10/14 Patch Day

Now why, oh why, would you put Patch Day on a school night so we have to get up in the morning and can't just wallow in our achievements? (Literally.)

9/26 One more thing about Palin

One more thing I meant to mention about Palin.

I'm from southwestern Ohio. I grew up on the Cincinnati Reds. They were wonderful. If you got straight A's in school, you got tickets to Reds games. And what a thrilling time that was to be a Reds fan--I'm talking about 1975-78 range. They were our team, and we ruled the world for five months a year.

And then that most wonderful news of all--the Reds were going to be owned by a woman! Oh, could life be more exciting! The most wonderful sports institution in the world would be the first major-league team to be owned by a woman! Oh, what joy would be mine.

And then we met her. The nearest equivalent I can think of is, what if we learned that the world had chosen the most fit human, both physically and mentally, to be the first astronaut to Mars. And there would be years of fitness trials, and everyone would have a chance.

And then the guy they picked was Carrot Top.

And the woman who would be the first owner of a major sports franchise was Marge Schott.

I'm having the same response to Palin I had then--oh, I'm thrilled that a woman's being considered, but I can't help but think this isn't the right woman for the job.

9/13 Notes on Palin nomination

John McCain nominated Sarah Palin as his running mate several weeks ago, so I've had some time to think about this. What strikes me is the sheer cynicism of the Republican message; the ticket wreaks havoc with the American Dream.

Right before the convention, it came out that McCain doesn't know how many homes he owns. For most Americans, this answer is simple: one. For many Americans, the answer is and always been zero, and for a frighteningly increasing number of Americans, the answer used to be one but is now zero. I'm sorry, but if you do not know how many homes you own, then that puts you squarely in the "elite" category. End of discussion. You can wear all the cowboy boots and vote against Martin Luther King Day and pretend you like your salsa hot and engage in all the other redneck activities you want to; you're still an elite.

I have many issues with the Palin nomination, but I'm just going to comment on her from my vantage point as an educator. Five colleges in six years. Now I don't have the full story on that, so I'm not going to say anything but that: five colleges in six years. I teach at a community college; I have seen, and I understand, and I respect many non-traditional educational paths. Most of my students are going to go to two schools, mine and the four-year institution they choose. Some come to us from other schools, so they may end up with three or four. Most of them are working, so five or six years, even longer, is well within the realm of the respectable. Let me just put it like this: I teach at the community college in Las Vegas, and I have had a number of students who let it be known they were earning their money, or had previously earned their money, dancing on or near a pole. These students are fully entitled to a nontraditional educational path; they may have had the hardest row to hoe educationally that I have ever heard of.

Five schools in six years. Why does Sarah Palin need more schools than a pole dancer? What has she done? Not even pole dancers, many of whom are not known for their couth or available study time, have pissed enough people off or educationally lagged enough to require five schools in six years. Five schools in six years. Five schools in six years.

And yet she has the nerve to sneer at people with Ivy League educations, many of whom won their degrees at one school in four or perhaps five years. Now let me make myself clear: I obviously do not teach at an Ivy League institution. I do not have an Ivy League education myself, nor did I seek one; I applied for no such institutions. I do not think the education is innately superior to that which I received or that which I dispense.

Having said that.

As an educator, I obviously have colleagues with Ivy League educations. They are universally bright people whom I admire. I do not necessarily admire them for their Ivy League educations per se, but I certainly admire the stress levels to which they subjected themselves to receive that education.

If a relative of mine received a scholarship to an Ivy League college, I would be thrilled. For those people for whom the American Dream, the answer in about 75% of the cases has been education: your education opens the door to your future success. (Of course it isn't that simple or direct, and of course in many cases, it doesn't work. An education is neither necessary nor sufficient for success in America, however that may be defined. However, I have never heard anybody older than 40 with any sense say, "Gee, I wish I hadn't wasted that time getting an education." (I have heard some people say something along those lines, but there isn't any indication that they actually received an education, so I don't consider the comment valid.)

For most Americans, education is the first step. An Ivy League education, while certainly not required, often shows a willingness to work hard, to go above and beyond, to put yourself out there in ways that not everyone is willing to be subjected to. Yeah, I can see why an American wouldn't find that admirable or respectable.

So here we have a man who claims to be homespun but owns so many homes he can't keep track of them and a woman who barely seems to have escaped the educational system, yet is willing to mock people who actually...well...had clues. Sign me up for that ticket.

8/1: Notes on WOW Professions

I have a batch of nine Alliance characters: one of each class, at least one of each race, at least one of each profession. Eight are level 60; the ninth is 62. (She is obviously the current project.) I've enjoyed playing this way; instead of "power-leveling" professions, I've played them as I've gone along. I also have appropriately-leveled cooking, fishing, and first aid. The crafting professions have made gear for everyone; the gathering professions have supported that. I've found that my characters were making appropriate gear for the appropriate level most of the time. (I'll see if I can discuss a few exceptions below.)

First of all, here's what I have right now:

Night Elf Priest Herbalist/Alchemist
Night Elf Hunter Skinner/Leatherworker
Night Elf Druid Tailor/Enchanter
Human Mage Miner/Blacksmith
Human Paladin Miner/Engineer
Draenei Shaman Miner/Jewelcrafter
Dwarf Rogue Miner/Skinner
Gnome Warlock Miner/Skinner
Draenei Warrior Miner/Skinner

(I am not involved in the beta, as I'd rather get my characters closer to a point where they can participate in WotLK when it comes out. At that point, since I meet the eligibility requirements, I will be creating a Death Knight of undecided race. She will be an Inscriber. I discuss her other possible profession below.)

(Yeah, some of those combinations are funny. Take a minute and laugh. Get it out of your system.)

*Herbalist/Alchemist obviously work well together. On my next batch of characters, however, I will not have this be the priest. I think it would make more sense to give potion abilities to someone who can't already heal herself. I'm leaning toward the mage, although the rogue might also be a good choice.

Since I never created another herbalist, I clearly had enough herbs to support alchemy without needing to supplement. Since we learned that Inscription will also use herbs heavily, I've been trying to remember whether one herbalist generated enough herbage to support two professions. I think probably not, although I'm giggling at the idea of a level 55 Death Knight skipping through Teldrassil picking Peacebloom.

*Skinning/Leatherworking work together naturally. I lucked out here; I would say the two best choices for a leatherworker would be a hunter or a shaman. (These two classes move from leather to mail at exactly the same point that the profession does.) Obviously, a rogue or druid would also work here, as they remain in leather the entire game.

*Tailor/Enchanter. I go back and forth on this one. In some ways, it was nice to have these two professions together: she could make cheap greens that were never going to sell on the AH and then DE them herself, getting two skill-ups for one set of mats (at first, and then later the materials for the second skill-up).

Tailoring does actually have a gathering profession associated with it, but by default, everyone is a cloth gatherer and doesn't have to train or level the skill. (My grandmother told tales of the Ragman who would come to the house occasionally to gather discarded scraps of clothing. Every character in WOW is a default Ragman.) Although the timing doesn't always work out just exactly as I'd like, I haven't had a problem having both cloth for the tailor and enough to level everyone's first aid and eventually some to sell or make into extra things to sell.

So in some ways, the tailor and enchanter went together naturally. In some ways, though, they were problematic. This character has *two* crafting professions, both of them expensive to level; she also has no gathering profession for easy money. She is therefore the clan's Welfare Case; most of the others are able to support themselves and pay for their own leveling in class and profession skills, but she sometimes needs a cash infusion.

Another advantage to having two crafting professions in one characters: one fewer character to drag through reputation grinds. (I may change my mind on this later, but right now, if a character doesn't need to have a good reputation with a particular faction to obtain a desirable schematic or item, I haven't taken the time to do that grind. I don't think it'll be fun to have to drag five people through the Timbermaw grind, where my poor leatherworker is working right now, instead of four.)

Another reason her income is low: when she finishes a quest or otherwise wins a new item, she DE's the old one. She therefore does not have the income from selling it that the others would have.

The flip side of that is that she contributes the DE materials that are below her level for sale, and they sell very well; she also contributes tailoring products to the AH, and they generally do well. So she makes the group more money than she takes, but she doesn't have as much ready cash of her own as the others do.

In my next batch of characters, I think I will separate these and combine both Tailoring and Enchanting with a gathering profession to help cash flow.

I've also toyed with the idea of combining enchanting with inscribing, since the materials for inscribing have natural use to the enchanter, but I think it'd be cheaper just to mail the parchments to the enchanter, or that'll be another character with two expensive crafting professions to level. I've really enjoyed having all the professions, and I think I've learned a lot doing it. One of the things I've learned: two crafting professions is a cash drain.

I also don't think I'd make the druid a tailor, since it's a more logical fit to give this to a squishy. When Inscribing allows Enchanting to sell its wares on the AH ("stoked" would be the word for the joy this gives me), then I don't think it'll much matter what class the enchanters are. Druid seems as fine as any of them.

*Miner/Blacksmith. Okay. This shouldn't have been a mage. By the time I figured that out, though, I thought it was funny, so I'm going to have a mage with a purple sword when the time comes. The two professions go together naturally and smoothly. This should have been a warrior or pally. (The other classes aren't particularly weapon-dependent, with the possible exception of the rogue.)

*Miner/Engineer. This was the paladin, and I actually liked that; having explosives gave the pally a way to pull, which she was generally lacking. The primary disadvantage: those wonderful cloth headpieces are wasted on a pally. I still liked the way this plays, though. (And a pally with a mechanical dragonling, advanced target dummies, and explosive sheep is wicked.)

Disadvantage: Pallies can already resurrect, so Jumper Cables aren't quite as cool or useful as they might be on a rogue or someone else.

*Miner/Jewelcrafting. This was the shaman, which was fine. It might also make sense to give this, with those handy healing statues, to someone who can't heal, like a mage, warlock, or rogue. The BOP trinkets were cool with the shammy.

*Three skinner/miners. Now I did this because having the crafters weren't generating enough materials on their own to level in a timely manner. This has produced way too much leather, but still not quite enough ore. (For awhile, between blacksmith quests and things I wanted to make, I needed something like 500 mithril and 300 thorium. That took forever. I did finish that, but now I'm trying to make both the pally and the warrior the Imperial Plate set. Even with six miners, I'm short on thorium, especially since the jewelcrafter and engineer need some, too.) In my next set of characters, I won't have so many skinners, and I'll have at least one more miner. (The tenth character will probably end up being herbalism/inscription, so she should be able to take care of herself.)

All of my characters are right around level 300, so I haven't done the final slog yet. That may change some of these thoughts. This is where I am right now.

7/19: Pattern That's Making Me Laugh

Have you ever noticed how many of the people who aren't going to vote for Obama because of his "socialism" are teachers, police officers, fire fighters, career military members, and trade unionists?

7/13: Alterac Valley

I'm getting character #6 from level 55 to 60, and I quickly noticed that it saves some coin to get the epic mount through Alterac Valley over buying the race mount or over the mount for all three battlegrounds. (Since we almost never win WSG, that would involve losing 30 times in a battlefield where D never earns rep; major drag.) So I've played well over 100 matches of AV, and although there are still aspects I haven't figured out, this is what I've worked out so far.

Assumptions to be borne in mind: a) I have only played Alliance. b) I have only played in the 51-60 bracket. Please do not be mean to me because of my limited experience. We're all doing the best we can.

First question: When do I go to Alterac Valley? Well, you can go at level 51. Don't. There are level 60's, both players and NPC's. If you are unable to solo a 60, don't go in there. (All ego and posturing aside, 51's can't solo 60's; any 60 who can be soloed by a 51 needs to quit. No 51's should be in AV.) With 40 people in the battlefield instead of 15, you don't stick out quite as much, but each side only gets a maximum of 600 deaths; if you are level 51 or 52, you're going to die more often than you should, eating up these deaths (which are called "Reinforcements"). That's counterproductive. Keep your little low-level keester out of the battleground.

Once you're around 55 or 56, you're big enough that you won't be a drag on the team. You probably can't do the mine quest until you're at least 56 or 57; that one requires you to be able to take out a 58 with two or three 57's on you. If you can't do that, you can't do the mine quest yet. The others probably won't be a problem after level 55 or 56.

Okay, so you're big enough, and you've decided it's time to begin your AV career. Go to Ironforge and pick up the quest from the guy in front of the bank. Run into the Warrior's Hall and see if the Honor quest for the day is for AV; if so, pick it up, but don't enter the battlefield here. Then fly to Southshore and ride north toward Alterac Mountains. As soon as you get the notification that you're in Alterac Mountains instead of Hillsbrad, turn left off the road and ride the ridge up the hill. (If you get the Corack's Dagger [spelling optional] notification, you're in the right place.) Then ride along the mountains until you're at the base. One guy will have a question mark; do the turn-in and pick up Proving Grounds. There's another quest outside; this is the one to defeat Drek'thar. Pick this up. Go in the cave. There's a dwarf with an exclamation mark; get all three quests. Go to the end of the cave and right-click the marshal to get yourself in the queue.

Now sometimes, this queue moves immediately; other times, it can take forever. If it takes more than two hours, I generally log off. While you're in the queue, there are a lot of things you can do. You're near the lake at the western shore so you can go over by Dalaran and run up and down the shore and fish. If you skin and are grinding Thorium Brotherhood rep, these mountain lions are easy sources of Heavy Leather. It's also easy to run north through Alterac Mountains and work on the quests in Western Plaguelands; you can also fish in the lake there.

So you finally get into the battleground. What now? During the prep period, you should cast whatever buffs you have on the people in your group and perhaps others you see nearby. (Don't forget hunter pets. I usually cast on demons as well, but I don't know how much difference this makes.)

The gates go up. Everyone steps just far enough outside the cave to be able to mount and does so. I have to admit that I find this kind of stirring in a sappy way, The Mounting of the Heroes.

I'll number this (1. 1st time in battleground; 2. between 1st and 2nd time in battleground; 3. 2nd time in battleground; 4. after that) to make this a little easier to follow.

1. Your first time in the battleground, your first priority is to finish Proving Grounds. You're going to go to the cave about a third of the way down on the western side of the map. You'll come across some harpies on the way, but they're level 53 tops; they shouldn't be too bad. Go into the cave. At the fork, go left. Then there's a part that veers down and a part that veers up. Veer down. There's a big ice field with a flag in the middle. Right-click that flag. (You'll obviously have to kill about a dozen harpies on the way. It's not unusual for other people to need this quest as well. You can all get the flag; no worries here. You can't all do it at once, so you'll have to take turns, but you can all claim it.)

After you've gotten the flag, you have some choices. Look at the chat; does there seem to be somewhere you could be useful? Do that. If not, if you're at least level 58, you might go up to Irondeep Mine and complete the Capture a Mine quest. (Capture a Graveyard and Towers & Bunkers you will probably complete quite easily just in the course of naturally running the battleground within the first four or five times, but the mine one requires you to go out of your way.) Go in the mine, killing little trogg things; eventually, there's a named 58 with some company, usually two 57's, sometimes three. Kill the 58, and the quest is done. Just run south and try to make yourself useful in some general capacity.

2. With any luck, you will win your first match. If not, you'll certainly win one of your first two or three. (Alliance seems to win about 80% of the time. This has to do with the map, and when the Horde chooses to play, and no doubt half a dozen other factors. I think the winning percentage is best on weeknights during the school year, but that may just be me.) When the match is over, you will go back to where you entered the queue; if you followed the above instructions, that's in Alterac. Right-click the marshal to get back in the queue. If you get the immediate message to enter the battleground, wait until you've done the turn-ins. If you did the mine quest, you may have that and should turn it in on the way out; it also isn't unusual to pick up the Graveyard and Tower & Bunker quests just in the course of your travels, so turn those in as well. Then run outside the cave. Turn in Proving Grounds and pick up your trinket and your Frostwolf Artichoke. (You should read this once, just because it does give a viable strategy, but then you can auction it off as it is otherwise worthless. Someone will buy it eventually for reasons I am unable to fathom. It costs no deposit on the AH. It might take several weeks, but someone WILL buy this turkey, just like they do the Faded Photograph, and since it costs no deposit, hurray.) If you won, turn in the quest for winning. Then there's an immediate re-turn-in, and you get a fairly good choice of prizes. If you've gotten the battleground entry, enter now; if not, quietly amuse yourself in a useful manner until you are called. Equip your trinket.

If you haven't been called, if you won the battle, and if you had the day's battleground quest for AV, fly or hearth to Ironforge to turn it in.

3. Now you're back in the cave for your next match. Again, buff people. When the cave opens, mount and ride south, following the huge herd of blue dots on your mini-map. There are two strategies Alliance usually uses to win here: most people ride to Galv, or most ride to Galv and some to the Relief Hut. (Occasionally there's a blitz that bypasses Galv; in my experience, that's iffier in its success rate. It might make sense if the battle's going to end because there aren't enough Horde players; this could maximize honor & rep earned for time expended, but it's not a normal winning strategy.) Now since you don't have an epic mount yet, presumably, don't put yourself in the latter group; you will not move quickly enough to be useful. You're following the herd to Galv. (He isn't strictly necessary, but it increases honor and rep and reduces the opponents' reinforcements to kill him.)

On the way to Galv, you will often see that the Snowfall graveyard has been captured by someone on Alliance. That's not a bad idea, but it isn't essential. Often, you'll also get the message that the Irondeep mine has been captured. Mines add reinforcements; reinforcements = deaths, so this can be important if the match is close. If, by your third or fourth round, you haven't completed the graveyard or mine quests, you could join others and do them this early in your next battle, but I'd suggest on your second, after getting your trinket, you just run the battle normally (as described below) and try to figure out the lay of the land and such.

Nine times out of ten, the herd of people wipe out Galv quickly and cleanly, no problems. If you have a trinket (not your AV trinket, but another one) that permits you to resist Fear effects, you should equip it. Under no circumstances should you run out of the tower for this battle or for Drek below; if he follows you out of the tower, his hit points reset, and you have to start all over--and the players' hit points or mana don't reset, so this can be a significant bummer.

After Galv is killed, run back out of the tower and remount. There will be a tower with archers visible to your right (to the east). Are there people with green names up in the this tower already? Have the messages at the bottom said Iceblood Tower has been captured by the Alliance? If not, run into the tower, go up a level, scan for horde, go up to the top, kill any NPC's (many of these are 60's), run inside the little hut and make sure the flag is gray with a lion and not red with the horde doobob, and then run back to the road. (You will sometimes get credit for Towers & Bunkers just riding past this tower or Tower Point; you may as well be helpful.)

On your left, you will very quickly ride past Iceblood Graveyard. If there's still a battle and the flag isn't gray with a lion, or if it's being attacked, stop and be helpful; otherwise, ride on. (It is not unusual to get credit for the Graveyard quest just because of when you happened to ride past here.)

Go south. Soon, you'll be at Tower Point. Again, are there archers, or have they been attacked? Even if Tower Point has been assaulted, glance inside. If there is a dwarf lying on the ground, right-click him; this is a Wing Commander, and he's useful if he gets to Dun Baldar and useless lying on this tower floor. Click on the "You stink" part to get him running back toward home.

Now is the tricky part. Ideally, you want to run south into the village of Frostwolf. You do *not* want to get bogged down at a big battle at the graveyard here. You really don't want to take this graveyard; it isn't particularly defensible, and it becomes a bottleneck. If you see a number of people on your side trying to take the Relief Hut at the very south of the map, do NOT let anyone take Frostwolf Graveyard; if all the horde spawns at the Relief Hut, it's all but impossible to take, and that graveyard is far and away the most desirable for the Alliance.

At this point, it might make sense to run and do Coldtooth Mine; same set-up as Irondeep. Rogues and druids might do well to stealth into Frostwolf and avoid this graveyard. ("Turtling" in this battleground often means, "We can't get past FWGY to help you in the battle at the far south of the map." This is stupid and frustrating. Do what you can to break this deadlock. If you are stalemated, go down to 3b below.)

Okay, now you've come inside the gates to Frostwolf. There's a hut in front of you, a hillside to your right, and a road that goes straight ahead. On the road just beyond the first hut is an elite horde guy named Jorek or Jotek or some such. If someone is fighting him, go into the second hut, the one that faces the road, and free the second Wing Commander. This is a Night Elf. He asks that you cover him; I did once, and it really isn't necessary. Just release the wing commander, and he'll probably get himself to Dun Baldar. If the elf isn't there or Jo-guy is still in the way, just go up the hill to the right. (This avoids several battles; past Jo-guy is a cave with 58 elites, so up the hill is your friend-o.) There are a lot of Horde NPC's here, the various vendors. If you can avoid fighting them, do; they have a crapload of hitpoints and aren't really worth a lot of XP or rep or honor or such. Go into the tower, turn left, and ride up the hill.

As you get up the hill, you go through other gates. On your right and left are two towers. See if the flags have been right-clicked so they're Alliance and not Horde. In the one to the left, there's a human guy collapsed on the floor; here is your third Wing Commander. Again, right-click him to release him.

When both towers have been conquered, go due south to the Relief Hut graveyard. It makes life much easier if Alliance has this graveyard. (This can break the deadlock; if Alliance can die far enough south to resurrect here, then we can get the last two towers and Drek easily.)

3a. About half the time, the match has gone smoothly, and you've been able to get to all these landmarks with a bit of interference from the Horde, but nothing undue. When a Horde person dies, instead of the little money bag a normal corpse has, the cursor turns to an insignia. Right-click it; you will pick up stuff that is potentially helpful. If it seems necessary, it would be appropriate for you to stop and defend any of the landmarks along the way (except the Frostwolf graveyard; this is a black hole).

If all of these objectives have been met, then go back to the middle of the Frostwolf compound and ask what the timers are at. (There's an add-on that will tell you this, and I should probably have it, but I don't know what it is yet.) You do not want to attack Drek'Thar (called Drek) until Iceblood Tower, Tower Point, and both Frostwolf Towers have "capped" (been destroyed or are under the control of the Alliance). This maximizes the XP, honor, and reputation and minimizes the remaining reinforcements for the Horde, which makes it easier to win if Drek doesn't die easily. Each of these landmarks that caps also removes one of Drek's guards; if all four are capped, then he has only the two wolves (easily dispatched by a group) and himself; this is very doable.

3b. If you're waiting for towers to cap, this can be a good time to use your trinket to return to Dun Baldar. (After death or during a stalemate is also a good time.) You've probably got three yellow exclamation points the first time you do this. The one nearest to where you land is probably one asking for supplies. Turn them in in lots of 20. This gives you Ironforge XP; the first time per match you do it, you also get a buff. Very worthwhile. (He's only yellow the first time; after that, his exclamation mark is blue like the other repeatables.)

If you have any Frostwolf pelt thingies from the wolves, they go to the mounted guy with the blue question mark over his head; he's in the pavilion by the trade supplies vendor. (My mother would have a fit at a horse in a pavilion.)

If wing commanders have been released, they're by the griffin master between the pavilion and Dun Baldar South Bunker. (You can't fly anywhere, but there's still a griffin master.) The dwarf guy gets the Soldier medals you may have picked up in exchange for IF and Stormpike rep; the night elf gets the Lieutenant medals for Darnassus and Stormpike rep, I belief, and the human gets Commander medals for Stormwind and Stormpike rep. (I may have the elf and human mixed up.) If a wing commander isn't there, he either hasn't been released, or he hasn't had time to make his way here. (The human way down south has a teleport he uses, but it still isn't instantaneous from his release.)

If you have Storm Crystals, follow the path behind Dun Baldar North Bunker. Turning in the medals or Storm Crystals has the potential to release powerful units to help your side. I was in a battle once where Ivus the Forest Lord was released from the Storm Crystals; that was wicked. If you go behind the North Bunker for the Storm Crystal turn-ins and the elves aren't there, either they've been killed (unlikely; they aren't that worthwhile to the Horde) or they've gone to the Field of Strife to summon Ivus. In this case, hie thee hither to the Field of Strife to help with the summons.

If anything here in Dun Baldar has been taken by the Horde (which it seldom is), you could defend it.

There are two other quests here, one that involves gathering rams and another that involves gathering supplies in mines. I have never done either of those quests, so I don't know how important or useful they are.

3c. Once you've done your turn-ins and all necessary things have capped, git yourself back to Drek and help with the kill.

You may have noticed that capping various towers and controlling various graveyards reduced the opponents' reinforcements by 75 or 100. Once the opposite side hits 0, your side wins. Sometimes, you win on reinforcements. Not quite as satisfying, and it's less rep, but you still get three medals instead of one.

The only, only time to consider killing Drek before everything has capped is if the Horde is just about to win by defeating the Alliance general, Vann. If this is not the situation, than anyone who attacks Drek before everything has capped is merely a) eating up reinforcements by fighting Drek before all his guards are down; b) jeopardizing your reputation and honor earned for this matched. Get that foolish nonsense stopped. (If others are already trying to get it stopped, though, and people are just being jerks to get other people's goats, don't join the general jerkiness.)

4. After two or three rounds of this battleground, your Stormpike reputation has probably gone from Neutral to Friendly. (Compared to Arathi Basin or Warsong Gulch, rep in Alterac Valley accrues crazy fast.) Each time your rep changes, go back to the guy who gave you your trinket and he'll upgrade it. (Neutral, Friendly, Honored, Revered, Exalted; the sixth is from earning Exalted fully maxed at 999.) I usually enter the BG through Alterac until my rep has hit Honored. Then I enter through Ironforge or whatever city is most convenient based on whatever quests I'm trying to further between rounds.

If you haven't gotten the completion notice on the Graveyard or Towers & Bunker quest within four or five times of playing, then see if you can get others to begin the match with you by doing Irondeep and/or Snowfall. Most of the time, though, these two quests take care of themselves. (And yes, these quests are easily soloable by the time you're 58 or so, but someone else probably needs them, too, and if you can avoid a death or two, it helps our side's reinforcements.)

I know there's a lot missing and probably a lot of disagreement, but this is the basic information I wish I could have found before I entered the first time.

4/12: What I Accomplished Today

Sorry for the gap; it was feeling obligatory, so I took some time off.

Speaking of Obligatory: New Rule: If all you've got is airport security, children's birthday parties, and some vague, amorphous Chelsea Clinton/Monica Lewinsky insult tied to a picture of Obama feeding livestock, don't bother with the segment. It's a shame, because after that, Maher made some interesting observations on similarities between polygamous cults and the Catholic church (albeit marred, yet again, by his inability to distinguish between "homosexual" and "pedophile"; 20 years ago, we'd all read enough to know that most pedophiles were heterosexuals whom the child trusted for some reason, and adding "Catholic priest" to the category confirms that definition rather than changes it), but those observations weren't received in a "Hmm, let me ponder that" way as they often are because what had gone before had been...just...well...dumb. Not worthy of his time or ours. (I suspect I've conflated two episodes there, but the point remains valid.)

I've taught and graded a great many classes. We've actually given and scored the College Readiness Assessment that I attended a number of meetings planning; it seems to have gone well. I've been to quite a few Literary Society and book group meetings and read several other books; I've also been working on a class I'm teaching next fall in which we'll approach Ulysses through The Odyssey, so that's been alternately interesting and deadly boring, depending on my mood. In World of Warcraft, I've gotten all nine characters to level 50; I have to admit that I'm a little smug about this (and yes, I also know that, on the Warcraft scheme, that really isn't any big whoop, and on the non-Warcraft scheme, that's rather an embarrassment). I also have four guild tabs and am working on improving armor and weaponry while leveling the blacksmith.

Now that new television programming is filtering back to the airwaves, we can categorically announce the winner of the writers' strike: NetFlix.

Co-Vivant wants to move to Blue Diamond while keeping this house as a rental. We can do one of those things, but not both. If she finds a way, I'd love to hear it, and I'm not saying I'm not open to doing one or the other of those things, but both--I'm trying to think of a "if wishes were horses" joke to go here, but I just don't have it in me right now.

2/24: What I Accomplished Today

1. Graded, prepped, and taught the appropriate number of classes.

2. Reading Last Temptation of Christ still. Slow going; making myself read 50 pages a day.

3. Got Night Elf Hunter to level 50. Draenei warrior is now at 48. Feeling very smug and pleased.

4. PBS had a production of Company that had cast members doubling as the orchestra which was really cool; I'd have liked to have been in it. I hadn't seen the play before; it made rather more sense to hear "Being Alive" in context.

Netflix experiment: I had always wanted to see the original Sister Wendy programs on art history, and they came up in the queue this week. Co-Vivant looked at me like I was a crazy person trying to kill her; I suggested she watch one and, if she didn't like it, I'd watch the rest by myself. Halfway into the third show, she said, "Okay, this isn't bad. I'll watch these with you."

2/19: What I Accomplished Today

1. Finished The Namesake. At book group last Friday, we watched the movie and discussed them both. Now I'm reading The Last Temptation of Christ. It's a slow read for at least two reasons: a) I've read several religious books recently, and I may be about done with them for a few months; b) this will seem strange, but I've borrowed the book from a friend in book group. It's an old paperback, and it smells musty. I don't like reading this book because it smells funny.

2. Prepped, taught, and graded the requisite number of classes.

3. Earned all timely Pogo badges.

4. Had Presidents' Day off. Hurray! Hurray for Presidents' Day!

5. Read some magazines.

6. I've gotten the Night Elf Priest to 45; she was the last character to get there. I've got the Night Elf Hunter (and her little owl friend) to 49.

7. We had an ongoing mystery get solved this week very anticlimactically. About seven or eight years ago, we were watching an episode of The Bob Newhart Show. It was an episode in the third season in which Emily has redecorated the apartment and Bob hates the new look (which is the name of the episode, "The New Look"). When Bob first comes into the apartment, we see a collection of items on the wall; it's hard to tell if it's one item consisting of a number of other miscellaneous objects fastened together or a number of small objects placed close enough together that they look fastened. I don't know if I particularly like the aesthetics of the piece, but it's interesting to look at. Emily references the wall and says, "It took Ellen three days to find that..." and then she seems to say the word "accio" (which I believe was a spell in Harry Potter). Or maybe it's ochsio. Co-Vivant was watching on Tivo, and we went back to that point and listened carefully dozens of times. Sure did sound like accio.

I looked up the various spellings we could think of in every dictionary I could find, every dictionary that I owned, every dictionary that I could access in a library. I spent hours in the Oxford English Dictionary. No go. We kept the episode on the Tivo, and every now and then, we'd listen again and try to come up with new possible spellings. ("Auchzio?") Then I'd try to look up the new variants. I've looked in visual dictionaries.I've looked in dictionaries for other languages. While I myself am not a furniture person, I've had friends who enjoyed antiquing; I spoke to some of them about what this word that seems to refer to a hodgepodge of items attached to each other and then to the wall might be. No go.

A few years ago, Co-Vivant discovered the captioning button. Back to the episode of Bob Newhart; at that point, the show had not be captioned, so we didn't have that option.

I have searched eBay for the script to that episode. No go.

I have asked at Bob Newhart's website. No response.

For Christmas, Co-Vivant got the third season of Bob Newhart on DVD. We realized it was captioned, so earlier this week, we played the DVD with the captioning on to learn what this elusive, mysterious word could be.

"It took Ellen three days to find that ox yoke."

And sure enough, up above the miscellaneous hodgepodge of items hung an ox yoke. The ox yoke was the only item on the wall which did not physically belong to the clump of stuff we thought was this mysterious "accio," which we have now learned is a word we made up to name an item that doesn't seem to have a name; we had simply misheard the name of the one item on that wall we could have identified had we taken the time.

All together now: D'oh.

2/11: What I Accomplished Today

1. Prepped a class, graded three classes, taught a class.

2. Television and Pogo badges.

3. Almost done with The Namesake. Very good.

4. Took a character through the Love is in the Air sequence in WOW. No experience, and the final reward is soulbound clothing; I don't think that's particularly worthwhile, and I don't think I'm doing it eight more times.

2/10: What I Accomplished Today

1. Valentine's Day WOW was supposed to start today and didn't. Wonder what's up.

2. Night Elf Priest to 41.

3. We watched one of the commentary tracks on The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. The actress who played Lucy was astonishing (and it's really her movie, so she needs to be), so she needed to be on the track, so the director had a track with the kids. Kind of cute in the right mood. I suspect that, for the two younger children (who played Lucy and Edmund), that track will end up being the equivalent of naked baby pictures on a bear rug: something brought up by parents on Prom Night to humiliate you if you're note careful. They did a pretty credible job for 10- and 12-year-old kids. On the other hand--they're 10- and 12-year-old kids, and intelligent enough to do a pretty good job in a movie which they were largely going to have to carry by its very nature. By definition, certain elements of their personalities will render them unfit company for people for longer than a few minutes (although they're utterly delightful for a few minutes).

(Yes, yes, my opinion would obviously be different if I'd spent more time with children. Maybe. I did enough babysitting that this pattern held pretty well.)

4. I forget to mention that yesterday I caught up on my magazines and read a good chunk in The Namesake. More in the book today.

5. I've put it off long enough; now I must pay the bills. In the months in which there is plenty of money to do this and still have some left, this is fun. In the months where there is not plenty of money and you have to tap into what was left in a previous month, the fun quotient is considerably lower. This month would be one of the latter. Blech.

2/9: What I Accomplished Today

1. Ran the last through characters through the Lunar Festival.

2. Watched trashy movies on Sci Fi while doing this.

3. Television and Pogo badges.

4. We watched Good Night and Good News and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe this week. We watched the little pop-up video thing on the latter tonight. Irritating things: the bubbles didn't show up if you had it even in the slowest fast-forward, so you had to watch the movie at regular speed to see them--but there weren't enough of them for that to be particularly worthwhile, and many of the ones that were there were redundant (I believe we were told three times, in various combinations, that Tolkien, friend of Lewis, had been one of the readers of the manuscript and hadn't liked it because of the mixtures of mythologies). Elf had had much better integration of the extras into the movie, and I've read that Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which I got for Christmas but haven't done my thing with yet, also has good integration of this.

5. You may have noticed (probably not) that for awhile in the summer I had various Potter-related work I was doing, but then school started. I thought I'd work some more in October, but that computer wouldn't boot, and it hasn't booted since. This month, Co-Vivant took it to a tech to either pull the files or fix the computer. He was hoping to have it on Tuesday, when she sees him for a meeting; he told her then that he didn't have it yet, but it looked like the computer would be able to boot stably, so that's good news. I wish it weren't this month (financially, this isn't shaping up well), but I'm beginning to be a little excited about getting back a computer I'd despaired of being able to use more.

I have some demos to play now.

2/7: What I Accomplished Today

Guess I haven't done this in a few days.

1. Graded, prepped, and taught the requisite number of classes.

2. Finished reading Angelica for Literary Society tomorrow. Started The Namesake for book group. It's hard to put down. Don't think I've read many magazines.

3. Finished six recipes in Cooking Mama.

4. WOW. Got the Druid to level 45. Today I got three characters through Lunar Festival. I've adapted a list of the Elders because the complete list is meant for level 70's, so I can't get to most of the suckers. Assumptions: soloable at 45 (which eliminated instances, the Plaguelands, Burning Steppes, Horde cities, and a few others), minimal death (fine for normal play, but not for this). Here's the plan I've come up with:

a. My people are parked in Ironforge. Introductory quests. Ironforge elder.
b. Swing down to Khoranos and get that guy.
c. Run back to Ironforge, fly to Thelsamar, and get that guy.
d. Fly to Southshore. Ride mount to the Sepulchre in Silverpine Forest.
e. Ride north past Undercity to Brill and pick up the guy there. There's a 20-something wandering the road here. Now of course you could kill him, but it looks like he's considered a guard, so that will activate your PvP. I don't want that, so I just ignore him; he can't hurt me.
f. Ride back to Southshore. For characters with the Aerie Point flightpoint, fly there; the others are just riding there. Get the flight point if you don't have it. Get the guy here. (The rogue and warlock had no problem with this; the warrior did.) (One of my characters is 40; I'm not even going to try to bring her here yet.) (Some characters had a Stormwind quest for here.)
g. You can run back to the flight point or hearth; one way or the other, the goal is to end up in Stormwind. Get the dude here.
h. Run to Goldshire and get that one.
i. My lag in the Trade District is so bad that I've just been running to Westfall to get the one at Sentinel Hill. The alternative is to run back to Stormwind and fly here.
j. Fly to Booty Bay and get that one.
k. Take the boat to Ratchet and get that elder.
l. (Rogues and maybe druids in cat form will be able to do Crossroads, Durotar, Camp Taurajo, and Bloodhoof Village. At 45, I'm not sold on anyone else. Watch your PvP flag.)
m. Fly to Gadgetzan. Get that one.
n. Run to the Thousand Needles Raceway and get that one. Some of my characters had turn-ins or pick-ups to do here. (Apparently not everyone had done the goblin indurium distraction quest.)
o. Run back to Gadgetzan and fly to Thalanaar. The Lariss Pavilion one is not terribly difficult at 45, but the 40 will not be doing it.
p. Fly to Astranaar and pick up that one.
q. Ride the mount to Emerald Sanctum. Then go north and pick up the elder. You will be attacked by a high-level wolf, but run in, get the elder, and turn around, using whatever you've got at your disposal to do this. Both my rogue and my warlock survived this. (I didn't have the warrior do it because I was tired.) (Again, Little Miss 40 isn't doing this.)
r. Fly to Auberdine and get the elder.
s. Fly to Rut'theran Village. If you don't have the quest for Hinterlands, pick it up. Then run through Darnassus to Dolanaar (yes, I skipped the Darnassus elder) and get the Dolonaar fella.
t. Back to Darnassus. Get the elder, and use the invitation to go to Moonglade.
u. If you don't already have this flight path, get it; it's south of the lake. Then run to Nighthaven, do the turn-in, and buy what you want.
v. Hearth back wherever you wish to be.

About two and a half hours. (It took the rogue longer because she was the scout. Freepost is out of the question at 45; peppered with guards.)

(I know, that was very self-indulgent, but I'm pleased with it. Humor me.)

Observations:
a. There was speculation on the message board about whether you'd be able to revisit elders you'd visit in previous years. I was able to visit all elders, even those I had to have done last year.
b. Blizzard did not put a timer on these tokens; I still have mine from last year. I was expecting to see an "expires in ten days" or whatever like many of the Halloween items had, but there still isn't any. That means I can keep the tokens for next year, by which point I should be offered the tailor patterns (see next point).
c. There was speculation about the Tailor patterns. At 45, my characters are offered four things by the fireworks lady (small fireworks plans, large fireworks plan, cluster rocket plans, launcher plans). The other seller guy has dresses (but not patterns), pant suits (but not patterns), dumplings, candles, and the summons for Omen (which there's no possible way my people can do successfully, so that's interesting). All the engineer plans except the last are BOP, so only the engineer needs to buy those. The dumplings heal 4% a second of both health and mana for 25 seconds--tada! The whole she-bang! Very groovy.
d. I understand there being no draenei ancestors, or undead, but it seems the Blood Elves have been here long enough to be represented. I wasn't paying a lot of attention, granted, but I only noticed dwarves, tauren, and night elves. No humans or gnomes or trolls or orcs? Sometimes, I guess they feel like motherless children. (Something in the back of my mind is saying that lore dictates that they were all back in the first two Warcrafts, which wasn't precisely in these lands. The only gnomes I can remember in the first two Warcrafts were the suicide bombers, and there were also dwarves there as gunner units, so I'm not sure I'm remembering that right.)
e. Triggers. There are people who will behave in idiotic ways if they are called certain names to try to prove the labels do not apply. The ones I've noticed are "noob/newbie" and "Care Bear." Care Bears are people who stick to PVE and do not participate in PVP. I am a Care Bear; other people attacking me while I'm trying to do my quests would really piss me off. I've been playing over a year (almost exactly a year; when I did the Lunar Festival last year, I don't think I'd created all my characters yet), and I have eight level 45's and a level 40--but by game standards, I'm still a noob. I have no level 70's; I obviously haven't seen the two most advanced battlegrounds at all; I don't participate in the Arena; I have no horde characters yet. It rankles a little, I won't lie to you, but I understand that, on the grand scheme of things, I am, in fact, a noob. If I am called this (and I haven't been yet), I will try not to do stupid things just to prove it's not true (and ironically, most of the things people do to disprove the label tend to prove it).

Okay, I have Literary Society tomorrow, so I'd better get some sleep.

2/2: What I Accomplished Today

1. Went to Costco.

2. Took home the lady who cleans the house and went to Target.

3. Night Elf Druid is now level 43.

4. Reading Angelica for Literary Society. I'm curious where it goes; it's interesting.

5. I'm really not much of a celebrity hound, but several weeks ago magazines were talking of how the Scientologists are courting Will Smith, and several magazines I've read this week have indicated they are succeeding. I hope they're wrong. I have respect for a wide variety of philosophies and religions (including no religion at all, done for reasons other than fashionability or lack of thought), but Scientology is just silly twits helping silly twits remain silly twits. A few months ago, the attempted courtship of the Beckhams failed. If all of these rumors are true (and heaven only knows), that means that, on some level, Posh Spice has greater moral fortitude and integrity than the Fresh Prince. I wouldn't have foreseen that equation. I hope, whatever the truth in these allegations, that Jada beats him with a rock until this nonsense ends.

6. We just learned that a friend of ours showed up at the registration at the nearby university to register for graduate school. No application six months before, no GRE's, no letters of recommendation, no transcripts, no chosen classes or field or profession or even thoughts of a teaching assistantship or fellowship--just waltzed in off the street to register for graduate school like it was a Continuing Ed Photography workshop. Now fortunately (or maybe unfortunately), it was after registration closed, so she was turned away for that reason. Because they gave her the date excuse, I don't really think she knows what a strange, bizarre, inappropriate thing she has done. (I'm wondering how hard the people in the registrar's office laughed when she left. We know what "guess what happened today at work" story many of them told at dinner that night. If this weren't my friend, I'd think this was hilarious, but it is my friend, so it sort of gives me knots in my stomach. For heaven's sake, why didn't she talk to somebody with a clue first?)

Now I have been to grad school. Also, at a time in my life when I was between jobs, it became my job to coordinate law school applications for a friend who was graduating from college. I didn't do any of the work, but I'd tell him what pieces he needed ("I need one personal statement that emphasizes this and another that emphasizes that; I also need paragraphs about your beliefs about X, Y, and Z, and letters from faculty emphasizing A, B, and C"), and he'd get them, and I collated them and prepared his packages for 15 law schools. I don't know how many he was accepted for, but he and his family were very pleased with my work, and the last time I heard, he was an L.A. County ADA, so he did okay, I think.

So I'm trying to decide if I offer to help this friend. I think I could be useful. If this is really a thing she wants to do, I could help her figure out what needs to happen and draw up a timeline and all that stuff.

On the other hand, she hasn't asked for my help. My Co-Vivant says this friend is intimidated by me; I think that's a polite way of saying, "She doesn't have that much respect for me or what I do" (and I think it's interesting that those can apparently be synonyms). There's also some question about how serious she is or whether she really intends to go through with this.

So I'm not going to offer to help just out of the blue. If she asks me for input, of course I'll give some, but I'm not going to volunteer it.

The other sticky part in this situation is that this person is one of the people who was really a condescending jerk about Co-Vivant's birthday party a few months ago, and I've asked myself several times: what action or lack of action of mine indicates true support, respect, and caring for this person? Am I keeping to myself about this because it seems to be what she wants, that she wants to do this, if she does it, on her own without my help, or am I merely being a jerk back? I hope I'm not (Co-Vivant says that the fact that this occurred to me indicates it's not the case, but I think that's too facile).

1/31: What I Accomplished Today

1. Picked up my book for Literary Society.

2. Read magazines.

3. Television and Pogo badges.

4. Got the Human Mage to 45. Mail & stats check.

Very sleepy.

1/30: What I Accomplished Today

1. Prepped a class, graded a class, taught a class.

2. Television and Pogo badges.

3. Read magazines.

4. A little level 43 Human Mage.

5. I have some BigFishGame I've downloaded; I think I'll play them now.

1/29: What I Accomplished Today

1. Same basic deal as yesterday: prepped a class, graded two classes, taught a class, graded another class. Yay, me.

2. Television and Pogo badges.

3. Tonight, I finished Armstrong's The Bible. I haven't started another book yet, but I've read several magazines.

4. Human Mage is now Level 43.

5. Downloading a couple of BigFishGames.

1/27: What I Accomplished Today

1. Against all odds, we won Puzzle Day this morning. This is evidence that no one did well on this puzzle, because we had two big ole honkin' holes.

2. Human mage is up to level 42.

3. I was hoping to finish Armstrong's The Bible tonight, as I only have about 10 pages left, but I'm very tired, so I think that'll be something to look forward to tomorrow. The last chapter or two has largely been repetitive of The Battle for God, but the information is so important that I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing.

I also read some magazines.

4. Television and Pogo badges. Watched the SAG awards. Most memorable line: Tina Fey saying, "Working with Alec Baldwin is like Fred Astaire dancing with a hat rack. Thank you for giving this award to the hat rack." Otherwise lame and forgettable.

5. It looks like there are several games on Big Fish that would be fun, but I just don't have a game in my tonight.

I'm tired; I'm going to bed.

1/26: What I Accomplished Today

1. Still working on Armstrong's The Bible. Read several magazines.

2. Got Human Paladin to level 45. Stats and mail. Started Level 40 Human Mage.

3. Who buys these look-for-things casual games? I already spend big chunks of my days looking for things. The last thing I want to do during my recreation time on my computer is look for things. That's the primary reason I decided not to buy Turbo Pizza; the game itself is fine, but the bonus rounds are look-for-things. Yuck.

4. We watched television this evening, but I don't remember what we watched. Wait; Oxygen ran Mad About You a few days ago, so we watched the last four or five episodes tonight. I enjoy the show, but these are the same episodes we just saw about six or eight weeks ago. They were on how many seasons, and now in syndication we keep getting the same 20 episodes over and over?

1/24: What I Accomplished Today

1. Strange week; I've been on almost a regular-person "awake in the sunshine sleeping in the nighttime" schedule. I'm not crazy about it.

2. Tuesday and Wednesday were school days, so I prepped and taught classes.

3. I forgot to mention that we caucused last Saturday. Interesting; Nevada apparently hasn't caucused since 1948, so most people didn't know how it would work. It was interesting to get to select our delegates for the county, state, and possibly national conventions, but other aspects of the format are intimidating and infuriating, and it really doesn't lend itself well to a large city.

4. Something happened Puzzle Day that I've been thinking about all week. The Fellas and a friend were talking about a picture they'd seen in the morning's newspaper about a celebrity with her daughter; they said the daughter was a hideous Amazon, too atrocious-looking for words, and all sorts of things that indicated it was a wonder the newspaper hadn't cried for having to hold the picture. And then later that day I read the newspaper and saw the picture--and she's not a classically beautiful girl (neither is her mother), but she looks happy, and healthy, and well-adjusted. She looks like she's living her life and having a good time. And I was a little puzzled and sad: are these people who are very important to us that unfamiliar with what a "happy person" might look like? Or are they so shallow that the fact that she's not classically beautiful means that her other qualities (and she really looked like a fun, fun-loving, intelligent young woman) were utterly meaningless? I don't think I like the answer either way.

I suspect the fact that Kucinich is a running joke in the presidential elections falls into this category as well. His politics are different from what we usually see in the mainstream--and his coverage usually indicates that this is bad. I'm not convinced it is. I think he's a joke not because of his politics but because he's handsome in a president-of-his-high-school-chess-club sort of way.

5. Still working on Armstrong's The Bible: A Biography. She's interesting but dense; sometimes it's "read a paragraph, chew on it for an hour, read the next paragraph." That can be interesting and informative and is a process conducive for retention for many people (sometimes me), but it makes many of her books slow going.

6. Trained the new person who's supposed to help do a lot of the logistical stuff for placement some more. I think she'll be just fine.

7. My Human Paladin is now level 43.

1/20: What I Accomplished Today

Strange week.

1. This was Convocation Week for school, so I went to a software demonstration, a School meeting, a Department meeting, and a tech fair. I also conducted a meeting of those planning to read Placements this term. This was all to determine what my projects and priorities for this term need to be.

2. I finished the book The Secret Magdalene, and Friday was book group at which we discussed it. I referred to this book as Heresy's Greatest Hits; almost every "what if" in Christianity are covered here. What if Mary Magdalene's father were Joseph of Arimathea? (No reason to think he couldn't be, and this makes part of the story make sense.) What if Jesus' brothers were disciples? (This was one of the premises of The Jesus Dynasty, which I read earlier this year. Like the previous book, this book establishes possibility, but not probability and certainly not certainty.) What if Jesus and some learned disciples mapped out what prophesies had to be fulfilled and took steps to make it so? (Certainly not outside the realm of possibility; some may see this as cynical, but I don't.) What if...what if...what if... And the individual hypotheses were all interesting and at least somewhat plausible, but together, it all got to be a bit much. (And I could have done without the kicker: and what if Mary Magdalene could read minds? Straw that broke the camel's back for me.)

I also read You: An Owner's Manual. Interesting and well-voiced, although I occasionally thought the humor was trying too hard.

Halfway through You, I remembered that I had been reading Karen Armstrong's
The Bible before I got The Secret Magdalene, so after I finished You, I picked it up again.

I didn't read any magazines this week.

3. The reason I haven't blogged this week is because I've been exhausted and going to bed early and therefore waking up early in the morning; I usually blog late at night during my "alone time," and I haven't been up this week.

4. Won Puzzle Day this week!

5. I don't remember where I was with the Draenei Shaman when last I wrote; I got her to 45 and have now started the Human Paladin. Co-Vivant's rogue is up to level 6.

I think that catches you up on most of the week's festivities.

1/13: What I Accomplished Today

1. It didn't seem too worthwhile to go to bed last night, so I just stayed up all night. I finished my Pogo badges for the week this morning.

2. Puzzle Day. Through a comical set of circumstances, we forgot the main puzzle, so even though we'd have tied, we lost because we hadn't brought the puzzle. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

3. Came home and took a nap.

4. Level 41 Draenei Shaman. Swamp of Sorrows. Dinged 42.

5. Television and more napping. I was supposed to work on my Placement norming, but I was too tired.

6. Went to bed, actually, and slept about four hours. Then I was awake again.

7. Level 42 Draenei Shaman. Stranglethorn.

8. BigFishGame looks like a three-matchy.

9. I think I'll work on a quick Pogo badge and then prepare for the meeting I'm conducting on Wednesday.

1/12: What I Accomplished Today

1. I haven't been sleeping well; I know this is for a number of reasons, one of which is that I'm trying to yank myself back onto a school-friendly schedule, and my body really doesn't want to go there. But for the last four or five days, I've slept maybe three hours here, five hours here, two hours here; no real, deep sleep. This morning, I was sleeping, and my Cop-Vivant let me sleep so that I slept almost 11 hours and didn't get up until between 3:30 and 4. It was nice to sleep, but it's not going to make this next week any easier.

2. Level 40 Draenei Shaman. Dustfallow. Dinged 41.

3. Co-Vivant played a little WOW! We got her Human rogue to level 3.

Her little laptop is much faster than this machine. I may need to install WOW on my laptop; I haven't because I figured this would have superior graphics and speed, but I may be mistaken.

4. Television and Pogo badges.

5. Level 41 Draenei Shaman. Fished.

Not sure what I'm going to do now, but I don't feel particularly tired.

1/11: What I Accomplished Today

1. I didn't blog yesterday because I was exhausted and went to bed. I slept three whole hours. My schedule is very weird.

2. Both days, I read. I've been reading Karen Armstrong's The Bible: A Biography. Today, the book for book group, The Secret Magdalene, arrived, and I realized I only have about a week to read it, so I got to the end of the chapter in the Armstrong and started the new one. So far, it's sort of an attempt to Magdalene-ize The Red Tent, but with a rather irritating tendency to plop everyone in the New Testament into it, often in ways that so far don't make a great deal of sense. (Spoiler: I'm on page 52, and Mary Magdalene's just turned 13, but so far, it looks like her best friend and foster sister Sabine is going to end up being Simon Magus. Yeah, it's only a little contrived.)

3. I got the Dwarf Rogue to 45, checked statistics and mail, and started the Level 40 Draenei Shaman.

4. Yesterday's BigFishGame was Fashion Rush; there have been several fashion-related time management games over the last few months. I'm not crazy about this one; even with what I think was supposed to be a speed upgrade, the on-screen avatar is noticeably slow and clunky, and the soundtrack is just bizarre and inappropriate.

5. I played a little Wii in the last few days, I think. I also read some magazines.

6. I'm supposed to be starting my final check on my online Comp course; there are two big chunks I haven't written yet, so I haven't finished my final gradesheet, and I also haven't done a final proofread. Guess what I haven't started yet.

1/9: What I Accomplished Today

1. Went to Literary Society to hear Ursula Hegi speak about The Worst Thing I've Done.

2. Took a nap.

3. Television and Pogo badges.

4. Level 43 Dwarf Rogue. Badlands. Dinged 44.

Last night, I downloaded the BigFishGame, Hot Dish. Really fun; less physical Cooking Mama with multiple dishes going simultaneously. I haven't checked today's game yet.

1/8: What I Accomplished Today

1. I'm not sleeping well at night, so I got up and finished The Year of Living Biblically. Very interesting book; he's honest with and about himself. I may read his other book as well. I've started Karen Armstrong's The Bible: A Biography.

2. Took a nap.

3. We went to a friend's house to set up our Christmas present to her, a DVD/VCR combo unit. It has no tuner (none of the ones at decent price points do), so it won't do what she wants it to. We're In Search Of Plan B.

4. Television and Pogo badges.

5. Level 43 Dwarf Rogue. Swamp of Sorrows. Finished cooking and fishing quests. Hurray.

6. Have downloaded today's BigFishGame, which is called Hot Dish. We'll see.

1/7: What I Accomplished Today

1. Did the day's shopping, primarily and Costco. Spent some Christmas gift cards.

2. Read more in The Year of Living Biblically, which is interesting and enjoyable.

3. Television and Pogo badges.

4. Level 41 Dwarf Rogue. Stranglethorn. Dinged 42.

1/6: What I Accomplished Today

1. Puzzle Day. We lost. Blech.

2. Took a nap.

3. Finished The Worst Thing I've Done. Not crazy about it; I liked Stones in the River much better. This was sort of "People I neither like nor trust getting through an unpleasant year." I'm interested in what she has to say about it Wednesday at Literary Society.

4. Started The Year of Living Biblically. This is about an Esquire writer raised as a secular Jew who decides, as he raises his first child, that he needs to learn about spirituality; he decides the way to do this is to try to live the Bible literally for a year. He does this without being overly reverent or irreverent; so far, I think the balance has been really good. I'm enjoying this.

5. Television and Pogo badges.

6. Level 40 Dwarf Rogue. Dustfallow (just the parts I felt like). Dinged 41. Got the Kalimdor fishing done. Started the giant eggs for the cooking quest in Tanaris, but not quite ready for that. Did the Warmonger one and the Preserving Knowledge one in Alterac Mountains. Auction stuff.

Also read a magazine.

1/5: What I Accomplished Today

1. Level 40 Dwarf Rogue. Auction stuff. Fishing.

2. Took a nap.

3. Took home the lady who cleans the house. Did the month's Target shopping and some exchanges.

4. Television and Pogo badges. We watched Elf from NetFlix. Really, surprisingly cute.

5. Level 40 Dwarf Rogue. First batch of Dustwallow.

6. Reading in The Worst Thing I've Done. Everyone else is a jerk, too. Mason is the biggest jerk, but so far, everyone is a jerk. I suspect we'll find out that we're all likable under the jerkiness. I hope not. I've read that before.

1/4: What I Accomplished Today

1. Read more in The Worst Thing I've Done. Right now, I just think Mason is just a colossal jerk that I want him to fall out of the book.

2. Level 44 Gnome Warlock. Finished fishing and did bits here and there in Feralas. Dinged 45.

3. Television and Pogo badges.

4. Mail check and stats check in WOW.

Last night, I worked on my office for an hour. It is impossible to tell.

1/3: What I Accomplished Today

1. Level 42 Gnome Warlock. Desolace. Dinged 43.

2. Got Dance, Dance Revolution for the Wii as a Christmas present that arrived today. Wicked cool. I haven't quite figured out the hand motions, but I'm making progress.

3. Television and Pogo badges.

4. Level 43 Gnome Warlock. Finished several stray Warlock quests I'd had and the cooking quest. Yay-rah.

5. Did a late-night mail run and was asked to do the Placement backup, so I did that.

6. Read some in The Worst Thing I've Done.

7. Now I'm working on cleaning my office. I'm a little concerned; I haven't had a tetanus shot in a long time.

1/2: What I Accomplished Today

1. Finished His Dark Materials. The ending was a real disappointment, hinging on two really unlikely events [spoilers here; don't read on if you don't want to know]: Mrs. Coulter, who has been really deliciously malevolent, suddenly finds honest, sincere Mother Love for no apparent reason (and says so), and just as we learn that the misflow of Dust is straining to hold back floods and floods of misflowing Dust threatening perhaps to collapse the very Universes themselves--the whole flow is somehow fixed by the puppy love of two twelve-year-olds. Remarkable twelve-year-olds, granted, even on a cosmic scale, and certainly likeable, but--give me a major friggin' break.

Having finished the end of the Harry Potter and Lemony Snicket series this year in addition to rereading the Little House series, this is far and away the worst of the lot, and that's disappointing, because the premises were really, really fun, and the story was good; then the ending was such a cop-out I really wanted to throw something.

I was also a little disappointed because I expected to see the religious controversy, and I was looking forward to reading a series of science fiction book written by a staunch, die-hard atheist. This isn't one; he can claim Atheism all he wants if the label pleases him, but he's too haunted by Christianity to leave it behind him, and it hurts the books. It looks to me like he's suffering from Christianity PTSD (not literally, of course; that's a make-like), and this is just petulant flailings by someone who isn't always entirely certain what he's flailing at. Too bad, too, because some of the ideas (the idea of end of death as ending religion as we know it, for example) warranted real exploration. They didn't get it here. This is someone sticking out his tongue at Christianity, not making a serious, concerted case against it (and yes, I think that's very possible to do in entertaining fiction, but it's not done here).

2. Played some Wii. I played quite a bit last night after I finished my entry here, and this morning, it felt like I'd done a worthwhile workout, so I'll see if I can parlay that.

3. Television and Pogo badges.

4. Level 41 Gnome Warlock. Stranglethorn. Dinged 42. Went to Swamp of Sorrows and was going to finish those questlines, but they really weren't that fun, so I did the ones I needed (fishing, ...and Bugs, and Dream Dust) and left. It's a game, after all, not a series of mandatory to-do lists; I don't have to do everything if I don't want to. (That seems so blatantly self-evident that it shouldn't have taken me this long to reach that conclusion.)

5. Played a little Farm Frenzy. I'm on my fourth character, trying to get all the rewards.

6. Started The Worst Thing I've Done by Ursula Hegi for Literary Society. Also read a few magazines.

1/1: What I Accomplished Today

1. Level 40 Gnome Warlock. Got fishing to 225 and picked up fishing quest.

2. Television and Pogo badges.

3. We got Bookopoly for Christmas, so we played this for a little while.

4. Played Wii for a little bit.

5. Level 40 Gnome Warlock. Dustwallow. Dinged 41.

6. Read several Wii manuals and more in The Amber Spyglass.

12/31: What I Accomplished Today

1. Ran errands, including picking up the book for Literary Society. We also got a Wii! Whee!

2. Set up Wii. Co-Vivant and I played it a little. Good, clean, silly fun.

3. Television; I don't remember doing any Pogo badges. I also did some online stuff I've been meaning to do for awhile that's been backing up.

4. Level 44 Draenei warrior. Quests outside Uldaman. Dinged 45. Stats check and mail check. Auction stuff.

5. Read some magazines and some in The Amber Spyglass.