The One With Random Facts About Me

In the comments of my last blog post, the kind-hearted Anou from Diary of a Gnome Spy nominated me for a Liebster Award. I have not been blogging much lately at all but I have been reading Liebster Award posts all over my favorite blogs, so I was completely familiar with it but never expected to see myself nominated. Also very happy that I was introduced to a new blog in the process, as I had not read Diary of a Gnome Spy before but have now added it to my feed. Thanks, Anou.

So the rules are (in addition to my paragraph above) I’m supposed to answer the 11 questions Anou provided me with, provide 11 random facts about myself and then nominate 5 bloggers and write questions for them. Well, I hate to be that person, but I am choosing not to nominate 5 other blogs. I apologize. It’s just that I feel it’s been spread through the community really well by now and one of the reasons my blog posts have diminished is due to time constraints so I am selfishly choosing not to take the time to write 11 new questions and find 5 blogs that haven’t been nominated yet. It’s nothing personal.

My answer to Anou’s questions:

1. Which is your favorite in-game quest line? Like, one you don’t want to miss on any alts as you level up?
Hands down, it’s Gnomebliteration

2. Have you ever just spontaneously started to role play; for example, stood around some tables in an inn and offered to take peoples’ order?
I haven’t ever actually role played in a traditional sense, but I certainly try to avoid running into people or standing on top of people at all. Additionally, all of my different characters do have their own personalities and each dress a certain way and ride specific mounts, etc. That’s probably not typical of people who don’t rp at all, so it makes me think it’s a tiny bit of rp I do.

3. What music do you chose to listen to, to accompany you in your epic battles? Do you play with the game music on? Or do you mute music and play your own in the background?
Weirdly enough, I’m a huge music lover but I don’t play any music while gaming. When I’m at the computer I am usually gaming on one monitor and trying to keep up with Twitter on the other monitor as well as catch up on blogs and news.

4.Were you a gaming virgin before your adventures in WoW, like me? Or had you already played other games, or MMO’s previously?
I was not a gaming virgin as I had played years of console games and I had played a few pc games such as Myst and The Dagger of Amon Ra. WoW was my first ever mmo (because I’m not counting 2 weeks of Runescape).

5. In your opinion, should Worgens have been added to the Horde’s races, or are they suited to be Alliance?
Of course they’re suited for the Alliance… they’re werewolves which means they are humans who become / shape-shift into wolves. The legend of the werewolf is clearly what Blizzard based Worgens off of, further evident in the fact that you can choose to shift to your human form when not in combat. I never have understood why people think they should be Horde. They have to be the same faction as humans

6. If you were brave enough to display your colors publicly, what symbol or quote could someone see stuck to your car’s bumper?
I actually already have an Alliance symbol, a bumper sticker that says “My other car is an EPIC mount” and a bumper sticker that says “My ❤ belongs to Stormwind"

7. Say you were an über rogue and could stealth past anything, what would you do/where would you go first?
I’m not certain if this means in game or outside of game, but I’m going to answer it outside of game. I would say I’d use my stealth ability to sneak into Blizzcon because going last year was totally amazing and I’d love to be able to get back there again.

8. Do you have a favorite companion pet out at all times? If so, is it always the same one? How do you choose?
I switch my pets out quite often and each toon will use different pets because of different personalities. Some of my favorites are a sapphire cub given to me by a friend, the cynder kitty given to me by a friend, my sewer rat from Dalaran named Chewie, my Netherwhelp Hatchling because they’re rare, my vampiric batling named Vinnie from Prince Tenris MirkBlood in Karazan

9. What is your #1 in-game pass-time? Auction farming? Transmogs? Being trendy in Trade chat? Exploring old zones? (etc.)
Either herbing or mining while just enjoying chatting with my guildies and friends

10. Is there a piece of art somewhere in game, a sculpture, a painting, that caught your interest and opened your eyes to the tiny details of WoW?
I suppose it would have to be the Darnassus bank since Elfi was my first ever character and that’s the first major city she came to. Once the tree that contains the bank came into view and I noticed it was shaped as a bear and bird, I was totally awed.

11. What real life thing do you tend to set aside for WoW?
Housework

Now it’s time for 11 random facts about me:

1. I am left handed but I wear my watch on my left wrist (and I wear it with the watch face turned to the bottom of my wrist). For some reason people think this is weird. Apparently you’re supposed to wear your watch on the opposite hand because it gets in the way while writing. Even weirder that I wear my watch basically upside down. But here’s something you should know … when you’re left handed the fact that you live in a right handed world and you have to sit in school desks built to support your right hand and use a spiral notebook that’s spiraled on the left side already make it fucking difficult to write. My watch isn’t making it any harder.

I’m glad we could have this talk. Moving on.

2. I’ve been dragged from my house in my pajamas, handcuffed, read my rights, shoved into a cop car and hauled to jail. When I got there I was fingerprinted, mugshotted and actually handcuffed to a concrete bench. If you’re interested in finding out why, you can read the whole story HERE

3. I spent several years in my 20’s writing dark, twisted poetry. It’s probably stuff that everyone else would think is stupid, but I’ve kept them all and I still enjoy reading them.

4. While pregnant with me my mom craved watermelon and ate it constantly. While I do like watermelon flavoring in candy, I do not ever have any desire to eat watermelon

5. Had I been born a boy, my first and middle name were going to be John Denver because those were the first names of both grandfathers. Thankfully I am a girl.

6. In high school I was voted “Most Intelligent”. Hahahahaha. Not nearly as impressive when you learn my graduating class consisted of a whopping 33 people.

7. I cry more for pride than I do for sadness. I can see a dead rabbit on the road and forget about it in seconds but I cry like a baby every time the National Anthem is played or when I watch 1st graders sing a Christmas program, etc. And anything military related? Forget about it, I’m sobbing.

8. I tend to be overly wordy in written forms of communication (not that you guys could tell, right?) but in person I’m pretty quiet and don’t say much. Unless I’m zinging someone with some quick sarcasm.

9. My eyes have changed colors and still do sort of change colors. I was born with blue eyes and had bright blue eyes until my early 20’s when they changed to grey eyes with dark blue around the outside edges. In my 30’s they shifted from grey lined in blue to a sort of hazel. Except mine are flecked with green, gray and blue instead of green, gray and brown like typical hazel eyes. The dominant color seems to depend on what shirt I’m wearing.

10. I’ve never once solved a Rubik’s cube without taking it apart and rebuilding it solved

11. My favorite food is ice cream. Oh, and donuts. Also hamburgers.

Blah

I read dozens of WoW-centric blog posts a day ranging in content from news about recently gained pets to detailed “how to” guides. I enjoy them all. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t read them. Yet when it comes to my own blog I find myself not writing posts because I feel the silly, unimportant subject matter could not possibly be exciting to anyone. This frustrates me. I enjoy blogging. I KNOW blogging is supposed to be for me and no one else. I certainly don’t pop in here simply because I need attention or desire to grow a massive audience. But as a child, I didn’t dream of becoming an astronaut or a princess or a superhero – I dreamed of being a photojournalist for National Geographic. From as early as I can remember I collected those magazines from every garage sale or old person that had them. My room had hundreds and hundreds of bright yellow-bound magazines stacked in it. In my teen years, I added novelist to the list. I read my first Stephen King book at age 11 and after reading 5 or 6 more (along with what I swear must have been every book my tiny school library had to offer) I was convinced writing was in my future.

Hey, guess what? Nope. Turns out I was too shy to complete the journalism classes I tried to take in college. Too lazy to do much writing of any other kind, apparently. I also don’t have much of an imagination anymore. I don’t know where I lost it. In my 20’s I wrote some poetry. Not epic poetry, or romantic poetry. Mostly what I’d consider dark poetry, I suppose, for lack of better categorization options. Maybe no one else would agree. /shrug. All I know is poems would randomly just start forming in my mind and lay themselves down line by line, piling up until my head felt like it was going to burst open if I didn’t stop and write it down. Most of my poetry was first written on random scraps of paper and napkins that happened to be near me when this happened. They always seemed to spew forth without needing to be edited or cleaned up. I miss that feeling. Even if no one else ever thought they were good poems, I liked them. Why can’t that feeling come back to me?

In case you haven’t noticed, this is just a mind dump. I sat here with the new blog post window open and couldn’t decide which insignificant detail of my gaming life to share so this started pouring out instead. My apologies. I used to have no trouble writing blog posts. Hey, while we’re on that subject, December 7 marked my 3rd yr anniversary at World of Elfi. It all began with an open letter to Blizzard. Ah, I used to be so entertaining. To myself, if no one else. I was fine with entertaining myself for so long. How did that stop? I didn’t mean to intentionally ignore my anniversary. Just accidentally overlooked it.

I still enjoy the hell out of the game. Sometimes my interest drops a bit if other side projects have my attention, but currently I’m in a big WoW upswing. It started ramping up as Blizzcon approached and it’s still going. Obviously my writing issues aren’t related to that.

Yes, it does strike me as funny that I’ve just used all these words to form lines and paragraphs of useless rambling about how I don’t write as much as I used to because I’m afraid it’s all useless rambling. Heh. I think that’s a clear indication I should sign off for today.

Here’s hoping sometime soon I’ll post about my latest boring pet, achievement, gear, etc.

My Blizzcon Experience: Part 2 – The People

While I didn’t get to meet everyone who was there who I follow on Twitter or through blogs, websites, etc., I got to meet so many amazing people. I only wish there had been more time to spend with each of them because what you need to understand about me is I’m sappy. Like, really sappy. I really LOVE my friends and I get the warm fuzzies when interacting with them. I’m kind of like a gushing 13 year old girl in that way. When I really like someone, I get all crazy excited for any opportunity I have to chat with them. I think sometimes I wear people out because I’m pretty much always excited to talk to them when there are times maybe they don’t feel like talking. But I also have a self esteem issue (again, 13 year old girl) that leaves a bit of doubt in my mind when meeting people in real life if they truly enjoy me or if they are just being polite when we chat online and are secretly rolling their eyes during our conversations. So meeting people was my highest priority for Blizzcon and was also the thing I dreaded the most. Seriously, why are we all such ridiculous basket cases? Humans. Ugh.

Obviously the most exciting ones I would meet would be my guildies. I joined Business Time in January of this year and very quickly felt comfortable and at home there. So seeing some of the people I had been talking to on such a regular basis in game was the most important to me. But as I mentioned above, I was a bit nervous that I wanted to meet them more than they wanted to meet me. That’s not a reflection of them at all, that’s totally my issue. I am a product of my raising. When you spend your childhood hearing you’re worthless and no one ever really wants to be around you it becomes entrenched in your brain, no matter how old you are now or how incorrect you know it is. It created an inner voice that won’t go away. But I am a happy person so I do my best to ignore it and power through my fears. I can usually tell within a few minutes of meeting someone face to face whether they actually think of me as a friend or if they are just someone who’s polite. Reading body language and seeing eye contact is a good indicator. Once I’ve established things are good, I relax and get over my doubts. Of course, I still have the “okay, they like me but am I spending too much time in their space” thing but that’s a whole new can of worms.

Okay, this post wasn’t supposed to be headed this way. Let’s get back on track.

So everyone knows Vidyala and Vosskah are awesome right? Because they totally are. I had gotten all sappy about them a long time ago because they’re just fantastic people. They are also the people who completely eased my worries about meeting them before I actually ever did because this happened:

In ALL CAPS even, which makes it mean even more.

They want to meet me? What? Without me initiating it? What? People don’t do that if they don’t actually want to meet you. Okay, it’s Thursday, I haven’t even made it to the hotel yet and I already know I’m going to be fine. Seriously, that was HUGE. These two… the best. I needed that, I appreciated that and I now totally ❤ them even more than I already did. Kim and I checked into our hotel, Vid and Voss walked over to meet us and we walked somewhere and ate something. BUT MOSTLY I GOT TO HANG OUT WITH VID AND VOSS. Yay!

But of course the day got better because later on we met up in the lobby of the Hilton and were joined by guildies Rhidach and Antigen. We grabbed a table and sat down for some drinks and conversation. Our other guildie who had tickets, Tass (@beartank), didn't arrive until later in the evening but we all got a chance to chill out in Vid's room after the WoW Insider party and the line to pick up our badges. It was awesome. Over the course of the next few days we got to spend more time together as a group, including a small, cozy sushi dinner on Saturday night that was just so fantastic and relaxing.

Because it was all happening so fast and there were so many people and so much stuff going on, I am not even going to try and write down any when and where details for most of the others I met. I likely wouldn't get it right if I tried. But I do have a mostly complete list (I believe) of peeps I got to meet from hanging out in the Hilton and attending the WoW Insider party. I'll use their twitter names to make it easier: @KelistiMMO, @Jasyla, @hestiahdruid, @AppleCiderMage, @Tikari, @orkchop, @MarconinWoW, @Kristin @Jedsblog (meeting him involved much Twitter coordination – yay for Twitter), @beruheals and hubby Brade. I had @AngryOrc and @Sha of Happiness pointed out to me, but they were both swarmed with people and don't know me, so I didn't go over to officially meet them. Though I should have. Just like I should have said hello to Ghostcrawler and Chris Metzen on those occasions when I found myself 2 feet from them. Sigh.

I also had two very exciting meetups on the convention floor; one by accident and one that was a determined wild goose chase. Lol. I came across @Draynee while she was in her amazing costume and I didn't even know it was her. I had stopped to take a picture of her and she totally noticed my custom art badge I had commissioned from Vidyala. She pointed at me and was like "hey, I follow you on twitter". I totally stared at her blankly and said "and you are?". Yep, I'm quite the charmer. But as soon as she told me who she was I was so glad she had recognized my name because I got to say hi and gently steal a hug from her while trying not to mess up the costume in any way. Yay for chance encounters. The wild goose chase involved the wildly popular Navimie. I was determined to meet her before leaving Anaheim so I started tweeting her to try and coordinate locations. We missed each other several times by several minutes each time because so many people wanted to be Navispammed she just didn't stay in one spot very long. But it all worked out and we finally found each other and spent a few minutes gushing at each other. I even got her to pose for a picture which I immediately tweeted out to prove I had been #navispammed irl. Meeting these two was awesome.

Sunday involved a trip to DisneyLand with Kim, Vidyala, BeruHeals and a few others. I’m not actually trying to be secretive in any way about who was there, but I totally never asked them if it was okay for me to blog about it, so I will be cautious and not mention them. There was a group of 8 of us though and it was a really fun day. We rode rides, we watched shows, we ate at The Blue Bayou inside the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. Just a fantastic time. I’m glad it worked out that we could all go together. All of us girls bought ears to wear. I’m such a nerd, I bought R2D2 mouse ears. I love ’em.

I’m sure I’m missing someone or some detail, but suffice it to say the whole people thing was amazing. If I get a chance to go again, I’ll totally go in a bit braver and will be determined to be less shy so that I can add even more people to my list. Of course, I can’t end my Blizzcon posting without saying a big thank you to my friend Kim, who attended with me and was my roomie for the weekend. Kim and I have been friends for almost 8 years now (and co-workers that entire time as well) and I take total credit for getting her started playing WoW. She isn’t in my guild, doesn’t have a Twitter account or follow any blogs too closely, so she didn’t have the same sort of agenda I had yet she patiently (mostly :P) followed me around so that I could meet all these people. I did mouth her about the fact that she didn’t adjust away from her normal sleeping hours so she crashed out hours before I did every night (srsly, like 7 – 8 pm LOL) and got up hours before me (2 – 3am) but that’s because of her work schedule so it’s just a total habit for her. She’d go to bed and I’d wander over to the Hilton. It worked out fine. I was just glad she was there as my security blanket – someone I knew well and could be comfortable around at a time and in a place where I was nervous about everything. I may even allow her to go again if I get tickets next time. Maybe. 😛

My Blizzcon Experience: Part 1.5

Blizzcon is quickly becoming old news and I still haven’t written my post about all the wonderful people I met, so I apologize in advance for the delay. I hope to have that one published no later than Tuesday so I can move on to talking about other things. Speaking of talking, this post requires very little talking. This is simply where I’m tossing up my cell phone photos that I had taken to update my Facebook page and a few that went out on Twitter. Some of these you’ve not seen before, some of them are almost exact dupes of pics I took with my Nikon.

Inside Hilton lobby on Thursday night

Accidentally meeting Draynee while checking out her awesome costume

Navispammed irl

Darkmoon Rabbit cosplay

Deluxe fries from food truck

Inside Hilton lobby on Saturday night

My Blizzcon Experience: Part 1

This is lengthy and image heavy. You have been warned.

I get super excited for upcoming events, so of course I had been anxiously anticipating Blizzcon for quite a while before it finally arrived. The closer the dates, the more intense my excitement. However, I’m very annoying in the fact that once said event has actually arrived I feel very natural about being there. I don’t know if that makes sense to anyone or not, but basically there is nothing to anticipate anymore… it is here now and I am in it. This results in me not being the greatest at coming home with amazing stories to tell. People everywhere are asking me “How was Blizzcon” and my response is basically “it was very cool”. I know it annoys people and makes them think maybe I didn’t really enjoy myself, but that’s not the case. I enjoyed myself tremendously. I experienced so many fantastic sights and sounds AND PEOPLE! I don’t like people to have to look at me / be seen with me because I have terrible self esteem but aside from that I am a very social person and I LOVE PEOPLE SO MUCH. So yes, Blizzcon was one of the best things I’ve ever done (and I’ve done a lot of things) and I’m going to try and force myself to tell stories about it here before the memories fade. This post, Part 1, will be more about the trip and the experiences from the convention while my next post will be more about my experiences with guildies, twitter friends, etc.

Might as well start with travel, since that’s obviously the first thing I did. Travel went very well. A friend of mine (Kim), who happens to also be a co-worker, went with me and we flew out early Thursday morning and there were absolutely no delays on any of our flights and no issues whatsoever. We didn’t have to wait on baggage or wait on the shuttle to the hotel or anything. It’s kind of scary how smooth everything went. We even got to check into our room at the Clarion as soon as we arrived, despite the fact we were there 3 hours before official check-in time. The California weather was beautiful, especially when you consider it was 31° F when we left Missouri and our plane had to be de-iced on the runway.

After checking into the hotel we grabbed a quick lunch and then did a little bit of looking around the area. I immediately noticed the flowers resembled birds, but Kim was the one who knew they were actually called Birds of Paradise. I had always heard of them, but had never seen one. They’re very pretty.

After hanging out with my guildies and meeting some Twitter folks in the Hilton lobby, we walked around the block to The Annabella to attend the WoW Insider party. It was a beautiful hotel and the outside area where the party took place was equally as pretty. However, the space was very limiting due to the pool being right smack dab in the middle of everything. I kept waiting for someone to step off into the water accidentally, but I never saw it happen. They also had propane heat lamps every 10 feet on a night where it was in the middle 60’s and people were packed together like sardines. This meant no one could stand to be near the heat lamps so we were all huddled up in little pockets between them, further limiting freedom to move around. But I’m not trying to complain. I’m glad I went.

After hanging out at the party for a while, Kim and I walked over to join the line to pick up our badges. Apparently earlier in the evening the line was ridiculous, but by the time we got over there at approximately 9:00pm, things were moving pretty quick. The line looked long, but we didn’t stand still much and we were done in about 40 minutes. Not too bad considering a lot of people waited for hours. After we got done there, Kim crashed out and I went back to the Hilton to hang out.

Friday morning we got up early, had some hot breakfast at the hotel and walked down to get in line. We actually timed it just right that we didn’t go extremely early, but just early enough to beat most people. We began our wait at the fountain which was pretty close to the front. There ended up being a pretty long line behind us but while waiting we got to see some of the cool costumes come by.

Eventually the doors opened and the mad rush was on. This being my first Blizzcon I didn’t do a very good job of mapping out where I wanted to be at what times and to make matters worse I had decided to forgo seeing the Opening Ceremonies live so that I could instead rush right over to where the “What’s Next” panel was going to be because I wanted to hear all about the expansion. Unfortunately, I had misread the panel location. I went straight to Hall A and grabbed a seat in front of that stage thinking I was in the right place. The opening ceremonies were fed to all the tv’s, so I got to see it from where I was but then when it was over, the tv I was sitting in front of announced a Diablo panel was coming up next. Turns out the What’s Next panel was in the main hall where the opening ceremonies were and I had gone to the complete opposite end of the building. Fail. I missed it completely.

But that’s okay, we all got a virtual ticket in our goodie bags so I decided to pretty much screw all the panels and enjoy the stuff on the con floor. I took a lot of pictures of the various booths, the banks of computers, the costumes I ran across, the amazing statues there, etc. There’s no way to post them all here and no way to choose which ones you may want to see, so this is where I tell you all of my Blizzcon photos (except for the ones from my cell phone which I will post in a separate blog post here soon) are available for viewing and downloading at Blizzcon 2013 on Flickr. Please feel free to share the link with anyone who may want to see them. Please feel free to leave a comment on any picture to tell me you are in it. You are also free to use these pictures in blog posts or on Twitter as long as you credit me in your post / tweet. Please do not use these pictures for any commercial / advertising use without contacting me and getting my permission. Otherwise, have at ’em.

Day 2 was much the same as Day 1. We simply wandered around and enjoyed the crowds and the atmosphere, trying to make sure we got to see it all. I wrote my name on the Make your Mark board, I got a free tshirt and hat from the Community Corner booth by checking in on Facebook and using the appropriate tag on Twitter. I forgot to mention on Day 1, while we watched some of the Arena Championships, we got to see Conan O’Brien. He was there to help call a few arena matches and he was hilarious, as expected. But for me, my celebrity sighting from Day 2 was one of the highlights of the con. I had gotten up that morning and checked Twitter and happened to notice Felicia Day had tweeted she would be at Blizzcon at the Jinx booth between 2 and 4pm. WHAT???? Woo Hooooo. I put that into my schedule immediately. I knew I wanted to line up early, so I started watching the Jinx booth at around 12:30 to keep an eye on any line that may be forming. Around 1pm, a few people began lining up so I rushed right over and was 6th in line. Less than an hour later, I got to shake her hand and have a quick chat while she signed a copy of The Guild Megaset DVD collection I bought for the purpose. I’ve always been a fan of Felicia’s because she’s just a normal, dorky geek and she cracks me up. I think she’s helped prove that smart, funny, cute girls do geek out and play video games. To me, her presence in the industry is a good thing.

It’s hard to describe what an amazing experience being at an event like this really is. As much as I already loved the game and the community, going to Blizzcon just made me even more excited to be a part of it all. I came home actually wanting to try Starcraft and Hearthstone. Heroes of the Storm looks interesting even though I’ve never played a MOBA type game before and will likely suck at it. I also came home determined to put more time into Diablo III. I had played it for a tiny bit after it launched but never made it past level 13 or so. Not because I didn’t enjoy the game, I just had other games I was more concerned with. But I think I’m finally through dabbling with LotRO, SWTOR, GW2 and TSW. Also, I played some of the Reaper of Souls demo and it reminded me that D3 is quite fun.

I skipped the Closing Ceremony and concert Saturday night and went to a nice, quiet guild dinner which was an excellent choice. Then on Sunday, Kim and I joined some of my friends for a day at Disneyland, also an excellent choice. More about that in the next post as well. We stayed in Anaheim Sunday night and got up early to travel home on Monday. I’m glad I took that extra day and if I get the chance to attend next year (oh man, I hope I do), I will add an extra day onto the front of my trip too. Again we had no delays or issues of any kind with any of our flights. It was a great trip and I’m very fortunate I got to spend time with the people I got to spend time with. My only complaint would be that I didn’t seek out more people or spend more quality time with my guildies and Twitter friends.

Stay tuned for Part 2.

The One Where I Return From Going Nowhere

When you get 4 weeks of vacation time at your job, sometimes you just take a week off to go nowhere. Which is what I did this past week. I only had two plans for my little staycation: reorganize, rearrange, redecorate & deep clean every room in my place and play a lot of WoW. Unfortunately, only one of these two things happened. The house looks awesome and I’m so glad I made the changes I made. Although I will say it cost more than I expected to thin out my clutter and organize things more efficiently. I had to buy storage bins, custom size frames for years worth of art I collected that had never been hung, new rugs that matched the decor, etc. etc. But I am so pleased with the results, it was all totally worth it.

Because I’m me, I didn’t start with one room and work at it until completed. I did little things randomly all over the house at once. I’d work on the bedroom closet for 15 minutes and then stop to use the restroom and decide to work under the bathroom sink for 10 minutes. Then I’d head into the kitchen for a drink and pull everything out of the pantry before deciding I should really get back to that closet and stopping along the way to rearrange the dvds on my new shelf. Yep, this is how I roll. So the entire house was in disarray all at once and everywhere I turned things were unfinished. It was sort of overwhelming so when I wasn’t actively working on the house, I found myself in the recliner watching Netflix. I just didn’t have the energy to sit at the desk and play WoW, as silly as that sounds. So I don’t have any LFR stories for you as I had anticipated.

What I do have are some random pictures of how things look now. Not that you have any idea of how things looked before, but that’s okay; I’m going to show you anyway. The only really huge thing you need to know is that my computer desk and my treadmill desk used to be in my living room which meant the living room chair was stuck in the darkness of my bedroom. Because I work 3rd shift, I had blackout curtains up in my bedroom and it was pitch black 24 hours a day and only used for sleeping. I have now taken down the blackout curtains and moved the computer desk into the bedroom and the living room chair back into the living room. The treadmill has gone into the spare bedroom with the laptop setup on it so I can watch Netflix or type blog posts or whatever while I’m walking. I have actually hung things up on the wall and decluttered the tops of dressers, end tables, etc. to put things away in newly organized closets. Doesn’t that sound exciting? Trust me, it really is.

The One Where All I Do Is Mining and Herbing

Now that I finally have my second level 90 in the same faction and on the same server as my main, I’m starting to realize how useful it is to have more than 2 maxxed professions. Not only does Morrissa now supply Elfi with ghost iron bars to be transmuted into Living Steel, but she gathers extra ghost iron ore and kyparite to sell on the AH. I am starting to get addicted to this making money thing. So about all I’ve been doing for the past week when I’ve been in game is gathering and selling herbs and ores.

I was actually offline all of Friday & Saturday and most of Sunday because I was camping with my brother and his family. As children we put in plenty of time doing the whole primitive camping thing, so now we enjoy a camping trailer with a slide out for the living room, a full size bathroom and shower, mobile satellite tv and most importantly, air conditioning. Yes, we spend more time outside than inside and we still light campfires and cook outdoors, etc. But it’s nice to have the best of both worlds. It’s also nice to know you can sleep inside comfortably and not outside where you find things like scorpions.

That’s actually the first ever scorpion I’ve seen out in the wilds, so it’s not something to really be concerned about here while camping. Now copperheads? That’s another story. Lol. But actually at the campground we were in I was more concerned about what type of people frequented the place once I saw who some of the playground equipment was reserved for.

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!