of them when they're decorating a tree. Hubby kept saying "spread the decorations around, so they're all over the tree", and Emily kept putting every ornament she picked up in the same area, or right next to one that Andy or I had put up. A little sneaky reorganization left us with a relatively balanced ornament distribution. :D

We bought new lights this year, after discovering that both of the strings we already had did not fully light up. One was half dark, the other was dark in the middle. I managed to fix one of them, but we decided to just get two new strings, and use the one that I fixed around a window or something. Yay new lights! We have a nice compromise when it comes to the lights. I like blinky ones and hubby likes the steady light, so we have one string of each, and they both wrap fully around the tree. It looks a little sparse when the blinky ones are off, but it makes me happy to have blinky lights on the tree. We also put tinsel on, which begins the month-long struggle between us and the cat, who thinks we just covered the tree in sparkly cat treats.

We managed to keep him away from it while we were awake, but first thing this morning when I was getting ready for work, I stepped in a sparkly puddle of cat vomit. This perpetuates the opinion that we all share, that the cat is a moron. He KNOWS he's not supposed to eat the tinsel. We know he knows because while I found the vomit, the cat himself was nowhere to be seen. He ate the tinsel, and he knew he wasn't supposed to, and sure enough he threw it back up, and so he hid in the vain hope that when we found him we'd have forgotten about it. I expect this scenario to play out at least three times a week until Christmas. We try every year to hang it so that he can't reach it, but every year he manages to find some to eat anyway. I guess I shouldn't expect more from him, he thinks plastic bags from the grocery store are the greatest thing ever too. He'll chew on any bit of plastic he can get his teeth on, no matter how many times he gets yelled at for it. *sigh*

Because it's early and I am less than coherent

2009-11-30T04:52:00.002-05:00

Time to be Thankful!

2009-11-29T10:00:00.000-05:00

Various things I am thankful for, since I haven't managed a post since the day before Thanksgiving!

1. My Family (that goes without saying, I'm sure, but I wanted to say it anyway)

2. My Friends (online and irl)

3. My Life

4. My job and all the things it helps to provide for my family

Also, one thing I am very excited about. Hubby and I did our usual mount-farming when we got home from dinner with my parents on Thanksgiving. The result?

Swift Razzashi Raptor!

Wired and Wireless

2009-11-25T08:45:00.000-05:00

I got out of work a bit early yesterday, and was able to surprise Billy and the kids by showing up at Andy's school in time to give them all a ride home. We did some questing on our druids, and got another level for them. I also started my rounds of the Horde capitals on Caelatria. I only managed to get to Orgrimmar before dinner, but I did most of the traveling to get to Thunder Bluff before I had to log off.

We had barbecued pork chops and stuffing for dinner, yum!

After dinner, I thought it might be nice to watch some tv, and color with the kids. Billy just bought a wireless router, so that we could have internet on our computers and not have to run a cord from the modem out into the living room to stream movies or tv shows from Netflix. He was having some trouble getting his computer online with it though. My computer was fine, the laptop was fine, but his computer wouldn't connect. He fiddled with it for quite some time, while I watched So You Think You Can Dance and colored in my Tinkerbell coloring book. He finally got it online by connecting our old switch to the router and his computer to the switch. I can only assume it was something to do with IP addresses. Either way, it works now.

Of course, by the time everything was situated, it was a bit too late to watch anything. The kids went to bed, and he fiddled with the DVD player, which had also been acting up, and got that working as well. The two of us watched a bit of Eddie Izzard's comedy special, Dress To Kill, and headed to bed. Tonight will probably be much the same, though we might have some shopping to do. The kids still need holiday outfits!

I found out what our next Netflix movie will be, Billy picked the GI Joe movie that just came out. My brother used to watch the cartoon on TV all the time, and he had lots of the action figures too. I hope the movie is good!

Short post today.

2009-11-24T10:31:00.000-05:00

I'm feeling like quite the zombie. I woke up with a pounding headache after a night of crazy dreams. I don't really remember them now, just that they were totally odd. Ibuprofen took care of the headache, but I haven't felt really conscious all morning. When I got in I found that I'd forgotten to make copies of the schedule for today, so everyone was all kerfuffled. No clue why I forgot either, it's something I do practically every day, and have done for several years now. I just... didn't do it.

We got in some WoW when I got home as well. I'm 2/3 of the way done with the holiday achievements, I think I just have to do the horde city one and the "turn rogues into turkeys" one. I'm tempted to dual-box that last one, once I get enough shooters. Just make level one rogues on one account, and shoot at them with the other. It would involve some traveling, but I have to do that for the horde capitals anyway. Hubby and I ran the heroic daily, then spent some time working on our alliance RAF characters. I believe they made it to level 13 before we quit for the night. Hubby's gnome did most of his leveling in his underpants... I wish I had a screenshot of that! He sold all of his gear in the starting zone to be able to afford his skills, and vowed shortly thereafter that he wouldn't wear any until he got some greens with stat boosts on them. He finally got a shirt around level 11. Crazy boy.

Tacos for dinner last night, and we finally finished off the pumpkin pie. I'm sure there will be plenty more later this week though, so I'm not too sad about it. Tonight or tomorrow our next Netflix movie should arrive, I'll let y'all know what it is and what I think of it once we watch it. :) Hope everyone is having a great day!

Poor Toaster.

2009-11-23T08:05:00.001-05:00

All that anticipation, and a whole weekend, and I never watched the whole movie. I guess this was one of those times when the actual thing doesn't live up to my memories of it. I watched the beginning, and it was cute, but it wasn't enough to hold my attention like it used to. The kids weren't overly excited about it either. Oh well, back in the mail it went, and we'll see what comes next. :)

On Saturday we had a birthday party for one of my nieces, which turned into a night of Rock Band after most of the family left. We downloaded some new songs, and played until we couldn't play any more! Yesterday was a quiet day at home. I sat in the living room and watched hubby play Fable 2, and we let the kids play around on our computers. Then after dinner we played a little WoW. We started up a couple of new characters on our RAF account, alliance this time, on Cenarion Circle. I have a dwarf warrior, and hubby has a gnome mage. We got them to Thelsamar, and I hope they will continue to level past that zone. I have been trying to level a dwarf for quite some time now!

We got a raid together after that, to take screenshots for the wow.com headset contest. I doubt we'll win, one person went afk before we even took the first one, and stayed that way until after we were done. But it was fun to chase around to all the different places and whatnot. It was a good guild event. When that was done, hubby and I headed out to Outland in another attempt to capture an Anzu mount for me, and also to get an achievement for a few guildies for the latest holiday. We also headed over to ZG, but no mounts from there either.

Then I stayed up too late working on the quests for the new holiday... and I'm paying for it today. I've only been at work for an hour, and my bottle of pop that's supposed to last me all day is already half empty. I think this calls for early bedtime tonight!

How were your weekends, dear people who read my blog? :)

I Got a Feeling...

2009-11-20T05:53:00.000-05:00

Yeah, so it's Friday and I'm feeling lazy. So you get a YouTube video. This song was on the radio on my way in to work today, and it never fails to give my mood a boost. The video was made by a bunch of film students in Quebec. They all got together and made this lip sync (or lip dub) video in like an hour or something. I hope you all enjoy it as much as I do!

Oh yeah.

2009-11-19T12:41:00.000-05:00

The reason for the medicine is that I've got a cold. Yippee yay hooray for that. Symptoms seem to be staying at a minimum though, thanks to the DayQuil people.

Last night is kind of a blur. I remember we ran Sarth-25 with 19 people and got an achievement for that. I even got to bring my hunter, and was only like 200 dps behind the resident MM hunter. Go me :) After that, some of the group stuck around and worked on Sarth-10 with a drake up. We hadn't managed it last week, but hubby said that not long after I went to bed, they finally got it down. Yay for the guild!

Just before that, I'd managed to ding exalted with Honor Hold and picked up the tabard for my 25-tabard achievement, which gave me... another tabard.

Tonight is going to be a non-WoW night. I have to go to work early tomorrow to cover the "new guy", who is having his wisdom teeth out this afternoon. So I'm hoping there will be a new movie from Netflix in the mailbox when I get home. Hubby says that one of mine is next in line, "The Brave Little Toaster". I am excited, I haven't seen that in forever. I used to watch it on TV all the time, and it's a good one to watch with the kids. Things are crazy here at work today, so a nice calm night at home is definitely what the doctor ordered. Yay!

Has anyone seen my brain?

2009-11-18T13:11:00.000-05:00

My dad likes to say, "Of all the things I've lost in my life, I miss my mind the most".

That's holding true for me today. I took some NyQuil before bed last night, and had a very tough time getting things going this morning. I woke up at 6:30 for work, and decided I needed another hour in bed. That helped, a bit. I got to work around 8:30, and of course everyone and their brother had been looking for me. When I'm here, nobody cares, when I'm not, they all need to talk to me.

I'm going to conduct an experiment. I just noticed that the tape dispenser on the desk is empty. Normally I'd be the one to go get some tape and refill it, but I don't think I will today. I want to see how long it stays empty before the Whistler says something implying that it's my job to go get some more tape for it. He does that with pens, when all of his go dry or get lost. He asks me for one, instead of stopping by the office supply cabinet after his break and grabbing a few. You're already up there, you dipstick, get your own damn pens.

Played a bit more WoW last night. Hubby wanted to run ToC, which was the heroic daily. A group was getting put together, but they only needed one more person, and we always run things together if I'm on. So we let them go, and put together our own group about half an hour later. We were finished about twenty minutes after that, and the first group was still in there. I think they spent about two hours in there trying to get the last boss down. People kept leaving the group because they were having so much trouble. I'm not sure if they ever actually finished or if they just quit trying. I felt bad, because if hubby and I had been along, they probably wouldn't have had so much trouble. Hard to say, but still. After that I just did some dailies, and hubby ran with me through Sethekk Halls. I'm trying to get an Anzu mount, but so far no luck!

I'm not sure what we've got planned for tonight. The guild is going to run OS-10, and probably do a few tries with one drake up. I might just watch the results show for So You Think You Can Dance, since I missed the actual show yesterday, and maybe Glee after that. And then bed. Rest is always good!

What day is it?

2009-11-17T07:52:00.001-05:00

Oog. My brain is mush this morning. I just went to check on the fantasy football page that my brother-in-law is running, and got completely confused. I thought to myself, weird, there wasn't a Monday night game? Then I realized that it's Tuesday. We didn't run production at work yesterday, so it felt like a weekend day. I didn't go in to work until after dinner to take care of a few things with the schedule. I probably should have gone in earlier, but I was playing WoW and doing things at home, and the day just got away from me.

Apparently the dj on the radio station is not having a good morning either. We're listening to to commercial breaks at once right now. Maybe he fell asleep? Who knows.

So... what happened this weekend? Most of the news is WoW-related. We spent the majority of the weekend just hanging out at home, though we did some shopping also. We got the kids some new clothes, and picked up a copy of Up. Emily is growing like a weed all of a sudden. The clothes we bought for her are 4T, and they just fit. When I picked them out, I thought I was getting her some things to grow into!

I don't even have a lot to relate in WoW-news. The big thing is an Ulduar-10 run we did with the guild on Saturday night. They had cleared a few bosses the weekend before, and extended the raid ID to work on some that we didn't have a lot of experience with. Saraabi came along to tank, and hubby brought Lumae. We started with Kologarn, and one-shot him. We had a couple of hiccups on Auriaya, but got her down as well. After that we decided to hit Iron Council, a fight I had never seen. The first few tries we had three tanks, one for each boss. That turned out to be too much of a strain on the healers, so I offered to tank the two spare bosses myself. The idea being that the spare tank could go dps, and then I'd have hubby in the back healing just me, and the other two could handle the other tank and the raid.

It took a few tries, and a couple more tweaks (courtesy of my awesome hubby, who reads strategies and watches videos and stuff), but before we called it for the night, we did get them down, and Saraabi got a new cloak for her efforts. That was definitely an interesting fight to tank. After that, it was almost time to call it a night, so we wandered down the hall to Hodir. We had a heck of a time with that, worms everywhere, and elementals... it was crazy! We made it through, and after a quick explanation of the strategy, we barrelled into the room. Saraabi got two-shot, and the rest of the raid followed shortly afterward. It was a fun, kamikaze-style way of ending the raid, and I was giggling my head off.

The only other thing I can think of is that hubby and I finally built another chopper, this time for him to have. So now Caelatria can chauffeur Alainds around, and Lumae can chauffeur Saraabi around! It will be nice to be on the riding end for a change. :)

Woo! Weekend's almost here!

2009-11-13T09:07:00.000-05:00

Just have to get through work today. And at least I get to do so with no danger of an underpants sighting. A small blessing, but a blessing nonetheless. If those pants EVER show up here again, I'm sending him home to change.

A random quote from the radio this morning that made me giggle. "A hot dog made of bacon is like a vagina made of Playstations". We're listening to the Bob and Tom show, and one of the comedians they had on this morning said that. I tried to look it up, he said there was a place in Chicago that sold hot dogs made of bacon, but all I could find was bacon-wrapped hot dogs, which aren't quite the same. Still sounds tasty though, perhaps one of these days I'll give it a try. I mean, they wrap steak in bacon sometimes, why not a hot dog?

We finally got to finish Superbad last night, as the new copy came in the mail from Netflix yesterday. It was funny, but the end was sort of anticlimactic and awkward. There are several other Judd Apatow movies that I like better, we'll put it that way.

Time to get back to work, bah. I'll see you all on the other side of the weekend, I hope yours are full of awesomeness! :)

Buy yourself some new pants, man!

2009-11-12T10:35:00.000-05:00

Yep, that's right, the pants have made yet another return to the workplace. And this time, his shirt was NOT tucked in well enough, and I had full view of his underwear. So, I got him a long coat to wear from the Shipping department, which he wore for all of five minutes, if that, because "it made him hot". Now he's got his shirt tucked in better. This is still inappropriate. If I was wearing pants that were ripped like that, I'd probably get written up and sent home. He says that he put them on "by accident". I call shenanigans on that one. How can you "accidentally" not notice what pants you put on? The front is a mess as well as the back, just looking down at yourself, you could see what pants you put on, for the love of pete.

Blech.

On to happier things.

Saraabi has a new tanking spec, and I tried it out in Heroic Gun'drak last night. Hubby was healing, and he kept popping out of tree to dps because he said he didn't have anything else to do! I can't believe I used to be scared of tanking! After that we did HCoS and HVH, which I ran on my hunter. I was pretty proud of her performance too. It feels very good to be good at what I do, no matter what that may be.

After those, hubby made some popcorn (which was absolutely delicious) and we watched a bit of TV. The results show for "So You Think You Can Dance" was on, and after that was Glee. I haven't really kept up with Glee, but it was easy enough to figure out what's been going on. I'm kind of on the fence with the show in general. There are some parts I like, but others just seem a bit too contrived. The love... square? going on with Rachel, Finn, Quinn, and Puck is just nuts. I'll probably still try to keep up with it, just to see what happens. I'm nosy like that!

Tagged, and he didn't even know it!

2009-11-11T13:12:00.000-05:00

So, as I've been catching up in my feed reader after vacation (over 500 posts, you crazy people), I've seen this meme popping up here and there. The most recent is my sometime-realm-if-not-faction-buddy Arrens. I am using him as the person who tagged me because he said he'd read it and chortle... and I am a fan of the chortle. I mean, it just sounds fun, doesn't it? So here we are, the DPS Meme!

What is the name, class, and spec of your primary dps? Caelatria, Hunter, Beast Mastery (with a secondary Marksman spec that I rarely use. I love my Devilsaur too much, yanno?)

What is your primary dpsing environment? (i.e. raids, pvp, 5 mans) Heroics when I can get them, 10-man raids when Saraabi isn't needed to tank.

What dps spell do you use least for your class and why? Probably Rapid Fire. It boosts haste, so it doesn't seem to add all that much when my haste is already boosted through talents. Other hunters out there, feel free to correct me on this one if I'm missing something important here. I try harder to remember it when running as Marksman because I know my gear doesn't have nearly enough haste on it to maximize the potential of the spec.

What do you feel is the biggest strength of your dps class and why? We're unique snowflakes in that we're ranged physical DPS.

What do you feel is the biggest weakness of your dps class and why? Hunters as a class... we're useless unless we've got range. The DPS put out by a Beast Mastery hunter's pet sort of makes up for it, but other than that, we suck in close quarters. Nobody else has this sort of a problem, a caster can sit under the boss' nose and still cast, while I'm stuck waving my polearm around at him every 2-3 seconds.

In a 25 man raiding environment, what do you feel, in general, is the best dps assignment for you? Let me stand still and shoot a single target please. I don't care if it's the boss or an add, I don't want to be running all over hell's half-acres trying to get at what I need to hit.

What dps class do you enjoy dpsing with most and why? Anyone with access to Replenisment or the equivalent. And enhancement shammies.

What tanking class do you enjoy dpsing with least and why? Death Knights. Too many bad experiences with ones who don't know how to use their abilities to keep threat. I understand you maybe need more time to get a handle on an aoe pull, but I shouldn't be pulling a boss when I've already given you a misdirect with the most powerful shots I have at my disposal.

What is your worst habit as a dps? Tunnel vision. I have to keep right on top of my steady shot cooldowns to squeeze as much DPS out of my spec as I can, and sometimes I forget to look at where I'm standing and if there's anything Bad around me.

What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while dpsing? Chronic AFK'ers. If you can't focus on what you're doing, why did you even join a group in the first place? It doesn't matter who it is, we all put together the group to do something, and not to sit around to wait for you to catch up after every single pull.

Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other dps? Nope. Hunters as a class can more or less hold their own in the right situations, but Beast Mastery as a spec is still considered a joke. I haven't been kicked from a group for it, but when I'm grouped with another hunter, I can't help but feel a lot of competitive tension and a need to prove that I'm not a total loss as a DPS even though my spec isn't the current BEST spec.

What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a damage dealer? Pretty much just Recount. I tried that whole log thing, WPS or whatever, but never really understood how to evaluate my performance except comparing numbers, which Recount does with a lot less hassle.

What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your class? That hunters are EZ-mode. Granted, the playstyle isn't complicated, but you still have to know what you're doing to put out any sort of good DPS.

What do you feel is the most difficult thing for new dpsers of your class to learn? Sometimes just how to play. I still remember in my early days, shooting something until it got into melee range and attacked me, so my pet would attack it back. I had no idea that I could tell my pet to attack something first.

What dps class do you feel you understand least? Shaman or DPS warriors, just because I have very little experience with either.

What add-ons or macros do you use, if any, to aid you in dps? I have Recount and MIK Scrolling Battle Text. The first just to keep track of how I'm doing overall, and the second to help keep track of my cooldowns. I have Omen also, but I generally only look at it when I'm playing my Paladin. It's very rare that threat is an issue for me these days.
Agility over other stats or balanced stat allocation, and why? As long as I'm hit-capped, it's agi agi agi! Attack Power and crit all rolled into one, how could you go wrong?

Work is totally boring.

2009-11-10T13:00:00.000-05:00

I know, I know, if it was fun, they wouldn't call it "work", right?

I think most of it is just coming off a long vacation and remembering how little I actually do around here during the day. My work doesn't generally start until 2, until then I'm mostly trying to look busy. It seems to be going around. Today when I went upstairs for lunch, the Whistler was sitting in one of the owners' offices just talking, and when I got back from lunch, he was on the phone with one of his friends. I don't think he has much to do any more either. Or what work he does get, he finishes too quickly.

It was funny though, after he hung up with his friend, he made some comment to me about how hard it is to get some people off the phone. The thing is, nobody he knows ever calls him here except his girlfriend, so he had to have called this person in the first place. If you don't want to spend forever talking to someone, especially from work... don't call them! There's a bit of thinking outside the box for you.

Not much more to report really... we played a bit of WoW yesterday, I tanked Halls of Stone (I really hate the Brann event). Our guild on Cenarion Circle has expanded to include a guild horde-side. Hubby came up with the name, "Murlocs Gone Wild". It's kind of nice, now if we feel like playing our horde characters, we're still able to chat with the same people. The sad part is they let one of the other guild members be the guild leader, and I don't think he really gets the idea that the guild is just for fun. He went searching the internet looking for a good ranking system, for crying out loud. Then just gave us equivalent rank to what we have in the other guild anyway... but with more limited privileges. As an officer, I can invite, but not promote or demote, and I have yet to see what he's done with the guild bank. My rank idea was to look up all of the murloc NPC's and give each rank a name based on them. So the guild leader would be like, King Mrgl-Mrgl or something.

Oh well. :) No idea what's on the menu for tonight. Last night we tried to watch Superbad, which we got from Netflix. It got most of the way through, then crapped out and started skipping. We asked for a replacement, but who knows if it will have arrived today or not. If so, I hope it's a better copy!!

Even More Acetone Free!

2009-11-09T10:02:00.000-05:00

So, ladies out there who read my blog and wear nail polish... you are probably also aware of nail polish remover, and how many brands will proclaim to the high heavens that they are ACETONE FREE?

Someday I will look up the reason that this lack of Acetone is so awesome, but in the meantime, I have discovered (totally by accident) an even MORE acetone-free means of removing said nail polish.

I give you...

Scotch Tape!

No, you don't have to thank me, really. It was a fluke even that I found out about it. I was putting a memo up on the lab door and the tape wrapped around my finger. When I removed it, most of my nail polish had attached itself to the tape. Tape is also infinitely cheaper than nail polish remover, and, as an extra bonus, you don't have to stick your finger inside any sort of foam and wiggle it around. Oh come on, you know what I mean. And.. AND, no cold fingers from the alcohol in the damn stuff evaporating the second you remove them from said foam.

If you're the sort of person who buys the liquid stuff and puts it on a cotton ball and actually -wipes- the nail polish off... this post is probably not for you. Unless you have issues with the alcohol smell. In that case, come on over for the Scotch Tape Party!

Vacation's Over.

2009-11-09T08:19:00.000-05:00

Waaaaaaah!!!! :(

So I'm back at work. I got lucky though, there's no production today. So I really only have to stay for part of the day. I'll have to come back in the afternoon to take care of the schedule, but other than that, it looks to be a pretty easy day. Yay for that, at least!

My vacation was pretty quiet. Mostly just WoW with the hubby and watching movies with the kids. We did go out over the weekend to the bar for some karaoke. We got there when it started at 9PM, and didn't leave until it was about over at 1AM. It was a lot of fun, there was a good crowd there. There was also a moment of hilarity stemming from a trip to the bathroom. They have a pretty forceful hand dryer in there, and Sara decided that it would be funny to stick her face under it. I wish I'd had a camera, because she was totally right. We laughed for quite a while afterward.

After the karaoke was done, we hit up McDonald's for some chicken nuggets, and headed home. We tried to play a little bit of Rock Band with Beth when we got there, but we only managed about four songs before we pooped out and went to bed.

Our little horde druids are halfway to their goal right now, sitting pretty at level 31 after about 16 hours of play time. We spent some time on death knights in there, getting them to level 60 (for death and decay) to make it easier to run each other through low-level instances. We ran a few heroics on our main characters, and did some questing in Outland on our high-level hordies. I realized not too long into that particular session that I need to set up some sort of standard across all my characters with regard to the abilities they use the most. Characters getting leveled up have the same need of their "oh crap!" buttons as max-level ones, and you can bet that the results of having to search for said buttons are not generally positive.

For example, I was flying past Telredor, and one of the guards decided they didn't want me there, and proceeded to shoot lightning on me and dismount me. I freaked out trying to find my Slow Fall button, and of course, located it just as I hit the ground. Thankfully I wasn't flying too high, otherwise the results would have been a bit more messy than they were. There was also a portaling incident... hubby says, let's go to Orgrimmar now to get our next level skills. So I hit the button with the orange circle, and find myself in Orgrimmar... alone. Oops. There was much muttering and sighing coming from hubby's computer as he hoofed it over to Shattrath to take the portal from there. As a result, I've put another bar of skills in between my portal and teleport buttons, which will hopefully keep that from happening again!

That's about all of the news I have for now... I'm sure there are things that I'm forgetting. Oh, hi to everyone who is stopping by from google regarding the lucky couch commercial. Sorry if my blog didn't have what you were looking for! :)

Ahhh, vacation.

2009-11-03T12:59:00.000-05:00

Life is good. Just spending time hanging out at home with my family, can't ask for much more! Watched some TV and did some coloring with the kids last night, which was very fun. The only down side is the blister I gave myself from sharpening too many colored pencils!

Yesterday while Andy was at school, hubby and I did the grocery shopping with Emily, then came home and got started on hubby's birthday present, which was a pair of druids on a new recruit-a-friend account. Not just any druids, but -tauren- druids. On a PvP server, no less! We really wanted to challenge ourselves this time, that's for sure! Most of our characters are alliance, so the quests aren't so familiar, and once we get to higher levels, we'll see how much we have to deal with gankers. Definitely new and exciting!

That's about all the news there is to share, I hope everyone is having a great week so far!

One for the road

2009-10-30T07:29:00.000-04:00

Anyone who has known me for any length of time will tell you that I have a very... unique sense of humor. I'm the person in the movie theater who's cracking up at some obscure reference that nobody else gets. A perfect example was the time I saw Finding Nemo in the theater. I laughed my fool head off when Marlin finally told the punch line to his joke. (For those who haven't seen the movie, he says, "With fronds like these, who needs anemones?")

So in that vein, here are some jokes that my sister-in-law sent me. She wrote at the top when she forwarded it, "I think this is right up your alley". She was right. (I don't know where #12 is, sorry!)

1. Two antennas met on a roof, fell in love and got married. The ceremony wasn't much, but the reception was excellent...

2. A jumper cable walks into a bar. The bartender says, "I'll serve you, but don't start anything."

3. Two peanuts walk into a bar, and one was a salted.

4. A dyslexic man walked into a bra.

5. A man walks into a bar with a slab of asphalt under his arm, and says: "A beer please, and one for the road."

6. Two cannibals are eating a clown. One says to the other: "Does this taste funny to you?

7. "Doc, I can't stop singing The Green, Green Grass of Home .."
"That sounds like Tom Jones Syndrome."
"Is it common?"
"Well, It's Not Unusual."

8. Two cows are standing next to each other in a field. Daisy says to Dolly, "I was artificially inseminated this morning."
"I don't believe you," says Dolly.
"It's true; no bull!" exclaims Daisy.

9. An invisible man marries an invisible woman. The kids were nothing to look at either.

10. Deja Moo: The feeling that you've heard this bull before.

11. I went to buy some camouflage trousers the other day, but I couldn't find any.

13. I went to a seafood disco last week... and pulled a mussel..

14. What do you call a fish with no eyes? A fsh.

15. Two fish swim into a concrete wall. The one turns to the other and says, "Dam!"

16. Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly, so they lit a fire in the craft. Not surprisingly it sank, proving once again that you can't have your kayak and heat it too.

17. A group of chess enthusiasts checked into a hotel, and were standing in the lobby discussing their recent tournament victories.
After about an hour, the manager came out of the office, and asked them to disperse.
"But why," they asked, as they moved off.
"Because," he said. "I can't stand chess-nuts boasting in an open foyer."

18. A woman has twins, and gives them up for adoption. One of them goes to a family in Egypt , and is named 'Ahmal.' The other goes to a family in Spain ; they name him 'Juan.'
Years later, Juan sends a picture of himself to his birth mother.
Upon receiving the picture, she tells her husband that she wishes she also had a picture of Ahmal.
Her husband responds, "They're twins! If you've seen Juan, you've seen Ahmal."

19. Mahatma Gandhi, as you know, walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet.
He also ate very little, which made him rather frail and with his odd diet, he suffered from bad breath.
This made him .... a super-calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis.

20. A dwarf, who was a mystic, escaped from jail. The call went out that there was a small medium at large.

21. And finally, there was the person who sent twenty different puns to his friends, with the hope that at least ten of the puns would make them laugh. No pun in ten did.

Have a great weekend everyone!

AUGH! Heebiejeebies are GO!

2009-10-28T13:23:00.000-04:00

A few minutes ago, I went to the bathroom. (and no, there is no Turd Tape in our bathrooms!)

I come out, and walk over to the sink to wash my hands. And I look into the mirror to see a WASP on my COLLAR.

I hate bees. Bumblebees are ok, because they're big and easy to avoid. Wasps, hornets, whatever, they all look evil and they creep me out. Especially because they seem determined to build a hive on our house. I want them as FAR away from me as possible.

But this one was on my SHIRT. I have no idea where it came from, or how long it had been there, or ANYthing.

I'm still trying to calm down, even though it is now safely dead.

One of the druids in our guild used to have a macro that he would use when tanking instances. He'd sneak up on the boss in kitty form, and then pop out into bear form and yell "Surprise Bear!"

This was Surprise Wasp, and it was not -nearly- so cute or so clever. Blech! *shudder*

Why, Google? Why??

2009-10-28T09:11:00.000-04:00

So I was just checking my gmail account, like I do every so often during the day, checking to see if I've got any new comments or anything like that (by the way, thank you Linda for stopping by so often!). At the top, they usually stick a link advertisement for something they think I might be interested in, based on the subject lines of the emails I've gotten recently (that's a guess, but I think it's pretty accurate). I always have to laugh when I open up my spam folder, because I almost always get a link to a recipe that uses Spam.

Today though, I was just in my regular email folder, and this was at the top.

Turd Tape - turdtape.com - Measure that turd! Sticker for inside your toilet only $2.99.+s.h.

Yep. I had to click through, because I'm morbidly curious that way.

Their slogan? "Sh*t happens, so why not measure it?"

And, even better. "Coming Soon: Stool Stick!"

I have no idea why I got targeted with this particular ad... but it's one I'm not likely to forget!

After these messages...

2009-10-27T12:20:00.000-04:00

I was listening to the radio this morning and a commercial came on that makes me chuckle every time I hear it. There are actually two of those going around right now. This one was for AT&T I think... it's the one with the guy who's sitting on his "lucky couch" to watch football and his wife is trying to get him to watch the game in the basement. He starts singing when the football music comes on, and it just cracks me up. "Game's starting now... have fun in the basement! Sitting on lucky couch!"

The other one, I honestly don't know what company it's for, but it's about a girl blogging about hanging out with her ex-boyfriend again. "What are you looking at? uh.. hermit crab! That hermit crab next to that hot girl? ...I didn't put it there!"

It just got me to thinking about all the other commercials I've liked in the past, and how I miss hearing them sometimes. I feel like a dork, missing commercials. But there have definitely been some good ones.

In other news...

Andy came out very well at his conferences last night. I managed to get out of work with time to run home and change into nicer clothes too. His teacher said that he's such a sweetie, and she's very happy to have him in her class. We had pizza for dinner to celebrate his good report. :)

Poor hubby is still sick, coughing his lungs out. So far I've staved off the sickness monster. I was planning on getting a flu shot at work this morning, but they ran out before I could get up there. Oh well. If I get sick, I get sick. There's not much more I can do about it except keep my fingers crossed and hope that if it happens, it happens during my week off. I don't want to miss any more work this year!

I'm no good at clever titles.

2009-10-26T07:12:00.000-04:00

This weekend was pretty quiet, as weekends go. Andy is feeling better, and went back to school last Thursday, but come Friday morning, hubby was down for the count. He spent pretty much the whole weekend in bed, the poor guy! I stayed home on Friday to make sure that Andy got to school, but my boss is out for the next three days, so I had to come in this morning. I only hope I'm out of here in time for Andy's conferences tonight. I'm supposed to be at the school at 6, so we'll see.

I did have a bit of fun this weekend though, I went out to a local hibachi place for dinner with Bob and Sara. It was a bit expensive, but very tasty, and fun too! The chef that was at our table was very funny, in a punny, deadpan sort of way. He'd toss butter onto the grill and say, "butterfly!" See.. it's butter, and it's flying onto the grill... yeah. I was laughing my head off. When he had finished grilling everyone's food, he had a few pieces set over to the side, and he asked who wanted them. I said I'd take them, and he told me I'd have to work for it, and started tossing them at me to catch in my mouth. I did pretty well at first, but then he started throwing them faster, and I couldn't keep up! I was so stuffed when I left, and still grinning, so overall I'd say it was well worth the price.

Other than that, I spent the weekend at home, taking care of hubby and the kids. I stayed up a bit later last night than I should have, so I'm pretty sleepy today... I really hope the day passes uneventfully!

I'm pretty damn funny.

2009-10-22T09:13:00.000-04:00

A week or so ago I went back and started reading some old posts of mine. Just looking to see what in the heck I was writing about a year or so ago. Also trying to find some pictures that I'd posted, like Andy's birthday cake.

For the record, in 5 days, this blog will be three years old. THREE years I have been writing on this thing to nobody in particular. Hard to believe that it's been three years since I wrote this story, or answered this meme. I'll have to see if I can't come up with something special to write next Tuesday, on the actual anniversary, or bloggiversary, as I hear these things are called. Looking back, I have yet to celebrate one. The past two years were just blogging as normal.

Anyway, reading through old posts, I found myself chuckling and giggling at things I said. Nothing major comes to mind, although I did just stumble across something I posted while I was drunk about being a grownup and doing grownup things. There are a couple of things over in the "favorite posts" section of my sidebar that I find pretty hilarious too. But I'm not going to re-link them here, you'll actually have to come visit if you want to read 'em!

I don't really have much else to say, except that I think I'm pretty damn funny sometimes. Too bad I'm just about the only one who thinks so!

Keep On Keepin' On...

2009-10-21T09:44:00.000-04:00

So let's see here...

Andy's got a "mild" case of bronchitis, according to his doctor. All I know is the poor little guy is coughing his head off, especially at night. He stayed home yesterday, and he'll be home again today. We don't want to chance that he'll make himself worse running around in the cold at recess, especially considering it rained last night, so everything will be wet. Not much else going on at home, hubby made some very tasty chicken stir fry for dinner, and tonight he's going to make tacos. Yum! I am soooo lucky to have married such a good cook! If I was in charge of dinner, we'd be having either spaghetti or macaroni and cheese every night. I'm good at pasta, that's about it.

Not a lot of WoW news either. We're switching around our non-playing days a bit so that we can be somewhat involved in the raiding schedule the guild leader just set up. Last night we scrounged up 24 people and took on Sartharion. We tried one drake up, but so many people were new to the fight that after a couple of disastrous attempts, we decided to take the drake out and run as normal. Even then we had a wipe before we successfully took him out. Someone in the raid was incredulous, we'd wiped three times and we were going to try AGAIN??!

Um, yes. Three wipes on one boss isn't much, really, when you consider that most of the people in the raid are not "raiders", per se, in that they're not always reading strategies and watching videos and learning the fights beforehand. They're depending on the raid leader to explain things once we're there, and half the time they're not listening even then. Truly told, I'm amazed it only took four tries to take him out, all things considered.

I took my hunter, so of course no hunter loot, and two pieces of paladin tier. I wish I had a screenshot of the recount though, at the end of it all I was 3rd on damage, running with my beast mastery spec. I think I hit about 3200 DPS. Not too shabby, if I do say so myself. We're looking at Ulduar possibly on Friday, we'll see how that goes.

In the meantime, we'll be trick or treating and running the Headless Horseman whenever we can, and on our days off, keeping up with our Netflix queue. Life is good!

I didn't think this was possible...

2009-10-19T06:27:00.000-04:00

I'm almost more tired and worn out than I was on Friday. We had a busy weekend!

On Friday night the kids went to my parents' house to get them out from underfoot, because like I said on Friday, we had a lot to do to get the house "party-ready".

On Saturday morning, Sara and I participated in a walk that we do every year, "Making Strides for Breast Cancer". I'm still sore from that.. it was a 5k, and I never walk that far these days! Still, it's for a wonderful cause, and hubby didn't want me to miss it. My mom had breast cancer when I was little, so it's something that's near and dear to my heart.

When I got home, hubby was already cleaning, so I joined in. We got everything done that day (including a mountain of laundry) except the kids' bathroom. We also took a bit of a break in the middle to get groceries, and get Andy's cake in the oven. He wanted the same sort of cake that he had last year, so we picked up some extra decorating frosting.

The kids came home early Sunday morning, and we all went off to church for the first time in quite a while. We tried a new church that's closer to home than the one I used to go to, and it was pretty nice. A lot smaller, but the pastor seemed nice, so I think we're going to go back again next week.

After that, it was back home to finish cleaning and get Andy's cake ready. There's a picture of last year's on this post, if you want to see (more or less) what this year's looked like. I made the road a bit more curvy, and used a smaller car. It came out pretty well.

Finally, people started arriving for Andy's party. My parents came, as well as Bob and Sara and Billy's dad. We had pizza from Little Caesar's, then Andy opened his presents. He got quite a few toys, and Billy and I got him a bike. For the record, I never want to put training wheels on anything again. That was a very frustrating experience.

After presents, it was time for cake, and then everyone went home. Andy spent the rest of the night playing with all of his new toys. Hubby and I got to figure out how to transform his Transformers, while he played with his Bakugan and colored some pictures with the crayons and paper he got from Aunt Sara and Uncle Bob. If the weather holds, he'll probably get some time to ride his bike this afternoon, as he doesn't have school today, the lucky kid!

And now it's back to work for me. My boss is still out today, so it will probably be a bit of a long one. I've only been here an hour, and I'm already looking forward to going home and having a hot bath or something to relax. How was your weekend?

Apparently I'm the only Bill Nighy fan I know.

2009-10-16T07:37:00.000-04:00

Or else every one of you is a Bob Dylan fan and now categorically hates me for making fun of him.

Hey, I SAID I was sorry!

I have been a giant ball of stress lately. I still am, in fact, which is in part contributing to the lack of posting this week, right after I was starting to get in a groove of boring you all with my day-to-day life again. It's just difficult to write a coherent post when you've got Tourette's of the brain and you're scared to type anything because the pent-up stress might escape and take over your hands for a moment and post some ranting raving crap that will offend anyone who even has my blog in their feed reader, regardless of whether or not they've actually read the post.

Ugh. The Whistler just adjusted his pants in my line of sight. Why can he never do that shit while he's facing into the corner? How many times do I have to deal with the potential sight of his underwear before I just go blind from the fact that my eyes refuse to take the chance any more? It could be worse though. Yesterday he was talking to the new guy in the department (he's been working for me for like a year, but he's still the new guy), and he got excited about something, and spit flew out of his mouth and landed on the poor guy's lip. ON HIS LIP, people. He told me he washed it three times, but he still felt like he needed a shower. I don't blame him.

I hate this damn place sometimes.

The mantra for today is "Thank God it's Friday". We've got a busy weekend ahead of us, considering that it's Andy's birthday on Sunday and we've still got quite a bit to do to get ready for it, but at least I won't be here. And in two weeks I get an entire week off. We're not going anywhere because Andy will be in school, but again, I won't be here. That's the important part.

Friday.. Friday.. Friday...... ommmmmmmmmm

If you really love Christmas...

2009-10-15T08:04:00.000-04:00

We're listening to the Bob and Tom show this morning on the radio, and a little while ago they started playing clips of Christmas songs. Now, it's way too early for Christmas songs (if you ask me), so I listened closer to see if I could find out why. Apparently Bob Dylan is releasing a new Christmas album this year, of him singing Christmas songs, and the clips were from that. I'm sorry, but the first thing that came to mind upon hearing this is this song from Love, Actually. Except Bill Nighy is way cooler than Bob Dylan, IMHO. (Apologies to any Dylan fans that read this, it's nothing personal, honest!)

Back to work... again??!

2009-10-13T08:19:00.000-04:00

Blech. I feel like poo this morning, mostly because I took a shower right before bed and even though the water was nice and warm, it woke me up. I didn't fall asleep until about 1AM.

We had a very busy weekend, so I apologize in advance if this runs long. Like you guys expect anything else from me, I'm sure.

Friday night the kids went to my parents so we could go present shopping for Andy. Once that was done, we decided to make a night of it ourselves and found a hotel across town to have a mini vacation at. We got a poolside room, and invited Bob and Sara to come swimming with us. We had an awesome time, and when the pool closed, we went to Steak & Shake for some food. It seemed to me they were a bit understaffed, or perhaps they were just ill-prepared. The girl who waited on us was also doing hostess duty, and her tables seemed to be scattered everywhere. At the same time, there were people hanging out doing nothing over by the counter the whole time we were there. My food wasn't that great either. The fries were fine, but I got chicken tenders and they were more chewy than tender. Still, it was a fun night.

The next day we picked up the kids and a rental car and headed across the state. We planned to visit my mother-in-law, as her birthday was yesterday. So we did a little vacation with the kids, driving part of the way there and spending the night in a hotel, again with a pool. They're getting very brave in the water, though they're both still scared to jump in.

Sunday morning we had our continental breakfast and drove the rest of the way to hubby's mom's house. We brought her a coloring book, a card, and a balloon. Her husband entertained the kids (or was it the other way around?) while she entertained hubby and myself with old photo albums from when hubby was young. He has changed a lot since he was little, that's for sure!

After that, it was time to head home. There are a couple of restaurants on that side of the state that we don't have by our house, so we went on a food hunt. We had a bit of an adventure, but eventually we found Tim Horton's, and I got a little box of Timbits (donut holes). The kids each got a donut as well, and hubby had a cinnamon roll. Then on our way home we stopped at the White Castle in Lansing and picked up a Crave Case and a sack of chicken rings. We had to wait for a while for that one, but it's to be expected, considering there are 30 burgers in a Crave Case, and the car in front of us ordered the same thing! Those little burgers are super tasty though, I must say! Between the four of us, we finished about half of the box in the car, and we had the rest for lunch yesterday.

We didn't have production running at work yesterday, so I took advantage of that and spent most of the day at home. Played a bit of WoW, some games on Facebook, generally just relaxed. I did have to go in to work for a bit, but I just had a couple of quick things to take care of, and then it was back home!

And now I'm back at work for the next four days. The Whistler seems to have gotten the memo about his clothes, hopefully he'll get his hair cut some time soon as well. We shall see!

Fridaaaay!!

2009-10-09T09:24:00.000-04:00

Finally!

It's another busy day for me today, sending around tons of emails, trying to get things organized for Andy's birthday next week. He wants the same cake as last year, so I'll be having fun trying to re-create it this year! On top of that, we need to make cookies for his class and cupcakes for the party he wants to have with some of his classmates. Lots of baking to be done next Saturday! I have fun with that, though.

Last night was pretty quiet at home. I got home a little early, so we spent some time playing our low-level alts on CC. I have a druid and hubby made a hunter. He's so cute, he named his hunter Calvin, then used Cael and her motorcycle for a ride down to Durotar for an orange tiger to name Hobbes. After dinner we did finish the Clone Wars DVD. It turned out that there was only like half an hour left, so that didn't take as long as we expected. After it was over, I popped in Drop Dead Gorgeous. We've watched it several times (so many that Andy said "this movie AGAIN?!"), but it's still funny... there are so many little one-liners that make us laugh even now.

We'll be out and about quite a lot this weekend, hopefully we'll be able to get Andy's presents, plus we're going to do a bit of driving. No particular destination in mind, hubby's just got that itch to be out on the road again. With luck the weather will be nice, and we can enjoy the changing leaves a bit. I'm sure the DVD player will come along to keep the kids occupied too.

I hope you all have a great weekend as well, I'll see you on the other side!

Waffling

2009-10-08T10:57:00.001-04:00

So yeah... I think I'm going to give up on the whole "starting a new blog" thing for now. Instead I'm going to put a little more... me into this place. Starting with the smiling face over on the sidebar. I'm putting my own picture up there instead of Asara's, with my own name. Not going to hide behind an avatar any more. :) Of course there have been pictures of me and my family around before, but that's not quite the same, in my own little opinion.

Last night we did spend some time playing Mezzaluna and Rhonson after dinner (hubby made stir-fry, it was super tasty!). It was nice, barring the slower mounts. I was almost tempted to suggest that we transfer them over to Cenarion Circle as well, in order to take advantage of the gold I've piled up over there and get them moving a bit faster! It wasn't bad though, not nearly as bad now that regular flyers are 150% instead of 60%. Still, the difference was noticeable! We put in some good progress toward level 76, and zipped through quite a few quests in Zul'Drak. Around 9 we decided to call it a night, and put in a movie.

Hubby is a big fan of Star Wars, and back when we had cable, he watched the animated Clone Wars series a lot with our son. So he put the movie version on our Netflix queue, and that's what we watched last night. We didn't finish the whole thing though, because after about an hour, I started falling asleep on the couch. I had been hesitant to watch it in the past, because of a review I read of it over on BBB's blog. He had said something about how it didn't quite fit that Anakin would have this fond relationship with a Padawan and then somehow turn into the baby-killing monster depicted in the third Star Wars movie. Hubby suspects that this might be explained as the tv show concludes. There were some previews of another Clone Wars season that included clips implying that Anakin's Padawan had turned into just as much of a problem as Anakin himself. This leads us to wonder if something will happen to her that could account for the violent shift in his behavior. Perhaps one of these days we can see the whole series and find out!

As far as being sick goes, it looks like I dodged that particular bullet. So far no new symptoms of anything, and the sore throat has gone away. Yay for that! On the down side, my wrist is hurting again, so boo for tendonitis there. I've been taking some ibuprofen and I put ice on it yesterday, but it still hurts. It's mostly a dull pain, but it's always there, and I'm getting sort of tired of it. I think I might have to haul out my wrist brace for a week or two on top of the other stuff I'm doing for it. I hate doing that though, because it makes it very awkward for me to use the computer and write. I feel like I'm hurting it more by doing those things because I have to stretch my hand around in ways I usually don't in order to click the mouse button or move a pen. Still, that's what the doctor told me to do last time, and it did actually work, so I guess it's worth a shot.

Regarding the Whistler, the HR guy did come down to the lab and he said he sort of talked about the pants issue with him, but he wasn't sure how much good it would do. It must have done something though, because he's wearing some new pants today. There was talk of getting him some uniforms again, which I would not have a problem with at all. I wouldn't have to wear one, at any rate! Plus it would save me from some stupid conversations about where he got the t-shirt he's wearing for the day. Extra bonus there!

That's about it for today, tonight we'll probably be finishing up the Clone Wars DVD and maybe watching a bit of TV or maybe another movie. I'm sure there are quite a few around that we haven't seen yet, and having the ability to stream movies from Netflix online right to the TV is pretty sweet!

Wednesday already?

2009-10-07T08:32:00.000-04:00

It's nice to see that my work week is already getting on toward half over. Yesterday practically flew by, I had a lot going on for a change. I still have quite a bit to do today, it feels good to be gainfully occupied at work! Not that I mind getting paid to surf the internet, but I feel better doing actual work when I'm at work.

The only thing I could do without today is the Whistler. He's wearing a pair of jeans that I know I've told him to get rid of at least twice before today. They're ripped and worn out, and the back pocket is hanging off in such a way that if his shirt wasn't tucked in, his skivvies would be hanging out for all to see. He said something yesterday about how he used to have a uniform and he wishes he could have one again because he ruins so many clothes here. I always have to bite my tongue when he says stuff like that, because if he would be a little more careful about what he's doing, he wouldn't have nearly the amount of mess on his clothes. But he's always in such a hurry, there's stuff flying everywhere.

I feel like I might be coming down with something. :( My throat felt really scratchy when I woke up this morning, and that usually means a cold is on the way. I hope I'm not getting sick, we were talking about doing a little road trip this weekend, maybe going to visit my mother-in-law at her new house. Just have to keep my fingers crossed, I guess!

Not much else to report today, hubby made us some delicious tacos last night, and we watched the Dark Crystal with the kids before turning in. Tonight we'll probably play a bit of WoW, hopefully we'll be able to dust off Mezzaluna and Rhonson for a while, we haven't played them in quite some time! I miss my little priest. :)

For Someone Special

2009-10-06T09:00:00.002-04:00

(I couldn't find the one I wanted, but hopefully this one will do!)

Bonding is good.

2009-10-05T16:16:00.000-04:00

Let's see what there is to report today...

We spent most of the weekend offline. The kids went to my parents' to get in some quality time with their cousin, and from what I hear, they all had a great time. My dad said that my niece practically couldn't stop hugging my kids, which is adorable.

We got a call on Friday from my brother-in-law and his wife, who invited us over for some Mario Party. The batteries in their Wii remotes were running low, so we hauled out an older version and played on the GameCube. We had quite a lot of fun, as it turned out that we had an unfinished game hanging around that we decided to finish playing. Hubby won that one, and then his brother won the quicker game we played afterwards. By that time my sister-in-law was getting tired, so she headed off to bed, and hubby, his brother, and I watched a movie before we came home for the night. It was called Bully... and I kind of wish we'd picked something else. It was just long and drawn-out and had very little point, when you got right down to it. It was based on a true story, but that didn't make it much more movie-worthy in my little opinion.

On Saturday we slept in quite a bit. I don't remember much about what we did during the day, but that night we went out to the bar for dinner and some karaoke! There was a pretty good crowd, but I still got to sing four songs. I had a good time, but hubby wasn't feeling very well. We left around 11:30 or so and headed out to a hot tub place not too far away, which was very relaxing. :)

Sunday was spent hanging around the house, playing a bit of WoW, doing a bit of laundry.

It was nice to just stay home and spend time with my hubby. Life can get pretty frantic around here at times, and I definitely appreciated the time to just be together. All told, it was a weekend well spent.

Feeling pretty RAWR.

2009-10-01T08:33:00.000-04:00

So, I've been raiding quite a bit this week.

On Monday, we ran Ulduar-10. I brought my hunter, and she got... zero upgrades. Everything was plate or cloth, no dps mail at all. Sadface. However, we did have a very successful run, we got through Kologarn, which is farther than I've ever seen. The last time I was in there, we had a wipefest on Ignis and never managed to kill him.

I've dual specced my hunter to Marksman. Sigh. I never thought I would, but I had the extra money, and I won a gun from heroic TOC, so I figured I'd give it a try. Stuck a haste scope on there, and I have been doing better DPS. The problem is, now I have trouble switching back. The haste scope is useless when she's using her Beast Mastery spec, and the non-haste scope is on a crossbow. So every time I want to switch, I have to restock arrows, and it's a general pain in the arse. I want a bow, dammit. Then I wouldn't have to worry about it. Still, Leshya is getting a lot of play time, and I'm still having fun, trying to learn a rotation for the new spec is amusing, especially because I'm not geared quite right for Marksman. I'm managing around 4k dps, which is nothing to sneeze at, at least I don't think so.

Then last night Saraabi got her turn. There were two 10-man runs set up, one for OS and one for Naxx. We got OS down with no trouble, and Saraabi got to tank the big dragon again. We did very well in Naxx as well, we cleared all four quarters, and just have the last two bosses to clear out some time this weekend. We had only two wipes the whole time. One was on Anub'rekhan, breaking in a new healer... he was too close to the boss on locust swarm and got silenced. And once Saraabi went down, everyone else followed shortly after. The other was on Four Horsemen, and possibly the same healer. He was put in the back, and wasn't close enough to Lady Blaumeux. Or however you spell that. We cleaned them both out on the second try though, which is a great learning curve for someone who had never seen the encounters before. Saraabi main tanked the whole thing, and had an awesome time doing so.

I think Thaddius is my favorite, with the whole tank throwing thing. It's just fun to go flying back and forth across the room. Grobbulus is probably second, and Heigan third, just because the dancing while tanking is a bit nerve-wracking. I like bosses where I actually get to do something more than just stand there and hold the boss for everyone else to pound on. Some of the standing still bosses were fun too though, I sat there and watched my TPS on Omen climb up over a million. I felt very RAWR!

On Friday is supposed to be another Ulduar, then on Saturday we're going to have another go at ToC-10. We have been in there once before, but we didn't really know what we were doing, and just barely got to the second part of the Northrend Beasts. However, we're all a bit better-geared, so perhaps we'll have more success this time around. We've also tried Onyxia once, but wiped to the flying phase every time. One of these days we'll take her out too, I'm sure!

After this week though, I'm cutting back down on my raiding to one or two days a week. I was up too late last night and Monday night, and I am really feeling it right now. I had fun, but I need to take care of myself too. Tonight is a night off anyway, so all I'm going to do is watch TV with the family and try to put a dent in our laundry. I've decided to wash just about every item of clothing in the house, and it's a big task! It'll get done though, mark my words! :)

Quiet on the home front

2009-09-25T08:28:00.000-04:00

Radio silence seems to be the catchword this week.

I have decided on the name for my new blog, but I'm still getting things set up over there, so no link for you all yet! If anyone has any banner-making skill at all, please comment or email, because I have tried and failed to make something good. I know what I want, but my graphics skills are just not up to it.

This week has zoomed by pretty quickly. It seems like it was just Monday! Our evenings have been pretty WoW-less this week. I think we got in one run of the Brewfest boss, and a couple of heroics, and that's about it. Last night we did a run of Heroic Halls of Lightning, and in the middle the guild master started up a group for Onyxia. They were short a couple of people, but Tuesday and Thursday nights are family nights now, so we had to tell them that we couldn't go.

We ordered pizza from a new place that just went in near our grocery store. It was pretty good, though I'm not totally sold on the sauce. Probably because I'm so used to getting a certain flavor from the other pizza places we order from. It wasn't bad, just different. The rest of the pizza was awesome. There was a ton of cheese, the mushroom pieces were huge, and the crust was amazingly tasty. We also tried their cheese bread and some boneless barbecue wings. Both were yummy! I think we'll probably order from them again. It's a nice break, because there is only one other place around our house that will deliver to us.

Once the pizza showed up, we watched Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, which had just arrived from Netflix. It was ok, but I wasn't super impressed with it. I haven't seen the first Underworld in a while, but I remember liking it a lot better. I think the fact that the big scary vampire leader was played by Bill Nighy did a lot for my opinion. The problem is, I had just watched Love, Actually the night before, and he is in that too as an old rock legend doing a crappy Christmas cover song in a last-ditch attempt at a comeback. So every time he was in a scene with his horribly fake-looking blue contacts, I kept expecting him to launch into "If you really love Christmas, come on and let it snow!" I hadn't seen Love, Actually before I saw the first Underworld movie, so there was no association at the time.

The style of the werewolves bothered me a bit too. They reminded me of gorillas with wolf heads. Especially when they were shown running from above. Just overall, it was pretty "meh". I have no idea what's coming next, but it probably won't get here until Monday or Tuesday because I forgot to bring this one to the mailbox this morning, so I'll have to drop it in the mail tomorrow or something. Bummer. At least we can hook up hubby's laptop to the TV and watch movies that way too. The selection isn't the best, but generally we've been able to find something worth watching every time we've set it up. The kids have been watching Voltron, and Andy seems to really like it. I noticed Thundercats on there too, but I don't remember if it's available on the computer or not. I may look into it this weekend. :)

Speaking of which, I think I've rambled on long enough. I hope you all have a lovely weekend. The weather here isn't going to be the best, but I'm sure we'll find something to keep us busy!

Weekend Recap

2009-09-21T07:21:00.002-04:00

Good times were had this weekend.

Saturday was Pirate Day, so I had to run Caelatria down to Booty Bay to get her pirate costume and a quick achievement. That's about all that went on in WoW though, the rest of the day was spent offline. We took the kids out to Applebee's for lunch, then did the grocery shopping for the week. We all got new coloring books, and after the groceries were put away, we all did some coloring. Then Bob and Sara stopped by, and we went out to Texas Roadhouse for dinner (prime rib, yum). Afterwards, they came back to our house for a few rounds of Rock Band.

Yesterday was a lazy at-home day. We did some more coloring, and we'd gotten Bolt in the mail from Netflix, so we watched that before bedtime. It was pretty cute, if a bit predictable at times. Some of the plot went over Andy's head too, which was difficult to explain afterwards. Still, he enjoyed watching it, and so did we. I think my favorite character was Rhino, the hamster. He was just so over-the-top, I couldn't help but laugh.

Now it's back to work.. blah. I'm still mulling over what to do with the blog. I probably will start a new one, but I don't know how soon. I still haven't decided on a name. Last time I checked, Mental Meanderings was leading the poll. We shall see :)

Yarrrr! It's Pirate Day!

2009-09-19T10:07:00.001-04:00

On a side note..

2009-09-15T07:49:00.002-04:00

First, thank you very much to the one person who has voted on my poll thus far. I will leave it up for a few days, in hopes that at least a couple more people will stop by.

Next, I have to say how much it astounds me that people come in here and ask where the paper towel is. We have a sink. The paper towel dispenser sits right above the sink. If you look straight ahead while standing at the sink, you can't miss it. Seriously. One of the managers just came in and asked for some paper towel, and I had to point him in the right direction. These people can find the sink to dump their skunky day-old coffee into, but they can't find the paper towel dispenser. Awesome.

Full Steam Ahead!

2009-09-14T11:35:00.003-04:00

As those of you who were around for my first few blog makeovers will remember, once I get an idea in my head, I have a tendency to zerg ahead full force to get it done. To that end, here are the blog names that have been percolating around in my head over the past few hours. I don't know how the poll bit will work in a feed reader, so please, if you have a moment, do come by and check it out. You don't have to comment, I'm just looking for input. I may even pull rank at the end and choose something completely different. (hee)

Winds of Change

2009-09-14T08:00:00.002-04:00

So, the general feeling I'm getting from the comments on my last post (and thank you all one million times for leaving them, you rock!) is one of "go for it". So I think I shall. I have decided that I am going to make a new blog, rather than give this one a facelift. It's been here for almost three years (can you believe that? I had to look it up, but there you have it.) and while I appreciate the history, a clean slate needs to be clean. There are, however, some complications that I must work through before all of this can happen.

1. I need a new blog name. I think I may even work in my real name there somewhere. My current bleary, hazy thought on this one is "Carrie Me Home (I'm tired!)" after the only knock-knock joke I've ever heard with my name in it. Other options.. perhaps something that combines the name of a hunter skill with the name of a paladin skill.. but it's not going to be just a WoW blog, so that might confuse people. Also, something involving dragons might be good too. Or even just "Clean Slate". Suggestions are welcome!

2. Once I've decided on a name, I need a new header image. Bansidhe did such a nice job on the one I have now, I'm kind of spoiled, and don't want just plain old boring Blogger stuff up there any more. If I go with the first title I mentioned, I'm thinking I'll have the title in the middle, with Cael in "feign death" pose on the left and Saraabi in "imp. feign death" pose on the right. I want to have my WoW characters in there somewhere, since I will be writing about them a lot. They're not the focus, but the game is a big part of what I do these days. Again, suggestions welcome. Once I get an idea of what I want, I may try to make it myself. We'll see.

3. ???

4. Profit! No, not really. I've never had ads on my blog before and I don't intend to start now. I'm not going to pay for my own domain either, I'm going to sit right here on Blogger where I've always been. I don't need anything fancy (custom header notwithstanding).

So there we have it. Lots of decisions to make, and formats to play with, colors, everything!

Identity Crisis

2009-09-11T08:41:00.002-04:00

Hubby and I were talking last night about character names. I mentioned in my last post that Asara had to change her name when she was transferred to Cenarion Circle. I have adjusted to that surprisingly well, I'm right on top of things when people say "Cael" on vent. Or Saraabi. Many of the people in their new guild consider Saraabi my main because they knew her first. Which is fine. There's actually someone else who is a friend of some people we run with often (yeah, that's confusing) whose main is named Cayle, so they call me Saraabi to avoid misunderstandings. It's still hard to hear "Cayle" over ventrilo and not go, "Yes?"

I suppose this is probably partly due to the fact that I've had many alts, all with different names, so I'm used to adjusting to people calling me different things. Still, it's a bit odd to me that I shrugged off the "Asara" identity so quickly. I still catch myself calling her Asara when talking about her to my hubby, and sometimes I have to remind myself what to type when sending mail from my bank alt, but other than that, she's Caelatria now. It makes me wonder if it's time to redesign the blog. After all, it's my WoW Asara that dominates the header, but that Asara no longer exists.

When I did the transfer, I decided that I wanted a new name. I wanted a fresh start for her, I didn't want to give her some odd spelling of the name she's carried for the past three years. She was stepping away from everything she'd known, I didn't want old baggage carried along, and I knew if she continued to be "Asara", it would be hard to get away from that. I didn't want to give her any name that I had ever given another character before.

Maybe it's time for a new blog. A new life, a new internet "identity".

What do you guys think?

It's been a while!

2009-08-31T09:19:00.003-04:00

If anyone is still out there reading this, thanks for sticking around!

It's been crazy for me the past week or so. I'm covering some vacations at work, so my hours have been all over the place. Still, I have some resolution to my guild problem. After trading messages back and forth with my class leader, I decided to transfer Asara. So if you're looking for her, she is now named Caelatria over on Cenarion Circle. I did make another Asara on Malfurion, just to keep the name in case I ever decide to go back. Or who knows, when Cataclysm hits, I might re-level her through the new quests. I even made her look like she used to before the barber shop came out, so it will be like completely starting over.

So far, I'm happy I made the move. The new guild is lots of fun, and very supportive. She's already been to 10-man Ulduar with them, as well as plenty of heroics. Believe it or not, they roll on loot in raids, no DKP to worry about, they just go and do what they can do. I like it. She's been busier in the past two days on Cenarion Circle than she has in the past two months on Malfurion.

The only sad note is that I got absolutely no response from my guild master about any of it. I have told him multiple times in the past that he's the main reason I stayed at all, and he had nothing to say. It's like he and my class leader have switched personalities. Over the years, my CL has been very quiet. He hardly ever spoke, even in chat, except to do MD assignments or something, unless directly addressed. My guild leader and I had a very open friendship, always joking with each other and whatnot. Now my GL is silent, and I've talked more with my CL over the past week or two than I have in the entire time I've been in the guild.

There have actually been quite a few people leaving in the past week. My CL is quitting the game entirely, that was a big shock. I had been teasing him recently about how he never named his pets, so I asked him that before he quit, he name one of them and send me a screenshot for proof. Which he did, lol!

That's about all the news for now, just life as usual at home, though Andy is getting ready for first grade! We just got a list of what he'll need in the way of school supplies last week, which was kind of a bummer. I really like the curriculum and whatnot of the school he attends, but sometimes they seem like they're a bit behind the ball, especially when it comes to communicating with us. I mean, Meijer has had school supplies out for weeks, so of course by the time we get there to pick up his stuff, a lot of the things he needs are out of stock, or there are only a few left to choose from. We didn't even know when his first day was until hubby called last Monday.

Ah well, we'll get him situated soon enough.

I might be done.

2009-08-20T08:36:00.002-04:00

Yesterday I was involved in some drama on Asara's guild forum. It really drove home to me that this isn't the guild I joined any more. SI has evolved into a hardcore progression guild. The people who are active in it now have little time for fun, and even less time for some random casual friend of the guild leader who used to be a staunch raider.

This morning I sent a message to my guild leader and my class leader asking for their input. I'm not having fun in the guild any more, I think maybe it's time I moved on. I've agonized over this for long enough, I need to just make a decision and get it over with. I'm losing sleep now over all this, and that needs to stop. I'm guessing that at this point my guild leader is probably just tired of listening to me whine and will be glad to see me go.

I just want to play and have fun, is that so much to ask?

WoW I've got things on my mind...

2009-08-18T07:36:00.002-04:00

I'm not sure what to talk about first! I guess I'll just start typing and hope that I get where I'm going in the end. Be prepared for a long post! :)

Yesterday when I got home, hubby was working on some Loremaster quests on his druid. So I hopped on Asara and started working on quests in the Draenei starting area, trying to get to Exalted with Exodar. While I was doing that, people were actually talking in guild chat, and I chimed in a few times. Mostly goofing around, which felt good, as I've been very out of the loop with the guild lately.

After a while, hubby asked if I would come tank a couple of heroics on Saraabi. We recently left the small family guild that we'd joined for a much larger and more active one, in hopes that we'd be able to run more instances and stuff. He'd gotten three DPS from the guild, and just needed a tank. I was a bit loath to leave Asara, because I finally felt like I was clicking with people again, plus I was (mostly) having a good time running around pwning the heck out of low-level quests.

I finally decided to go, but only for a couple of heroics. I was tired, and tanking requires quite a bit of concentration, I didn't want to let the group down too much because my attention was wandering. So we decided to run Utgarde Keep and Utgarde Pinnacle, since they're very close together, and I'm comfortable with both, having run them before. We got an achievement in Utgarde Keep for not letting the first boss cast Ice Block on anyone, and quite a few people said grats and good job. I hadn't even realized that he hadn't cast one! The rest of the instance went quickly, and the end boss dropped plate pants that I already have, and a lovely tanking ring that I didn't have, but won.

So we moved on to Utgarde Pinnacle. Had some trouble getting in (stupid instance servers), but finally made it. Things went well, we lost the rogue on Svala Sorrowgrave for some reason, but that was it. No problems on the other bosses, including the end boss, who was nice enough to drop a Red Sword of Courage for me. So as much as I protested going in the first place, in the end I was really glad that I had gone. Plus the group of DPS-ers we ran with was super friendly and nice. They were all already friends, but they tried really hard to include us. There are a lot of people in the guild like that, actually. They'll grats people for the silliest things, like catching 500 fish. But you don't get an achievement in this guild when people are on and not see a bunch of green text congratulating you for it.

After UP, I went back to Asara for a little while before actually going to bed. I was sooo close to Exalted with Exodar, I felt that a couple more quests would probably do the job. Guild chat was a lot quieter because most everyone was in Ulduar. About a half an hour later, ping! Asara has earned the Achievement "Ambassador of the Alliance"! Woo! And.. one person said grats in guild chat. One. Person. Not even one of the people I'd consider a good friend, either.

See the contrast? It really bothers me that people I've been playing with for almost my entire WoW career can't be bothered to take two seconds to type /g grats! because they're so busy with their "srs bsns" raid and people I've been playing with for less than a week do so as a matter of course, regardless of what they themselves are doing at the time. They could have a macro to do it, but the point is, they do it.

Asara's guild used to be like that. I mean, there weren't achievements or anything back then, but the environment was much more friendly than it is now. There was an effort made by the officers to include people, there were social events, everyone just seemed a lot closer. Things have changed quite a bit since those days. Maybe they don't do those things any more because the majority of the guild doesn't want them. Maybe the majority of the guild is only there for raiding now, I can't really tell. There are a lot of newer people, most of whom were recruited to raid, so I guess that might be true.

It kind of hurts, to feel like such an outsider among people I've known for such a long time. Having Saraabi in this new guild is just illuminating the differences more and more clearly. This feeling isn't new, in fact I've talked about it with Asara's guild leader once before. His solution was to wait things out until I can raid again, because then I'll be included in raid chat and people can get to know me better. So that's.. maybe in a couple of months. Maybe never.

They only raid on nights when I have to work the next day, and I don't think I'm comfortable with that any more. Plus they outgear me so much, I'd likely be waitlisted even if I did sign up for a raid anyway. Saraabi and Lumae's new guild, though, they've already invited us to 10-man Ulduar. Someone asked me about it the other day, and I said I'd have to see, because we're 3 hours ahead of server time. But she said they raid it on Friday and Saturday nights. I'm tempted. I really am. I'd have to go as DPS, so I'd have to work on Saraabi's Ret spec, but I think it would be fun to go.

We'll see.

Many Many Accomplishments!

2009-08-14T22:19:00.003-04:00

Phew, it's been a very interesting evening. After I got home from work, the heroic instance bug bit the hubby pretty hard. So we hit up Heroic Violet Hold and kicked its tail, with a couple of interesting moments due to encountering a couple of bosses I'd never tanked before. No wipes, though hubby died once and almost couldn't get back into the instance!

Once that was done, we got a group together for Heroic Utgarde Keep, which was the daily. Again, we rocked the kasbah, finishing up the entire instance before my buffs ran out! Since we were doing so well, we headed up to Utgarde Pinnacle, and wiped that place clean as well. No drake, but also no deaths.

Hubby and I were on a roll, so after dinner I decided it was time to conquer my fear of the timed run of Heroic Culling of Stratholme. We grabbed some DPS and headed out. It was messy, but we got through the first two bosses and headed for the inn. We destroyed the dragons in there, and moved on to the part that made me the most nervous... the gauntlet. With about 8 minutes left. I have to say that I could not have managed it without hubby here. He was my cheerleader and my hero. I kept asking him, am I doing ok? And he'd say yep, you're doing fine, just keep pushing through, as long as I'm at half mana or so I can keep up.

And suddenly, we were through it. With six minutes left on the timer, we rushed the boss, and took him out! Mal'ganis was basically an afterthought, I tanked with one hand and cleansed sleep with the other, and he was a goner. And at the end of it all...

Kidlet Cuteness

2009-08-11T07:05:00.002-04:00

On the way to Andy's friend's birthday party on Saturday, we were talking about rain and storms and stuff, and the following gem came out of the back seat.

"One time when Aunt Beth was outside cigaretting, I went with her and splashed in the puddles in the driveway!"

Hubby said.. "I never knew cigarette was a verb!"

Skatchamagowza.

2009-08-10T08:41:00.000-04:00

What a night!

I think I woke up five times last night, both from thunder and from my kids' reactions to it. Andy came in the bedroom scared once, Emily didn't seem to be fazed by it, or if she was, she stayed in bed anyway. I wish it had knocked out the power, so I could have gotten some extra sleep!

We had quite the busy weekend. My cousin Sara just graduated from high school, and had her graduation party on Saturday at my uncle's house. We met up with my parents and my brother and his wife and daughter there. The kids went home with Papa and Grammie, and as everyone knows now, hubby and I headed out to the bar and had a totally awesome time.

The next morning, I picked up Andy from my parents' house, because one of his friends from school was having a birthday party that afternoon. Emily stayed there, because my parents were taking everyone to the beach. Andy had a good time at the birthday party, because it was at Chuck E. Cheese! He won quite a few tickets, and played several games. Afterward we took him out to the movie theater to see G-Force. We arrived just in time to catch the 3-D version, and he really liked it. Hubby thought maybe we should have taken him to see GI Joe instead, but I think we made the right choice for him. It didn't impress me much one way or another, there were a few funny moments, and I was totally surprised by the true identity of Mr. Yanshu. Other than that, it seemed to be a standard kids movie.

Last night after the kids went to bed, hubby and I watched the second episode of Defying Gravity. I really liked the premiere, but now I'm not so sure how I feel about it. It felt like they said a lot without really saying anything, most of the episode was focused on the little HALO patches that were developed to keep sexual tension at bay between astronauts during long missions. I'll probably watch a couple more episodes over the next two weeks, just to see where it's going, and if all the setup they're doing with the plot is actually worth it when they reveal just what the heck is happening.

I think tonight I'm going to bed early.. I need to catch up on some rest!

drunken posting is FUN

2009-08-09T01:34:00.002-04:00

So we just got back from the bar and I am having a very difficult time writing properly 'cause I had like half of a bottle of wine at dinner, and then some Captain and coke and then shared some pitchers of beer with hubby. We went to Olive Garden for dinner, which is where I had the wine, and the steak crostado or whatever, which wasn't as tasty as I thought it would be. Definitely not nearly as good as the mezzaluna we had last time, so it won't be getting a WoW character named after it.

After dinner we went to the Shamrock, where I was pleasantly surprised to find that they were having karaoke. I sang the Time Warp, and also um.... Everybody's Fool by Evanescence, and What's Up? by Four Non Blondes, and Everything About You by Ugly Kid Joe, and Broken Wing by Martina McBride. The best part was when I was singing What's Up, because I was pretty tipsy, and I was really getting into the song. People in the audience were waving lighters around, and then they put those away and started waving their glowy cell phones in the air. I felt pretty cool.

Now I gotta go, hubby's waiting for me in the bedroom. (wink wink)

BYE BLOG PEOPLE!

(this post brought to you by hubby's laptop's backspace key, without which this post owuld olook more like this I swear honest. I thin i hit it more than an y other key on his keyboard while tyinpg this.)

This is madness!

2009-08-07T10:13:00.003-04:00

Two posts in one day!

*hands out brown paper bags to those who may find themselves hyperventilating*

No, really, I just have some things to think about with regard to my pet situation in-game, and I'd like to write about them here and see if I can't coax a couple more of you lurky-type people out to help me with this whole thing.

The Problem:

3.2 is here, and brought with it a new Spirit Beast. He is blue and sparkly, and, well.. new. Which makes him very want-able for me. That whole SHINY thing.

The Arguments:

He's rare, just like the other ones, so not a lot of people will have one. I'm guessing Beast Mastery is still going to be the redheaded stepchild of the Hunter Spec family for a while, which cuts down even farther on how many people will actually be out there looking to tame him.

He's a Spirit Beast, and not a cat, which adds to the whole "different" feel.

He's a Spirit Beast, and my stables already hold the other two. He would totally be a "vanity" pet, because he uses the same skills as the other two. Plus he wouldn't see raids or instances unless somewhere down the line the whole pet family gets a buff. Devilsaur is still topping the charts as Best DPS Exotic, so Chompy will always be by my side when I go through an instance portal.

(side note: I totally don't get the people going all OMFG WTF about the set of skills this guy has. Yeah, he's not a cat MODEL, and he has Prowl. So what? If you've quested in Hinterlands, plenty of stealthy wolves out there. Plus, the pet family name is totally Spirit BEAST not Spirit Cat or Spirit Wolf, so none of the Claw/Bite arguments hold water for me either. The pet family has these skills. Blizzard chose to give the first two examples of this family cat models. So what.)

In order to tame him, I have to give up someone who's been there for quite a while. Let's go through the choices, shall we?

Chompy the Devilsaur: Not happening. See above comment re. Best DPS Exotic pet. Also my only level 80 pet at the moment.

Beauregarde the Chimera: Probably candidate #1 for replacement, except for the fact that I spent four days camping the silly thing because it was purple and gorgeous. Has not been out of my stables for more than showing off in ages. Still level 75. Rare, but I could possibly camp him again and re-tame him should I change my mind later.

Leshya the Grimtotem Spirit Guide: Also not happening. This guy is totally not replaceable AT ALL since Blizzard hotfixed the mechanic that allowed him to be tamed in the first place. Still level 75, but also a regular wolf, and the only pet available to me should I ever spec out of Beast Mastery.

Sidhe the Spirit Beast: Loque'nahak. The first Spirit Beast I tamed, and totally a fluke that I even managed to get him in the first place. I blogged about taming him, and personally, I think that story is one of the best things I've ever written. Rare, but again, re-tameable. Level 78, because I was working on leveling him when the patch containing Gondria came out. To release him would feel like a bit of a waste, as he counts for the rare-killing achievement, and if I'm not going to have him as a pet I may as well have killed him instead of taming him.

Zingarnor the Spirit Beast: Gondria. Currently level 79, and of the two cat models, my personal favorite. He was relatively easy to find, but his name has some history, and I couldn't transfer it to the new wolf because the first Zingarnor was a cat, and it just wouldn't feel right.

The Plea:

I can't decide this on my own. I've got a problem with doing things on impulse, and should I happen to fly over this guy before I've totally decided one way or the other, it would be extremely difficult for me to resist releasing the chimera and taming him. Advice pleeeease??!

Zergfest is GO!

2009-08-07T07:29:00.002-04:00

Last night I was spodding around on Asara, doing the cooking daily and whatnot, and also buying a Tome of Cold-Weather Flying for Mezzaluna. (Flying on a carpet is awesome, by the way, even if it is one of the slow ones.) Hubby was on his druid over on Cenarion Circle, and someone was putting together a group for Karazhan in Trade. So I hopped over to Saraabi and we joined up. It was the most interesting group I'd ever seen. Six paladins, two warriors, a hunter, and hubby's druid. Four of the paladins were ret, one was holy, and Saraabi, of course, is prot. We lost the holy pally before we even got started, so hubby was left to heal the whole thing himself. The hunter told me I was going to be MT, because nobody else was volunteering. Not to mention half of the group was 70, and the other half was 80, nothing in-between.

So we get there, and start getting the group together, and one of the paladins starts pulling trash, before everyone was even in. It set the tone for the whole thing. I was off-balance from the start, considering I was told I'd be tanking, and this other paladin hardly let me have threat. He was in Ulduar gear, and I'm barely geared for heroics, so whatever. I just kind of wandered around after them all, because they were pulling faster than I'd ever seen. We did the whole instance that way. The only boss I actually tanked was Moroes, and that was just because one of the warriors charged one of the trash packs next to his table and pulled them, so I taunted him off.

I was very proud of hubby, he kept up like a trooper. We destroyed all of the bosses up to Prince. By the time we got up there, we'd lost another paladin, and the hunter was dc'ed. She'd started having connection problems after Curator, and never really got back in. I felt bad, since she had been the one to put the group together. So we get to Prince. Seven melee DPS and hubby healing. The first attempt didn't go well. Some of the group didn't know the mechanics, and so a lot of them died on the first Shadow Nova. I knew what was going on, but having only done the fight as ranged DPS, and that having been almost a year ago, I had some trouble adjusting to running out on enfeeble. It didn't help that DBM didn't load anything for any of the bosses.

After the first wipe, the 80 ret paladin that had been leading the charge never released. He got rezzed four or five times, but never came back. So there were five of us. The second try went as well as the first, but the third try.. that was pretty awesome. I got hit with the first shadow nova, but hubby rezzed me, because I was right next to him. Lived through one more, and got hit with a second. The other paladin had gone down as well, so it was down to hubby and the two 70 warriors. One was tanking, the other was DPS. They dragged Prince all over the place, before the non-tank warrior went down. Hubby was totally on top of his game, healing when needed, and popping out of tree to drop a Moonfire and a couple of Wraths on whenever he could. And, amazingly, the two of them managed to get him down. Hubby finally fell at the end, but the warrior blew all of his cooldowns, and down went Prince. Very impressive to watch. The warrior's helm token dropped as well, Prince's nod to a fight well fought, I suppose. :)

We spent the rest of the night watching TV, an episode of Heroes and one of Leverage.

And now it's Friday, and I can't wait to get the weekend going! This work day can't end fast enough. See you all on the other side!

I prefer "unique"

2009-08-05T11:47:00.003-04:00

Hubby and I recently signed up for Netflix, not sure if I mentioned that before or not. (Hey, when you only post once or twice a week, you forget things, OKAY? GOSH.)

He picked out some random movies for our initial queue, and I started thinking about ones I'd like to see, that we could intersperse in the existing list, so we could maybe alternate between movies I wanted and movies he wanted. This morning I sent him the following list.

The Swan
Casablanca
Saw
Brave Little Toaster
Armageddon
Breakfast at Tiffany's

The email I got back said simply:

"The Brave Little Toaster?? Really?!?
Only you, honey.."

And that's the way I like it. :)

Playing Hookey!

2009-07-30T21:58:00.002-04:00

So... this morning I woke up, and I didn't feel very good. My throat was all scratchy, and my nose was going nuts. Allergies probably.

I faced a tough decision. Go in to work feeling miserable and hope I felt better later, or go back to bed.

Bed won. By a landslide.

I sent my boss an email that I wouldn't be coming in, and off I went.

Later in the morning, I was feeling quite a lot better, but you can bet I wasn't going to go in just because of that! Hubby and I took the kids out to Perkins for a late breakfast, where we got cruddy service, but the food was tasty. Plus that whole "Kids always eat free" thing was a bonus!

Not far away from Perkins was a park where we take the kids sometimes, so we headed off that way for a bit. We grabbed some drinks and snacks from a gas station on the way. It was a great day for the park! Not too hot, not too cold, not too sunny, not too cloudy. Just right. The kids had lots of fun wandering around playing on the swings and adventuring in the wooden castle.

Afterwards we did some grocery shopping and headed home for dinner. Hubby made a three-cheese penne with chicken that was soooo tasty!

All in all, I'm totally glad I stayed home today. Not only did I get some much-needed rest, but also I feel quite a lot better in other ways too. Overall quite a bit refreshed and rejuvenated. I have to go back tomorrow, because the Whistler is out again on vacation, but I think I'll feel quite a bit better about it!

Venting

2009-07-29T10:42:00.003-04:00

Argh.

So the Whistler has been on vacation since last Wednesday. I worked my butt off while he was gone, even staying until about 9PM last night trying to get things done before he came back today. This morning I tried to be nice and tell him how hard it was for me to do his job and how glad I was that he was back. It worked for a couple of hours, he was all laughing about it and saying stuff like, hey, it's a lot of work, and it's easy to forget stuff when you're not used to doing this every day like I am (because even though I stayed almost all night last night I still forgot to do something). Blah blah blah.

Then a few minutes ago he goes.. "Yeah, this glassware wasn't washed well enough, see the boiling stones are stuck solid to the bottom. It's all like that."

WELL EXCUSE ME FOR HAVING TO DO YOUR DAMN JOB AND MINE AND SOMEONE ELSE'S AND NOT DOING EVERYTHING PERFECTLY WHEN I HAD A TON OF OTHER RESPONSIBILITIES ON TOP OF YOUR CRAP.

OMG that made me so mad.

I just said, "Sorry, I'll try to do better next time."

But really... I wanted to punch him in the face. A lot.

Monday again already?

2009-07-27T07:29:00.002-04:00

Last week was super crazy! I had someone on vacation, which meant that I barely got home in time to eat a quick dinner and scoot off to bed. Hopefully this week will be better, we'll see. :)

Unfortunately, that also means I don't have a heck of a lot to talk about right now. My weekend was nice though! We signed up for Netflix, and spent quite a lot of time watching movies and TV shows. Hubby's laptop has found a new home in the living room now. :)

We also went to see the new Harry Potter movie, and I'm still trying to decide how I feel about it. I'm glad I saw it, but for some reason it didn't hit me quite like the other ones did. I did get caught up in the action once or twice, a fact hubby brought to my attention by grabbing my knee and startling the heck out of me! Still, there were some things left out that I would have liked to see, and some tweaking of the story that really felt out of place. I understand that it's a long book, and they had to pick and choose what to put in it, but I wish that at least they had stayed true to what was written. For example, there was a scene at the Burrow (the Weasley's house) that I don't remember being in the book at all.

Those of you out there who have seen it, what did you think?

For my honey. I love you!

2009-07-20T12:37:00.000-04:00

Getting started a bit early

2009-07-14T08:59:00.002-04:00

I left my bottle of pop at home this morning. I'm trying to get into a better routine with my eating habits, so I've started actually having breakfast at home, and bringing a lunch with me to work. But in the midst of getting ready and eating my cereal (for the record, Frosted Cheerios taste exactly like Alpha-Bits), I forgot to grab a bottle out of the fridge. I did, however, remember my new water bottle. So I tossed in a packet of Special K protein water powder (Strawberry Kiwi flavor, yum!) and stuck it in the fridge here at work. We'll see if I crack and get some pop out of the vending machine.. I'm going to try to be strong!

I'm also going to be bringing a snack and an actual lunch. So today I have an apple and some peanut butter, and leftover ribs. And on those occasions when there are no leftovers from dinner, I'll have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Still no new WoW news. After dinner last night (BBQ Ribs, SO yummy), hubby hooked the Xbox up to the modem and we got some new songs for Rock Band. Two Evanescence songs, a Toby Keith pack, and Thrash Unreal. So of course we had to play them! We did all the new ones with me on lead guitar and hubby on bass, then he wanted to go to bed and read for a while, so I hopped on the drums for a couple of songs just to see how I would do. Not awesome, but not too shabby either. After that I got the microphone out and did some singing, then it was bedtime for me too.

I think tonight we'll probably play some more. I had dolled my avatar up like Amy Lee when I was singing Evanescence songs, but I think I'll play around with her some more and make up another wacky outfit. She had been wearing a feather headdress and some funky armored leather stuff, with a loincloth thing. Before that I had her in a fedora and a blue coat with fur, like a pimp. See, I don't really play for the music.. you can't buy new clothes if you don't have any money, and the only way to get money is to play the music!

Not really, I honestly have a lot of fun playing the guitar and singing. I think I will do some more tonight! :D

Gonna get back to good...

2009-07-13T05:40:00.002-04:00

This week is going to be -almost- normal. I have a long day today, and possibly another one on Friday, but the other three are happy little days when I don't have to get up early. I may have to stay late, but my alarm clock is going back to 6am, which makes me extremely happy.

Not much new to report in WoW. Saraabi finished her first set of Valiant quests for the Tournament and is now an Exalted Champion of Exodar, with a shiny new red elekk. Asara hasn't been doing much except cooking and fishing dailies. Finally bought her a Chef hat, even though it doesn't really do anything at the moment.

There isn't much WoW news because I haven't really been playing much over the past few days. Just some dailies and that's about it. I've been too tired to do much more than that. Had to work on Saturday, got done around 1PM, then later that night we hung out with my brother-in-law and his wife. Dinner at Red Robin followed by a good run of Mario Party. Sunday was a lazy day, we went to the store, got lunch at Taco Bell, and played some Rock Band until the kids came home. Not long after that it was bedtime already, but I just could not fall asleep.

I think I have the Mountain Dew I had with dinner to blame for that. It was the Alliance blue Game Fuel, and it was tasty, but I really shouldn't have had so much caffeine. I'm working on cutting down on my pop intake. Right now I have a 24-oz bottle to get me through the work day, but I'm not having any with dinner any more. Eventually I hope to start alternating pop at work days with water, on my way to cutting it out entirely. I'm also going to try to exercise more. Right now I'm thinking about doing walks on Saturdays and Sundays to start. We'll see how that goes. :)

Am I lucky or what?

2009-07-08T20:54:00.003-04:00

Yesterday I worked a 17-hour day. It sucked.
But when I got home, hubby was there to rub my back and we got my favorite Chinese takeout for dinner, and after dinner I got a nice long bath before getting tucked into bed.

Today was slightly better, but I still got home late.
I got pan-fried chicken and mashed potatoes, with ice cream for dessert. But not just ice cream. Chocolate brownie ice cream with an Oreo on the side and chocolate syrup drizzled on in the shape of a heart.

I love my hubby SO much!! <3

Hallelujah!

2009-07-06T09:17:00.001-04:00

The oldies station that the Whistler listens to has changed their format from oldies to classic rock. He is really mad, he says he doesn't listen to that music any more. They played Foreigner and he got all grumpy. So it looks like we'll get to listen to actual rock every day now, which means that the whistling will be extremely curtailed.. at least until he learns the songs that they play on the rock station.

I'll take it! XD

Also, a belated happy birthday to my niece, and a belated happy 4th of July! :D

Yet another sporadic update!

2009-06-30T12:15:00.002-04:00

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!

2009-06-26T07:27:00.003-04:00

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 :)

2009-06-22T08:18:00.002-04:00

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

2009-06-18T08:48:00.002-04:00

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!

2009-06-15T10:38:00.003-04:00

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!

2009-06-10T10:43:00.002-04:00

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!

2009-06-08T07:43:00.004-04:00

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

2009-06-05T06:35:00.004-04:00

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! :)

2009-06-04T09:52:00.006-04:00

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...

2009-06-03T16:37:00.002-04:00

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!

2009-06-02T07:29:00.002-04:00

...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!

2009-06-01T07:41:00.001-04:00

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.

FRIDAY!

2009-05-29T07:35:00.003-04:00

I have rarely been as happy to see a weekend as I am today. I know it was a four-day work week, but it felt like six or seven. Yuck. Thankfully it's almost over, just have to get through today. Yahoo!!! :D

I was thinking the other day about how I had a cute story about my kids to blog about.. and now I can't remember what it was. So you get this one instead, about something my son has apparently inherited from my hubby.

Now, hubby enjoys building with Legos. He has a ship that he built which really is pretty cool, not following any directions or anything. I joined in one day, and I don't even remember what I made, I think it was supposed to be a ship or a car of some sort. Anyway, I was just messing around, and he looks over at what I made and starts laughing, in a sort of, "OMG what IS that???" way (not mean or anything, just goodnatured teasing). The other day I was playing with Andy, and we were building with his Duplo blocks. And wouldn't you know it, he looks over at what I'm doing, and says, "What IS that, mama?"

So apparently I fail at Legos.

In other news... Last night hubby and I took Mezzaluna and Rhonson out for some more questing. We did quite a few quests in Zangarmarsh, then decided to move on to Nagrand for a bit to hit 65, then we'd be heading out to Blade's Edge. I was pretty proud of us, we did the entire Nesingwary chain (yay for only having to kill 12 instead of 30 of everything), including Tusker, all on our own. We thought about trying Durn, but since we weren't high enough level to even get the quest to kill him, we decided not to. It feels strange to be zipping through Outland so quickly, I remember it taking ages when BC first came out. Depending on what goes on this weekend, we may be ready for Northrend by Monday. Time to start saving up for a third round of epic flying, I think! XD

Shameless Promotion

2009-05-28T13:32:00.002-04:00

I have this thing about winning contests. I figure, you can't win if you don't play, right?
So when Mountain Dew announced they were giving away a bunch of prizes to celebrate the launch of their WoW-themed Game Fuel pop, I just had to sign up. I made a banner, and I get tokens to use for prize entries for everyone that clicks on it every day. I'd appreciate it if y'all wouldn't mind giving it a click for me. Thanks!!

What a morning.

2009-05-26T09:37:00.002-04:00

On Friday, when I saw today's schedule, I asked my boss if I could come in a little later than usual, because it was going to be a marathon day, and I really didn't want to put in more than 12 hours if I didn't have to. He said sure. Today I got a phone call at 7AM, which is when I usually get to work, from a coworker saying that her machine was giving her errors and she'd been trying to get it working for an hour with no luck. I'm the only one there who knows how to maintain the stupid thing, so... I went back to bed.

Why? Because it was spewing out the same error that it has been for the past two weeks, and I had just changed out the offending part on Thursday. Therefore it must be something other than that part, and in that case, I needed the help of the professional tech experts at the company that made it, and they wouldn't be around to talk to for another couple of hours. As it turned out, it didn't matter that I didn't rush back in to work, because she got it going about fifteen minutes after she called me, and it's still working now. So I sent off an email, and hopefully we'll be able to figure out what the heck is going on with this thing.

On my way in to work, I was stopped at the intersection right before my building by signs saying "Road Closed". I couldn't see much past them except what could be dust or possibly smoke and a bunch of yellow trucks. So I went around the block and parked on the side street. As I was getting out of my car, another employee was finishing her break, so I asked her what happened. Apparently the restaurant across the street caught on fire around 3:30 this morning. The roof had caved in and everything, and the firemen were still spraying the hose at it when I got in around 9. This is the second fire they've had over there since I've worked here, though the first was not nearly as severe.

Camping pictures.. I know I promised them, but I don't really have any, unless hubby took some before I got down there on Friday. I took a whole two pictures on Friday night, of the sunset through the trees. I'll get them uploaded soon anyway. We didn't do a whole lot on Saturday, just sat around the fire pit. I read an entire book though! I didn't get to go fishing either. I did get a pole and hooks and stuff, but I didn't get a license. I had figured on getting one from the store near the campground, but never managed to do so. Hubby has promised that I'll get to go this season though. I can't wait to catch a fish! :D

Once we got home, hubby transferred Rhonson from his RAF account to his main account. He and Mezzaluna took their first trip to Outlands. Over the weekend they managed to clear out most of the Hellfire Peninsula quests, and got a good chunk done in Zangarmarsh as well. As a result, Rhonson is almost 64, and Mezzaluna is 64 plus a little bit. One thing we forgot about was that hubby's RAF account was just basic vanilla WoW, so while they've been waiting around to be played, Mezza was building up rested, but Rhonson wasn't. Oops!

Two Spirit Beasts, Two Days!

2009-05-22T10:34:00.002-04:00

Yowza. Time has been getting away from me this week!

On Wednesday I finally found myself a Gondria out in Zul'Drak. I had downloaded the addon SilverDragon, on advice from a guildmate, and it was what clued me in. I was just flying around in a daze when my screen flashed at me, and I noticed the yellow dot on my mini map. I would have missed it otherwise! A quick hop down from my Nether Ray, a sad goodbye to my Rhino, Rocksteady, and a few seconds later, Gondria was mine! I named him Zingarnor after my GM kitty who got lost in the shuffle of exotics.

The next day, I hopped on my paladin for a quick round of Sholazar for minings, and to check Loque'nahak spawn points for the same guildmate who had recommended SilverDragon. She's been after him for months, so I had made a bit of a personal crusade out of finding him for her. And what do you know, on my first trip around, there he was! I quick yelled in guild chat for her to get on her hunter and get the bleep out to Sholazar, because there was an Orc rogue in the vicinity, and I would have hated for him to get there before her and kill Loque after I finally found him! Luckily, she made it in time, and much happy dancing was had when she had tamed him at last. She named him Dax, after her first rare pet.

Other than that, I got a Strand Crawler in my fishing daily bag, I'm halfway to Champion of Gnomeregan (hopefully Exalted Champion by the time I get there), and I've purchased a Swift Moonsaber from the tournament vendors.. because I could. XD

In a few hours (once work is done for the day), I'll be heading out to join hubby and the kids on their camping trip. He already brought the camera down there, hopefully I'll have some great pictures when I get back! Oh, and SQT, if you read this, I'm bringing Arthas and a notepad, and you'll have a review when I get back too! :D I read it twice, to make sure I could do it justice when I write about it.

I hope everyone has a wonderful long weekend, I know I will!

Danger, Will Robinson!

2009-05-18T06:59:00.002-04:00

It's Monday. Sigh. And I didn't get nearly enough sleep last night. I did a bit of spodding around in WoW, ran a couple of Heroics. Got some badges. Got a new chestpiece, and regemmed twice to rearrange my hit rating. Should only have been once, but I wasn't thinking ahead far enough. So now I finally get to use my shiny polearm from Naxx that I won oh so long ago.

Not much else going on in WoW.. I'm looking for Gondria, but so far no luck.

Nothing really exciting happened over the weekend either. Went grocery shopping, mowed the lawn... that's about it. Next weekend though, we're planning a camping trip. Hubby and the kids are leaving on Thursday, I'll be joining them on Friday after I get out of work. It will be Emily's first camping trip. I may even pick up a fishing license and a pole, and finally try my luck at catching a fish. I'll make sure the camera is charged up, and hopefully be back on Sunday or Monday with a bunch of pictures for you guys! :)

It's a blaaaaah blaaaah day.

2009-05-15T12:39:00.002-04:00

*sigh*
Today I just wish I could go up on the roof of the building and sit and not do anything for a couple of hours. Not fall asleep or anything, just sit. But even if I tried I'm sure someone would choose that exact moment to call me down to the production floor for some reason or another.

Come on, weekend, HURRY UP!

Wonderings

2009-05-14T12:34:00.002-04:00

I work in a meat processing factory. We make hot dogs, for those who don't know. Part of this process is mixing in ground meat with seasonings and other things, and occasionally stuff falls on the floor. Depending on what it's been mixed with, this often looks like someone actually vomited on the floor. However, this doesn't faze me in the least. Spray off the floor with the hose, sigh a little about the waste, go on about your business.

However, when one of the kids gets sick, be it on the floor, or (by some miracle) they make it to the bathroom, I cannot handle it at all. I feel bad for hubby during these times because it is next to impossible for me to clean this up without coming close to vomiting myself.

Strange.

Epic Weekend

2009-05-12T09:18:00.002-04:00

We had a super busy weekend, and yesterday was super busy too, otherwise I would have told y'all all about it yesterday. I finally have a bit of time to myself today, though, so here we go.

On Saturday hubby had an appointment to go pick up his contacts. He goes to a vision store in the mall, so we thought we might go see a movie while we were out that way. We get ready to go, hop in the car, and barely went two blocks before we could hear one of the rear tires flopping on the pavement. Completely flat. So hubby pulled into a nearby parking lot and changed out the tire. Of course it was cold and rainy, and the parking lot was mostly sand. He was a mess afterwards. So we got the spare on, and headed back home.

Hubby's sister let us borrow her car, so we took the flat tire to Discount Tire to see if they could fix it. They said no, so we had to buy a new tire. Yay. Got the new tire, and headed to the mall, only an hour late for hubby's appointment. He got his contacts anyway, and some new shoes, and we went to the movies after all. We went to see X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and I thought it was pretty sweet. The only gripe I had about it was that before he gets the adamantium on his claws, they're all bumpy, because they're made of bone. They look like long pointy fingers. So one would think that a coating of adamantium would mean he'd have bumpy claws still, but no, they're smooth blades. There were a couple of other small discontinuities, but overall the action was great, and the plot was good too. I totally didn't see the end coming.

We watched quite a few movies this weekend, actually. I finally saw Twilight (yawn), and as I mentioned on yesterday's post, Marley and Me, which totally had me in tears at the end. I knew it had to happen, but that didn't make it any easier. I think there was one more we watched, but I can't seem to remember which one it was now.

Asara has finally visited the Argent Tournament, and is now a Valiant of Darnassus. In four more days, she'll be a Champion, and by then she'll be Exalted with Darnassus as well, so she'll get the Exalted Champion achievement as well. Gnomeregan will be next, so I can get her some Mechanostriders, and after that will be Exodar for some elekks. Hopefully when all that is done, she'll have her 50 mounts and an albino drake! If not, I'll head back to Terokkar and pick up a couple of Nether Rays or something. And of course, in the meantime, she's still doing her cooking and fishing dailies. She's up to 30 Cooking Awards or so, just 70 more to go for the Chef's hat.. oof.

That's about all for now, except to thank my wonderful hubby for the beautiful card, and my kids too for the cards they made me! Oh, and my mom, for remembering which Avon perfume was my favorite. I love you all!

Happy Belated Mother's Day!

2009-05-11T08:18:00.002-04:00

Lots of hugs to all the moms out there, I hope you all had a great day yesterday. I know I did!

P.S. To Barb - You are not allowed to send us movies any more. Or if you do, they have to be happy ones! XD We watched Marley and Me this weekend, and I was bawling (again).

To quote a good friend of mine...

2009-05-07T07:28:00.002-04:00

Grimbleschnitz! (hee hee, Mo!)

The Whistler is in fine form today. He's got a new shiny piece of equipment, and he installed it at a bad time. We've got lots of samples coming through for a project, thanks to the owner of the company, and he's getting behind because he didn't want to have a tech from the company come in and install it. He's got a problem with the plug, it doesn't fit quite right in the socket, so he has to unplug it and plug it back in a few times a day. He complains because he has to wait an hour to get the machine started in the morning. Then, since he's already in a bad mood, he jumps all over the janitor because he's running low on paper towel. There's a problem with the drain, so he can't run the water at full blast in the sink like he likes to. And he keeps going on and on about all this crap to me, like there's something I can do to fix it. He's a big boy, he can go talk to maintenance himself. He sits with three or four of them at lunch every single day. Sigh.

There is some good news, though. I finally got my Bronze Drake! I dragged a bunch of guildies into CoS, and at long last, nobody rolled against me. :) A little bit later, another guildie wanted to start up a run of Heroic Utgarde Pinnacle for a chance at the drake that drops there. I wanted to bring Asara, for that and for the Children's Week achievement, but we could not find a tank at all, so Saraabi was volunteered for the job. I was nervous, especially about the gauntlet, but we made it through with only one wipe.. on the gauntlet, lol! No drake, and no Red Sword of Courage for Saraabi, but one of the mages we brought got a nice staff, so that was cool.

Tonight I get to go to Andy's school to talk to his teacher, it's conference time again already! It seems like I was just there. It's hard to believe his school year will be over soon. And next year Emily will be in preschool. They're growing up so fast! It seems so cliche to say that, but it's true. Hubby uploaded some pictures the other day from when they were born, and they look so small compared to how big they both are now. My little boy who used to chuckle and ask for his dodo is writing and reading and doing math problems. My little girl, it seems like just yesterday she was sleeping in a crib, now she's getting ready to go to school too. Goodness.

Some things just aren't meant to be.

2009-05-04T06:48:00.003-04:00

Asara was spodding around yesterday helping Alainds with some group quests in Icecrown, when someone asked in guild chat for people to go to H. Magister's Terrace. I piped right up saying I would as soon as this quest was done. A couple of other people expressed interest as well, so it seemed there would be plenty of people available for a group. When the quest was done, I said I was ready for invite, but none came. A quick check of the guild roster showed five people already in there. Quite the disappointment, to have been first to say something, but left out in the end. I still don't have either the phoenix pet or the white hawkstrider.. but maybe someday.

Later on, hubby and I decided to get together a group for a drake run of CoS. We got the group around pretty quickly and headed in. We cleared the first boss, and started walking toward the next group of elites, 19 minutes left on the timer, things are looking great, when all of a sudden everyone is running in place. And... hubby and I got disconnected. Crap. We reset the modem, got back on for a second, just in time to see the group going for the next boss, and... disconnected again. Long story short, Comcast decided to have problems at just the wrong time, and we didn't manage to get back again until later in the day. And of course, it turns out that we would have easily made the timer if we'd stayed connected, and I probably would have won the bronze drake. Sigh.

There was some fun to be had this weekend though. Later that night I got in on a run of AQ40. They had already cleared most of it, but I was there for Twin Emperors and C'thun, so I got the achievement. I also got a cool blue bug mount from the trash. After that, I took Numae out to try to finish her Sunday's Finest achievement. She had gotten the shirt the night before, and I didn't want to leave it half done if I could help it. She opened something like 525 eggs, but finally, at 1AM EST, the eggs and the vendors despawned for the year, and she was left pantsless. So I sent her off to Darkshore to gather up some small eggs and Mageroyal, to make a Delicious Chocolate Cake, so Asara could get started on her Children's Week achievements.

Speaking of which, I doubt that I'll get the Matron title. I'm really not a fan of PvP, but I suppose I'll give it a shot. I don't expect to see Blizzard taking that part of the achievement out, especially when the rest of them are so easy. Not to mention there aren't that many required for the title to begin with. I guess we'll see, but I'm not going to spend all of my playtime this week in battlegrounds, Violet Drake or not. I'll probably just keep working on my Wyrmrest Accord reputation, and buy my way to a red drake from them. :) I'd really like the green one, but so far all I've gotten is egg yolk and lots of tickbirds from my eggs. Darnit!

I didn't play a whole lot yesterday. It was a beautiful day, so I spent some time outside with the kids, sitting on the porch swing and reading. It looks to stay nice for the next couple of days at least, so I expect to do a bit more of that, provided I don't get out of work after sundown! :)

Cursed Raid Night...

2009-05-01T09:20:00.002-04:00

Saraabi didn't get to tank much of anything yesterday. Everyone in the guild was off doing their own thing, getting ready to raid and whatnot, and I didn't want her first 80 tanking experience to be a PUG. I will probably PUG eventually, but I want to be a bit more confident in my ability first, and guildies tend to be a bit more forgiving of mistakes than random people, or so I've noticed. I'll see what I can rustle up this weekend though, there have to be SOME people out there who'll run normal instances with me and hubby!

Also on the list for this weekend are the Children's week achievements, as well as some egg-hunting for Draevyn, my Belf mage. I want to get the Polymorph: Rabbit spell for him. He has the penguin glyph, but I like the variety of having a bunny too. Maybe someday I'll even get the Turtle book for him, that's always been my favorite poly.

Other than that, I guess we'll see what happens. As long as it includes some extra sleep, I'll be happy. :) Have a great weekend everyone!