I will rise now

I am the biggest dork in the world.

So, I worked today (and found out that tomorrow's my last day, apparently). After work, I went over to jitb to grab a large orange soda (which Ambra is now drinking most of). And finally, she was there.

It was weird.

I started by trying to apologize for the weirdness that had occured last week, with the pizza and everything. She asked me if I wanted the soda for free, she didn't want to charge me for it. I was all flustered and didn't know what to say, so I ended up paying for it. It was just basically me being a dumbass, it's hard to really repost any details. At one point, she said "I can honestly say that's never happened to me before", which I guess is good, since she was bringing that whole thing back up, instead of trying to act like it didn't happen? But at that point, we were just kind of sitting (and standing) there, looking at each other. As noted earlier, I wasn't particularly uncomfortable with that specific situation, as opposed to any other situation I might find myself in with her. So I kind of just drive off. Yeah, I know. I said something, though, to indicate that I was leaving, not like I just drove off or something. But it was definitely me abruptly terminating the session, or something like that.

I'll try again tonight.

A Man Called Adam -- Love Forgotten

All my illusions, in my head

So, I did the WoW post. That leaves Lilie, Rebecca, Ambra, and work. One of those is significantly less fun than the other three. Well, that, and one of those is much *more* fun than the other three. Astute readers already know which is which. That leaves us with two topics, both of which are somewhat... anemic, at best. So, I'll start with the more interesting of the two.

Rebecca.

There really hasn't been much, if any, progress. Well, kinda. Not what would typically be considered "progress" in the relationship sense, but, well, there has been action. Movement. Something.

So I went through the Drive-Through when I got off of work Saturday night; she was there. I just got the usual - one large orange soda, nothing odd there. However, as usual, just seeing her put this big, goofy grin on my face and definitely raised my spirits (Note: to find out why they needed raising, find the job post and read it. Wait, it's not up yet. I guess you'll just have to use your imagination.) But yeah, I pulled up, and there she was. As usual, I felt all icy in my gut - fear. I promised myself I wasn't going to be afraid to meet her eyes, and I did. And it was fantastic. Among other things - boobs and wings - I love eyes. I love making eye contact with someone I like, it's just an incredible feeling. Something about the eyes being a window to the soul and all that, I don't know. But making eye contact with people is kind of 'my thing'. I don't know. Though it kind of freaks out people, I love to hold eye contact with people *way* beyond societal norms. That was one of the things I really liked about my relationship with Mindy - sometimes, we'd just lie there and gaze into each other's eyes, not saying anything. Occasionally, I miss those times. Occasionally.

But I digress.

So yeah, I promised myself that I was going to not avoid her eyes for once, I was going to make, and possibly sustain, eye contact with her. And, frightening as it was at first, I did. I looked her right in the eyes, and I smiled. Still didn't say anything other than the standard "Thank you." as she gave me my orange soda, but still. Baby steps. I want to say I saw at least recognition in her eyes - something.

Let me clarify the part that comes after the implied 'but'. There's two ways to finish the statement. The first is "but there just wasn't anything there", the second is "but I'm not sure". I'm not sure which way I mean it. There might have been something, and I've just not grown accustomed to looking at her eyes to recognize it, or she just didn't recognize me. That, or she was like, "OMG, who is this freak?"

Either way, I went home smiling.

The next day, I was working five to close. Oddly enough, that will probably end up end up being my last closing shift at Domino's (more on that later). But yeah, worked 5 - close, had Ashley and Joe inside. At one point, Kyle asked if he could go to JitB (Jack-in-the-Box). I told him sure, just that I wanted him to check and see if Rebecca was there. So he did. He went up to the counter, and asked the person if there was someone named Rebecca there. She pointed her out to him, and he went on his merry way. After he came back, Ashley went through the drive-through and had a little, uh, conversation with Rebecca. It went something like "This is going to be weird, but, uh, you know that guy in the big red truck that always comes through here and orders an orange soda? Well, I work with him, and he wants to send you a pizza. What kind do you like?" As far as I can ascertain, her response was "Um, cheese."

At that point, I was kind of backed into a corner. Yeah, I could have told Ashley not to go, and I should have, 'cause I'm not normally a 'have someone else go talk to someone for you' kind of person. But she did, which left me in an intersting position. So, I sent the pizza over. Had Kenny deliver it - he walked in, said he had a pizza for Rebecca from Billy.

Yeah.

Now, I have no idea what to do. I'm afraid to go through the drive-through and run into her, 'cause I'd have NO IDEA what to say. "So, um, like your pizza?" "Hi, I'm Billy." Yeah, this whole thing was just botched from the get-go. I don't think I was ready for anything to happen with this whole thing. First and foremost, I have this bad feeling that she's like sixteen. I mean, she has braces, which is usually a younger thing. Also, acne. So, that's two indications that she's probably younger. Now, I don't generally have a problem with the age thing - Mindy and I were three and a half, almost four years apart, and that was never an issue (mostly). But there is a limit. And yeah, the range that's not weird gets wider the older you get. But 16 and 23? That's a little much for me. I mean, she works the overnight a lot, which is why I'm thinking she's at least 18. I just talked to Rose, and she's thinking the same thing, that that's probabaly and indication that she's not 16 or something. She's more familiar with the applicable laws then I am, and I have almost no knowledge whatsoever, except an interview at Target when I was a senior in high school where they said something about me being young and that affecting my potential hours, since I couldn't work late. I'm not going to just rely on hearsay (as people tend to do when they're quoting OSHA regulations regarding breaks, and almost always get it wrong, especially concerning Texas's idiosyncracies), but it's a point that can't be discounted, either, without further investigation. And yeah, not worried about legality, since it's not like, even if through some bizarre chain of events, we did hook up or something, sex wouldn't come up for a while.

So there's those issues, and then the whole non-thing with Lilie. Though, apparently, I shouldn't worry too much about that. More on that one later.

Unknown (Megamix)

Is it making you crazy, that I'm happy?

So, I'm still working on updates. I want to talk about work, Lilie, Ambra, Rebecca, my apartment... that's about it. But I'm not going to do that right now, since I have to leave for work in a little while.

But I do want to post about the weird dream I had last night. It wasn't like "OMG WEIRD!" or anything, just a little unusual. I was walking around... somewhere. A school? Something like that - there were a lot of people around my age. But yeah, saw Mindy. Again, it wasn't Mindy like she looks now, but how she looked when we first started dating, except grown up, like she had never changed, just gotten older. I ran up and hugged her.

Yeah, that's all.

Oh, and Janice was there.

That was the weird part.

Sugababes -- Whatever Makes You Happy

Do you believe it, can you receive it?

So, I've got some updating to do. I'm going to start with WoW, in its own post.

I figure that's the one part of my life a decent portion of people couldn't care less about, and that's all that's in this post. So, if you don't play WoW, or do play WoW but couldn't care less about what I've done, skip this post. There are some pretty pictures at the end, though, so you might take a glance at those. And don't forget, you can click on the thumbnails for a larger picture.

Gnometastic:

I haven't really played Gnometastic since Ihatebrooms hit, oh... 40 or so. I did get to take her to MC a few times with Grief, managed to get the Felheart Bracers, threw a +9 Stam enchant on those. This was right before the Tier .5 upgrade chain. Good times. But that remains her only epic. She still has her Tier 1 PvP Pants, Robes, and boots. I've got 7/8 Tier 0 (well, minus the 3 pieces I've upgraded), just need the shoulders. Stuck on the 45 minute Baron run.

Ihatebrooms:

This is where all the action is. I'm up to, um, I think 4 epics. Picked up the Fang of Venoxis in a pug ZG run; I pair that with Penelope's Rose (+10 Int/Stam/Spr) for now. I have the Hide of the Wild, and got my ZG Bracers as well. I also have the tier .5 gloves. Oh! So Esar, this warrior, was doing these pug ZG runs later at night, I was going on those. We would always down Snake and Bat, and wipe repeatedly on Spider. Last week, I went on the run as normal, but everyone was in Blindside. I was invited to join, so I /gquit from Grief without any warning and joined up. It's been AWESOME. I love this guild - I actually log on Vent just to talk to them all, which is a first. I've been in a ton of guilds, but never felt I was friends with any of them. I've switched all of my characters over. The players are all pretty good. On our second ZG run as a group, we cleared the entire instance in, um, 3 hours or so. Not that fastest ever, but A) we had no locks, B) it's only our second run as a group, and C) that time includes the fish boss and Jindo (again, no locks). We only wiped once, on our first attempt on Bloodlord. JP, our secondary tank, was supposed to tank the raptor, but he resisted all the taunts and hate-building, and killed me. After that, Cattibrie, our main tank, went down fairly soon after, and from there, it was just one solid wipe. No soulstones, but one pally did manage to catch a rez from the spirits while it was resetting. So yeah, pretty pro run. We've also been running AQ20. Had some initial problems on Ayamiss our first two runs; third run, we one-shotted him. That third run, we also downed Ossirian, finally. We've never downed Moam, since we have no warlocks. So that's fun. They're doing Ony on Sunday, which is going to be a BLAST, but I won't be there, working. There's an off-chance I might be able to get Rose to guest-heal for me, but doubtful. However, we are hitting MC on Tuesday, if we can get enough people. That'll be great, to be there for the initial drops, before everyone else has a ton more DKP than me. So yeah, gearing up will be nice, no more Dreadmist Robe and Mantle of Lost Hope. Oh yeah, speaking of which, we pulled off the 45 minute Baron run last night, did it with no problems whatsoever. Really pro group, I didn't know any of them.

Ereneda

Finally hit 38, getting close a mount. I'm going Fire/Frost right now, probably going to stick with that. Got an Illusionary Rod and Robes of the Beguiler when a guildie ran me through SM in exchange for two Stockade runs. Aoe'ing is fun.

Sanallexi is Rose's little gnome warrior. We just had to pose for some pictures on the chandeleer in one of the taverns in Stormwind. Bears and gnomes being oh-so-cute together, and all that.	I took this screenshot just before turning in a step in the Ony attunement quest chain. I'm level fifty-nine in this screenshot. Notice a few things: Wait. I'm looking at it, and it doesn't match up. Compare time played this level to time played this session, then XP gained this session to this level. It was supposed to show that I leveled from 59 to 60 in one marathon session, which included doing the first two parts of the .5 upgrade chain (Bracers, then Gloves/Belt), along with getting a bunch of Ony done, all in one marathon session, but it doesn't. Not really, But I did.
My successful non-harming-the-princess BRD run, where we used the lava-jumping shortcut to bypass the vast majority of the instnace. I had no idea such a thing existed; it was really nice to use. But I like this picture, with me on the throne, and my sycophants and courtiers gathered around.	Enjoying a rare moment of peace in Silithus, catching the sunset from the massive arch in Cenarion Hold.
Dramaz! I went on like three Baron runs with this really bad warlock named Babiecutie. On the first run, she kept doing stupid stuff like aoe'ing a single mob, wanding when we needed dps and she was at full health/mana and wasn't going to pull aggro, running around randomly, etc. I called her on it finally at the abomination gate, and she said that she was busy looking at talents, and it didn't really matter since this was the only time she was going to run Baron (this was the first run with her), and was going to spend most of her time in MC/BWL. That proved not to be true. Oh, and she kept body-pulling mobs. The third run I went with her, I just stopped healing her. On her fifth death or so, she booted me from the party, then hearthed. The party thought I left. They messaged me, we got it straightened out, got a good mage, and wiped up the rest of the stuff. Good times. To this day, we hate each other.	I just happen to think this is a pretty picture. This was taken when me and two epic paladins fought the Scourge invasion. Dual-consecrate, with some holy nova to taste.
I was out in EPL when the server was about three minutes from going down; It was going to go down about four seconds after my hearthstone's cooldown was up, so I wouldn't have time to hearth back. For whatever reason, I really wanted to be in IF when I logged in the next day, so I ran into Stratholme as a part of someone else's group, then left. Auto-hearth! The part that made so cool is that I made it with like three seconds to spare.	First time I saw Hakkar, with Blindside. We killed him.
Me sporting my new guild tabard, after joining Blindside. I happen to really like the way it looks. For those of you wondering, I'm wearing the Crown of Caer Darrow, Mantle of Lost Hope, Robes of the Exalted, and Virtuous Bracers/Gloves/Belt.	Mag down! This was a semi-pug MC. It was about twenty LoM members, about eight Blindside, and another eight random people. We got Mag and Luci down without too much trouble, but had two pats kill us, and we just lost steam there.
The guild lined up for a mounted shot before Ossirian during a short break.	Innervate stacks. Notice my buffs along the upper right side of the screen, then look at my mana regen / tick above the combat log, in the lower right area.
We had a wicked-fun guild UBRS run. We basically chain pulled everything between Rend and the Beast, then chained the next room as well. Tons of fun, tons of dps. One scared pig.	Kayze's the guild leader, real fun guy. Honk honk mother fuckers indeed.
I totally melee'd down that yeti. No spells, other than Power Word: Shield and renew. I've got like a 292 dagger skill.	This is us after we finally managed to down Ossirian.
We then went and one-shotted Ayamiss the Hunter, who is a total bitch.	This is the 45 minute Baron run I went on where we totally pwned the SHIT out of that instance. That screenshot only shows three minutes left, but that's because we took our time after we downed the Black Guard Skeletons (the 5 elites that come out after Rammstiend), rebuffed, etc.
Another picture from that run. My Devout Skirt dropped as an added bonus.	Final picture from the 45 minute Baron run. The next step was to turn in 3 mooncloth, 3 Dark Iron Bars, 4 Cured Rugged Hides, and 20 Enchanted Leather. Cost me a little over 50 gold, all told, not counting the stuff I had on hand already.

Groove Coverage -- God is a Girl