A Venture

Sometimes, it's good to go on an adventure...

Taking a ship is a good idea. But also there's overland...

And across bridges...

Over the plains...

But don't forget to stop and enjoy some ruins...

Don't forget to visit the quaint little towns along the way...

And also some nice streams to fish at...

Forests can be quite relaxing as well...

But then, at journey's end, our destination is in sight...

Let's go visit the spooky haunted castle, shall we?

Meme Monday: Wilderness Memes

The other day, we had a visitor outside the window where I work:

The deer was standing when we first noticed her,
but she decided to rest in the sun for a while.

She's a young deer, but she doesn't have spots anymore, so she's no longer a fawn. 

That got me to thinking about how during the pandemic the wilderness crept back into "human" areas as people retreated to inside homes and apartments.

From the Covid19 archive, cfa.cats Instagram, and
The New Yorker magazine.

So, I thought of posting a few wilderness inspired memes today...

This was the first thing I thought of when I came
up with this post. I'm as guilty of this as
any other RPG player. From Reddit's r/dndmemes.

Ever been in one of those RPG campaigns where you
roll poorly and then the DM starts rolling all sorts of
dice? Yeah, the poster of this meme on Reddit felt
the same way. From Reddit's r/dndmemes.

You can tell this is NOT Elden Ring because everything
is so bright and cheery. It's from The Witcher 3, actually.
From Reddit's r/gaming.

There are survivalists out there, and then
there's Bear Grylls. From MMO-Champion,
of all places.

And if you've ever seen Pixar films, you knew this was
coming. I've never seen Up and even I knew it was
going to be here. From Yarn and Pixar (naturally).

Apparently Mage School is a Hoot

I'd come across Pivotal's YouTube page a while back, and there was a recent release of a third installment in their Lessons in Magic series: Portology.

All three videos are about a minute long, but they pack in a LOT in that one minute. Here's the first two for reference:

Oh, and here's one that I found really amusing, called The Final Touch...

Why is it that it's the fans that create videos about WoW that I want to watch? I'm not interested in faction leads or the other "main characters"*, but I am interested in the "regular people" of Azeroth.

Take Bombowy's Little Tales, such as White Petals...

Or this one, titled Spooky Brew...

Maybe these little shorts aren't for everyone, but for me, they're fantastic. Blizzard should take note.

For me, however, I'll have another chuckle at Green Eyes...

*"What am I, chopped liver?" Cardwyn snorted.

"Who'd want to chop up livers anyway?" Linna mused. "I always hated the stuff whenever Dad cooked it."

"That's not the point; we're not the centerpiece of this game! How can you remain interested when the story doesn't revolve around you?"

"Story? What story?"

"Oh, nevermind."

EtA: Corrected misspelling.

There Hasn't Been a Dragon in These Parts for... Uh... Two Days, Maybe?

The past couple of weeks on Operation Spread the Love have seen slow but consistent progress. 

Longtime SF&F novel fans may recognize the name
Ctuchik from David Eddings' The Belgariad. The so-called
"Magician of the Murgos" is the perfect name for
a Shadow Priest or a Warlock. In this case, a Shadow Priest.

I haven't jumped into any instances and I've kept mostly to myself while questing. Well, there's also the fact that I've not played altogether that much over the past two weeks either. An hour or two per day an average of 5 days per week doesn't exactly add up to much in MMO terms. Right now, however, that's good enough for me. 

The way I play means I don't really exit Rested XP*, so that's why my levels are as high as they are. 

Of course, something big did happen to one of my toons...

I'm going on an adventure!

And oh yeah, this happened too...

Uh oh. I think I must taste good with ketchup...

Yes, some Hunter thought it'd be a good idea to kite Teremus the Devourer to Stormwind, and a lot of lowbies (and higher level toons) got burnt to a crisp. And a bunch of bots around the Auction House and mailbox, but that goes without saying.

So, things are progressing. Sorta. Kinda. Maybe.

*Except for Hoots, who left Rested XP close to leveling to L25, so I figured I might as well finish that up before moving to other toons to play.

Meme Monday: Grumpy Old Man Memes

I was, well, a bit perturbed while driving this weekend by some of my fellow drivers. When you combine that with some grumpy old man memes that I'd been saving, we have a recipe for a Meme Monday.

Ha. There have been days like that at work.
From Imgflip.

Or if you go by the SWTOR method, you head to the fleet
and you start there at a shuttle bay. From Pinterest.

Good ol' Dana Carvey from his Saturday Night
Live days. That this rant was about redheads made
it even better. From Imgflip and SNL.

Ah, Burgess Meredith from one of the Grumpy Old
Men movies. Of course, I know him as curmudgeonly
Mick from the first three Rocky movies.
From Imgflip.

I know it's from Space Battleship Yamoto 2199,
not the original, but to me I saw the English version,
called Star Blazers. The captain of the Argo (seen
above) was named... Captain Avatar. From Imgflip.

It's not a grumpy old man per se, but you
becoming enough of a grumpy old DM
that you pull out one of the iconic encounters,
dating back to AD&D 1st edition.
From imgflip (again).

Meme Monday: Cold Temperature Memes

Yesterday I was sitting at an intersection, waiting for the light to change, when I espied this little quip on the sign in front of a local salon:

Yes, I was amused.

That inspired this weeks' Meme Monday. It's not that cold right now, in the 20F/-7C range, but compared to two weeks ago it's pretty cold. This winter in general has been much colder and wetter than usual --hello, extreme weather-- and so it was simply low hanging fruit for me to harvest.

Thank you, Ron Swanson.
From Thunder Dungeon (and Parks and Rec).

That's not spooky, that's just sad.
From Cheezburger.

Well, that doesn't make me feel any better.
From Funny-as-fuck via Cheezburger.

I can sympathize, Wyoming Police Department.
From the Wyoming (MN) Police via Cheezburger.

Again, I can sympathize.
From Imgflip.

This is the most accurate statement here, but...
thanks a lot, Einstein.
From Dailymeme-noah via Cheezburger.

Enjoying the Ride

Last night I spent some time doing something I've not done since November: actually playing in-game with friends.

Oh, I've been online at the same time they are, and even been in a group together, but either they were doing their own thing, doing boosting/getting boosts, or doing group content of some sort. Since they mostly were rushing on ahead in the Anniversary servers, there really wasn't much in common for us to work on at the same time. Even when they had gotten toons to L60 and were working on alts*, I'd kept a distance because they were frequently doing boosting of some sort.

However, last night was a respite from that because my Questing Buddy was playing with one of her kids**, and I noted that her kid had died. 

"Need a healer?" I asked.

"Not a bad idea," my Questing Buddy replied, so I switched to a Priest who was close to Darnassus and went up to Teldrassil to help out.

I spent the next hour or more following them around, healing and shielding them, while they quested inside the Ban'ethil Barrow Den and against the Furbolg encampments nearby. Once in a while I would pull threat due to the heals, so I had to use wands and the occasional attack spell, but I was perfectly fine providing a minimal amount of support to keep them upright. I had no skin in the game, since I wasn't trying to keep up with quests or catch up with leveling. It was simply something that I could do without disrupting their enjoyment of the game --or making it all about me-- so I could enjoy the ride for a while.

*At least one has an alt closing in on L60 as well. Go figure.

**The kids play on a free account, which works well since they only tend to play in the starter and adjacent leveling zones.