Weekend Review

So Friday night our raid practiced Garrosh in flex, to hopefully give us a chance to reliably see the whole fight and be able to bring all our standbys along so they can learn it too. I don’t know how our raid leader can calmly and patiently go over the same stuff repeatedly and not sound like he is getting annoyed. I was getting annoyed and I was making a deliberate effort to stay nice and not grump. I know, some of these folks don’t do LFR and our Monday flexes have stopped and those were the wing 4 ones, even though we haven’t taken Garrosh out we’ve still explained it there several times.

Anyway, we did flex. Did not kill him, but did see the whole fight and get our positioning down. I think we will have a hard time with the interrupts. We have 2 druid healers, so no interrupts for part 3 there, and a boomkin DPS and I don’t think Solar Beam works and I don’t think they get Skull Bash, which leaves 5 potential interrupters, after MCs go out, including the tanks. Well, we’ll work it out. Or I’ll get fed up and bring my monk so I can have a real interrupt. I’m a little less certain of 2-healing on the monk with my healing partner, I feel more confident on my druid. But all this is hypothetical, as it will be at least another 2 weeks before we get back there. And our 3rd healer who is going DPS for fights now is getting married and going out of town! A big grats to him, and I wish him a happy time.

This weekend had a lot more runs than usual. Flex on Saturday required picking up some folks from group finder, but I found a few good ones who stuck with us through parts 1 and 2. My Firelands run on Saturday got off to a rocky start, with only 3 people. A few more trickled in late and I begged the last few to come along, so we reached the 6 required for the missing achievement and got it! Whoo, now if only I could avoid the clouds in the air I could quit screwing up Do a Barrel Roll for the others. Though I think the people who are missing it don’t really care. 

We did Heroic Blackwing Descent to get the guild credit for that, and managed most of the achievements. Still missing 2- might have to go back on normal later and try to get them. Not too sure about the one, it was tough. Might be easier on normal.

And a path test- just took it, got an A on the test- yay! But since I missed 2 questions, after how I did on the midterm, no chance of an A in the class. Time to figure out what I can miss for a B+. I was really worried about this one last night. 

Oh! I can’t believe I forgot to mention it- the reason I was so worried was because I spent hardly any time studying, because I also did a normal SoO alt run! And got <drumroll> a Droplet of Y’shaarj. No other loot for my poor shaman, but the pet was way more than enough!

Well, now our path professor is saying 2 questions were wrong. I have hope again, at least until official grades are posted.

But anyway- all those runs, then the handful of arenas to get my hunter partner his weapon, then staying up til 2 studying and watching random youtube videos. When I finally went to sleep, I was  so worried I wouldn’t get enough and would sleep through my alarm I kept waking up in the middle of the night.

And then I woke up this morning, did a last minute review, and read the blogs I check- only to see Navi listed me under her Liebster award nominee. I’ll do that post tomorrow, but seeing it made me smile and feel better about the day. I stopped worrying about my path test, and figured the day would turn out OK.

Next up- to finish capping conquest, hope our arena third is online today and ok. There’s a NAVLE study lecture put on by one of my favorite teachers tonight, so that might be fun. I have some neuro homework to do- only 5 questions, but I always have to stop and think through the pathways for neuro. Uhm, anything else? Oh yeah, my horde druid hit 40- now to get to 60, and boost. And grats to that guild who managed to down heroic Paragons and will be working on heroic Garrosh. They’re going for realm first, and good luck to them.

And just went over the question with some friends, and I did miss 2, so I might be back to a B- for the class. Hopefully grades will go up soon and I can know for sure and quit worrying.

I think I killed our fish from lab on Friday. Our professor said there were 3 fatalities. Ours was breathing, but not moving on his own when we left. I blame my really poor blood draw technique. I was successful without doing cardiac puncture, but it took awhile.

Recent amusing vet school stories:

So apparently drug smuggling in Malaysia is a capital crime. Our teacher happened to be traveling there, with some fish anesthetic. He was teaching a class, and wanted to have enough. But this drug comes as a white powder, and he decided to put it in his toiletries bag, just to make sure if it spilled clean up would be easy. He made it through customs with no issue, and go to the hotel. Pulled out the bottle of drug, and a student had written “fish anesthetic… haha” on it. So a good thing customs gave him no issues.

There’s a blood drive next week with the med school, and we have to specify on our notice board that it’s a human blood drive. Just makes me giggle a little bit.

Chinchillas will just lose their tails. “Makes it easy for making the coat.”

Just to know, we have a kinda sick sense of humor here. We’re nice people who love animals, but we will joke about giving some animal “the pink juice” or blue or purple or whatever color it is, and not really mean it.

And the fun story of our teacher’s NAVLE, where she was so drained she was down on all fours poking a stick trying to figure out if it was a bug, a stick bug, or a stick that looked like a bug. It was a stick, by the way. Sounds like it will be a really fun test.

Pomegranates!

Well, raid Thursday night was promising. Still no Garrosh kill, but some really strong feeling attempts. I got to DPS, which was fun. I was occasionally one of the top 3, which was odd. I mean, since the only other leather wearer is our bear tank, I get a lot of off-spec gear, but I think the people 10 ilevels above me should do more DPS than me. Which makes me wonder if I was ignoring something I should have been doing. I expect a few low ones, the person who has to deal with the engineer since our disc priest is on his druid and can’t do it anymore. So hopefully when we start fresh next week we can complete some tier sets and see a DPS boost. We ended up losing a hunter to computer issues and picking up a very sweet elemental shaman. Only raided with her for a bit, but she sounds really nice. It was enjoyable to have her along.

My druid is coming along nicely. She hit level 30 last night. I decided to go around and do all the pet battle quests on another toon for her to turn in. Now I need to decide if it is worthwhile for me to beg one of my higher level horde friends to drag me around a bit to turn them in or not. If I catch one of them admitting to being bored in the next few days, I’ll ask. I might subtly enquire to their state of boredom, I have some friends who just AFK in the Shrine a lot.

So that was most of my day- leveling the druid, doing pet battles, occasionally camping a rare, and raiding. I meant to get some arenas in. It turns out the guild is 1 win away from an achievement.

Oh, and the best part of my day- my awesome friends gave me a ride to the grocery store! I could recount the whole thing as an epic tale- my original planning based on the knowledge of their stocking schedule, the surprise offer, the quest for pomegranate that looked to be a failure, the surprise find and success! I could go into more detail- and clearly narrated a great deal of it in my head already. So yeah, I cleared them out of pomegranate. They only had 6, but it’s a good start to breakfast for this week :)

Something I am wondering- I was using zen meditation last night during whirling corruption. I am not sure if it reduced the damage the raid takes, but it sure helps me. I am just curious if it does work. Suppose the healers would have been the ones to ask. I’ll remember for next time, assuming I DPS instead of heal. I am happy I managed to bring my DPS up- made a few macros for Storm, Earth, and Fire to smooth that out a bit.

Plans for this weekend: study for my pathology test on Monday, cap conquest, level my horde druid a little more, quit rethinking my decisions on professions for my horde druid, quit craving steak since every time I log on someone says something about steak or A1 sauce. Hopefully makes some nice progress on Garrosh. And SLEEP.

An aside- I love A1 sauce. Some of my odder eating habits as a child involved eating spoonfuls of the stuff, along with Molly McButter. My family eventually stopped buying Molly McButter because of that. And I may have named our puppy Molly after that. 

We have a fish lecturer now. The topic is not interesting, but he is a good lecturer. And he opens the window between classes to let sunlight in, which is really nice. I don’t always see a lot of daylight.

Knocking Things Out

Alright, I have my PvP staff, got the lockout for Garrosh on Flex, and got the name I wanted for my potential horde druid released. Saw the response to that ticket in the middle of raid and was twitchy til break time when I could go make her.

While I was queued up for flex, I got a whisper from someone asking for advice on druid healing. So I chatted with that person for a while, went over all the glyphs, talents, abilities, whatever he asked that I could think of. I hope it helped him. I was feeling particularly nice, and he was very polite about the whole thing.

I finished my legendary for Ulduar, yay! And promised to help the 2 people who ran that with me weekly finish their legendary in ICC. I promised them that weeks ago, we just stalled out on the vampire part, due to lack of people.

Whoops, I messed up. I do combat logs, and I forgot I logged out (to make my horde druid) and didn’t restart. Then I “stopped” logging. Or so I thought. So now we have logs for my Ulduar run from last night. Yeah… And last week we have logs for the first few bosses of Firelands. I’m on top of things there, whoo! I finally got logs for my shaman friend who has experimented with some healing helping things, so she can see that on Thok.

Our raid last night went pretty well. We took down 4 bosses fairly easily. We had a few wipes, Blackfuse gave us a little trouble, but we got em pretty easily. The plan is to work on Garrosh in flex, where ideally we will be able to see the whole fight instead of wiping in part 1 or the beginning of part 2. I’m hopeful we’ll down it, and a bit sad that I have to wonder about that when I’ve been in PuGs that have done flex Garrosh so easily.

I’m sure we’ll get it eventually. It’s just a matter of time and practice, and hoping everyone stays sane and no one stresses out too much. We need to have a discussion with our guild leader, make an official policy for alts in the raid. We only have a small handful of people who would want to switch, but an official policy will be nice. Had lots of discussion for potential answers to some of the questions that are really worrying our raid leader. Hopefully we can implement at least 1, and then the only other big issue will bug me more than anyone else. And I’ve just gotten used to sighing and ploughing forward. And reminding people to dispel. 

I’ve pretty much decided to prepare to raid horde next expansion, hopefully with a resto druid. I need to talk someone and find out what his plans are. Right now, he raids on his lock, but he has healed on his druid in the past. I have enjoyed healing on my shaman and monk, and if he wants to heal on a druid I can figure something else out. But now I have Nala, a tauren druid, to level to 60 before I boost her. I have 4 of those experience boost elixirs to use, and I don’t want to level professions from scratch. I decided herbalism/alchemy, and I will get some gold over to horde-side. I’ll have to be poor for a while, and just buy things of the AH. I will miss my supporting group of alts.

A Bit of a Ramble

This one is a bit long and rambling.

Alright, so yesterday started pretty good. I did a brief write-up on the last few CM we have on our second set of toons, and decided to quit slacking and make potions. Don’t really think about DPS potions as a healer. Killed a celestial on my druid for my weekly gold, and ran a random BG so that when I run one today I can get my PvP weapon :)

I ran my druid through what I can comfortable solo in Ulduar, leaving 4 bosses and 1 fragment left. I feel bad asking the same few people to run it with me, so I may try to see if anyone else is willing to help me. Got a FL run for Saturday, though I am itching to try to solo some of those bosses. Think I’ll just wait til next week, and take it easy this week.

One of my teachers brought her dog to class, so our visiting professor could do a brief neuro exam. We’ve seen and done them before, but it’s nice to get a refresher. Plus that was the professor I have a weekly Tuesday group meeting with, so I was happy to get a little bit of dog time. I could really use my dog some days.

In Hearthstone, finally unlocked the last hero so I can try arena. Limited has always been my favorite format for Magic, and hopefully once I remember my basic limited rules: rarely more than 8 non-creature spells in a 40 card deck where 15-17 are land (depending on my mana curve) and remember to LOOK at my curve, I think I’ll do a bit better. It does take me a while to learn things, and I am used to having LSV’s set reviews with limited and constructed comments to look over. I don’t always agree with him, but it is always useful. I haven’t kept up with Magic here, no place sells cards. Haven’t even looked at spoiler since the last Elspeth was spoiled. A side note- Elspeth, Knight-Errant is one of my favorite cards, and I wish I’d had the money to play her when she was in standard. I started in Zendikar, and I wish I’d started earlier. Though at least I have a bunch of Zendikar full-art lands to play with. But anyway, Hearthstone is very aggro-y, and I always did best with aggro decks. Though I do remember the first time playing Red Deck Wins, which was designed to be able to deal 20 damage by turn 4, in an ideal hand, against White Weenie, a cheap white aggro deck, and we nearly went to turns. I rarely won by turn 4, but often by 6. 

I miss Magic sometimes. Made some nice friends there, met my boyfriend through Magic. I used to, in Blacksburg, play FNM then draft afterwards til 2 AM, then draft on Wednesdays. And drafter 2-3 times a week in Yorktown. I played a lot. Never did Magic Online, they didn’t have it for macs and I’m a cheapskate.

And the raid. We had 2 or 3 pulls, lost 1 person, and fell apart. We were missing 3 or 4 at the start, and took a while to get going. I just felt awful at the end of the day. I don’t know why, but I was near tears and frustrated and just wanted to DO SOMETHING but I didn’t want to really do anything. I blame most of that attitude on lack of sleep making me more prone to emotional outbursts combined with stress. That feeling kept me up til 3 AM doing pretty much nothing but reading random things and watching youtube videos. 

I did try to study. Went over Pasquini’s “Localize the Lesion” dog as practice for neuro. Couldn’t get through notes at all, was just so frustrated. 

I need to remember to get a lockout for Garrosh later on flex with Elay. Maybe I’ll look at trying that over lunch. The alternative is napping. I think I will stay up and hopefully crash after raid, instead of being sleepless til 3 AM again. 

Oh, I also sent in transmog for MoMar’s March competition. I sent one in for February, since I happened to have a red transmog already put together on my monk. But it didn’t get in, probably the e-mail issues I’ve been having. Not the happiest with orange, it was put together rather quickly. 

Oooh, did I mention I finally got the staff for Elay? Dreambinder dropped, from Freya this time, yay! <happy dance> just in time for me to be almost done with Ulduar for the legendary.

And now the real life stuff: the move. I live with my parents when I am not in school, and they are moving. It’s going to add 15 minutes to my drive to work and my boyfriends, which I imagine I’ll adjust to eventually. Mom decided to start moving in in May, ideally being done before I get home on the 18th. Well my brother’s guidance counselor heard, and told him he would have to pay tuition since it’s a different county. For one month. He graduates in June. How silly, especially since my Dad owns the townhouse so he’d still have a parent with an address in the right county. So my Mom is debating putting off the move, because Jake is going to stay at the townhouse with one of the dogs just to avoid issues with the school, and I don’t think she wants to leave him alone. Oh brief background here: my parent are divorced, Mom and Dad bought a townhouse at the time of the split, Mom moved in with us kids, a fight occurred, Dad moved in and Mom moved out, Mom remarried, Dad remarried and moved to Germany, Mom rents the town home from my Dad since it is in his name alone now. Now Mom is moving to a house again, with a fenced in yard, since we have 3 large dogs and only one is well trained and won’t pull my step dad over if they see a squirrel. 

That’s a big reason for the move- Mom is worried about my step dad and the dogs after my brother leaves, and he won’t have anyone to help with them while she is at work. He is very stubborn, and not in the best health. He’s over 6 foot when he’s not hunched and he weighs less than 160 lbs, and they can’t find any reason for the weight loss. He was a large man when I first met him. Lots of other things going on related to a car accident he was in a few years ago to, and a knee that needed replaced even before that accident. 

So Mom is worried about the move, and my older brother is doing his usual “I promise I’ll do it” then never finding the time, to help with some things for the move. And I don’t fly home til May 18th, so I can’t help much. I mean, there is plenty of time left, and I reminded my mom that 1 carload a week and the house will be empty before I get home. My parents have a large truck, can fit quite a bit. I just wish I could help more.

Nice to laugh at little things: golf tee sign, in myleography, and my teacher turning her head to see it. Someone was tired when they named that I bet, or wishing that’s where they were.

“We can also diagnose brain death with this, thought it’s typically quite apparent when [they’re brain dead]”

The BRAIN

So I deleted what I had written last week, some complaints about feeling like I never have enough time to do all the things I want to do. It’s been a while since I’ve written anything. My usual pattern is to write during class, but since Wednesday I have skipped classes. I feel a little bad about that. Yes, I had intended to skip the first 3 classes Wednesday and Thursday, but I meant to come for my Thursday afternoon and Friday stuff. And I did something stupid, and stayed up to 6AM reading a story I have read 2 or 3 times before and overslept and decided to just not go to my last class. Hopefully I’ve taken the weekend to get my head on straight, get outside in the sunlight a bit, and get back to being responsible.

Raiding went well enough this week, tried some new stuff on Garrosh that make me go  “hmph, I need to heal better” cause we tried solo healing and that guy rocked it out on his druid. We didn’t get very far, but I don’t think I could’ve healed as well. i always forget the mushrooms bloom. We’re trying a 25M next week, we’ll see how it goes. I just want to kill him and get the achievement. Just one kill, then we can go back to wiping weekly.

My other raid might try some flex Garrosh, to get the strategy down, and ease in to normal. Not to sure if that’s the official plan yet. I need to go over some stuff for that raid. I need to learn to deal with people better.

Did a Firelands run for achievements, only missed Only the Pentient. And some people missed Do a Barrel Roll cause I can’t avoid bad stuff in the air. Bad kitty. I am well on my way to that legendary, yay! And I have another group next week to go back for the missing achievements, I hope. Then after that I will have to see about soloing some of those guys. I feel guilty asking the same people to help me all the time. 

I’m a little worried about a friend of mine. He’s seemed stressed for a while, and mentioned he’s not really enjoying the game as much.  I don’t think there’s anything I can do except tell him if he’s not enjoying stuff, don’t do it, especially if he’s doing it because I whine about being left alone in Flex. I’d be sad to see him go. 

And the vet school quote from the few classes I attended last week:

“Go mug a few old ladies and it less serious than using the wrong drug.”

Also, our Neuro professor gave us an overview of the brain, as explained by John Cleese.

I sit behind our regular professor when we have guest lecturers, and her reaction was as funny as the video. She was trying so hard to be quiet and nearly on the floor laughing

And then we watched the ministry of silly walks video. She couldn’t keep it in, she was cackling like a witch. It was amusing to watch.

Weekend Report

I took a break this weekend. I did some light studying, but the fact that I have an exam on Wednesday almost completely slipped my mind. I’ll work on that this week. It’s in surgical skills, so practicing my suture patterns and making sure I know all the surgical instrument names.

In WoW, I managed to cap conquest. I think I can get my weapon next week. If I’m lucky, the Celestials will give my poor druid some prideful gear. I’m enjoying PvP more than I thought I would. I do wish I could get involved in some rated battlegrounds. 

Managed to clear out my mailboxes and a few banks. Organized 2 tabs in my bank alt’s guild. Ok, one of those is cause I purchased a new tab, so it didn’t have time to get messy. Once I sold off all the extra enchanting mats I had a lot more room than I expected. I kept enough to help someone level enchanting. I am missing some of the harder to get enchanting mats- hypnotic dust, a few others. But since my enchanters are maxed, and my BF’s is, I’m only hanging on to it to help a hypothetical person in the future, so I don’t mind too much.

Yesterday I found 5 other people to help with Firelands! But we missed the achievement I need. But 2 of them said they’d go back again, either for achieves and transmog or to work on their legendary. I finished the first part of the legendary, and I might try to get the next part done solo without killing bosses so I can put a date on the calendar to get achievements. I’ll give soloing bosses there a try later. I feel bad asking people to help me run old stuff as often as I have been.  Though I’m 2 weeks, 1 if I get lucky, away from my legendary in Ulduar, yay! Many thanks to the people who have been running that with me regularly. It’ll be nice to get that done, since I’m going to be asking people to run Firelands with me it’ll be nice to keep it to 1 thing I need help with a week.

Looks like Monday flexes are cancelled for good, thank goodness. 6 days in SoO was getting to be a lot. I do miss my chances for the pet, but I suppose I can PuG it with my shaman, she’ll need gear if we ever get that alt run off the ground. 

Today we started fish med. With an Irish lecturer on Saint Patricks Day. And I forgot to wear green. Upon reflection, I’m not sure I have much green here. Turquoise, if you want to be generous.  Maybe 2 shirts with actual green on them. 

Done with Midterms, whoo!

I seem to have gotten into the habit of putting my thoughts to paper before each test, why change it now?  A brief recount of midterm week seems in order. Mostly this is a review of my complaints. 

Monday got off to a bad start. We were split into 2 groups, and I was stuck in the sucky room. Silly last name at the back of the alphabet. That test started with a phone alarm going off- twice. I felt really prepared for that test, and did not do as well as I would like. Which threw me off the rest of the week, and really just made my motivation to do anything besides sleep and goof off vanish. I keep going back and going “man, if I’d logically thought through that one question a little better, I’d have a B.”

Tuesday and Wednesday are a blur. Still deciding if I need to be ticked off about Wednesday’s test and start arguing questions. I need confirmation that the right answer of a question was something that we were told in class you don’t do before I make up my mind. 

Thursday was the test that took 45 minutes to start. I knew we weren’t going to start on time when they let the 200 people in 10 minutes before we were supposed to start, but I wasn’t expecting that much of a delay. At least the proctors stopped patrolling at least 20 minutes after the start time so we could talk and go on the internet.

And today. I didn’t start looking over material until 6 PM yesterday. I stayed up too late doing other stuff, trying to find a nice place for dinner because the only price I could find for our original plans was $40 US, which was more than I wanted to spend. I mentioned that to my friend, who insists it isn’t the price. She may be right, I’ve never been there before and have no confirmation besides that flyer from a few months ago. Maybe I’ll call later and confirm.

True to my goal, the only WoW I did was a few world boss kills and some camping of rares. I did start Hearthstone, which is a fun diversion. Still learning the classes and cards. Right now, I hate playing against hunters and want to see what a druid looks like. Tonight, the plan is to go out for a nice evening, and raid later. Have fun, maybe get a few talks we need to have out of the way. 

I think I need to put flex on the calendar for Saturday still, should probably check that. And come up with some raid quotes/names. I have random word documents for a bunch of things, one of which is potential and used raid quotes. No theme next week I think, just whatever I have already.

And we got our pre-test joke. How many mice does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

2, but don’t ask me how they get in there.

And that test went really well. An A, yay! Nice to end this week on a high note, especially after some of the earlier tests and my motivation to study last night.

Turned out, it was $40 US for a three course dinner, but you could show up and have drinks and s’mores without paying that. They had really good pumpkin ginger soup, I should learn how to make it.