A 'Working' Holiday
Sep. 25th, 2011 10:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thessalianI've been quiet out here in journal-land, I know. Mostly I've been cat-sitting and having a much-needed holiday. The biggest bonus to staying at ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mitchy's place to look after Rob T Furball is that I have had no stress at all over "I should be at work". I suppose it helps that I'm in an entirely different city ... and never mind the fact that the fast train into King's Cross from here is actually faster than the train I get to St Pancras every morning, and they're basically the same station. I'm farther away and thus there is no guilt over "I should be working!" Somehow I have managed to avoid thinking about how much work will have piled up in my absence. Gods, I hope they got a float secretary in...
Anyway, maybe the other part of the non-stress over work absence has been the needy furball. It's not 24/7, the neediness, but he'll alternate between curling up in his cat bed / on the armchair dead to the world, and then all of a sudden he'll decide that if he isn't fussed and petted and scritched RIGHT THIS VERY SECOND he will die of heartbreak. Cue the yowling and the feeling that someone has replaced his fur with velcro. This is not a bad thing, but it can be tricky when one is trying to chat to someone over IM and just stopping the petting gets the big-sad-eyes look and a plaintive yowl. I'm such a sucker. Anyway, the point is that I might feel guilty about taking time off if it was just me at home on my own not doing much of anything, but since I am elsewhere, maybe not seeming to do much of anything but really ensuring that a lovely furball is fed and watered and petted and fussed, at least I am being useful to somebody. Apparently this assuages my work-guilt somewhat. So ... yay!
I'll be glad to be home, though. There are definitely things that my place lacks (bathtub, gas stove, decent-sized fridge with freezer that doesn't frost over every three days, space) but it's mine and I miss it. I miss my bed and my computer 'desk' ... hell, I miss my computer, full stop. Not to mention Warcrack - I decided that it was too much addict behaviour to travel all the way home just to check on my little Azeroth denizens mid-week, so I didn't. I'm not overly jonesing, thankfully, but then again, I had DA2 as a placebo. Not to mention a particularly stellar DVD collection - my tastes andmitchy's don't always coincide, but I have to admit that she's introduced me to more TV shows than any other single person I know. Most people, it's a show here or there; it's been at least a half-dozen with mitchy - more than anyone else, fewer than it could be (I just can't get into NCIS: LA, but I love the original and Criminal Minds is growing on me).
On the subject of video games and various bits of entertainment ... Sebastian Vael. I swear, the only reason I'm not sorry I got the DLC is that the extra quests give XP. You get him way too late in the game to build him up properly, and you end up with this relatively useless rogue who can't pick half the locks or disarm about a third of the traps and, despite his mail-and-plate armour, goes down like a twenty-quid hooker the minute anyone carrying a sword looks at him cross-eyed. Mostly I just leave him tucked away in the Chantry and don't deal with him until he demands that we go do quest types of things. I haven't got through a full playthrough with him yet so maybe his hissy-fit over the events in Act 3 will make having him as a full-on party member a little more worth it. As it stands, Varric is still my all-time archer in-game BFF, kthnx.
(Also, Sebastian, character-wise, is a cross between Leliana and Hamlet.)
Warcrack-wise ... still hacking my way through Northrend. I do not like Coldarra. It's creepy-death. Or ... well, it would be creepy-death if I weren't playing a Paladin. I would say I don't think Paladins can die but I have seen proof otherwise. (I still want to know how a massive 75-Elite patrolbot managed to sneak up on me in Hellfire Peninsula when I was doing my purgatory time in Outland.) Anyway, a lot of that is Nexus dungeon and since I don't really have the sort of party backing required to hack my way through one, I feel justified in abandoning the zone entirely beyond a couple of little quests and a flyover or the 'Explored Borean Tundra' achievement. I could probably move on to Dragonblight now, but I think I'll move to Howling Fjord and grind a couple of levels there first. I like level-grinding in lowish-level areas. Particularly when I've been logged out in an inn for a week and a half. The 'Well-Rested' XP bonus is going to last forever...
I haven't been on as my belf pally as much as I could be because I don't really like Northrend all that much, though I do hack through a level or two, time to time. I have, however, been working a little on my other characters - I've made a few as alts that I might actually stick with for awhile. Dwarf Pally, Gnome Warlock and Goblin Shaman, mainly - that last a holdover from my first spate of character creation early on. At least there's kind of variety, and a good Alliance/Horde spread. Though given that the Dwarf and Gnome starting levels are more or less the same after level ... oh, six or so? I kind of have to alternate with the other two so I don't get bored out of my skull.
There have been other things - potential writing projects, finally having solidified what I want to do for this WoD site that I still need to talk tolithiumdoll about as re: Jove when she's less busy and had some relaxy time, stuff like that there - but a lot of it's too vague to yammer about here and I'm thinking moar coffee. Then haul my lazy arse (and a mid-sized wheely suitcase full of books OMG heavy) back home, likely via somewhere I can get some lunch. Then probably right back out again to pick up something for dinner because I made sure that my fridge was empty before I came out here. I didn't want to find something gaining independent life in my fridge when I got home.
mitchy's place to look after Rob T Furball is that I have had no stress at all over "I should be at work". I suppose it helps that I'm in an entirely different city ... and never mind the fact that the fast train into King's Cross from here is actually faster than the train I get to St Pancras every morning, and they're basically the same station. I'm farther away and thus there is no guilt over "I should be working!" Somehow I have managed to avoid thinking about how much work will have piled up in my absence. Gods, I hope they got a float secretary in...Anyway, maybe the other part of the non-stress over work absence has been the needy furball. It's not 24/7, the neediness, but he'll alternate between curling up in his cat bed / on the armchair dead to the world, and then all of a sudden he'll decide that if he isn't fussed and petted and scritched RIGHT THIS VERY SECOND he will die of heartbreak. Cue the yowling and the feeling that someone has replaced his fur with velcro. This is not a bad thing, but it can be tricky when one is trying to chat to someone over IM and just stopping the petting gets the big-sad-eyes look and a plaintive yowl. I'm such a sucker. Anyway, the point is that I might feel guilty about taking time off if it was just me at home on my own not doing much of anything, but since I am elsewhere, maybe not seeming to do much of anything but really ensuring that a lovely furball is fed and watered and petted and fussed, at least I am being useful to somebody. Apparently this assuages my work-guilt somewhat. So ... yay!
I'll be glad to be home, though. There are definitely things that my place lacks (bathtub, gas stove, decent-sized fridge with freezer that doesn't frost over every three days, space) but it's mine and I miss it. I miss my bed and my computer 'desk' ... hell, I miss my computer, full stop. Not to mention Warcrack - I decided that it was too much addict behaviour to travel all the way home just to check on my little Azeroth denizens mid-week, so I didn't. I'm not overly jonesing, thankfully, but then again, I had DA2 as a placebo. Not to mention a particularly stellar DVD collection - my tastes and
mitchy's don't always coincide, but I have to admit that she's introduced me to more TV shows than any other single person I know. Most people, it's a show here or there; it's been at least a half-dozen with mitchy - more than anyone else, fewer than it could be (I just can't get into NCIS: LA, but I love the original and Criminal Minds is growing on me). On the subject of video games and various bits of entertainment ... Sebastian Vael. I swear, the only reason I'm not sorry I got the DLC is that the extra quests give XP. You get him way too late in the game to build him up properly, and you end up with this relatively useless rogue who can't pick half the locks or disarm about a third of the traps and, despite his mail-and-plate armour, goes down like a twenty-quid hooker the minute anyone carrying a sword looks at him cross-eyed. Mostly I just leave him tucked away in the Chantry and don't deal with him until he demands that we go do quest types of things. I haven't got through a full playthrough with him yet so maybe his hissy-fit over the events in Act 3 will make having him as a full-on party member a little more worth it. As it stands, Varric is still my all-time archer in-game BFF, kthnx.
(Also, Sebastian, character-wise, is a cross between Leliana and Hamlet.)
Warcrack-wise ... still hacking my way through Northrend. I do not like Coldarra. It's creepy-death. Or ... well, it would be creepy-death if I weren't playing a Paladin. I would say I don't think Paladins can die but I have seen proof otherwise. (I still want to know how a massive 75-Elite patrolbot managed to sneak up on me in Hellfire Peninsula when I was doing my purgatory time in Outland.) Anyway, a lot of that is Nexus dungeon and since I don't really have the sort of party backing required to hack my way through one, I feel justified in abandoning the zone entirely beyond a couple of little quests and a flyover or the 'Explored Borean Tundra' achievement. I could probably move on to Dragonblight now, but I think I'll move to Howling Fjord and grind a couple of levels there first. I like level-grinding in lowish-level areas. Particularly when I've been logged out in an inn for a week and a half. The 'Well-Rested' XP bonus is going to last forever...
I haven't been on as my belf pally as much as I could be because I don't really like Northrend all that much, though I do hack through a level or two, time to time. I have, however, been working a little on my other characters - I've made a few as alts that I might actually stick with for awhile. Dwarf Pally, Gnome Warlock and Goblin Shaman, mainly - that last a holdover from my first spate of character creation early on. At least there's kind of variety, and a good Alliance/Horde spread. Though given that the Dwarf and Gnome starting levels are more or less the same after level ... oh, six or so? I kind of have to alternate with the other two so I don't get bored out of my skull.
There have been other things - potential writing projects, finally having solidified what I want to do for this WoD site that I still need to talk to
lithiumdoll about as re: Jove when she's less busy and had some relaxy time, stuff like that there - but a lot of it's too vague to yammer about here and I'm thinking moar coffee. Then haul my lazy arse (and a mid-sized wheely suitcase full of books OMG heavy) back home, likely via somewhere I can get some lunch. Then probably right back out again to pick up something for dinner because I made sure that my fridge was empty before I came out here. I didn't want to find something gaining independent life in my fridge when I got home.