The Thessaliad Redux

Another week, another new department. I swear, it's like they think that if they shift me around enough, I'm going to forget about wanting to get shot of this place.

The latest is that ... well, having moved to the new department, I had to go in and pick up some of my bits and bobs from the last department. Who in turn told me that there were some 'loose ends' to tie up. Said 'loose ends', by the way, involve printing out, photocopying, posting and filing every letter I've typed in that department. But I can't actually do it in that office, oooooooh no. No, that would be sensible. Instead, I am forced to use OtherDepartment resources to print and post all those letters, and then stay late when the office is empty to sit down and do the filing. So I don't get in anybody's way.

If I'm going to be in people's way, wouldn't it be easier for them to do it? Or at least the person for whom I have been covering for the past week and a half? Or something? Instead I'm being saddled with the work of two departments because ... I don't honestly know why. AND WOMAN FROM OTHERDEPARTMENT HAS JUST CALLED TO CHECK ON ME WTF. After an hour and a half goes by, you kind of get to thinking that maybe I'd have called them if I was having problems logging on to the system and signing things off, wouldn't you?

Also, I hate the departments where the secretaries work right next to actual clinic space. It's noisy, it reeks of disinfectant and it drives me bugnuts.

I need to get gone before I pull an Anders or something.

In other news, I am finally over the flu bug from hell, I hit level 85 on Warcrack and am now faced with a moderate case of the 'NOW whats?' - only 'moderate' because I am in the middle of three quest chains, I am determined to be able to afford my Expert Riding achievement, I have professions to level and I want to jack up my Rep with the various factions - and I need more weekend.

That is all, thank you.

Dear Friendslist:

I know that I have been intensely reclusive the last week or so. This is due to reasons, and also non-reasons. Sort of a combination of the job, the weather, a few personal issues and, if that weren't bad enough, RID. (Which, for those of you unfamiliar with the lexicon of my pachinko-machine brain, stands for Random Inexplicable Depression ... although technically I guess it isn't so much Inexplicable as it is "fuck, clinical depression really does not ever go away at all, ever, does it; it just goes into remission for awhile".) This has resulted in my, among other things, hiding behind Invisible on AIM and not really participating much in anything but the occasional rant and random stuff on Tumblr.

Really, I have not been what I'd consider good company for anyone, beyond the occasional aforementioned 'random stuff' - read: fannish comedy stylings - on Tumblr. However, I don't imagine that my mood is going to improve by not communicating with anybody, and I miss you guys on AIM. So I'll be around more, honest. Sorry for the radio silence.

...Although I might need to barge my way through Dragon Age: Legacy first to vent some of the rage of today because fuck's sake, I just had some clinic clerk wander up to me and insist that I must have a set of notes for a clinic I've never laid eyes on. When I remind her that two other typists work up here and might have the clinic notes, she says, "Well, they're not here today". So I advise her to look on their desks to see if those notes are there and while she manages the one who sits next to me well enough, she can't find the other lady's. So I show her ... and the other lady is sitting at her desk. When I make mention of this, clinic clerk goes, "Oh, I didn't check". She may say 'I came straight to bother you' jokingly and everything, but the fact is that she marched up to me, insisted that neither of my colleagues up here were in without checking and more or less made me personally responsible for sorting out her problem, which she could have managed just fine if she'd used a bit of initiative.

...Yeah, I'm going to have to pick up my Rogue playthrough because there is a need to stab things until they explode.

I've been back on Warcrack a bit lately, too - needed something relatively mindless to do while trying to claw my way out of my current funk. Level 83 now - a level and a half to go until I hit level cap - and ... well, because I couldn't take the Nespirah quests anymore, was more or less done with Hyjal and needed a break from Deepholm, I went to Uldum. Now I am trying to struggle my way out of a city full of cat-people in the middle of a desert and really, I wish I'd waited awhile. I'm hoping you can go back to Uldum and pick up the quests again whenever you want the way you can with some other 'we're trapped' circumstances because I'd like to get back to Dalaran to do my jewelcrafting dailies, thanks.

...Well, at least I'm not totally obsessive about it. I generally get through an hour or so before I get bored/tired during the week, a few hours on weekends.

I need a new job or a lottery win. But I suppose I'll settle for a weekend. It'll have to do.

Oh, my colleagues are truly brilliant.

"Stick to the tapes, [Thess]!", they tell me. "It's too confusing when you type the digital dictation stuff, [Thess]! Leave us to do the digital dictation and you just handle the tapes, okay?"

Yes, this is a brilliant idea. However, said brilliant idea relies on them actually doing the digital dictation typing. Seriously, I go downstairs for piles of notes and notice, to my dismay, that while the tapes are more or less up to date, the digital dictation typing is backlogged up to 14th November. Oh, joy of joys. Now, admittedly, the backlogged dictation are from registrars and consultants whose dictation sucks like a Hoover product, but this is not a job where you can just let tasks that are difficult or annoying just sit there for over a month because you can't be bothered! I mean, I've seen one of the other floats working on digital dication dating to December, so why hasn't she touched these? Or ... y'know, any of the other secretaries who're supposed to be actually working here? And yet it's off-limits to me because they can apparently handle it and it's 'confusing' to have me take work off their hands. I don't understaaaaaand.

I have had to make an executive decision at this point, and said executive decision is, "Fuck this; I'm doing it anyway". If I take the notes upstairs with me, there's no way they're eventually going to get around to stuff they should be doing instead of working through this month and forgetting November ever happened. (And let's not talk about the lady I was temping for while she was on holiday, who hasn't touched any of her typing since I came back from holiday. I do not believe she still has her job. I'd feel more guilty about not trying to do something about her atrocious lack of anything resembling work on the backlog if I technically still worked for her department. I still feel bad, though.)

[Edit: There is apparently a way that they're going to get around to stuff they should be doing instead of working through this month and forgetting November ever happened. Phone call from colleague downstairs basically going, "I was just about to do those! Give them back!" "But ... I finished one clinic and I've got the other now..." "Give them back! I'll give you tapes! We have tapes! GIVE THEM BACK!" So I had to haul the ones I hadn't done yet back downstairs after booking the ones I had done back to file and get back upstairs with three clinics (on two tapes bundled with a stack of notes a foot and a half thick, which are VERY BLOODY HEAVY, I might add. I don't even know why it matters who does it so long as it gets done; why couldn't she have just picked up something else? I really do not get it but if that's what I get for trying to take initiative, fine. Whatever.]

Oh yeah, and these are the ones who want me to work over the bank holiday. There was actually a mass email sent out supporting the office managers' requests for people to give up their bank holidays and pitch in without a mention of pay, let alone overtime. They can go jump, really; they may not like my taking my mandated bank holidays but if I don't get those extra two days, I am never going to get over this lurgy that is still kicking my arse because it's the only shot I'm going to have at bedrest for awhile. Said mass email also said that Grand High Hospital Poo-Bah hopes that our 2012 is "an Olympic one!" .......Wut. WUT. The hospital is doing this "WE SUPPORT THE 2012 OLYMPICS" thing and it's driving me up the wall. I don't want to have an Olympic 2012. I just want to have one that sucks less than the last couple of years. Is that too much to hope for?

I really should stop letting them guilt me into not taking sick leave. After all, I think I may be the only person doing any real work at all around here. Huh; if these are the wages of virtue, maybe I ought to try following the example of my colleagues. Though with my luck, I'd be sacked if I did. So ... yeah, better not.

I'm still going to try for a nice holiday meal but I imagine that most of my Christmas is going to be spent in bed with chicken soup and DVDs, trying to get some semblance of health back in the four-day weekend my workplace is trying to guilt me into not taking. I am seriously beginning to dislike my life.

Though at least there's Warcrack to ease the pain (or vent the frustration, really). Finally saved up enough for Artisan Riding - only Master to go now - and soloed through Ragefire Chasm, mostly for the achievement. I'll probably do a couple of others at some point - anything I can solo through - but it's mostly for achievements and rep with Silvermoon. Except one, which I'll probably keep doing until it drops that Epic Mount. Though it's funny soloing low level dungeons at level 80-ish; one-shotting elites never gets old, even if they are sixty-odd levels below you. Anyway, it makes a change from Deepholm, Vashj'ir and Mount Hyjal. I'm nearly up to level 83 now and may actually hit level cap before this Mists of Pandaria thing comes out - I may only be crawling through the levels at a very slow pace by choice, but there's not even a release date on the new expansion yet. I ought to go to one of my alts at some point but I'd like to reach level cap just once.

So ... yeah, that'll be my holiday - bedrest, Warcrack and possibly writing Dragon Age fanfic. Too many plot nugs, too much sickness to actually do anything with many of them. Such is the way of things. Bleh.

Dear Blizzard,

After about a month of more or less abstinence (because I could not be arsed), I decided to switch on Warcrack again. I went back to Azeroth and sent my belf pally to the soaring heights of level 80. Thank you for the charming little congratulations pack you sent me when I hit level 80, by the way; that was very nice of you. But then, of course, the XP rewards for the mobs I killed in Northrend went way, waaaaaaaaaaay down, and I decided, fuck it, I'll go see what level 80 has in store for me elsewhere in Azeroth.

At first, I dodged your "Hey, there's this new island right off Stormwind and we're gonna occupy it for the Horde and beat the shit out of the Alliance's capital!" quest, because I seriously could not be arsed. However, then I tried the stuff you were throwing at me at Mount Hyjal and decided I wanted to climb a couple more levels before I even touched that shit because I was getting pasted.

I thought I hated Tanaris because it reminded me of Valkurm Dunes. I thought I hated Outland (or at least Hellfire Peninsula) because it was ugly as sin. I thought I hated Northrend because ... well, it started to get old three levels ago. However, I do not hate any of those places as much as I hate the living shit out of this underwater quest chain upon which you have shanghaied me. At least at Mount Hyjal, the enemies did not attack you from all sides, including up and down. I hate underwater. Even if I do have a 'breathe underwater' spell on my character right now.

Also ... you just did a patch, people. I know because it still hasn't fully finished downloading. So please explain to me why the hell there is still a bug in a specific quest, which has been an issue for at least a year, where completion of the quest relies entirely on you committing character suicide? Seriously; apparently you do not get the credit for quest completion - signalling a fellow shipwreck victim to let her know that she can come to safety - unless your character dies. HOW THE HELL DOES THAT INDICATE SAFETY?!?

Sort it out, Blizzard. SORT IT OUT.

Regards,
A Blood Elf Paladin somewhere underwater.

With apologies to tempus_teapot for stealing her idea of condensing her Tuesday plot nug drabble stuff into one post on a ... well, Thursday, now. But if I'm going to write fic, I may as well start owning up to it again. Plus it's easier to keep track of what I've written that way than it is to randomly tack them into my Memories and dig them out of the comments (though I do that too, if only to remind myself what went where when and it's always fun to reread other people's stuff too).

( Surprise Party )

( Piles of Paperwork )

( Say Anything )

In other news, slept badly, still lurgified, and am getting horrified over on Tumblr about the whole deal about The Mists of Pandaria. If they're going to give us a playable race of Kung-Fu Pandas, they could at least try to throw a spin on it somewhere. Tauren have Mulgore, Worgen have Gilneas, and Pandarens have ... Pandaria. And there are to be pet battles. I subscribed to Warcraft, not Pokemon. *sigh* The expansions have gone "Azeroth -> beating back demons in Outland -> beating back the pissed-off undead in Northrend -> beating back a pain-maddened warder of the earth itself with the entire world cracking under one's feet -> ...pandas and pokeballs", so maybe I shouldn't be surprised this is a letdown.

Now, lemme just crawl back under my duvet and die for a couple of days.

Much of today has been spent dealing with people on the phone (always a joy) and hauling notes around. Thankfully my typing pile was clear before I started, so the couple of tapes that randomly appeared while I was trying to heave heavy stacks of medical records around the place or cope as best I could with people browbeating and/or passive-aggressively bullying me to try to make me do the impossible are not a big deal. Well, they won't be on Monday, anyway. That's when I can sit down and actually type them. Hopefully I'll even have time to send out those letters that I've had to print out to send stuff back to filing for today. I'm halfway considering taking them home and working on at least getting the envelopes stuffed but I have sworn to myself that I will never bring work home with me and I do not intend to start now. I just can't get it done in the office because every time I try, something else comes up. I had to do the booking back to medical records first because we're running out of room in there and there's stuff that Schrodinger's Admin hasn't booked back from ages ago despite us having been done with them ages ago. I don't think I've even remotely sorted all those out yet, but I've made a dent and it gives us more space.

So looking forward to the weekend. So very much you have no idea. I'm tired, I'm still sniffly, everything hurts from the notes-haulage this afternoon, and dear gods I want a bathtub. But then again, I stopped in Covent Garden at lunchtime and did my trawl through Lush, so at least I have lovelies for the shower. Still, this weekend is going to involve chores. Properly filling the fridge. Laundry. Stuff like that. And in between times, I'm sure I'll find something to keep myself occupied. I always do, one way or another. I really do need to relax between chores, though. Maybe I'll try my Mass Effect games again.

Or I could just continue my Belf Pally's slow crawl towards level 80 in Warcrack. I bumped her to halfway into level 75 over the last couple of days, dumping a few quests that are supposed to be part of a quest chain that used to be awesome until Blizzard decided that the most awesome bits of the quest line were obsolete and took them away, but ... well, if they took away the awesome, I'm not really that invested in getting really annoyed over quests of stupid. I have new quests of stupid to get annoyed over now, anyway; I'm in Tower o' Dragons right now, wondering what the aggro range is on the elite dragons that fly over the entire area. This was my problem with Coldarra, y'know; the intense worry that I was going to bank the wrong way and end up crushed by an elite bloody dragon. But then again, one of my quests of stupid was a level 74 elite bird, and I don't figure a level 74 elite dragon can be that much harder, can it? Not entirely sure I want to find out, but I suppose if I had to...

Anyway, I think I've killed enough time. Now I can go home. WEEKEND! Okay, fine, chores, but WEEKEND!

(Oh, and new meme will happen when I get home. Thanks, kelemvor!

I seem to have gone more to a video game place these days.

Sims 3: I decided to try actually playing this over the weekend, as courtcat was telling me about how your Sims-kid can have imaginary friends. I somehow ended up with a family of eight - three sets of twins. I will eventually go back to that family to actually complete the mother's lifetime goal of 'raise five kids to teenager' but right now it just scares me. Looking very forward to Sims 3 Pets, the new expansion coming out in mid-October. (UNIVERSAL RELEASE DATES, FUCKERS!) Cats in particular. I am a cat person; it happens. Plus their animations are adorable.

Dragon Age: I'll end up picking up Mark of the Assassin when it comes out on these shores, but I have to admit that I'm not really all that thrilled by the sound of it. Mostly I'm just getting it to see what it's about and so they don't take away my Dragon Age Fangeek membership card. I also went back to Origins recently, and had a bit of a play with the graphics settings, since this was the first time I had really played it on Morrigan. (I feel a little remiss about this, but I did mainly spec Morrigan for DA2, so I suppose it's not terribly surprising.) I ... frankly had no idea the graphics could be that clear. See, Morrigan's graphics card and processor can handle 'very high' detail rather than the 'medium' I'd been running on, and I remembered to tweak my screen resolution. Damn, that game looks good. Anyway, I'm looking forward to having Origins endgames to import to DA2 that I didn't make with someone else's mod-hack-thing and aren't kind of buggy as a result. Y'know, the ones where my Warden dies.

Warcrack: Not been on as much as I could be, but noodle around with it now and again, mostly to find a quest that is simply 'Kill X Number of Specific Mob/Mob Type' to vent some aggravation. I did do a quest clear-out recently, though ... and, of course, got more quests. Bloody quest chains. Anyway, point is that I hit level 74 on my Belf Pally. I've got a few other characters to occasionally level (Gnomelock, Dwarf Pally, Goblin Shaman who's now discovered the not-so-gentle art of alchemy, a couple of others that are probably destined for the bin and I'm only counting characters I've played to level 10 and up) but it's vaguely important that I keep the Belf Pally active because she's the one in a guild. Of course, my guild is notoriously inactive and I think someone whose first language is definitively not English is trying to take it over and turn it into a PvP guild, so I may have to bail out, but for now, I enjoy the minor benefits of being with a guild - namely, the fact that my hearthstone recharges in half the time. *shrug* It's a thing.

Plants vs Zombies: I am remarkably unsure as to how the hell I got into this game. It ... seemed like a good idea at the time? It's a fun game, if unutterably nuts. Maybe I ought to check and see if Worms World Party and Lemmings work on my computer. If I can ever remember how to work the controls on the former, at least.

Actually, being able to actually work the games via the keyboard is an issue with a few of my games, not least of which being the Mass Effect games and the American McGee's Alice in Wonderland games. Then again, I've been practicing with the WASD keyboard configuration ... sort of. It's one of those situation where I basically keep holding down the W key while I angle the camera, and thus the character, in the direction I want to take. It works for the DA games and Warcrack; should hopefully work in Mass Effect too. And if it does, maybe it'll work for others as well. And in that case ... well, the world is my mollusc! At least as far as video games are concerned.

I'm not really sure why I got into this stuff so late. I honestly didn't care that much past age thirteen, and now all of a sudden, it's twenty-one years later and I'm hooked. The response I got to the question of why I suddenly have more video games now than I did when I was a teenager was 'money', but ... what happened to blowing it on sourcebooks? Or books in general? ...I mean, besides the fact that a RPG sourcebook costs nearly as much as the average computer game these days and I haven't actually got that much space to put books and I'm really not up for getting a Kindle and... Yeah. Well. I suppose it's at least keeping my brain busier than watching TV or whatever.

...Speaking of, I haven't watched the last two episodes of Who yet. I've seen comments though, and now I'm a little afraid to watch. I probably will, but ... maybe on Friday. See, Friday is going to be treat day and I will probably need gummies to ease the pain. Or possibly liquor, but ... gummies are good.

There may be more ranting about the workplace when I'm not actually in it, but right now I'm going to polish off one last letter and then go home, because I still feel miserable (yay flu) and I can't take much more of today. And then I will probably go home and beat on things for awhile. That'll be fun.

I'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 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.

I have not done this in awhile, so ... Warcrack news.

So I hit level 60 the other day. This was huge. Seriously. Those of you who play know what I am talking about. Those of you who don't ... two words: flying mounts.

It goes like this. In your first twenty levels, you're pretty much reduced to walking around the place getting squished attacked by anything that happens to be passing. Well, technically you can rent a wind rider/griffon (depending on faction) but those only take you from point A to point B. Then you hit level twenty and you're allowed to have the riding skill, and you can buy a mount. Kind of like in FFXI, except without some of the really fuck-annoying quests you have to do to get a chocobo licence. And you're not necessarily stuck with a giant battle emu. (Well ... okay, since my main's a blood elf, I am stuck with a giant battle emu. But I also play Paladin so I get an actual horse too. One day I'm going to level my goblin alt and get a motor vehicle. Gnome? Well ... with gnome you're still kind of stuck with a giant battle emu. Except it's a giant robot battle emu. So ... your mileage may vary?) Anyway, it's not like nothing attacks you when you're riding your battle emu or your mini T-rex or whatever your particular race has as a mount, but you stand a chance of outrunning anything that aggroes you.

Anyway, then you hit level 40, at which point you unlock Journeyman riding and faster mounts. Which means I now have four mounts - one black battle emu, one faster purple battle emu and two chargers, one built for more speed than the other.) And then you hit level sixty, at which point you can buy a Flight Master's Licence, and a mount that flies. This is either a wind rider (MANTICORE WOO!) if you're Horde, or a griffon if you're Alliance. This is a big deal because it means no more shelling out for rides between cities on wind riders/griffons and getting to places one hell of a lot easier, plus exploration achievements up the tailfeathers.

Just one problem: THIS SHIT IS EXPENSIVE.

Not real-money expensive, oh no. Just it requires somewhere around the region of 250 gold for the licence alone (less depending on your reputation where you buy the licence), and 50 gold for the mount. When you're levelling jewelcrafting and have been known to blow 100 gold at a time at the auction house for materials, 300 gold is a Big Deal. So what's a belf pally to do? Well, frankly, sell everythiiiiiiiiiing. Seriously, I had a metric fucktonne of low-level gems and the like for jewelcrafting materials that I wasn't really going to need anymore so all of that went to the auction house. After that ... well, I got mercenary about my quests. Any quest that didn't give me a piece of armour that was better than what I was wearing, I picked the reward item that would net me the most coin when sold to a vendor. Thankfully, at my level most of the reward items are worth at least one gold, sometimes as much as three, not to mention an average of one gold per quest done. So I've been running around the Blasted Lands, doing quests and selling gear and generally making a killing. I've got my 300 gold now (I had about 160 when I hit level 60, so at least I didn't have far to go) but I want to get a decent buffer zone before I spend that much gold at once. Somehow spending it in dribs and drabs at the auction house is one thing but blowing a huge wad all at once on one thing just ... gah. To be fair, I'm a lot like that about real money, too. I guess it's just A Thing. But never mind, I'm getting there and soon - soooooon - I will have my very own manticore and it will be awesome.

But in the meantime ... MOAR QUESTS. Currently resurrecting a druid in the Blasted Lands. I have no idea sometimes, when these quests are concerned. Seriously, I went running around looking for body parts so I could sew this Frankenstein-druid together and now I'm going up to the Altar of Storms to resurrect him with blood magic. (My inner Dragon Age characters are having fits, kthnx.) And prior to that, I was sneaking around a mine Metal Gear Solid style, in a huge crate, so I could kill a mining foreman. This game, she is on crack. I'm pretty sure I killed a demon in a cowboy hat an hour ago.

In other news, I am strongly considering starting up my own old WoD RP online. Chicago went the way of the dodo bird entirely suddenly and it's very sad. I'm just so tired of these things suddenly ending when I was just getting into it. It's not even as though the game was entirely dead, either - sure, it was slow because of the summer and a few people having some computer issues, but two people were in the middle of storylines and play was available if you were willing to tap people on the shoulder and ask, at least via IM. Unfortunately, the head admin got bored (there were rumours about Werewolf drama, but I try not to pay too much attention to rumours, particularly not about systems I don't play) and without so much as a word of warning, she shut down the entire site. Thankfully, she gave someone else access for about a week so we all got to ask her for our character sheets and journals, but ... still, it's frustrating. London, at least, had had its run and The End was discussed. Charleston ... well, that one was just unfortunate, with drama and server crashes and a whoooooole lot of mess. And the less said about San Francisco and the other Chicago, the better (those didn't close down while I was there; I just bailed because they drove me bugfuck). Anyway, I figure that I can probably manage admin well enough, so all I really need to do is get a decent ISP, talk to lithium_doll about getting hold of Jove and decide on things like where it's going to be set. Part of me is strongly considering Montreal; my home city doesn't get enough love. But that's thoughts for later, while I comparison shop for web space (and frankly find out if anyone I know is actually up for staffing or even just playing).

Why, yes, I am looking for distractions from people like Ann Coulter saying some truly appalling shit about the London riots, from people like Theresa May saying "the only cause for criminal behaviour is criminals" (which ... is not a cause, exactly, and makes no sense), from the bloody Prime Minister talking about "ignoring phoney 'human rights'" and closing down social media during 'times of crisis', from the idea of collective punishment for the riots as two boroughs vow to evict any convicted of taking part in the riots and their entire families from council housing if they're living in said council housing. I'm not ignoring it in the hopes that it will go away. I am taking occasional breaks from it because if I don't, I'm going to stress myself into the kind of migraine attack that doesn't stop at pain and photophobia but goes into visual disturbances/hallucinations, cognitive dissonance and worse. Yes, it happens when the stress is bad enough. And I do not need that right now, kthnx. So ... moderation. I'll rant and stress and rage about it in controlled bursts so I don't die of government stupid.

Ah, relaxing weekend. Nothing to do but veg out, do a bit of grocery shopping and poke around with the computer. It's good.

I've been giving my belf paladin a little more attention this weekend. Just recently hit level 44 - up from ... *checks last Warcrack post* level 37 last weekend, which was more or less the last time I played it with any degree of seriousness. Which, given I used to consider myself lucky if I got one level in a weekend, given the party-centric FFXI set-up, is pretty freakin' impressive. FFXI, I think I gave up around about this level, and I'd been playing ... oh, at least a year. But Missandei the belf paladin is still trucking away, having gained 44 levels in the last two and a half months or so. Well, less, really, when you consider that I didn't start the belf paladin 'til ... holy crap, 44 levels in a month? Of on-again, off-again play, no less. More to the point, solo play. Shit, I see why people kind of gave FFXI a miss now...

Actually, I think one of those levels was entirely because of mining. Seriously. See, I ended up in Thousand Needles for some reason (man, that place got wiped by the Cataclysm) and ended up with this quest for this weird kind of buff that lets you swim continuously with no need to come up for air, and also increases your swimming speed to about your walk level. And seriously. Mithril. EVERYWHERE. I spent a good two hours going, "Screw this questing shit; mithriiiiiiil!" and swimming around, barely getting attacked by anything and mining until my mining bag filled up and my inventory couldn't take any more. Then I spent another hour or so in Orgrimmar, smelting mithril ore and making mithril filigree. My jewelcrafting skill is starting to seriously rock.

(Oh, hey, wingedkami? You didn't tell me about gem bags. Gem bags are awesome. So now I have a gem bag, a mining bag and a couple of really big bags replacing the diddy ones I looted off mobs way back when. I still get that annoying 'inventory is full' gabble now and then, but it's a lot easier now that I have more storage space, a lot devoted to ore and metal bars, and yet more devoted entirely to gems and copper wire and mithril filigree and other jewelcrafting stuff. More space can be devoted to the crap I get from mobs that are on occasion standing right on top of my metal vein.

...But yes, I do more than just mine when I do these things. Quests quests quests. Of course, sometimes by the time I respond to some quest where the 'Horde war machine' is trying to send me someplace, I'm too high level to actually bother with any of it? But still, at least I get to explore. But the mining in the Dustmallow Marshes is crap. Craaaaap crap crap. Anyway, the Booty Bay pirate stuff was fun. Though I had a kind of scary moment where the last "KEEL THE PIRATE GUY!" moment of that particular quest chain got interrupted mid-battle by ... well, net connection hiccup. So I'm maybe two-thirds done killing this guy and I'm at full health and then all of a sudden, I can't use any of my skills, even though they light up when I click on them. Sure mid-battle sign that my net connection has just keeled over. My reaction? "FUUUUUUCK!" However, when I managed to get everything up and running again and logged back in, I was in the inn in Booty Bay, apparently having killed the pirate guy and gone down with the ship which the Booty Bay pirates had been cannonballing to death, and they fished my half-drowned pixellated near-corpse out of the water or something. It's a part of how that whole quest series goes, I figure. Either way, at least it wasn't death by connection glitch. I hate that.

So yes, tyrell, still loving Protection spec. Though I kind of wonder if you're still allowed plate armour even if you do use another spec for paladin. Anyway, fact is that my belf is almost entirely decked out in plate (I haven't quested up a bit of plate chest armour yet, but I have everything else; I just don't buy armour much beyond level 3) and the last time her health dipped below 90% was when there was a mob of maybe five tower guards all at once on top of elite big bad. Though part of that is various auras, seals and a very good shield that no one has managed to offer me a superior replacement for since. Paladins are soloing machines.

No, I really haven't been doing much else with my weekend, though I did play some DA2 (I'm steeling myself for doing the Anders friendmance thing again, just for plot relevance and eek factor) and there has been a little bit of RP, which has been more or less awesome. It's good to have people around again, though not many and not often. It's the summer and I guess everyone else is out doing meatspace stuff. Which is cool and all, but I haven't done it much of late. I'm perfectly happy with my human interaction taking place predominantly through a keyboard and computer screen on the weekends, at least partly because the job tends to make me lose a great deal of faith in humanity and the last thing I tend to want to do at the end of a long week is to actually deal with people. I'm pretty sure that there are some I'd really like just hanging out with, but it tends not to happen. Partly because I do not make an effort and I really need to get better at that.

Aw, crap, it can't be 7pm on a Sunday already. Really? Seriously? Weekends are way too short. I need a day off. At least just one damn day off. Preferably attached to a weekend but I am so not picky as long as it means that I can sleep in and don't have to go into work. Oh well, at least the other admin (not Schrodinger's Admin; the other one) is back tomorrow so I don't have to be all things to all people. Bleh.