New is so last year... Old is the New New!

Been a while since I've blogged. I've been having a hard time getting started lately.

Yesterday I was a half hour late to work. There was a massive wreck on the freeway involving a pickup and an 18-wheeler. You'd think the semi would have won, but it looked like a tie. >.>; Back end of the trailer completely torn up and lifted off the ground, laying on top of the truck. The authorities had all three lanes of traffic exit on one lane to a small access road, so it took forever to get through the mess. It must have been fairly recent, because I got to the scene just as the helicopter and the jaws of life were getting there. Past few days at work have been kinda busy. One of the guys has been out clearing up some personal legal matters and another likes to take 2 hour lunches. :P Nothing that couldn't be handled, but not necessarily fun.

The money matters have gotten a little worse. We kinda knew that this week was going to be a pinch if we bought the car, but this was a little more than a pinch. The bank slapped us with some pretty massive overdraft charges and fees. I've freaked D out more than once this week with news of our depleted savings. It's going to take a while to get that back again, but that's why it was there to begin with. I get paid this Friday, and things will get much better at that point, but it's scary nonetheless...

Little wonder I've come home every night so far this week in an incredibly bad mood. Then I'll walk through the door with a barrage of frantic wife and baby and dog and stupid cat and spastic son, just waiting for me on the other end - I'm just not ready for that when I first get home... There are just so many things on the attack this week, there's not much I can do about any of them and so much of it will be solved simply by it being the weekend. -.-" Which can't seem to come fast enough...

On more of a diversionary topic, the FFXI update finished on the second day. While the update didn't necessarily add any new areas or drastically change the mechanics of the game, as have previous updates, this one did make some sweeping additions to many old areas. One of the things added was a system of new pop NMs throughout the ToAU areas. You have to defeat lower tiered monsters before you have access to the higher tiered ones. I find the whole system a huge step in the right direction. Many of the NM's can drop some pretty decent gear, and the whole system is designed to reward hard work and team effort over the common endgame/HNM asshattery that dominates the rest of the game. Our LS decided to do a few of them to try them out. The first tier so far seem to be relatively easy, and have dropped decent gear at a fair drop rate. I'll be looking into some of the drops when I have time. My goal list needs updating anyway. ^_^

Another thing they changed around a bit was Einherjar. Before, Einherjar would only reward you with drops and ampules (key items traded for special gear) for successful completion of a chamber, and you could only move on to the higher chambers if you completed all the chambers beneath it. Now, all you need is the leader to have the chambers completed. You can have no wins at all and enter a tier 3 chamber, as long as the leader has all the previous wins. You also win ampules for just trying - more kills equal more ampules. Basically, they made it more like a really tough Limbus. We did Einherjar instead of CoP Dynamis this week, and (of course) didn't win, but we still all earned 960 ampules. Most of the gear is 15k ampules, so there's a long way to go, but the fact that I can start working on it even if we lose is a ton of incentive to go.

Tomorrow is Static night. Hoping to down a few more Anniversary ring charges, hit 67BLM and use up another scroll from my delivery box mess. I can't wait until the moogle lottery is over so I can get my 10 inventory spots back. I'll try to remember to take some screenies or something: my blog is starting to look a little like a wall of text. D:!