Mishaps and other haps

A group of Horde defeated Onyxia last night while we were having our guild meeting in the Valley of Honor. She is, arguably, the toughest end-boss in World of Warcraft at the moment (I expect this will change when the expansion is released). There are websites devoted to strategies for killing her. So whenever she is killed by our faction, her head is brought back to Orgrimmar and people head down to the entrance of the city to celebrate and congratulate the heroes who killed her. Everyone in the city at the time of Onyxia’s death (this may be true for other Horde cities as well) receives a blessing that gives them extra health for 2 hours.

I signed off pretty soon after that because our meeting was over and I wanted to save the buff for the next time I can play for a long stretch (maybe Wednesday or Thursday night?). Also, PhysOrg and I wanted to play our Tauren druid duo, Minni and Teqnoq, for a bit. We leveled up to 9 and completed a few quests. Teqnoq made new, cute, matching armor for us. We need to make the trip to Thunder Bluff soon so that Minni can learn tailoring.

1) Do you know why you should always fill up the windshield wiper liquid container with windshield wiper fluid, rather than water? Water freezes at 32&deg F. Windshield wiper fluid is liquid to -20. Or so it claims on the bottle.

2) My roommate made her version of potato soup this afternoon, so there was tasty soup for dinner that I did not cook! And brownies from Stitch’s work were thawed out down the hall, so there was a minty brownie for dessert that I did not bake! However, I did make the Bailey’s/Godiva brownies that were consumed at gaming yesterday, so I have not been completely lax on the kitchen stuff this weekend. I did not cook any real food, but I suspect I will survive.

Yesterday during gaming, Stitch was talking about how it saves him money to stay home and play City of Heroes with his friends online. Which I can see. I’m not sure how much it costs to play the game online, but I’m sure it’s comparable to WoW, so like $15/mo or something.

So when you figure that you can stay at home and play a game with your friends online, if you’re Stitch, you potentially save:

1) The cost of gas driving back and forth from home to friends’ places or other places to hang out multiple times during the week (this adds up if you live 15 + miles from your friends, as Stitch does).

2) The cost of food, since you will likely be eating out more if you are not at home to make food

3) Potentially the cost of cover fees and other fees (Movie tickets and snacks? Drinks?) if your friends are more inclined to go out than stay at home

I have been finding that it saves me money (to some extent) for the same reasons. I still go out for dinner and the occasional movie, but not as often. Also, since most of the people I want to see frequently are in my building now anyway, I stay home on weeknights and weekends more. I re-evaluate the necessity of trips out. It’s kind of awesome. Probably helps that it’s winter right now and the weekend has been icky-wet (not snowing, though– cool and RAINY).

I had to bail out on our game at 11:30 last night, though. My body wants to stay on its weekday schedule and I sometimes just can’t seem to stay awake much more than an hour past normal bedtime. We had actually accomplished quite a bit, since we had started our session mid-afternoon, but the momentum was present to keep going for an infinite amount of time (well, not my momentum– not physically, anyway). For all I know, they may still be gaming down the hall … but I think if I do much of anything today, it will be WoW.

I have also been in the mood to read lately, so I am trying to find time to do that. One night last week, I sat over at PhysOrg’s and read while he was playing WoW. Reading has always been a kind of unsocial activity for me, but maybe it doesn’t have to be that way

Oh, wow!

Cleolinda was nice enough to post about the Bloggies, which enabled me to find the Vegan Lunchbox. Awesome! Just look at the pics (and even read the text if you are motivated)! I am really impressed with people who go through the trouble to make lunches for themselves or their kids that are so varied, appealing, time/labor intensive, and neat. I guess it helps if you’re a stay-at-home mom and have the time to do that sort of thing, but still– wow!

My best cooking days involve throwing leftover homemade chili or stew and a piece of fruit in the lunchbox. This is what I have for lunch today, in fact. Leftover stew and an orange.

I was talking to my Dad on the phone the other night and told him I had just eaten leftover stew for dinner and he thoughtfully wondered, “How can you make stew without meat?” (This was kind of cute.) I explained what I had put into the stew and he seemed satisfied with the answer. I know he thinks his first-born daughter is crazy sometimes, but he is polite and/or supportive enough not to actually SAY it.

Several other blogs mentioned on The Bloggies website look interesting to me and I will definitely be checking out some of them and possibly adding them to my list of regular reads. I also added The Daily Mumps to my reading list yesterday because it is FUNNY and very adorable.

Warning: The current version of defaultlisa may exhibit irrational behavior and crash on occasion. We are working on a patch at this time. If you are experiencing problems with defaultlisa, you should restart her, run a virus scan, and make sure all of her applications are up-to-date.

Remember: defaultlisa is both hardware and software

I started a work journal today, not anything that will ever be online, but just a notebook so that I can document things and (occasionally) rant without clogging up my blog with work-related matters.

Who knows, it might be good pulp for a book one day, years down the line, when I am doing something completely different.

This week has been OK. I was mentally and physically exhausted last night. I crashed with PhysOrg for a while since he was taking a nap and I needed a nap. He appeared to be physically exhausted, but was emotionally supportive and remained coherent and comforting while I was crazy for a bit.

I went upstairs, ate dinner, and returned a call to my parents that I had missed. Then I went back downstairs and crashed for another hour or so. Came back up around 8:30 and talked to my roommate for a while. Then I went to bed and slept all night. So good … to sleep … all night …

I wasn’t lying when I said my next post would be about porn, at least in part.

I am cool with porn, as long as:

a) the participants are ALL LEGAL, CONSENTING ADULTS; and

b) porn does not substitute for or take precedence over REAL RELATIONSHIPS

I have to wonder about this government subpoena issue, though, as reported in the NY Times today.

First, it’s eerie that search engines keep records of terms and phrases that are used in searches.

Second, I have to wonder whether the government is interested in stopping crimes that involve minors or in flat-out keeping tabs on its citizens’ habits and potentially blackmailing them or blacklisting them. Or even just *monitoring* people for signs that they have crossed the line from legal “forbidden fruit” into CRIMINAL ACTIVITY.

Not that the government might be interested in the average person’s foot fetish (tiny-tiny!) or booty browsing, but what if that person decided to run for political office and the opposing party had access to their personal web browsing habits? What would right-wing Christian fundamentalists do with this information? (Answer: witch hunt– woe to anyone who has ever Googled anything)

These cases will be interesting to follow … particularly what happens with Google since it is probably the most-used search engine on the planet.

Oooo– Internet law … fascinating …

I swear I am going to cease buying Dove chocolate if the company keeps printing messages like these on the wrappers:

“Be your own Valentine.”

“Chocolate loves you back.”

What the hell is the message here? Dove chocolate is for losers? That’s the vibe I’m getting …

(Sorry for the rant, I promise my next post will be about something important, like porn)

It is very comforting to know that home is a place with people in it who care about you.

I think about that sometimes when I’m somewhere else and my anxiety level drops through the floor.

I totally feel like today is one of those days when I could (should?) use the random blog generator to describe my recent goings-on, something along the lines of:

It was a meek-and-mild, “nothing much happened” sort of weekend, chased by “another day of working on current project at work.”

Actually, it was a pretty good weekend, if understated. I slept until noon on both days and, unlike some weekends, it seemed like a huge break from the work week.

In fact, it felt like a 3-day weekend of rest, performed in two days.

We had a meeting about house plans on Saturday, followed by a long gaming session. When all was said and done, we looked at the clock and said “Shit, it’s 10 PM.” Mlitiagrl, Inle, PhysOrg and I regrouped at PhysOrg’s place and watched Princess Mononoke, then decided we’d had enough of Saturday and fell asleep.

The home ownership quest is going as well as it could be going at the moment. Next month, we should find out how feasible it is in reality.

From time to time, we have ideas that we’re either motivated enough to implement or that we talk about in some detail and abandon. The house plan is the first one we have gathered some steam for that requires financial backing. So that is Reality Check #1. We shall see what happens …

Sunday involved some shopping for food, some WoW playing, and running between my apartment and PhysOrg’s about every two hours to see if anything cooler was happening downstairs than upstairs. I gave up kind of early on the WoW and watched some TV with the boys until bedtime.

There was a user-induced laundry situation in our building that was kind of awful and led to a backlog of laundry on Sunday. I decided to let the one load that I washed air-dry (to avoid huge wait times for a dryer) and had horrible flashbacks to landlord maintenance issues in an apartment I lived in about three years ago. In that apartment, I resorted to letting everything air dry for months since the landlord would not come out and repair the non-functional dryer. I know that our current landlord will resolve this issue much more quickly. Apparently it’s the stupidity of some of our neighbors that we really should be concerned about.