Yey the headache is gone! Woot! I pretty much took off Monday night due to several factors, but recovered quite nicely last night. We’ve had a few people come back to WoW the past few days, including Uber Pally Tank, much to my delight. Since I was in between the level groups in guild at level 73, when we broke into instance groups, I went to the “kid’s table,” aka the 70-71 level group. That was okay, cos UPT and I got to chat and smash stuff into submission. After doing Nexus and UK, the group had to dissolve and I ran off to kill 6 more mobs. Why 6? Cos after those 6, I dinged 74. Hopefully tonight I can get some more leveling in and get to 75 or at least a little closer to it. I’d like to see some more of the instances other than Nexus and UK. Oh and the one with the undead bugs. -.- /shudder

Once I dinged, it was off to find an NPC mage and get my butt ported to Dalaran. Giddy was about the appropriate description for me then. I crawled all over Dalaran, sticking my nose into various shops, and finally found the pet store. After putting up with my cackling, Exar finally looked over at my screen and asked “WTF is THAT?!” Hearing me cackling and singing “My pet is playing feeeetch” probably didn’t reassure him to my sanity, but he knew what he was getting into long before last night.

So right now I’m a happy camper. I’ve found a nice place to farm crystallized water for leathercrafting. I’ve gotten to Dalaran and made my hearth there. I’ve found the exotic ammo vendor and have loaded back up with purple arrows. And I have my pally tank back. It’s a good time! Wheee!

Since I’ve managed to change up my addons a bit with the 3.0 patch, I’m probably going to work on a addon/UI/macro post at some point in the next few days. Nothing like continuously tweaking your UI for “perfection”. ^^;

If I was coherent, I’d tell you all several things. I’d tell you:
1. How I happily went through 3 instances multiple times in the past few nights, including talking a group of friends into trying one that was rated 73-75, when we were all mostly 72 (with a kitty drood at 74), and we still won. Twice.
2. How even tho Exar had work on Thursday, Friday AND Saturday, he’s (75) still passed me (73-almost-74-dammit) in leveling. Bastard. No cookies for j00.
3. How I’m playing with Power Auras addon after Nibuca talked it up. So many uses, so little screen space. So much addon love.
4. How I’m really enjoying being a MM spec hunter again, even if I am forced to deal with craptastic arrows in Northrend since I’m not of a level for the “good” ones. (See #2)

Alas, I’m not coherant. I have a splitting headache that isn’t going away. Sense of humor’s still somewhat intact, though, and I took one of my employee’s to lunch as a going-away treat (she’s leaving to open her own store, which is total win for her and the town), so I’m still stuffed on Japanese steakhouse. So, I’ll have to post all the fun later. Maybe even with shiny pictures.

…maybe not so much with the pictures. >.> Depends on if I remember them. /sigh

So the plan worked out: Wednesday night, The Boyfriend (aka Exar in the last post’s comments [yes dear, get a Frostmourne, we'll hang it next to my sword and daggers when we set up the game/comp room when we get a house]) and I went off to Best Buy. See, with the xpac coming out, I’d decided that I needed a new mouse. The Logitech G5 that I have was starting to act, well, “wonky”. It would stutter, I’d clean the eye and it would be fine… for 15 minutes. The cord on it has a permanent kink from how the desk is set up and kept getting tangled in the cats’ legs, or trapped under their bodies when they’d flop. I love the thing, but it was starting to slowly drive me nuts while playing WoW, and with the new content, that couldn’t happen.

So we wandered around Best Buy for a while, with me checking on the iPhone and remembering reviews and other bloggers’ comments. I’d asked for opinions from the BA chat room when I started thinking about getting a new mouse, and they were kind enough to make suggestions. My choices are slightly limited due to running on a Mac. I need either the mouse vendor’s software drivers, or use something like USB Overdrive, which is what I’d been using for the G5. But for some reason, USB Overdrive and the G5 didn’t quite get along. The side buttons were mostly useless since they’d get randomly reset constantly. Annoying. :/ So this time, I wanted manufacturers’ drivers, no 3rd party. End result? We walked out with me holding a new Logitech MX Revolution Cordless.

Then we had steak for dinner. No Tauren jokes were made.

After that, it was off to GameStop where I’d prepaid for our copies of the CE. It being a small town, they didn’t open their doors til 10:30. We were the first two in and for a while, I was thinking it was going to be Exar, the GameStop employees and myself for the night. After 25 minutes or so, another guy came in. Then another. Then another couple. Then a whole group. By the time everyone lined up to pick up their copies, we’d all been chatting, comparing notes on servers/classes/races for a while, free posters in hand. There ended up being around 18-22 people in the store, and I was pretty pleased at the turnout. I made my call in to the TNB to say hi (and think I’d hit the babbling stage by then), and took a picture of the store as we were getting our copies.

(Yes, Exar’s hiding, as are about 1/4 of the people there. The Xbox racks were digging into my back.)

After that, it was race home, install, log in, and start slamming out quests. He and I had a little bit of an advantage since we’d both been in beta, so we were able to zip through quite a few quests. He started his Death Knight (conveniently named Exar) and got it to a point to start collecting rested XP. I played around with Siana and Wrenn, then finally collapsed at 4:30am, only to get up 2 hours later when he got up to get ready for work. I had one more nap, probably not any longer than 45 minutes, around 3pm. Other than that, I was in-game, questing, chatting, or flat out goofing off. At some point before 3pm, Siana became the first guild member to reach 71. When I went to bed, one of the other guildies had dinged 72 while about half the guild was at 71 or just about there.

We managed to get in runs on Utgarde Keep and The Nexus and I got quests done in both for Sia. Today, I’m going to try and get quests for both on Wrenn and see about taking her to a run with the Runtz. Or I might take Sia. Still wafflely I have to say, tho, that I love the instance designs on both. UK is dark, rustic, and very Nordic inspired to my eye. The Nexus was a nice change as well, similar in some ways to Tempest Keep but not. It’s definitely it’s own flavor.

Today and this weekend, I’m off to explore more, work on both Siana and Wrenn, and explore my brains out, looking at cool new things and being happy about new content. I’m sure in 6 months, I’ll be sighing “Boooooooooored.” But now, I’m thrilled to be exploring new areas and finding even more things that fall down and go boom in new and interesting ways.

My good friend Nytetyger lives in the OC. Yep, she lives in throwing distance (or at least cab ride distance) of Blizz HQ. As such, she gets to see the OC Register paper every morning, and giggle over the Blizzard news that’s reported within. Today, she gave me two links that I thought I’d share.

First, is a link to a slideshow showing off art being displayed at a nearby art college. Some nice stuff and wish I’d been able to see it close up myself. But the fun one? The Blizzard COO showing off his collection of toys and “stuff”.

You gotta love a company that has fun with it’s own products.

Okay, is it bad that I keep singing songs from Muppet Christmas Carol in my head? Except applying “Wrath” and “Lich King” to them? I’m at work, completely useless to do anything other than talk with other bloggers, watch Leafy unbox his CE, and vibrate along with Breana and in general act like a kid the day before, well, Christmas. So, since I am, well, useless for the moment, enjoy this song, which has been going through my head since I woke up this morning, giggling in glee, and I’ll see you all in Northrend.

I have two new additions in the sidebar. One is a Twitter badge. I had played around with Twitter pretty early on, but hadn’t used it in a while. A few weeks back, I rejoined the twittering world and it’s been amusing.

The other addition is a Raptr.com profile. I had heard about Raptr a while back, but had forgotten it until earlier today when it was brought up in the BA bloggers room. Invites went flying, and soon a ton of us all landed on the site, creating accounts and poking the new toy.

Will I be keeping them on the front page? Who knows. Right now, they’re helping relieve a little stress from no servers and wishing 12:01am Thursday would get here already…

So last night, I spent hopping between all my characters and looting them and their banks of anything useful that I wasn’t going to need come Thursday. I tossed a ton of stuff onto the AH and giggled as it sold as I was putting more things up. The banker character now has a clean mailbox and is mostly emptied out. All the money she was holding has been divided and given to Wrenn and Siana for “OMG LICH KING!” day. When I go home at lunch today, I’ll see what sold before the servers went down for maintenence, and what didn’t goes back up. Fun fun!

While I was running around in Stormwind on my banker, I saw the yells between the King and Arthas. After a while, I switched over to Wrenn then wandered down to the harbor.

I lined up with everyone else after I’d gone and talked with the King and everyone else. The one that made me blink a little was Broll Bearmantle. Part of his chat is this: “Are you heading to Northrend? I have never been there, but I hear it is both a beautiful and treacherous land. Sadly, urgent matters at home require my attention, so I will not be able to join Highlord Fordragon and his army on their journey.” After I blinked and re-read that, I looked over at The Boyfriend and asked “WHAT ‘urgent matters’?!” Seriously? “Urgent matters?” What on earth is going on over there?!

Then the shiny happened.

I watched it all for a while, being horribly horribly impressed and, well, geeking out. After watching that for a while, I wandered back off to continue the clearing of the banks. /sigh

Tonight, it’s the last of the bank organization, and the last of the laundry. Boy, do I lead an exciting life or WHAT?!

I swear, the weekends are becoming more and more of a blur for me. Friday night was the usual Kara run. Saturday was the (now) usual vaguely ill so back out of everything. Sunday was the (now) usual recovered, so let’s go pwn things. Heroics were run, daily quests were opened, and all in all, a good time was had. At least it was had by Wrenn. Siana’s currently sitting in Shattrath, muttering and grumbling about the “anklebiter” going off and having fun while she’s forced to sit around and feed her pets. She can stuff it tho, cos she’ll be marching towards Northrend soon enough.

So what does this week hold for me? In-game:
1. trying to do dailies and get some more gold under my belt before Thursday
2. cleaning out banks to make space more yet even more crap
3. Figure out what professions Wrenn’s REALLY going to do
4. Spend any remaining badges on Siana, Etaine, and Wrenn

Out of game?
1. make sure laundry is done, kitchen is clean, and cats have plenty of food stockpiled.
2. make sure WE have plenty of food stockpiled
3. finish reading any “must read” books
4. make sure store orders are in and set up for while I’ll be out of it
5. Play more LittleBigPlanet

Then there’s Wednesday:
1. work
2. come home at 6pm
3. one last batch of “AHHH!” in WoW for 2-3 hours
4. nap
5. 11:30pm, get up and stagger towards local Gamestop
6. midnight, pickup two prepaid copies of Lich King, CE
7. go home and start installing onto two comps, drinking tons to soda to try and stay awake.
8. poke servers until I get in and start moving Siana and Wrenn to their locations.
9. PLAY!
10. fall over and nap
11. PLAY!
12. more nap
13. PLAY! then realize I need REAL sleep since I’m working Friday
14. go to work, muttering the whole time, but with Lick King disc tucked into purse for install at work
15. work
16. Flee cackling and giggling at 2pm, yelling at the employees I’ll see them on Monday
17. Wallow in Northrend goodness until 12:01am Monday morning.

Oh yeah, Sleep Dep: it’s a way of life. o.O

Yeah, you read that right. I’m tired. I quit.

Quit leveling, that is. DING 70!

In celebration, I took Wrenn off to have her hair unbleached. Yep, now that she’s a fully grown lockette, she can expose her black roots for all to see. Mwhahaha!

So for now, I quit leveling. In a week, I’ll start it all back up again. Tonight, Kara. Tomorrow? A little bit of work, then some relaxing earning of money.

Breana dear? All done.

Yeah yeah, this last level I’m taking my time with. I mean, I know I’ll be 70 by the time that Lich King rolls around. I made my goal of running in at least one Kara with the lockette, and looks like I’ll be in again tomorrow night. (Note to self: bake cookies for The Boyfriend as a thank you for sitting out and letting me go instead.) However, I’m still going to try and ding 70 tonight. Why? Because I have a nice clump of rested xp right now, and dammit, I want the joy and giggles that come from using Seed during the Illhoof fight.

Last night, I logged in for find that the random carnage was going to be more “Rawr kill undead!” Fine by me, so I grouped up and everyone went rampaging onward. Lots of giggles were had, “Suicidal Gnome” status was maintained, and epics were gained. See, that’s the OTHER reason I need to ding 70: all these new shiny epics I can’t wear yet! However, I’ve got a date tonight with another guildie to smack around Durn and the Ring of Blood. Between those and some other quests, I’ll get there. Then it’s back to Siana to do dailies to get money! Mmm money…