I mastered the lore in Eastern Kingdoms

Yep I got the Loremaster achievement for Eastern Kingdoms yesterday. It was amusing. After merrily smacking my way through low level quests, running Scholo and Strath cos I’d find just one more quest for them, and gritting my teeth to just buckle down and do it when I got to the last 75 quests, the last 10 quests were more like a cakewalk than anything else. Oh look, it’s a quest chain. Whee!

And what happens after I get the achievement? I suddenly remember I haven’t picked up the two pets in Blackrock forWrenn yet. /facepalm So at some point, I’ll be going back in to BRS to get them, as well as do a few more quests in there, just for giggles.

Also last night, I managed to finish the last piece to a project I’d been working on for almost 8 months now. I’d put it at the end of the list because I don’t have a sewing machine readily available to help finish it, and I had gotten amazingly tired of knitting one big line of stitches over and over. After the shawl and the baby blanket, though, finishing one last strap was cake. And since we’re going to visit my mom tomorrow, and she DOES have a readily available sewing machine, I’m going to finish out that project hopefully this weekend.

Of course, I’m hoping I’ll actually HAVE the spare time. When we get up there tomorrow around lunch, Mom and I have to go over stuff for the stores, go over stuff for the house she’s building (apparently, she had me so she could have free tech support and design/decorating services) since they’re finally putting in the foundation this week and will start framing next week, meet with her builder on other things with the house, and just chat in general. Saturday is taken up mostly with the Ole Miss/Arkansas football game, and this will be Exar’s first time at an Ole Miss game, with all it’s insanity and weirdness. Sure it’s the normal college football insanity, but then there’s the Grove, and tailgating in the Grove needs to be seen to be believed. And Sunday we drive home, hopefully early enough that I can get laundry done before hopping into game for a while.

Yeah, that’s right, I said “into game”. I still have Kalimdor to clear! A girl’s gotta have goals.

But yeah, it’s gonna be a busy weekend, and one that’s gonna leave me wanting to flop over dead at the end. I’d give anything for a real vacation, where I don’t think about the store, and don’t worry about phone calls, and don’t run around like an insane woman. Dragon*Con is lovely, but I’m so tired by the end of it, I need a vacation from the vacation! So for Christmas this year, I’d like Santa to bring me the following:

1. 10 skiens for Noro Silk Garden in 252 colorway. I have a project for all of that and want to get started nao!

2. A small beach cottage with a good internet connection, one week rental.

3. One week off to pack up Exar and I, and all of our stuff, and go to said rented cottage. I can go say hi to the beach in between knitting and gaming and he can read and game.

4. Oh wait, can I add reading to my list? Yes, reading must be added, kthxbai.

5. I’d also like a 40″+ HDTV at this mythical beach cottage so we can bring the PS3 for console gaming. Oh and I’d like a second PS3 so we don’t have to fight over who gets to play single player games on the one we have right now. I’M LOOKING AT YOU, MADDEN FRANCHISE! /sulks with my Katamari Forever disk

6. (I’m somewhat kidding about the fights over the PS3. I’m just waiting on Dragon Age: Origins right now before I start using the claws and teeth.)

7. And last but not least, a new home to come home to when this vacation-of-my-dreams is over. One without neighbors below me that we can hear talking loudly at 2am, or with neighbors next to us that have a dogs that is howling and/or screaming at 2am, making me think someone’s getting beaten and making the cats completely spaz.

… oh yeah, I could use some sleep about now. -.-

Fall Melancholy

Fall has always been an odd season for me. There’s a sense of melancholy attached to it for me. A bit of happy, a bit of sad. When it came to the happy, I was one of the weird kids that actually looked forward to school starting, cos I loved learning, and cos I got to see my friends again. Yes, I’m one of those people that gets a whiff of erasers in August and has fond memories of shopping for back to school clothes and supplies. Usually by November, the warm fuzzies between me and school were over, and I just wanted holiday break to come quickly.

At the same time, I was sad to be watching the leaves wither and fall to the ground. There was a feeling of the earth dying, showing off in one last blast of riotous color before turning into the grey of winter. If summer was sun, sea air, and the cries of gulls, fall was a cool breeze, dew on the grass and spiderwebs, and the scent of burning leaves.

Scent is a funny thing. It triggers so many things in humans, not the least of which is memories. Back when I was 10, my mom moved the two of us up to Knoxville, Tennessee, so she could attend the University of Tennessee and work on her PhD in Anthropology. (For those that are into that kinda thing, yes, that’s where Dr. William Bass taught, who formed the first and best known “Body Farm”. Mom took classes under him, and he was a wonderfully sweet guy to the 10 year old kid sitting in his classes next to her mom, including his forensics classes.) (Why yes, I did have a weird childhood, why do you ask?) I was not the happiest kid in the world about leaving all of my friends and moving to some strange town, and sulked for a good chunk of the time there.

Around October, Mom found out that Silver Dollar City, a theme park in Pigeon Forge, TN, was having a Fall Arts & Crafts Festival. Mom was a big believer in getting culture and education in while having fun (and if it was inexpensive, all the better!), so we drove up on Saturday to check out the park. When we got there, it was open, tour buses were lined up and dropping their passengers off, and the BBQ pit was in full gear. We spent the day wandering around, checking out the crafts, watching the blacksmithing, glassblowing, and giggling at the lines of people staring at the quilters (my great-grandmother was still alive and very much still quilting at the time). I was fascinated with the chandlery and had to be dragged out of there. The colors of the waxes fascinated me to no end, until we saw the weavers and my brain completely popped.

By the time the day was over, Fall became cemented in my head with a full array of memories: the fascination of learning, colors from every spectrum, the scent of BBQ, charcoal and diesel exhaust, a crisp breeze, red plaid fabric, the sounds of crowds and the crunch of dead leaves, and missing friends and family horribly. To this day, most of those can still trigger a melancholy in me for a moment, but only for a moment. Then the good memories rise to the top, and I start to think of the possibilities that fall can bring.

Like finally being able to wear things I knitted! WOHOO!

Achievements – I has them

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been slowly working on achievements in WoW. I mean, I finally got enough money in Wrenn’s pockets that I felt I could comfortably afford an Armored Brown Bear. Yeah, I’m paranoid about my money, mainly cos I don’t have near as much as a lot of people I know. I’m currently sitting at just over 2k. Yeah, not a lot in WotLK. But for me, it’s “Woooo! RICH!”. ::grin::

I also have been slowly working towards the Explorer title. Outlands, Eastern Kingdom and Northrend are all done. Kalimdor isn’t. Why not? Well cos I started working on the Loremaster stuff, and Eastern Kingdoms won the coin toss on which I started first. I’m within 25 or so quests of getting that finished, then it’s off to Kal and exploring it. Outlands, I will have quests there to do, and same for Northrend, but I’m more concerned with getting the old world done before it gets changed up. And considering my pace, I’m gonna need all the time I can get. >.>

The pet collecting has been trucking along, and I finally splurged on a few under-25g pets and got my Reeking Pet Carrier. I’m sitting at 55/75 pets now, and still have to go back into Black Rock to get the two pets there. The mounts are coming more slowly, mainly due to preoccupation with other things. I’m sitting at 45/50 with the mounts right now, and hope I can get back to mount hunting soon.

I finally decided to level up Wrenn’s cooking, and have been slowly working on achievements there. Oo wow I finally have 10 cooking awards! Wooo! My fishing is magnificently low, so once I actually get cooking “out of the way”, I will grimace and work on that next.

In a case of “better late than never”, I managed to get exalted with Argent Dawn. I’m still attempting to work on getting Wrenn Exalted with the Netherwing so she can have a space dragon of her own, but that’s gotten derailed by the “OMG OLD WORLD QUESTS!” panic I’m under. She’s sitting at just over halfway through Revered, so it won’t take that much longer.

Pretty much my goals lately have been to try to log in, get at least 1 old world quest done, if not more like 5, then see if there’s anything going on that interests me. Last night, as I was sitting in Strath using ray guns on ghosts, enough people were on that we got a Horseman group going. Sadly, no mount, and for some reason, all the guys in the guild have this tendency to eat tons of Tricky Treats then barf on me. Yeah, me, the little gnome. Even Exar barfed on me, giggling the whole while. He almost got a pillow to the face at 3am in revenge for that. ::mutter::

Tonight is raid night. Uldar. I’m hoping like hell we get to see Freya this week, after regressing and re-progressing back to the point of walking into her room and saying “ooo shiny”. Hm, that reminds me, I still need to watch a vid of her fight so I can see what’s supposed to be done, not what we’ve done, which was run around screaming like idiots.

You know those shirts that say “Life happens”? It’s a semi-sarcastic turn of phrase, for when Life comes and smacks you around. I’m this close to making ones that say “WoW Raiding: Progression Happens”. Owie.

OMG I’m Hallowed

Oh, the world events. Over Brewfest, I managed to get horribly lucky and get a kodo right off the bat. And for some reason, I finally made the mental click on the ram racing and was not doing too badly with it, so the tickets piled up and I was able to get the Brewmaster title. Yey for drunk gnomes!

But the other world events… I’ll be honest. I’ve been staying away from them, other than the easy fluff bits. Why? PvP and I don’t get along. My first intro to MMOs was something called MUDs and MUSHs. For those under 20 (and a few under 30) that have no idea what the hell those are, those are like today’s MMOs, only with no pretty graphics. Nothing but text, baby! /watches as people flee screaming

But the first ones that were recommended to me had PvP. I didn’t know it at the time, just going off of friends’ recommendations. So poor little level 1 me wanders out, and a level 100 person walks over and smacks me into a wall, proceeding to camp me for the next hour. Yeah, not my idea of a good time. And unlike WoW, ANYONE could gank you, your race included. So yeah, PvP and I didn’t get off to a good start with the relationship.

Now then, Siana actually does have a “Private” title in her list. One weekend within the first year of WoW, two friends of mine somehow convinced me to try out this “Battlegrounds” thing, and sucked me into playing in Warsong Gulch. I merrily bounced around, palms sweating, and trying to not screw up too badly. They were amused when I found myself in the horde flag room, all by my lonesome, staring at the flag and wondering what in the hell to do, while the rest of the team was busy trying to smack the crap out of the Horde in the middle of the map. But that 4-6 hours that weekend was the extent of my PvP in WoW.

But with the world events, quite a few of them have PvP elements. Cue sweating palms and me rocking in a corner saying “nononononononono”. Yeah, it’s not pretty. But several guildies patted me on the head and said they’d come along for the ride and try to help me get through it. See, I love Halloween. Getting a title of “the Hallowed” for any of my characters? YES PLS! Okay fine, to be able to get that title, now that I’m more or less comfortable with Wrenn, I’ll :;gulp:: PvP.

Those guildies that were online had a good giggle at me flailing in guild chat as Exar patted me on the head and said “Okay, go ahead and click the button. We’re going into AV.” Thank heavens he had a motorcycle, so I could hop into the sidecar, cos damn I would have been lost. I’m still not sure where we went. I know we detoured at one point to get a flag in a cave. And I know we went and smacked around a bunch of NPCs. And at one point, I managed to smack around a priest all by myself, til someone else got the kill shot on him (but apparently I did get a killing blow on a Tauren Druid). And I got 30 HKs in one battle, which Exar’s still snarking over, cos I swear it said I’d only gotten 28, then it gave me the achievement. And then, I got the G.N.E.R.D. Rage achievement. Wohooo! For giggles, he dragged me into Strand of the Ancients, and our team did well enough, we got the Storm the Beach achievement.

Later last night, we gathered up a group and hit the Headless Horseman. Towards the end of the run, I got the Squashling and the last run gave me the helm. I squealed, and yes, I’m now thrilled to be “Wrenn the Hallowed.”

I might not ever take the title off.

Baby knits and pics therein

So the package of baby stuff I’d knitted for friends (that I met through WoW, go geek team!) got to them yesterday, and the Daddy happily took pics of them for me (since I was a dumbass and forgot in the rush to get them to the mail center).  The big item was the blanket. I’d had an idea what I was getting myself into, but not really. That was a lot of knitting. God help me when I actually decide to tackle a sweater. At least the stole was “make you think once every 4 rows”. This was mindless knitting. Which actually was nice come to think of it. I got to watch a lot of TV and get caught up on some series I’d been missing, cos it was easy enough to knit and pay attention to the TV, not my hands. Okay, ignore the bitching. It was just a LOT of pink and normally, I don’t do pink.

The pattern was from a book called Stitch ‘n Bitch. I saw the Big Bad Baby Blanket in there and knew I had to make it at some point for someone. In this case, the someone turned out to be my friends. I still like the pattern, and suppose that for mindless knitting, it works out nice. I just wish I’d been able to work on it a bit more regularly instead of in bits and pieces when Life wasn’t getting in the way. But since they’d requested pink, and since it was for a baby, I declined to purchase a bunch of handpainted wool like the book suggested. Instead, easy-to-care-for, but still passing the “oh that’s nice and soft!” feel test, baby pink acrylic won out. And since that was a hell of a lot of pink, I ended up renaming it the PANK! Big Bad Baby Blanket of Dooooom.

Yep, that’s pink and a lot of it.

While I’d been chatting to the parents-to-be, I’d jokingly threatened to make a hat and booties to go with it. But I didn’t want to use the same yarn as the blanket. Easy care, yes, but wanted something a little more special-ish than what I’d knitted the blanket out of. I’d seen an organic cotton that looked good, but it clashed bad with the blanket. There were a couple of other choices, but they all clashed with the blanket. About the point I was going to give up and just knit it all out of the same thing, I saw some bright pink yarn. Hey, lookie there! They actually go together! One’s just LOUD pink and one’s baby pink! Oh what the hell, it’s worth a shot. After running around on Ravelry for a while, I found a couple of freebie patterns for a hat and booties. The booties were… interesting to knit up. And I think I knitted the hat 3 times before it got finished. Slippery yarn + metal DPNs = dropped stitches and swearing.

See? Rather a bright pink! But do they go together with the blanket?

Yep!

Aw yeah, that’s working juuuuust fine.

Apparently their first little girl has decided that the baby stuff is hers as well, and as a result, I’m currently working on a knitted kitty for her from a pattern I also found on Ravelry, in a soft lavender in the same type of yarn as the hat and booties. Hopefully that will appease her for a little bit til the new sister arrives.

Word of the Month: “Damp”

No really, it’s damp here. just about every day for the past week, it’s rained. I’m damp and feel like I’m about to start growing moss. NOT HAPPY! Even better, all the rain lines swooping in suddenly have wreaked havok on my sinuses, so it’s been one slow steady headache for a while. Ick. /sighs at more rainclouds incoming

This past two weeks have been chaos, as per usual these days. In WoWness, Brewfest came and went, but I got a Brewfest Kodo, and the Brewmaster title (now why can’t it say “Brewmistress?! Srsly! /pout), so that was good. Wrenn’s now rockin’ the 2 piece T8 bonus, which is also excellent. The guild finally got raid-happy again, and we’re now back to where we were progression-wise a few months ago when a bunch of the regulars went off in new directions/left game/vanished. We downed Ony in 10-man, and I would have loved to have been there for a 25-man kill with another guild, but the game decided to lock up whenever I rezzed outside when we wiped. Bleh.

Tonight, we step back into Uldar for raids again, and I’m hoping that at some point in the next few weeks, I can work on that whole 700 quests in Kal and EK for Loremaster crap. Sitting at over 600 for EK, but just over 400 for Kal. Gah. >< Then there’s the tracking down the few extras in Outlands (okay and almost two whole zones, since I totally skipped out on some of that while leveling Wrenn). So yeah, I have some plans for her in place, just need to get to them.

In knitting news, I managed to clear out just about every project that I had on the sticks. o.O Finished the stole, blocked it, and it’s wonderful. I just haven’t taken pictures of it. I finished all the baby stuff, packed it, and sent it on it’s way. In fact, it should be there today, according to FedEx. But, I forgot to take pictures of them before I shipped them off. And because I was working myself up for another project, I needed a fast distraction, so I knitted up a kitty ear hat, and, you guessed it, haven’t taken pictures of it yet. I’m sucking on this whole taking pictures thing as of late. /sigh At least the baby stuff was promised to have photos taken of them once they got to their destination. The kitty hat and the stole are all on me. Dammit.

So the thing I was working myself up for, knitting-wise? Socks. Again. Except this time, I decided two at a time was the way to go. Okay, one really long-ass circular needle it is! Two balls of yarn? No sweat! Oh wait, it’s black yarn, and I have a dark apartment. No matter! We’ll get through this! Um, “Magic Loop” method of circular knitting? Hmm never done it before but bring it on! Oh and while we’re learning a new needle method for something I’ve not really ever completed successfully, using yarn that’s causing eyestrain, with twice the number of steps since we’re doing two at a time on one needle, let’s start these from the toe-up instead of the way I learned before which was cuff-down! Whee!

For non-knitters, translate all of that to “standing on the roof in the middle of a bad storm, on one foot, replacing shingles while discussing quantum physics and playing a grandmaster in chess.” That’s where my brain is.

Fortunately, so far, I seem to be okay. I got past the cast-on for the toes, got the increases done, and am working on the body of the socks now. Nothing fancy, just simple stockingette. Using some KnitPicks Kettle Dyed (in, yes, black), and they’re looking good so far. Once I get past these, and they come out okay, then I’m breaking out the good stuff. There’s some Fleece Artist that I have that’s just begging to become some lovely socks to wear. Mwhaha!

At the same time, I’d like to knit another stole/shawl, this time in something a bit larger in size. I could have added another skein to the feather-and-fan that I did, but I wasn’t sure how far it would block out. I’ve got a better idea now, and have a few ideas in mind, so we’ll see what shakes loose in the next few weeks. I also need to work on a gift or two, plus Anne’s requested some more fingerless mitts, just in something that’s a little more “tough” to handle being used while someone’s in a wheelchair. She knows another lady in her apartment complex that would love some as well, so we’ll see how that goes.

In non-knitting and non-WoW news, …well a bunch of shit happened, some good and some bad. I’ll happily share the good, which is Mom has started work on the addition to my great-grandparents’ house that she’s currently living in. It was built in the early to mid-1930s, and they’re going to make the addition blend in with the current house: Arts & Crafts/Mississippi Delta Farmhouse. It’s gonna look good and we’ll be taking pics of the whole process.

And that’s about it for right now. Store’s decorated for Halloween, I still need to find my vampire teeth (made from dental materials and yes, I can bite someone with those and have it hurt like hell) (can also eat with them in too, which causes quite a few double-takes), and figure out what other than the kitty ears from DragonCon and the teeth I’m going to be wearing here at the store since I’m working that day.

Bottom line, insanity continues as it’s normal pace, with occasional bouts of sprinting chaos, and flash floods of water. Pictures to come at some point when the sun is shining again.

For Llanion and the BA Chat Room

Cos you all know why…

Okay… just… wow…

Breana and I were both away from the blogger’s chat room. I had a second to look back at the room while checking in freight and this is what I see:

TheStoppableForce: Hey hey hey hey hey.
TheStoppableForce: If ANYONE’S unnatural, it’s me.
TheStoppableForce: Game on.
Faulsey: Yabut that’s because your mother didn’t love you and you turned to dark forces.
TheStoppableForce: No that’s because the Lich King loved me.
TheStoppableForce: Specifically he loved me with sharp pointy things.
Llanion: Wooooow, not touching that one
TheStoppableForce: Then necromancy.
Faulsey: Which is why your mother didn’t love you!
Faulsey: I mean, it’s hard to love a ruined corpse.
TheStoppableForce: Cue the necrophiliac jokes.
Llanion: The possible slash fic here is frightening…
Faulsey: Not just any necrophiliac jokes, stop.
Faulsey: Oedipus styled necrophiliac jokes!
Nightravyn: /coming to a screeching halt and staring
Llanion: So would Arthas/Draenei DK be undead slashfic, or tentacle slashfic…?
Breana: wow
Nightravyn: o.O
Faulsey: Both.
Faulsey: Undead tentacle.
TheStoppableForce: oh great, the undead tentacle slashfic is what brings them both back
Breana: okay leaving chat for a bit until the talk of corpse sex has moved on
trizophenie: Wouldn’t that be Yogg/Draenei DK? The undead tentacle?
Faulsey: No, that would be tentacle on tentacle action.
Llanion: So wrong. So very wrong. *curls up in a little ball*
Faulsey: I’m expecting a full house of eye twitching here.
Faulsey: -pats Llanion gently… with a tentacle-

Pirrrrrate Day!

Well that was fun – Wrapup

For Day 1, click here. For Day 2, click here. For Day 3, click here.

Monday morning, Jared and I woke up and went out to breakfast with Mike and Heather. All four of us were moving slower than normal. It was a long haul weekend for us all, and Jared and I still had the drive home to deal with. Yep, we’d checked the list of panels and there wasn’t anything that begged us to drive back into Atlanta and go to it. We’d already gotten our shopping done, so it was just home time.

After we packed up the car and hugged Mike and Heather goodbye, I started driving for home, with Jared finally passing out in the passenger seat. I ended up resorting to my usual tactic of singing along with various selected road tunes on the iPhone, just not quite at the volume I normally do when I’m alone in the car. I didn’t want to wake Jared (or scare the hell out of him). Somewhere between Birmingham and Tuscaloosa, I made Jared take over driving before I fell asleep. By the time we got home, I was good and loopy. The cats were thrilled to see us… for about 5 seconds. Then it was all “Where have you been, dammit!”, “You smell like other cats!”, and “WE”RE STARVING!”. Little liars. I know Dana fed you good while we were gone. (Kika, yer tubby anyway, so shush.)

So, now that I’ve gotten sleep and I’m back at work in the “normal” mode of things again, how was Dragoncon? As usual for my trips to the con, when it was good, it was very very good. When it was bad, it was %^!@$. Okay maybe not that bad, but certainly an exercise in frustration. They’ve done a great thing in setting up certain panels to either be shown live or played later in the hotels TVs. But you can only see those if you have a hotel room in one of the big 4 hotels. If you had the time, and wanted to see a panel you couldn’t get into/had to miss, but knew the time it would be rebroadcast, there was nowhere to see it. We asked and were told one place, but it was very much NOT someplace to watch the feeds. So we were SOL. Annoying.

Normally, Dragon*Con’s security staff is very much visible and around. This time? Not so much. I’m thinking they either didn’t think they were going to have this many people show up for this year’s con and were stretched insanely thin, or the security people were seriously understaffed this year. I did have a run-in with one con security person that when I asked if the line she was keeping under control was the Hobbit line, and she snapped at me that it wasn’t. I blinked, responded politely with I was just asking, and she visibly took a breath, smiled and apologized, whereupon I smiled back and said it was okay, and all was right in the universe afterwards. So my vote’s for understaffed/overwhelmed staffers.

The panels (at least the ones we got to see) were great. That’s never been a problem (much) at this con. A lot of people were having a great time, and for the most part I did too. I wish I’d been able to see more than I did, but time constraints and lines hampered that. Next year, I’m hoping we can get hotel rooms and go from Thursday to Tuesday and really do the whole thing. That would help a lot on the stress involved.

I will say that I’ve heard mutterings about them moving it to the Georgia Convention Center when the current contracts are done with the hotels. Personally, I hope they don’t. Yeah the hotels can be a PITA at times, and the crush can get to be too much. But that’s part of what keeps Dragon*Con’s personality as the laid-back fun con. This is where the PR people don’t dare go. This is where we get to hear people say things that weren’t expected and not sent through lawyers to make sure it’s okay to say that. I’d like to keep it that way, and moving it to somewhere more “professional” like a convention center, seems to kill that flavor. They tried that in 1997. It just wasn’t the same con.

So overall, I had a blast. I’m tired, my back hurts, my eyes hurt, my feet sure as hell hurt, and my knee is probably plotting it’s suicide when I least expect it. But damn I had fun and look forward to doing it again next year. As one last parting item, enjoy an AMV that was shown while we were waiting for the FUNamation panel to start. It made me laugh hard.