The Mists

I'm feeling pretty cranky today.

The conclusion is that I'm probably full of frustration from not being able to find my own time and space to just do something for me. Even though I've been writing about all the plans of projects I've had for myself, I've been stuck with helping others. Yes, I did offer a lot of those services, but the few times I'm not- I've still ended up doing so.

I could probably use a bit of a vacation but we'll see. Pay day and a party this Friday but I'm stressed with money and can't think of what I could do for gifts. I'm sure that plays into it too. I'm just all gummed up with resentment and stress- that's all. Will get over it soon, I'm sure. :)

I haven't given enough thought to the fact that the latest expansion pack (Mists of Pandaria) for a game I've played for roughly six years (World of Warcraft) just came out/ went live today. For the past three expansions, I've pre-ordered and went to midnight release parties with either my best friend or my significant other. This year/ time, I didn't.

It's been such a big part of my formative/ young adult life that I feel that it's finally an end of an era. However, it's not a piece that faded with time. No. Not exactly. Something in me has been starved to death.

I've forged so many deep and meaningful friendships through this venue that will last my lifetime. Countless hours have been spent logged into that game and chatting "offline" with those people after dozens of hours. I've even met a handful in real life. That is how real this massive-multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) is to me. I've experience nearly every emotion and many crucial life-changing events while logged on.

Time has keep turning, younger kids grew older, moved away, and moved on with their lives without this. Too soon and suddenly, it felt as if I was talking to an empty room. I have been a bit lost without it, but I swallowed my pride and let the game lay dormant while I struggled to take care of my "real" life responsibilities. I still can't bring myself to completely let go. Some voice inside of me says, "Maybe I'll play regularly again some day."

I suppose I'm mourning the death of that part of my life. I still can't say that I've quit for good. Something that meaningful and rich in its own culture (at one point boasting 11 million players worldwide) let alone in the culture of my life can't be easily relinquished.

Maybe that's what's been bugging me in the back of my mind and putting my worn patience over the edge today.

It just doesn't make sense for me to delve in when most of my friends have moved on and I cannot afford such a luxury right now. I suppose that means I'm also mourning the loss of the time in my life that I didn't have to worry about much more than caring for and helping my friends.

Now, add that to how lonely I often feel these past few years subsequently.

I really need to sort out some new priorities or something.

I heard the new scenery is beautiful on the continent of Pandaria...

Twitching

It wasn't until late in the evening that I got more supplies for my recipe project, so I'm going to get back on that tomorrow.

In the meantime, I've been watching live-streams of a particular PC game on Twitch.tv. The SO got me into it and I've decided to be an active listener. Before I knew it, I was given the permissions to help moderate the chats on two channels. The SO warned me that it would probably happen pretty quickly because of my personality.

Old habits die hard! XD

It's been funny and... active, lol. They are two great and kind guys with equally nice audiences. Coffee is the nectar of the gods though. These guys are beasts that stream for more than half of the day- I can't believe the stamina and enthusiasm!

However, their positivity, patience, and kindness are infectious and we could all use a little more of those things in our lives. Heck, in the world. I'm pretty proud and honored to be a part of that. As nerdy as that is. :P

Streams

Not too much to report today.

The SO was feeling under the weather so he didn't join us, but FMIL and I tried out a new restaurant today. Actually, we were recommended a little bakery cafe and when I looked up the address, I saw rave reviews spanning years. We were pretty excited about that but I didn't think to look at the hours. >_< What a newbie mistake.

Turns out that it closes at 2pm Wed-Fri. Whoops.

We did see a Chinese restaurant on the way there and had seen advertisements for it before, so we gave it a whirl. It was a nice enough place visually, but the food was super dry and under-seasoned for what we paid for it. :(

We even brought the SO a dish to try too. I really wanted to like that place but none of us could. Oh well, it was fun to try something new anyways.

The best part of the day has been spending it playing video games "with" the SO. I've been playing the game that I shared yesterday (Terraria) and he's been playing Diablo 3.

He has been streaming live shows about video games for background noise and the occasional relevant tip. The commentary is sometimes hilarious. Sometimes it's hard to concentrate on killing demons because of it.

I, on the other hand, have spent my time exploring and digging through caves and turning them into caverns. I've come to realize that way I'm doing it is incredibly inefficient but I've opened up huge areas and collected many materials. It's just stuff like sand to make glass to turn into bottles for potions, etc.

My biggest enemy right now is water. I keep finding pockets of it by accident and flooding the tunnels and platforms I so painstakingly created with streams upon streams of water. Right now, my tiny adventure cannot breathe underwater.

I've seen that if I dig deep enough, I could get to lava! Not that I want to anytime soon because it sounds incredibly dangerous and tricky to deal with, but all I've seen are forests and dirt caves.

It's like a simplistic puzzle of sorts trying to figure out what ingredients I need with no goals or storyline that I have to pursue.Very addicting. :P

Mine

The flight issue was settles, she ended up volunteering her seat but didn't know if the airline would take her up on that offer until about 10 minutes before take off. Cute.

Then she wasn't able to find her luggage before realizing it was already waiting for her elsewhere because it had made the original flight while she did not. Got a voucher for her troubles. :D

We're all resting up before a night out, probably tomorrow now. I woke up to our first ant infestation of the season. It did not make for a happy camper and I was already exhausted after a sucky night of non-sleep.

This lead to the SO setting up and spraying around the house like we've been meaning to do. We were holding out for a good storm first, so the spray wouldn't be washed away but this was too much to deal with.

They were following past trails and going nowhere in particular yet, so that was the good news. The bad news was that they have trails going into every single room. My room was the only one they hadn't made it to yet before I started doing my best to manually annihilate them. Grr!

The best part of today has definitely been: Terraria.

It's like the big sandbox game of Minecraft, which I wanted to play but didn't want to pony up the $30 for right now. It's a cute old school pixel style, 2-D, and side-scrolling. You just... mine and build things while surviving zombie attacks and such. At 50% off right now through Steam? Yes, please.

I'm off to fend off balls of slime and build my fortress!

Loading

It's high time that I started to unpack my suitcase but I knew that meant that it was also time to go through my wardrobe to bring out the warm weather clothes while figuring out what to donate. It's been a long time coming since there's such limited space for storage or use. Definitely loads of laundry will have to be done too.

Oh man, so many clothes. I have stuff from five years back and a handful of pounds and inches ago. In the past, we've donated a bunch to younger relatives every other year. I guess moving around the past couple of years and living out of boxes, suitcases, and shallow temporary drawers made me forget how much I was accumulating. Oye, there's is about 18 inches of clothes all over the bed right now.

Had to yank out everything and organize it by type because that's just how I redo my organization systems. It's looks like insanity during the process, I've talked about this before, lol. My next big challenge with this is wanted to really purge and somehow that means that I should try on every single piece of clothing I have. Oh boy. Trying on clothes is such an awkward, frustrating, and discouraging process for me.

Refolding and organizing into new piles for donating and storage of cold weather clothes does give me some time to think about all of the work I thought was going to get done while I was away. Yeah, none of that happened. So, I have a load of photo editing and fandangling to do in the next couple of weeks.

I guess that could be the silver lining to the fact that my laptop's built in video card cannot support the latest gaming obsession: Diablo 3. It's the third installment in the Blizzard franchise that had been awaited for more than ten years. I played it more than six years ago before being introduced to the World of Warcraft. I get to hear (and sometimes see) all about the installation and patch loading issues along with the weak servers. The SO has been nice enough to break his obsession to let me try out the game and it really is fun. It's interesting what habits you can retain after so long- almost like never forgetting how to ride a bicycle.

Alright, need to stop procrastinating and get back to work!

UPDATE: I haven't added onto a post in quite some time, but this definitely deserved it! Take a look at this incredible fanart:

 

Maple Syrup

Bittersweet memories...

Back in my freshman year of college, my roommate/ best friend and I got into this MMORPG that was free to play and oh so cute before we were introduced to WoW. We made friends, I learned how to understand and read quite a bit of conversational French, and I started to feel comfortable playing video games myself instead of being a cheerleader on the sidelines.

This was Maple Story. It's actually still around and still free to play. Still very cute and still pretty glitchy. Lol.

A while after she and I got into it, my cousin, my brother, and his friends discovered it as well. They started really playing together around the time that I discovered WoW, so I gave my account to my cousin to use at her disposal and never looked back.

My old account is still there. I just can't access it anymore. Or for now. What a shame.

So my brother and his friends recently started to get into the game again for whatever reason and he encouraged me to look into again so we could sometimes play together. I let my best friend know and now she and I have been on a lot this past weekend. Quite a bit has changed and yet tons of it feels familiar. So much nostalgia. And confusion. :P

I wonder if most people rediscover things they used to be obsessed with or at least like tons of time later and enjoy it as much as I do.

It's nice how somethings never change and while others don't stop changing. It's great to experience both.