everything will be alright

It was a pretty nice weekend, I've gotta say. We never did get the monster storm that everyone was predicting for all of last week, really; Friday night saw some snow fall (though none had really started by the time I went to bed closer to 3am) and there was maybe, what, 10-15cm to deal with Saturday morning, but we were supposed to get 10-20cm overnight Friday and then 20-30cm on Saturday I think, which, no. It was windy and freezing cold but not that bad at all, all things considered. Last Thursday had actually been worse, in the morning anyway, though that too had cleared up pretty much completely by lunch (which was good as I still had to drive into St. John's after lunch). Because of the fear of the storm, the grocery store and the mall in general was blocked Friday after work, but I still managed to pick up some wings - Thai and Honey Garlic kinds - and some snacks - this awesome mini cookie cake thingy with chocolate sauce in the middle, sort of like a lava cake made of cookie - for the Super Bowl. Which I didn't really watch all that much but more on that later.

Friday night involved the usual LOTRO raid, which wasn't too bad. The week before I got very frustrated with it, at least I think that was the week before. Anyway, I'd been working on my character and getting my morale (your health in game) much higher so I wouldn't die so much, and I think I've done a good job of that now. The problem with Friday was banging our head against the wall on trying to do the new raid at Tier 2, the hardest setting, as opposed to Tier 1. Tier 2 has better rewards but is much, much more difficult; we've finished the whole raid on Tier 1 (well, I haven't, but the kin has) and now want to move on but it's not easy. We've still yet to get to a boss on Tier 2 yet, the groups of mobs between the entrance to the boss are tricky and we often get through 2-3 groups of them to the last group pre-boss and then can't get that last group down. And on Tier 2 you have to do the entire group before you wipe, if you don't get them all then they'll all respawn. On Tier 1 if you wipe whatever you kill stays dead so even if it's messy as hell you can get through things, not so on Tier 2. Anyway, Friday night we voted to try Tier 2 until we wiped 3-4 times, then do Tier 1. Which we did, we wiped a lot more than that, and eventually the raid leader suggested we vote to see if we should continue on with Tier 2 or switch to Tier 1. I had to speak up and say that, no, we all agreed going in to swap to t1 after a few wipes, and we'd done more than that, so we swapped to t1. Then we did 2 bosses, leaving the one we'd been banging our head up against on t2 open for Saturday night, and then I went to bed. I think some people stuck around and tried again but with no success.

Saturday was nice, I was up well before noon even, and played some more Assassin's Creed 2. I recently came to the realization that I should try and enjoy some of the mountains of media I've amassed over the years before buying any more, heh, and part of that includes video games. Like, last Thursday while in the city I saw that Final Fantasy XIII-2 is out and I was like omg WANT but, um. I got Final Fantasy XIII when it came out, strategy guide and all, and have yet to even pop it into my Xbox. >.> That's just what I do, but I'm not going to do that any more if I can help it. So I'm trying to play through things, watch things (I have SO MANY seasons of shows to watch it's not even funny, as well as movies), read things, etc., and AC2 was on the top of my list. Mainly because I already have AC: Brotherhood and they just released AC: Revelations just before Christmas and I wanted that too. XD So yes, I played more of that, then watched the Bruins lose to the Penguins in a matinee game before playing some more AC2. It was a nice day, relaxed, and I made some of the Honey Garlic wings before the LOTRO raid that night so win. Also had one of those cookie things, omg so good. The raid was more of the same, though people's patience was very raw and oh so thin. We didn't have enough to start it at first until more people showed up or came back from afks, so we ended up starting late. That's not too unusual, but the person who had lead the raid Friday night wasn't coming along because he said he couldn't stay on long. Well, he was on the entire time we were raiding, just playing PvP, and apparently after we stopped (I went to bed when we did) he did the raid with another group of people, just, rar. Something may come of that, I dunno, not cool at the very least. >:| We did more t2 attempts but never made it to the boss and no one wanted to do t1 so we just called it, earlier than Friday night too, people were just unhappy it seemed and frustrated.

Another big thing about Saturday was the amount of writing I did, all in logs for XP, omg. Close to 5k words (I'm keeping count for Get Your Words Out), mainly in one huuuuuuge log that ended up being over 11k words total, which was amazing and still has me smiling today, hehe. It was nice to get back into XP some more, I've had some kind of, I don't know, can you say writer's block for an RP? I wasn't getting much done at any rate and while I still love the game, don't get me wrong, since I went away at Christmas time I'd had a hard time getting much done there. I think I'm waking up from that hibernation however and that huge log was a big part in shaking off my slumber. :)

Sunday I was up well before noon again, which was nice, I like that. It was another nice day started off with some AC2, then watching another Bruins matinee, this weekend was awesome for hockey despite it presumably being all about football, and this time the B's won handily, dispatching the Caps 4-1. Then I played more AC2 for the afternoon, talking to a few people and just relaxing. I did pop out for lunch but then stayed in for the rest of the day. After supper it was more AC2, pausing to watch the Super Bowl when it started, but I actually flipped back and forth a lot because I was getting to the end of AC2, heh. >.> I saw the end of the first quarter, a good chunk of the second quarter, went and had a shower and a shave during the half time show (omg still loving the straight edge razor, SO AWESOME), saw part of the third, and then watched the last quarter and part of the ceremonies. I also made some more wings for the last quarter, which I burned a little, whoops, and another of the cookie dessert things omg. In between there was AC2, and after it was all over I sat down and finished the game omg. Which was awesome, I've gotta say. I don't know if people can still be spoiled for it or not, so I won't go into detail, but I was kinda spooked by the ending which involved some people talking directly to the screen as if looking/talking right at me, just creeped me out omg. x.x So sleep was hard after that. XD

All in all a very good weekend, I've got to say. The only problems with it were the head banging and frustration in LOTRO, which actually wasn't too bad for me, not nearly as frustrating personally as last week anyway, but still a downer. Hopefully next weekend will go better, we'll see, or this week for those who are able to raid during the week anyway. I think I will be trying to get 100% completion on AC2; I've only got a handful of achievements left to get and omg I've never, ever gotten 100% on a game before, so I'm kind of excited. Now that I've finished the main storyline I have full carte blanche to run wherever I want in game and do what I want so we'll see what happens. I think it's mainly a bunch of easy things but I know one will be tough, which is to defeat ten enemies in a row while in conflict without taking a hit. The not taking a hit's not too hard, especially in the earlier areas, but the problem is finding enough of them and not having them all run away on me, heh. We'll see though, will give that a shot before trying Brotherhood, but yay for finishing things I already own for a change, right? :)

Hope everyone else had a good weekend and that you have a good week ahead of you too! :D

Hope everybody had a good weekend! Mine wasn't that bad at all, despite not really doing what I would've liked to have done. It being my first full weekend at home since returning from the US, I have a lot of books, movies, tv shows, etc. that I was just planning to immerse myself in but instead I had other obligations to fulfill.

Friday night was nice and relaxed. I think I had a brief nap after work and then started in on watching season one of Flashpoint. I picked up seasons one and two in the city last Wednesday and I'm pretty excited about it, and have been really enjoying the episodes I've seen so far. After that I puttered around a bit, putting in some time on SWTOR, and then I did my first bit of raiding in LOTRO in awhile. I finally got to see the new raid, and more than just see it, we did what I think is all four of its wings (albeit on tier 1, the easiest level of difficulty) in one go, in just over two hours. That was nice, even though we had to stop and couldn't do the final boss that evening. Still, I hadn't even set foot inside it before then so that was pretty awesome, getting to see almost all of it like that. Of course winning is nice too, so doing all of those bosses without any wipes (except for one non-boss pull that got us twice, hehe) was nice. The only downer to the night was me making an announcement that I'll no longer be looking after the kin's SKL, which is how we keep track of loot, because I just can't be around all week. Somehow a new schedule got set for raids (still no answer on how/when that came down, but it's set now anyway) and I won't be able to keep up with it, so that's all you can do. I'll still be around when I can, mainly on the weekends, but we'll see how that goes. Regardless, Friday night was a nice time and I even got in bed at a decent hour, around 2am, though Kristen Bell was on Craig Ferguson so I had to watch that haha.

Saturday was the day I wanted to stay home and absorb all the new things, but instead I had a party to attend. Which, well, I knew I'd have fun, and I did, but I was a little reluctant to head in for it. Maybe that makes me a bad sibling, because the party was a birthday get together at my sister's place for her and our friends Jackie and Chris, since all three of them have their birthdays within 4-5 days of each other. I slept in pretty late, because even though I had a decent-ish bedtime I was pretty tired from my first week back to work post-vacation. When I did get up, I pretty much showered and got ready to hit the road asap, getting into the city before dark. I went to my sister's first to drop off some things Mom had sent in for her, then I went to the comic book shop where I picked up the Schism trade, a D&D supplement (I have plans!), and some dice. Next was supper at Quiznos, mmm, toasted subs, and then a quick pop into Chapters where I only walked out with a new magazine (PC Gamer that covers Diablo III, SWTOR, and Skyrim ftw) and a Starbucks coffee. I went to J&A's place then where we hung out for a few hours before going to my sister's place. It was a great little party, so many people showed up, and I picked up a little flask (375ml) of scotch that I polished off over the entire night, haha, complete with a large can of this yummy German beer. I haven't drank that much in a long time and thankfully somehow I avoided a hangover, though I was pretty drunk. Those of you who follow me on Twitter could probably tell that. XD I went home with J&A because the stupid parking ban is in place now and I can't really park at my sister's place (not without a lot of fancy maneuvering but it's too much of a hassle and really only works with two smaller cars and my Sorento's too big I think) so I left the car at J&A's, since they have a double driveway with room for more cars on the side, and A was driving anyway since he was feeling under the weather. We were home by 1:30 or so, so another earlyish night out, and I slept like a champ until 10:30 or so. I was afraid I'd have a horrible hangover so I did have something to eat and a lot of water before passing out and it appears to have done the trick. \o/

Sunday was nice and quiet. I woke up and hung out with J&A some more, having lunch with them before stopping by my sister's place around 1pm or so. She was up and about and cleaning up from the night before, and apparently everyone else at the party had stayed until 3am. A good time was had by all and she said the landlords upstairs got home at around 3:30 and mercifully they were only stomping around for 10-15 minutes before sleeping themselves so Jen got a decent night's rest. I hung out with her for an hour or so before heading back out home. I got back around 3pm and spent 30-45m at the office, sending out a quick letter before I went home since I knew I wouldn't want to come back over once I was home, hehe. Then it was a lovely evening at home by myself, which is what I'd planned for Saturday, but I still had a fantastic time so it's all good. I had a little nap, then a nice supper, followed by a relaxing shower and then a good shave with my new straight edge razor and oh my. It is so choice, if I may borrow a line from Ferris Bueller. If you have the means I highly recommend it. And I didn't even cut myself this time, woo! I think I need to sharpen it though, as there was some tugging and such, but it shaves so nicely and is just a relaxing process, I dunno. I'm so glad I gave it a shot, it's an investment I'm happy that I made. Plus I shaved with it last Sunday and yesterday when I shaved again, the first time since last Sunday, it felt like I only had 2-3 days' worth of stubble, so it cuts way better than an electric razor. Plus it makes me feel all grown up and manly, haha. I wonder when I'm shaving with it if this is how Hemingway felt all the time or something. Shh, yes, I'm weird.

On the writing front, I have a lot of plans but need to sit down and actually write. Last night I meant to but then pre-shave I put on last week's Sherlock episode and then post-shave I watched some more Flashpoint. I keep seeing all these big bangs being advertised, as I joined a channel that pimps them here, and I keep wanting to sign up for them ALL, haha, but I can't. I did sign up for one (an SPN crossover one), and have another ambitious fic plot started that may or may not fall under one of the other big bang categories, so that's more than enough for now. It's exciting, though, gotta say, I'm enjoying what I've done with it so far and hopefully there'll be much more writing done as a result of it all. :D

Lastly, in general as well, I've been listening to Watch the Throne and really, really liking it. Which is so weird because normally the only rap I listen to is the Beastie Boys. I got turned onto it from another rap album, by Childish Gambino which is Donald Glover's rap name. I love him from Community and follow him on Twitter so when he put this album out I gave it a listen and loved it. He makes lots of references in the songs to many things, as most rappers are wont to do, and it lead to me checking out the Kanye/Jay-Z album and voila. Weird, I know, but hey, I'm proud of my wide spectrum of musical tastes. :)

And today I'm back to work. The boss is away until next week and I've no court at all, so it's a nice, quiet week, or so I hope. Next week and most of the week after will be crazy busy so this week is for prep work and such, so I'm enjoying the quiet while I can. Hope everyone else has a good week!

It was a great long weekend, very relaxing and informal, which was just what I needed after a chaotic couple of weeks of work.

Thursday afternoon my sister came home for the weekend and we got to hang out, with me picking up supper for the family after work and then watching some tv. She fell asleep while Community was on but it was alright, as the episode was hilaaaarious as usual. :D I got to spend a little time in LOTRO too, getting some new gear for my character, then made an earlyish night of it.

Friday was Remembrance Day and was appropriately peaceful and quiet. After lunch my sister, my mother, and I went to our house in Salmon Cove and retrieved our 50" plasma tv and the table on which it stands to take back to my folks' house in Carbonear. Their rear projection tv has been nonfunctional for over a month now and I kept saying we should just move our tv up here, get some use from it since it's just been sitting in the house, but until Friday no one wanted to hear it. What was the difference then, you might ask? Well, Friday morning Mom asked about taking the Wii down to our house in Salmon Cove since my Aunt Wendy and cousin Melissa were coming out, so they could play some games down there on Saturday. That's when I said we should just bring the tv up, since it made much more sense to have that kind of thing in our house instead of the near empty house in Salmon Cove, so we did just that. Our tv kicks ass too, especially since the HD receiver Mom & Dad had for their tv actually shows HD channels in 1080p on my tv, hehe. Their tv doesn't have an HDMI input, I don't think, but ours does and it looks very nice! The Wii is great too on the big screen, so I hooked that up for them too. Friday night saw more raiding in LOTRO, taking down the dragon raid once again, which is pretty much on farm mode already I guess which, mreh. It was an earlyish night again for me after that.

On Saturday I was originally planning on going to the city with my cousin, who'd called me earlier in the week to suggest that we do something on Saturday, then wasn't around when I called to confirm on Friday like we'd also discussed. However, he did call me after lunch, while I was dogsitting for my sister, and we managed to meet up for awhile in the afternoon. We went to Wal-Mart where I picked up another Wii controller (I only had the one before) and this cheap game Mom had played with Aunt Wendy at her place last weekend that she wanted to have for that night, and I also picked up a copy of Skyrim for the PC, heh. >.> Then my cousin was having bad heartburn so I dropped him off at his place, where he has medication for it, and he came back around 5pm to pick me up for supper. We went to Quiznos which omg, so yummy, and then came back to the house where we played some Xbox 360 for a few hours before he had to go to his fiancée's house for the night. After that I put on some hockey and played a bit more LOTRO, then when nothing was going on I tried a little Skyrim. So so so very pretty, need to get a strategy guide though because holy crap it's a large world. x.x

Yesterday was very low key, with a lot of reading - I'm on the White Night book in the Dresden Files series right now - and I volunteered to bring my sister up to meet my folks after their accordion practice, rather than having her go with them first and have to sit through that. XD After that Mom went to the city with Jen, while Dad and I came back home. Dad's getting the winter tires put on my sister's car this morning, you see, then driving it back to her after lunch, bringing Mom back out with him. I then spent the evening writing for the most part, mainly on NaNo but also working on the weekly summary for XP and making nominations for Yuletide. I messed up the latter, haha, by not looking at the list of banned fandoms; instead I just checked AO3 and Fanfiction.net to see if there was a lot of Dresden Files fic and there didn't seem to be so I nominated that but it got shot down. Which I would've known if I'd had bothered to doublecheck the list, so my bad! I did get one nomination in though, for How I Met Your Mother, hee, something I've thought about writing myself but never did, maybe this would be a chance. And I couldn't think of a third (most of my fandoms are huuuuuge, it seems) so I added Ghostbusters as a favour to a friend. :)

But yes, the highlight of the weekend was the NaNo writing last night, in which I managed to bang out 10,074 words in one sitting, haha. XD It was definitely an anomaly but a very awesome one at that. Last week I wrote almost 7k words in one night and vowed not to fall behind again, and didn't touch it again until last night, but this time I definitely am not going to fall behind that much again! XD It was awesome, though, things just seemed to flow well last night and I actually liked what I wrote, which makes it so much easier to do. In previous years I've had to slog through scenes that I didn't really enjoy writing, which always makes it more difficult, but last night I enjoyed all of it. I'm still making it up as I go for the most part, though I do have an overall plan for where things are heading. I think I have just enough of a plot so that things aren't too rigid or inflexible, but not too little like I have no clue at all where to go or what to write next. It's nice.

I hope everyone else had a nice weekend and that everyone has a good week ahead of them! :)

So, long time no post! I've been insanely busy with work lately, and then I come home and bury myself in something else to forget about it. Last week LOTRO put out its latest expansion, upping the level cap from 65 to 75, so you can guess what my latest time sink has been, heh. Well. Same old time sink, I suppose, just in a different light. Now instead of just raiding on the weekends I'm leveling up most week nights. I did take most of Saturday and Sunday off, though, after a very frustrating Friday night, but I've been working on it again lately. I'm still amazed at how past some people are burning through it, though; I saw people in the game hitting 75 the effing day after it came out, just, why? And people in kin are flying too, we have 4-5 75s now, and have for awhile. To each their own, I guess.

In the new music category, so many good new things lately. Namely the latest Jim Cuddy album, Skyscraper Soul, and the newest Wilco album, The Whole Love, both of which I've already given several listens and both of which I am fond. I've also been playing the accordion a little, haha, mainly because of a traditional song I downloaded on .mp3 back in my law school days (when I lived away from home and was nostalgic) that comes on after the Jim Cuddy album on iTunes. I heard it the other day and realized it was in the key of G, which my folks' accordions can play, and I picked one up and messed around with it until I figured it out, hehe. Need to transcribe it, as it were, for Mom since she asked. All their songs are in simple notation, not sheet music, i.e. there's a row of buttons for each key and the songs they play are written out with button numbers, with a stroke over the number if it's a pull out note instead of a push in, hehe. So that was kinda neat. :)

What else... hockey starts soon, which reminds me, once again I've failed to call my buddy Marc about that, whoops. I'm guessing we'll pick our teams either tomorrow or Wednesday night before the season starts, though due to people being away and/or busy we've picked teams after the season has started in the past, it's just not preferable. We'll see, and I also need to talk to him about potentially visiting him this weekend, if I still wanna do that, I dunno. On the fence but leaning towards going, I think.

I'm also reading a lot more again, thanks to some various books I've dug out of the "oh hey I forgot I had that!" pile, haha. XD Mainly a Christopher Hitchens one I started months ago, and an Elminster book I should finish since I've already gone and bought the next one in the series on hardcover for some reason. ^_^;; I'm horrible like that, I know, I know.

I also finished a Resident Evil marathon of sorts tonight, though I suppose since I started on Saturday night it's not really a marathon, haha. XD I watched the first two movies Saturday night, then the third on Netflix last night, and tonight the latest on Blu Ray. I bought it in the US ages ago when it first came out but kept meaning to watch the first ones before seeing it, and finally broke down and did just that this weekend. I meant to awhile ago but couldn't remember if I owned the third one and couldn't find it if so, but finally realized it's on Netflix so that solved that. I'm watching season 6 of How I Met Your Mother too which is awesome.

Speaking of tv, I also finished Supernatural season 6 and have started watching season 7 now, and am attempting to watch many tv shows this year: The New Girl, Survivor, Supernatural, The Ringer, Community, and Archer to name a few. There may be others that I'm forgetting, but yes, am trying to get back into the swing of things.

Alright, off to bed for me now, trying to get back to a better bedtime since it's been helping with work when I do, so it's something I should keep up, yes? :)

Randomly, I need some How I Met Your Mother icons, hmm. I have seriously become a bona fide bigtime fan of the show, haha, and am anxiously awaiting the arrival of Season 6 on DVD so I can catch up; I've mainlined 1-5 in the last several weeks or so.

Anyway! What's up with me, besides my newfound love of HIMYM (as us fans are oft to abbreviate said show), you ask? Quite a lot, actually! I'll put this behind a cut because lord knows there's likely very few of you who will find all of it interesting, maybe a few who will find parts of it, but that's about it. XD

( Snip snip! )

That's about it off the top of my head, I should hit the hay since I've work in the morning, an unexpected return to court but what can you do? I'm sure there was more I meant to say but it's slipping my mind now, ah well. I can always post again later if I think of anything. :)

Watched Super tonight which was way more violent than I thought it'd be. Not a bad movie, though, but I loved the actors in it (particularly Rainn Wilson and Ellen Page) so that helped colour my opinion of it as a whole, I think.

While watching it I played around in LOTRO, spending a lot of time working on crafting for a few of my characters, which... seems a bit futile now, I dunno. It was quiet all night while I did that, which is one of the reasons that's why I did, and just logged off now and people are showing up, starting to raid, people in glff are looking for people to do stuff, just as I have to go to bed. Well, actually, by my new recent attempts at a decent bedtime I should have been in bed over an hour ago, so that's even worse. But it felt good while I was doing it, like I was accomplishing something, so that's good, yeah?

Home alone tonight and for the next two weeks or so; the folks are off on their vacation, driving off somewhere. Mom called to check in earlier and they're about half way across the island, may make a run for Labrador it sounds like it. I know I usually just come right upstairs whenever I get home anyway so it shouldn't be a huge deal, but feels a little lonely around here, I dunno. Have tons of food, lots to do, so there's no need to, so I'm just chalking it up to the general feeling of crap making it seem that way or something.

Off to bed now, going to put on an episode of How I Met Your Mother before I drift off. Trying not to linger on a passing thought I had earlier today, which was that one year ago today I was so very happy compared to now, and instead am telling myself to think about where I'll be one year from today and how it'll be much better than it is right now. Also need to turn on the AC, it's stifling hot here in the room, even though it's not all that warm outside.

Another long weekend draws to a close. It's the second one in a row for me, after a three day work week in the middle too (we had last Monday off for Discovery Day and Friday past off for Canada Day). In short, this week is going to seem like an eternity, haha. XD Not that I don't have it coming or that I really can complain, but still, hehe.

It was a good long weekend, though of the two I had - Monday off versus the Friday off variety - I think I prefer the former. Friday is usually a decent office day anyway, though super busy, but Mondays are just positively dreadful. That being said, though, Friday was a good day to have off as it was the first sunny day we've had in literally weeks. Saturday (and today, apparently, though I've yet to venture outdoors) was better, but Friday was pretty nice. I went into the city to celebrate the holiday with friends, and we had a nice little house party, with a BBQ (not attended by my sister and I, who instead sought out the new wings place in town which was aaaaaaaaawesome) and drinks, then some guitar playing and singing, very fun. Curiously enough everyone went home by 12:30am. Maybe we're all getting old, I dunno, but then again the first lot of people apparently showed up around 4pm (we didn't arrive until 7pm-ish) so that makes sense too, I suppose.

Saturday was a gorgeous day, and I spent the rest of the morning after waking and part of the afternoon just relaxing with Joni and Alex in their backyard. Then, of course, I went to the mall to pick up more How I Met Your Mother and season 1 of True Blood which was cheap (I know, I know, but so many people have been bugging me to check it out, so who am I to blow against the wind? XD), then just killed time, really. My buddy Shawn was working until 2:30pm so I was going to meet him, however when I got to his place close to 3pm he was gone. So I went to my sister's to pick up the leftover wings (hmm, still have those in the fridge...) and head back home, only to get a call from Shawn saying he was home now. He'd left to go to Best Buy and such, which is what I wanted to do with him, haha. XD At any rate, I went back and we hung out for awhile, but he got a call from a mutual friend to go over for supper and, while I was invited, I was an absolute mess with no good clothes to change into so I took a pass and came home. I feel bad about that because I've not seen said mutual friend in ages but I was in no shape for it, and just wanted to get home and relax online for a few hours at least.

We did raid last night, which was pretty good but oh my god, so late. I didn't get to bed until 4:15am and it was pretty light outside when I did, which I hate. :/ We did accomplish something fairly big though, I suppose, the first take down of a boss on tier 2 that we've never done before (and only did once on tier 1 I think, hmm), which was great, but omg I was so tired. I couldn't leave though, or I wouldn't let myself anyway, because I had won a 1st age symbol (used to make an uber weapon/class item) earlier in the raid and I didn't want to just bail. It turned out ok in the end, though, but hoping to avoid ever running that late again any time soon if I can. At least in the winter it's not quite as bad because it's still dark, heh, but psychologically speaking it just messes me up trying to sleep when it's light out, do not want.

Other than that, not much else new to report. Still working on writing, and still sucking at it. XD I want to maybe try some things out today, if I can, but also may try to hit the office after supper, so we'll see. I have some letters to get out and such but nothing that's super urgent, so may just wait until tomorrow, time will tell. For now I should just run out and pick up the supper that I ordered, hehe, and see what I can do I suppose. May make another entry later, some things bouncing around in my head but gotta run right now. Hope everyone else is having a nice weekend! :)

Not a bad weekend, though it seemed to go by way too fast for my liking.

Friday night I ended up staying home alone, hitting the mall for the requisite snacks and then raiding online for 3-4 hours or so. It went well enough, I suppose, after straightening out some loot rules and explaining them to people. I'm... not in charge of it, since all of the officers agreed on the rules and all, I just manage the list and whatnot, and have had a few complaints / questions but I think it's working out well enough. Taking longer than I thought to handle it while we're mid-raid but that's because we've had a bunch of new people to add to the list and such. At any rate, we did ok, only did one boss before calling it a night but it was alright by me as I was tired from a long week of work.

Saturday was very relaxed. I got up at noonish to watch the Bruins' victory parade through Boston, which was very awesome, not only because it was my team celebrating the Cup win omg (still can't believe it happened sometimes XDDDDD), but because it took me through some streets I was half-familiar with, I guess, hehe. Haven't been there in a little over a year but still, love that city so much, for many, many reasons. Then my buddy Brad showed me a link to a live feed of the EVE Online Alliance Tournament IX, which we watched together all afternoon and into the evening. Such a fun production, omg. They have their own "tv" show, a live webcast, run buy the devs. The company that makes and runs EVE Online, CCP, are so amazing, just, wow. They're great people, they do so much in the community, like running this show and the tourney, and are just awesome people who also play the game. And the tourney itself was very entertaining, even though I'm such a n00b in the game it's not even funny. The commentating and trash talking was great, though, and I had a blast watching it.

Sunday was more of the same; the tourney, you see, started a few weekends ago, and this was the last weekend for it, with the round robin ending yesterday and the final brackets going head to head today. Lots of upsets and awesome fighting, some great entertainment there, and I ended up playing some more EVE with Brad while watching the tourney too. He plays it a ton and I have a short sub for now too, so I'll be playing with him when I can. It's very fun but oh so very different from any other MMO I've every played, to say the least, haha. I like it though! It's something that, playing the way I do anyway (mining/manufacturing moreso than combat), you can put on a movie/tv show or listen to music while you play. I love deeding in LOTRO or harvesting mats while doing the same thing, so it kinda makes sense, I think. At any rate, I've a lifetime LOTRO account and will never leave there, and am still going to be playing that too and raiding a lot on weekends, but this just gives me some more options and all. :)

Other than that, not much else to report. Only went out for food on Saturday and today, really, and to get a Father's Day card for Dad yesterday - got a birthday one for him while I was in the States last so Sara could sign it (his bday's tomorrow, fyi!), but didn't have a Father's Day one. Got him that and a $20 scratch ticket, on which he won $50, haha, and a $50 Canadian Tire gift card for his birthday.

One other thing that's crossed my mind lately has been possibly applying for another character in XP. It's been a blast so far, and I've really been liking it, especially lately with my character being in a bunch of plots. I have one in mind, too, but I dunno, will think about it and see I suppose. No big rush, really, but I'll think about it. :)

On that note, though, it's after midnight so I should hop in bed and rest up. Not sure what's going on tomorrow; I have court in two places at once, heh, but one may (hopefully) go away. If not I can get someone to cover one (it's just getting a decision), but hoping I won't need to do that. I have time to deal with it in the morning anyway, just need to make sure I have enough rest to deal with it. There's also a ton of work!drama at the moment, none of which I want to get into here, heh, but will maybe reflect on later this week, depending on what happens.

Hope everyone else had a nice weekend and that you have a nice start to the week tomorrow too! :)

Lots of reminiscing going on lately, in many different ways.

I failed to renew a bunch of old RP journals last weekend but in saving a few I got to reread some old logs and think back on old characters / RPs I was in, which was pretty cool. I forget sometimes just how many games I was in and how many characters I've had, haha, so much writing stored up from all of that, it makes me happy just thinking about it. It also makes me want to revisit some of them and write more, maybe write about what they'd be doing right now if they were still around, but I never follow through on that. Maybe someday.

Then later in the week, and over the weekend, I played a bit on my old LOTRO server, with my old toons there, some of who are still in pretty good shape. That lead to talking to some old kinmates and getting to play with them a little bit, which was also nice. I'm going to try and play with them some more if I can, during the weeknights if they don't start too late, with the proviso that I can't stay very late either, so we'll see how that goes.

And finally I have a file that involves an Ontario action, which lead me to having to call a friend from law school who practices in ON, who I finally made contact with this morning and we briefly caught up with each other over the phone, which was nice too. We talked about the time I got stuck in Toronto on my way to visit Sara (that was my first trip down when we were dating, actually!) and how she put me up in her apartment, then we went to see the Hockey Hall of Fame and had a nice day together, hehe. My mom & sister are up there now, in ON anyway, and will be in Toronto sometime this week, and my sis has tickets to see Glee perform live in Toronto on Saturday. I'll have to look into making a long weekend trip or something one of these days, maybe, if it's financially feasible and whatnot, lots of people there I miss, and lots to do up there. Maybe one of these weekends this summer when Shawn's off, we can maybe make a trip of it. :)

So, it's been a pretty good weekend so far. It's almost over, and I'm writing this from the office sadly (had a few things to clue up that I just threw my arms up in the air come 5pm Friday and said I'd deal with it later, hah), but still, it's been nice.

Friday saw me run out of the office as soon as I could, heh, and I dove into more LOTRO when I got home, finally getting my Hunter to the level cap of 65 just before our raid that night, which was a nice bonus. It was a lot of fun, I love the class so much, but as soon as I did it I shot believeitup a tell saying something along the lines of "...I don't know what to do now." Which is true, kinda. I mean, I have a lot of polishing to do if I want to use her for raiding and such; she's in rough shape since I basically just leveled like mad and didn't spend all that much time tweaking her stats or her traits. That's what I'll work on for now, I suppose, but almost as soon as I hit 65 and the satisfaction of doing that wore off (which was very fast), I felt a little aimless again.

That being said, I have some ideas for my main character there, a Burglar, but that'll take some time to develop and get ready, so I do have some things to occupy my time at least, which is a good thing. I'm thinking I'll split the difference this week between polishing my Hunter and working on stuff for my Burg, and I'll be just fine.

Friday night we raided and had a rough time at first, rough enough that one of our regulars who's been having a hard time dropped group mid-raid again and is taking some time away from raiding, which is sad. He's a good guy and a great player, just very frustrated with things and the new raid, and I think there's some real life things going on too maybe, so I can totally understand why he'd be upset, but it sucks to lose him just the same. Hopefully some time away will do him some good and he'll be back soon enough, I know that's helped with me in the past. After that we lowered the difficulty and knocked out 2 of the 6 bosses in the new raid that night, which was nice.

Saturday afternoon I spent polishing my Hunter some more, and then Saturday night we were back in the new raid again, at the lower difficulty level again, and we knocked out the third boss and aaaaaaalmost have the fourth one down, which is awesome since we'd never even set foot inside the fourth area before last night. We're getting better at it, and I think by running it on the lower setting for now we're getting the strategies down and (hopefully) getting better gear and weapons out of it, so we can then tackle the harder setting and be more successful. It was a good night, with some communication issues aside, and hopefully we can build on that from here on out.

Other than that, had some weird, weird dreams last night. I dreamed I was in the game, which isn't unusual in and of itself (when I play a lot like I have lately this is a common thing, heh), but in my dream we were going to a raid area and passed a mailbox, where all these half-naked characters with lewd and odd names were lined up by the mailbox. Someone in the raid told me that they're the people who mail out all those Viagra and enhancement spam ads, and this is how they do it. And then we went into the raid which... wasn't a raid at all, but an episode of Glee, and I was in it. We were going to a strange school, looking for one of the students there, who or why I have no idea, but I was helping. And I ended up performing "Crazy" by Aerosmith while looking around, heh. Very very very odd indeed. >.>

So, that's my weekend in a nutshell. Now back to finishing up some paperwork and then back home to watch some hockey and either do more Hunter polishing or working on my Burg, or maybe I'll just read or watch a movie or something, we'll see. Hope everyone else has had a good weekend! :)