Life! (my return to blogging)

It's been well over a month since my last post and a lot has happened since then! Most notably I have moved house :) So I was without the internet for a good week or two but we're now all settled in and I'm gradually clawing back in-game time.

The new house is lovely and I have to give the other half a massive amount of credit! He pretty much single-handedly packed our stuff up at the old place, moved us and the unpacked whilst I was stuck working stupid hours.

Our new living room is a much better layout and we now have our desks side by side, so you know we could hold hands whilst gaming and have lovely little discussions or more accurately get distracted by each others screens and telling each other what to do!

We've also gained a conservatory which is epic. It's actually a double conservatory comprising two rooms; one has sofas in and we're using the other shabbier half as our new greenhouse. The plants are loving it especially our collection of peppers (both chili- and sweet bell peppers) plus my mini lemon tree which has shot up. We also have a range of plants outside (as we did last summer) - runner beans, dwarf french beans etc and a hanging basket that I have just put up.

But I think the biggest bonus of the new place is we have a pond! And it has newts in! It's got a bit of a chickweed problem that we're working on - sieving the water etc - and we've got some new plants on order for it. My parents we kind enough to give us some snails from their pond and a bit of my mums yellow flag.

Plus when my parents visited yesterday they brought us some furniture goodies from my late uncle Fred's. Meaning we now have a funky ottoman and I have a sewing box and my gran's hand powered sewing machine. That's right - hand powered. I currently sew everything by hand so this will certainly speed things up. Just need to decide what my first project with it will be.

Aside from moving I've had a pretty rough month at work - working in a different team to usual so lots of on the job learning and long hours which ultimately came to a pretty sour end but I'm now back in my ever faithful team - thankfully!

I think I'll do a catch up post on what's being going on in Azeroth later this week and then hopefully I'll be able to get back in to the swing of blogging! I've missed it & you all!

Ding!

Apologies for being absent again this week! Those of you that have me on battle tag might have noticed that I haven't logged in since last weekend, or possibly Monday. For once this hasn't been work related but is real-life. We are moving in a couple of weeks and decided to start early with the sorting and packing side of things. I'm bored already but I've managed to sort through and bin most of my old uni stuff.

In more exciting news it was my birthday yesterday. Ding ding, level 24! You may have seen on Twitter that I posted about some of the presents I got but if not here are the highlights:

One of my friends is currently in Australia on a working visa so she sent me some presents from Broome where she currently is. I think it's safe to say that the main present is the 'Genuine Kangaroo Scrotum' bag and that the salty croc toy and the stubby holder / can cooler thing were to soften the blow! As a group of friends we tend to give either jokey presents or hideous items found in a charity shop. I think that the scrotum has to be one of the oddest gifts ever and I'm not sure I'll treasure it forever... or at all.

The boyfriend got me Lurky the plush Murloc from the Blizzard store. He had to order it all the way from the US as the EU store still isn't selling physical items. I knew that I was getting something from Blizzard as he'd got himself a Diablo 3 lanyard. It's safe to say that I love my little Murloc and I will be treasuring him forever! He also got me some Star Wars lego and a third item that's still in the post somewhere.

Finally I thought I'd share my Hugo Hedgehog cake with you - available from all good Sainsburys! He tastes lush and is very cute... whilst he's still here.

Last year I had a proper little in-game party and held a transmog competition but this year it really seemed to creep up on me and I didn't really have much time to plan anything sadly. But I have some idea's for future shindigs and I'm determined to have a Dwarf pub-crawl at some point so keep your eyes open!

It's That Time of Year

It seems that its that time of year again and there's been a heck of a lot going on in my world - both real and virtual.

Seasons Greetings!



Following this weeks Friday-Fun-Run.



 

It's been nearly two weeks since I last posted and for the past few months I've been pretty crappy at posting regularly. Work has really picked up so I've been rather busy, away at a meetings etc.

Despite not being overly present within the blogging-world I have been keeping up to date with the latest WoW news and reading other peoples blogs. I've just been having to prioritise my time and the little in-game time I've had hasn't inspired much news for the blogging world to read!

But... I now have two weeks off and don't return to work until the 6th January 2014. Yayyy!! Tomorrow I am heading back to my parents for a week-ish of festivities and the internet there is pretty poor (compared to my lovely fibre optic) so I can't promise I'll be on much more than I have been these past few weeks. Having said that I will be spending the second week at my own home where the internets much better and I can get my geek on with lots of gaming.

 

Anyhow, I'd like to wish you all a very happy Feast of Winter Veil and hope you manage to get the new pet (Rotten Little Helper) etc. etc.

A Brief Update

For some time now I've known that I will be going on a secondment. This means that whilst I will be employed by the same organisation they are essentially lending me to another one for a set time period. There's been a few delays along the way which really haven't been ideal. My security checks have now cleared and I could be starting as early as the 14th October!

This is excellent news for my career and bank balance but I honestly don't know what affect this will have on both my in-game time and blogging. Because I'm starting ~2 months later than expected I could have a massive work load to get done but I'm hoping they'll either extend my contract beyond the initial end date (so it's the same duration as initially intended) or that my list of deliverables will be cut.

In terms of career development very few people at my career stage would be offered such an amazing opportuinty. I'm still not 100% clear on what exactly I will be doing other than it's data / database related (which is what I currently do). I went to London for a meeting yesterday which has given me a better understanding of the project as a whole but not necessarily my specific role. I guess I'll find out more when I start.

In-game I've been quite slack (as with blogging). The past few weeks have not been particularly plentiful in terms of spare gaming time. So I have a load of things I really want to get done before I start my secondment. This weekend I will hopefully be dedicating a fair chunk of my time to finishing things off and working on some in-game goals.

I really hope that this job won't impact on my play time too much. I'm hoping that if I get stricter with me time-keeping and scheduling that I will be able to balance things out. Only time will tell...

I've Graduated.... Again

I've been a bit quiet this week in-game, on Twitter and in the blogosphere because it's graduation week! I had guests staying Monday - Wednesday for their graduations and then Wednesday was my own graduation.

I wasn't sure if I wanted to go as I'd already attended my undergrad one back in 2011 and my masters finished nearly ~10 month ago so it's a bit late, I've had my certificate for ages! But my parents wanted to go, the majority of my masters course were going and the Twitter-world pointed out that it was better to go than not to and regret it.

So, yeah I went and it was pretty much the same as my undergrad one - same location, same order of events but I did get to wear different robes with longer sleeves (like full-length wings) and a slightly different hood. Even the entrance and exiting music was the same - I'm still not a fan of Take That's 'Greatest Day' but hey-ho.

No-one fell over and there was no catastrophes on stage. At my friends grad on Monday someone's mortarboard fell off as they were crossing the stage. Although, we did have a posthumous award for one of the engineers which was kinda sad but he finished his degree and was given his certificate before his passing which is nice and his 'rents were there for the ceremony.

I went out and celebrated last night with all my coursemates which was good fun. It's amazing how many have gone on to do PhDs (either starting last Sept or this year). I'm one of only a few that haven't continued in the world of research but all-in-all we seem to have been a pretty sucessful year!

Now things are back to normal and I have a lot of catching up to do - in-game and blogging (both reading & writing).

My Weekend Back Home

Hi Peeps!

I hope you all had a fabulous weekend. I was away from Friday 'til yesterday so I have a lot of blogs to catch-up on. Hopefully I'll be up to-date by next weekend.

I spent the weekend back at my parents as we had a wedding to attend - the fifth and final wedding that I've attended this year. Although it wasn't your traditional wedding. A relative who lives in Canada, who got married over there a few weeks ago, was having a celebration / party. It was great to catch up with family that I haven't seen for 3 or 4 years etc. We also got given some epic favours - M&Ms!

Breakfast Topic Thoughts: Could you step into your character's shoes? & Do you play WoW with a family member?

A two-in-one Breakfast Topic Thoughts today as I didn't finish my thoughts on yesterdays topics yesterday and I thought today's topic was worth a ponder to.

Yesterday's WoW Insider Breakfast Topic (asked by Lisa Poisso) is "Could you step into your character's shoes?". Lisa asks:

"Could you effectively step into your character's shoes in Azeroth? Like my mage, could you get the work done if you could find a non-combat position? Or do you play any characters whose jobs simply aren't a fit in any sense for the real you?".

I have a range of characters from an assortment of classes and with a variety of professions. I don't think any of them fit the real me perfectly. That said I've never really tried to make a character that's like me in every possible aspect - appearance, class and profs. Appearance wise I'm certainly a mix of my Gnome mage and Dwarf warlock.

I don't think I could step into a combat role. I'm really not the athletic type! Running around isn't my thing and nor is swinging swords and axes. My main is a hunter and when I was a guide I was quite a fan of archery & I wasn't that bad at it so I guess that's something that would stand in my favour of being a hunter. I guess I could cope as a caster such as a mage, warlock or druid.

As I'm into science I think I could do fairly well as a herbalist and/or alchemist like my mage. I'm no expert on terrestrial plants but it has to be said I'm not too shabby with seaweeds! Being a marine biologist I think the druid Glyph of the Orca would allow me to carry out my job a lot better (if I an get over the whole diving thing). So maybe I could be a mash-up of my mage and druid.

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Today's WoW Insider Breakfast Topic (asked by Robin Torres) is "Do you play WoW with a family member?"

For starters it depends what you class as family. None of my blood relations play WoW, to be honest I think most of them would be quite baffled by the game concept alone let alone all the buttons etc.

I do however play with my boyfriend who is essentially family. Up until recently we were in the same guild and would do scenarios, dungeons and old raid runs (for pets) together. However, he left the guild a week or so ago and I haven't seen him in-game since. That's not to say that we won't continue to do the occassional thing together - primarily farming for raid pets.
 

When Virtual Life Meets Real Life...

Today me and the boyfriend went to meet a fellow guildie (whom I will now refer to as P). P was on holiday at a relatively close sea-side town and so I took a day off work and we got the train over for a few hours. It was only a short visit, a matter of 3 or so hours, as the boyf had to get back for work this evening. Slightly annoyingly another guildie was visiting the same town this bank holiday weekend and has come down a day early (this evening) but we weren't able to stay around a meet him.

For me, and the boyf, this was our first experience of meeting a guildie as such. Obviously, I live with a fellow guildie (the boyf) but he was my boyfriend long before I started to play WoW. Similarly, I have friends from university that play WoW, several of which are in my guild, but again I knew them in real life first. More recently, a work colleague of mine plays WoW and we do occassionally do things together in Azeroth.

Our sand castle version of Stormwind post-
 Deathwing's attack.

I built this sand castle :)

I really wasn't sure what exactly to expect. I have known P ever since I started to play the game casually on my boyfriends account. When I got my own account, Feb 2012, he was currently away from the game but once he got back he really helped me get to grips with my hunter etc. The boyfriend has known P for a number of years - I'm not exactly sure how many but I'd say we're esily talking 3 years. So, what I guess I'm trying to say is we both know P pretty well and could be fairly sure he was not in fact a she or likely to be awkward to meet / chat to.

We spent the day at the beach building sand castles (as you may have guessed from the pics). I'll point out that P has a son who was a brilliant excuse for such activities. Whilst we were chilling out on the beach we spoke generally about WoW, the guild and real life stuff. Our guild is very family-esque and everything is discussed including real life so todays conversations were nothing out of the ordinary. I guess if I'm honest it was just like the conversations we'd have on a normal day playing WoW. But this normalilty doesn't mean that it wasn't a big day for all involved.

I really would love to meet more of my guildies! Unfortunately me and the boyf are pretty far away (geographically) from most of the UK guildies which makes things tricky. Not to mention those that live abroad in places like Holland. I think it's a great experience to really meet someone that you spend many hours a week with in a virtual world.