Novice Woodworking

A very long time ago, when I was first talking about making posts that were not directly related to World of Warcraft, one of the first things I thought I'd be making posts about was my crafts. I made an introductory post to present the fact that it was even a thing that I did, and from that point on I forgot to take step by step pictures of my crafts for the next ever. I made a lot of stuff since that post, just never thinking about making a post about it until after the craft was already made. Well, I finally thought about it beforehand enough to make a post about it. It's not a fancy suede bag or, like, a table or whatever, but it's something.

Over the last few weeks, each time I had been in any kind of department or retail store, I had glanced around for a paper towel holder. It wasn't the biggest priority on my list, since paper towels are perfectly functional without a holder, but after awhile without one, it was starting to bug me.

Then I remembered that I know how to do things, so I just made one.

in your face, walmart

I had a wooden dowel at home, so as soon as I saw a little circle of wood in the crafting section I knew what to do. I put it together really quickly last night before playing some Magic and going to bed.

the hard part was finding the recipe in my crafting log

Monday Mews

Welcome to Monday's cop-out post! I've been really busy today.

working hard or hardly working ahahahah ok sorry

No, but really.

Get Out the Way! It's Caturday!

Since I started blogging again after my move, I found more Warcraft related topics to write about than I had thought I would. I've really just been doing so much house-related stuff that there aren't even other topics to write about. I may do a Story of Seasons post, but I've only been able to play it for a few hours - only seven so far. Today, however, my post always explains itself for me.

HIGH FIVE FOR CATURDAY!

Today's not a theme post because the pictures I found that I liked vary too much. Without further ado, here are the pictures I found today that made me make noises that would have warranted strange looks if I had been in public.

Warcraft - Obligation Free

I've been playing WoW infrequently lately, so when I do log on, I don't "have time" to do my garrison chores on all my alts or make sure I go get all my seals for the week on my 100s. I don't want to sit in queue for LFR for my runes and looking for heroic raid pugs is usually too much of a pain to even consider as an option. Instead, I just do whatever I feel like.

ooOoOoO I'm the ghost of Thunder Bluff!

It feels odd.

My Complex Relationship With PvP

I don't dislike PvP. I used to do it in classic and TBC a lot, but after my run around with arena and the vast amount of changes, including resilience, it brought into the game under the pretense of "balance", I fell out of interest with it.

I played with my friends and my guild, but I hovered around rank 4 for the majority of my PvP career until I finally decided I was determined enough to work my way up.

I climbed the ranks of the old honor system in pursuit of glory, purples, and cool mounts, until I learned about the changes to honor coming in 2.0. I stopped stressing about it and just waited until honor would be an accumulated point system, but as with many things I didn't do back in vanilla, it would have been neat if I had kept going with it and had earned a higher rank than 9 to show off in my feats of strength.

Nostalgia and Addiction - a Warcraft Story

I bought a filing cabinet today because I am an adult. After setting up the hanging folders and putting all my important papers into a heap, I went through and ended up finding things from many years ago.

I'll figure this out

One thing in particular I found was a creative writing assignment I had in high school. I threw it away hastily in embarrassment, but not before looking through it.

In it, I had to write 6 separate pieces in an assortment of types of poetry and/or prose. Two of the six had been directly influenced by World of Warcraft and one of them was loosely influenced, with an additional drawing I had included for the final several page story.

I had this creative writing class in 2006-07 and graduated in 07. TBC came out about six months before I graduated from school (and on said release date, I lied and said school was cancelled so I could play, which was accepted without question for some reason), though I was in high school throughout all of Vanilla, and it almost caused me to be in high school longer than necessary.

Home Sweet Caturday

Since we moved, the three cats have been a bit skittish as they are settling in, but this is Toona's third move and Fishcake's second, while technically also being Kirin's second (although the first time he moved, it was when we adopted him!)

where have you taken me?

Kirin has been the most brave, exploring in the face of danger and unfamiliar noises and not batting an eye at 'strangers'. Fishcake hid under the couch for five hours when we got here, but Toona was the one who hid from the Verizon technician. Both Toona and Fish hide when the door opens, though occasionally a loud noise will scare all three under the couch.

I have a few pictures of them adjusting to their new home for you this Caturday, so please forgive me for my own little show off of my own cats!

The Art of Falling Behind

I think I'm looking at about the fifth time that I'll be behind the curve in game. It's been happening with more and more frequency as the expansions come and go, but the first time I ever fell behind was actually in TBC.

the one with the red hellfire peninsula

The difference back then was that I was still actively playing. Something about the game when I hit 70 prompted me to just chill, fly around, and farm rather than joining my guild in raiding. As I began to see more and more people in Shattrath with raid gear and, most notably, tier sets, I got frustrated and wanted to raid again. Unfortunately, I can never be happy playing the game without raid gear - yeah, just the gear. I really like raiding, but ultimately, it's the high end gear that I can't stand not having. I'm not saying I'm in favor of systems that grant raid gear to you without requiring some amount of raiding from you, just that basically I get frustrated when I'm not ahead of the curve. I know it sounds elitist, but I'm not really afraid to admit it.

Since my first raiding break back then, I have taken breaks from the game with increasing frequency and managed to always find myself needing to play catch up. Right now, in light of all of the work I've been doing to move and the fact that I still have rooms full of boxes and bags of clothes, I won't have much time, or frankly interest, to play to try and maintain my character between guilds since my latest dissolution.

Wow, Where Was I?

I haven't updated since the 1st of this month, tomorrow would be a full two weeks. That's five missing posts and two missing caturdays, sorry! Truth be told, I haven't even turned on my computer since I published that post. See, at the start of this month, I had the opportunity to move back into the house I had grown up in. This is a pretty seriously off topic post, but I have missed two weeks of posts, so I figure I should explain why.

still have a lot of work to do, but I'm home

Banished

Banished is a city builder designed by Shining Rock Software, which misleadingly is just one stellar dude, Luke Hodorowicz. It was released on February 18th in 2014, but it's still being tweaked and updated regularly. It's just now starting to have player-created mod content.

I got the game the day after it was released, played it for several days straight, and frequently go back to it. This is one of my favorite games, but some people give it flak for a couple reasons. This post is not really a review (I am not even really a reviewer, so get that out of your head), but rather me expressing my (correct) opinions on some controversial gameplay and design within Banished.

The game has almost zero plot so you couldn't really say there are any spoilers, though gameplay and mechanics will be discussed within this post.