Another birthday has come and gone – I’m 35. Oddly, this one does feel different, although I’m not quite sure how to describe it.

Work’s fine. The pace has been uneven, but that’s to be expected in the new year. I’m still stressed about the things that normally stress me, but overall… work’s just fine.

I started on some fanfic early in the month, but I’ve been distracted by all of the other stuff going on in my life. Erich has some gaming dates with the guys in the next few weeks, though – so I may reserve some of my time to just tinker. No idea where it will lead. I’m not putting any expectations on myself other than to scribble some scenes and see if anything takes me anywhere. I’m debating posting draft scenes under a friends’ lock on LiveJournal for feedback… any thoughts?

I’ve been doing a decent amount of stitching, too. As part of “Guilt Free January” over on The Wagon, I’ve started two pieces so far this month: Legends of the Dragons and Astrology Sampler. I’ll post pics this weekend on them. I’ve debated starting one more piece for Guilt Free January to throw some variety into my rotations the rest of this year… I’m mulling over starting Spring Queen by Mirabilia or Witchy Washy by Raise the Roof. Not sure yet… but I probably will get something else underway in the next week or so.

I haven’t, to my surprise, been playing a lot of World of Warcraft. Erich tossed the Guild Leader tag on me earlier this month, and I need to start doing something to salvage the guild in some way. Not sure what yet – it will be a casual setup, but I need to get on the polls I took earlier this month.

That’s it for now – new work just came in, so I need to get offline.

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Another birthday has come and gone – I’m 35. Oddly, this one does feel different, although I’m not quite sure how to describe it.

Work’s fine. The pace has been uneven, but that’s to be expected in the new year. I’m still stressed about the things that normally stress me, but overall… work’s just fine.

I started on some fanfic early in the month, but I’ve been distracted by all of the other stuff going on in my life. Erich has some gaming dates with the guys in the next few weeks, though – so I may reserve some of my time to just tinker. No idea where it will lead. I’m not putting any expectations on myself other than to scribble some scenes and see if anything takes me anywhere. I’m debating posting draft scenes under a friends’ lock on LiveJournal for feedback… any thoughts?

I’ve been doing a decent amount of stitching, too. As part of “Guilt Free January” over on The Wagon, I’ve started two pieces so far this month: Legends of the Dragons and Astrology Sampler. I’ll post pics this weekend on them. I’ve debated starting one more piece for Guilt Free January to throw some variety into my rotations the rest of this year… I’m mulling over starting Spring Queen by Mirabilia or Witchy Washy by Raise the Roof. Not sure yet… but I probably will get something else underway in the next week or so.

I haven’t, to my surprise, been playing a lot of World of Warcraft. Erich tossed the Guild Leader tag on me earlier this month, and I need to start doing something to salvage the guild in some way. Not sure what yet – it will be a casual setup, but I need to get on the polls I took earlier this month.

That’s it for now – new work just came in, so I need to get offline.

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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.

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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…

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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So… here’s me contributing.

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