Worlds Apart

It was a VERY slow day at work today. So slow that one of the network engineers joked about that being when they usually start sending the contractors home. ;_; It gave me an opportunity, midway through the year, to look back on this blog and read through it. It's interesting to go back and think "Yeah, I remember that!" and see all the mistakes in grammar and punctuation. I didn't edit any of the older posts, much to the dismay of the proofreader in me. It was also funny to see how warped my sense of time is. Some of the things that feel like they happened only yesterday happened months ago, and somethings that feel like forever ago aren't really that far past. Maybe I'm just getting old. LOL

Traffic was pretty light as well. After picking D up and arriving at the daycare, Noni had some questions about the video game we play together and I blog about. She also didn't know that D and I had met through this game, so it was story time for about an hour as we related our experience with the game, try to explain how this whole (previously unknown to her) world worked and answer questions about it the best we could without being utterly confusing. FFXI is pretty complex when you're trying to explain it to someone else. She seemed so interested in the game that I decided to add a link to the PlayOnline site to my sidebar and edit my blog from last night. I might bring my laptop tomorrow so she can see how it's played. It would be pretty sweet to have a friend locally who plays. :D

It was pretty late by the time we were done at the daycare, so we decided that it was to be our night eating out for the week. We went to Sea Island - I've had a craving for seafood lately. If there's one thing I can say for the place is that I never leave hungry. I don't like bringing home leftovers from seafood restaurants because it stinks up the house, so I eat all I can there. And that particular restaurant has rather large portions. :P By the time we finished eating, got home and put baby to bed, neither of us felt much like dancing... x.X

We logged in and decided to see what was going on in game. All of the stuff from the Castle Zvahl raid from yesterday had sold, bringing the earnings from the previous night to about 50k per person. That more than paid for the Black Cloak I bought in anticipation of leveling BLM. >.>'' I also heard that all the gil items from Ouryu had cleared, and there was a nice chunk of change waiting with Glinda for people who attended. :D I didn't get around to asking, but I will tomorrow. More gil? Yes, please!

Speaking of Glinda, Keri got a tell from her that Dynamis - Jeuno actually did get off the ground, but they were hurting terribly for more bodies, particularly WHMs and RDMs. So we suited up and jumped into dynamis a little late, but just in time to clean up and keep people propped up. Emma decided to come to Dynamis on her newly leveled 75WHM. She now gets to create a raise macro of her own! Congrats, Emma, but how am I gonna stay entertained in dynamis if I'm not scrapping you off the pavement on your BLM? D:! We were exchanging gear and raise macro ideas most of the night. I look at it as a rite of passage: if you sacrifice bits of your sanity and grind out 75 levels of WHM, you have earned the right to inflict that twistedness on your LS mates with raise macros. XD

The run ran late (English rocks...), so D logged off, put Colin to bed and went to bed herself. The people at the run were dropping like flies for the night too before Shado decided to try to eke out a win with a low-man strategy. We did actually win, and with maybe 16 people at that. I stayed through the win - I need the points. x.X No plans for tomorrow beside work and driving home. Talon is out for the next week and a half, and static has seemingly fallen to the wayside. I may decide to just say screw it and go campaigning on BLM. I want to put that one in the drawer already...

Rain

Before I forget: Noni, click here for FFXI info. When you get there, start with the section titled game introduction. ^_^/ I also put a link in my sidebar titled PlayOnline - Final Fantasy XI

It really hasn't stopped raining from the weekend. This means that the already long daily drive has become longer as the people that can't drive even under perfect conditions decide they can drive in the rain. Of the past two days, Monday was the worse: there were three accidents on the way to pick up DeAnn, and a light had gone out on the surface street going to her work, making it a 4-way blinking stoplight. No one knows what the hell to do with those, especially when it's on a 6-lane undivided street. What was worse was I must have seen 2-3 police cars come out of the Japanese restaurant around there, take one look over at the unholy mess down the street and take off in the opposite direction. -.-; I was in the car for an hour and a half coming home, all said and done on Monday.

I had hoped that I could start exercising with D on Monday. My activity level has plummeted since starting this job. When I was a theater manager, I was on my feet walking, running, cleaning and climbing stairs for hours and hours on end. Then I started at Valero and my activity went to a daily 30-45 minute walk. Now it's diddly. So I picked up the DDR Universe 2 bundle set, the one with the game and dance pad so we both can have one. Needless to say, by the time I had navigated the roads that evening, neither of us were in the mood to exercise. We gamed instead: the LS had a random sky gods night. And there was much rejoicing.

Tuesday night was our normally scheduled BLM static night, but Andro didn't log in until 8, so we went raiding Castle Zvahl instead for a 20k-ish haul apiece, not counting things that need to sell on the auction house. Not bad really. We also popped the ant that drops an axe that Keri will be able to use on her BST, and we popped Morion Worm on our way back home for another nice chunk of change. Really needed a good farming session like that, and it was way more exciting than fishing. :P

It really has me wondering about the static, though. We never really got our momentum back when things fell apart, and I'm getting a bit tired of trying to organize twice a week only to have to try to find other things to do after gearing up. I'm not angry or bitter or anything really to anyone, just ready for a change of pace, I guess. Gotta admit, though, it's been a good run. ^_^/

As I've said, my lifestyle is far from what anyone could consider enriched with activity. I'm going to try to prod D into DDRing with me on Wednesday, and hopefully the moral support will help both of us stay on track better than we have been.

Big Ol' 4th of July Week Blowout: "I guess it is holiday or something..."

No, I haven't forgotten I have a blog. As dusty as this thing as gotten, I have good reason for letting it get this way: life blew up. Ironic that it happened over 4th of July week, eh? Guess that makes me extra patriotic. LOL

So work slowly and steadily got bonkers over the course of the short week, as if to make up for the fact that it was, indeed, a short week. Clara threw in (or up) the last straw on Wednesday and vomitted all over herself, crib and carpet. We thought maybe she just overate from the night before. After getting her washed off and dressed, she threw up in the new car. -.-; So D stayed home with her while I went to work on Wednesday. At least we didn't have to do the carpooling thing.

She had a fever still and was not feeling very well on Thursday, so it was my turn to stay home with her. She wasn't awake very much - she didn't sleep well the night before so she was pretty worn out. I spent most of my day cleaning odds and ends and gaming. Our LS had a bunch of ToD's, so it wasn't hard to find something to do. We claimed Simurgh (AKA Big Bird), but couldn't damage it enough with the people who showed up, so it raged and wiped us at 40%-something. Kind of a bummer :P. I also tri-boxed Keri, Talon and myself as we got the coffer keys needed for the rest of BST AF. TS eventually logged on, and after the bird called in a friend to help me get my Garlaige Coffer. I swear, for a job that is supposed to solo their way through pretty much anything, I find it rather stupid they put the coffer somewhere that requires 3 other people to access. I did finish up my coffers, leaving me free to help Keri get hers when she got back.

Later that night, after baby was asleep (she wasn't awake for very long), Andro logged Ame's character on and we did BLM static. He wasn't quite sure how the SMN pulling went, but after he figured it out, he thought it was rather funny that she pulled and did ballad and played EXP sponge. LOL! As funny as it sounds, Talon and I couldn't figure it out without dying horrific deaths, so we're more than happy to have her level with us. ^_^ I'm about 200 off of 68, so next session I should level, like, on the first mob. I haven't really talked with the others about what we're gonna do post 70, but the time is drawing near. Once you hit 70's, it's a lot easier to get merit parties and solo for chains and such, reducing the return of having and organizing a scheduled static. I'll bring it up when we're a bit closer and see what people think.

Friday was the 4th of July! Time for picnics! Time for explosions! Time for RAIN! D:! Yeah, go figure: it doesn't rain for literally months, then decides to rain during the WHOLE WEEKEND. It was raining when I woke up early in the morning on my day off. ._." Don't ask: I dunno why I do that. So I decided to have hope that the rain would let up and that we could go out and watch the fireworks at Landa. I changed Clara and took her with me to WalMart to get some picnic/cookout supplies. It was still raining when we got home. D refused to wake up, and Clara still wasn't feeling in top form, so I laid her back down for a nap and did some fishing. Even after D had pulled herself out of bed, it was still raining.

That about shattered any plan for anything outside: even if it stopped raining then and there, the park would be hot, muggy and muddy. We got Peng's takeout instead. Best. Chinese. Ever. Anyway, I walked in there and there were all of two people eating in there, with cooks and waiters standing around looking very bored. I tried to joke with the hostess, asking if it was a busy night, to which she replied, in a thick accent: "Oh no! I guess it is holiday or something." It was all I could not to burst out laughing. I mean, I was 98.5% sure she was being facetious, but as I was ordering takeout on the 4th of July at a Chinese restaurant from a someone whose first language was clearly not English, that missing off-chance 1.5% sure lent itself plausible. LOL!

We gamed again on Friday night, and the main order of the night was finishing BST AF, followed by ZNMs. We finished off the last of Keri's coffer pieces and went to fight the last boss. I have to hand it to SE: if they were trying to make the BST AF storyline epic fail, they succeeded masterfully. The whole story was like a really bad remake of a really bad movie involving the ghosts of animal rights activists and beastiality. -.-; It was kinda like "You don't love the animals like *I* do, you just want to use them and you don't care if they DIE! Q_Q~" The last cutscene involves the said undead activist in a loving reunion with his pet monkey, where he rewards you with his pants. Yes, his pants. "Yay! I have my monkey now, so... umm... I don't need my pants. Here, you take them!" >.>;

After the BST AF, we moved on to Whitegate to do ZNMs. We did the puk (and Keri got the sword ^^) and a bunch of chigres before deciding to head out and try our hand at Khromasoul Bhurborlor. We got there just in time to see another endgame/HNM linkshell pop it. Something to be said about this shell: they cheat. And not just a little bit here and there. The whole purpose of the game is to cheat for them. They use programs to hack their characters's movement speed and to claim monsters before they have a chance to spawn on the screen. And the loot they cheat others out of is sold to the highest bidder to fund their relic. So we see their extremely well-geared characters preparing to take on this monster and decide to watch how they do. They wiped. Hard. Then they reraised and wiped again. Hard. It was very gratifying to see them get the ever-loving crap kicked out of them. But the time came when enough was enough, and I was going to try to help at least get their WHMs up that lost reraise so they didn't lose their pop. That's when Shado told us not to help them out. He didn't want us to have their hate and they wouldn't do the same for us.

That's just not how we used to roll. That's not how I roll, anyway. Maybe they're not honest players, but I don't roll like that. Keri and I told him that we were helping anyway and he asked us to leave the alliance. -.- Several of us helped them recover and win, after which Keri was too disgusted and I was too tired to want to help do ours. Seriously, ZNMs are the ultimate friendly event. They require you to go out and take pictures of stuff for points. The guy has a preference, but it can be anything. You don't even have to have claim on the thing your taking a picture of: you can take pictures of other people's monsters and it doesn't hurt anyone. You work for the points and get the pop item for the boss ZNM. You simply can't screw that up! It made no sense not to help out, beside being a jerk to jerks. And that's not how I roll...

Got up again early on Saturday... -.-\ I had checks to deposit in the bank before they closed, and some housework to complete before Colin came home. And it was still raining... We decided that D was gonna go get Colin and I'd stay at home with the baby, since it makes about as much sense to babysit a toddler in an airport as it does to waste $4 in gas to avoid $3 in parking. Baby was down for a nap before D left, and I followed suit until the late afternoon.

We had our Ouryu fight that night in game, something we had never won before, despite our best efforts. And it seemed like this one was destined to be grounded as well. It was a good hour and a half after start time before we could start. At 45mins late, I decided to make dinner and cooked up last of the steaks and hamburgers. I figured if I was gonna wait for an hour for random people to get their stuff together, they could hold for 10mins for me to feed my kids. All said and done, we did finally get everything together and started the fight. The whole thing went perfectly, giving us our first win vs. Ouryu v2.0. :D

Once again, I woke up at the crack of dawn on Sunday. I think it's all the rain, cause it didn't stop all weekend, and I woke up early everyday. I decided since I was up early, I'd get the WalMart run knocked out. I like doing that early, because there is no one there. I can just get in and get what I need without having to wait 30mins in line at the checkout. It was still raining when I got back - so I hurried to get all the groceries in. I did a little bit of laundry and before joining a group of LS mates for a few runs of an ISNM, trying to get some gil. It ended in epic fail (I'd never lost that one before) and I nearly deleveled on my MNK, so we decided to go merit instead and get the experience points back before Dynamis. Dynamis - Windurst was almost cancelled due to low attendance, but we were able to get the numbers we needed and went in for the win. I got the Monster Helm that dropped off the first wave of mobs. Now I'm 4/5 for BST relic: I'll probably have all of the BST relic before I have a BST that can wear it. >.>

Full work week starts tomorrow. Let's hope the rain lets up just a little so the traffic isn't completely wonky...