Friday, May 16, 2008

Random things to remember

I was in group therapy and this woman who got proposed the first day he met her by this millionaire who's about 15 years older, told me I need a bf.

I was once happy with things like books and art.

I once left a secret thankyou bundle at my neighbor's house with Korean grape juice and snacks and a thank you note. My gf told me this because she remembers it well.

I had a singing solo when I was 9; it was the Little Mermaid song, "Part of that World" which is still a difficult song. Some girl wanted to sing the solo too so she badgered the teacher to let her perform the second half. People told me she wasn't as good :)

Tim Robbins took a tour of my high school which he was an alumni. Many years later, he licks the neck of my gf, who is also an alumnae. Lucky bitch :P

I can make glass Venetian beads, with a real torch and real glass.

Trial run

I was doing a trial run with two applicants in a quick Kara with 2 healers and some unexceptional tanking on my part. Nightbane, wow, just couldn't target the guy nor predict where he'd land, combined with slow response-timing due to a mysterious seasonal fatigue = bloody mess of dead players. It's not that I don't care because I'm a heartless bitch; it's that I've become cynical to the expenditure of raiding. Consumables, repair costs, a few trigger-happy people, eh.

To the point, I extended an invite to the holy priest after much hemming and hawing. An officer pointed out his flaw of dying to threat-sensitive situations like the aggro wipe of Nightbane. I asked the applicant about it; he mentioned how he took a hunter's misdirection for granted with this particular fight. That fanagle poked at me...if we clearly don't have a hunter, why would you react to a situation as if you did have a hunter? Would you heal as you did before if there wasn't a druid who would innervate you?

It was me and another officer on; we came up with the hesitant answer of "Yes, let's invite him". In my fluxing degrees of indecisiveness, I called one of the lead guild officers; no response. In hindsight, we could have taken our time making a decision; I don't have to accommodate an officer asking about whether we should invite a person who is mediocre in healing. His redeeming quality is that he presents a drive to learn.

Hindsight is everything when I cringe at his healing. I hope he actually doesn't believe he's doing that well. And when he got taken for a mana injector, buying one charge for 60g from the AH, it made me pause. And that he actually thinks the effort put into complaining to Blizzard GMs will come to a pleasant fruition of a resolution to accommodate for his inobservant behavior, that made me wince and pause some more. Priests need to be observant of minor details like cleansing, when to shield, when to take focus off of the tank, etc.

But I'm also suspicious of every new applicant. I'm jealous of protecting the guild's best interests. This priest seems like a decent sort of guy. However, I have to say that I wish that I could have had a better gauge to measure a healer. I have to trust that he'll try to become a better healer, that he won't snap when the pressure is strong, that he will know he's capable of more. Much like I have to trust myself to do all that.

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

How I got into the game and why I fish.

When my boyfriend at the time and I got together, WoW had just finished the beta and released. I wasn't a gamer and wasn't interested in playing WoW. But one day, my bf asked me if I would level up his fishing. So he parked me in Darnassus with a fishing pole and I fished there for 4 hours. I was hooked.

He got me my own account even though I asked him not to. I'm fond of saying that my relationship with WoW lasted longer than that relationship. I have two BT/MH raider characters as a pally tank and a shadow priest which is time-consuming and demanding.

But I still try to sneak away to fish because
1. I can handle guild officer stuff and chat without killing a group in an instance.
2. I enjoy gathering cooking materials
3. I enjoy the surprise element of a catch.
4. It's not about GCDs or how much haste rating you have. Its simplicity is something that most people write off as boring. It's a meditation of my "surroundings", a time and place where all your focus is on the bobber and the basic joy of a catch.
5. Unlike RL fishing, WoW fishing is not at all demanding; it's free of extraneous factors like timing of the tides, stabbing hooks in fingers, and tangled lines.
6. If you miss a bob, there are very little consequences, unlike raiding :)