Roads to Safe Places

First of all, it was good to see that the sales ranks on Amazon.com have returned, but I don't really buy the explanation an employee gave, although that might be because I am too ignorant on how their categories work. It would make sense that a French employee who's come down with the stupid mixed up "adult" and "sexuality", but only if books like "Heather Has Two Mommies" were listed in the category "Sexuality" - which, as far as I can see, it isn't. Unless they used the tags, which, seeing as how they're user edited, would be downright idiotic.

But I guess that that explanation is the best we will get, so I'll have to be content with that, I guess. The whole affair makes me rather uncomfortable of Amazon, though. Why have sales ranks at all? Why filter anything? Why filter only non-"norm" sex? This entire thing remains highly dubious.

Second, Crocky is awesome at picking gifts.  A present from her arrived in the mail today, it's the first volume of LFG. <33



And third, some recent WoW endeavours.

Patch Day
Yay patch day!! And with it, obviously, dual specs! Playing a Priest is finally going to be fun again, and I am sure that there are a couple of very happy Druids and Shamans out there who love this day, too. I'm definitely looking forward to being able to go both ways, although I'm still more comfortable melting faces than healing them. I'm going for Shadow plus Holy, as priests seldomly get taken along if they only want to dd.

My budding main was not that affected by the rest of the patch, although I am looking forward to Ulduar - not that my gear or level is anywhere near ready for that just now, but we're getting there.

Instances: Sethekk Halls, Shadow Labyrinth, Utgarde, Nexus
On Easter, we did Sethekk Halls and Shadow Labyrinth runs, which was entertaining, even though Murmur killed me because my bloodworms and BloodStrike were not enough to heal me and our healer was busy elsewhere. Part of the key attraction of these instances for me was the fun I got from comparing epeen with those of the others on Recount. I am getting better, and it shows in both DPS and damage, and that makes me feel like less of a n00b, which is a good feeling.

Yesterday and the day before my brother and I have done very quick Utgarde runs. Utgarde was surprisingly easy, much easier than I had imagined, although I managed to die twice - once because I was standing in the boss rather than behind him and was hit by Smash, the second time because I didn't pay attention to the bloody Shadow Axe until I was dead. We breezed through there three times yesterday and on Monday, it was awesome.

Nexus was a bit harder. The first time we did a Nexus run my brother and I had just hit 70, our healer was inexperienced, and the others were not very well coordinated, either. The first time we attempted Keristrasza and ended up wiping five times before she finally did us the favour of dying - with four of the group dead and only our hunter alive, I think. In spite of the wipes and the difficulties, it was awesome, easily the best run anywhere so far. For the first time, it seemed to really matter what we were doing and it was not just a matter of going through the motions and hitting the buttons in a routine order, but a matter of watching debuffs, her tail, my cooldowns, and decide what to cast to achieve maximum damage. I realise this probably says a lot more about my proficiency as a gamer than the comparative difficulty of the Nexus for recently-turned-70 players, but it was just awesome. Lore-wise, I love the dragons in this add-on, and her story is really sad. I felt sorry for her.

Yesterday I've done some very successful Utgarde runs and one Nexus run with my brother and lots of friendly people. The first time we went to Utgarde we had another DK with us, our healer was his spouse and a ... I think it was a hunter. Ârthás and Nightlypries were sort of the focus of my attention from the beginning, though, mostly because of the unfortunate names. What is it with DKs being called all sorts of variations on "Arthas"...? Well. The DK fancied himself the tank and tried hard, too, in spite of his blood spec, and in spite of the fact that my brother's howling blast permanently stole his aggro. We had mobs being death-gripped to and fro and our healer nearly suffering a heart attack because half the time, no one knew who was tanking, although towards the end, my brother was tanking by consensus.

Ârthás and his Nightlyrpies did not accompany us to the Nexus, and I was sort of glad about that. The Nexus run was smooth and a lot easier than the last time - it only took around twenty minutes, hardly anyone died, everything went as it should, I seriously pwned the other players on Recount. Fun times.

The new instances are so pretty! I wish they would use whatever they did to make everything look so gritty and more realistic on the original areas, too.

Scary, scary time factor
Evenings like these make me wish we could join a guild together to raid, a really, really casual raiding guild, should such a thing exists. I love doing instances and I am really curious about raids, but I doubt that there are a lot of random group raids happening even on that busy server. The time factor is also scary. I usually play for two to three hours when I play with my brother, and twice a week, that is a pretty solid time-committment I am not that comfortable with. It works out fine as long as Rebecca has choir practice and ensemble meetings once a week, although I end up feeling like a loser to game while she is out doing better things. It certainly makes me wish for better and more worthwhile hobbies in addition.

Apart from that, I am off to try and bake bread with fresh yeast rather than the dry variety I've been using. I love fresh bread, the smell, the taste, the feeling of the dough. I'm thinking about trying this bread