Just had a delightful weekend and a good week.
Wednesday Lies and I went to our favorite restaurant and spent a night together. Just... together. Very, very necessary sometimes. Thursday Lies went to Utrecht to meet up with Jolanda, recently returned from vacation, and I went into Azeroth with my alternative character ("Alt", as opposed to "Main", my fire-blasting Mage Galadaeros), the Night Elf Priestess Aisli. We had a good run, with killing a lot of Defias in Moonbrook waiting for the Defias Messenger, who was appearently having tea-and-cookies in the Jangolode Mine judging by the amount of time he took to show. Still, by that time our trio had been joined my Glok's Warrior, and we went to Redridge after the Defias Traitor showed us the entrace to the Deadmines.
Redridge was fun but unexpectedly the first teamworking test: a pull from both our Druid-Tank and Warrior-Tank brought about a dozen Gnolls bearing down on us, but I managed to outheal them... just. Then, near the end, we started geno-ciding the Murloc Village, to which the nefarious Merlies responded by spawning like madmen, making it about 20 minutes of running battles and a lot of the much-hated Merlie-gurgles ( Funn vid, featuring the Murlocs ). In the end, though, we had pulled through and we were very near level 18; I spent about an hour more getting to level 18 once we decided to call it a night, and made loads of cloth stuff to max out my Tailoring and to Disenchant stuff so I could happily Enchant. My Alt does require a lot of sponsoring from my main, who is making gold hand-over-fist with high level quests and Herbalism, but I hope to load my party to the gills with Enchants before we go into the Deadmines come next Wednesday. Once I make lvl 20 I should easily level both my Enchanting and my Tailoring to about 200 with all the cloth and items that I have been saving for a while with my Main to sponsor my lovely Alt, giving the entire party a nice early advantadge when it comes to upper-end stats.
Friday was my last day at work, which I spent cleaning and clearing the Service Desk of accumelated junk; I salvaged a few noteworthy pieces, sorted computers, and made neat piles of the 70+ boxes of Dell that are currently in our installation backlog, and luckily we are finally getting the long-delayed last batch of D620's that have been delayed for a month and a half. Creating order in chaos kinda set my mind at ease again, and typifies my recent change of working plan: I now take smaller bitesize bits and focus on those, doing what I can and leaving what I cannot, instead of being overwhelmed by a lot of stuff at once. I also take very simple jobs that one would consider beneath my caliber, but the easy, swift jobs give me a necessary feel of accomplishment and satisfaction, and they do need doing.
My weekend began with coming home to my love having cooked me dinner (we are more or less trying to take turns at it now) and having food; we had a quiet start of the evening before I went to Ren & Cora for Lextalionis talks. We planned and plotted for the next few events, from the party upwards to Lex V and even few snippers of VI, even; it really got the blood flowing in all of us, pun intended, and I came back to Lies a few hours later with the excited tingle in my underbelly of things to come... and due to the unfortunate cancellation of Pirate D&D due to the DM working I had a free weekend to look forward to.
Sleep claimed my till Saturdaymorning just before 11, horribly late for me, but I woke up relaxed and more or less in a cheery mood (rare when I immediatly wake up). After coffee we went to Spijkenisse, to go to a teashop, but it was full by the time we got there; instead we shopped, and we sinned. We bought a few more packs of Pirates and both expansions to Civilization IV, "Warlords" and "Beyond the Sword". After that we drove to Heenvliet, a small village just past the huge petrochemical plants that border the Port of Rotterdam, and found a virtual oasis. The village itself is the cutest little thing, very quiet and a small medieval-like market square bordered by nice houses, a park and a cafe. We went to the Ruins of Castle Ravensteyn, which is basically in the backyard of the main villa on the square and still the property of the family that owns the villa. The garden is beautiful and the castle itself kind of suddenly appeares in between weeping willows, well kept grass and many varieties of flowers. The moat is still intact, as is the main defensive tower, though the island around it has only small ruins; the history of the place is nice and it has a great feel to it. Strolling around in made my really happy, though the romantic ruin surrounded by the idelic garden ever so slightly reminded us about Fiorne. heh.
Afterwards we ate a late lunch / early dinner at the tiny Restaurant and quietly went home, where we spent the afternoon and early evening grabbing a bite, watching the 4th season of Angel and assembled the fleets from Pirates. My Pirate Faction fleet is the largest at the moment, with three five-masted warships: both versions of the Revenant and the Stoneheart, ably supported by a flotilla of four- and three-masters like the Jaguar Spirit and the Shadow; the British and Spanish fleets are smaller, but equally impressive with the El Acorazado and the HMS Victoria, both very ouchie. I have a small smattering of American, French and Mercenary Ships, too, but they are just fluff, mostly, since I like to play single-nation fleets.
After that we went to see "Fantastic Four: the Rise of the Silver Surfer", and I liked the movie. It wasn't great, as I didn't like the sudden pop-up that Victor von Doom makes, but the character development in the team of four is nice; they were rather obvious about a sequel, though. The worst faux-pass, however, must have been the wedding near the end of the movie: it is in Japanese style, despite the fact that they were in China at the time, and all the guests are wearing Kimono's, with the most beautiful of those of course reserved for Sue Storm. The upper layer of the Kimono is white, though, with a red Kosode - undergarment; now, white is not a very good color if you are Japanese, since Samurai clad in white are off to commit suicide, and red is the traditional color of the Maiko, Geisha in training: NOT something that a bride would wear. Not only is it cultural appropriation, but the Samurai in me was being very nonplussed over the choice... now, I am getting into Yoshida mode, but they could've done a bit more research on that. James Bond got it right, why couldn't they? Still, the sudden Japanese moment was well-timed, as I recieved the Drachenfest tickets. Preparations are pretty much done, and I have the week before DF free so I can do pickups with Linda and Inge for the tent and its various pieces of furniture. My costume is back in full with the Hakama coming in thanks to Simone; the only possible snag is the potential for my new Samurai blades not being done in time, but I plan to make sure that I have a cunning fallback plan so I don't have to face the Orcs unarmed... hehe.
Slept very late again on Sunday after having a great levelling spectacle in WoW in the evening (150.000 XP / hour is a lot) with my main, prepping him for a run through Scholomance, one of the lower level dungeons in the Western Plaguelands. The day itself I spent sorting the DVD collection, sorting books and generally sorting out my house. Just before dinner I installed the Civ Expansions, bought the previous day, and was pleasently surprised to find the Dutch amongst the new civilizations. Wasting no time I booted into a custom game with said Dutch and booked a cultural victory and a space race victory in under 2 hours. Still got it... and these expansions will keep me busy for a while yet to come, especially playing with the Crossfire WoW crew.
JW came by in the evening, and we had a good run of Scholo; it took some adjusting, with just us three, but we had a lot of fun tearing appart necromancers and undead in equal measures, finishing a few long-standing quests for moi. I still have the intention of building on my reputation as an undead-slayer, so this was a nice run for me. Annelies got the lions share of the treasure, and she was happy too with the revenue generated from that. All in all, a good run, and one we hope to repeat fast enough.
And that ended the weekend. Tonight I'll have Vampire, Tuesday Mage as usual, and Wednesday is Crossfire-night. Thursday is all for Lies and me, and Friday will prolly be nice and quiet, being my last working day before DF. Saturday I will go to Castlefest with my girl, with Sunday being nice 'n quiet, too. Last DF preps will begin in earnest then...
Oh man, I'm exited. I got to go Yoshida again!
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sna) wrote,
accomplished
