Already? Well, not quite.

The older I get, the faster time seems to move.  When I was a child only dreaming of finally graduating from high school so that I could be out on my own, I couldn’t conceive of any period of time longer than a school year.  Holy crap those years went on forever!

These days, it seems like I could have a full-body yawn that lasts longer than a school year.

I logged on to check my e-mail this morning and had my latest e-mail from National Novel Writing Month (NaNo) warning me that November is coming up soon so it is time to start exercising those fingers for the frantic write.

Holy crap.  It seems only a few weeks have passed since I finished NaNo last year and here we go again.

I’m excited though.  I went in last year with high aspirations that NaNo was going to spear-head my desire to start pursuing my writing again.  It didn’t… rather, I didn’t let it.  I didn’t stick with the head of steam that NaNo produced and I soon fell back into my routine of, “I’ll do it tomorrow.”

On the other hand, maybe it did.  I did more writing this past year (and by “writing,” I don’t mean working on this blog or any other guest articles I’ve written) than I have done in a long time.  I have also begun the process of converting a section of my office to a dedicated writing space.  I reconnected with an artist I used to work with and we have a few ideas in the works.  He, unlike me, has remained vigilant in his quest to be in the comic book industry and has produced and released a few things alongside some fairly established names in the industry.

Since completing NaNo last year, I have kept a journal of story ideas.  As I mull them over and flush them out, I have tossed them into several categories: potential novel-length story, possible idea for future NaNo but not enough meat for a full-length book, won’t really work in book format but might be able to work it into a graphic novel concept, absolute and complete crap.

The crap pile is pretty high, but there are a few other ideas that I definately want to work on.

For NaNo last year, I pondered the various story ideas and finally settled on one that I really wanted to write but that I knew I could totally abandon once NaNo was complete.  I knew that, as my first writing attempt for some while, it would suck.  I didn’t want to have it hanging over my head that I really needed to polish it up and give it an honest chance at life once I was finished.  I wanted to tell the story and be done.

In the end, I was satisfied.  I told the story that I wanted to tell and I was able to put it away without another thought.  I still have it, but I haven’t so much as glanced at it since submitting it for the final word count last November.

What’s in store for this year?

I’m not sure yet.  I still have time to mull it over.  A part of me wants to do something similar to last year… write a story that I can finish and forget.  Another part of me wants to be a bit more ambitious and use NaNo as a springboard to launch into something that I will continue well after the contest wraps this year.

I guess I won’t actually know what I’m going to do until the first word makes it onto the page.  Until then, I’ll just continue to guess.

Unforced Break

I don’t always seem to manage it, but I decided some months ago that I was going to take at least 1 day a week and not touch anything that even resembled technology during my off-work hours.  Although I didn’t play on Tuesday, that was due to outside circumstances and so I don’t count that one.

I typically decide on Wednesday for my no-tech day.  It is the perfect timing because I am coming off of weekend overload burnout and our raids happen on Sundays and Tuesdays so my overall attitude towards the game tends to fall into the negative by Wednesday anyway.  I take that tech free day and recharge my batteries by ignoring anything and everything that beeps, has buttons, plugs into a wall and/or lights up.

Except for lights of course.  It is difficult to read a good book without lights.

So that is how I spent my night last night… ignoring the computer, DVD player, radio and everything else and just spending a quiet night enjoying a book.  And not a book in some electronic medium either.  A physical book with a cover and pages and all that stuff.

I even picked up a pen and a pad of paper and sketched out some writing ideas.

I should spend more nights like that.

Forced break

I was “forced” to take a gaming break last night.  Truth be told, I wasn’t upset.  In fact, I was actually looking for a reason to log off.  It was raid night, I didn’t feel like raiding, and I knew that if I was online, I would be raiding.

It took me 4 or 5 tries to even get online last night.  The logon server wasn’t cooperating.  When I finally did get online, my lag was in a whole new dimension.  I could see someone activating voice chat, but nothing would come out.  30 to 45 seconds after they quit pushing the talk button, their words would come out in a cluttered rush from my speakers.

When I tried to move, I just stood in place.  Minutes after releasing my movement keys, I would suddenly warp into a different room.

I finally logged off and rebooted to see if that would fix the issue and got the message that I couldn’t negotiate with the logon server again, so I took that as my ‘get out of jail free’ card and called it a night.

I quite frankly needed a break from the game anyway.

I spent a quiet and relaxing evening reading and went to bed early for some much-needed sleep.

Unfortunately, the fates of misery were watching and knew I desperately needed a good night’s sleep. 

Around 3 AM, all bloody damn hell broke loose in the sky.  The lightning was coming so fast and so brilliantly that it looked like high noon outside and the thunder was so intense that I had several pictures fall off the wall and my alarm clock vibrated off of my end table into the floor. 

That went on until 5AM before finally letting up allowing me to get back to sleep… a mere 30 minutes before my alarm went off.

I so need a vacation.

1 down 2 to go

Got another level on the ranger last night so he is now level 78.

We started out hitting up the starting quests in Jarsath, but it wasn’t long before we decided to put a shard group together.

I was somewhat encouraged that maybe I know what I’m doing on the ranger.  Our group was me (77 ranger who hit 78 during the second instance), a 76 ‘zerker, an 80 fury, an 80 brigand, a 79 illusionist, and a 79 dirge.

I don’t run parse software and I typically ignore the parse information that gets posted by those who do.  In all honesty, I find the whole concept of parsing DPS annoying and a recipe for poor playstyle (“I can’t debuff because it lowers my parse.”  “I’m not doing battle rezzes because it will lower my parse.”  “I’m not going to wait for assist because it will lower my parse.”)  My opinion tends to be that parsing each and every fight is a piss-poor idea that serves little real point beyond stroking someone’s ego.

But that’s just me.

Anyway, having said that, I have to call myself out as a hypocrite as well because I did find I was curious to see how the parse was going last night.

My gear is ‘meh.’  I’m wearing a full suit of t8 master crafted, using 2 t8 mastercrafted weapons and a t8 mastercrafted bow and I’m using t8 crafted arrows.  My jewelry slots, belt slot, and all other slots are using a combination of Faydwer and Kunark quested gear.  My CA’s are a mixture of the flavor formerly known of apprentice 1 and adept 3’s.  The brigand has her fabled epic, the nice scout weapon from CoA, full t2 shard gear, and a mixture of master and adept 3 CA’s.  She’s level 80 and I was 77.

I was staying real close to her on the parse most of the time.

Granted, this is not her main character and, for all I know, she was holding back so as not to pull aggro constantly, but it still felt nice and felt like I am moving in the right direction with this guy.

We knocked out 2 shard runs… Scion of Ice and Anathema.  I added those shards to the shard collection I have waiting for whenever my ranger hits level 80.  I don’t currently have enough to get him suited out in full t2 gear, but I’ll be able to make his full t1 set and most of his t2 gear.  Hopefully we’ll be hitting some more shard runs in the coming days and I can add to the total.  It would be nice to be able to put him in a full suit of t2 right when he hits 80.

All I know for certain is that I still have a lot of work to do on him and hitting level 80 is just the smallest step.

*Plink* Take that!

I spent a lot of time on my ranger this weekend.  I really love playing that character.

I took him over to participate in Tinkerfest which I found enjoyable if short (no pun intended).  I completed the quests and the shiny quest in pretty short order and then started gathering tokens.  As I was scooping up the tokens and checking out the furniture items I could buy with them, however, I realized that none of that stuff would really fit into the house of a half-elf ranger.

A gnome wizard on the other hand…

I ended up going ballistic with him.  I have purchased 1 of everything off of the merchant and have plans to go back and get some additional stuff.  The plan is to completely redo his house into a haven of dangerous, could explode at any second, gnomish tinkering goodness.

I got to run my ranger though CoA again over the weekend.  We must have hit the cash-cow version of CoA because I think we had 3 exquisite chests drop.  I think it was all caster loot that dropped, but still… 3.  I am usually shocked if I see 1 exquisite drop in that zone.

During the course of the weekend, I also managed to finish up the rain caller HQ.  When I started that quest, the rain caller would have been an upgrade.  I was a little disappointed to see that it no longer was, but it still wasn’t a wasted effort since it is a requirement for the ranger fabled epic.  I spent more time doing more quests in Fens, but yesterday, we decided to bid farewell to Fens and move on to Kunzar.

That ended up being a feeding frenzy.  I was grouped up with a couple of guildies who are also leveling different toons and we tore that zone apart.  We still have a lot of quests left, but we definately put a good dent in the zone including getting at least halfway through the Tynonium Shackle questline.

All in all, I got 2 levels and at least 20 AA’s on the weekend.  My ranger is now more than halfway to 78. 

Over the weekend, a friend of the guild (who just happens to a have an 80 dirge) finally joined the guild.  With the addition of him, at least some of the pressure has been taken off of me.  Hopefully, if the changes to the support classes that they mentioned at fan faire go into effect, I can retire Rao from raiding and possibly play the ranger instead.

We’ll see though.  We have several raid rangers so I’m not sure we need an additional one.  That’s fine though.  I didn’t level him thinking in my heart that if I got him to 80 I could start raiding with him.  I leveled him because he is fun to play and that was all the reason I needed.

Despite what I said on Friday that I was going to spend a good chunk of time tradeskilling him this weekend, I didn’t.  I did get one more tradeskill level on him, but that was purely incidental as I needed to refill my quiver.  I just happened to hit 74 in the process.

No arguments from me on that score though.  I’ll take it.