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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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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scuba_mo‘s coming down to our house for the weekend. I know that 3:10 to Yuma is in the viewing plans (mmm… pretty boys in Western…), and the guys are going to be working out characters for Erich’s new Star Wars d20 campaign.

I’ve chosen *not* to play in that campaign. I think the fact that it’s been about seven months since he proposed it, and I haven’t been enthused to create a character is a sign that it’s just not quite my thing. Which is fine. I’m sure I’ll come in to a couple sessions here and there as a guest character/NPC as needed. But it doesn’t commit me to the game, and that’s honestly important to me right now. I’m finding myself with a ton of obligations (by my own choice, mind) these days, and I just don’t want to add another one onto the plate.

SO… my weekend is fairly free (yay!), aside from a few standard weekend chores. I’m hoping to get some writing done this weekend. I have the Series Finale for Project Runway to watch from Wednesday night. I’m sure I’ll play some World of Warcraft, continue my quest to save up 5,000 gold toward one of those purdy dragon mounts (I’m almost at 2,000 gold now… slowly but surely, I’ll get there!). I need to do some computer tidying – I have a lot of scattered files all over the place that need to be sorted and put in appropriate folders. My frantic drabbles to find my voice for the Holdiay OT3 ficathon are scattered ALL OVER my desktop, for starters. *snort*

One thing I’d really love to do soon is get my stitching stuff back in order. I felt the need to stitch last weekend, but my supplies are just scattered about and I couldn’t find anything that wasn’t one of my super-difficult Teresa Wentzler patterns. And yes, I love stitching my TW patterns – I have many of her designs in progress (I seriously can’t believe that string of words worked out brilliantly for all of my links… hee!), I can’t go into stitching on one of them cold after months of not stitching at all. They’re simply too complicated. I need to gather everything up, label my bobbin bins appropriately for my projects, and just get things under control so I can start doing some work on them.

And from what I hear, the weather is supposed to be craptastic on Saturday, so it looks to be a good day for writing and puttering. So hey, maybe I’ll be productive!

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It was a glorious battle.

With LOTS of AoE.

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So my ten plus hours of World of Warcraft on Saturday wound up being probably about eighteen or so over the weekend. Included in said WoWing was:

- Two full instances (Shadow Labs and Arcanium), to help scuba_mo, aka Basmon, with his key quest for Karazhan. I hadn’t completely run either before, even though I was keyed for Kara – I was pulled into the instances for the key quests both times.

- Twelve Netherstorm area quests cleaned out of my quest log with Basmon & Erich (aka Abudiabudie)

- Nine daily quests

- Respecced Tennetty, created macros for her shots, and worked on the timing for said new shots (this will continue this week before I go back into Kara… I don’t feel comfortable quite yet with it).

- Resupplied Tennetty after she picked up tremendously good equipment in Karazhan during last week’s raids. My personal haul on 2/14 included my new cloak, chestpiece, legs, and boots. Had to buy all new gems for sockets, get new enchants, and upgraded the enchant on my axe. All told, about 550 gold spent, so finishing the quests in Netherstorm to save up some gold was appreciated. I still need to get the supplies for my gun scope, and hopefully upgrade one of the red gems because nothing I was thrilled with was in the AH.

Her spiffy upgraded spec looks like this now: http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Eonar&n=Tennetty

- Rolling up little noob blood elf females on Eonar with the boys late on Saturday night, and just running around the starting area with the quests… mostly nekkid. Absolutely stupid, silly stuff – but fun. And yes, the threesome included a blonde, a brunette, and a redhead. We’re thinking we should totally make a silly named blood elf female guild for absolutely no reason other than to run around nekkid and tease other players online. If anyone else is interested for shits & giggles, roll up a female BE on Eonar, and then send a mail message to “Quela”.

- Levelled my lowbie Druid, Silverhoof, up one more level.

Yeah, I’m a geek. Slacker geek.

I did, however, be practical for a bit yesterday and went out to buy new clothes since my old ones were getting… worn (or are ready for recycling/trashing). We went straight to the mall, so I went to Lane Bryant. Bought three new pairs of work pants (yes… blue SIX… friggin’ salespeople, I TOLD YOU), two new twinset sweaters, and a new pair of pj’s. All costing about $230. There were a few other nice pieces, but nothing that really, REALLY caught my eye. I may look around at Macy’s and at the other plus-size stores in the area come next paycheck. My wardrobe needs an overhaul – and a cleanout.

But yeah – total slacker weekend. Which I honestly needed. I feel much better now, and feel up to tackling things again.

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And because it’s going to be Greek (Tauren? Orcish?) to anyone who doesn’t play World of Warcraft… I’ll be a bit careful to explain things as necessary.

So my first character (“main”), Tennetty, is a happy level 70 Tauren hunter – max level you can have. But there’s still plenty of stuff to do once you HIT that level. Literally it’s like playing an entirely different game – the one to get you there, and then all of the stuff you do once you’re there (group battles, advanced quests, daily quests, etc.).

Said level 70 game was put on hold until after the wedding because I just didn’t have time to devote to it. Now that the wedding is behind me, I’ve been thoroughly enjoying blowing off steam and just killing time playing WoW. Got through all of my required quests that unlock some of the advanced stuff – and now I’m happily doing the 10-man raid instances with my guild. Until this week, my current weaponry/armor really only allowed me to do the first half of our current raid instance. This week, I was able to join the group for the latter tier. So I’m having a blast – getting some good gear, discovering gorgeous new places (really – one of my favorite things about WoW is just how beautiful the game world is… I can just go exploring and have a great time sight-seeing!)

This week, I was scheduled to run Karazhan both last night and tomorrow. Had some problems with my login, so my spot last night went to one of the other hunters in the guild – someone who hadn’t been to Kara. People were all worried when I logged on, and I said no – it’s cool. Get someone else geared. I’ll bring Tennetty over to the front gates and leave her there in case someone needs to leave and you need a spot filled. But it was seriously no problem. At this point, I’d honestly prefer to be able to try the Thursday night session, since it’s almost all new to me.

So I park Tennetty, log onto one of my lower-level alt characters, Kelima – a Troll Warrior – to do some questing/levelling. scuba_mo joined me on a hunter alt alt of similar level, and we cleared out a couple quests. I emphasize couple, because one specific quest took us nearly an hour because the drop rate on the items we needed to collect was so bad.

and here’s where the WoW experienced will know what I’m referring to a bit better…

So bad, in fact, that even with the two of us sharing the kill XP, I managed to completely wrap around my XP bar 1.5 times. DURING THE QUEST. I started at level 23 last night. Levelled upon turning in a quest to start the evening. Then we go do this quest in the Barrens (collecting three weapons, killing three named Quilboars in the Barrens… mid 20′s level). I wrap around, level, run out of rest XP as I’m still gaining XP – and then upon turning in the other completed quests in my log last night (I hadn’t turned in for a while – I had nine to turn in!) – I’m now 3/4 the way to the NEXT level.

IN ONE THREE HOUR SESSION OF WOW.

All the while both of us are having to constantly throw out food, grey items, etc. out of our bags because they’re now constantly full, but we’re far enough away from town that neither of us really wants to run to just clear out bags.

Seriously… WTF? Not that I’m complaining (other than regarding the drop rate of those effing weapons)… but insane.

So yeah, with really only about 5 hours of play time, i’ve gone from level 21 to nearly 26 with Kelima this week. Not too shabby.

Of course, now she’s out of rest XP, so I’ll have her parked at the inn for a couple days to recharge. I need to work on my pet with Tennetty – I’ve been neglegent about feeding Mousedeath lately. I’ve had him since level 28, and recently his loyalty is back down to 3. Not good.

Never piss off a cat. Even in WoW.

*sigh*

Thus ends my geekdom for the day.

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Didn’t get fanfic writing done yesterday as I’d hoped. My brain is just tapped, I think. It’s frustrating, but I’m at the point where forcing it will make the situation worse. I need to relax, and eventually the words will come. I could try drunken writing again, I assume.

New Torchwood tonight. Woot.

Kara raid last night was… interesting. I was distracted all to hell, and stupidly pulled a couple mobs when I shouldn’t have, and my freeze/frost traps were all confused. *sigh* But we did okay. The Thursday raid group will have Aran through the end to clear, as we just stumbled on Aran last night. No idea why – past attempts hadn’t been bad. No other party wipes, though – which was good considering that we only had one priest to shackle for half of the night.

News continues to come in on my friend Rob. He’s better in some ways, confusing the hell out of the doctors in others. The docs brought him in for a biopsy yesterday. Meanwhile, he’s regaining some of the use of his lungs, and now is awake a bit more often. He’s irritated with the tubes, which actually is a very good sign.

Lots to think about. Lots to do.

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In any case, it’s been insane since the beginning of the year, and here’s my thirteen things that have been taking over my life since the New Year:
1) Birthday celebrations. I’m 33, had a fantastic birthday with friends over a Pats game and some delicious strawberry hookah smoking.

2) The Patriots. Sundays have been owned by football. Absolutely owned. And I’m loving it. The Superbowl party is in the works.

3) Being sick. I fell ill with a cold on New Year’s Eve, and still have the annoying cough that goes with it, despite otherwise feeling fine. It’s not a painful cough, mostly in the mornings and evenings, but the cold weather (and the hookah smoking on my birthday) didn’t help.

4) Fanfic writing. I’ve been finishing up pieces that were due around the holidays. Got one done and posted last week. Now I’m working on the other one, which I hope to have completed this month. A small idea just snowballed and, with some help from another writer, looks to be a much better, satisfying piece.

5) Work. I’ve been absolutely insane with work lately. Lots of little projects, lots of paperwork to get through because insurance policies have just renewed as of the first of the year, and lots of really random little things like redesigning the company letterhead (eep!)

6) Torchwood & Doctor Who – Torchwood Series 2 just started airing in the UK last week, and it starts on BBCA this Saturday, along with Doctor Who series 3. Both shows are must-see, IMHO. The second series of Torchwood is already MUCH better than the first. Much slicker, stronger plots, and much more sure of itself. And Series 3 Who? Absolutely wonderful. The first six episodes are a mixed bag, but the last seven are much-watch. Particularly Human Nature, Family of Blood, and Blink which should be on in March. You must watch Blink if you haven’t done so. It’s a brilliant piece of television, regardless of science fiction leanings. It’s up for a Nebula award, and undoubtedly will go up for a Hugo this year (the writer, Steven Moffat, has won for his Who outings the past two years).

7) Money issues. Erich and I have been… let’s say, stressed. Partially holidays related, partially increase in heating bills related, and partially issues that come up with his mom’s estate. I’m just really worried about financing our trip to England in October.

Emotional stuff. Erich’s worn down by his mom’s estate affairs. I’m worn down from being constantly on the run since, oh, last August. We’re both in dire need of a break. Thankfully we’re not snapping at each other, but both of us are just exhausted.

9) The weather. Unlike last year, where it was nearly 50 degrees for a good portion of January, it’s been quite cold with lingering snow. I think it’s contributing to some of the emotional exhaustion.

10) Attempting to get our lives back in order. Vet appointments are being caught up on, getting stuff cleaned around the house, finishing up the final few thank you notes from the wedding, etc. – we have a lot of little projects around the house that we desperately want to get done.

11) Cat issues. Along with the generic vet appointment, we’ve been dealing with some feline frustration. One of the cats was taking to peeing all over the house. We’ve added a couple additional cat boxes (one upstairs, one out in the sunroom), and that seems to have stopped most of it. We still have an idiot cat who is apparently going into a cat box and peeing, not realizing its ass is hanging out of the box when it goes, though. Haven’t caught the culprit, but somehow I think it’s one of our bigger three – Colley, Gus, or Hoodsie.

12) World of Warcraft. Attempting to have some me-time has resulted in a lot of hours playing WoW again, and doing all of the in-game related stuff I’ve wanted to do but couldn’t commit the time to while also planning the wedding. Meaningless to real life, of course, but still a little sense of accomplishment all the same.

13) I really don’t have a thirteen. Maybe commuting time? The MBTA continues to suck and get worse. This morning’s sightseeing excursion on the commuter rail took us ringing around the city through Dorchester because apparently there was something wrong on the mainline track. Never mind the fact that when we got to the junction where both lines meet up by South Station, there were three trains that came through the main line. AND, our train was forced to wait through three trains coming through (10 minutes, standing still), despite us being the ones that were running 20 minutes late into the station. *sigh*

Will February calm down? I hope so!

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I’ve been reading friends’ pages as the reviews from this weekend’s Arisia convention come in. As always, it’s a mix. Mostly good experiences, which is great to hear. But as always, criticisms are quickly dismissed with “well, go do it yourself, then!!” regardless of validity. It’s frustrating, and it’s the main reason why I distanced myself from the con after 2005. *shrug* We’ll see.

It’s not like I could have gone this year – and we won’t have the money next year post ZOMG Geek Honeymoon! either, so who knows?

Not much else for now… time for lunch…

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This means, of course, that on the way home they’ll close off cars and cram us all onto one car, rather than let us enjoy our rides home with personal space. Mark my words, it’ll happen.

Watched the Pats game yesterday – very happy the Pats are in the Superbowl. L.T. just amuses me – I realize that he has tremendous talent. I realize he was injured. I can respect that he recongized that his lack of effective play due to injury made him decide to keep himself off the field. But for a guy who spouts his mouth off all the time, he certainly knows how to sulk, be anti-social and be unsupportive of his team, doesn’t he? Rivers? Huge props for playing with that knee. Huge.

Bummed a bit that the Packers aren’t going to the Superbowl – Favre vs. Brady would have been fantastic. But hey, Manning the younger will be great too – the Giants gave the Pats such a fantastic game at the end of the season. Should be a great match up.

Lots of random crap to do this week – exhaustion from work last week kinda took over this weekend. I worked on a few things, but nothing was completed other than my beta reading for rabid1st and some completely non-essential to life things on World of Warcraft (although I’m now keyed for Kara… yay!). So this week’s stuff-to-do includes:

1) The final drafting of my OSK pinch hit (thank you, principia_coh for the brainstorming ideas!!!)
2) Update the TBS website with the new initiated class
3) Finish the never-ending pile of laundry in the basement
4) Reclaim the kitchen
5) Give the bathroom a proper scrub
6) Reclaim the futon in the sunroom

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