Lovely Long Weekend :)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reconnecting is so much fun!

Yet another great weekend!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MaNiC mOnDaY ~ Lick

So.. it's Monday again, and Doodle Week is over. :( Saturday and Sunday were supposed to be part of it, but I didn't get any more doodling done after Friday. Why? Because as soon as I got home from work, hubby sent me to the bedroom to change out of my work clothes, he loaded the kids and some luggage into the car, and off we went for a little vacation. Nothing fancy, we stayed in a hotel near town, but it was a very nice change of pace. He brought his laptop, but it mostly stayed off, as we were down in the pool swimming, and just lazing around, doing nothing at all in particular.

We had a lot of fun in the pool with the kids. Emily took to the water like a fish, and we got Andy to unbend a little bit about going out into the deeper end of the pool with us. The only regret I have about the whole weekend is that I didn't get to spend any time in the hot tub. I went down there later Saturday night, but a whole gang of people had taken over the pool area. The hot tub was full of adults, and the pool was full of kids. They were making a full-fledged party out of it too, with bags of snacks out on the tables, as well as a cooler.. and what looked like a glass bottle of beer on one of the tables. Never mind the posted signs saying "no alcohol" and "no glass". Hubby called down to the desk after I got back upstairs, but I don't know if anything came of it, because I didn't go back down after that.

I'm at work a little early today, so I tried to go to bed early last night.. but I made the mistake of turning on the tv. The DVR was recording a new episode of Iron Chef America, so I watched the last bit of that. They were just finishing up the cooking part, and I wanted to see who would win. The battle was Zucchini, and the challenger made a very interesting thing for a dessert. She did a zucchini fritter thing, accompanied by a spoon of white taffy-looking stuff stuck in a glass of ice water. So the judges took the spoon out and licked off some of the white stuff before eating the fritter.. I guess it was a sort of soft gum or something. They make some weird stuff on that show. And right after was my latest reality tv obsession, The Next Food Network Star. I told myself I shouldn't stay up and watch it.. but I did, even though it was recording.

So I feel like I didn't get a lick of sleep last night. It didn't help that it was really humid, and since we had been out of the house for a couple of days, the air conditioners had been turned down, so the house was pretty hot. We really need an air conditioner in our bedroom.. I think I'm going to try to price a couple of the ones that don't have to go in a window. Our windows are too large to put a conventional air conditioner in them without a lot of finagling. We'll see what I can find. In the meantime, why don't you all head over to Mo's and see what other people have come up with for today's MaNiC mOnDaY theme?

Long-winded post, INC!

It's Monday again and I'm back at work. My attitude today is a bit better than it was for most of the week last week. Let's do a weekend recap, shall we?

Friday after I got out of work the only thing on the menu was dropping the kids off at my parents' for the weekend. We were supposed to go to Michigan's Adventure for the day on Saturday for my company picnic, and there really isn't enough there to keep Mr. Andrew occupied yet. In a couple of years we'll probably give it a try, when he's big enough to ride more rides. In the end however, we decided not to go. Not a whole lot has changed since last year, and hubby and I didn't think it would be worth the gas to drive out there for the same rides we've been going on for the past 8 years. So instead we went out to the bar that night and had a good time. Before we left, the UPS man showed up and dropped off the books I won! I was very surprised that they arrived so quickly.

Saturday morning I woke up relatively early.. when I first woke up I just had a bit of a headache, but as the rest of my body realized I was awake, some of the other parts decided to put their two cents in as well. My stomach was really not happy with me, even though I had taken some ibuprofen and a Maalox as soon as I got out of bed. So I took a bath, and sat myself down on the couch to rest and maybe read a little bit. I fell back asleep.

A few hours later, hubby got up and played some Lunar as I slept on the couch. He woke me up around 3 because he wanted to go out and about. So I took a quick shower, and off we went. We drove around for an hour or so, and stopped at a Chinese Buffet for dinner. Yum yum yum.. I had some things I'd never had before, and they were all quite tasty! I wish I had brought my camera on the drive because there were quite a few things that we got a chuckle out of. One was a billboard for "poopycredit.com", another was a station wagon for sale by the side of the road. On the back window was written, instead of a price, the fact that it gets 26 mpg. I thought that was hilarious.. "I don't care how much it is, with that kind of gas mileage!"

We were driving down a pretty hilly back road, and suddenly hubby goes, "Yzma, put your hands up!" It took me a second to get it, and those of you who haven't seen The Emperor's New Groove won't get it at all (sorry). :) Later we drove past Cronk's Oakridge Motel. Coincidence? I think not.

Once we got back home, hubby went back to playing Lunar, and I went back to sleep on the couch. He woke me up to tell me he was going to bed, so I followed with my blanket.

The next morning I woke up at around 10, when the alarm went off. We were supposed to be at my mom & dad's around noon for lunch. My dad made steak, and I brought the kids home with me afterwards. After that, grocery shopping, and once the kids were in bed, it was time to return to raiding thanks to the switch we picked up at Best Buy on Saturday. On the menu: Black Temple. Unfortunately, our raid group was very melee-heavy, and though we tried our hardest, we couldn't even drop Naj'entus. It was frustrating, and disappointing, so I imagine we'll probably try Hyjal tonight. The schedule says either Hyjal or BT, we'll have to see what sort of a group we get together. And I have to remember to pick up some more healy stuff.. I'm down to one potion and half of my bandages after the mess with Naj'entus! Here's to better luck tonight, eh? :)

Oh, Thunderstorm.. how I love to hate you.

Over the weekend we had some pretty fierce storms. I love storms, I really do. That whole "raw power of nature" thing just gets me. But after this weekend, I don't like them so much. We had a really bad one Saturday night.. it killed our internet. We have no idea how long it will be down for, and a call to our ISP told us that a large portion of the state was having service issues, but they were working to get them addressed as quickly as possible.

Well, it wasn't quick enough for us.. we had to miss a raid on Black Temple last night. The guild got Shade of Akama down too, putting us to 3/9 BT. Tonight they're either running Hyjal or BT again, but we're probably going to miss that too. Even more heartbreaking, Numae is still level 37. So no moonkin form for her yet. /sigh.

We did however, get to watch some nice movies, and hubby got a new game for the XBOX 360, so we did have a fun weekend, but it felt strange to see 8:30 roll around and not be prepping to raid. Hopefully we'll get this sorted out soon! And in the meantime.. I'll be busy at work today. 234 posts in my reader to sort through!