Last night, after creating some musical stylings about pedo trees, I drove down to mom's house so we could hit up some of the Northwest Arkansas crafts fairs today. Yesterday, I was only coming down because mom would enjoy it but that must have been a byproduct of staying awake over 24 hours on Fridays because this morning when I woke up I was really excited about going. We set the alarms for 6:30am, got up & around, packed a cooler full of drinks, grabbed Charlie and Jessica and headed out the door.

We always go to War Eagle first because its off the beaten path, down a long curvey road and there's a single lane bridge to get to the parking area. Because its one if the most popular locations of the whole weekend, if you don't get there early you're going to be sitting in your car, in line, for hours.

We got there before most if the traffic, looked at everything, spent some money (I bought 2 pkgs of chicken soup mix) and then headed into Rogers for lunch at Pandas.

Unfortunately, that's where our big day of crafting ended. Before we had left the house this morning, mom had decided to remove the cable ties that were on the little rolling cart we use for these kinds of adventures. And she decided to use a pocketknife that my dad had freshly sharpened. Yep, she stabbed herself with it. Not a cut, a puncture. It had bled all morning, all over everything, and had also been swelling and bruising. By the time we got to lunch she couldn't move it and it was throbbing and really hurting her.

We went to the ER because the urgent care center told her to. She got a tetanus shot and some antibiotics and they checked to make sure she didn't damage a nerve or tendon. She's more upset about the cost of going to the hospital than she is about anything else. To entertain ourselves for the hours we were at the hospital, we spent our time making fun of mom.

Guess we will try to go crafting next year.

A fire, in September.

Rain, Rain, Go Away

What a miserable, dreary day for the Henderson family reunion. We are all soaked, people are cold, the kids can't play. BUT... we are all together and there's good food to be eaten and new babies to be cuddled. Maybe it's not such a bad day after all.

Hey You Kids, Get Off My Lawn

Today, while driving through the parking lot of my apartment complex, I came up behind 3 kids who were walking down the center of the lot. As I pulled up behind them, 2 of them moved out of the way; the third one, a boy of about 12, turned around and held his arms up acting like he dared me to hit him. I smiled and waved and he moved slowly off to the side. I just wrote it off as him clowning around, being funny for his friends.

But then, as i drove by them, he ran up behind me and smacked the back of my car. I'm sure he was still showing off and probably thought he was being funny, but it just instantly went right through me. It was a tad dangerous, he could have gotten hurt. It was disrespectful for him to treat my car that way. It pissed me off. I immediately slammed on my brakes and opened my door to pretend I was getting out and they all screamed and took off running.Obviously I would not have done anything to him, just wanted to scare him a but. But now I'm sitting here feeling like a curmudgeonly old person. Stupid kids anyway.

Look Out Girls...

Looks like someone was having a bit of fun in the breakroom.

Or maybe this person just doesn't like single women.

Oh Hai There, I Haven't Seen You In A While

So I've been so busy blogging about World of Warcraft that I have once again neglected this place. But I'm back, at least for today. There are a few things I wanted to get down for future reference. Things such as the two 911 emergencies from last weekend. And some news about more positive subjects like my weight loss and that other thing I try not to talk about.

Where to begin... how about last weekend. It was horribly exciting. But mostly just horrible. Friday afternoon, Friday the 4th, I had a hair appointment at Melinda's shop in Cassville. When I was walking to the door of the shop I heard someone off in the distance faintly hollering. It kind of sounded like "help" but I wasn't sure. I paused, there was silence. I put my hand on the door, hear it again. I almost convinced myself it was someone calling for a dog but it nagged at me a bit that it was "help". So I paused again, heard it twice and walked around towards the side of the building. I noticed a pickup pulled over on the edge of the ditch several houses down the road with its headlights on. About that time, I saw a gray haired gentleman raise his head up near the tire of the truck and he spotted me. He started waving his arms and began yelling "help" louder. I knew Melinda was in her 2nd year of nursing school and since I was still on the porch of the shop, I ran inside to get her. She and I start running down the road towards him and she turns around to tell the others to call 911. To make the story shorter.. the poor old guy had hopped out of his truck into the ditch and somehow the clutch popped or something and the truck had rolled on to him and trapped him. Both of his legs were twisted over each other and the front drivers side wheel had rolled onto them up to his knees. The cops came, jacked up the truck a few inches, pulled him out. He lost both of his shoes under there somewhere. Then the ambulance got there after a few minutes and checked him out. He insisted he could stand and was fine so they helped him up. But then took him by ambulance to have xrays done.

The next day, Saturday the 5th, my Uncle Garry was getting married to Sheila. It was a nice quiet ceremony at his house. Everything went fine until after the vows when the happy couple was cutting the cake. The stairs to the basement are in the middle of the living room floor. There is a 3 foot wall around 3 sides of the stairwell, but where you walk down them is, of course, open. A friend of the bride, a tiny little 78 year old woman, was trying to get a better picture of the cake cutting and took a step backwards. She stepped back right into the open stairs. Several people gasped and I turned around in time to watch this little old woman fall down 30 stairs to a concrete basement floor. It was horrible. Luckily, Sheila is a registered nurse. And a friend of hers who came to the wedding is also a registered nurse. Apparently she was completely out for about a minute. She had a gash above her left eye, her nose was broken and bleeding from the nostrils and a gash on the bridge, there was a hole the size of a nickel completely missing from her top lip. She had landed on her wrist which was swelling and both knees were gashed open, one a good 4 or 5 inches. My uncle yelled for someone to call 911 but I looked around and everyone was just standing there frozen. So I grabbed my cell phone and dialed 911. It took 20 minutes or so for the ambulance to get there (out in rural area). The woman was taken to the hospital. When she got there, she refused to be treated due to religious beliefs. She wouldn't even let them clean her up. I can't believe she just went home. I can't even imagine how she must have felt the next day. She needed a lot of stitches, she needed her nose set, she couldn't tell us what month it was or how old she was. Horrible.

Okay, enough about that. Let's talk about some positive stuff. My place of employment began a weight loss competition on March 1st. I just had my first weigh-in a few days ago and I lost 7 lbs in my first week. That's good considering I had already been eating healthier since the beginning of the year and had joined a fitness club in January also. I was very proud of myself. However the past couple of days... I've had a bit of a struggle. My hormones have caused me to remain constantly hungry the past 2 days. I just had pop-tarts. Shame on me. But I will get it together and work it off by exercising twice as hard this weekend.

Also, I haven't talked about this much at all, but I quit smoking on January 2nd and haven't had a single puff since then. It wasn't a New Years resolution. I didn't plan it in advance or really put any thought into it at all. It kind of just happened that the stars all aligned and I smoked the last cig in my pack late Sunday evening a few hours before work. I thought "well I'll just stop on my way to work and get some". Then as I was driving to work I thought "well, I don't actually smoke at work, so I'll stop on my way home in the morning". Then the next morning I thought "well I'm just going home to go straight to bed, so I'll just buy some when I wake up later". Then after I woke up I thought "well I don't have any plans to go into town right now so I'll just buy some on my way to work". And there the process repeated. By the 3rd day, I just stopped thinking about buying any at all. I still think about cigarettes, but it hasn't been hard as far as my body physically craving them. Mentally, however, I do want to smoke from time to time. But it's the same way I feel about travel for example. I mean I wish I were in New York right now because I've always wanted to see it. But I can't be, so oh well. That's how my mind thinks about the cigarettes. I sure do remember enjoying them and I wish I had one right now. But I can't, so oh well. Nothing more than that. It's been way easier than I imagined it would be. Especially since I am combining it with a diet. Or maybe it's easy because I'm so worried about the food, I'm not worried about the cigarettes. Either way, it worked and that's all that matters.

So that's how things are going with me. Exciting stuff, huh?

History of Google Doodles

Let's start out by answering the question I'm sure you've already asked outloud - what the heck is a Google Doodle? Well, that's simple. Have you ever noticed an artistic or creative Google logo when you go to google.com? Something different than just the word Google spelled out in colorful lessons? Those are Google Doodles and they are used to mark important historic or cultural events in the world. I've always gotten a kick out of the ones I happen to see, but I know I've missed a bunch because I use the Google search bar more often than I go to google.com. Luckily, I just accidentally discovered Google keeps an archive of all their doodles and I can g back and look through them whenever I want. You could too if you click this link.

News Flash: I Now Have A WoW Blog... But It's Not Here

This blog that you are reading right now? This blog (as a whole) is actually pretty sucky. It's just a little personal blog that has been around for several years and has been subjected to a unique combination of blandness, stupidity and neglect. Of course, I've recently discovered a new-found fondness for blogging about WoW and I've been throwing those posts up here. Amazingly this has caused a few people to actually find their way over here to read a few things. Since I feel like continuing to blog about WoW is something I want to commit to right now, I have decided to split those types of posts off onto their own dedicated WoW blog and let this one continue to dredge along as a personal blog.

That being said, allow me to direct you to http://worldofelfi.wordpress.com/ - aka Elfi's World. I have transferred the WoW posts and associated comments from this blog over to that one and after I few weeks I will be deleting them from here. So everyone please be sure and bookmark the new sight. I can't wait to see some traffic over there.

Uldum's Floating Cat Head Revisited

It's been almost a month since I first talked about discovering a floating cat head in Vir'naal Lake in Uldum. As soon as I spotted it I thought it was odd. I spent a good 5 minutes in-game swimming around it, trying to click it, trying to jump on it, etc. I couldn't discover any reason for it whatsoever. So I simply screen-shotted it, made a silly little blog post here and forgot about it.

But now... now the floating cat head is catching the attention of other people. Important people. People like Zinn over at Jinxed Thoughts who also thinks it's very odd and has set about investigating the whole thing. I hope she is able to track down an explanation so we can get this settled once and for all. I would hate to have unexplained floating cat heads infiltrating my dreams.

Yesterday Was A Wow Day For My WoW!

Seriously, yesterday rocked. Is it odd that I'm most excited about Stood In The Fire? That's the only one that is completely random and out of my control. The rest of them I had to work for. Lol. I was on cloud 9 yesterday. The only downside was that most of my favorite WoW friends are no longer in my guild and I didn't get to share my moments with them.

Thank God for Kind Tanks

As a resto druid healer who has spent my entire career spamming rejuvenation, life bloom and wild growth (with an occasional regrowth in tight spots), I have been hesitant to heal any dungeons in Cata. Well, maybe hesitant isn't exactly the right word. It's more like I've been scared shitless. Spells and buffs and talent trees have changed so drastically. My old rotation is total garbage. The spells Blizzard now wants me to use as my mains I've never even thrown before. On top of all this, I've decided to stop using Healbot and begin using VuhDo. I made that decision based on reading this post by Jasyla over at Cannot Be Tamed. Once I decided to use VuhDo, I of course had to learn how to set it up. And there's no better way to do that than to read Tamarind's post over on Righteous Orbs.

After getting my addons whipped into shape and rearranging my action bars, I needed to practice. But we all know how pugs go, right? A lot of individual agendas, no concern for anyone else's mana, rage quitting, ninja need rolls, and (most relevant to me) everything is the healers fault. Who needs that shit? I'm in a delicate emotional state right now, getting yelled at by random strangers does not sound appealing. Luckily I got the chance last night to group up with a few friends so I suited up and took my first trip into Grim Batol. Unfortunately, none of them were tanking and tanks can be the biggest issue in pugs, so I was still a little worried.

Turns out, we were lucky enough to get one of the rarest forms of tanks in the game these days - a nice guy. And overall, I didn't do too bad. I certainly learned what I needed to tweak with VuhDo and I learned how my mana was being used so I can control it better next time. Because of this success, I'd like to give a big shout-out to Thatlilshyt from server Undermine for being a great tank. He explained boss fights immediately and thoroughly, he never once yelled at me when I wiped us on a trash pull or wiped us 3 times on the first boss. He even took his time moving forward so I could drink without having to tell everyone I needed to drink. Amazing. Because of this tiny bit of patience, we all succeeded and I am now better at healing than I was. And it didn't hurt any of us. Except for the cost of repairs after wiping. :)

Deepholm? More Like Deepressing!

Tired of all the diplomacy and the touchy/feely/girlie emotion stuff? Me too. Let's talk about Deepholm. I hate it. Seriously hate it. Before I got there I heard so many people talk about how beautiful and awesome it was and I got so stoked to get in there and experience it. But it honestly bores me. I don't necessarily think it's ugly, but I also don't think it's beautiful. Everything is shades of blue and gray, yawn. There are chunks of sparkling rocks floating everywhere, yawn. And even though I'm not claustrophobic at all, the place feels like it's closing in on me. The whole place is depressing and makes me sad.



I even hate the Temple of the Earth (except for the handy port to SW, of course) because I seem to always have to fly around it 6 times before I find the entrance. Then when I do get in, I never can remember which set of stairs leads to the portal so I run around the circle in the middle 4 or 5 times cursing loudly. Does that sound like fun? It's not.








I do enjoy gathering cinderbloom and heartblossom, but there doesn't seem to be a huge abundance of it either. Basically I zone in, pick flowers for several minutes, do two or three quests, pick moar flowers and then get the hell out of there for the day.



Sigh. It's gonna take forever to finish the quests in here.

Wall Of Text Wherein I Prove I’m A Liar

*Disclaimer: the following post is not an attempt to solicit any explanations, apologies or etc. It's just me clearing my mind.

Have you ever stated with certainty that you feel a specific way about a subject and then later, after drama unfolds an unexpected change, you realize maybe you don't feel that way anymore? Well it just happened to me. My last post here, less than 1 week ago, was all about how WoW was just a game for me and how the recent issues in my guild weren't stressing me out. I even stated that as a game it should never be a source of stress for me on a personal level and if it does ever cause stress or I become upset about in-game relationships then it would be time to quit playing. Well guess what... I'm stressed out and upset about in-game relationships. And no, I'm not going to quit playing the game. So, I was wrong. It can be more than a game.

My guild has recently gone through some major shit and it has finally taken its toll on me. I'm not going to get into what happened with great detail. Everything I said in my last post about not choosing sides and not believing one story over another is still true. The initial situation I was referring to then (which was a chunk of people leaving) is not even what's bothering me. What is bothering me is that chunk of people left because of their personal issues with my GM. My GM stood her ground and accepted the fact that she was losing all of these people because they didn't agree with her about whatever. It was a shock and a bit of a loss to the guild, but nothing we couldn't recover from easily enough (numbers wise). Because of blog posts and bitter comments and the like, things did get a bit nasty over the past 2 weeks but I continued to stay out of the fire and remained friendly with both Side A (people who left) and Side B (GM and several others).

I was pretty sure things had finally gotten as bad as they were going to be and a sort of healing process could begin. I don't yet have any desire to be a guild officer, but I did tell my GM that I would be more than happy to take over guild bank organization as a way of helping out while we were short-handed. And this week my plans were to devote some time and gold into stocking the bank with a good number of flasks and potions everyone could use for raiding. Through all of this, I have been there for both sides. People from Side A have chatted with me about their feelings and I have listened patiently and gently without ever trying to defend Side B or telling Side B that I've even spoken to anyone on Side A. I've also talked with Side B and listened to whoever needed to vent about anything without ever trying to defend Side A or telling Side A I have heard things about them. But the bottom line was - I wanted to remain loyal to my guild (which consequently meant my GM).

I talked in my last post about how my guild was just a natural part of the game to me and I couldn't imagine playing without being in it. I didn't really clarify this, but that wasn't as much about having the guild name attached to my character as it was about associating the game with 3 specific people. It would be 4 people, but my brother (who introduced me to the game and the guild) no longer plays. So, 3 people. My irl buddy David, my GM and my GM's husband (who was originally the GM when I joined). These 3 were the main people who guided me, encouraged me, and helped teach me how to play. They may not even realize how important they were to me, but I've had them each on a pedestal this entire time. My GM's husband cheerfully loaned me 80 gold when I hit level 60 and couldn't afford an Epic Mount. He was the GM at the time and I couldn't even fathom how much money 80 gold was. It might as well have been a million dollars to me then. I stressed over paying him back as quickly as possible. I farmed herbs relentlessly. Little did I know 80 gold meant nothing to him. It was such a big deal to me. He was always such a happy, helpful GM and then just player. My friend David is one of the biggest WoW nerds I know, so he was very helpful and inspiring at every turn. He doesn't play as often currently as he used to, but man he used to. The guy keeps spreadsheets of gears and enchants and can rattle off all that mathematical shit about spirit regen and blah, blah, blah. He is such an asset to have around. I have picked his brain for lots of things. As for the current GM, she's just a pretty cool person. She is extremely knowledgeable about the game. She knows enough about each class that she can recommend who needs what loot, when I raid with her she knows every fight and can explain them well; she is well organized and not afraid to take charge. I always knew if I had her approval in what I was doing, I was doing alright. I follow her blog and her twitter account because I like the way she writes. We even love a lot of the same music/bands.

So here's the unexpected change that happened last night and prompted this post. My GM, her husband, a co-gm and several core raiders (along with who else, I just don't know yet) left the guild last night and created a new one on our server. It devastated me. I understood their reasons. But it devastated me. Let me try to explain the two emotions I went through. First, I felt hurt and left out that this was obviously something that took a bit of planning and I wasn't asked if I was interested in joining them. I know I'm welcome to join them. They expressed that last night and I believe it. But that's not the same as being included. When my GM was thinking of who she really wanted in her new guild, she didn't think of me. Now maybe that's because she started this new guild to be dedicated to progression raiding on Friday & Saturday nights and because she knows me, she knows I won't give up every Friday & Saturday night to raid. No sense asking someone if they would like a peanut if you know they're allergic to peanuts, right? But if you google the name of her new guild, you can find their forums and the first posts are from around Dec. 21, 2010. Which means they didn't just decide to do this in the past 3 days, there's been some thought and planning put into it. And I didn't know until yesterday. So, yes my feelings are hurt. It doesn't mean I'm mad at her or even that I don't understand why. It certainly doesn't mean I would have followed her (though I probably would have, hard to say now). It doesn't mean I am going to give her the cold shoulder. Why? Because we're friends. And I'm cool like that. I will get over the disappointment in no time. Life goes on.

The second emotion I have is anger. Not directed at my GM on a personal level, but directed at my GM in a business sense. Here's where the line gets fuzzy. Try to think of it as related to a work environment. If a good friend of yours is your supervisor at work, there will likely come a time when what they have to tell you at work will piss you off; but when you go out for drinks that night, you shouldn't be mad at your good friend. This is what I'm talking about. She had to do what she needed to do and I understand that. But from a guild point of view, it's hard to understand how she let all of the people who are now known as Side A leave the guild (resulting in shit being stirred and drama being had) because they had issue with her when she probably knew she wasn't going to be in the guild much longer anyway. Because now we have a Side C. The people left behind. And it seems like somehow that could have been avoided.

Thankfully, my friend David is still in my guild. Although without the GM and her husband, it hardly feels like my guild. I know it wasn't easy for her to hold a guild meeting last night and make the announcement. I have much respect for her because she did that in person and was willing to discuss it afterwards. I certainly don't think they are over in their new guild laughing at us or throwing crazy celebration parties. I do sincerely hope she feels relieved and I hope that means she can now look forward to logging in again and enjoy the game like I know she used to. I will continue on with my guild although I have no idea what lies ahead of us. I will continue talking to my friends, regardless of what guild they are now in. And yes, that includes my GM (because I know you're reading this). My devastation, my hurt, my anger... it's just a result of the shock of everything. I will be fine. I may be a bit quiet for a day or two because I need to process everything and try to figure out the next step for me, or my guild, or Kim (you know she idolizes me). But I'm still cool.

It's been an interesting ride recently. I've gone from being excited and anxious about helping my guild achieve great things, to remaining neutral and friendly during a guild split, to feeling like a homeless reject who isn't going to have a chance to do any raiding. Quite a rollercoaster. Luckily, I've got a level 20 worgen who has never been in any guild and I can always log in there to just enjoy playing for a while and take a break from all the sad stuff. And who knows, maybe that worgen (feral druid, btw) will one day soon get the chance to join an amazing guild.