Relaxing

Still no Elegon kill. That's been at the top of my mind when we raid- what can I do to get us closer?
The obvious answer is stay alive. Admittedly most of my deaths are poor planning. I don't fall through the floor, but I prioritize tank health above mine, and that delay has cost me a few times.
I healed this last attempt. I am usually not in the top of the healing numbers with my monk, because I fistweave. Our other healers have been awesome, so I don't do a lot of targeted healing. I have been DPSing Elegon, since out of our original group of healers, I had the best DPS spec and gear. Our current priest has expressed doubts. I think he does a great job, but he sat out on Friday and we had a real DPS come in. Still didn't get it. Oh well, next week, right? Gotta stay optimistic. Or, as our tank pointed out, we can go wipe in HoF for a while and then come back to Elegon. Let attenuation kill us for a while.

I have taken over the Tuesday night raid group next week. Not tonight, I went out for my birthday this week. Tried a new restaurant, off the bus route. That was an adventure, driving in Grenada in the dark. There are no street signs. We had to ask for directions 3 times. I am glad I was not driving. We did find the place, and it was great, best service we have had in Grenada by far. Good pizza (and a buy one get one free night too) and drinks were pretty good. I'm looking forward to a return trip, providing our driver feels up to it again.

But raid leading. I know, only one week, on a group that has only killed the first boss one time. They only run once a week, and have only gone in 3 times. Unfortunately, I have found I tend to leave things out of my fight tactics if I think they are obvious. Good thing this group knows the fight, and if we somehow get past the first boss, I should be able to hash out the second one just fine. I'm more worried about filling spots if people don't sign up. Thank goodness we have 2 awesome tanks who can and want to be there, I can heal and I can wing filling in the rest (I hope). Now it's just the preparation. Our guild leader usually provides feasts and flask for the group. I have a ton of feasts left over from leveling cooking, and my alchemist is up to the task for flask making. Just gotta get my herbalist in gear for the gathering for potions.

It won't take that long, but it comes out to a lot of time with everything I am doing. Get my priest to 90 by the end of the month for the competition, cap valor on my main for the Black Prince, and try on my second healer if at all possible, and study for tests. Luckily, I have Physio on Friday, Anatomy on Monday, and a lab practical next Friday. Should be doable, since after that we have no tests until midterms the Friday after the lab test. I rocked the immuno test. It has all made sense, which is great. Now the nerves, vessels, and muscles of the equine hindlimb just need to come together, preferably in the corect manner that will match the drawings on out test. I bought Pasquini's Equine Atlas over break, since I was told the lab manual for this term is awful. It is, and I cracked Pasquini's book today. Very helpful, I will try to do some coloring before next lab to make it stand out and learn a bit more. There can be a lot of coloring in vet school. And drawing.

So, now I just have to learn some neurophysiology and remember how to localize the lesion, which I do find fun. Well, these examples. If I really had a daschund with a ruptured disc, I would probably not think it fun. Hypothetical localize the lesions are fun.

Oh, and the title. I read an article about aesthetics, and the color green being stress relieving and motivating, but now I forget where I was going with that. So here are some yak attack pictures. Note: bosses can be pulled with yak attack. Don't let your mage for get it.

Refocusing

Well, tonights raid went great. 1-shotted the first 4 bosses, and then got Elegon to 5%. Pretty good, since my death was the reason for at least one of our wipes. I usually heal, but I switch to DPS on that fight. I occasionally get stuck in a healer mindset, and forget to do things like use my stacks of brew when they are up. I am looking forward to having them stack to 20 instead of 10, so I won't waste as much.

It's been a tough week for me. I've been very scattered and a little depressed. I did not do near as well as I would have liked on Anatomy and Bacteriology. Ever miss questions when you know the right answer, were thinking correctly, and just looked at the picture wrong? That was my issue in anatomy. Then I just studied the wrong stuff for bacteriology. My focus was off, and that test really threw me. I was worried I had failed right up until the grades were posted. It just left me feeling awful for a few days. And this term, we have at least 1 test every week, and this week, last week, and next week it's two tests. I usually take at least 1 day to recover from a test, clear my head and refocus. It can be difficult when they come so fast, and I've been so distracted by WoW I've forgotten what's important.

I am going to be a vet. I have wanted that as long as I can remember. What I learn now, I will use on a daily basis the rest of my career. This isn't just foundation stuff and we'll get to the "real" stuff later. It's been hard for me to remember and recognize the significance of that. So much of college was requirements that I am never going to use. I tended to cram, ace the test, and forget it. I cannot do that anymore, and changing my study habits has been difficult. But, here's to the beginning of better study habits.

So, in other news, our raid leader is out for a while, and has been the last week. Our lovely guild leader has stepped in and done well at organizing our two raid groups. I joined the second group, only been together about three weeks now, to fill in for a missing healer. The day after the test, and then that night of wiping on the stone dogs was not pleasant. So I am glad we had success tonight.

And Navimie wrote me a lovely little poem:

Your med school days remind me of
Fun I had long ago.
And peppered amongst science tests
Your thoughts on Warcraft flow.
I thank you for the note you left
When to my blog you came.
And hope in life you'll brighten lives
Much like you do in game. 



I got that while I was still feeling out of sorts, and it really cheered me up. Thank you!

Now onto bed, where I can hopefully have more dreams that involve chocolate cake, since I'm too cheap to buy sweets down here in real life. Night!

A Good Week

Not bad so far. We take another crack at Elegon tonight. We were stuck on Garajal on Wednesday, DPS just couldn't quite get there. We were running with some new people, regulars couldn't make it this week, but we'll get him tonight.

Leveling the little pandas for our guild challenge hasn't been going too well. My boyfriends been sick, and I've ben feeling under the weather myself. Hopefully we'll get back on track this weekend, and I can get studying done for Physiology.

I have 2 tests next week- physiology and anatomy. I need to catch up with pharmacology- the day I skipped class, he went way further than I expected.

I haven't really been in the writing mood lately, but hopefully since I'm feeling better I can post a bit more often.

Another Week

Another week, another raid, more classes. I feel like I am starting to get into a rut. I wouldn't mind, I just want to add some good things to it.
I feel we did really well, getting through 3 bosses with minimal mess. We had a new tank with us, so the boss raps took a bit more time, and we called it quits a tad early. But tonight we should be back on Elegon. I hope my transition from heals to DPS goes a tad smoother this time.

We attempted challenge modes again. They keep whooping us soundly. I run out of mana healing all the time. I'm hoping more practice will make things easier. There were 8 people interested in going last night, made me really sad I couldn't get everyone in. Especially our awesome priest healer, I really wanted to bring the monk along to DPS tonight. This looks to be turning into a weekly thing, maybe with a few more people interested, we can get 2 groups going and I won't feel so bad.

Classes are going swimmingly, but today I was mentally all over the place. Only got 4 hours of sleep the night before, and my attention span was almost zero. Long enough to catch these great quotes from pharmacology though!
To explain, our professor couldn't find any pictures showing drug distribution patterns in the body, but eh did find one showing them in Mexico, so that was in our powerpoint. Our professor also shaves his head. And we were talking about drug testing with hair.

So today's top quotes from class:

Ecstasy- the netherlands is quite well perfused

I just want to be sure if they try and find any drugs on me, they can't find any hairs. ... Beware of this. Grenada is an island where several things grow easily

Back to School

I am back in Grenada, classes are going well. I hate when first impressions make  you predisposed to dislike someone you'll be stuck with all year. One of my professors just rubbed me the wrong way, and I am trying not to let that stick, because it is a tough class and it's only day 3.
We're taking pharmacology this term, which I am excited about. It theory. We'll see how it works out. Physiology is turning out well, and we're already behind in dissection because they were a donkey short, so we haven't even started!

My little panda priest for the Stay Classy guild achievement is coming along fine, level 52 at the moment. I keep forgetting i can't fly and jumping off the mage tower in SW.

Back to the raid tonight, see how well it goes. We're stuck on Elegon. I'm the healer swapping to DPS for that fight,  so I am working on getting a good DPS set together.

I'll see how it goes. Time to get back to dailies- wait that sounded like a queue just popped. See ya

So Much to Do

I feel like there is not enough time in the day to do everything I want. I have 4 90's now, 2 of whom I care about gearing up for healing, which means running all the LFR every week with them, and 1 is my jewelcrafter, so I run LFR and kill stuff to get more meta patterns. My mage hangs around to tailor and make flasks, but I still farm with all 4 of them every day, which takes a decent chunk of time.

Then there are the "we have to do sometime this week" things my boyfriend and I do, like the pet raids. Plus raiding 2 nights a week, and both of us working. Although yesterday was my last day, I go back to school next Monday.

We are leveling a panda priest and warrior to help get the class achievement for our guild, in a bit of a race to get them there by the end of February. We've finally knocked out all the dailies except the Anglers, for the rep grind. So we finally have a little time to level them. They just hit 40 last night, so we have a ways to go.

And isn't it amazing how I can remember perfectly quests I have done maybe twice on my way to leveling my guys, but my classes, where I study for hours, I forget the simplest things sometimes? Makes me wish I could learn pharmacology as I play WoW, maybe it would stick better.

As I write all this, it really doesn't seem like that much. I can knock out 2 of my toons LFRs today, and leave on to do with my boyfriend later in the week. We've got one more day to finish the storage shed, hopefully tomorrow. And hopefully it will stop raining today too. That has been our big project while I am home. We've had a 10X20 storage shed for a few years, packed full since the move. My brother has one too, but he is emptying his (since it was mostly an old car) and we are moving things from my parents to his, getting rid of the one. We've gone through all the boxes, donated a ton to goodwill and throwing away a ton of trash, and we're almost done. Everything has been sorted and gone through, just need to do the last move.

And don't people just annoy you sometimes? I posted Tailoring, LFW last night to see if anyone was interested. Someone wanted me to make a bag for them, trading me the number of windwool bolts that go into the imperial silk to make the bag. With the chest or gloves, I may not have had an issue.  But I could have bought that much windwool for less than 1200g, and I didn't feel like selling a bag for essentially 1200g, since no other offer was made. The guy got pissy, complaining about inflation. I feel like I put a ton of work into getting that pattern, since I hat to grind rep with the GL to unlock the August Celestials, then get to exalted with them, all on an alt for that bag pattern. Making the bag is worth more than just the raw mats. But people like that upset me, just getting mad without any sort of discussion first. I didn't laugh in his face about the offer, I just told him that wasn't a trade I wanted to make for the bag. It takes days to get that much imperial silk. I shouldn't get upset by people in WoW being mean, but it is annoying.

On another note: challenge modes are challenging. Starting to organize guild runs, so hopefully next week will be better.

LF Loot

LFR is so random sometimes. Someone complemented the healers in a group, and there was silence for a minute before someone asked if they were joking. Nice people don't happen often. More common is my group today, where the tank politely introduced himself and said it was his first time here, and the other tank tore into him the whole rest of the run. Very annoying (especially when he died once because he was typing a reply- which at least he admitted).  I don't tank, but to explain the fight enough to get through it usually takes about 30 seconds. Way less time than all these complaints did. I was already grumpy, because no one ever stays out of the purple circle under Garalon like they should, and like I make a point to politely say before each encounter with him. That was a tad rantier than I meant.

Out of all 5 LFR, I got 4 pieces of loot. 3 from 1, and 1 from the last one I did. Kinda annoying, but still 3 were clear improvements, including my second tier piece, and one was a sideways slide I took. Looks like I'll have to make myself a trinket, no drops in LFR. Ah, oh well, I half expected it anyway.

Today was, for all of that, a good day. Sure, we had a horrible run tonight. Took down 2 bosses in 2.5 hours in MSV when we had done way better last week. Feng was buggy, not moving when he shifted phases, and drawing flame as he was shifting messed us up. On the plus side, monk healing is coming along great I feel. I was doing LFR healing on my druid and was actually bored. Just healing wasn't intensive enough in those fights, but with the monk I can at least hit the boss and heal. Still learning a few tricks, things I prefer over out shaman/priest/monk whatever he is this week, but he's helpful to talk to.

We got rid of 5 42 gallon bags on clothes this week, things that had been in the storage shed for over 2 years now, clothes that no longer fit. And a bunch of trash. Feels nice. I finally realized that my parents are never going to get rid of the storage shed completely, even if only to keep my step-dad's harley in over winter. SO, I moved the many boxes of kitchen things from my old apartment out of my bedroom, moved a few bookshelves and boxes of my old stuff in, and will hopefully have a room I really have things in. I've been under the impression I was going to successfully transfer of get accepted into a state school, and have an apartment for 4 years I could fully unpack in, but that didn't happen. It is nice not to have those boxes, even if the space will still be occupied. Here's hoping that tomorrow I can do just as well (only better with the loot- those  3 from on instance were from yesterday).