vicks6
SoI seem to have stopped this again. I think I ought to formally declare this blog to be in cold storage. I'm not sure it can do what I want it to, and I just don't have time for it.
If you want to get hold of me, though, you know where I am...
Falling backwardsI've been a bit up and down this past week. But I've got a load of work to do, which, frankly, isn't gripping me as much as it should. I've also got some other preparation to do. And books! Today, I am mostly fine.
We're on holiday in a few weeks, so I am really looking forward to the chance to re-charge and get some much needed sleep. I am finally sleeping through the night (mostly), so at least I am less tired than I was. Now I need to work on not going to bed quite so late, and I'll be sorted.
Wheeeeee!So things are going pretty well at the moment (aside from the weather, which is nice and all, but it's a trifle too stifly. My favourite seasons are spring and autumn, when you can rely on things to be just that little bit drizzly and gloomy, but not too hot or too cold. Hmm, perhaps that is a pathetic fallacy though. Anyway, too much interstitial rambling, but I
am British, and I am claiming justification on that ground alone). I am pretty much on an even keel and happy and productive at work.
I saw two sets of old friends last week, both sets of whom (hmm, not sure about that) have known me well over a decade (and in relation to the first set, 20 years. Gasp). It's strange the way that it's clear that one's become a different person since then, but indefinably still the same. I think that was most clear with the university friends, partly because I haven't seen them for longest, whereas I've always met up with the other group intermittently, although we'd fallen a little out of touch. The great thing about old friends is, of course, that you always remember each others' mistakes (and curse them for even remembering the names of my mistakes!), but somehow they've all passed into the mists of time, and have become funny. We laughed now about waiting in whilst at University for the phone to ring. Perhaps my memory is better; it wasn't remotely funny at the time.
Which is not remotely to say that I hanker after only old friends, or the person I was when I first met them. I don't want to be that person any more anyway, and I don't think I could get her back if I tried. No, I cherish the new friends equally (and sometimes more) than the old friends; it's the new friends in my life, particularly this year, who have given me the confidence to see that I am not the person I once was, but that I've gone on and fulfilled a lot of my potential, which the old friends sometimes (but not always; they had their issues too!) told me I had.
So, all told, hurrah for friendship, old, new and still to come. Thanks, guys!
\o/
On weekendsI really don't think there is enough of a weekend. I always end the week exhausted, and then there isn't enough time to recover from that, and have a tiny bit of fun as well.
This weekend I was more tired than usual, and also unfairly snotty. All weekend. I don't know whether it was a cold or hayfever (which I do not suffer from. Chiz), but it bothered me. Having said that, having been unexpectedly free on Friday, I raided then and on Sunday, and got upgrades! Although nothing from Ulduar, sadly. But we did down the first boss in 25 man. Which is an achievement. Other than that, I levelled herbalism from 0 to 450 over the weekend, having finally made the decision that skinning wasn't doing it for me any more, and that it is an absolutely pleasure to herb in flight form!
This is linked to my cunning plan of getting the rogue out of retirement to become a fully fledged inscriber (she dabbles at the moment, since I got things wrong, and levelled her to 60 before Wrath, not realising that she would have to be 65 before she could learn Grand Master). So she has milled all the herbs I gathered (save for the Wrath ones, where there is no point).
Am also reading Pride and Prejudice. Oh! How lovely it is. How wonderfully written. It is wasted on A level students, really. But I forgot that it is my book club on Wednesday, and now I have to finish P&P and read the book club book (The Black Album by Hanif Kureshi) by Wednesday evening. I will do my best to achieve!
I only have one thing to say/sigh. Tim Minchin. Always puts me in a good mood. Now go listen. Don't stay here. Go listen. It's not perfect...
And breathe...I woke up in a foul and vile mood this morning. I was not in a happy place with anyone in particular and anything in particular. But I have spent the morning talking sternly to myself, and have reached somewhat of an epiphany (and why do I always want to say nirvana, when I mean epiphany?). I think some of my issues have been (a) thinking that other people have all the answers and they are just not telling me, coupled with (b) a desire to know how everything will turn out. I am espousing a wait and see policy. I think that to be for the best, and may well lead to a calmer existance.
Have just finished reading Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Hmmmm. It leads me to wonder why. It was funny in places, but in others there was a clunky displacement of language, and I wondered to what avail. It left me with a sense that someone had decided after a drunken night out (or possibly during) that it would be a clever thing to do. It undoubtedly is clever, and some of the parodic imitation is very good indeed. But I still wonder what the point of it was, or whether it's a book by someone too unoriginal to write their own.
Dunno what to go on to next. But I am being drawn back to Pride and Prejudice. Given my extensive problems with sleeping over the last six months or so, it is a truth universally acknowledged that a woman in need of sleep could do worse than curl up in bed for the weekend with a selection of Jane Austen books.
Upgrades and other mattersSo I raided yesterday. Logged on in time for a Naxx25, which I think is the first raid I have been on since the end of April. I went on 3, maybe 4 (but I think only 3) Ulduar runs, and then knocked the whole thing on the head for a while. So it was a bit of an achievement to actually go again. One of the things which had switched me off raiding was the expectation that I would set the healing all the time, and have people looking to me always to organise things. Before Gruul and Hyjal I'd never done that, and I don't really enjoy it, to be honest. Someone always has a better idea of doing things, and half-way through you feel the urge to should "Just because I say so! Do it!" because actually one of the reasons you sometimes give people non-traditional healing assignments for their class is because you don't trust them to do what their class does best, because they just don't play that way. One thing our guild has always been good at is not forcing people to play in a certain style. Which is fine, and good for a casual raiding guild, but within that, I've never thought it was fair to then not recognise that if you aren't requiring people to spec a certain way and play a certain way that you, as guildies, need to play to their strengths, rather than accentuate their weaknesses. If that makes sense. I think it does.
Anyway, I went last night, and was really pleased that after such a long gap (for me; remember I don't play computer games), that I pretty much rocked. If that sounds big-headed, I don't care. Healing is what I enjoy, and I do it pretty well. I don't think it did me any harm at all to be second on the meters, and 5th on the overheal (and I know, I know, I know, healing meters are not all. They do not say everything about a player, but I am expressly talking about how they were for my first raid back. So they have that value to me). And I got upgrades. I have been after a better hat than my Nexus blue one for ages, and I got the tier 7.25 piece (which means that I now have 5 tier pieces /flex). J won the roll for it, but very kindly passed to me, since he had the 7.10, and I didn't even have an epic there. I still need a replacement for my crappy green trinket though, but druid trinkets are not very common. And I got a better belt, which is also nice.
I am also doing the tournament dailies because when the patch comes it will open up new ways of instancing, and will have the same instances available for 5, 10 and 25 man. I like that as an idea. But I think they are only available once you've finished all that malarky. And, of course, there are pets to be had there. I have the Darnassus and Exodar ones already...
So, other things. I was wondering whether it is possible ever not to slightly edit oneself in communicating (in writing or otherwise) with people. I sadly don't think it is. It is always the case, I guess, that we want to appear in our best light, or that there are things which are so personal that we can only think them to ourselves. Sometimes I think that the way of editing ourselves though (and I am sure that this is not particular to me at all) means that, by definition, there are only a few people who can really, truly know us. There are only a very few people who I have a light editing-touch with, but even with them there are areas where I will not go, and hope that they don't stumble across them, or slight diversions which I make so that they don't stumble there. On one level that makes me sad, but on one level I quite enjoy the fact that I control what information people have about me. But I do assume that this is the same for everyone. I very much hope that it is.
