(I don’t even know what that means…)

Er, anyway, so apparently I’ve been tagged by the illustrious Kimli to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. Theoretically, I’m then supposed to choose 25 people to be tagged, but I don’t do that sort of thing, so instead you merely get 25 things.

This could be difficult. Or boring. Or both!

- When I order a burger at McDonalds, I always get extra pickles. I am visibly distressed if my pickles do not arrive.

- I like the smell of faux watermelon.

- I am extremly good at self delusion.

- I absolutely hate talking on the phone. Therefore, I almost never answer my phone. Caller ID is a must — and yes, I screen calls. Of course, half the time I don’t know where my phone is anyway, so screening isn’t necessary. Send me an email, I’ll respond on my own time.

- I really want to get back into Rock Climbing again.

- It’s not that I don’t trust people when they correct me on something I was sure I was right on… it’s just that I’m cynical and prefer third party verification, even if I acknowledge that they’re most likely right pre-verification.

- My typing speed is slowing down. I used to be able to type 110wpm. I don’t know what it is now, but it’s definitely not that fast. As this is really the first “sign of aging” that I care about, this sort of bugs me.

- I dislike admitting that I’m wrong. Therefore, I rarely make “all or nothing” statements (or at least, they’re not intended to be all or nothing statements) and usually add in a “this opinion may change” disclaimer.

- Despite the above, I am extremely opinionated, especially about things I’m passionate about.

- I like getting older.

- My favorite part of the human body is those little dimples you get in your back, just above your ass.

- I am incredibly nosy, but try really hard not to be.

- I find it difficult to get motivated at times. I really wish this wasn’t true.

- My favorite part of my dogs body is the top of her snout.

- Years of chewing on my left pinky finger have left it a bit mangled, and I doubt the nail will ever grow in correctly. I hate this, and usually try to hide it.

- I still chew on it.

- Sneezing tends to give me a roaring headache.

- I’m neurotic about my laundry. This goes back to when my ex-fiance ruined an absolutley gorgeous worn-once $150 cashmere sweater by washing it. It felted. I wasn’t happy.

- I’ve been using the same (logitech split wireless) keyboard for about 8 years — I bought it off somebody on IRC. I fear the day it quits working. I’ve seen the current version of the same keyboard and I’m not overly impressed.

- Aforementioned 8 yr old keyboard is COMPLETELY FILTHY. I clean it superficially every now and then, but I’m afraid to take it apart. I FEAR THE DAY IT QUITS WORKING.

- I may be rethinking my position on marriage a bit. Some of the aspects that never made much sense to me are a little clearer now.

- One of my favorite things about Warcraft is when someone tells me I’m doing a good job. I am apparently a sucker for compliments. I can’t tell if playing a healer helps this, or totally screws me for this. (People tend to be a little unappreciative of their healers.)

- I really, really miss my bookshelf. Well, more specifically, the books on it. It’s probably the biggest — hell, the ONLY downside to living here. (I have way, way too many books, and there simply isn’t room.)

- My hair is currently the longest it’s been in about … what, six years? However long it’s been since I shaved my head. It’s shoulder length. Give me another 6 months, and it’ll probably be longer than it was when I shaved my head.

- Coming up with 25 things? Harder than it sounds. Which is why the 25th is this lame-ass cop out for an answer. Suck it, princess.

…I broke my specs while doing the nasty!

(What? It rhymes, and has the advantage of being true.)

This kind of blows. I have really shitty eyesight. Worse, I have really mismatched eyesight — one eye is twice as bad as the other. So not wearing my glasses gives me quite the headache, nevermind the really uneven vision.

I may have to go the Utter Nerd route and tape them up. That’ll look great — I’ve got black plastic frames. I’ll have to make sure to use white tape to fix ‘em.

Oh well. At least the act of breaking them was pretty fun.

New Years rocked.

I had far less stringent requirements for New Years as compared to Christmas. The only thing I was fully insistent on was that at midnight, I had better get some pretty serious kissing going on with Nick.

(Yeah, Mom — I think it might be serious.)

After work on the 31st, I headed downtown, and bought some material — specifically, silver lame and blue lame. There’s a reason that it’s spelled “lame”, but hey, it’s flashy. And apparently Sin had an unofficial blue & silver theme. I can do that. I then spent a few hours sewing myself a short 8 pointed handkerchief skirt, with the blue underneath and the silver on top. It’s flashy and ridiculous and I’m pretty proud of myself, it turned out awesome. Will supply pictures sometime.

At around 6:30, Nick decided he wanted to take me out for dinner. We headed downtown, only to find that Earl’s was closed for a private function. Fine, have it your way. Since we were next to the theatre, we decided to eat crap for dinner, and go see The Day the Earth Stood Still. I was hoping for Marley & Me (which I WILL see, and WILL bawl at) but alas, the timing didn’t work, and it had already started.

Knowing exactly nothing about any of the other movies (The Spirit was the other choice) that were starting other than “one is about aliens, one is based on a comic book”, and since Nick made me pick… well, this one has aliens, I like aliens. Let’s see that.

I was horribly dismayed at first when the first name credited was Keanu Reeves. KEANU REEVES? God damn, I hate that man. He has all the acting ability of a pencil, and a permanent expression that is a cross between “working out a really tough math problem” and “chronic constipation” and I just. don’t. like. him. (Ok, I like the Bill & Ted series, but that’s pretty much the extent of his acting ability: clueless stoner.)

Luckily, the next few names convinced me that it could be okay: Jennifer Connelly, Kathy Bates, John Cleese… ok, I’m sold.

However, it turns out, Keanu was playing the alien. Which meant… actually, it worked out very well. He’s a completely wooden actor playing a completely wooden character, but he was SUPPOSED to be completely wooden, so I enjoyed it quite a lot. Klaatu Barada Nikto indeed.

Non-spoiler that amused the heck out of me: The kid is playing Warcraft at the beginning. Bahaha. But he’s gotta be pretty low level, as he was hanging around in Stranglethorn…

Seriously depressiong fact: John Cleese is getting older. Damn. Don’t get old, John Cleese!

Anyway. So the movie got out at 10ish, and we raced home to get dressed and headed out to Sin City. It was loads of fun, and I unexpectedly ran into an old friend who I haven’t seen in years… but oddly, have been chatting with online a lot lately. Go figure.

Midnight came around, said serious kissing occurred, along with some shmoopyness because I am nothing if not completely shmoopy. Did I mention how much I love that man? Anyway, more midnight cheer, and then around 1-ish, we got our coats and went to head out to Mark & Yvonne’s.

Catch: It was snowing. A lot. Damnit all to hell.

I tried to find parking off the main street near M&Y’s, but failed miserably, getting stuck in the process. After procuring the services of a few good (if not completely sober) men, we moved over to the main street and parked there. Much easier to get in & out, we just had to make sure we were out by 7am. Hey, given that I rarely make it home before 9 or 10 from these parties, that’s a valid concern!

Anyway, as this is the New Years party that I’ve attended for the past … god knows how many years now, I pretty much knew what to expect, and this was no different. I had an excellent time, made even moreso by the fact that I was with Nick, my love, my sweetie, my honey, my sexy, awesome, wonderful, fan-freaking-tastic man of my dreams.

I am a somewhat demonstrative person. Can you tell?

Somewhere around 5am, I think Nick was starting to peter out a bit (hell, so was I.) The agreement had been that Nick would drink earlier in the night, and I wouldn’t… and then once we arrived at M&Y’s, I’d get to have my fun, and he could drive home. Of course, this didn’t take the snow into account.

So, Nick’s been using my car to learn how to drive a stick. He’d done it a few times before starting to drive my car, but not too often. No problem, though — he’s gotten the hang of it, and my knuckles are completely pink when he’s driving with me in the car. Still, we’d agreed that while the streets were slippery, he’d avoid driving if possible — hell, while the streets are slippery *I* avoid driving if possible. No good, the streets were freaking awful, and … well, we either had to find a place off the main street to park, thereby likely getting stuck, take a cab home, and god knows when I’d be able to get the car again… or Nick can drive us home. Let’s go with that option.

He was, of course, just fine. The weather was bloody awful, and seriously Vancouver… I know we don’t get a lot of experience with this frozen white shit, but the basic premise to driving in snow is just like driving in the rain which we SHOULD know how to do: Slow down, and increase your following distance. This goes for stop lights, too. It’s 5 in the freaking morning, you don’t need to be sitting on our ass, there’s plenty of room for everybody.

Got home, and our pretty puppy was ecstatic to see us, we wished her a happy new year, and all cuddled up in bed together.

I love my family. Which makes for dull blogging, but I never promised danger & excitement, so this is what you get.

Another one of those boring Warcraft posts, but I’m proud, so… suck it.

So, now that I have a computer that doesn’t weep tears of shame any time someone looks at me funny, I can actually raid properly! On my old computer, I could … kind of do 10 mans. My laptop could handle 10 mans okay, but 25 mans… yegods. (And quite frankly, having not raided in vanilla WoW, I have NO idea how anybody could EVER do a 40 man… jesus bob. I had a hard enough time keeping track of 25 and still being able to stay out of the goddamn fire.)

Recent achievements:
Heroic: Besting the Black Dragonflight: Defeat Sartharion the Onyx Guardian on Heroic Difficulty.
Heroic: Archavon the Stone Watcher: Defeat Archavon the Stone Watcher on Heroic Difficulty.
Archavon the Stone Watcher: Defeat Archavon the Stone Watcher on Normal Difficulty.
Molten Core: Defeat Ragnaros.

Ok, so that last one is a little out of place, but I’d never been there before…

Turns out: Archavon is a bloody easy fight to heal. Spam heals. Avoid spikes. Avoid white cloud stuff. Blah blah blah. Sartharion isn’t really that much harder, except for the flame walls. The trickiest part with those, I found, was that with 25 people on the screen — plus totems, pets, raid icons, idiots, and add-ons… the screen is REALLY crowded. Especially when I judge light on the boss, and every time one of the other 24 people hit the boss, a green +580 pops up above their head. And some of them are hitting him a lot. So now I’ve got a screen full of people, totems, pets, raid icons, idiots, addons, and numbers. Jesus christ. And I thought some 10-mans got crazy.

And with all that stuff going on… where the fuck do the flame walls go? The key being: Avoid the flame walls. If you don’t, not only do you take massive damage and probably die, but you spawn an add. Great. We wiped the first couple of times because half of us had never been in there before (and, duh, wait for the tank to pick up the boss AND POSITION HIM before you unload on him, eh? Nick’s a damn good tank, but there’s only so much he can do if you’re basically saying “NO NO LEAVE THE TASTY DEATH KNIGHT THAT YOU’VE BARELY TOUCHED AS HE TRIES TO LEAD YOU INTO THE CORNER FOR SOME QUIET ALONE TIME, I’M SO MUCH MORE WORTHWHILE, OVER HERE WITH MY CLOSEST 23 FRIENDS!”)

On the upside, once you’ve missed the first flame wall, it becomes pretty easy to figure out where you should be for subsequent flamewalls. So, good news, when we did finally take it down… I was still alive. The way I see it, as a healer I have three goals, in this order (especially in a raid with multiple healers): One, don’t let the tank die. Two, don’t let ME die. Three, don’t let anybody else die. (In a solo-heal situation, not letting me die is really more on par with not letting the tank die. Unless there’s someone else who can pick up healing if I go down, my dying is pretty much the same as the tank dying.) Anyway, so while there were 4 people dead at the end of our kill, I wasn’t one of them, and neither was the tank. Win.

I also really, really get how strong a paladin healer can be in a raid now.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m pretty familiar with holy paladins at this point, and how awesome we are. I’ve always known, theoretically and somewhat logically that paladins are primarily excellent single target healers. But man, seeing it in action in a 25 man… wow. Yeah, we are really, really excellent at single target healing.

My group was pretty self sufficient, and we didn’t really have a lot of direction for healing, so I took it upon myself to backup-heal the main tank & add tank (the healer in their group was also a pally healer) and spot heal around the rest of the raid. (Incidentally: Healbot is AWESOME. Even if I had to get used to a 25 man interface, vs my regular interface.)

Anyway. Overall? It rocked.

Note: I wrote this on the 31st… and now it’s Jan 2nd. I’ve since also main healed Obsidian Sanctum on 10 man, and it was cake, especially now that I get the flame walls a lot better. Nobody died, we only got a few adds, and what it comes down to is that we rock hard. So hard that yesterday, we ran Violet Hold, Nexus, Utgarde Keep, Utgarde Pinnacle, Gundrak, Halls of Lightning, and Obsidian Sanctum. We are heroic instance MACHINES.

2008: Brought me Nick. Thanks, 2008.

See you next year. It’s gonna be even better.

I continue to find myself not in as good shape as I’d like to be.

Weight: Despite the temptations of the season, I continue to hover around 125. I fully expected (and had no problem with) gaining a little weight for the holidays, so … surprise surprise.

I have, of course, totally been ignoring said “working out” things. It’s not my fault: I am terribly unmotivated. Oh wait, I guess that is my fault.

But, on Sunday, Nick (who has also fallen off the exercise wagon a bit, since he’s on vacation and it’s less convenient to go to his shiny gym at work when he’s not AT work) convinced me to work out with him. Yes! I can do this, all I need is a teeeeeny bit of pushing. Honestly, I should hire a bloody trainer, but there are so many other things I’d rather spend my money on. New video card, here I come.

Here’s where the bitching part comes in: I seem to recall Gill complaining about lunges at one point. Holy fucking christ on toast, she was right. Lunges are EVIL. My ass hurts. My thighs hurt. My chest hurts, although I think that was from the curls. My knees feel weak. My right knee actually decided to stop holding up my weight all together on Sunday, but luckily it gave up on that one pretty quickly. Still, I didn’t particularly enjoy discovering the non-working knee while running up & down the courtyard outside our apartment door either. Did something of an odd swing as I grabbed the (very cold!) railing and suddenly found myself sitting on the ground. Sexy.

It’s been almost two full days. I still hurt. I woke up at 3am in so much pain that I got up and popped an advil and a muscle relaxant. Then I played some Warcraft while it kicked in. Ow ow ow.

I still hurt today. This sucks. Yeah, yeah, body is repairing itself, and I’ll be better-stronger-faster as soon as it’s done… but OW.

You know, they say “no pain, no gain”. You know what else is true? No pain, NO PAIN.

No no, not catholic…

I’m not a huge fan of pop music, although there are a few songs on there I like… but this is pretty cool: 2008’s Top 25 Pop Songs in One Mashup. Viva la Pop indeed.

Guilty Confession: Rihanna makes me feel funny in my underwear area.

So, Christmas Dinner had about ten minutes of “omg, fear!”

Justice made me laugh while I was in the midst of swallowing… and I started choking pretty hard. Was still getting air flow, but not quite enough, so was starting to panic… but it eventually cleared itself out (after I just about threw up, yehaw.)

Still, scary as hell, tears streaming down face, whole nine yards.

And the whole time, all I’m thinking is … okay, I’m still coughing, so I have air flow. Nobody should touch me, this will probably work itself out. But what if I don’t? How do I communicate how to treat this to anybody else? God damnit, WHAT IF I’M THE ONLY ONE AT THE DINNER TABLE WHO KNOWS HOW TO DEAL WITH AN FBAO?

But it’s okay — Nick was sitting by with a knife so he could trach me if necessary. So helpful, honey. Um, instead of jumping straight to jabbing a hole in my throat, maybe try abdominal thrusts? Just a thought.

William is my new love. (Sorry, Nick. It`s okay, I still love you too…)

William is my new computer, courtesy of my mother & step-father. I like Christmas. He’s one of the low end Acer’s, but to be honest they’re actually pretty decent systems for only a few hundred bucks. So far, he`s pretty fast. I like William. William is Good.

Things I am not terribly fond of about William, however:

- Vista. Vista can suck my left nostril. It`s nice not to have the little `You may be a victim of conterfeit software` icon, but to be honest, I wasn`t really a victim… I kind of did that on purpose.

- The keyboard layout isn`t quite right, so all my quotes appear to be goofified. Hmm. Will have to fix that. To be honest, am not terribly crazy about this keyboard. Will be going back to my awesome old split wireless keyboard shortly.

- I had to spend the first half hour of getting my system setup REMOVING all the extra shit I didn`t want. As much as I will stick just about anything Google offers me wherever they want to put it, Google Desktop is not my thing. It can go.

Other than that, I love William. LOVE HIM. (Sorry Nick. Again, still love you too, sweetie. I just … may have to ignore you a bit for William for a while…)

And now… to go install Warcraft. You knew that would be coming…

So Nick & I had our awesome Christmas morning curled up in blankets sitting in front of the fire, digging through presents. I am a lucky, lucky girl — some new candle molds, ingredients for soap making (new hobby! whee!)

It’s been a long running joke with us that as soon as a particular debt is paid off, we’ll go to Cuba. Heck, the joke is getting to the point where ANYTHING we spend money on is “After the debt is paid off.” “We can get a Scooba… after the debt is paid off. We can have lunch… after the debt is paid off.”

So, Nick dug through his stocking and pulled out … a travel book about Cuba. He laughed, and suggested the next present I should open. I open it, and … it’s another travel book about Cuba.

I think we’re ready to go to Cuba. As soon as the debt is paid off.

On the topic of office politics:
"Mom, you have to tell them what they want to hear."
- Carol Ann, age 6

 

I wonder if it will be friends with me?