Mishaps and other haps

Should people be allowed to skip completing high school (or the skills-assessment equivalent) and go to college anyway?

On a personal level, I have objections to this for the same reason that I was miffed by the girls (and guys) who managed to worm their way out of the required two years of gym class for one reason or another.

I had to do it. It was not necessarily any more pleasant for me than the next person and probably less so some days. Why should other people get off, opt out, have special privileges?

On the other hand, life isn’t fair. Some people have more advantages than others. We don’t start on an even playing field and things happen that we don’t always anticipate or plan for.

Whether it is true or not, the message is out there that success in life requires a college degree, although a college degree does not *ensure* success.

Whatever success is … some idea concerning money, personal fulfillment, and prestige that motivates Americans (you really have to have all three to fit this definition of success) …

Anyway, is the only option to “level the playing field” for those among us who do not finish high school or the GED for whatever reason? How will this affect college education in the United States?

I guess in some ways, I do believe that for any experience, you “get out of it what you put into it”, so maybe it doesn’t really matter. We shouldn’t be so bound by “doing things by the book.”

But should people who follow the rules and deal with the aggravations get shafted? Or are we just upset because we want to “get ahead”?

Hmmmm ….

Best use your nose.

Unfortunately, this chemical mechanism for dating doesn’t take into account personality differences, values, interests … are those things really more flexible than biology?

Then again, pairing sex with love and friendship may not be recent developments, but I guess the expectation is modern enough.

Compared to Saturday, the rest of the weekend was very unbusy and most of it was spent at home.

Mlitiagrl returned from her Arizona trip Sunday evening and I saw X-Men 3 with her and Inle on Monday.

Some WoW was played and we had our weekly guild meeting last night. I worked on Montanni’s fishing skill yesterday. It is about halfway to max now, considerably better than it was.

Can’t believe it will be June in a couple of days. I need to start thinking about my upcoming trip. Yay, vacation!

Various crazy work things happened last week, so the holiday weekend was a refreshing break from all of that. I think I can eek through the next couple of weeks … then I will have major time off.

And we are apparently seeing some houses this week.

Woah! Yesterday was a very full day.

We were up and on the go by 7:30 AM and did not arrive back home and collapse until about 10 PM.

It was Margot’s (PhysOrg’s mom’s) “Carpe Diem” celebration day. One year ago, she was in the hospital undergoing tests and was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Since only 5% of patients diagnosed with this type of cancer survive a year or more, it’s incredible and wonderful that treatment has been successful and the cancer is not present at the moment!

Phys and I headed out to the Farmers Market by 8:30 or so and picked up a couple of pink lillies to take over. We stopped for coffee and breakfast and then stopped over at his Mom’s before heading out to the park with the family.

What an event! Last count was 80+ people (I think that was just the adults– there were at least 20-30 babies and kids running/crawling around, too). The generation spread ranged from about six months to great-grandparents. So many people love Margot and showed up to wish her the best! PhysOrg’s sis already had the pics up by the time we got home last night.

Among our friends, Inle dropped in for quite a while before he had to go to work and the Guffeys made it down from Oshkosh. I was excited to see my peeps show up

I also met a few new (to me) people– Phys’s friend Kelly that he went to high school with, her mom, and a few relatives and friends of various family members that I had not met before.

After the party, we went over to PhysOrg’s parents and stayed a few hours. We ordered pizza and watched Doc Hollywood. Then dropped by Kelly’s farm for just a little bit, where I met more people (sisters, roommates, friends) and we had a happy time.

Then Kelly’s mage uncle got to work and a pile of wood exploded into an instant bonfire. If you have never seen a pile of wood explode, it’s highly amusing and incredible, but I’d advise you to stand back just a bit from targeted area. It’s distracting and disturbing if someone has to dial 911.

We got back around 10 and collapsed. Inle came over for a bit and we watched Army of Darkness. Well, sort of. My eyes kept closing involuntarily because I was apparently completely exhausted.

Slept and slept and slept. Woke up kind of late this morning, had coffee and toast, and sent Phys off to lunch at his sister’s.

Woo! Fun weekend so far and still so much weekend left!

Today I was talking to a co-worker about a meeting and we got on the subject of another co-worker, who had missed the meeting.

“You know, she’s so serious. After my husband died, I realized that you only live once. You know, you have to take things less seriously.”

I am so glad that my life is full of people who make me aware of what is truly important every day.

The son of our real estate contact (also in the business, apparently) contacted us today with a sizeable list of houses that are currently on the market.

Since Mlitiagrl is heading out of town and won’t be back for several days, Phys, Inle, and I will be sitting down in the next day or two to figure out which ones we want to see.

The next week or two will be busy, but hopefully we can get a lot of House business done before I go to Florida.

You know, ever since grad school, I’ve had an issue with books and reading.

It’s not universal. I have managed to read a number of books in their entirety over the past few years. Most of the ones I have finished have been recommendations from friends.

But I seem to have an aversion to sitting down and reading. I lose interest in a book almost immediately after beginning it and certainly no more than halfway through.

I try to spur my interest: I walk around a bookstore, pick up books, read the backs, and discover that I absolutely don’t care about reading them. It seems like torture to imagine sitting there alone for hours, filling my brain with something that is not real. (At least online video games are interactive. Truthfully, I don’t have much tolerance for playing games alone for a long stretch of time, either.)

Non-fiction seems like time better spent than fiction, but still it’s like wasting time. I can’t get past this idea that I have already wasted a huge chunk of my life reading things and that most of the time, books are more of a way to avoid living your life than a key to understanding it.

Then I think, you’re supposed to enjoy this, it’s like a hobby, not a dead-heat, pursuit-of-truth race.

Sometimes too many years of school can just ruin it for you

and defaultlisa moved through the dark places of the world …

It wasn’t so bad. I returned from retail hell Saturday largely unscathed and with quest rewards: three new dresses that really don’t provide much AC at all, a funky embroidered blouse made in Ecuador, and some articles of undersupport.

I hadn’t stepped inside Victoria’s Secret in a couple of years, at least. It is a weird store. Not only is it a place where all of the employees are apparently required to wear black and look like they are paid far more than is actually the case (retail norm: you must look fabulous so products will sell), which is strange enough– they also have a crazy system for managing their store. Employees are assigned to “man” specific rooms. They communicate via walkie-talkies. Woman in one of the front rooms calls someone in the dressing room to let them know that a customer is coming through (“red curly hair and a green shirt”). Extra merchandise is stored in the dressing room so that half-naked customers aren’t wandering out into the store to try a B cup, rather than a C cup. Sorry, guys.

Also, despite the advertised “sexiness” of Victoria’s Secret, they sell a bra with a special patch designed to HIDE the nipple. It’s a covert sexiness at best.

I returned home Saturday evening and we decided to start a new Saturday game since various circumstances have caused Saturday cancellations during the past month. So we worked on new characters and eventually played some WoW.

Montanni picked up his first flask recipe for the low, low price of 125 gold at the Auction House.

There was more sleeping-in on Sunday morning and someone was nice enough to make oatmeal and toast for breakfast! The toast was leftover from bread we had baked the night before, so it was a great way to use up relatively-fresh bread that had been sitting out all night.

I had catch-up errands and chores to do on Sunday– namely, shopping for food and laundry– but I did manage to work in a fabulous Sunken Temple run with Akaia, Pheam, Scias, and Qlash in the afternoon. Akaia and Scias were back online this weekend after being absent from WoW for a few months and we’re all very glad about this!

I ran out later, got food for Inle, Phys, and me, and we played Teqnoq and Minni briefly before people wanted to do a run with their primaries. It was time for me to be heading to bed anyway, so I did. The end.

Well, after 10+ hours of sleep, I am feeling much better. There were a couple of nights at the end of the week when I didn’t sleep well and the lag was beginning to show by last night. (Read “heightened emotions” and general paranoia that my behavior was awkward)

I left work a little early yesterday, came home, got all prettied-up, and went out to dinner and a play with PhysOrg, his Mom, Terry, and Maretta. We went to see Arthur Miller’s “The Price” at the Madison Repertory Theatre.

I had forgotten what a deeply psychological writer Miller was. This was a stellar performance of a play that sort of picks at and finally peels the scabs off of old, wounded family relationships. Watching it was a stark reminder of how hard and painful it is sometimes to be absolutely clear and honest about our motivations and how we perceive and react to events that affect us personally and emotionally.

After the play, we came directly home and immediately fell asleep because we were so, so tired. The 6 AM alarm was ignored and ignored and finally killed. We missed the Saturday routine of Farmers’ Market/gym, but I think we needed the sleep more than we needed morel mushrooms and asparagus.

Woke up in time for an UBRS (Upper Blackrock Spire– WoW) run, but the server was having problems, so we ended early and failed to accomplish some of our objectives.

PhysOrg has run off to work for part of the afternoon and I need to run some errands before gaming this evening, so I had better get moving …

Others may have realized this for a while, but because of some conversations I have had with my WoW-playing friends the past few weeks it has recently dawned on me that there is a lot of controversy over game play after you hit level 60 (currently the highest player level) in World of Warcraft.

If you level a character up to 60 and then stop playing because you think the game is essentially over, you miss the entirely new game that emerges at level 60.

My group of friends has been playing WoW since last July/August. Depending on play time logged, time efficiency, and other factors, people started hitting 60 around January.

There are several dungeons you cannot feasibly hope to raid until you are level 60. While some of them may be run in their entirety with 5 people (and some parts may even be soloed, as Bovia recently proved), some of these dungeons need the involvement of 10, 20, or 40 (level 60) characters to reach and conquer the end bosses.

Moreover, there are various sets of epic armor, which can be upgraded. Pieces from these sets are dropped by bosses you kill as part of these massive raid groups. These armor sets are ranked in tiers and you need a certain caliber of armor to be successful in your attempts to raid high-level dungeons … in order to pick up even better armor so that you can go to even better dungeons.

Since very little armor drops in one run and this must be divided among all of the people participating in a raid, various rules have been devised by groups to determine who gets the armor (some rules are universal and some may be the house rules of the specific group that is running that instance on that day).

The huge amount of post-60 game play has led to various tiers between those player characters who are new 60s (like Montanni right now) and, say, those players who have been 60 for a year or more and have killed some of the end bosses dozens of times.

All of my friends currently fall into tiers somewhere between Montanni (the 60 Noob*) and the very experienced 60s who frequently organize Onyxia runs and have the rarest, coolest armor and weapons in the game.

Among players who retain interest in the game after they reach 60, there tend to be some disagreements and divisions when it comes to the endgame stuff.

Some players are very enthusiastic, want their characters to be as decked-out as possible, and are willing to put as much free time as they can muster into post-60 game play.

Other players want to continue playing because they enjoy it and their friends are playing, but are less concerned about playing for armor and other rare gear and trinkets.

Since it takes some effort to arrange for 20 or 40 people to meet online at a specific time for a raid, players want their raid to be highly successful. This encourages some amount of competition and 1337ness that may not appeal as much to people who are playing the game more casually. Not to say that the game loses its cooperative aspect– but some selection is involved in choosing people for your 40-man raid group. This can be aggravating for a lot of players.

Now there are various ways of dealing with this on the part of more experienced players, as well as the “60 Noobs.” The worst ways I have seen involve intensive performance evaluations during raids (you don’t get invited to another raid if your DPS isn’t high enough), elitism, frustrated players ranting and quitting the game, and guilds being torn apart.

I JUST WANT TO SAY THAT I HOPE THIS NEVER HAPPENS TO DRAGON FACTORY AND THAT WE FIND HELPFUL WAYS OF DEALING WITH THIS ISSUE AS OUR GUILD MATURES.

That being said, I will have to check out Raid Awesome, the uber-guild raid group on our server that people have been recommending. Apparently it has a tier system already in place to help 60s work their way through the endgame challenges from noobhood to eliteasskicker.

* “Noob” is gaming slang for “newbie”