I know when the heartache is over, I won't be missing you

This will be my 777^th post. Yay me. So, tomorrow is Christmas Eve. Good stuff. It really snuck up on me this year - I hadn't done any shopping, but I remedied that today after work. Got a lamp and some perfume for Mom - both things she specifically told me she wanted, and a bath basket for Janelle. I'm getting her an external CD/DVD drive for her laptop, since a replacement internal drive will be something like 150+ dollars. She's worth it, but the part isn't. Needlessly expensive replacement components - another reason I don't like laptops. But yeah, we'll get her taken care of. Gonna get Bam and Greg a birdbath, but neither Walmart nor Lowe's had one. Mom's going to check the Home Depot in Kyle for me when she drives by. I figure I'll put two rubber ducks in it, 'cause that's cute, and those will be for Saxton. He might be a little young for them at the moment, but a kid is never too young to start collecting rubber ducks, right? Anyway, those are the big three on my list. After that, there's Rose, Lilie, Ambra, and David. I'm going to get them... well, I shouldn't write that here, since they all four, at one time or another, read this. Occasionally, at least. But I know what they're getting, and I hope they like it. I think they will.

Ambra's gone for Christmas, she won't be back 'til... Tuesday? It's all quiet and lonely here. David's going to be gone 'til January, Rose and Lilie are in Austin, and neither one's much for talking at the moment.

So, relationships. In the aftermath of the Lilie situation, as I continue to adjust to our new situation, I've done a lot of thinking at work about myself, about love, about life, the universe, and
everything (hint: 42).

Stop. Stop it right here. As I've done before, I'm going to stop myself and just replace what I was going to say, rant about, whine, bitch, and moan with a pretty picture:




Ah, I feel better. I still want to talk about relationships at some opint, but not what I was going to say.

Freemasons ft Amanda Wilson -- Love On My Mind

Artist -- Title

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

I want a curry and rice girl

No, I don't know what that means. But the song, and its video, are downright hilarious.

But it's time for a dream recap. I've been going through a non-posting phase, which always annoys me. Kind of, but not that much. So yeah, I've had a few weird dreams that I thought I'd post.

Lemme think... I had one last night about WoW. It's always cool to have those dreams, but it makes me feel like a total geek. Given the amount of time I spend playing and the time David and I spend talking about it, it makes sense, but still. I think Jarrod would understand what I mean here, and probably back me up. But anyway. So it was a first person dream - IE, I was the character. Yeah, kinda geeky. Alliance, but I don't remember what else. Something like 5v5, and we were in one of the first games to occur. There were five points in a really short V shape, but really long. Almost a line, but still a fulcrum. There were some weird objectives which I don't really remember, but there were multiple ways to win, and we were experimenting with different things, and had hit on something that worked really well. There were seeds at each one, and if you could control them all, you'd grow this magical tree that would start charming foes and really help you out. Everyone else had been ignoring that, but it was a tactic our group was experimenting with. It was working fairly well, but there was this Tauren Druid with the shoulders that looked like bushes that kept screwing with us. It wasn't Ganadar. I think he was immune to it or something, and was doing whatever he could to impede us in annoying little ways.

As David said, Tauren Druids even haunt my dreams.

Moving on...

I had one about Carrie the day she sent me this crazy letter. I'd post the full text, but it's kind of private. So yeah, I was lying in bed, kind of half-asleep, thinking about her, and fell asleep for a delightful afternoon nap. I've forgotten most of the detail in this dream, but I picked her up at the airport. I think that was about it.

Two nights ago, I had one where I was reading a Star Wars book. Yeah, that's an exciting dream. But I was also watching the action, while there was a voiceover reading the text of the book. Almost like a movie, but I was definitely reading a book. It had Corran Horn in it, and he was being kind of introspective. I think Wedge might have made an appearance, but that was about it.

Then, the one I had last night. David and I were in it, as well as Mat Petersen. He was still in High School, and we were a year ahead of him, having graduated the year before. We were back to visit him, and David and I had made these really cool glasses, built on the frame of old batting helmets. (It's a lot cooler without that last part). They were *really* cool, though. Voice-activated, with a bunch of different modes - edge detection, heat, motion, etc. We were testing them out, and were talking about playing "James Bond Tag" with them, where we'd have guns that shoot special non-harming bullets, and the glasses could detect the outcome of the shot, like they'd be monitoring the game and all. There was also some bizarre subplot where I kept unplugging this big plug from an external electrical outlet right outside a classroom, and it was actually unplugging their overhead projector. The teacher was about to come out and catch me the second time I did it, but that was about when I woke up and realized it was like... um.. crap. No idea. But I went back to sleep later, and woke up around midnight? Not sure. Ran RFD with Ihatebrooms.

So yeah, I've had some weird dreams lately. Nothing spectacular, but odd enough that I still remember them later. Still have another post to make about locking horns with almost every driver this week, but I'll do that one later. I'm kind of half-heartedly cleaning some of the apartment. Already got the dishes taken care of, David got the trash out, I'm going to work on my bathroom next.



MC Vikram & Ludakrishna -- Curry and Rice Girl

At the End of Us

So for a while now, probably about four - five months, I've been planning this long, detailed, angst-ridden post about Lilie, detailing the highs and lows of our relationship, how it came to its (then) current state, and my thoughts on the matter.

I'm still going to do a little of it, but I'm going to replace the vast majority of it with a picture of a duck:



Isn't it cute? I love ducks. 'Duck' was even my first word. I tried searching on google for a better cute picture, to no avail. I tried 'cute', then 'random', then 'random cute'. So I ended up going with the picture of the duck. It's a good picture. I like it, and I'm happy with the decision.

That last paragraph was nothing more than repetitive stream-of-consciousness rambling, and it's what I was planning on doing. While that does have its beneficial aspects, there wouldn't have been any of those present in my intended post.

So instead, I'm going to do a short version. We had a good time. There were a lot of memories created, ones that I hope I'll treasure forever. I thouroughly enjoyed the time we spent together, and I'm fairly confident she did too.

But there were things that I ignored that I shouldn't have, occurences that became patterns. I'll probably always be in love with her, but I don't love her anymore.

And, to finish things off:

The UK's smallest carnivore, the weasel is nevertheless a fearsome predator, and its small size enables it to follow small rodents (its favourite food source) deep into their holes and tunnels - once the chase is on there is little chance of escape for the prey. Looking very similar to its close relative the stoat, smaller size and lack of black on the tip of the tail are the main distinguishing features. In summer what appear to be 'gangs' of weasels may be encountered, these tend not to be gangs as such, but are usually a mother with a litter of young. After a few weeks though these parties will break up as the young move off to establish their own territories.

I like weasels. When I play a wizard or sorceror in D&D, my familiar is always a butterfly or a weasel.

Groove Coverage -- The End

These real emotions are shaking up the world

Watch out, bitches. The platypus is poisonous.

---

I just noticed this. It's a signature on my guild's forum. I don't know why, but it strikes my as downright hilarious. Just had to share that.

Koda Kuma -- Real Emotion

Gnometastic, international goodwill ambassador

I should explain this chat log a bit. For whatever reason, I often get random tells from Chinese farmers. I know that happens to a lot of people as they hawk their wares... but I get them IN CHINESE. Yeah, kinda weird. Anyway. It kind of annoys me, so I respond in the only Chinese I know - swear words. Tends to get them to leave me alone. Sometimes, we trade insults (well, I can only assume they're throwing insults back at me - I do recognize every third of forth word, but I'm not sure how heavily context-dependent they are). This last response definitely sets the record for the longest response I've ever gotten... and I'm fairly certain he's telling me off the whole time. I might have to track someone down who can tell me what he said, just for kicks.

It's time I changed the combination

So here is the complete dump of the pictures I took during the New Orleans trip. A lot of them aren't terribly exciting unless you work in a Domino's, since I was documenting a lot of the cool stuff they had. That's a big chunk of the pictures. Another big chunk is just pictures of people - not necessarily in cool situations or anything, just a picture of them. There are only like three of the city itself, and none of them really do any justice to the state of everything.

That's Kassandra, when we finally got to our room and (somewhat) settled in.	Our room even had a TV. All the comforts of home.
It did have a nice view, though. We were on the ninth floor.	That's Jenn, who wasn't terribly happy about waking up Tuesday morning. 'Course, she'd be much less thrilled about waking up the next morning.
That's my bed right there - blanket, pillow, care bear.	Jenn got dressed first, then climbed back into bed.
Exterior shot of the hotel.	Military vehicle parked on the side of the road. Growing up in San Marcos, that's not a sight I'm used to.
That's Dale, the second guy to man the command center. He was off Monday and Tuesday.	Their walk-in was full of deep dish boxes. That's the middle stack we're looking at. The area to the left is just as full.
The middle boxes are all pepperoni; the lower boxes are cheese. You can also see a few sausage on top.	The guy about to cheese a pizza is Eric, from California. Really cool guy.
Ambra.	Those pepperonis are actually about the size of a quarter. Quite small.
Cita, the first of the locals to get hired.	Calvin, the VP. Of something.
They had security monitors, which was really cool.	That's our full menu. Even with that, people still asked for all kinds of random stuff. At least this time, I could just point to this and say "This is our full menu, sir."
Approved for re-opening. Yay.	Full shot of the lobby. Two security window-opening things.
They had a *huge* driver map. That's Adam providing a sense of size. He was about my height, give or take an inch.	Another security monitor, showing the lobby, side door, back door, and front walkway.
Yet another security monitor, showing the part of the store just inside the side door.	Three tiered, padded heat rack.
Boxes of parmesan and crushed red peppers. They do exist.	Their pizza peel had bent up rear edges, which was both good and bad.
That ladle was much, much wider, but much shallower, than ours. Made saucing much quicker and easier to evenly distribute the sauce.	Sink area.
They also had a weird cutter, but we weren't using it.	Command center board, which had constantly updated stats on the status of all of their open stores.
Random shot of a store.	That's the store Ambra and I worked at.
Back area.	Manager office.
They gave us candy. The thing that got my attention was Hershey's Cherry Kisses, which had a thick cherry sauce in a normal Hershey's chocolate kiss. Almost as good as a chocolate-covered maraschino cherry. Almost.	Miniature laminted driver maps. Another cool thing they had.
No comment.	That's Scott, the GM of the store we were at. Constantly reminded me of Kevin Nealon, but with a New Orleans accent.
Patrice, another of the local people that got hired. She played computer games; she pronounced Diablo "Dee - ab - low". Wasn't sure what she meant at first. I told her about gamefaqs.com.	Military vehicle getting pizza.
Adam and I spent about an hour and a half each day holding up that sign. Well, the second day, we each held up a sign.	Note: He has a visor. Bleh! I want a visor!
The Venue - The hottest club around, apparently. Nice cars out front.	An example of said cars.
Me and Ambra.	Me and Dwayne, another local that had just been hired 'cause he "Had nothing to do at night, might as well be getting paid for something." Cool guy.
Me and Scott.	Me and Patrice.
Mark, from Pennsylvania. Didn't like him.	Samantha (left) and Samantha (right). Samantha said that she wanted to take all of us back to her store, since we were all "Cool as shit and actually had senses of humor."
The exposed wiring at our hotel.	Also, exposed duct work.
They gave us hard hats.	Devastation.
Ambra.	Jenn.
Not sure.	Dale at the command center, as we're getting ready to leave.
A picture of the picture of a store that got really flooded.	That couple was coming in as we were leaving.
The four of us.	Had to get a shot of military guys with pizza. "That's not how you eat those wings, soldier!"
Devastation.	Car on a fence.
Boarded-up Sonic.	FEMA center for pets.
"I'm proud of my ladies." One of the best quotes the whole trip.	"Elysian Fields Ave." I think that's awesome.
Obligatory big church picture.	We were operating a trailer that made and sold pizzas. That's where Jenn and Kassandra were working.
Inside shot. Kinda.	Ricky would take that bike around and sell pizzas.
Subway had their full menu, but they closed at 3. They even had the Spicy Italian, which Mom likes, but you can't order (directly) here.

Sugababes -- Conversation's Over