Not a Bad Night

Raiding last night went pretty well. We started fresh to help gear up our shammy who offered to go DPS for Garrosh. I think he only got one piece of gear for his healy set, and the only other piece that dropped that he could use was a trinket and someone else beat him out. So unless he rolled some bonus stuff, not really a great gearing run for him. Let me tell ya, all the int plate we see we could gear a couple of paladins. A shame we only have 1 DPS pally with a tank off-spec.

Aside from that, raiding went great. One shot everything up to Shamans with 2 healers, and took two attempts on Shamans to get them. Somehow I was the only one standing at the end of that- yay for warlock DoTs killing them while I ran around trying to live and find a safe place to shadowmeld! We ended a bit early, didn’t want to clear all the trash to Nazgrim.

I’ve just looked over the logs for the other healer. In some ways, much improved from last week. Much better harmony uptime. Lifebloom usage, highest was 25%. I’ll have to mention that to him again. I don’t know, to me the two basic “How do I heal as a druid?” things are keep lifebloom up, usually in a tank, and make sure you maintain harmony. And lifebloom should be the easy part of that. If it looks really low on the first fight on Friday, I’ll mention it to him again. Last time I mentioned lifebloom, he told me he lost the spell and it took about 30 seconds to find where he’d bound it

So I did the responsible thing and logged off early to study and sleep. I wasn’t entirely successful in those goals. I did skim my notes, but sleep did not come easy. Then I ended up dreaming I was driving back from school in Alabama with a total stranger when we ran across an elephant on the side of the road stuck to a tree. There was some more elephant stuff, which was kinda neat. I like elephants. All in all a nice dream to remember, I just wish I didn’t remember it because of waking up in the middle, at 4am. This was another morning where I really wanted to roll back over and not leave my bed. My roommates ended up unknowingly helping me out- they hadn’t woken up yet, and they are pretty loud in the mornings. I’ll often wake up early hearing them move about. And it would be an absolute waste to skip class to try to sleep only to be unable to because of a few loud people.

Plus, I really like this path lecturer and feel bad from him when people skip. And it’s Thursday, I’ve got normal classes and 1 lab. I’m an adult, suck it up and be one for a day.

A Consistent Plan

Still wiping on Garrosh, but I think we made some important progress- we picked a strategy to stick to. We’ve been swapping it up every week, sometimes multiple times in one night. Last night alone we tried 3 tanking, 2 tanking, had 4 different people as tanks, 2 of the 3 healers swapped toons a few times, and we switched strategies for movement. We’ve picked one, named the two tanks and settled. We’re sticking with 3 healers, but it’s 2 Disc priests and a fistweaving monk, so together we’re a mediocre DPS. I am excited about this change. I think we’ll see progress this way.

I do get where our raid leader was coming from- he thinks he can’t trust the DPS to handle the whirling corruption adds, and was trying to devise a 3-tank strategy to avoid having the DPS deal with them. I told him I’d try anything once, but I think most raids 2 tank, 2 heal and learn to deal with stuff. And I think we can learn to deal with things. Ok, might take us some time and practice, but we’ll get it. The important thing is to let us work on it, not confuse us with “Ok, we’re doing <this> now, not <that>.”

I think we’re starting fresh with the Wed/Fri group tomorrow, but I’m not sure. I’d like to just extend and try a night on Garrosh with some different people. On the other hand, working on Garrosh 4 nights a week does not appeal to me. Especially when there are still pets to get, and I know a few people in that raid need loot from earlier bosses. I’ll be happy with whatever we decide, they’re a fun group.

Did not get any arenas in, but the Call to Arms BG is Silvershard Mines, which I kinda like. I ran that for the conquest. I’m going to be making an effort to cap that each week now. I’m hoping I can try some arenas later today, but we’ll see. I slept fairly well last night, and I am going to try not to nap today and see if I can get a pattern going. Which would leave me more afternoon WoW time, after studying.

Stressy Rant

I’m trying, but some days I just want to roll over and go back to sleep. Then there are days like yesterday, where even sleep is too much effort. I just lay there, flicking through youtube videos and starting stories only to close all my tabs and quit, then starting right back up again. 

That is unusual for me. I love to read, and I’ll open tab after tab with fanfiction stories that look promising, and if I have to close them I will bookmark it “to come back to someday.” I have dozens of things marked for that. So to close them all is unusual for me.

I figured I’d write this out to share, and hope airing my thought can help me figure out what is going on. I have a few ideas. School is stressful, and it’s even more so when you don’t do anything- I don’t pay attention in some classes because it’s just so boring, and I don’t study unless there is something pushing me. I just stress about things and ignore them until it is almost too late.

WoW is stressful lately. Wiping on Garrosh for weeks with one group, dealing with some stress about raiders in the other. And flex isn’t an easy, fun run for me lately either. Even with the RL there, I’ll speak up, try to pay attention to people and help out.  And then if we struggle a bit and wipe a lot, I feel guilty because I did chose the wings we are running. Yeah, it’s not just me, but it was my suggestion. 

I’m hoping arena will be fun. But I know how frustrated I feel when we lose because I do something silly (like pop Incarnation in the hallway by accident), say focusing on CC-ing to the detriment of my teammates health.

And my dog is not eating again. We removed her spleen over winter break, and the histopath came back hyperplasia, but I discussed it with one of my professors today. With the eosinophilia, she thinks there might be a mast cell tumor somewhere we haven’t identified. 

My final issue is probably sleep. I often wake up tired, and stay up too late. Every morning, knowing what my first class is, I want to set my alarm an hour later and roll back over. Sleep makes me more fragile. I’ll cry at things I usually don’t think twice about, remarks made to or about me will stick harder than usual, and I’ll feel like I can’t do anything.

So now that I feel I’ve identified some of the problems, what to do? I think the first two things to work on are sleep and getting some exercise. I do very little, and I think getting moving will help me. I am hoping once I fix those two, the rest will seem like less of a burden. Midterms are in two weeks, and I can’t afford to feel like I do now when I take those tests. That’s my next big hurdle. I am going to try to study more in those classes I don’t pay attention in. Usually once I start something, momentum will keep me going. It’s just getting up that first hill that stops me so often.

Doin' OK

Last night ended up being a lot less busy than I expected. For the Alliance and the HoF heroic were cancelled. That left me what I thought was a nice, open night to help start flex, invite the regulars who are part of my friends list and not the guild, maybe kill a boss then step out. Then my RL sent me a message, he was unable to make it to flex tonight. He did tell me I could let the other people lead if I didn’t want to. But I know them, and of the other 2 officers who attend- 1 wasn’t always a guarantee, and while I’d love to watch the other lead a raid I thought it better I be there. He’s way more blunt than I am, but I thought I should stick around and provide a gentler touch. Though I do thank him for getting everyone to listen a bit on Garrosh. How foggy is “when you’re ready stand on the bouncing tree”? Apparently more than some can handle.  

But flex wen’t well, we killed Seigecrafter in a handful of pulls, and one-shot Paragons. And someone rolled a Kovok! Surprise, it wasn’t me. At least is was someone nice. Well, there’s no one we have in our guild I’d consider not-nice- just not outgoing people. But this person was someone I once sent a stack of Agility flasks to, on their request, and occasionally send a few more to here and there, and they have been sending me their extra cloth, herbs, and leather ever since. Super nice :)

No luck on Garrosh, but in our half an hour of pulls we made it to phase 2. All in all a great night for having 1 tank who was returning to WoW after a break and hadn’t seen these fights from a tanking PoV. Poor guy, relying on me for explanations. Thankfully our other tank, though he doesn’t tank often (usually our top DPS) knew what to do, and we had 2-3 more people who tanked normal on occasion there to throw out the info I skimped over. And a good night for having a lot of low DPS- lots of alts. Only 1 or 2 deaths to the Iron Star our first pull. We’re having trouble getting Garrosh to the right place after the transitions, but I think having our RL back to tank will help. I am optimistic we’ll get it in flex eventually. It’s tough when we only get half an hour on him, but soon we will get Seigecrafter down quickly and I won’t need to explain every fight to new people each time and we’ll have more time on Garrosh.

In other news, I am looking forward to arenas starting back up. Very excited for that. My Tues/Thurs RL asked me to get my tanking set together. I already have it, and told him so. He is thinking of 3-tanking Garrosh, which makes me sigh a bit. I will give anything a shot once, but I told him what I think: a lot of raids 2-heal, 2-tank, and just learn to deal with the mechanics. Unstated, but hopefully heavily felt was as should we. I’ll give anything a try, but I think it’s not the best idea. Meh, whatevs. I’m less concerned about this Garrosh kill since my second team managed to make it there. Hopefully we’ll end Friday with Thok down, at least, and get at least 1 night on Garrosh the next week.

I have been enjoying playing as a brewmaster, though I haven’t tried to tank anything. I love not having to worry about dying, and I feel if I didn’t have to pay attention to my health as much tanking would be easier than healing. Not watching everyone health, buffs, and debuffs, just watching a few things and moving like I already have to as a healer. I’m still nervous to actually tank anything. Think that goes back to how much I expect from my tanks. Though it would be really nice to be able to set the pace I want. I’m working my way up to it. We have…7 potential tanks right now, so it seems my services are unlikely to be needed.

So lots is being planned for the future. We are working on another CM group, the group of us that got golds done, for some alts. Poor guy in charge of all these things I am listing off. Cause there’s a second group that will start sometime, after we finish either this group or the Sunday Heroic raids we’re working on (he also leads those), plus an alt Normal SoO run one night a week starting sometime, he wants to start CM another night to finish our group up. Plus he’s our RL. So that’ll be 2 days of SoO flex, 2 nights of normal, 1 other normal, 1-2 nights of CM, and heroic HoF/ToES to finish. Lots to do. And lots for me, since I’m involved in all of that (maybe minus 1 of the CM groups, not sure) plus another 2 nights of raiding.

I really hope our group downs Garrosh this week. I have midterms in 2 weeks and might need to step back from WoW a bit, and I want to kill Garrosh first. I am not sure yet what I plan to do- only raid, stop raiding and only do fun filler things, or just study more and stick with my WoW schedule as it has been.

Today is going to be a long day. I have class or meetings from 8:30-2. I couldn’t fall asleep til after 1, and my roommates got home at 3 and woke me up. Then after I fell asleep again, one wandered into the wrong room and woke me up again. I really want to nap after all that. My plans to knock out the world bosses and try some arenas may have to wait a few days. 

Vet school quotes today:

“The USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) people just fell in out of the USDA cloud in the sky.” - on dealing with an Exotic Newcastle Disease outbreak in birds.

“I’m going to assume those of you who answered these [wrong answers] really meant this [right answer]”

"We have 2 plexi, cause i’m sure that’s the way you say it….. plexuses? I like plexi."

"Clearly I was drinking vodka when I wrote this."

"That horrible horse gut on fingertoes. That’s why horses have such a hard time with life."

"It is larynx and pharynx. if anyone says larinks or parnicks I will literally shake you like a baby."

"I will give anyone a dollar if you can tell me the plural of pancreas without looking at your computer… EC of course."

Weekend Recap

So my weekend was pretty nice. It was my birthday on Friday, and neither of my raids managed a Garrosh kill for me. But in a surprising turn of events, my Friday raid took two attempts each on Seigecrafter and Paragons and killed them both, netting us 2 new bosses. I think we are still starting fresh on Wednesday. Which is nice, I really don’t want to spend 4 nights a week wiping on Garrosh.

Saturday was flex, parts 1 and 3. One went well, but 3 was a pain. We’re getting to the point where we only have 2 or 3 people bringing mains, and maybe 3 or 4 more decently geared people, and the rest are undergeared alts. So we ended up only getting Malkorok down and wiping on Spoils. I want people to gear up- especially the other healing alts- but at the same time, I wish a few more would bring their mains so we could clear things. Maybe we should go back to doing part 2 again. I started the 1 and 3 on Sat so we could do 4 on Monday, because I think people want chances at the heirlooms (and I still need Kovok). I’m going to tell our raid leader to quit asking me what I want to do, cause then when things don’t work out I get frustrated and mad at myself, and start thinking “if I’d only done <something else> we’d be done.” Following flex we did a quick (for us) challenge mode-  Shado-Pan Monastery, which was the daily. And I learned if you don’t turn in that quest that day, you lose it. We managed gold after a few tries- think it took us a little over an hour. After that, my Tues/Thurs raid was working on Garrosh some more, but I told that raid leader I was honestly too tired and would be a hindrance. And went on to do Firelands and snag 2 missing achievements for the meta, leaving only Do a Barrel Roll and Only the Penitent left. I might try to get those on normal- we’ve been doing it on heroic.

That whole day was a blur- I bought Ready Player One after reading Matty’s recommendation. It was my birthday, I wanted a book. So after raid on Friday, I thought “I’ll just read a bit” and finished the book, staying up to 4:30.  Bad idea, I spent the whole weekend groggy and trying to catch up. 

Sunday I went out with some friends to Le Phare Bleu, one of my favorite restaurants here. They appeared to have redone their menu, and my normal dish was missing. But the food was still good, and I had fun playing games with my friends. The  pool was a bit of a disappointment this time- absolutely full of dead bugs. Kinda gross. But a fun day, ending with some frozen yogurt. Got home with enough time to take a quick nap before the ToES heroic run. We downed the first boss after a few attempts- healers forgot to dispel the prisons so people died, we had no clue what the adds were so that hurt, our raid leader was in trouble with his girlfriend and couldn’t get on vent, and ended up leaving early so we’ll try again next week. 

I did finish my bone collecting, and got my white raptor mount. It was fun to pull all the things as a tank and kill them. It took forever- the big dinos would respawn on top of me as I killed their comrades. I got better- eventually, I had to wait a whole 30 seconds for respawns. But the whole time I had 3 deaths, and all of them were being stupid and not looking at my health. So yay! it was fun, and since my transmog for that is purple, I love it. I’ll have to share pics of my monks transmog, I love both of them at the moment.

And today I get to hopefully knock out some of For the Alliance before finishing heroic HoF and then starting flex, whatever part we chose to do tonight. I might leave early depending on how things go- I really need to work on this decent bedtime thing, and being busy from 8-12 is not the best way to get more sleep.

Vet school quotes:

Have you eaten lunch, or are you going into lunch? (before a diarrhea video)

The dumbest kidney on earth is still smarter than the smartest clinician.

I would kill one that way (on never ever use milk vein for anything in cows)

Don’t get a needle in the vein of an alpaca and realize your wire won’t go through, nothing but profanity will follow.

Lots of Things

So I passed along a message to the healer I wanted to talk to via his roommate, asking him to  log on 5-10 min early so I can talk to him. Naturally he logged on right as raid was going to start. I did manage to snag him for a few minutes after raid. 

I’m not happy with how it went, but that’s because I’m not happy with my responses. I should just suck it up and say “yes, especially on the fights we’re getting to, we can’t afford to fall behind on heals, so please don’t slack cause you see me and the other healer are going all out. We’re doing it because we can’t count on you to do so.” That’s what I should’ve said, but it never occurred to me you wouldn’t keep harmony up because you’re standing around while the other healers do stuff. But I didn’t. I did mention WeakAuras to help him, and he mentioned he had considered looking into it.

So even though my end failed, I hope the fact that I talked to him at all will cause him to make some changes. I’m not holding my breath, but I’ll remember to get logs Friday and re-evaluate the situation in a week or two. In hindsight, there is a lot more I could have said. But hindsight is 20-20, and at least I’m not afraid to talk to him. I should’ve asked him why he raids, cause it feels like he doesn’t care about it. Next time, if there’s no improvement, I will.

I really suck at dealing with people. I had a script kinda pre-written for things I wanted to mention, but he went off script. Hmph, how inconsiderate of people not to do what I expect of them, right? Anyway, that threw me a bit and I completely failed to address the new issues that came up. Makes me mad at myself, and I wonder if I could address that again. I will re-evaluate at raid tonight, and see if I need to figure out how to say what I want to.

Next part- the tank. All I really want to do is say “you feel squishy, can you keep shuffle up more?” cause that’s about all I know of brewmaster tanking. I think I will make an effort to set up a brewmaster spec and go practice on the dinos on Isle of Giants. Then I can at least get an idea. And if I feel confident, I’ll maybe offer to tank flex 1. Though I am not sure about the tank challenge on Norushen. I am attracted to fire. But all this is big talk, no action.

We did manage to get Spoils down fairly quickly and Thok down in 2 pulls. Yay, people were dispelling the poison! And we got him to 58% before the first stack phase ended. Killed him right as the fire started. Our Seigecrafter pulls were abysmal, at least to me. Our belt people were awesome. Our main tank seriously considered solo tanking. I feel bad for him, and that’s part of the reason I am thinking of making a tanky spec- I can offer, cause we have 2 other good tanks, and 1 seems to prefer DPS and the other we kinda need the DPS they provide. On the other hand, we kinda need my heals too. And the healer who could replace me (at least in flex) is the tank! Or two of our top DPS. Though lately there have been a few flexes I have DPS’d in cause we had too many healers, so who knows, maybe I could tank? 

On that note- off-spec healers. We have one, boomkin who has off-spec heals. She’s using glyph of rejuv, and still casts nourish. I’ve talked to her, me, and 2 other druids have had healing discussions in front of her. No change. But she very rarely heals, so how can I really expect her to put the same effort into healing that I do? This is that expectations again. Then again, I do crappy feral DPS- thus why I always step out for Spoils if we have more than 10 people. But I do try, I read up on it and practice and look up ways to improve. And my poor druid- she has 4 different sets of gear, only one of which is in the bank. Though I could put my PvP gear there, I suppose.

Expectations. I am trying to remember that not everyone cares. Or raids as much as I do. I just know that probably half the group (at lest) does care, and those few that don’t really tick me off. Ah well, my ideal raid group doesn’t exist. Though I have imagined it- the 2 tanks I really like, the healer from that group, these DPS there, and so on. It’s a nice thought.

We also managed to get our raid leader together with the raiding officer for a discussion about this. I feel a bit like he feels we cornered him (the raiding officer), because there were 3 of us and 1 of him. Didn’t mean it that way at all- I was concerned, and wanted to be there to add my voice if needed. I also get the feeling that he has completely handed this raid over to the raid leader and washed his hands of it, so to speak. Yeah he’s a member, but it’s like he doesn’t care about raiding anymore. When we were doing flex and our normal leader was out he flat out said “I don’t know these fights, I can’t explain them, you or the other officer will have to.” Which is fine, but he’s our raiding officer, I kinda expect him to know this stuff, especially when things are planned in advance and he knows what is going on. And as he would later go on to point out, he put those raids together.

Anyway, back to that conversation. His advice was fine- recommending one-on-one with them with the raid leader. Fine, is a good idea. We’ve done that, between me and the raid leader, but a few more times won’t hurt, and I at least still have one more big question to ask them. But I feel like that wasn’t the advice I’d expect from the raiding officer, about concerns with a raid he organized and people he chose. About his roommates. Maybe I’m just disappointed, I’ve been feeling like he doesn’t care for a while. In our officer meeting he made it very clear he was the raiding officer and he wanted us to discuss changes to the raids he planned (meaning the flex we changed without talking to him first) even if he was no longer leading them. That’s been our raid leader, and me or the other officer when he’s not there. Leading, organizing, putting on the calendar. But when we got to him to discuss some major issues that irritate or concern at least half the raid, he was very standoffish and reticent to talk to us. Took forever to get him into vent, and then again  based off his very heavily emphasized one-on-one meeting idea I get the feeling he felt cornered. But we’ve had that discussion now, even if there were no clear answers given like I had hoped. 

I was just hoping for an explanation- these people were chose because <blah> and whatever. This is your raid, <raid leader> do what you think is best. Which I suppose we’ll have to do anyway. Well, we raid tonight- starting on Seigecrafter. I’ll see how the first 2-3 pulls go, then talk to the healer if I feel he needs to step it up. I’ll try to get to the tank about shuffle, and just leave the rest to our raid leader, who has played her class tanking heroics with his other guild and can offer way more help than me.

On the other hand, back to that conversation, I can see why he didn’t say much. Maybe he would’ve explained more one-on-one to the raid leader, but didn’t feel like he owed me and the other officer present anything. Oh well, we’ll get things straight. I should be ecstatic with our progress- 11/14 while the stuff is still current! We only killed the first 3 bosses in ToT before SoO came out and then our raid fell apart for a few months. So being this far along is very nice, and I credit a lot of that to our awesome raid leader. I think I’ve mentioned, but he has the patience of a saint and manages to stay calm and compliment people on good things even with wipes. Which led me to a discussion with a friend that I should never be my own manager, if I open my own practice- I suck at motivating people. And don’t get me started on what I think about complimenting people for doing the things they should be doing as a bare minimum all along. Though that’s probably my people expectations thing again.

Back to updates on my Tues/Thurs run- went back to Garrosh today. We’re doing some weird 3-heals but 2 are hybrid and 1 is going “holy DPS” thing. Yeah, I don’t get it either. It didn’t help much. Anyway, I told the RL my opinion of that, and he mentioned he was thinking of 2-healing again. I told him I feel confident in doing that with my monk, though I feel ideal would be my RDriud and the disc priest- but that druid is in another raid, so if he goes that route I need warning to clear with my raid lead the healer swap. I’ve also taken the plunge and set things up for brewmaster, so if he wants me to DPS, I need at least a bit of warning to set things up properly again. We’ll see what happens.

I have a very busy weekend! It’s my birthday today, yay! I have a raid tonight, flex tomorrow afternoon, challenge modes tomorrow evening, possibly another Garrosh attempts after that if there is enough of that raid on, going out on Sunday to a nice restaurant/hotel for my birthday, then heroic ToES that night. Then on Monday, as much of For The Alliance as we can fit in before trying to finish Heroic HoF, then flex at 8:30. Followed by a week of my normal Tues/Thurs Wed/Fri raids, and then I imagine next weekend we’ll try heroic HoF for our guild, and keep up the challenge modes so we can get as many done before they go away as we can. Whew, a busy week! 

Here’s hoping it’s a good one, that we get Seigecrafter and Paragons, both pets drop and I can win Kovok, maybe a few pulls on Garrosh, my other group gets Garosh, CM go smoothly on my shammy or monk or whoever the heck I bring, I manage to finish For the Alliance. And while I’m wishing, my staff finally drops in Ulduar, I finish my legendaries, and get the last 2 pets I need from normal SoO. 

Talking to People

So after wondering if my expectations are too high, I have decided maybe they are. And what I feel might be an okay way to deal with that is to try to teach people. I’ve been talking about the issues I have with another healer a lot, and I have not talked to him about it once. I am going to make a sincere effort to discuss it with him tonight. Hopefully I will have a chance before raid, to at least talk to him roommate and ask “Is he open to advice?” and “Can you tell him I would like to talk to him about healing, and ask him to get on maybe 5 minutes before raid time?” if the answer to the first question is yes.

Assuming all that happens (cause I talk a big game, but I hate talking TO people), the plan is to share with him at least 1 simple weakaura that shows harmony has fallen off. Maybe anther for LB, if he’s interested. And offer one for our tier set 2-piece bonus that I like. And one to remind me to use swiftmend and ironbark, if he’d like. My main goal: to talk to him about harmony, and about speaking up if he hasn’t: watched a video or read a description. Because that Malkorok thing really, really, really, bugged me. 

The next thing I would like to try, hopefully the same night, is a quick whisper to our other tank that I notice she feels “squishy” and I’ve seen shuffle has a really low uptime, could she perhaps try to keep that up more? I want to look up a good weakaura for it, and offer to share that if she’s interested. I’ve looked up a few, and I might go give them a look on my horde monk, see if they are helpful.

Yes, I have a horde toon. Made it to 60, and parked her in Org until I can get someone to take me through a ton of outland dungeons to 68. I m not a fan of Outland, so I’ve been avoiding it. My hunter is also stuck at 63, for the same reason. The big thing here is- I went brewmaster on my monk. Well, I learned the spec and set it up and promptly swapped back to windwalker before I tried to tank something.

I feel awkward talking to tanks without trying tanking myself, but as someone with an awful sense of direction and usually a squishy healer, I rely on my tanks a lot. I expect tanks to a) know where they are going and b) keep me safe while I keep them alive. So I am really, really hesitant to tank. I get lost easily, I don’t know a lot of the leveling dungeons, and I’ve never tanked anything. Stepping in the circle on Sha of Pride in LFR as a healer doesn’t count. I’m sure I can manage, if I started and practiced. I have almost a complete set of tank gear in my bank on Nala, and she’s equipped it exactly once so I can transmog it and see what it looks like. The hard part is done- I found a transmog, that’s what’s important, right?

I’m rambling because I am nervous about trying to talk to these people. I try to avoid confrontation, and put up with a lot of crap before I speak up. I’m probably only thinking this now because I know there are at least 3 other people who agree with me, cause we’ve bemoaned the situation before. My last time approaching someone went really well- he learned about hit/expertise caps, mr. robot, and that alone improved his DPS a bit. He’s not where a top-level player would be, but he’s better than before, I think. But I am worried this might not go over so well. I also stink at teaching. I tutored a few people, and once I explain something I expect people to get it and move on. So when people don’t, I’m stumped.

An example- I explain an easy way to avoid the spikes on Seigecrafter, 3 or 4 weeks ago. Then last week, find out someone still has no clue about the easy way to go about it. Maybe they weren’t there, or maybe my explanation stinks. And I don’t know which. 

I’ve prepared a script for my discussion with the healer- my end anyway. Here’s hoping it works out! I’ll let you know if I go through with it/how it works later. 

Expectations

So we took our epidemiology final yesterday. It went very well, but I had a bit of an issue with how things were presented. Well, not really annoyed by it, just a disgusted head shake and thought “really?” in a mental incredulous tone. Our tests are on computers, and timed, but if you finish early you can leave. Well, most times, but that’s another rant. So today they told us if you are going to finish early and leave, sit on the edges, and if you are going to need more time sit in the middle. Ok, fine, we’re not 5, we’ve been doing this 2 years, we know that. Then they wrote it on the board. And announced it 2 more times. Made it very, very clear. 

And I felt like they were treating us as if we had no clue, like we hadn’t been doing this once or twice a week nearly every school week for two years. I mentioned afterward to some of my friends that I didn’t really appreciate being treated like I was an idiot in professional school. And they said this: Have you met some of our classmates? They kinda need it. Lower your expectations.

Lower your expectations. That kinda stopped me for a sec. We are in professional school, going to be doctors. And we need to be told to use common sense? Then again (as I write this in class) our professor just had to stop and go “wait, what am I saying?” and think about his point a sec before continuing. Though to be fair, it was a relevant tangent.

I have a bad habit of expecting everyone to be like me, in terms of preparation and caring. In WoW and school. I expect people to show up on time and prepared, with flasks and some background of the fights. I expect people to care about the 9 other people who they raid with, and put forth effort. And then I get upset when they don’t. Lower my expectations. I thought I’d been working on that, but it became clear to me last night that I clearly have much more work to do here. I was just surprised and disappointed that I have to work on it in class too.

Flex went ok last night. I was expecting no troubles on Seigecrafter, but we had the usual- people took damage from spikes, stood in the way of sawblades being blown off the platform, complained about things I had no idea how to fix because they’d never been an issue for any of the people I know and regularly run with. Paragons took 2 tries, we had something weird go on with the first guy we killed. Had Amber Parasites up everywhere, lots of healer deaths. But we got them on the second try.

Then Garrosh. I took my monk, for the extra DPS and hopefully some practice on healing, try some new things. Unfortunately that meant someone else was in charge of typhooning adds back, and there were some issues with placement of weapons because people can’t get “stand far back.” Ok, that one is partially my fault for not re-explaining the fight this week since everyone was there last week or I thought they knew it. I’m just griping cause a lot of the faults with flex were probably because of lack of explanations. This is the expectation thing- I expect you to remember things from week to week, and not need an explanation every week.

So I am hopeful next Monday we’ll get Blackfuse and Paragons down early and have some time to work on Garrosh. Eternally optimistic, still overestimating people’s abilities. We’ll get him!

But I do have to wonder, AM I expecting too much of people?

Vet School Quotes of the day:

“If you bolus potassium, it’s called death.”

On urine: “God made it gold for a reason.”

Not exactly a quote- but our professor asked if we’d had any radiology, and the class started laughing. Threw  the professor for a sec, and I think he’s still confused. A discussion of our radiology class would turn into a rant. We’ll just go with radiology- something I will have to develop proficiency in myself.

Weekend Review

In terms of studying and sleeping like a normal person, this weekend was a bust. In getting random achieves and starting another legendary quest line, you could call it a success. After flex on Sat, we finished the last two bosses of Ulduar. They were bugged last time, and the trash and General Vezax went missing. Still no mount (I’m not counting on it) but 2 more fragments!

After that, my boyfriend wanted to run something for a chance at a transmog weapon. I think it was Dragon Soul? I had been there once before, but we did it on heroic. Picked up a few achievements there, then went on to Firelands (also heroic). I took my druid along to refill my stock of seeds, realized I had the legendary quest and decided I might as well collect the stuff. Maybe I can go back and finish it, I’ll put it on the back burner for now. So it was nice to knock out those 2 on heroic, my boyfriend had been wanting the Firelord title for quite some time.

It was around 11 after that, so we knocked out I Hate This Song and Share the Love, nice to knock out the achievements that take more than 2 people. Share the love took a while, kept impaling the mage. But we got it, yay! Now I should to do those Occulus achievements…

Sunday, what did I do Sunday… Ah yes, that was running scenarios to fill out the guild bank, some gathering, and we did MSV on heroic. That was fun. Everything was pretty easy til the last boss. Seems moving away from the sparks doesn’t occur to people… Of course, I can’t speak. I died once horrible to a spark very early (before the bosses came down) and it didn’t occur to me Storm, Earth and Fire would be useful until our last pull. Who’da thunk it, right? Silly monk. Tired monk, is what I was. Was getting a headache. But we did it!

Why did I tell someone I would do HoF heroic Monday night before flex? I have a final on Tuesday…

I will help if they need a tenth, and plan on going. Which means a quick nap after class and then studying epidemiology until my eyes bleed. I am hoping for a super quick flex, but not counting on it. By now everyone should know how to live through Seigecrafter at least, and Paragons went really nice last time.  Garrosh we only saw for about 10 minutes, so here’s hoping we get to him and get him down. 

I need to chill, and realize people do this for fun. This is like me tagging along for old Cata stuff with no clue what I’m doing, just to hang out. So I should stop being ticked at people for having never seen the fight. Well, I wasn’t mad- I just didn’t want to explain paragons. Thankfully I have my cheat sheet to go on, and things go too quick in flex to worry much about. But I don’t want to explain it again. That 10K gold fine we never pay says I will though.

Man, the vet school stuff for today was great. We had a new lecturer for avian/exotics, and he did story time, and talked about things he has done.

So first, vet school quotes:

“We can do story time, unless you want to go over some avian hematology.”

“Turns out koi herpes is reportable. Who knew?”

“Every spring was fawn napping season.”

“It’s not like I crawled up in the cow’s vagina and kept warm.”

“If I told you how many times I’ve done this, you wouldn’t believe me.”- as a good answer for a client when you have never done the procedure before.

He basically went over some of his experiences, how he went from someone who wanted to be a food animal vet to seeing exotics. What I took from that lecture was don’t be hasty in saying “no, I don’t treat fish/birds/elephants/whatever that thing is.” He did have a few people to help him, but he has some awesome experiences because he agreed to see things, like the circus elephant. As it turned out, he also saw a ton of other animals there, and they paid in cash. That was mentioned several times. Very important- get payment. Lots of threads on VIN about payment issues.

Overall that was a fun morning, and I think I will like that guy when he teaches poultry, even though I am not a fan of chickens. I really wish I was- poultry vets can make a lot of money, and lately I’ve been worried about paying back my loans.

Recap

I’ll start off with the vet school ‘fun thing’ of the day: our teacher acting out what a bird will do the first time you put an e-collar on it. Basically scream and fall to the bottom of the cage and throw a fit to try to get it off.

In WoW news- another light week, a test in anesthesia Thursday had me spending time offline. Sleeping, not studying like I should have been. Think I did ok, but grades aren’t up yet. 

Still wiping on Garrosh in my Tues/Thurs group. For a group that adds tanks and drops healers at the drop of a hat, our RL has been pretty stubborn about 3-healing this fight after our initial 2-heal attempts. Ok, you have a MW and a Disc priest, and together we make a crappy DPS, but I would still like to grab my druid and have me and the disc priest 2-heal it. But I’ll watch some vids, talk to the RL, and we’ll get him eventually.

The Wed/Fri group started fresh and made it to Shamans with only a few hiccups. Let Varian die almost instantly on Galakras, had a wipe on Immerseus cause we tried to 2-heal it and let me practice kitty DPS and the others didn’t realize they’d have to move a bit more to heal everyone. But we made it. Sadly, my prowling around to loot things like I usually do didn’t go well. A tank helpfully aggro’d the first 2 packs for me, but the stupid mage kept attacking and killing me anyway. Ah well, win some lose some. We’ll start at shamans tonight, here’s hoping we a) down it quickly and b) they drop the shoulder our tank wants for transmog. I have high hopes we’ll get to Spoils tonight, if not down it. Ideally we start next week on Thok, at least I hope so. We had some of the most controlled Thok pulls I’ve done, and I really like what we’re doing there. If we quit dropping a tank early for some reason… I really should get my monk into a tanky spec, just so I can figure out what is going wrong.

We got Blackfuse on flex, and had most of our normal raiders there so hopefully that fight will go well. Unfortunately, on of the folks I think will have the most trouble wasn’t there, and I think he’ll eat up a few brezes. Too many people who can rez in our group, and they often grab someone I think is unnecessary. Ah well, we’ll work it out.

I have been unable to talk with the healer I am concerned about. He pretty much only logs on for raids, then logs off. Can’t really talk to him while we’re killing things, and though we have a 15 min break, I usually use 12 minutes of it for other things and he’s AFK til the end too. So I have decided to ask his roommate if he is open to advice, and perhaps some help in approaching him. Our RL has talked about benching him for Garrosh when we get there, and I see where he is coming from and completely agree that all things be ideal, we’d have a DPS in his spot for Garrosh.  I think that will be a hard sell to our raiding officer and guild master. We’ll see what happens, we’re still a few weeks from Garrosh. Another option is I have time to talk to this guy and his healing improves a bunch. We’ll hope that one happens.

Oohh, good news everyone! Sorry, Futurama was discussed in class yesterday. Anyway, I got my 2-piece on my druid. I debated rolling on the chest- I had a warforged from Ordos, but stats weren’t as good and the chest would be my second tier piece. I also raid with an awesome shammy who decided not to roll against me for a staff that would be a minor upgrade for him. Only a minor upgrade for me as well- we both had the flex version. I did discuss it with him, make sure he was really ok with it. He’s awesome, and hugs and a shout-out to him for being so nice to me with the loot. Here’s hoping I can return the favor. I bet I will be able to, and I bet it will be a trinket. Grumble, I only just replace my Shado-Pan assault trinket with a flex one. And my other trinket is LFR. Ah well, this hasn’t happened yet. Anyway, back to druid 2-piece: I think I will love it. Only got to experiment a tiny bit with it, but it seems like I might actually unmacro my HT/NS. Or not, no harm in using NS more often. Plus I like my bar set-up as it is.

There has been talk of a Saturday alt run for SoO normal, so our frustrated RL can invite who he wants and do whatever the hell he wants with us. We have 5 people committed, but we’ll see if it starts up this week or not.

School Update

I figure it’s time for a <key up music> VET SCHOOL UPDATE! I’m in Clin Med now, which is a fun class. Currently our guest lecturer is making fun of our professor and classmates. Nice to start the lesson off with a laugh. This semester has been a lot of fun.  Our normal professor is sitting here crocheting, so I don’t feel bad writing this.

I’ll admit, I am not the best student. I don’t always pay attention in lecture (like this, for example). But this semester we have some lecturers I really like. There is also the chance they might pick on people, so I tend to pay attention. Yeah, Dr. C said she’s never going to pick on someone sleeping in her class cause she’s been here, but I’d rather not take the chance. Plus, I really hate sleeping in class. Incredibly disrespectful. I have done it before, and didn’t like it. (Sorry Dr. K- your voice and subject often made me tired.) Thus why I bring my computer to class- may not be paying attention, but not asleep!

Anyway, classes- this semester we have a handful. My favorites are Introduction to Clinical Medicine, Avian, Exotics, and Fish, and Intro to Surgical Skills. Clin Med is designed to get us thinking like doctors. A lot of the material we learned in other classes, now time to think of it in a clinical setting. Dr. C is awesome too, even if she likes to scare us. Shares her clinical experience, so we will remember and hopefully not send a dog to a specialist for rocks in the prepuce. 

Surgical Skills- do I need to explain why that’s fun? Learning how to sew things up right now (mostly pieces of rubber/foam) really makes me feel like I will be a doctor some day. I will be doing surgeries. I will need to know this stuff forever. I did have some trouble at first- I’m a lefty. But I wanted to do everything with both hands. Turns out, that’s a bad idea, cause I have to stop to think about things. For tests, I want to be able to whip those knots out. Also, Dr. P is fantastic and I love having her as a professor.

Avian/Exotics- I like to know stuff I will probably not need to use everyday. I will probably not have any pet reptiles or birds. Too much work, and not cuddly. I like cuddly pets. But Dr. R is great, and also has lots of clinical experience. She was one of the vets in New York when West Nile first started showing up there. I’m learning a lot about reptiles, amphibians and birds. Most of it has cemented my decision not to own one of them as a pet.

Other classes: Epidemiology and Public Health are two separate 1 credit classes taught by the same woman. Not bad, just not interesting.  Anesthesia is partly pharmacology 3, at this point. We’ll get into things for different species, considerations of individual animals and such as well. Important class, as our DES tutor has pounded into our head. You can kill things with this. People have, and do. This is a class I really need to buckle down and learn, because pharm was tough for me. Pathology 2 is pathology 1 all over again but on new topics. By that I mean similar professors, just a continuation of part 1. Though Dr B started it off, he was new to us. Great notes, knows his stuff. Test yesterday was a bit tougher than expected, but not unbearable.

That’s it for the term, just those 6. A nice schedule, 4 classes a morning from 8:30 to 12:20, then anywhere from 1-3 afternoons a week for labs, usually about 2 hours each. This month and next are the busier weeks, with 3 labs a week.

We’re doing opthalmology, which is part of the reason I chose to write this now. Eye pictures creep me out. Unhealthy eyes are really difficult for me to look at.Healthy eyes, fine. Eyes with KCS? <shiver> At lease my teacher is the same. She had to look away when he showed some of the pictures.

Ve school quotes of the day:

If you can’t remember [the negative] the figures that give you the lens are in red. Like your bank balance.

Herpes is forever. That’s my line for you guys cause I care.

What do I DO?

It’s been a while. I have tried stepping back from WoW a bit. Tests have really started up, had one yesterday, one on Thursday and one next Tuesday. Still having trouble settling on a sleep schedule, but I think it’s getting better. We’l see how today goes, but otherwise the school front has been going OK.

On the WoW front, my Tues/Thurs group is swapping things around, having a tank and DPS swap places. About half of them got a chance to see the strategy for Garrosh that we’d originally tried in Flex last night, but I’m not sure we’ll go with that. There is a lot of concern about the ranged dealing with the engineers doing pretty much no damage to the boss. Oh well, if it doesn’t work for that group, it’ll work for the Wed/Fri group when we get there.

The Wed/Fri group downed Spoils on Friday, and went on to do some great pulls on Thok. I love our raid leader, he worries a lot and works up things to try to help us. That fight was very organized and everyone knew where to go. We didn’t kill him, but we did pretty well for having some annoying healing issues.  We’ll start fresh this week. I have been thinking of offering to extend the lockout on my druid and healing with my shaman, but I think I’ll let it rest. We’ll get there again soon.

We did 1 and 3 in flex on Saturday. Should’ve mentioned keeping spread out in the final phase of Thok a bit more, we pushed him into a blood frenzy phase and had to kite him around from 17% to 4% before everyone died. Then time was up, and we came back on Monday night to start on part 4. Our raid leader was late, which meant I had to explain the fight. We did manage to get Blackfuse down, after a few pulls. Maybe I should just flat-out tell people when I think it’s more important to avoid mechanics and stay alive than DPS? Think I failed to get that point across. Though I was one of the people who died to the belt… I swear, when we did that in normal I rolled off, no issues, but last night? I found it better to wait for the boss to pull me off. After that I had to explain Paragons cause we had people who had never seen the fight, and I was the one who had the cheat sheet open in another window. I gulped, looked at my handy cheat sheet, and did a very quick “here’s what I think is important and might kill people” and tossed a quick hope that things would die too fast to really be an issue- and they did! A nice one-shot there, made me happy. That left us a whole 40 minutes to take our break, kill trash, and explain Garrosh. Which left about 15 minutes for the actual fight, but we did get to part 2. I think the only issue with that strategy is the melee have to be on the ball about moving for the Iron Star, cause we’re so close. But once we get that, and people figure out how to avoid the smashes in the transition phase, and we get interrupts taken care of…. ok, once we get all that down, we’ve got it! 

One of our new-ish guildies came along and healed on her monk last night. I have to tell her later I think she did great. I encourage everyone to heal- even our main tank. Get that druid geared and heal already! I want more healers. MOAR HEALS. This is a little sad to say, but our guild has 1 other healer I completely trust to do things right the first time, no issues. And he’s been our top DPS lately, so… Now there are others I trust after we’ve done things a bit, and talked it over. I just wish I had healers that I didn’t have to worry about again. And possibly more variety- Saturday’s flex had 4 druid healers. Not that I have anything against druids, but I like to have shamans for Mana Tide and so I can steal Spirit Walkers grace (which I am usually quick to snag) and priests so if someone else gets the shaman’s symbiosis, at least I can lifegrip people where I want them.

We really need to either advertise our website is back up, or get that advice day together. The meeting didn’t make it clear about the website being common knowledge for everyone, or just a temporary stopgap til we get a more complete one. So not sure if I should be telling all the people about it. I’m encouraged that people would take advantage of a day to talk about what they can do to improve since I’ve had a few people ask me questions and heard people approach others.

There is one thing that worries me, and I don’t know what to do about it. I like to think of myself as a decent healer, and if you asked me which class I heal best on I’d say druid in a heartbeat. I love my druid, i started as a resto druid. Swapping to my monk and having people consider that my main caused me a bit of heartache. So I am super happy to be raiding on both regularly. My issue is thus: one of my raids has another druid healer, and I see him failing to do things that I think are basic. And I don’t know what to do- should I talk to him? I don’t know him very well, he pretty much only logs on to raid, occasionally for a flex raid, and then logs off right after. I had to speak up one night when I looked at logs and didn’t see any Lifebloom used at all. That’s kinda druid healing basics #1- keep LB on someone (usually tank). I’d say #2 is keep harmony up, and that has some pretty sad uptime too. Should I share the weak aura’s I saw on Beru’s site that helped me a ton? It’s basically this: how do I approach this person- this person I think doesn’t even care about raiding- with suggestions for improvements I think he won’t care about either?

So those are my goals for this week- keep working on the sleep thing, pass my anesthesia test on Thursday, and try to find a way to talk to my fellow healer. I’d really like to know why he raids. Just for my own curiosity.

And vet school quote of the day: If I shine a bright light into your… third eye? No, left eye

-on the pupillary light reflex. 

Whining a bit

So this started as an awful, whiny post about how I’m tired and stressed and need to take a break and sleep. I’ve decided to take a break from WoW. Well, sorta- what I mean is I am not going to log in before 5pm today. Not going to worry about camping the bunny, or plan things I need to do. I did all my world bosses yesterday, I don’t want to do LFR for challenge mode gear for my shaman or monk. I’m all farmed up on all the mats I need for few days except leather, and I can live without that for a while. 

What sparked this was a bout of crying during raid last night. I play WoW for fun. There is absolutely no reason to cry, ever, over anything in game. People in the game having issues, sure, but a bad pull? Something is wrong, and it’s with me. I was way too invested. Sure, the tired, stress, and long days recently probably didn’t help. I need to step back and remember, I do this for fun. I am not a raid leader, I don’t need to take charge. Relax, mute my mike for a night and don’t worry about it. (I did try that- I am very bad at keeping muted) I can afford a quite few nights of expensive repair bills before I have to earn more gold. 

So my WoW goals for the week are simplified. I will log on for raids. I will camp the bunny in the evening before raids, and if anyone wants to run something for fun maybe I’ll go along. The Arena season is ending, so maybe we’ll do some this week to try to gear up my shaman friend, but I won’t worry about it. At least I’ll try not to :)

And this is the big thing- I am going to say “good night” and log out after raids. And go to sleep. I tried last night to make a to-do list for to day. The first thing involved waking up at 7:30 and taking a walk, which I promptly blew off. I did manage to sip my smoothie outside for a little while, get some sun and remember I live on a tropical island. I’ll try to be a little better about it the rest of the week.

So this started out a whiny post, and kinda ended that way. But believe me, it’s way more relaxed that what I originally wrote during the raid last night.

Update: I spent a good bit of the afternoon napping, and now I can close my eyes and not feel anything. No mild stinging, nothing. It’s great.  Well, I can feel the slight sting at first, and if I squeeze real tight. But not the one that slowly builds after I close my eyes right away. I like it. 

There's at least one confession in here.

So there’s a pretty funny thread on the forums- Confessions of an Abused Healer. First, it makes me want to go tell my tanks I <3 them, and thank you for worrying about how difficult you are to heal. I am not going to notice unless there’s an issue, so asking me is kinda pointless. My usual answer is I “didn’t notice an issue, and I still had mana, so I guess you were ok” only phrased better. Unless there is a problem, I don’t pay attention. 

Next I had to think about what I’d name my chapters, if I had to write a book like that. First thing that comes to mind is “I Was Lying on the Ready Check” though that applies to myself… Only lost 1 tank that way. To be fair, there was no ready check, he just assumed that because I was standing right next to him it was safe to pull trash. He had no idea I was really alt-tabbed, and splat went the tank. Oopsies. I try not to do that anymore without notice.

On healing with other healers: “Do you know what a dispel is?” comes to mind. Would have to have a chapter about the mysterious, never appearing damage buff the fire is rumored to provide (hint- there isn’t one) and how the stupid hunter better stay in range of me if he want’s to live because I am not chasing his ass after Thok, thank you very much. Would certainly need one for what is good to stand in. Perhaps a part of the Fire: Not a Hidden Haste Buff chapter could mention leafy green circles. 

Flex last night went very nicely.  We got Thok down quite easily, 2 or 3 pulls. Very nice, I think our raid leader was dreading it enough to consider skipping him. Had a few attempts on Seigecrafter, so most of our group has seen the fight now. Have a few things to work out- best way to avoid the spikes, don’t walk backward from the fire, don’t drop sawblades in melee, etc. Though that last one is my fault- I saw that issue from the start and didn’t say anything about standing at max range/close to it until a few pulls in. I think we’ll do OK next time we get there in normal (hopefully Wednesday). I need to give a shout out to our awesome lock, who swapped toons as requested to help us out on Thok. And who healed awesomely while I took turns DCing through large parts of Thok. I love him, and miss healing with him- which I told him, and I think that’s encouraged him to heal more. Though then we lose our top DPS. Can’t seem to win.

I’m excited for Garrosh tonight. I had our raid leader explain his horde guilds strategy to my Tues/Thurs raid leader, it seems simple enough. Side note: I know some really awesome people, and I should tell them that more. Here’s hoping it works out! I am hoping for a nice, early kill leaving us standing around awkwardly the rest of the night wondering what to do. I am not expecting that, but I am still hoping for it. 

I’m in a good mood- ended up missing 1 question on my test this morning, and it was one I would not have remembered if I had reread my notes this morning before the test. Puts me in a good mood. Combined with the caffeine and chocolate, plus having my charger in class so I can get my world boss kills knocked out on breaks I am one happy panda.

And the quotes of the day from vet school: “First thing you have to do if you come to Edinborough is get over this. That’s not funny.” On their name, Dick Vet College.

“They will use it to gut you. They come at you and they take it and do this. It's awesome.”- on working with a certain species of bird, a cassowary I think.

An Interesting Week Ahead

I feel like I wasted the weekend. I went and camped the Darkmoon Bunny, cause I know myself. If I wasn’t doing something in WoW, I would want to. Camping a rare is boring enough that I may study while I do it. Well, that was the goal. Reality- I did read my notes once. I helped finish out the scenarios the guild needed to try to get some gold back in the bank. Coincidentally capping valor on 3 toons and making some nice headway on a fourth.

Epidemiology is a not terribly interesting subject, but it is our first test. I have read the notes again, and I feel confident I will do well on the test. RR for cohort, (a/(a+b))/(c/(c+d)), and OR for case-control ad/bc. Just need to remember that.

So tonight is our flex, part 3. Here’s hoping we get the first 2 down quickly, and can take Thok down too. I’m hopeful we can. I’ve been practicing my kitty DPS so I can swap to feral if needed. And I’m all stocked up on burning seeds. The important things, right?

As far as school goes, this is a week I have been anticipating for quite some time. I may have explained this before, but for the Caribbean vet schools (Ross and SGU) the clinical year is completed at a different school. This week, the schools send representatives to talk to us. I’ve been leaning towards one for a while, mostly due to location. It’s about 3 hours from my home, and I would love to be that close. I could bring my dogs with me again. Though that is something I have been debating long and hard, and will have to talk to my parents about. 

Let me explain- I consider all the dogs my dogs. We have 3, Lina, Bella and Kenzie. Lina is the oldest and best-behaved. Kenzie is the youngest, the German Shepherd. And Bella, while 5, acts like a nut. She’s a lab, like Lina, but she never got a good basic training. So while she knows sit, down, stay, get off the couch you idiot, etc. she can’t do some things. Like walk well on a leash (though a gentle leader does wonders) and she gets excited easily. When my step-dad had his accident, and I was in undergrad at VA Tech, I took Bella back to school with me to help out. She’s the strongest and hardest for my mom to control at the time (she has improved) so I consider her the most mine. (though for the sake of free heartworm meds at school they are all mine.) If I’d gone to vet school within a drivable distance she would have come with me. 

Since she has been at home with the other dogs for a few years now, I worry about separating her from them. I will offer to take Bella and Kenzie, but I think that would make my step-dad sad. My parents are looking for a house with a fenced-in yard, which would make letting the dogs out much easier. Things are harder for Norm, walking the dogs-especially in cold weather- is difficult for him. But why go borrowing trouble. Is that the phrase? This is more than a year off. Things could change quite easily then, and for all I know I could end up out in CA, which is a really long drive that would be tough with 1, let alone 2, dogs. And if I felt comfortable taking Bella on a plane she’d be at school with me already. We vet students know all the tricks about making sure your pet flies in the cabin with you.

A side note- Bella took 5 hour car trips to Blacksburg with me just fine, then started getting nervous in the car and chewing seat belts. So long car rides, probably not the best. Also why I avoid planes. Do not want to be charged for plane seat belts.

Anyway, this week. All the schools send representatives out to talk to us. Presentations will be held, 15 min each, over the next 3 afternoons. I already like NCSU from their location, I am hoping I will like their programs as well. Other schools I am leaning toward (right now, based solely on location) include VMRCVM and Tennessee. VMRCVM, is VA-MD Regional College of Vet Med, at VA Tech. I love Blacksburg, I love Tech. I am looking forward to all the presentations, and I do want to see all of them. Who knows, maybe I’ll decide to take the chance to travel and try for one of the Australian schools. I don’t submit choices until next year, so who knows what will change?

Slow Weekend

Alright! I’m still stoked to be working on Garrosh next week. A friend went over the strategy his other guild uses, seems simple enough. While we won’t have the DPS to kill him in 5 minutes like that group did, I am still hopeful that we’ll make good progress next week.

My Friday raid only got 2 bosses down, had a lot of trouble on Malkorok this week. About halfway through, I learned that one of our other healers had no idea about the shield mechanic, is colorblind, and uses ElvUI so we had to do a walk-through of how to add the shields then hope the colors were visible. Healing went smoother after that, but that was a grr moment for me. Cause we’d done that boss before, in normal and flex, and this issue was never mentioned. Grr. But it’s been fixed, yay! And we extend next week, so here’s hoping we get Spoils quickly on Wednesday when everyone is fresh and awake, and move on to probably Thok. 

Flex on Saturday went, but I felt like a lot of people were irritated. Or if not a lot, then at least the most vocal. Lots of lag going around this week, issues everywhere. Trying to zone in to SoO on Friday got just about everyone kicked at least once, and most everyone on Saturday had some sort of intermittent lag issue. But we finished 1 and did the first two of 2. I got to practice my kitty DPS, and as I suspected, I was able to do much better than in my Spoils attempts on Friday. Setting up some timers to track bleeds helps. 

I think my real issue for Spoils is this- I don’t have my DPS rotation down like I do for my monk. SO I spend a lot of time watching timers, trying to remember if I’ve used this or that, and then standing in the bombs and dying.  I swap to feral for that fight since our other 2 healers either don’t have an off-spec, or don’t have one as geared. Well I think, maybe I’ll ask the shaman next time…

Anyways, that’s about all I’ve done this weekend. Time to get started on studying epidemiology, our first test is next week. It’s just so boring.