My beloved compy is back home. WoW is installing and I'll be able to play tonight. /happysigh

Today is the second day my computer has been at the repair shop.

When I took it in, I was nervous and fidgeting, painstakingly explaining to the gently smiling, extremely patient tech exactly what was wrong with it, and what I wanted from them, and please-god-just-fix-it-and-give-it-back-ASAP!!!! I felt like a mom dropping her child off at school for the first time.

When I asked the tech when he thought it would be done, he smiled and asked if we were in a rush. I just gave him my best hard, serious stare and told him that I play World of Warcraft (in other words, this is an EMERGENCY, and YES we're in a rush!!!). He nodded and said, "say no more - we'll get it done for you."

Yesterday evening rolled around and still no word from the tech. I fell asleep* and missed the call at 7:30pm in which the tech promised me that it would be done by 1pm this afternoon.

Keep your fingers crossed for me.

*I fell asleep the second I got home from work at 6:10, and didn't wake back up until about 7:45am the next morning. It's like without a computer in the house, my brain is forced to shut down!

I wanted Protector's Band, Defiler's Chain Greaves, and Defiler's Chain Girdle before I hit 40. Was that too much to ask? I didn't think so.

Unfortunately on low pop server Underbog there don't seem to be enough lower level toons around to keep the BGs full during the later evening. I would be queued up waiting for Arathi Basin or Warsong Gulch for forty minutes before finally getting in, only to have it end in five minutes because there weren't enough players. This was fine in AB when we Horde outnumbered Ally and were able to overrun and win in under five, but for the most part, it sucked. Getting the marks was frustrating and time consuming. And not time consuming in a grueling, tough battle kind of way (which is fun!), but in a sit around and wait and wait and wait and read a book and wait some more kind of way.

Then Laughingbull decided to ding 40, and I was doing the BGs alone. I started getting heat from Laughing ("come on, we're being run through RFD, you should be here, all that stuff is going to be outdated in a couple days anyway etc. etc.) only to have him do a 180 when I finally did decide to give up on my marks and move on (I checked from 37-42, there isn't a better belt, you need Defiler's Chain Girdle, we'll wait for you).

I ended up with Defiler's Chain Greaves before I gave up (only because I was still planning to get the belt too, otherwise I would have gotten the belt first). I didn't want to fall too far behind Laughingbull and Patobanton, waiting to get into AB was driving me batshit crazy, and every single time I did WSG we got our asses handed to us. Granted, I probably could have just suffered through the three more losses it would have taken for me to get my ring, but I ran completely out of patience.

So Harpy's 40, wearing mail, and dual wielding axes. With Windfury. ^_^ And I'm not losing any sleep over the lost BG gear.

I am notoriously bad about falling asleep at my keyboard. It generally happens when I'm trying to grind or pound out some long quests with friends (never ever in an instance), and I definitely remember it happening in STV more than once... although I'm not sure how you could avoid falling asleep in STV. /hate! Anyway, I'll feel myself getting sleepier and sleepier, then I'll target one of my friends and hit follow so I can rest my eyes for a second, and then....

/rw WAKE UP BECCA!

Ermm... yeah.... thanks for all the free xp I got while I had you on follow and you killed five thousand mobs... oops.....

The other night I was in Thunder Bluff with an alt and was looking for the mining trainer. I have to find the mining trainer, where's a guard.... I was repeating it over and over in my head. I knew I was this close to falling asleep. I have to find..... WHOA!

I let out a quick bark of a laugh. Laughingbull, playing at my place, looked over from his desk. "You okay?"

Yeah. I just walked off the edge of Thunder Bluff. No big deal.

Last night's falling asleep at the keyboard was pretty bad. Harpy had just been run through SM about five or six times by friend and Guild Leader Extraordinaire, Durtyturdy. I completed The Compendium of the Fallen, and immediately went back to Thunder Bluff to turn in and get my Forcestone Buckler. I was pretty excited because I was still using Seedcloud Buckler.

Somehow between turning in the quest, getting back to Hammerfall, and falling asleep I managed to vendor my new shield. I wouldn't realize this until I was woken up by Laughingbull and halfway to Shadowprey Village, only to find that buyback had cleared out. I have no idea how it happened - I could have sworn I equipped it immediately - but... apparently not.

/cry

However, I did ding twice and Harpy is up to 33. I'll be dual wielding soon.... who needs a shield anyway....?

Better late than never, right? Click on all of the screenshots for a full size version!

Laughingbull (a.k.a. Imachargeatu, or some such) and I (Iduun) logged on and rolled our Tauren on Cenarian Circle somewhere between 10 and 11 AM to see what was going on. And as such, we were fortunate enough to be a part of the Moo Formation!



We logged out, ran some errands, and logged back in just in time for the race to begin. And WOW there were a lot of cows! We blasted out of town and out into the wild... and then my computer exploded.








Things started to thin out and get a little scary in the Barrens...

The Dwarves weren't terribly welcoming, and it wasn't too long before the horde of dead Tauren rivaled that of the live and kicking one.

The goal was to get to the tram, get out of Stormwind, then go kill Hogger. I missed that part... I logged out before I got to the tram.

It was a blast, and the number of people participating was overwhelming. In guild Moo we capped out at 500 members... I think the most I saw logged on at a time was in the high 380s, but there were TONS of cows not in the guild. I would estimate we had around 500 Tauren in our mad dash.

Although I'm guessing many of the people there did not know Sharvan, myself included, it was touching seeing people all across the run /yelling "For Sharvan!" I found out that Sharvan's family participated in the run after reading this letter on Big Red Kitty's blog.

I'm glad that so many ran to honor Sharvan. /moo!

I did at one point have two blogs. One for my daily rants and rambles, and the other for my World of Warcraft encounters. I decided a while ago that my WoW blog was unnecessary - I had taken a break from the game, hadn't posted there in ages, and all it was doing was irritating me by its sheer presence in my Blogger profile.

/delete

But now I find myself playing again (playing a LOT again) and if I don't want to choke my "regular" blog with WoW posts I need a new outlet. So... taDA!

I have a TON of screenshots from The Running Of Da Bulls that took place this last Saturday that I need to post. It was truly fantastic, from the main event with hundreds of cows yelling "For Sharvan!" while running all the way to Hammerfall, to the afterparty at Ironforge (even though the Dwarves weren't all that keen on hosting). I'm proud to say that Iduun the level 1 Tauren warrior stayed level 1 all the way to Hammerfall. I'm not quite sure how that happened!

AND I would like to warmly welcome Kelswift to the wonderful (and addicting) World of Warcraft! Countless episodes of hounding the bestest big brother in the world finally paid off! Kelswift was rolled at my house, mid evening, on a trial account. About halfway through the night, Kelswift was upgraded to a paid account. ^_^ Welcome! /hug