Weekends of Warcrack

Aside from the wedding, it's just been a really busy month. This weekend was (believe it or not) the first completely dead weekend we've had all summer-- and it was organized that way. Erich and I did essentially nothing, other than catching up on dishes and a couple loads of laundry. It was dreary outside for most of Sunday and made for perfect couch weather.

I did about 4 or 5 hours of stitching done on Apache Wedding Blessing over the weekend. Nearly all of the pale yellow across the bottom border (where "Apache Wedding Blessing" is backstitched) is complete. I've also started the dark trees just above that block. I'd ideally like to get that entire bottom border- including the trees and sunset - done before I receive the first UFO RR piece in mid to late September. The feathers on the right border will stitch up a bit slow, but the rest of that side will go very, very fast. I'm confident I'll have it done by the holidays. (yay!)

Erich and I both also played quite a bit of World of Warcrack this weekend, including a new instance within the game that I hadn't played before. As I may or may not have mentioned earlier in the month, we decided to join a new guild in-game, and it's kept us quite busy. For the uninitiated... guilds in these massive online games are essentially communities within the game. They organize runs into the multi-player scenarios ("instances") that require anywhere from 5 to 40 people to play, depending on where you're going. Our old guild was comprised only of our close friends- the ones we see on the weekends for Dungeons & Dragons games and such. It was good for the lower levels of the game where we'd only need between 2-5 people to group for some of the quests (aka in-game assignments giving you projects to develop your character). But the problem was that we were simply too small to really do any of the instances at the highest level. In that case, it's easy to get stuck with really not much to do. We needed a change because the game was getting quite boring. A few conversations via email with our friends also really pushed both of us to start looking.

My first instinct was to contact the Burrito Bandits. I've worked on a couple of things along the way with them. They were a friendly group and seemed to have a great sense of humor. They also had a guild philosophy that was in line with the type of gameplay we do. That's the important thing with a guild-- making sure you join one that fits your play style. Some guilds demand a LOT of time-- so much, in fact, that it could be argued that it's a second job. And some players really go for that. Heck, if I were in college, I probably would. The real-life stuff, however, requires that I don't play that often. And of course, there is the fact that I don't WANT to be spending every moment of free time, including possibly some of my sleep time, in that game.

So Erich applied to the guild first, and was nearly immediately accepted. I did the same a couple days later, and was nearly immediately accepted. We've both been learning how to do the 20-man instances. We're meeting new people. We're having a good time. It's geeky and time-wasting, but a great way to relax. :)'

OK... back to work.