Exquisite Turmoil

Alas, this was supposed to be longer but Dan finished buying his crap in EVE sooner than I expected. More to come after we finish Unrest tonight. But first, check out my sexy man in his Halloween costume. It isn’t quite complete yet, just need boots and pants. And some hair changes ^_^;

—> Here’s the more to come. Got Kaorin’s EoF class hat as well as a Cruel Innovator’s Ring (poor Ven camped that thing foreeeeeever and Kaorin got it on her first run). All in all, things went well. Syslik didn’t die once and Kaorin managed to do most of the healing. Agro was pretty solid, fun was had, etc.

On to what I really want to talk about. My sexy, sexy man. Who is the most amazing Vash in the world (aside from the real one, of course, not that he’s really real). Not only is he the sexiest Vash ever, but he has also agreed to buy me a Bowflex Revolution! That being the newest, spiffiest, and hottest one. Because he is awesome like that. And loves me. And now I *really* owe him. Eep.

But anyway, I am now a happypanda (I don’t think that’s even a phrase, but it should be since sadpanda is). We are going to pick up my sexy Bowflex tomorrow.. and if this guy isn’t there when we arrive, I’m going to go postal. Like seriously. I am so excited, so if he lets me down I’m going to torch his house or something. But anyway, off to bed to dream about my Bowflex!

Link of the day: Bowflex Revolution!

As promised, my blog about Castle Mistmoore (not that anyone likely cares or would hold me accountable for not posting about Castle Mistmoore since I don’t think anyone really reads this :p). So yesterday, not being a schoolday (yay, as opposed to today being a schoolday — boo), I finally managed to get into a group around 2:30. Our goal? Camping Sage in Castle Mistmoore~! After a long time spent clearing up through the Catacombs with my nice slow group, we finally made it to the back door of CMM (commonly known as Stairs). With four members. Because the rest deserted us on the clear up. Leaving me the only healer. So my oh-so-intelligent group recruits a SIXTY-FIVE mystic for like.. the meanest single group zone in the game. At least in my opinion. Man CMM is nasty. Shit hits like trucks, respawns sooo fast, has nasty AEs..

So anyway, this obviously didn’t go well. We wiped like five times in the first hallway, everyone said screw it and bailed. Luckily another group who was already camping Sage (wish I’d known it was camped when I started clearing with the other group) was on the lookout for a second healer and CoH’d me right in. I looked at the tank with sadness (Zatar, 70 SK) and realized that he was using a 2h instead of a sword and board for what I consider to be a very difficult zone (obviously). And then I doubletaked. Permastun? WTF? Apparently the Voulge of Endless Lamentation is a drop from one of the Epicx2 in Shard of Fear. Unfortunately Zatar couldn’t remember the name of the mob (clearly not an EQ1 player) and said it was something like Agony or whatever. While I don’t know for sure which epicx2 are in the zone, I’m going to guess it was Terror? Since I thought only Terror and Dracoliche were there as epicx2. Anyway, despite the broken weapon of uberness we managed to wipe right after I was CoH’d in.. I’m guessing they spent too long looking for a replacement second healer that the spawn cycle got off, and everything in the room basically popped on us at once. At this point the conjurer and wizard left, leaving us with SK, mystic, 66 dirge, and me. We grabbed a 70 swash and a 67 conjurer and got going. We cleared back into the room, made a few kills, wiped again, got back to stairs, and the tank had to leave for a raid. When the tank had to go, the mystic took off as well. This was very sad. I wanted my pants. The conjurer (Vezstran) provided us with a new tank — a 70 pally whose name I can’t remember other than that it started with an A and was totally awesome — and I provided us with a new backup healer (he’ll kill me for calling him backup when he stomped me on the healparse), Dan!

We cleared back in to Sage immensely successfully and plunked down for a camp until 11:30 that night. We got two Novum Tectums (whee), one for Vezstran and one for myself (even more whee). We also got a set of legs for the dirge, then a set for the swash. Shortly after dirge legs dropped, the dirge “had to go” and my old friend Prophit came out to play! This was a double bonus as A) I like Prophit and B) Prophit already has his legs). During our downtime camping Sage I ran Keth out to CMM and had Vezstran CoH her into Sage room in case we needed more summonings after Vezstran left, since his girlfriend was harping on him. We got another Sage spawn, conj legs dropped (of course :p) and then Vez had to go. We replaced him with a Yadinal (who I texted to bring him running, he’s always so reliable!). After this, we managed to get another Sage spawn and get some legs for our tank. This, of course, meant that everyone had legs, except for me, since Yad and Ven already had theirs. But, of course, Sage decided that he didn’t like me and didn’t want to spawn and drop more legs for me. Around this time, Xivali had to go and Prophit’s time was running short. When Xivali left we invited a troub out and set to. Prophit took off, we grabbed a monk in his place. The troub, who managed to somehow be slow as hell despite having Selos, arrived at the same time as the monk.

CoHing was had by all and camping continued apace. You will note, however, that neither troub nor monk had pants. This made me sad.. no more guaranteed pants for me. Not that it mattered, since Sage only spawned once more during the night and dropped a wooden chest (that bastard). So, in short, everyone who camped Sage for more than an hour got pants except for me. And I camped them for longer than anyone :p Ah well, such is life. I’m glad I got my Novum in any case. And I will get pants damnit >.< I just wanted them so badly because then I wouldn’t have to worry so much about trying to box Garanel. Not that he’s particularly nasty, but since the fury is on the same account as my tank, it makes things rather difficult. Boxing to Priest of Fear for the hat is no issue… boxing to Garanel without Selise *is* an issue. I just hope I manage to get my six set bonus *before* RoK comes out.

On a more positive note, Rith reinstalled EQ2 last night and was able to log on for a bit and chat with us. Guild chat was full of discussion of Scarlett Johannson’s breasts, Firiona Vie, and Scarlett + me porn. Life was good.

Link of the day: Everquest Movie

More inc about stupid sage camp in the morning. I’m too tired right now. Suffice it to say (for now) that after… 8ish hours? Everyone got their pants except me. And I was there longest ;-;

How could you not love a man who sleeps with a stuffed animal? Dan actually asked Anya for her bunny last night because it was “so cute and he wanted to snuggle it” while he fell asleep. Well, I thought he was so cute that I had to get a picture! Enjoy!

So, we decided to do a Shard of Fear run tonight, check out the new zone.. yeah, didn’t go so well. To start off, when you first zone in there are “scarelings” flapping around. They look like cucuys from Unrest, have an enormous agro range, and like to agro you as you’re standing at the IZ still waiting for the healer to zone. Very reminiscent of Plane of Fear, at least. So after one death (well three, if you count Selise, Syslik, and Kethryveris), Venovia zoned in and was able to get us rezzed, and things progressed apace. There’s a little dead dooder lying on the floor and you get a quest from his journal to find some glasses. After wandering around for a bit, we found his goggles and got a quest update, commanding us to destroy the bone towers.

The bone towers are guarded by level 73^^^ fetid fiends, and encounters of 3 72^^ fetid fiends. The single 73^^^s aren’t bad, but once you have to fight one of the encounters, good lord! They have a 10 second stun and they like to chain cast it. We definitely spent at least 40 seconds stunned at one point. Obviously, this makes them very difficult to defeat if you don’t get a resist on your healer or someone who can cure your healer, because they also hit pretty damned hard as well. Anyway, when you kill all of the fiends outside of the tower, it spawns a named (who drops no loot, the bastard) and once you defeat him you have “destroyed the tower”. We destroyed two bone towers, and spent a little time hunting named.

We killed one named spider who wasn’t that difficult, although he did have a nasty AE (but after the first try we just kept everyone but my tank out of range). On the second pull the named went crazy and like.. ran away (pathing bug, I’m sure) and ran through a bunch of other spiders and brought them back to us. Third time’s the charm, of course, and down he went, dropping his crappy cloth hat (congrats Yadinal, though if you wear it I’ll have to kill you :p) Continuing along, we got a few random drops from random mobs. Notably, Dawnfear the Reaper, which went to Syslik, much as I wanted some cowbell for myself, I’m afraid I never use 2h.

Next up on the list was Fearmonger, a gorilla with a fear. Pretty straightforward and easy, went down easily and dropped crap for loot, whee for wooden chests. After that, we decided to go after the named monkey on top of the tower, Kyr’Tok, who will henceforth be referred to as “Assrape”. On our first pull of Assrape, I went to the top of the tower and jumped off with him in tow. I’m pretty sure that I died before I even hit the ground. Pull #2 consisted of the same thing, but with reactives up and my 30 second mit buffs running. This time we managed to drop him to about 40% health but Assrape has a massive knockback and was very fond of blowing me out of heal range. As well as blowing everyone else around while they were trying to cast. So then we figured hey, lets go inside the temple and pull him into there, that way we can corner him and not worry about knockbacks. Unfortunately, this resulted in my death before making it into the temple. Our next attempt was to have Syslik pull with DA. The theory here was that he would make it into the temple at 100% health with his uber DA running, Selise would grab agro, and we would perform some assraping of our own. Unfortunately, Assrape’s AE ignores the z-axis and managed to hit everyone inside the temple while Syslik was pulling, as well ignoring DA. At this point I had had enough, decided it was late at night, didn’t feel like using my third repair kit, and called it a night. More Shard of Fear to come tomorrow. Hopefully the ensuing post will be a bit more pleasant.

All in all, I had a pretty good time despite all of the deaths, but I am very much looking forward to understanding the layout of this zone better. I am not particularly fond of exploring things on my own, I would much rather have a walk through. And a map. I am capable of getting lost in my own driveway, let alone in a brand new open zone with no map. Ah well. The trials of being female, I suppose. Dan does not seem to be troubled with this affliction. And by affliction I don’t mean being female. I am very certain that Dan is not female. By affliction I mean the complete and total lack of directional sense. Or any sense, he might tell you :p Anyway, I do believe it’s bed time!

You aren’t supposed to hate school when you don’t even go. But I do, I hate school. That being, I hate when it is a school day for Anya (Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 12:30 to 3:00). It seems like, by the time I wake up (yes, I am a late riser), get the kids up, get breakfast into the kids, get the kids dressed, check my e-mail, etc.. there is no time to do anything before it is time to take Anya to school. There definitely isn’t enough time to get into a group and do anything, and if I tried to wake the kids up early enough that we could go to the grocery store before school time, they’d be furious with me. And cranky all day. Then, to top it all off, by the time I drop Anya off at school and come here, there still isn’t time to get into a group and do anything. Although I could use that time to go to the grocery store. Going to the grocery store, however, means that Alex gets no nap, means that Alex is cranky for the rest of the day, means that I am irritated for the rest of the day. That leaves — after I pick Anya up from school. Which also means that there is no time to get into a group and do anything because Dan will be on his way home shortly thereafter. Not that Dan would be upset if he came home and I was in a group doing something, but I like to have dinner made for us, spend some time with Dan, group with Dan, etc.. so if I’m in a group when he gets home it either: A) pushes dinner back which pushes back when Dan and I can get a group going together (and he has to get up for work, so) or B) means that he signs onto EVE as soon as he gets home and I lose him to deep space for the night.

So, in short, I hate school. Especially when GU39 was released today, meaning that Shard of Fear is open. I want to go see the new zone, dammit! I don’t want to wait until tonight when Dan gets home ;-; And yes, I know that it’s mean to hate school when Anya loves it so much x.x

Word of the day: mean (since I used it about 700 times)

Oh man I want a new video camera. As all things go with me, I am developing an addiction to YouTube. You see, I have to comment on Sean’s videos to show him my support, but then it bothers me that there is no picture for me aside from that default like.. camera rolling thing. So, of course, I had to grab my crappy digital camera and take a crappy video of myself just so I could have a picture up (remember, we have discussed my vanity before). This, of course, led to wanting to make more videos, since I don’t believe in half-assing things. So now I’ve got a video of myself that consists of nothing other than me filling time to get a glorified picture of myself on YouTube, a video of Anya telling a story about the monkeys at the zoo (see the kids’ quotes page for the full story), and a video of the kids saying hi to the in-laws.

The problem is: My camera is old, and was a piece of crap even when we got it. It isn’t a video camera, really, just a regular ol’ digital camera that happens to take movies as well. With extremely poor sound quality, might I add. So yes, wtb new camera. Both for stills and videos. You know, I think I’ve pinpointed my true obsession. Buying things that cost lots of money. My Bowflex (I e-mailed a couple more people on Craigslist about their Bowflexes but no one has gotten back to me!!), the new camera, EQ2 plat… er… forget I said that, I never violate the EULA. Not me. No way, no how. And here Dan is reminding me of something else expensive I’ve recently asked for. That would be a third computer. It’s so hard to box when I have to run multiple accounts on the same computer! Especially when I’m tanking (since my main is a berserker). It seems like as soon as I swap to the second account I lose agro x.x It is the suck.

Oh yes, I am also reminded of the shoes I just got. I still “owe” Dan something for that. But they were worth it. Not that I mind owing Dan, but even if I did mind owing him, these shoes would totally be worth it. They are sooooo hot. Now I just need to go and spend some more money to get the perfect outfit to go with them. Oh how I love clothes shopping. I actually hate trying clothes on, but it’s worth the pain to bring home my sexy new clothes and feel all spiffy. I wish I could just walk into the store and buy everything that I want and come home with it. Try it on at my leisure, you know? Keep it if it doesn’t fit.. you know, in case I put on a couple pounds or drop a few more, depending on the fit. And, of course, you have to have period clothes. Not that anyone wants to read about periods, I’m sure. But F feeling fat, in any case.

OMG sometimes I really hate grouping in EQ2. And by grouping, I mean PUGing (pickup grouping, as in with people I don’t know). So today I get a CoV (Crypt of Valdoon) group on my fury (68 at the time, 69 now — no thanks to those tards). It’s me, a 70 guardian, 70 coercer (not a tard), 70 monk, 66 necro, 64 conjurer. The guardian, monk and necro are all in the same guild. Apparently it is a guild of retards. The conjurer is in a different guild, but really much too low to be running CoV since the mobs are 70+ and it’s like.. impossible to hit them at 64. As it turns out, the coercer and I are the only ones who have been in the zone before, so we figure hey — it’ll be a good idea to tell people what we know about the zone to make things go more smoothly / quickly.

To start, when you get to the first named it’s like 700x easier to pet pull him, because then you don’t have to kill all of the adds standing between you and him. It took six tries. Count them. SIX. Because the guardian didn’t really want to pet pull, so he figured he’d just stand there and stare at the wall in protest. Finally the coercer tagged the named as it came in and kept it mezzed until retard decided he actually wanted to participate in the group.

As you go down the next hall, skeletons pop out of the floor. Therefore, it is imperative that the entire group:

1. Stay behind the tank.
2. Stay against one side of the hall so you don’t pop skeletons from the other side.
3. Assist the tank when every idiot in your guild goes to the other side of the hall to spawn adds.

I told the idiots no less than four times that crossing to the other side of the hall would spawn adds. Yet they all still managed to do it. And the idiot monk wouldn’t assist the tank because “he was attacking the same mob anyway”. Which explains all of the mezz breaks, I’m sure. Finally I told him that I wasn’t going to heal him again, and that I would be keeping my heals off cooldown so that I could heal the coercer when idiotmonk broke mezz. Again. And again. He still broke mezzes, but that’s why idiots have feign death.

After many trials and tribulations with shitty pulls and mezz breaking, we make it to the second name. That goes off fairly well and we evac back to the IZ, and head back to clear to the last named. Once again idiot guild is informed by both myself and the coercer that they must HUG THE RIGHT WALL or more skeletons will spawn. I bet no one will ever guess that we ended up clearing both sides of the hall anyway, because idiot guild couldn’t manage to stay on the right wall. Mind you, this isn’t a hard task. It’s a nice wide hallway. All you have to do is.. stand still.. then run in a straight line forward.

Next we come to a room with three mobs in it. I give idiot tank directions to go in the door and hug left on the doorframe, which will cause the mob (monster, bad guy, whatever) marked as 1 to come out by himself. Of course, idiot hugs the right wall and pulls mob #2 first, which, of course also means that mob #1 comes with it. Whatever, anyway, life continues and we get into the final named room. We go through the crappy little script without a hitch (although here the tank insists that the necro pet pull for some reason that was completely beyond both myself and the coercer). Anyway, we get down to fight the last named. Group is warned about all of the adds that will spawn. Coercer and I inform everyone that once the named dies, we’ll pop the chest, loot fast, and then evac out to avoid fighting all the adds. So — named dies, we pop the chest and it’s the class wrists for necro/conj. It’s the only thing that dropped. This should, of course, make things nice and simple. The necro and conj in the group roll, everyone else declines and we evac out happy. But no, someone (and I don’t know who, but I’m guessing the necro) took so long to decline or do whatever that the timer on the chest ran out (that being a minute) before it finally got looted. And all the while the adds are spawning, coercer is frantically trying to mezz, and the guardian and monk are frantically trying to break all of the mezzes. I’m very happy to say that the conjuror (who wasn’t an idiot and wasn’t in idiot guild) won the lotto on the class wrists and we evacced out. At this point, the necro and guardian start bitching and whining about how they didn’t even get a chance to roll on the loot! First off, idiot guardian, you can’t wear it. It is NECRO or CONJURER only. Secondly, idiot necro. You put out less DPS than EVERYONE ELSE IN GROUP EVEN THE 64 CONJ WHO WAS TOO LOW LEVEL TO HIT THE MOBS. So I really don’t care if your stupid ass was too stupid to hit “lotto”. You clearly weren’t so busy DPSing that you didn’t have a chance to click lotto. I would imagine you were so busy being AFK during the final named fight that you weren’t able to roll.

To top it all off, idiot guild then starts going off on the coercer and myself, like it is somehow our fault that idiot necro didn’t win the wrists. Needless to say, I do not see myself ever grouping with someone from “Lost Souls of the Decayed” ever again. And here’s to Prophit, the non-idiotic coercer. My hat is off to you (not that I am wearing one) and I hope to group again!

And so it starts again. I bet you’ll never guess what my latest obsession is. Blogging, apparently. I’ve spent the entire day looking at WordPress skins and planning one of my own to create. I run into one small problem here, in that I am a moron at coding and photo editing. I made Dan spend like three hours trying to fix fonts for me because I am completely incapable of doing so myself :p In any case, I doubt any amount of whining or nagging will get Dan to edit my picture for me, since we don’t actually have a photo editing program, unless you count The Gimp. I hate The Gimp. I can use PSP somewhat, and could probably eventually with hours and hours and hours of work accomplish what I set out to do, but no amount of staring at The Gimp is going to save me.

As an aside, I hate EVE. Not that EVE is a bad game, mind you — I am just a very jealous person. Jealous in that I always want Dan’s complete and full attention. I love playing EQ2 together, but I just can’t really get into EVE and Dan loves EVE. And Dan playing EVE = Dan with no ears. Which leads me into my next point. I also hate Vent and TeamSpeak. Vent and TeamSpeak also = Dan with no ears. I understand why people like voice communication crap, it’s cool to chat and all that, but there are a few things I can’t stand about it.

• People who refuse to use PTT (push-to-talk) or otherwise think that everyone wants to know that their mother wants them to take out the trash.
• People who become so dependent on voice communication software that they can no longer read guild / group / corp / whatever chat.
• The people who have their mic volume so low that you have to turn your speakers up to max to hear them, followed by the people who have their mic volume so high that they blow your speakers when you turn them up to hear the idiots who can’t figure out how to turn mic volume up.
• Raids / big events in which commands are given solely via voice so that if your kid sneezes while something vital is being presented, you are unable to hear it.
• Idiots who insist that it’s impossible to run a successful guild without giving your raid commands via voice communication software.
• Idiots who didn’t play EQ1 and therefore have no right to talk about successful raids since NO GAME has raids as complicated as EQ1 and GUILD CHAT WORKED JUST FINE FOR US KTHXBAI~! La. QQ.
• Adorable husbands who spend too much time listening to people through their headphones instead of through their living rooms.

Well, as anyone who knows me knows — I have an addictive personality. Or at least really close to it. Once I catch onto an idea, I am completely obsessed by it until boredom finally ensues. I’ve been pretty obsessed by weight loss / exercise / nutrition for quite some time now, probably as long as I’ve ever been obsessed with anything (Everquest / Everquest 2 aside). In the past year to year and a half or so, I’ve gone from 170lbs to 130lbs. For background information here (and reference for my future self looking back) I currently wear a size four jean. Obviously, being the obsessed person that I am, I am not satisfied yet.

Hence my present obsession. Bowflexes! It’s gotten so bad that I’ve even been trying to find (without success) a Bowflex infomercial online, so that I can download and watch it whenever I want. That doesn’t really make any sense, by the way. I’m like.. the one person in the world with a burning desire to watch an infomercial and it isn’t available! You would think they would have infomercial downloads pasted all over the net. Much cheaper than paying to put them on TV, I would imagine. While I haven’t managed to find an infomercial, I have stumbled across a lovely video set on YouTube by Sean McFall, who is just starting his own Bowflex training regime. He’s currently on his second video (of 52, one a week for a year) and the third is due out today, or tomorrow. Being the obsessed person I am, I keep checking every five minutes or so to see if he has updated yet. I’ve had this website for quite a while, actually, and just never put anything on it. The final drive to get off my butt and actually make use of all of the money I’ve spent on this thing came from watching Sean’s video. I figured, hey, I can totally blog about how I’m obsessed with Bowflexes if Sean can make videos about how obsessed he is! Not that I really think Sean is obsessed with Bowflexes, but no one likes to be alone in this world.

On to the topic I’ve been trying to introduce for the last two paragraphs! Given my obsession with Bowflexes, it is only natural that I would be attempting to purchase one. After reviewing the official website, I was sadly forced to admit that I could not afford to get one of my own. I was not to be defeated so easily, however! My clever mind led me to ebay! Maybe not so clever, since no one wants to ship these things. Craigslist! Yes, Craigslist was what I needed! After several interesting distractions, I was able to find many Bowflexes for sale in my area, and at reasonable prices. The most reasonable of which being $225 for a Bowflex XTL in supposedly mint condition. E-mails were exchanged, plans were made to drive the hour to Surprise in the gas-guzzling Ford Excursion to view and purchase my beautiful Bowflex.

Dan and I got to the current home of my lovely Bowflex right around five pm, the planned meeting time. No one was home, of course. We waited until five-fifteen and, of course, no one arrived. I was notably irritated at this time, but we decided to go and have a bite to eat and check back at the house afterwards, since we’d already driven such a long way. We checked back at the house at six and the lights were on, the four or so dogs were barking (who were not barking at the previous visit, might I mention) when I rang the doorbell seven hundred times, a human shadow came to the door.. and no one answered. Needless to say, I will be checking the obituaries for Surprise periodically to see if a woman named Kimberly was crushed under her Bowflex, crapped on by her dogs, and dead by the time her husband got home from work. How tragic.

Link of the day: Sean McFall