A Moment

I am going to break with your regularly (or not so regularly) scheduled WoW posting to say goodbye to someone who has been in my life for the past 14 years.

 

Goodbye Mr. Bear.

 

I have a picture of you as a baby here on my desk.  I look at you every day and smile at how cute you were, how little you were.  How you would run like a bunny rabbit when you had your cast on after your accident.

 

I remember when mom first met you.  She came home and was so mad nothing had been done while she was gone to just stop mid-yell to say “Awwww” when she saw you sitting in the middle of the floor.

 

Our hearts melted at first sight and you were ours to keep.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I knew when I moved away last year that I wouldn’t see you again.  I didn’t say it to myself, but I knew.

 

I miss you puppy, even more now that I know I will never see you again.

 

Goodbye Mr. Bear.  You will never be forgotten.

 

Ha! Snuck one in on you! Sneak increased to 65!

Thought I’d closed up shop huh?  HA!

I guess in a way I kind of did.  Lack of game playing, lack of time, lack of motivation, etc.  You name it I has it!  Honestly I’m not even sure why I am writing this post now.  Other than I am kind of “blah” at work right now and just felt like rambling.

Today is my two year anniversary with Slice.  Feels like longer.  Which is a good thing I think. 🙂  I do love the booger so it works out.  Even if he rants and raves in Engrish on his site.  It is part of his endearing character.

Let’s see, what have I been up to?  Lots and lots of Skyrim.  I shit you not.  I rarely log into ToR, maybe two or three times a week I will log into WoW, but I play Skyrim almost every day.  Most of the time I am just randomly running around exploring and killing stuff.  Or stealing absolutely everything I can get my hands on, all while in plain sight of the person I’m stealing from.  I haven’t unlocked the ability to sell stolen goods yet so any awesome weapons or items that should fetch a high price I just store in my house.

My house.  It is an awesome thing.  I only have the first house you can buy in Whiterun.  I haven’t done enough in other cities in order to get another house.  I purchased all of the decorations right away (mostly because I had a lot of gold due to my constant stealing and exploring, mostly exploring) and set things up to look nice.  The first cabinet in the living room has all of my crafting mats.  If I ever get around to leveling my smithing it will be a glorious thing.  As you walk towards the kitchen/dining room there are the stairs that lead to the top floor, behind those stairs are a bunch of barrels.  One of the barrels allows you to store stuff in it.  This is where I keep my food.

My favorite thing to steal is food.  The main reason behind this is I will use it.  Goblets, plates, bowls, etc, might look fancy smancy but they just take up weight in my bag and aren’t worth the bother of stealing them.  In fact every time I accidentally steal something like that it gets stored in a cabinet in the house I stole it from.  I just wish you got more health points out of food.  Eating a cooked mammoth snout shouldn’t give me 10 health points but a loaf of bread only gives me 2 and have them weigh the same thing!  I recently looked in the barrel and each type of food numbered in the 100s.  Yeah I like to steal food. >.>

Moving on!

Turning right from the barrel is a hutch with a drawer.  This is where I store all the books I couldn’t fit in the bookshelves.  I also have some spell books and spell scrolls.  I had 4 shelves in my ENTIRE house.  Each shelf holds like 10 or so books.  At first I was just dropping them and trying to pile them.  Well that didn’t work out too well.  You can’t exactly place things all nice and neat in this game.  So I finally gave up and stuck everything in the drawer.  Next to food, stealing books is my 2nd favorite thing to take.  Slice always makes fun of me because I am always stopping to read and take books.  At first it started out with me just wanting to read the lore of the world then I realized that they were sneaking in some skill ups in books that previously didn’t have a skill up.  I’ve even found books that start quest chains.  So yeah, I read EVERY book I come across even if I’ve read it or have it at my house.  I think I have like 5 or 6 copies of certain books.  Some books are definitely more popular in certain areas of Skyrim.  Others are just popular everywhere.

Turning left from the book cabinet takes you into a small side room.  My alchemy table is here so I used the chest conveniently located on top of a bookshelf to store my alchemy reagents.  I mentioned above that  I like to explore all over.  While I am out in the world I pick EVERY SINGLE THING I CAN.  That is usually why I’ve been exploring so much.  I’ll find a plant I can pick and I go off in that direction and then I’ll see a butterfly that I can catch and start chasing it.  Then I’ll see a deer or a fox and I will hunt it.  The next thing I know I have discovered a random cave filled with bandits!  Time to kill and loot!  So yeah, the chest has a ton of stuff.   I haven’t done much with alchemy short of making healing potions.  I printed out a list of every reagent and what each one can be used to make.  I just go down the list and take out the ingredients for healing potions and then make a mass quantity of them.  It works out quite well.  Plus I usually have a supply of random ingredients when random quests ask me to bring them things.  Right now I have a quest to bring a heart to this blacksmith.  Apparently he needs blood to make daggers.  Yeah I don’t ask questions I just give them what they want and take their gold.

If you turn left from my chest o’ ingredients you will see my alchemy table.  On the table is a bag.  I keep every potion I find/steal in this bag.  Some of them are worth a LOT of gold to the right person.  Unfortunately most are stolen so I really can’t sell them.  I find it is just easier to store everything in there and if I need a random potion to cure a disease or poison I just look in there.  I have some pretty cool ones.

When I start playing I usually will head out to a specific place to quest.  While I am questing I will get distracted and find new places to explore/loot.  Once I finish a dungeon I fast travel back to my house and just unload EVERYTHING.  Then I save and go right back and do the same thing.  One quest chain had me leave and come back like 5 times.  There was so much metal to smelt down that I quickly exceeded my weight capacity.  The positive side is I now have like 300 bars of dwarven ingots to level my smithing! 😀

Going upstairs you see two rooms.  The smaller room belongs to my servant.  They call her a housecarl, but it is still a servant.  For some reason she likes to spend all of her time eating at the table in MY room and lecturing me when I move stuff around in my house or if I have my weapon drawn.  Um no bitch, I am the boss.  Part of me wants to take her out with me when I go adventuring just to get her killed.  ANYWAY.  In my room is a chest.  I store everything else that I didn’t mention before in here.  I have really cool weapons that I don’t use (I’m currently using a bow and a 2 handed hammer and wear heavy armor) and NICE armor that is a different weight.  For those of you not in the know, you can wear cloth, light armor or heavy armor.  There are so many things in here that could bring in so much gold, if I ever bothered to sell it.  Right now I’m sitting at over 20k gold and have nothing to spend it on.  Who needs to spend gold when you just steal everything you want?  Am I right?

I have around 90 hours played and I am only level 31.  Is that a bad thing?

An update . . . finally

So I have been in Ohio for about a month now.  A little over a week after getting here I got a job through a temp agency and I’m still there.  The job itself isn’t bad, it is just soul sucking.  I went from being in charge to being on the very bottom.  It is quite a tough pill to swallow.

 

The people I work with aren’t bad.  I’ve already found 3 WoW players and get to chat with them about the game.  That is the beauty of not hiding what you enjoy doing.  You can find friends where you least expect it.

 

The biggest pain that this job gives me is the drive.  It wouldn’t be so bad if people actually knew how to drive here.  I work 27 miles away from where I live.  This is all freeway driving mind you.  Even if people drove the speed limit (65, ugh) it should take me less than 30 mins to get to work.

 

Yeah right.

 

On a good day it takes me 45 mins and on a bad day over an hour.  This is just the driving.  This doesn’t include the 3 blocks I have to hike (uphill mind you) from the parking lot to the building I work in (I work downtown).  The walk itself isn’t that bad tbh but it has a lot of crosswalks where you have no light to stop traffic, and traffic just doesn’t stop.  On my first day of work some woman was killed at the crosswalk I have to cross twice a day.  Good times I tell ya.  According to one of my coworkers, that crosswalk is the deadliest one in Ohio.  Nice to know >.<

 

I think my biggest issue was I was brought in to do something at a higher level but because of other things that occurred out of my control, I was put into the shit job.  I have too much experience and ability to spend 8 hours a day printing & sorting emails and scanning documents.  My boss is trying to get me involved in more projects (yay!) but they won’t start until after Thanksgiving and will be all overtime work.  This means long days and working on the weekend.  The money will be nice though.  It has been tough reconciling what I get paid in a month is what I used to get in one paycheck.  Oh well.

 

So far I have been adjusting well to living with Slice.  We haven’t fought yet so either the honeymoon phase isn’t over or we just get along too well.  I’m honestly not sure.  The only times we seem to get heated are during bad raid nights.  Then we both yell at each other and get pissy.  However, after the raid is over we settle down like nothing happened.  Of course Sorak is laughing and saying “I told you so bitches!”  Which is fine and dandy.

 

I don’t know if it is the pre-expansion blues or what but I just haven’t felt like logging in.  I log in to raid and that is pretty much it.  I think a big part of it is I used to log in to spend time with Slice, but now that we see each other every day it isn’t necessary and I find myself without a real reason to log in.  I have alts I want to level and that’t about it.  My dorf lock is in Outlands so there isn’t a major reason to pick her back up again since I’ve done those quests a million times.  My human mage is very close to 85 but I just haven’t bothered to finish leveling her.  She is in Twilight Highlands to see the Alliance side of the story.  Even that isn’t enough to make me want to stay playing her.  She ends up being used to just make money on the Alliance server.  I did run the holiday bosses on her each day and snagged that XP.  So who knows, she might not move again until there is another holiday boss to queue for.

 

Horde side I just log in to do my cooldowns and raid.  While I am excited to being so close to finishing my orange staff it almost doesn’t feel worth it, at least at this stage.  I don’t know if I’m just burned out on Firelands and need a new raid or if it is something else.  As of writing this I am 63/250 towards finishing my staff.  With the double raid lock outs coming I am hoping to get it finished faster.  It has kind of turned into a joke to remind me to channel the bosses.  What makes me mad is I can’t seem to get anything when we kill Rag.  Which I find to be bullshit.

 

Slice got into the Star Wars Beta and let me play a bit this weekend.  It reminds me of Dragon Age but set in the Star Wars galaxy.  It is kind of odd hearing your character talk and having choices to make while playing, but it was fun.  I don’t think I will be rushing out to buy it for the midnight release or even leaving WoW for it, but it will definitely be a diversion for when I need it.  Kind of like AoC, which I have been neglecting!

 

Part of the reason I have been doing that is because I bought stuff with real money for my demonologist but I am at a loss as to where I can level with her.  The game isn’t exactly straightforward and doesn’t tell you a damn thing.  I know there are 2 other cultures that I can go level in their zones but then my alts who are of those cultures won’t have anything “new” to see.  That is the part I am not happy with.  I have no clue where to take one character without losing something for another one.  Since I spent money on one toon I kind of want to see her maxed out before I move on to the others which means I haven’t really done much in the way of playing.  I think I made a new alt, but that is about it.

 

A large part of the issue is I no longer have internet access at work.  This means that all of the blogs that I used to read all day are being neglected and not getting read right away.  This builds up my reader until I can get home and get a moment to read it.  I have several that I haven’t touched in over a month, which is bad because my reader only stores posts for 30 days.  When I get home from work I find I don’t have much time to read.  I usually have to start dinner or get other stuff done before I can sit down at the computer.  It is even worse on raid nights.

That is another thing I am not used to.  Raiding used to be 5:30 to 9 pm.  Now it is 8:30 to midnight.  Yet I still have to get up at 6:30 am (that much hasn’t changed) so I am exhausted by the end of the raiding night and just want to call it.  This of course isn’t an option.  Plus I don’t know if it would even be possible to change the raid times.  We have too many odd schedules to change things now.

 

So yeah that is my update.  Not a whole heck of a lot of stuff to say, mostly bitching, but hey that’s me!  So if you used to have me comment on your blogs and notice that I’m not doing so until later (if at all) then this is why.  Anyway I miss all of you and hopefully I will be able to afford a smart phone soon!

So yeah, two years

Man I talk A LOT!

Like seriously a lot.

But you all knew that :-p

The past few weeks have been pretty stressful.  Now that I’ve told my boss I can now announce to the world at large that I am leaving California and moving to Ohio.

Yes I know I am INSANE to leave San Diego and move to Columbus, but take your complaints to Slice.  He refused to leave Ohio.

So telling the boss didn’t go well, but I knew it wouldn’t.  Necessary evil as Sorak puts it.  I can only hope that the next 3 weeks aren’t like living in hell.  We’ll see I guess.

In other news, I have been cheating on WoW a bit.  About 2 weeks (or was it 3) Slice started playing Age of Conan for something different one night.  I decided to download it and play it with him for a little bit (it is Free to Play) and I uh kind of got hooked.  I spent most of Labor Day weekend leveling my demonologist (it was the only dps caster available as F2P) and I hit 25 at the end of the weekend.  I have since hit 31 with her, 20 with a barbarian (mixture of a fury warrior/rogue), 9 with a bear shaman (melee healer) and 11 with a ranger (hunter).  I uh also kind of subbed for 3 months.  It was the same price as WoW so I just cancelled my 2nd account (my brother’s) and subbed to AoC.  While F2P isn’t bad having the full game (and OMG the inventory) is definitely MUCH better.

Right now I’m really enjoying the demonologist and barbarian the most.  Everyone starts in the same zone and doesn’t leave it until around level 20-22 so I’ve been pushing to get my barbarian through it so I can see what her homeland is like.  She only has a handful of quests left before she can leave Tortage and I am getting antsy over not being finished yet.  My current peeve is with one of the dungeons and how the mobs respawn almost as fast as you kill them thus overwhelming you.  Not fun.

All in all it has been a nice little diversion.  I’m not treating it like a normal MMO though.  It reminds me so much of Dragon Age and I have ended up treating the game like a single player with a chat feature.  As long as I don’t venture into global chat I’m good.  The new player help channel is actually pretty nice.  Don’t get me wrong, the trolls are there, but they are usually just regulars who are just having fun with each other.  The rest of NPH is actually HELPING the new players.  Shocking I know! 😀

So that is what I’ve been doing instead of packing my apartment.  Which I really cannot avoid anymore.  The moving company is coming to pick up my crap on Tuesday.  I think Andrew might be picking up my furniture this weekend.  I think I have a total of 6 boxes packed.  Yes I know I am WAY BEHIND!  Must stop playing on the computer!

In WoW news we still haven’t downed Rag.  Not for lack of trying.  We’ve been hit with an attendance issue.  Last week we had 3 people out (2 healers and 1 tank) this week we are out our MT (Arv chose to go on vacation).  Luckily Zarm is an awesome tank and Zari was willing to come heal us on his druid.  We had some snags on Balroc & Alysrazor.  We got Balroc down after some role changes but were unable to get Alysrazor down.  Zari couldn’t dodge tornadoes and Zin kept dying to the hatchlings.  I think it was more a mixture of standing in the fire and not feeding the birds fast enough that killed him.  He has as bad habit of keeping the hatchling in one place and not eating a worm until told repeatedly to do so.  His damage on the hatching wasn’t bad, but that doesn’t matter if he doesn’t live.  In Zari’s case he hadn’t ever seen the fight.  For most people it takes a bit to learn how to dodge the tornadoes.  I’m hoping we’ll have a post from here where he describes the horror of the Alysrazor fight.

I’m really hoping we can get Rag down tonight.  I know there are several people who will be upset if we don’t down him before the nerfs.  As I said before, it isn’t a matter of ability, it has just been bad RL RNG.  Maybe I should whip out the alcohol tonight.  Tipsy Lyssi is a FUN time I tell ya.  I mean, something has to happen to the stuff I have in my apartment before I move.  Why not right?

Onward!

I completely missed my 1 year anniversary last year.  I think I remembered like 2 weeks after it happened.  I had originally wanted to do a whole stats thingy, but frankly I am lazy and trying to type this between my boss being in the office.

I did want to say thank you to all of my lovely readers that have stuck with me through the dry times.  You all are wonderful and I am grateful for each and every one of you!

❤

RL Screenshots

I just got back from visiting Slice in Ohio.  On my last day there we went walking around this forest by his house.  I took a few pictures and wanted to share them with you all.

Enjoy! Click to enlarge to full size.

This was through a viewing station

 

More of the lake

 

This was the path we were walking on

 

I can’t wait to see this place in winter.  It would be simply gorgeous.