Owls.

Today is Wednesday--
Ten wings and fries for six bucks.
Why not like Hooters?

(This is fine because Wednesday is pronounced with 2 syllables. Ha.)
~j

Going Somewhere.

Everyone I know is travelling.

Literally, everyone. I can walk down the streets of Champaign (walking, I'll get to later in this post) secure in the knowledge that I will meet noone I know. They're all gone--or going, or coming back. They're just not here. Or wherever they're supposed to be.

My parents moved to Florida last month. I initially didn't seem to be affected by this, but thinking about going "home" to visit family is full of complications now that home is someone else's. And I'll miss the place. It wasn't the only place I grew up in, but it was the place I grew up in the longest. Since I've moved to Champaign, I could always come back, basically whenever, and know that I could crash there. Now, I'm rather sure that I'd be unwelcome, as the new owners have no idea who I am.

But I digress. My parents are in Florida. This is a longish way away--but I'm happy for them. It's a reward for long (but gracious!) selfless lives. But it doesn't feel like it where they should be, yet.

My sister and her family and my little brother are heading down to visit them.

My little sister is in Europe with her guy. Facebook says she was heading to Rome 9 hours ago, so I'll assume they're basically there now.

My cousin and aunt were in Germany for the 4th, and probably still are.

One of the managers here at Friday's is on his way back from visiting family in Florida. Screw Rome, it seems all roads lead there.

Then, there's me.

This morning, I tried to unlock my bike, and the plastic grip snapped, leaving the key sticking out of the lock. It seemed a little much, but the lock had been sticking recently, so I didn't think that much of it.

I got a pair of pliers, got a good grip on the key, and turned. The key bent. I straightened it out, gently, and tried simply pulling the key out. The metal ripped. Now I have half a key stuck in my bike lock.

Everyone I know is travelling, and it's a miracle I can get to work. An object at rest...

~j

The Other Half.

Okay, today, instead of playing World of Warcraft Alliance side, with my guild and all of the stuff I've built up there, we played some Horde characters we had on another server.

We looked for a guild. We were mostly interested in another RP guild--since the server was an RP server, and we had characters there on purpose. Last night I was doing some searching online for info about RP guilds there, and we finally found one that wasn't horribly specific enough to disqualify our characters, but actually had active players. Today, we jumped through hoops. I understand that if people are willing to go through all sorts of things in order to get a guild invite, they're less likely to beg for stuff and then run. We posted in-character things on this guild's forums. We joined their out-of-character chat channel. We talked to their guild leader.

And we ran around, doing Horde quests and leveling a bit. It was fun. One of the main drawbacks I see to RPing on the Horde side of the game is most of the character races are more monstrous. I play humans because, well, it's fairly simple to figure them out. But when I actually spend time trying, it's not so bad playing a "Hordie." Most of the monstrous races are vaguely (or not) connected to a real-world ethnic or racial group, so if you start there, it's not really much harder than playing a "normal" human, as long as you do a bit of research.

This other server has an actual community of RP, which makes me think about our "home" server a bit differently. Do we have a community for RP? How hard would it be to advertise that a bit more, to get people involved? Beats the hell out of everyone running around, doing their own thing.

Heck, I may be a bit more picky in how my guild recruits. Because if we manage to get space on a Wiki built for the guilds of the server, then people will see us, read about us, decide we're awesome. And making people jump through hoops makes them even more determined to stick around.

After a couple of days of dealing with the Horde side of the game, I've learned a little, and maybe I'll bring some of it back. And maybe I'll keep playing my Horde characters a bit more often. I don't know if you can call it personal growth, but hey--not gonna be picky.

For the Horde.

~j

Cheat.

I forgot to write
Now the day is getting old
Time to go to bed.

~j

Better Late.

My rule is, if I'm still awake from the previous day, it still counts.

Yet again, my family educates me about neato stuff. I'd talked to my dad on the phone last week, and he'd mentioned that most of the family had Skype, so we could all conference call, and it was cool--particularly since the folks just moved to Florida, and my sister and her guy were traveling around Europe. So I downloaded the installer, and promptly forgot about it.

Today, messing around on Facebook (another thing my sibs got me on), I get a message from my sister's boyfriend's account, telling me their Skype login. I took the hint, and actually ran the installer and set up my own account.

20 minutes later, I was having a conversation with my dad in Florida and my sister in Germany. I was doing this from my laptop, at work.

I freaking love technology.

I didn't get the webcam set up--it was working, but this being my first "call," I didn't want to make it too complicated. But now I want to get it going. How fun would that be! I can already imagine Skype RPG sessions, calling my girlfriend up to say goodnight, saying hi to my niece....

Being more social sure is more appealing to me when I get to use a computer to do it.

~j

The Responsibility to Game.

I play World of Warcraft.

I've played for awhile--I've really lost track, but probably around four years. It launched in November of 2004, and while I know I didn't jump on that particular wagon right away (I was playing City of Heroes at the time, and still update my account occaisionally), it wasn't long before a friend of mine got me to try the game. Last December, I became the guild leader of the guild I've been a part of for awhile--the Order of the Ebon Circle.

We're on an "RP" server, Earthen Ring--which means that Player vs. Player action isn't the rule, and in-character naming conventions can be enforced (usually if there are complaints about a particular name), and that there is actually in-character role-playing going on somewhere on the server, sometimes. That isn't the rule, but it happens here and there, and is nice to see and to butt into.

So, we have RP events sometimes, but mostly we just talk in character when we happen to be running content together (or with other players who seem RP-friendly). We're small, but we've got help getting into end-game dungeons and content that sometimes requires 10 to 25 people to play through. People log on nightly, and I'm their leader.

So I try to log on nightly. I'm sometimes a little selfish with my time on WoW, and as much as I'd like to make people think I got my guilt-gland removed and the tender age of five, I feel bad that sometimes I can't help.

With the last expansion pack for the game, I started a new character--and after I began playing him, I decided to make him a "tank"--a type of character that can take gigs of damage, and keep the enemies off the rest of the team. I like playing and making tanks in City of Heroes, and I thought this would be a good way to help serve the rest of the guild--play a role that most people don't want to play, literally taking one for the team. That character has been doing that well enough, I think, but I still feel bad--particularly for my girlfriend, who after joining the game and the guild, began playing a healer. And now she's frequently talked into healing for our dungeon runs even though she's way too cool to actually get anything out of those dungeons anymore.

So, now my priority is my healer. He's a calm, temperate sort whose life is about service--an interesting divergence from my normal character personality. I'm learning to heal in dungeons, how to work with different party make-ups, and hopefully soon I'll have something to help the guild at end-game content again.

So I need to log on nightly. People need to see me around. They need me to take one...two for the team.

Good thing I really like the game. And the characters. And the guild.

~j

Break.

Yeah, that's probably enough of one.

I'm not precisely sure what made me totally neglect the write-something-every-day thing, but in the interests of laziness and avoiding too much introspection, let's just call it...laziness. I've found I like doing this--but, it's setting aside the time every day--time that could be used to sate my addiction to World of Warcraft, time that could be used sleeping, or time that could be used watching TV the way of the future. Yeah, by finding some website that's streaming it.

Not that I sleep too much. But the other two, they're a big problem.

Nobilis tomorrow night. We have a new player--who doesn't have a new character yet, but that's cool, it's a work in progress. And our old new player is a great addition to the game--her character's needing to go to the other characters for advice or help actually keeps other people involved. Now if only I could learn to do that myself...

I have been informed by my weather guru that the current bout of mild mildness will continue until...Our Independence Day. I'm a little bemused by the fact that I have a weather guru--a sweet older lady who comes in to Friday's every Monday. I also like the idea of only referring to the upcoming holiday as...Our Independence Day. You go, Bill Pullman.

That's enough ranting randomly for this evening. Tune in next time. And that reminds me of the Muppets.

~j