Where I’ve Been and Where I’m Going

Where I’ve Been:
I have been out of game and basically offline completely for the past 28 days or so due to a family emergency. Except that’s not exactly as black and white as it seems. Most people have no idea what’s going on or why I’ve been absent, but even the people that do know the basics don’t really understand the family dynamics at work. So I thought I’d take a shot at trying to explain it real quickly.

Approximately 28 days ago, my 86 year old grandfather was crushed under a tree that was being cut down by my father, but fell early and unexpectedly. It also fell the opposite direction of where they planned it to go. This is a serious injury for old people. He was knocked unconscious immediately, 911 was called and he was airlifted 2 hours away to a trauma hospital in the city where I live. My entire family lives within miles of each other in a small, rural community. I’m the only one who escaped to civilization lives away from them.

Grandad was critically injured. His left scapula was broken in 2 places, his lungs were bruised and 8 ribs were broken, his lower back was broken, his pelvic bone was broken on the right side and his right femur was broke in 2 places. The next morning they did surgery on his femur to insert a steel rod, but he was not stable enough to have any other surgeries. The rest of his breaks are being left alone in the hopes they will heal fairly straightly on their own. It took him 4 days to wake up after being put under for his surgery, but he finally did and was downgraded to stable condition. After another week in ICU, he was moved to a private room. However, he is still in the hospital in the city where I live.

I am the responsible one in the family. Even if I didn’t want to be, I’m expected to be. But I generally take responsibility on willingly. Probably connected to my whole Virgo and servitude thing. The day of the accident my mom called me and asked me to rush right over to the hospital because it was going to take them 2 hours to get there. So I went over and met with the ER doctors, heard all the gory details, was taken to see him in all his bloody (lots of scratches from the tree and ground), broken misery. I started filling out his paperwork and making decisions that needed to be made urgently. I am someone who is calm in emergency situations, so when my parents did finally arrive, I was still in charge of the situation. And I have remained in charge of the situation ever since then. Whether I want to be or not.

We all stayed in the ICU waiting room for 3 or 4 days after it first happened because the doctors told us he’d be lucky to make it through each day. Once he finally woke up after surgery and was considered stable instead of critical, most of the family went back home. Except for my mother. My grandmother is in a nursing home immobile and suffering from dementia, so she is unable to visit him. Which means my mom is the main person who cares for Grandad. Since she is retired and lives 2 hours away, she’s been living with me ever since the accident so she can be at the hospital around 20 hours a day and not waste time and money driving back and forth.

Not only have I spent the past 4 weeks sleeping in chairs at the hospital and then on my own couch at home, I’m also not getting as much sleep as normal and when mom and I are home together in the evenings we watch her TV shows and I don’t “play” on my computer because video games are dumb. Yes, I realize I’m an adult and this is my house. But some battles just aren’t worth the fight and I’m trying to keep in mind that she’s stressed out and been away from her own home for weeks now.

The good news is, other than the issue with all of his broken bones still being broken, Grandad is recovering nicely (but very slowly) and they hope they can move him into a nursing home down local to his home in the next two weeks for several weeks of rehab and therapy. Then my life will be my own again… I don’t mean that to sound as selfish as it does but hopefully you understand what I do mean.

Where I’m Going:
I am freaking going to Blizzcon! I can hardly believe it. Like most of you, I have been anxiously waiting for tickets to go on sale. I warned my mom in advance yesterday that I would be spending some time on the computer at 9pm (central time) because I needed to buy tickets for an event. I didn’t bother telling her what the event was; she would not have approved. When the time came and the button lit up that tickets were for sell, I clicked the button. I was approx. #6500 in queue and I could tell by how much stock decreased compared to how much the queue was decreasing, I wasn’t going to make it.

I was right, I didn’t make it. I was still at around #2400 when they sold out. Boo. But wait! I had been reading Twitter while waiting for my chance to buy tickets and I had seen that Vidyala was lucky enough to be at the front of the queue and had indeed snagged tickets. Then she mentioned she snagged extra tickets and thanks to the awesomeness of guild membership and online friendship, she sold me 2 of them. Also she’s just a darn sweet person.

I am so excited to be going and so ecstatic at having a chance like this to snag the tickets. Especially since I am taking a much needed camping trip this weekend to escape my current life of sitting in a hospital room most of my day. I won’t be home on Saturday, so last night was my one chance. Even though I haven’t been around at all lately, I have a great guild. I can’t wait to meet a chunk of them at Blizzcon this year!

The One Where I Bought A Treadmill Desk

Yep, you read that right. Almost two weeks ago, I bought a treadmill desk. It was my Christmas / New Year’s gift to myself because this year I’m finally going to get serious about my health and weight. I am not so lazy that I can only exercise while being on the pc, but I am smart enough to realize that I don’t go to the gym every day or stay longer than an hour when I do go because I am more interested in being online with my friends. So with my new purchase I can add to what I do at the gym by also walking while I’m doing dailies and talking in vent. It takes away the whole “I really need to spend 2 hours at the gym, but _____ will be online in 30 minutes and I haven’t talked to them all day” dilemma. I know, it’s a dilemma that I shouldn’t have ever had, but seriously, I didn’t get to be such a huge fatass by making the correct choices in life. So the treadmill desk is a fantastic option.

I first heard about these types of desks a few years ago when a saw a news special about treadmill desks being an option (a very expensive option) in some workplaces. I was immediately interested but the professional type were just too costly and too big to be something I could actually consider buying. But as things tend to do, now that it’s a few years later prices have dropped and options have increased. I bought mine from Target.com and 2 weeks ago it was priced at $713 with free shipping and because I used my Target RedCard, I got an instant 5% discount so that I only ended up paying $706 after taxes to have it shipped to me. Currently, the same one I bought is listed at $663 but it doesn’t say Free Shipping so I can’t say for sure what the final price would be. Here’s the link. It’s just my luck it would go on sale after I bought it, but I am so happy to finally have one I really don’t even care.

As far as a review of this particular model – I am very satisfied with it. It’s much bigger than the picture online made it appear. In fact, the desk portion is so huge the cup holders that are on the front edge of the desk aren’t even usable because there’s no way you can reach them while you’re on the treadmill. It’s very thick and sturdy feeling, it doesn’t feel like a cheap version at all. In fact, it came with a sticker on the control panel stating it’s rated for people up to 400 pounds. I am nowhere near that weight, but it does make me feel like it’s probably going to remain sturdy for quite a while since it’s built to hold a weight much higher than mine. As far as how comfortable it is to use the pc while walking, I find it to be just fine. If you were using it to do a great deal of constant typing, you may want to add some sort of keyboard wrist support, but since I’m only typing to chat and mostly using my mouse with my right hand and my game-related keystrokes with my left hand, I’m perfectly comfortable resting my hands on the foam molded areas on the sides of the treadmill’s control panel. It’s when you are doing serious typing and have to move both arms off of the molded areas and basically hover over the control panel that it would likely get uncomfortable. However, like I mentioned, I imagine it would be pretty easy to just scoot the keyboard back a bit and use your own wrist support.

My only complaint (cup holder issue is not a legitimate complaint, I just set my cup elsewhere) is that the treadmill handles both have controls on them. The right one has buttons to increase / decrease speed and the left one to increase / decrease incline. You can adjust the speed and the incline both from the main control panel, so I have no idea why they are also included in the handles. I suppose they thought it was a convenience, but they are easy to accidentally bump. Obviously I don’t hang on to the handles because I’m mousing and typing. And when your using the desk, that part of the handles is behind you anyway. But if you’re using the treadmill simply as a treadmill, which I do for at least 30 minutes so that I am actually walking at an increased speed, then anytime you reach down to the handle for balance or whatever, the controls are easy to bump. Of course, I assembled the damn thing myself so I suppose I could have simply not connected the wiring to the handles.

Alright, this is getting boring. Let me wrap this up. Treadmill desks are awesome. The one I bought is awesome. If you have any interest in owning one and are able to spend the money, I highly recommend you do so. I am so fat and out of shape I’m not yet spending all my gaming time on the treadmill, but I’ve tried to average 2 hours a day so far. I walk at 1 mile an hour while gaming and I look forward to increasing both my time walking and the speed at which I’m walking. I have been really surprised at how easy it is to actually do questing while walking. I initially thought I would just do simple tasks like fishing. Nope, I’m leveling alts while burning calories. It’s awesome. I’m hoping as I build up stamina and my balance gets more used to the whole event, I can actually run dungeons this way. However, I would never try raiding because raiding is way too serious to risk making mistakes.

And now, PICTURES! Since I live alone, my pc and desk are in my living room. I have no desire to spend all my time sitting in a bedroom facing a wall. I sit in the living room and talk to the cat while watching Netflix. I decided to place my treadmill desk next to my regular desk so I could simply move my keyboard, mouse and monitor back and forth instead of using my inferior quality laptop or moving my entire system daily.

Here’s what you see as you enter my living room:

Here’s the view from the other side:

My view of the TV for regular walking at 3mph:

And what it looks like while logged in:

It’s 2013 And It’s All About Me Now

Happy New Year, everyone! Welcome to 2013. I am not normally someone who makes a big deal about a new year rolling around because all of those resolutions and promises people make on January 1st are usually things that could have / should have been worked on any old random day instead of waiting until you have a new calendar to mark up. But this year I am in the spirit and I am stoked to make 2013 a great year. I certainly wouldn’t say 2012 was bad, but it was definitely typical. I ended the year having the same personal issues I’ve always had, the same unfulfilled desires I’ve always had, and the same opinion of me I’ve always had. But recent events, or at least my perception of recent events, has caused me to spend a lot of time reflecting on the deep, inner workings of myself over the holidays. I knew I wouldn’t like what I saw, which is why it’s something I’ve avoided for decades now, but I was way overdue for a closer look. And I’ve certainly emerged with new motivations and goals as well as the desire and willingness to become a better me.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to bog this place down with my journey towards personal discovery and reinvention. I did have to mention it here though because World of Warcraft is a big part of my life and the things I need to change and the emotions I struggle with are both impacted by the game and have an impact on my time in game. Because of this, it stands to reason that things like determining what I want from an activity and learning to focus on accomplishing goals will apply to both my gaming life and my non-gaming life. The purpose of this post is to try and get the process started and begin figuring out what I want from WoW in 2013.

I have always considered myself an adaptable person because when I am around people I enjoy, I will enjoy doing whatever it is they are interested in doing. Does that make sense? It’s kind of hard to explain. I suppose it can be best explained with an example. Like when I go visit my friend Lisa, she’s a huge fan of shows like Judge Judy and Dr. Phil so almost every time I’m at her house, we’re watching episodes of those shows that she’s dvr’d. Now while I’m there I’m totally fine with it; we’re having a good visit and I don’t hate Judge Judy. We trash talk the defendants and laugh at how mean Judge Judy can be. It’s a good time because I enjoy being with Lisa. But I’ve never watched a single minute of Judge Judy outside of visiting Lisa because it’s not something I’m interested in just for the sake of watching. Hopefully that clears it up a bit. But honestly, most people aren’t like that. When Lisa comes over to my house and I have Duck Dynasty playing, she doesn’t sit down and enjoy Duck Dynasty with me; she asks if there’s any Judge Judy to watch. Now before everyone tries to tell me Lisa is a terrible friend, let me just say no she’s not. She is not doing it to be rude, she’s doing it because she doesn’t like Duck Dynasty and I’ve led her to believe I do like Judge Judy. So she believes if we switch to Judge Judy we’ll both be happy.

I’m getting a little carried away and this is becoming wordier than I intended. Basically what I’m trying to say is I’ve spent almost my entire life being fine with whatever anyone wants to do as long as I get to spend time with them. I’m now realizing that’s a disservice to both them and me. It sort of makes it seem like our friendship is built around a falsehood, though Judge Judy has nothing to do with WHY we’re friends at all. And what it has done for me is made me boring. Vanilla. A blank canvas. Someone who doesn’t actually have my own likes, dislikes and opinions. And the few I do have I generally don’t walk around displaying because I might offend someone and unfortunately, I am the type of person who believes I need everyone to like me. You can see how this is one of the big flaws within myself I need to fix. I promise you (and me) this – I will and I am.

Not surprisingly, this type of behavior spills over into WoW and it’s something I need to fix in all aspects of my life. It affects what I do (or mostly don’t do) in-game and it even affects this blog because I typically censor myself here so as not to accidentally upset anyone. Well fuck that. I’m done censoring myself. Yep, I dropped an f-bomb. I realize that’s a pretty mild offense, but it’s a good starting place. Rome wasn’t built in a day. Guess what, people? I fucking curse like a sailor sometimes. Because I’m an adult, I know where and when it’s inappropriate, but this blog is my space and my mother will never read it. So starting today, you’ll likely see some cursing. I’m pretty bad ass like that. Lol.

So what do I want from WoW? That’s a damn good question. Every time new content comes out I get all excited and start talking about how I want to keep up with content and do raiding and max all the things. Unfortunately, it never happens. I’ve been playing for 5 years now and the only thing I have really accomplished is getting Loremaster before Cata dropped and getting the Holiday meta-achievement way earlier than a lot of people did. Neither one of those are that impressive, though a lot of people do seem to struggle with the holiday pvp requirements and SOMEHOW I had no trouble doing those the first time around. Now I’m at a point where shit needs to get real. I have had a lot of fun over the past 5 years, but I’ve also had a lot of quiet, personal heartbreak and dissatisfaction due to not getting things accomplished. I’ve spent the last several years still mourning the death of my first ever guild. Not being able to let go of that has certainly been hampering things. When that guild split, I had no idea what to do. I wanted to follow some people to the new guild, but I waffled due to a combination of loyalty, not wanting to hurt anyone’s feelings and not being sure I was even wanted in the new guild since I wasn’t included in the original decision to split. So I stayed with the old guild and spent months enjoying chatting with a few of the people who stayed, intensely missing the people that left and doing not much more than standing in Stormwind feeling sorry for myself. I finally decided to move to the new guild and I don’t regret that decision, but by the time I got over there it was filled with a lot of people I didn’t know and who didn’t know me and they were months ahead of me in gear and content. I never really worked as hard as I could have to fit in there and I never really made a place for myself on their team. Then that guild split and I left it too.

I transferred servers, I rolled alts on various servers, I played SWTOR almost exclusively for 6 or 7 months. I have missed out on a lot of things in Azeroth I had hoped to experience. Now it’s time for me to take control of the game and make it be what I want it to be. Don’t misunderstand, I have had a lot of fun here. I have some great friends and Elfindale is in a guild with 2 of my longest known WoW friends as well as a whole group of awesome people. But just like before, I don’t seem to fit in. I’m casual, they’re not. I prefer constant rolling guild chat, they’re a very quiet bunch. I enjoy dungeons and heroics more when I can run with people I know, they don’t seem to ever do group runs. I have to put some serious thought into what I want to do with Elfi. My other level 90 toon is in a very tiny Horde guild with another couple of great friends. We’ve been having a blast doing old content for pets and mounts as well as silly things like 5 manning Ulduar 25 to get achievements. But I am not doing dailies, gaining rep to get better gear, learning Heroics or becoming prepared to run LFR. Just like my Alliance guild, I enjoy my time there. But I’m wondering how much of my time in both of these guilds are similar to my story earlier about watching Judge Judy with Lisa.

Part of me is afraid if I’m not actively spending time in these guilds, with these friends, our friendship will fade. I realize that’s part paranoia and is very telling of my self esteem issues. Part of me can see it may already be happening regardless of what toon I spend my time logged in with. So the time has come for me to really sit down and analyze what I want from the game. I will likely not stop derping around in old content laughing my ass off in Vent with my Horde guild, but outside of that do I want to get my Horde toon geared up and start working on dailies and rep? Or do I want to just leave her for derping and start putting serious work into Elfi? If I do decide to become more focused on advancing Elfi what exactly are my goals with her? Do I stay in the guild I’m in and just run heroics and LFR by myself or do I think about finding a guild that’s more in line with my casual, social style and be able to do things with a group? Do I want to level both toons up and have more options?

I don’t have the answers to these questions today, but I am determined to get it straightened out. It will go hand in hand with all of the other self-improvement I need to do and will be doing over the course of this year. I’m excited to finally be ready to work on being me. I am looking forward to seeing what 2013 has to offer, both in-game and out of game. If any of you have been in this type of position or have any special insights or advice you would like to share, I would love to see it. And I promise that if you offer up an opinion, I won’t simply adopt it as my own.

My WoW Secret Santa Gift Has Arrived

Hooray for getting packages in the mail! Granted, I only check my mail about once a week so it’s very likely this package had arrived days earlier, but that’s neither here nor there. On Monday I got my WoW Secret Santa gift! I have no idea who it’s from AT ALL. Either it’s someone on Twitter I’ve not yet stumbled across or it’s someone who I do follow but clearly have no clue where they live because the return address didn’t ring a bell to me. In fact, the return address thoroughly confused me because it only listed a first name and an address and the first name was the exact same as mine. Even spelled the same, which is not the most common spelling. So I don’t know if my Secret Santa shares a first name with me, or just threw mine in there to stay a secret for a while longer. I didn’t spend too much time pondering about the address though, I jumped right in and started ripping it open.

Once unwrapped I quickly discovered I had NOT been sent a cake:

But the box was filled with goodies much better than a coffee cake:

Aside from the adorable, glittery mouse on the Christmas card, I got a handmade SpongeBob SquarePants ornament. Because he’s my fave cartoon ever. Here’s the front and the back:

And I got two AMAZING origami ornaments. I am so impressed with people who can do this. I love them so much. One is Alliance colors (awesome!), the other is my favorite color (even awesomer!) and I suppose Horde colors

And here’s the whole bundle of wonderful all together. Thank you Secret Santa! I love the gifts so much. I can’t wait to learn who they’re from.

Can’t We Do IntPiPoMo Every Month?

How did I manage to go from a post a day for a solid month to no post at all for almost 2 weeks? Well, part of the reason is because last week I had the plague and was too sick to get out of my recliner. The rest of the reason? I don’t really have one. Just haven’t gotten back in the swing of things after the week of sleeping. I have been logging in, but instead of diving right back into the serious business of grinding and gearing my main I have been hanging out on the Horde side with a couple of friends going through all the old content we can for pets and mounts. Derping around can be fun. Especially when you’re raking in pets and mounts while logged into Vent making fun of Canadians and the way they say all their words wrong.

Aside from that, I’ve been not doing much. Sadly, I recently told my SWTOR guild that I was leaving the game because I’ve lost interest in the Galaxy and wasn’t doing any extra work to keep my gear upgraded. I had also grown tired of both weekend nights being filled with raiding. I had been missing raids due to illness and obligations and with the holidays here now, I knew I’d be missing a lot more. I finally had to quit stringing them and myself along and just end it. It sucked. I have good friends there and I have an amazing time when I’m raiding with them. I had actually posted on the guild forums that I was unsubbing, but have since decided not to for now because when I am logged in I have a lot of fun. So we’ll see what happens there. I have a feeling that now that I’ve officially quit, I’ll want to play more than usual. Because that’s what kind of special crackhead I am.

I will resume regular posting here again soon, though. And since I’ve been running a lot of old content, it’s highly likely you’ll see more of the old school screenshots like I have recently posted. Until then, I’m just going to sit here and cuddle with Jasper (who COMPLETELY enjoyed me being in the recliner for a week).

The One Where I Act Like Brett Favre

For those of you who may not know, Brett Favre is one of the recent great quarterbacks in the NFL (Green Bay Packers for most of his career) who, starting back around 2007, began retiring at the end of the season and then coming out of retirement just in time to play the next season. This went on for 4 years or so. By the time he finally really did retire, the whole thing had become quite absurd and no one really even cared any more. Hopefully, that won’t happen to me.

Yep, I am announcing my retirement from this blog BUT WAIT… I have talked about Brett Favre for a reason here (other than the fact that I am a huge NFL fan (Go Chiefs!)(everyone shut up, I know they suck but they are my team)). See, much like the first time Brett retired from the game, I would love nothing more than to continue on here. But sometimes the desire to play football write blog posts just isn’t worth the time and effort required to do it. However, I am smart enough to know that my love for Elfi and this little world I’ve created here may draw me back. I might decide after being retired for a few months that I’ve got one more season in me.

I love being Elfi. Elfi has been a huge part of my identity since I began playing WoW in January 2008. But I am only Elfi online, in WoW. My coworkers don’t know me as Elfi, my family doesn’t know me as Elfi. And now that I’ve made SWTOR my main game and I am not named Elfi there, I’m only Elfi a few hours a week. Mostly here when I blog. And there’s where the problem begins because of a combination of the following things:

• I don’t have as much time to write posts as I used to – I began blogging in general (personal blogs, photo blogs) around 2006 when I worked 3rd shift all alone in the basement of a hospital where my only job was to answer the phone if it rang and solve whatever pc problem was on the other end. In an 8 hour shift, I’d get 3 or 4 calls and they were 90% password resets. When the phone wasn’t ringing, I was allowed to do anything else I wanted so the job was great for reading, putting together jigsaw puzzles, watching DVDs, surfing the net, blogging, etc. But in case you’re wondering, it wasn’t worth the solitude. Especially considering I worked every Friday & Saturday night and my 10 hour shifts began at 9pm. Talk about not being able to have a social life. Ugh. Actually, forget the social life, when you live alone and work that kind of schedule you rarely get any human contact with anyone. Ugh. But I digress. I began blogging because I had nothing but time and since I worked there for 5 years blogging very much became “something I do at work”. I am now working 3rd shift at a different job where I only get 1 phone call a night. Unfortunately for me (relevant to what we’re discussing here), answering the phone is like 1% of my job. I work my ass off here. There’s no more time for blogging.
• Back in December, I switched my main game to SWTOR. I love it there because it’s a great game and my dearest friends are there. This means sometimes I login to WoW for 2 – 4 hours a week, sometimes I don’t login to WoW for a week or more. Despite the fact there seems to always be some new achievement I’ve … achieved…(how redundant) or some new pet I’ve acquired, or some fail PUG to make fun of, the quality of posts here has been slipping. Spending so much time away from the game means I’m forcing myself to invent things to write about. Even though I still enjoy the writing part of it, it’s just not as inspired by my love of the game as it used to be. I still love the game, but we’re long-distance lovers these days and the flirty, breathless excitement between us has been replaced with “let’s schedule a quickie twice month if it works out”.
• I seriously need to figure out how to get off my ass more. Did I say seriously? Because I seriously do. Seriously, I’m killing myself here. I’m drowning in obesity and diabetes with some almost-old-age mixed in. When it comes to figuring out where I’m going to get the extra time to hit the gym I’d rather take it away from blogging than from getting to play the game. Don’t give me that look… I’m taking it away from other things too. The Nook makes it easy to read while I’m on the treadmill so now I’m not sitting on my ass reading as much.
• Twitter. It’s… what’s the word… it’s constant. I enjoy it, but I can’t keep up. Especially since I keep following more and more people. I love the way it’s such an intimate little community where I really do get the feeling all of you guys are actually friends. Twitter helps me stay on top of the WoW news and happenings while I’m playing SWTOR and of course let’s me know when my favorite people publish new blog posts. It is also a platform I use to let people know I have published a new post. It’s very much connected to blogging for me. Especially because I follow most of my favorite WoW bloggers. And so, it must go. No more spending 6 minutes out of every 20, all day long, bent over my Droid 3 reading Tweetdeck. It’s done. A week ago I tweeted that I was breaking up with Twitter and I haven’t tweeted a single thing in 7 days. No one commented. No one has noticed. So I guess quitting Twitter will be the easy part. I will keep my SWTOR twitter account active to keep up with my guildies tweeting action. But @_elfindale is retiring.

So the struggle is I want to continue being Elfi but all the other crap is true too.

There’s more. I’ve been really emo for a couple of weeks now and I could really begin rambling about some shit right here. But ultimately, it doesn’t matter. What matters is I feel like I’m doing this space and my readers a disservice by forcing content once or twice a week just for the sake of keeping an audience because I like having one. So I’m going to stop. At least for now. Hopefully I will get rid of the emo, get myself into a better routine of fitting things in that should be priorities (seriously someone figure out how to make me exercise), and get a better handle on my time management so that I can Brett Favre it up and announce that I’m back. See, I want to believe I will one day be back. So I want you guys to realize you don’t have to keep coming here to read whatever crap I’ve thrown together in a rush (lately) because I’m stopping. But if you have ever enjoyed Elfi’s World you should not throw away the link and forget it exists.

And in closing, I’d just like to say to Psynister … uh, sorry dude but I guess I will NOT be updating my “About” page for now.

The One Where I’m Simultaneously Proud And Ashamed Of Myself

I am a very easy-going person. I am shy and awkward, yes, but at the same time I like to constantly be surrounded by friends. These days most of my closer friends (thanks to video games) are not near my geographically, so I guess that should be amended to say I like to constantly be in communication with friends. I hate to upset people, which unfortunately does make me a bit passive/aggressive. I know that’s considered bad and I really try to stay aware of when I’m doing it and bring it to a halt. Luckily for my parents and siblings, most of my passive/aggressiveness is used on them. My point is, I try to be nice at all times because I am a nice person. I have a lot of patience, I’m very accepting, I am always willing to adapt to others, and I venture through life with a great sense of humor.

These things probably tend to make people think I’m a pushover; and I’ll admit I am one of those people who seems to be invisible a lot in the outside world. I’m the one who people step in front of at the counter even though I had been in line waiting. Or the one who finds the door shutting in my face thanks to the person who just held it open for the 3 people directly ahead of me. People talk over me. People forget to introduce me. But it’s not because I’m all withdrawn in on myself and looking at the ground. It’s because I’m one of those people who will automatically stay a bit back away from the counter in case someone decides they really need up there first. I’m the one who will start to hesitate as I approach a door being held open because I want the person holding the door to be able to make the decision to be finished holding the damn door. Does that make sense? I put everyone’s needs (needs that I imagine they have, because most of the time they are total strangers) above my own. But it’s not because I don’t feel I’m worth it. It’s because I think you’re worth it. True story. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. It works out for me only about .005% of the time, but I still try.¹

I’m not trying to toot my own horn here. I just wanted to point out how I view myself (because seriously, I’m sure there are people around who would disagree with my previous statements. Even I can’t please all the people all the time. Though I do try my hardest.) before posting the below screenshot of a conversation I just initiated in WoW. We all know that internet anonymity can turn any average nerd into a troll. Well there are times when I find myself pissed off at some random person in-game. It’s not very often and it usually involves them ninja’ing (made that word up right there, yo) a node I’m going for. The reason that will piss me off is because I never race anyone towards a node. I see someone in the general area and I’ll just stand and wait to see if that’s what they’re going for. [See second paragraph for reference]. So after inconveniencing myself that way for long periods of time it will occasionally hit me the wrong way when someone takes my shit.

And when that happens, this type of thing happens:

I hate when I do this. It’s like I don’t have the balls to just be outright mean but I am to the point where I want them to acknowledge they wronged me. I hold back from outright asshattery (or try to) because Elfi is known publicly by a small crowd and I don’t want that name tarnished. So it’s a combination of a few ranty sentences and a few passive aggressive sentences and it’s all pointless. I need to learn to just ignore it. These people are certainly ignoring me. But then, maybe that’s why I can’t ignore it. If someone grabbed a node from me and said “sorry” or “sucks to be you” or “take that fucker” as they ran away, I really think I’d get a good chuckle out of it. They knew I was there, they acknowledged that something has just happened. But to not say anything makes me feel like you haven’t even taken the time to acknowledge my existence and that burns my ass.

In closing, I really don’t know what the point of this post is. I just got wound up after the above conversation and started writing. I guess to feel like I’m serving a purpose here I will toss in a quick suggestion to everyone out there to tell me how I can improve the above conversation, or how I can train myself to not say anything, or even how you handle things of this nature. I can’t wait to see everyone’s take on this.

¹ Disclaimer: I am not saying I am like this all the time. I do have my bad days like everyone else. I can be grumpy, whiny, irritating, and everything else.

Nerd Badges – Blog Azeroth Shared Topic

I’m a few days behind on this, but last week’s shared topic from BlogAzeroth is as follows:

How do you express your geekery? Do you own obvious paraphernalia like a Horde-symbol bumper sticker, in-joke tshirts like the dps/ups pun, or less obviously related items like a gift from a guildie? Rather than physical indicators, do you mix nerd lingo into your everyday speech or talk/post about geekdom in non-nerd spaces? How do you advertise your nerd tendencies? Does it help you to attract new nerd friends?

Well let me assure you, I DO proudly display nerd badges. And yes, it helps attract new nerd friends. Which is a total bonus, but is not the reason why I display my nerdiness. I just figure that it only takes people about 2 minutes of knowing me to realize I’m a total dork so the least I can do is help people realize why I am the way I am. “Aw, the poor dear can’t help but act this way. Just look at her, she’s a total nerd. Bless her little heart.”

My two most recent purchases have already been responsible for starting several random conversations with strangers.
Gas station cashiers, strangers in the breakroom at work, even bank tellers have all commented on my bracelets. It’s been pretty evenly split on which bracelet gets the most comments. I haven’t had them very long, but I love them.

I’m a fat chick, so I don’t really have a lot of nerd t-shirts. One, because no one needs to stare at my fatness to try and read a shirt and two, because it’s just a waste of money since I
won’t look all cute in them. HOWEVER, because I’m a fat chick and Elfi is a night elf druid, I HAD to get this shirt a couple of years ago. It cracks me up every time I wear it.

Another place you can find proof of my nerdiness is on the back of my car where I proudly display the following stickers. (taken in the dark with a cell phone, crappy picture)

And then there’s my desk at work which is really geeked out. It’s not even all pictured here. Of course, working in the IT industry I’m surrounded by people who understand why my desk is decorated the way it is. They can appreciate it.

At home there are WoW plushies and Darth Vader helmets sitting out on display. I am also one of those annoying people who talks in lolspeak quite often, though only to people I know will understand it. I’m quite the oddity in my family of rednecks. My parents and the one brother I was raised with just scratch their heads at me and wonder what the hell I’m talking about. It seems to really cause my mother some serious pain to be out shopping with me and watch her 41 year old daughter buy Star Wars toys and World of Warcraft trading cards. But I can’t help it, I’m a nerd and I’m proud of it.