Where in the World....

Well, Christmas was awesome. I got two different Lilith Saintcrow books, and Torr got me a Black Hills Gold heart pendant. I did not expect jewelery, the books were my favorite, but the necklace is pretty. I like glittery things as much as the next girl.

My DvD Drive died on Christmas Day. Torr got Spore... which i might add is addicting as all bleep! :) I found out that my DvD Drive died then when it wouldn't read the DvD. We were under a blizzard warning, and the stores were already all closed, but my brother-in-law had an extra DvD drive lying around, so we swapped that in, and then found out something nasty. My Hard Drive was dead.The hard drive in my computer was older than this blog. It finally coughed, wheezed and died on me.

Remember that blizzard warning? Well, it dumped almost three feet of snow on us. That kinda limits my options to staying in doors for a day or two. It the second day after the blizzard that we managed to dig ourselves out. Snow drifts are still high here. When we were able to get the car out, Walmart, as usual for the bane of my existence (yet still at times being the only place in town open to acquire things) didn't have internal hardrives in stock anywhere. So, I ended up waiting another day. Got a new 160 Gig Hard Drive yesterday.

As I type this World of Warcraft is downloading in the background. I still have to go back and grab any of the Mods I normally use. But I should be modded up and in game tomorrow. I've been missing my fix and staying up very late, and then sleeping in until well past noon.

That's been my week. How was yours?

Sorry Guys

I just want to start out by saying I'm sorry for posting even less than I usually do. But the last few weeks here in the real world have been a bit of an upheaval. I've been working either every single day or not at all, juggling three college classes all demanding various things of me (two of which are just paper after paper after paper). Some days the only thing I end up doing is getting up in the morning write half a paper, go to school, come home, continue writing, eat, save what I've written and then fall into bed. Other days its add work for the evening into there. Basically, school and work have been making so many demands on me of late that i have not had time to play Wow, or when I do, I just do it to try and destress between Math tests and papers coming up due.

On the math testing though, I'm highly pleased to report a B on the last test. Now I just have one more section of this class to get through and then I shouldn't have to deal with Algebra again for a little bit of time!

For Thanksgiving I will again be going to my parents house. Now here's to hoping I can just survive this semester and the next one isn't as scary... of course, if I can manage to pass this math course and the next one lined up, that will clear the last gen ed hanging over my head.

Brief /AFK

Well, even though most people that read my blog wouldn't even notice- since I seem to be running about a week between posts- I'll be away from the keyboard and the Internet for a few days while I'm packing and moving half-way across town. I might pop in and post something brief after the 'Net comes back up on Saturday Afternoon.

And, because the people that really need to know this kinda stuff are either at work at the moment or are more than likely asleep this will also serve as notice to the guild mates that need to see it most.

Well, gotta get a lot of packing done tonight. See everyone in a few days! And feel free to read anything else that you keep putting off in my blog.

/wave

And a reminder to all my guild mates: We are the weavers, we are the web, we are the spiders, we are the thread. We are what makes Bloodriver a great place to be. I doubt the meeting will be anything earth-shattering, but I'll be reading a transcript come Sunday Afternoon.

Rally Inc!

Mind you, I normally don't mention real life things, however; when I'm living on a main artery for the town and can thankfully walk to work, and something that's happening a few cities over actually has an impact on my city, and region, and spikes my state's economy... I'm posting on it.

Sturgis Bike Week. August 3-9 according to all official leaflets, but anyone that's lived and worked through one in the past knows better than to trust an official leaflet. It basically starts tonight, and goes until next Sunday. Motorcycles roaring all hours of the day and night. Its going to be so loud, that I'd warned guildmates ahead of time not to expect me on vent.

We've been seeing more and more bikes since at least last Monday. And since I'm living in an outlying city in the Northern Hills, the main point of origin must already be reeling from all the bikes in town.

I do enjoy looking at the various bikes, its just the level of noise at times gets to a person, the vibration settles somewhere around the back teeth, like a constant buzz that doesn't let up until a week after it should.

All I can say? Hope I survive yet another... next year is going to be completely insane. Its 70 years next year. Well, gotta get dressed for work... we are wearing Rally apparel this week... obviously! Wish me luck... I just might need it.

/afk

Well guys, I'm just posting to let anyone that reads know that I will be out of the country for two weeks. Heading to New Zealand.

Casavel sits at 75 and can gain rested xp while I'm away. It will help me make that jump from 75-80 easier.

If a post does pop up here? Well, I am taking a laptop with me, and as long as we have the correct converter, I shouldn't blow anything up. But, Have Bow should be quiet while I'm off wandering an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

Happy Hunting!

All My Bags are Packed...

Well, its moving time for me, here in the Real World and in the World of Warcraft. I've spent most of today doing nothing but putting things in boxes, loading those boxes into the van to come back and pack more boxes. And wait for my husband and his best friend to get back so I can load those boxes into the van. Then repeat the entire process over again.

My husband and I found a cheaper apartment that is closer to campus and work... and oddly enough, is far larger than our current place. So, we took the day off from work and have been scrubbing, cleaning, herding cats (much easier than politicians- you can pick up a cat), and boxing things up to move. I'm at the old apartment tonight, since we still have 'net here, and don't yet over at the new one. That will be up and running Monday, I hope.

On the WoW side of things, I've moved my 73 hunter Tzia over to Wyrmrest Accord. My 65 Paladin will soon follow. I knew I shouldn't have pulled her out of the que. Ah well, live and learn. I'll take her on a quick mining loop of EPL for Thorium, and then stuff her back in the transfer line.

With my paladin's move off Quel'dorei this signals something significant. Dione, as she was known on QD is my last high level character that everyone knew. With her transferring, I leave QD behind completely. I will probably leave my Blood Elf hunter there, just in case I want to log in and poke certain people (Elin, Rivey, or Dutchess) to say hi and chat for a bit.

But, aside from the three people I listed? There is nothing left on that server for me. My characters might as well be in a guild with a lot of people I enjoy playing with. The door is always open,for old friends to drop in and say hi.

My home is the Horde, on Wyrmrest Accord. You can reach me @

Tzia
c/o Bloodriver
Horde Faction
Wyrmrest Accord, USA

What A Mess!

Today has been a bit of a mess. I had planned to register to vote -- maybe tomorrow if I have enough time between a job interview and cleaning up a watery mess that started my day off.

Yes, I woke up this morning to water ballooning underneath paint as it dripped through the ceiling and ran down the wall, half over, half under the paint. Lucky me... it was in my room, the same wall that my computer sits against. The Guy woke me up to a "Hon, wake up and take a look at the wall."

I woke up, looked at the wall I was facing, went "Hun?" And then rolled over to the paint puffing out oddly in two places on the wall... right above my computer. Meep! Needless to say, I scrambled out of bed and started disconnecting my computer, killing its power with the flip of a switch while The Guy went to call the landlord and get maintenance down here. We moved both our computers out to the kitchen, re assembled them, and that is now where I sit. The hallway and half my room carpet are soaked clear through, the hall closet and my shoes are a total mess. I'm so glad I'm not wearing tennis shoes to that interview tomorrow... I'd squish when I walked.

The apartment above ours had the toilet over flow while the tenant was out of the house... no clue how long it takes water to seep through floor boards, run down the wall and soak the carpet. I woke up to The Guy complaining first about the floor being wet... I figured one of the kitties had had an accident on the floor, and went back to sleep. I was of the opinion that he could clean it up for once.

Then he noticed the wall... which really got me up. We found the closet AFTER we'd called the landlord about the water ballooning the paint. His work uniform, shoes and all were hanging in the hall closet and well... laundry done, shoes hopefully be semi dry enough to wear by the time he has work tomorrow. What a mess... don't know how long its going to take the carpet to dry, and the paint will have to come off that wall... it won't dry properly otherwise. I don't like the idea of mold much.

Basically? My day has not been a pleasant one. Though, I will say this is the second weirdest thing that has happened to me... weirdest has to be waking up to a bed collapsing underneath me. But that's another story for another day.

Why was the bear on the bike?

Okay, I read the Odd News through Yahoo every day between blog posts and playing WoW. There have been times when a headline will grab my attention... and then there are times when I almost want to write to the editor and ask if s/he fell asleep at the desk, just due to basic errors with subject verb agreement, tense shifts, and then there are sentences that are just worded wrong (which is how it ends up on Headlines on Monday Nights).

Anyways, I ran into an article this morning titled, Teacher OK After Crashing into Bear on a Bicycle. When I first saw it, I thought, car crash + biking bear statue... this did come out of Montana after all! But, no. Its the fact that a teacher, riding a bike, crashed into a black bear at about 25 miles an hour. Now, that in itself is a news piece. Its just the title is worded badly.

My HS journalism teacher would have asked me, with one eyebrow raised, "Why is the bear on the bike? Was it driving?!" if I'd turned in such an article headline. In fact, he'd have grinned over the idea, then gone scary serious and tossed the entire thing back at me, pages ruffling, and reach for the next article of the person that was standing in line.

I'd have scurried back to my little thirty year old wooden desk (I swear my Dad had it when it was new), feeling like an idiot, and frantically tried to find a new title, because if the title sucked? There was no way Cecil was even going to LOOK at the rest of the article. That English Teacher -who taught Comp 3, Comp 4, Journalism, Poetry, and Greek and Roman Myth- did more to teach me the basics of journalism and creative writing than any course I've taken in college to date.

I try and keep such things in mind when writing- even here, because it makes my writing better. And you'll never catch me writing about a bear on a bike, or even implying it. He taught me a lot... that gruff, barking bear of a teacher.

So, next time you are writing up a blog entry, take careful stock of your title, is it implying what you wish for it to, or is it saying something completely different from the body of the article? And if its different, which is easier to re-write, the title, or the entire article?

Personal Life Stuff

I have always tried to keep my WoW Life and Personal Life seperate on this blog. I've not let my readers (what few there are, and I thank each and every one of you) get tangled up in my personal life by keeping this WoW related in its entirety. However, I'm going to briefly break that rule today.

Well, a number of things are going on in my personal life right now. This means until the general sh!t storm blows over, I probably won't be posting on the blog as often as I normally do. I will try to get in at least three a week on the blog, but for now, please, please bear with me.

I'm generally under a lot of stress, relating to job hunting and everything that goes with it. I'm to the point that I want to scream and throw things, as I admitted to my Moon Guard Guildmates last night... and when I get to that point, nobody is happy... even my cats are hiding right now, if not tipping over the litter box... what a mess!

So, if you wouldn't mind, send some positive energy my way if you would. Cause everything is feeling skewed sideways right now, like an arrow with a bad fletching. And I'm getting tired of it.

Pop ups and Spam-me-not

I found a pop window up sitting on my computer task bar this morning after I finished typing my quote of the day in. After having read several unfortunate instances of hacking, I am letting my virus scan completely run, and then piggybacking Ad-Aware - 107 days of old deffinintions? Oops! Correcting that right now - and Spybot S&D, which is also probably out of date! >.< Anyways, this leads me to my daily post...

I wonder how many people remember last year about this time in WoW. Tzia would have still been on another server- pvp at that, and I don't think Quel'dorei would have been up just yet. Either way, I remember the sheer volume of SPAM I kept getting from random level 1 characters whispering me about once every minute - if I was lucky it was once every two - just to see if I wanted to buy gold, and my mail box was full of the junk as well. Deathwing how I do not miss thee!

I remember dealing with it calmly for a day or two, simply because I knew I wasn't the only one, my husband was getting a ton of it, as was his best friend, who was running Scholo with his brother to farm for money for his epic flying mount - I think it was the epic flying mount.

Then I got lucky enough to get Tzia into an instance - I want to say ZF at the time... yeah, a year ago Tzia was barely in her late 40s... scary eh? But, I got her in, and was running along killing things quite happily - then I got hit with about 7 spam tells about WoW gold all at the same time, and missed a pretty important notation about not clicking Bly due to it. Needless to say I wiped the group... oops.

Luckily the group leader was pretty cool about it, and suggested I get a mod called spam-me-not. I said okay, jotted down the name of the mod for later review and we tried again, successfully killing Bly and crew and getting me a shiny blue ring.

Side note: I want that on Yaz!!

After the run disbanded I got off my computer, walked down the hall to the present day computer room, knocked, and stuck my head in, to talk to my husband's best friend and ask about the mod I had just heard about. Lucky for me, computer geek best friend to husband - GIDustin - had heard of the mod, and had tested it out. He backed up the suggestion on my getting it, confirmed I could find it at curse and that it was "safe" for me to download and install on my at-the-time shiny, new, pretty, pink computer! (What can I say, I'm a girl?)

Side note 2: I might also add, Dusty put together my computer, all I told him was, Pink. Can run WoW and Half-Life2. Okay? Good!

I went back to my room, downloaded and installed it. It worked like a dream. When I later transfered over to Quel'dorei it needed an update, because they were dealing with the same volume of spam that Deathwing had been, just minus th mailbox portion of it. I was blissfully silent after that Spam-me-not update, and even today, running through a town, I will sometimes see Spam-me-not chirp at me that a gold spammer has been blocked - a single line of text is better than a paragraph!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! And many happy returns for everything you do this upcoming year.

Well, I just showed my husband how to use chopsticks, and we found out that chicken-flavored ramen with cashews is a very tasty combo... might have to do that next time I want a late night snack.

Just realized its 3 in the morning here, the 1st of January... and I go back to school in six days from this one. Ugh. But then again, maybe its a good thing to be headed back to school. I'll be able to break my WoW time up with studying History and Sociology - I hope.

Also, realized I need to refill my FSFA form for the up-coming school year! I think some of the deadlines are the day after Valentine's!