Weekend Intelligence: Search and Seizure

Lots going on both at home and in game. This time of year is always kind of crazy, and our family just seems to have its own brand of insanity. So, in typical weekend intelligence fashion, here are the highlights!

House and Home:

Friday night was my company's Christmas party, and one of DeAnn's coworkers graciously offered to watch the kiddos while we went. The party was at a high-end French restaurant. They had wine and mixed drinks you could buy with drink tickets, and two buffet areas with appetizers like quail, crab cakes, spring rolls and a variety of cheeses and desserts. I introduced D to some of my coworkers and management, and we had a few drinks and chatted it up for a little over an hour or so before ducking out. Later found out the party ended shortly after we left. Overall, we had a really good time. When we picked up the kids, we found them settled down watching Finding Nemo. I guess Colin had won the game of Scrabble they brought out to play. LOL

There was just so much to be done on Saturday. Dishes and laundry and cleaning and more laundry. We ran our WalMart run and picked up Colin's meds all at the same time, while juggling several loads of laundry. It'll be a few more days until we have the laundry pile back to a manageable heap. At least we had Omaha Steaks from D's mom for Christmas, so the grocery bill was lower and we had good food to look forward to. If only the kids would cooperate long enough for me to cook a meal...

Maybe it's just the weather, but the kids seemed to be particularly off-the-wall lately. I don't know what it is about them, but they seem to know when its the worst possible time to act up, and decide to act up then. Colin will be completely oblivious to the destruction he's causing in the depths of his ADHD madness, and Clara will be only too happy to help. We try at least to keep her entertained with raisins for a snack and Veggietales, but she gets bored of the videos and just ends up feeding the raisins to the dog.

On that note, did you know that raisins can cause seizures in dogs? I sure didn't! But sure as could be, just as I was sitting down to take my first bite of the delicious steak I spent the last 45mins preparing, Suzie huddles right next to me, looses bladder control and starts to spasm. Poor girl! ; ; I tried to keep her calm until it was clear she was coming around, while Clara started to launch food and Colin watched, laughing at Clara one moment, visibly concerned for Suzie the next. D had already finished her meal and went to the computer to email the vet, leaving me to juggle the convulsing canine and both kids at the same time. -.-; My steak dinner was cold by the time I got to it.

Sunday was not quite so madcap. At least it didn't require us to leave the house. We still had a walking mountain of clothing to wash, illuminating the need for more hangers next time we go to the store. I think Clara is eating them. Between rounds of gaming, Colin and I picked up around the house while D cleaned the catbox. Nothing in there...

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So... where is the cat... Um... o.O? We started looking around the house. Turned out that the cat had been using Colin's room as a toilet since Thanksgiving, and he was completely oblivious to it. I really try my best not to go in there, but I walked in there this time and retched. He plays in there. He reads in there. He hides from his baby sister in there. HE SLEEPS IN THERE! How can he NOT smell that? I thought I smelled something funky upstairs, but everytime I did, I found yet another diaper that Clara had hidden somewhere, and figured that must have been it.

I wonder how I can make the cat's disappearance look like an accident...

In Game:

While Soulfire was doing Medusa and tier 4 ZNMs this weekend, Keri and I decided to get some good sessions in on BST. Mainly, this was due to us not being home for Medusa and Keri isn't much into ZNM. Something about needing a ton of open inventory spots... We did a few rounds of Fields of Valor in Xarcabard to ding 58, and I level synced to her and helped her do a round without flagging one myself to get her caught up to me.

We decided to look for a different camp than Toraimarai Canal. While the experience there was really good, it simply wasn't worth the amount of work it takes to drag the charm-resistant slime through a nest of aggro-happy mobs. That place is really unforgiving of any mistakes, which abound when playing BST. I picked through some forums and found that there was a nice camp for a 60ish solo player in Quicksand Caves using the southwesternmost entrance. Same entrance you use to get to the Chamber of Oracles. The plan was to throw the lizards there at the ants. While the whole "60ish solo" part had me a little worried, I decided that we should go check it out.

Glad we did. The lizards didn't con any higher than T, even at that level. Easily zooed. And there were about 3 lizards for every 2 ants, so we had plenty of pets available for swaps. The only rough part tended to be the PLD ants down there, because they would perpetually cure themselves to be just beyond us being able to land a killing blow. I think we should be able to ride this camp out through 60 or 61, and then we have The Boyahda Tree to look forward to.

Quaide was missing for our normal Nyzul runs, and since we beat 100, the only reason we'd be going would be to farm floors for weapons and armor. We enlisted the help of some LS mates who needed floor 40 win and decided to make a farming/win run out of that. No armor or weapons that we needed dropped, but the WAR weapon that Quaide would have wanted dropped. >.>; The other two tags we spent getting Japolo caught up to us in Lebros Cavern assaults.

We were a bit rusty in our Dynamis - Xarcabard skills. For some reason, we just kept making sloppy mistakes. People took too long getting into the zone and got wiped out on the sac pull. One person got away from the main group of demons, but trained a smaller group of them from the sac pull and wiped more people. On the demon kings, people were chasing instead of staying put, aggroed a large group of demons and wiped us again. We started the line pulls too soon after a wipe, the sleepers weren't ready and we got wiped again. Somehow Keri got lost and made it behind the line, making it impossible to get to her without dying at least once. And lastly, it was decided that we only really needed 2WHMs for Dynamis Lord, which not only failed miserably, but took forever to recover from. Something about only having 2 WHMs to scrape people off the ice.

At least Monster Gloves dropped... O.O Yeah! That concludes my gear desires from Dynamis. I'm still looking forward to doing more Dynamis, but now I'm more or less just doing them for the points. :D Oh, I'll take the WHM belt if it should drop (it's a sexy piece), but that's the last piece that I really WANTED. I'm now 5/5 on MNK, WHM and BST, and I have the BST accessory piece. Now to get the 17 levels I need to wear the set...

Ended the night by catching the tail end of the officer's meeting for DeathByHairball. I missed the majority of the meeting while I was in Dynamis, but I was able to get the basic idea of the point system they want to implement. We're also looking to start doing more events after the holiday season is over to try to build group cohesion. This time of year stresses just about everyone out, and there's been a lot of arguments, hurt feelings and people are leaving over them. Hopefully things will settle down once the holiday stress is taken out of the picture and people can just enjoy their time again.

Hard to believe, but in less than two weeks we will be heading out to the great white north for Christmas at my folks house. I haven't been up north in 3 years, and haven't seen my parents in over a year. I'm really looking forward to getting the hell outta Texas for a couple of days.