The weekend always feels so short, but especially after a 3-day weekend followed by a full work week. Sometimes it feels like there’s just barely enough time to recover and get everything taken care of before I’m back in the workweek. So, in typical weekend intelligence fashion, here are the highlights!House and Home:
We didn’t do much of anything Friday night beside celebrate the beginning of the weekend. We’ve both been so busy the past week that the opportunity to just goof off for an evening was too good to pass up. We did our FNLE while Colin and one of his friends (the 12 year old whose voice has already dropped) hung out and played the 360 upstairs.
Saturday was the usual big chore day. This time, our target was the upstairs rooms and laundry. Colin and Clara’s rooms got a clean sweep, and we pushed through 5 loads of laundry and made a dent in our own room. Later that evening, I decided to try to get a little bit of studying in while doing some laundry while D tried to lay down for a nap. Clara has hit her terrible two’s stage full-stride: she is into absolutely everything, wants everything her way and will begin tantrums at the drop of a hat when something isn’t right. I just couldn’t do what I wanted to do while she was up and around. I sat her to watch some TV while I folded some clothes, but she worked her way to my laptop while I was logged into one of my routers and started mashing keys. Before I could do anything about it, she had written something into the active session of the router and everything I had been doing to that point was hosed up. x.X D thought it was funny and decided to take pictures. I was not so amused. After dinner, we played in-game for a while and had ourselves a carefree night. -.^
Maybe it was payback for a great Saturday night, but Sunday was half over when we started it. I hate sleeping so late that we miss church. The dog hadn’t been let out, Colin had started surrounding himself with trash, toys and drink cups while firmly planted in front of the TV and Clara had apparently already been up, played in her room and decided to lay back down for an afternoon nap. -.-; It wasn’t long after we got the day jumpstarted that the doorbell started ringing off wall with Colin’s friends. Somewhere in the midst of answering the door and the steady stream of Sunday night phone calls, I had found time to setup a play area for Clara and get dinner in the oven. Colin and company eventually left to go outside and play, leaving D and I to our Dynamis – Xarcabard run without much more interruption. If only…
His friends were still stopping by. At one point, D was hollering upstairs for Colin (who had already left) to come answer the door when she banged her pinky toe on a baby toy and collapsed in a heap to the floor. I was on the phone with my parents, the dog was barking at the visitor at the door, the baby was crying and trying to climb on my huddled and, now crying, wife and the yahoo kid at the door was still waiting for the absent Colin. I told the child that Colin wasn’t here, went to hold Clara while giving support to my wife and put the dog in the kennel. All I wanted to do was relax! Bedtime for Clara on Sunday involves giving her a bath first, so I got the bath started and her all washed up, then traded places with D so neither one of us were AFK for too long.
About halfway into D’s shift, Colin came home crying. Apparently, Colin is friends with two brothers, who thought that teaming up and throwing rocks and sticks at the other team would make a great game. The older brother started taunting Colin, calling the books he reads and the characters in them “stupid.” Woo. I wonder how long it took him to come up with that one. So Colin decided to hit his younger brother in the face with a stick… Filled to the brim with genuine 100% “WTH?” His older brother responded by hitting Colin in the back with a rock and threatening him with a saw blade. All children involved ran home crying to their moms.
Why are children such savages? I’m seriously considering at this point how much I can get for the pair of them on the black markets of Bangladesh when D comes downstairs and gets the scoop from Colin. He tried to defend what he did by saying he was “provoked.” We quickly corrected that shenanigans – just because you are provoked doesn’t mean you have to choose to hit someone. There’s always a choice. We had to make yet another extended AFK in the middle of our run, take Colin down to his friends’ house, have him apologize for hitting him in the face with a stick and talk to their parents about their sons’ propensity for brutality. Once we get home, we send Colin upstairs to get ready for his bath, and lo and behold, the doorbell rings again and this time, it’s the older brother, come to apologize. AFK again, everyone is friends again, and Colin gets in the bath.
In-game:
Friday night was FNLE in the past. Several people had their eyes set on some of the new items dropped by popped notorious monsters in the past. In particular, Bloodlapper drops a pair of gloves that would be very nice for the BLM army. Pretty much a poor man’s Zenith Mitts. And the pop items for it are rather easy to get. The hardest part is getting far enough into Castle Oztroja [S] to get to the mobs that drop the item. There were a ton of us, so we easily got there and started mopping up the Yags. It wasn’t long before we had a pop item for everyone that wanted one and more. LS call went out that anyone who wanted a pair of these gloves better get out there and get one. Kitiara decided to come out for the fun, too. Unlike E and Emma’s first encounter with the bug, the fight was ridiculously easy with an alliance. We were there popping them and getting gloves for about 2 hours and went 5/6 on pops – all the BLM army that were there that wanted one got a pair of gloves. I think the drop rate is somewhere around 90% with treasure hunter effect. We also went to Jugner Forest [S] to pop a gnole NM, but that one was nowhere near as easy, nearly took out the alliance and didn’t even drop the item. I heard they had a hell of a time getting that pop item, too. All that death and no item, might be a while before we do that fight again, and we might have to devote a whole FNLE to farming/popping. I finished off the night by turning in more fish. I’m getting crazy close to that rod now. One or two more weekends should do the trick, and I think I have enough gil for it.
We didn’t get on much on Saturday – too busy with the house. I’d been doing a lot of thinking lately about whether I should keep MNK as my main or change to WHM. For me to do anything more with MNK would involve an ENORMOUS amount of time and/or gil investment. I just don’t have that, so after much consideration, I decided on Saturday to make the change to main WHM. When we did get online, we decided to help out in sea. We popped two Ix’MNKs, a Jailer of Temperance, and two Jailers of Hope, along with a bunch of pointable pop items. I was very tempted to lot the Temperance Axe that dropped for BST, but I decided against it and opted to stay in positive points.
Sunday’s in game time was spent in Dynamis – Xarcabard. It is such a tight balancing act to get any game time in while the children are awake, but if the only time we got was while they were asleep, we wouldn’t get any time at all… The kids were particularly bonkers, as I’ve already related, which lead to several AFK moments during some rather dicey pulls. Luckily, we were available and ready for Dynamis Lord, who we took down handily for the first time in almost a year. Nothing spectacular dropped off him, unfortunately, but it sure felt good to know that we could still do it. At the end of the run, Cleric’s Mitts dropped, so I was thankful I kept my points positive from the night before. I’m now 4/5 on WHM, all I need are the pants from Jeuno and I’ll have 5/5 on WHM.
Tomorrow is study night. I moved all my routers and switches to my desk in the office, so I don’t have to worry about Clara haxing my tables again. This way, I can set up a play area downstairs while D is upstairs exercising on DDR uninterrupted and unhindered. Might even be able to finish my chapter and take the test for it. We’ll see.
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