Measi's Musings

Archive for the ‘Geeky Stuff’ Category

My office is closed for Columbus Day, so I get to settle into a three day weekend – a much needed three day weekend. I’m still coughing from the cold I got during my vacation week, but it definitely is improving. Hopefully I can get a couple of the things done around the house that have been lingering the last few weeks.

Stitching has been progressing well – I’d forgotten how much I missed it! Egyptian Sampler is now done for this round (per my last entry). My Elemental Dragons by Dragon Dreams are my “traveling” piece – they’re nice and small, so easy to bring on the commute train with me. I finished Fire back in 2005. I’m now working Spirit. Here’s where I started this round on Oct. 6th:

It’s not the greatest photo, as it was taken with my cell phone. (the color on color doesn’t help, either). I’ve already made some significant progress down the right wing.

This afternoon I’m going to start my rotation on Cats on a Staircase. I’m somewhat meh about the project, honestly… but since I am on my initial round, I figure I might as well put a few stitches in to see how I feel about it. It’s currently here:

Since it’s the piece up in my rotation, I’m going to use it as my piece for the October SAL via Facebook’s Cross Stitch SAL group. They pick a weekend once per month for a mass-SAL. This month there are about 150 people “attending.”

On non-stitching news…

We’re heading to King Richard’s Faire tomorrow for our yearly visit. We didn’t go last year, since we did the “real” faire – going to England and Wales for two weeks. (I seriously can’t believe Monday marks a year since we were there… time flies!) My garb is all set – although I’d lost one of my corset strings. *sigh* The corset has kind of funky fat shoelace style strings in a deep navy blue. I’m going to ask the vendor that sold them if she has any replacements tomorrow. In the meantime, I picked up the wide laces for hockey boots to lace it up. Doesn’t quite match the look, but it’s the lace up my back, so I’ll just hide it under my shawl. If the vendor doesn’t have any more in that color, then I’ll have a year to track something down. Worst comes to worst? I get white laces and hand-dye them myself.

I’ll have pics up of that on Monday, I imagine. I’m looking forward to the Faire, but we’re going as part of a loosely large group… and there’s now a lot of kids. As one of the only women left in the collective group who doesn’t have kids, and as someone who’s probably not having kids (a long story that I’m not quite ready to go into), it’s a painful thing to be around them. I imagine I’ll be trying to head off and wander on my own as much as possible. It’s really the only thing that’s dampening my excitement about tomorrow. But it should still be a fun day.

That’s about it – I need to go handle Colley, who’s been meowing non-stop for attention now for 30 minutes. *sigh* More later as I have pictures and news.

So if you play WoW and have nothing better to do with your Friday evening, come on over to Eonar (US) this evening, roll horde, and join my guild in defeating the most vicious villain ever to roam the ground of Azeroth.

HOGGER

That’s right, THAT HOGGER.

The more the merrier. Any level is welcome. Azeroth pub crawl and temporary guild leader hazing initiation (aka beating him with lvl 1 brooms and sticks until he dies) will follow.

Details

Server:       Eonar (US)

Faction:      Horde

Levels:       All. Mix of 1-80 will be present.

Time:          9 p.m. US Eastern Time for Hogger. 10 p.m. for pub crawl [Convert Here]

Contact:     Whisper Tennetty, Xaldien, or Abudiabudie in game to get a raid invite

Bring:          Some sort of a stick for the afterparty, any booze/food you feel like bringing, fancy dress, etc. EPIC HOGGER IS TERRIFIED OF EPIC SILLINESS.

I think we’re up to day… 16? 17? of this gloomy early-spring weather. It’s getting a bit tiresome, even if my yard is loving it. San Francisco-like fog is rolling in over Boston Harbor. It’s pretty, but after two weeks of grey skies, I need a good dose of sunshine.

Random things…

Erich’s now the temporary guild leader of our WoW guild. The normal GL is on vacation for a month while her family visits her in Australia, so Erich’s taking over to maintain stuff while she’s gone. He’s already been having some fun joking about infinite power.

Our guild went through 7 brand new bosses in Naxx this weekend. All but two we destroyed on our first attempts, and we managed to clear Naxx for the first time last night. It was a great feeling. Amazing that we’ve learned the entire dungeon in essentially only 13 sessions max.

Support Stacie writing continues to progress. Still writing longhand and drafting. I’m looking forward to a relatively quiet long weekend to hopefully get the draft completed and ready for beta review. I think I’m just about there. Just a few transitional scenes to fix pacing and tie up loose ends, I think. (yay!)

Back to catching up on others’ entries…

Old stat bar:

Hey! I’m improving! Lookie where I was:

And here’s where I am as of today:

Looking forward to tonight’s raid. Hopefully I’ll finally get my War Bear.

It’s one of those freaky situations that honestly writes itself, and it’s both weird and amusing and just… yeah.

Erich and I are on Warcraft last night, playing our Death Knight alts, trying to level them so they can start being contributing members toward the professions in our guild, make us some money, etc.

Out of the blue, Mono, who’s a member of the guild we’ve known since we first joined three years ago says “So Mel… I think that my sister dated your brother.”

Now, Mono’s the guildie who has no filter, and instinctively I’m waiting for the punchline of a random joke he’s setting up on me. It’s Mono, it’s normal for him. I’m curious, so I naturally say “What?”

“Scott.”

Okay… not a punchline…

The conversation progresses, and it’s pretty clear that yeah, he is talking about my brother, that the realization came through Facebook when I friended him a few weeks ago (several of our guildies have connected this way). His sister apparently saw my name, and asked how he knew me, and they figured this out.

Now – I’ve never met Mono in person. Aside from the offline friends like Matt and Tone that we’ve brought into the guild, we’ve never met any of our guild members offline. The odds of this are very, very low. 13 million people who play WoW worldwide, over 100 servers. On each server, you have two factions that cannot communicate with each other… and then on each faction, you have dozens of individual guilds.

Joking ensues on how Mono could have been a distant relation, crude Mono-typical comments about how “my sister fucked your brother-in-law.” And just amusing freakiness at the connection all around.

Seriously – what. are. the. odds?

So after we log out of WoW for the evening, I pop over to Facebook out of curiosity.

Not only is Mono correct – but I met his sister during my only visit to Arizona to see Scott… about 4.5 years ago… AND… there’s a photo of me with her and Scott. This would have been a year and a half before I ever met Mono online, and my brother doesn’t play WoW. The connections were made completely independently. I need to find the photo – it’s in the disaster that is most of my file storage after computer crashes and Diary-X crashes and whatnot.

So. Strange.

Burrito Bandits tabard
Originally uploaded by measi

So… my guild’s a bit slower than some to get into raiding. We had a bit of drama happen a few months ago, the quick-to-80 people left, and it put the 10-man stuff on hold for us.

BUT… we got there. And about… six weeks ago(?) we started with Obsidian Sanctum. Took us a few tries, but we got through it. And then a month ago, we began our way through Naxxramas.

We are absolutely rocking through it. To the point that with the exception of Heigan (and that effing dance), we’re managing to get every new boss down within a couple tries. We have spider on farm already, plague quarter may officially be on farm as of next week, based on how quickly we do it (but we cleared both spider and plague in 90 minutes last night… so… I think we’re there).

Second attempt on Patchwerk, we down him – and we were only 20 seconds over the 3-minute achievement on our first downing of him.

Absolutely psyched on how we’re moving. The guild is awesome now. We work together as a team. We joke throughout the raid both in the chat screen and over vent. It’s just fun, laid-back gaming where everyone knows his/her part, no one’s greedy. I mean hell, we don’t even use any sort of a point system for items. We just do straight d100 rolls for loot on the bosses. Half the stuff we wind up sharding at this point unless someone new is coming with us. Exactly what I envisioned for playing. I look forward to it.

And now that more people in our guild are getting to 80, we may actually be able to consider doing 25 mans soon.

I love my guild. I really do.

Burrito Bandits tabard
Originally uploaded by measi.

So… my guild’s a bit slower than some to get into raiding. We had a bit of drama happen a few months ago, the quick-to-80 people left, and it put the 10-man stuff on hold for us.

BUT… we got there. And about… six weeks ago(?) we started with Obidian Sanctum. Took us a few tries, but we got through it. And then a month ago, we began our way through Naxxramas.

We are absolutely rocking through it. To the point that with the exception of Heigan (and that effing dance), we’re managing to get every new boss down within a couple tries. We have spider on farm already, plague quarter may officially be on farm as of next week, based on how quickly we do it (but we cleared both spider and plague in 90 minutes last night… so… I think we’re there).

Second attempt on Patchwerk, we down him – and we were only 20 seconds over the 3-minute achievement on our first downing of him.

Absolutely psyched on how we’re moving. The guild is awesome now. We work together as a team. We joke throughout the raid both in the chat screen and over vent. It’s just fun, laid-back gaming where everyone knows his/her part, no one’s greedy. I mean hell, we don’t even use any sort of a point system for items. We just do straight d100 rolls for loot on the bosses. Half the stuff we wind up sharding at this point unless someone new is coming with us. Exactly what I envisioned for playing. I look forward to it.

And now that more people in our guild are getting to 80, we may actually be able to consider doing 25 mans soon.

I love my guild. I really do.

One of the things that I collect during my Warcraft play are the little companion pets in the game. Apparently Mt. Dew is in on the action and anyone who participates in this advertising scheme will get a free pet.

So… here’s me contributing.

I’d say not much has happened recently, but it has been a busy couple weeks. Just a blur of a couple weeks.

The bad stuff:

- Mom was laid off last Friday. It wasn’t completely unexpected, though. She works in real estate, and the company had been stripping off personnel all year. I left a message for her to commiserate, but she headed off immediately for a vacation week at the beach. So I haven’t talked to her yet. I’m gathering that the beach week means she’s okay, though.

- Been sick for the better part of a week with some annoying low-grade thing that just will not leave me alone. I had a couple days in it that were very miserable with multiple trips to the bathroom for a couple different issues (ahem). Feeling a bit better, but I’m still obnoxiously tired all the time. Just drained.

- Work’s been stressful due to the people I work with. Nothing new, but it hasn’t helped matters.

The good stuff:

- Been doing my writing for Support Stacie. I’m about 1/2 done with wiggiemomsi’s fic (hooray!), and then will start on the shorter after-pieces to thank other high bidders. Wiggie’s should be done by mid-next week, then off to beta. The others I’ll do on my week off at the end of the month.

- I HAVE A WEEK OFF AT THE END OF THE MONTH. Yay! First vacation week since the UK last fall. I need it so badly.

- Went last weekend to the University of Rhode Island for their spring farm fair. The masters students in life sciences grow plants in the college greenhouses over the winter, then sell them as a fundraiser. I got three different tomatoes (already large enough that they’re staked), a jalapeno pepper plant, mixed basil, parsley, garlic chives, and 2 lavender seedlings. We’re going to build a raised bed this weekend to plant everything.

- Mom’s offered to come up when I take time off to help decorate the house – badly needed, since we haven’t done a thing since moving in. I cannot wait to get rid of our loud, 1970′s era wallpaper. She has ideas for the kitchen, and I will happily go along with them since I have no decorating sense whatsoever.

- My clothes are too big, and I need to buy new ones not only because mine are worn – but because THEY ARE TOO BIG ON ME. Woots!

- We’re selling the Jeep to a guy who wants to fix it up as a second car project. Only getting $600 for it, but due to the amount of work needed, we’re cool with it. And it’s more than we’d get for a donation. It’s not trade-in worthy, since it doesn’t run.

- Soon, hopefully, I will have a new car. We’ve decided, barring issues with a test drive, on a Honda Fit, quite possibly in “Blue Sensation Pearl” which is so TARDIS looking, it’s hysterical. And this car is definitely “bigger on the inside” than it appears. Heh.

First, welcome to several new friends I’ve met through memes in WoW and Slash fic writing… hooray!

So far, it’s been a very successful weekend. I have tomorrow off (hooray, Patriots’ Day!), so I’ll be able to devote a good chunk of it to writing, exactly as I’d hoped would happen. I’m feeling VERY pleased. Spring Cleaning success – hooray! And the weather has turned out surprisingly good… the original forecast was for scattered showers all weekend. We had just a bit last night, but otherwise it’s been partly sunny and mild. All of the tree leaves are exploding. The only downside is my allergies – but after this winter, I’ll deal with sniffles!

the big project of the weekend

I’ll admit that I’ve been in a meh mood about blogging lately so I haven’t been around LJ often. Part of it has just been a pullback after all of the fandom b.s. over the last several months (and taking a breather). Part has just been that frankly, I don’t have a lot I’ve felt like writing about. And really – in a lot of ways I just don’t feel like I have anything interesting to say. *shrug*

That being said, I hate that with the exception of a few very filtered entries, my journal has really only been filled with dragon eggs for the last several weeks. And that needs to change. I’m also debating whether to start posting most stuff in unlocked entries again, and just say “eff it” to all of the crap that’s gone on. Filtering myself into a lockdown, and then forcing myself to further filter due to the people who were on my friends list has honestly hurt my writing style. A lot.

Thankfully, I’ve done a lot of sweeping. And I’m thinking I’m okay.

So for giggles, here’s just a “what’s Mel been up to lately?” life recap post…

Writing Stuff
I’ve been doing a lot of writing, both fanfic and casual fiction, but not getting anywhere near where I want to be. That’s frustrating. I’m now two months late on my Support Stacie fic – mostly stuck because NC17 was requested, but I just can’t get my brain to go that route right now. *sigh* (and of course, forcing makes it even worse). I’m now also late on an OT3 fic, although the deadline was a bit looser on that one. I do think that my OT3 writing is being affected by the Stacie fic situation. I’ll just try to keep plugging… somehow.

Once these two fics are done, though, I need to take a break from fanfic for a while. Just to focus on other projects, I think.

Travels
This past weekend Erich and I headed to Chicago to celebrate the wedding of our friends myownwench and jgulner. We had a great time, despite some extremely crappy weather on Saturday and Sunday. Neither of us had been to Chicago before. To be able to fly from snowy teen-degree Rhode Island to a sixty-five degree Chicago and sprawl out on the Navy Pier on Friday, complete with mini-icebergs in Lake Michigan, was a blast.

The wedding itself was very nice – a pretty and heartfelt ceremony for two fantastic people, followed by a good party that went past midnight with lots of dancing and goofing off. Really can’t beat it.

Oh – and if you ever go to Chicago, you must eat at Glenn’s Diner. We saw it on Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives on the Food Network just a week before heading out west… and it was fantastic. It’s a bit pricey ($17-22), but very, very good and worth it in my opinion. Some very different fish selections than you’ll normally see.

Work
Work’s been stressful, and I admit that I’m very frustrated with the situation. I love the company I work for, but I’ve got a growing resentment regarding the people I work with… and having gone to my manager about it, now know that I have absolutely no solutions beyond the traditional “put up and shut up” about it.

I know I’m good at what I do, and I take pride in my work. I’m not just there to get a paycheck – if that were the case, I definitely wouldn’t be traveling 90 minutes each way. The downside of being good at what I do and taking pride in my work is that because I’m willing to take the responsibility, I see the two people I work with taking advantage of that. It’s expected that if a project’s going to go later than our scheduled hours, I’m the one staying. We’ve been on an adjusted work schedule since October when our receptionist went out for double hip surgery. One of the women I work with volunteered to work every morning starting at 8:30, and then the other two of us work the afternoon shifts. When early morning admin is off or having to cover the mailroom because THAT clerk is out, then the two of us who cover in the afternoon have go come in early. Well… I’ve wound up having to cover six of those so far this year, and nine since October, including working THROUGH the office Christmas party. The other girl has worked that extra phone shift… once.

And when I pointed this out to my manager, I got absolutely no help on it. In fact, she claimed that both of them are getting glowing reviews – completely OPPOSITE of what I’m hearing from people, who come storming to me to complain about the stupid mistakes and attitude they get from the others. I suggest they take it to my manager, but they tell me that they get blown off about complaints.

So yeah… despite carrying a heavier workload because extra afternoon person sucks, both personality and work-output wise… I’m just expected to put up and shut up. More and more people are either waiting until I’m by myself in the administrative assistant cube to give work, or just not bringing it to our department at all because they don’t want the other two working on their projects.

And of course, I’m happy to do the work. BUT… I’m also getting major attitudes from the other two, who of course, I’m making look bad by actually DOING MY JOB.

The whole situation is souring me. I’m tired, I’m frustrated, and just need a venting session. I keep reminding myself that I need to be thankful I have a job. That because I live in one of the states with an over 10% unemployment rate, I can’t do anything to risk it.

But it’s getting harder to get up in the morning, knowing that I’m going to have to put up with the crap again.

*sigh*

Health
On the downside – I really need to get in soon to get my blood pressure under monitoring. Three separate times over six months, my reading was at roughly 140/90. Considering I was at 115/75 consistently (even at my heaviest weight) until very recently, I’m wondering what’s up. I’ve been watching my sodium intake in the meantime, since it’s the easiest thing to keep an eye on.

On the upside – I’m somehow down two dress sizes. My clothes still fit me, but I’ve gone down a couple dress sizes… and a bra cup size. Not complaining about this. Not sure how it’s happening, either.

But I’ll take it.

And I’ll look forward to the weather getting better so I can take advantage of it and get some good walking in.

So yeah, that’s basically everything going on in my head these days.

Okay… a couple choices were taken so…

Guild creation is in progress for

Details:

Server – Eonar (US)
Faction – Horde
Contact – Quela, blood elf paladin
Where – Valley of Trials (starting area for Orcs & Trolls)
When – Now until 11 p.m. Eastern, or whenever I get the sigs

You don’t have to stay, but you’re welcome to if you’d like.

Edit:

Thank you giggleloop!

ETA: Just. Need. One. More….

Ding! Level 80 – 1/19/09

Tennetty has found more cowbell. It was hidden under level 80.

Very quick sum-up:

Family medical crisis averted
Lots of WoW – ding! 79
Lots of snow
Lots of fic pondering, but not much writing (working on that)
Not a long weekend for me – I iz at work.

Now in depth… behind the cut…