Hm...

Last week I came down with Strep Throat. Horrible thing. I went to bed Wednesday morning with a sore throat. It was still sore when I got up for work, but not too bad. I ended up calling out from work because it had snowed during the morning and the roads were still too treacherous to navigate. By the time Jer got home from work, I was laying on the couch, exhausted, achy, and it hurt to swallow. Even a strawberry milkshake from McD's couldn't keep me a-swallowing.

It was a night of a feverish me. I couldn't sleep. Sleep for 15 minutes, wake up, achy. I thought for sure I had the flu, but went to the doc Thursday morning. Turned out, I had strep. Been feeling much better since then. Although when I went to work on Friday I was still running a fever...

FFXI:
Got THF to 45 Friday night during static.
Deleveled Saturday night doing mission 5-1. I died 2x. Our first run slaughtered us all. When we were kicked from the BCNM circle, the following picture had us all rolling in laughter.

[Not pictured, Paitre... I think he was buried.]

The people we dropped in dead upon were kind enough to raise us. And Shaolinexile offered to help us through the battle. I offered to sit out the first round. I spent the time on the couch with our feverish daughter reading up on BCNM 30 - Creepy Crawlies. Audrey wasn't much of a handful. If it wasn't for her hot skin and slightly muted exhuberance, you wouldn't have known she was even sick. Odd baby I have.

When the guys were ready to start the BCNM again, our BLM was AFK. So they waited... and waited... and then figured he'd fallen asleep, kicked him, invited me, and off we went. We were ->| |<- that close to killing the skelly when we all died off. Shoalin came up with a new battle plan, and off we went again. Success!

Afterwards Jer and I and Ram (hi Rammie!) opted to try BCNM 30. We failed each time we tried, timer up. It was taking us too long to Aspir the MP out of the crawler. So after Jer collapsed into bed, Ram helped me get Jez's Dark skill up a bit. Need to get that capped up at 96, though. Hopefully we can try BCNM again this weekend, even though I have to work.

I just hope I don't collapse in exhaustion. I haven't really been playing this week as I've been too tired when I get home, been going to sleep early. Except Monday night, it was ideal fishing, but the den wasn't clean enough to fold laundry. Instead I started Suikoden IV and fished. Yahoo!

Weird ass dream last night.

You'd think that with the weather being so cold the past few days I'd dream of freezing or of snow. But nope, I dreamt of rain. Lots and lots of it.

Basically the planet was flooding. My dream-self had the chance to pack up a few things and then board a bus. A really big bus, which, by the way, could drive under water and float, too. So I'm on this bus with some dream-friends and we drive to The City, where we stop to buy things. And then we drive to some road, and it starts to rain. Soon enough we're driving/floating through water. Making stops at "islands".

I suppose it could have been a really interesting dream, but I'd been asleep since 9pm (yes, I went to bed early last night), and Jer was snoring. Kept interrupting my sleep.

But anyway.

Kid things: Audrey's 2nd tooth punched through. She's also quite the bird when it comes to jar food. She's been POed over the whole confined to the playpen thing lately. Can't leave her in there for a few minutes without her pitching a fit. She absolutely has to be on the floor. But she can't be on the floor in her bouncer center, either. She has to be able to pull herself up to play with the toys. We're introducing the sippy cup this week, I think.

Mikey... has the habit of rummaging through mommy's bag looking for her GBA when he cannot find his. >.<

Friday night there was no sign of half our static PT, so I took Jez to the jungles, hoping to level BLM. I wound up in a forming party which had this other BLM that was a real piece of work. There were no WHMs, so we were asked to carry the healing burden. I have no problem with helping out, only one of my jungle parties actually had a WHM in it, so I was used to it. His response?

"I refuse to heal anyone" other than himself. o.O
"If people start dying, I'm warping out of there." O.O

In the jungle, 1 BLM does not come close to equaling 1 WHM. (Unless you're my sunday night party, I'll get to that later). And I said that. But after listening to this kid... I warped back to Kazham and switched to my WHM. Rode back out. Took the PT a few moments to notice the change, though. I was pretty flabbergasted over some of the things this guy was saying though. Naryumage, or something like that was his name. A real piece of work.

Things didn't go too badly. The BLM had no sense of hate control, that's for sure. Didn't quite understand "debuffing" either, so I was doing debuffing, then curing. He DCed on us and we replaced him pretty much instantly. With a SMN, I think. He came back eventually and one of the other parties picked him up. A party that happened to have an LS-mate in it. Should have heard him when they invited the idiot.

So Friday night I got WHM from whatever it was to 1K to 30. I got to wear my new equipment!

Saturday my sinuses were bothering me, so I wound up sleeping all day.. and night. I started feeling better around 4am Sunday, so I just stayed up at that point. Let Jer sleep in, took care of the kids. We went to the mall around noon, and I got a new pair of walking shoes. Gotta start using that treadmill.

We were still missing half the static, so I took Jez back to the jungle again, this time intent on leveling BLM. After waiting about an hour I got an invite, but was told I'd be the only healer. But not to worry, the PT was pretty good. It was PLD, THF, THF, DRG, & SAM.

Well what to do you know, I was doing very little curing. We were chaining Mandies like mad, too. I had privately offered to the PT leader that once I hit 29 I'd warp back and switch to WHM. As long as the 26 SAM didn't mind the exp hit. Well, it wasn't until after BLM hit 30 that I went to switch. And that was after the SAM had fallen asleep and auto-disconnected! [We had a good laugh over that.]

We did pretty well after I switched to WHM, too. Got to work on my enfeebling and divine skills quite a lot. Party makeup switched around a bit, but we spent most of it with 5 people. We grabbed a BLM from a neighboring disbanded party. Got a NIN when the DRG had to leave. Or was that when one of the THFs had to go? Don't remember. And after bit Jer came as BLM to fill the 6th spot. So we were really ripping through Mandies and Gobs. The PLD had to go, so it was just 5 of us for awhile, but we were having hate problems with 2 blms. And the PT behind us creeped up on our mage-line so we were being put to sleep on a regular basis.

But overall, WHM 32, BLM 30.

So yesterday I thought, hey, lets take Mery's NIN to the jungle.

Bad idea. Waited awhile for an invite. Once I got one, it was a pt with me, 2 RDMs, THF, SAM (or MNK). They were trying to fill the 6th slot. RNG, THF or BLM, he asked... I suggested BLM, especially as it was Jer. But a WHM had popped on, in Yhoater, no less, so one of the RDMs was insisting on the WHM. No response from the WHM, so the leader invited Jer. Meanwhile, the RDM gets a response out of the WHM and insists on the WHM...For some reason, the leader gave her leader and she invited the WHM. >.< With a member on the way...

So I'm pretty tweaked. Not only am I tweaked, but we have no heavy damage dealers. And our necessary WHM was MELEEING. The RDMs are all meleeing and rarely debuffing (and those never stuck). I was doing Poison and Blind with Ninjitsu. So who was awake to wake us up? No one. So this mandy is wailing on me...

The RDM that was the PITA had to go, and took the SAM with her. Ok, fine. We got a 30 THF (for SATA) and Jer. Time for faster kills! We convinced the WHM to stay out of battle, "but I wanted to level my club.. they're so easy to kill". Easy to kill when you have some heavy damage dealers!

But things went much better after that. But I was still so sleepy that after the RDM leveled and the WHM was leaving, I was leaving too, while they waited for replacements.

I was just so tired, I was going to take a short nap, then come back to fish ('cause I'm a broke mithra/taru), but I slept all night. ^^

Fishing tonight. Need gil.

In the year 2005 I resolve to: Start smuggling contraband in baby diapers. Get your resolution here.

You mean baby poop isn't already contraband?

Mommy, I don't feel so good...

I'm suffering from some sort of intestinal bug. It came upon me Tuesday in the form of egg-burps. Not too bad, just annoying. Also annoying was the need to go to the bathroom, but be unable to do so. So I went to bed early (2amish). Woke up at 6am to pee from my butt. That's right, my colon took the night off and decided that absorbing water from my waste wasn't needed. I still felt eggy. I spent the morning waking up every hour to go poo. At noon I called out, mostly because I didn't think I could make it to work without having to pull over and find a toilet. Went back to sleep, woke up several times, did the usual, waking up with a migraine (I hadn't had any caffeine yet!). Stomach hurts, too. Stomach still hurts. I'm functional out of sheer force of will today. I've barely eaten anything in the past 2 days now.

One of the radio stations I listen to is gone. Jer told me last night. I would have found out if I'd gone into work as I listen to it on the way in. HFS as the alternative rock station is suddenly no more. It's gone Spanish. I guess it's a good thing I got that iPod for xmas...

Friday night's static was ... a night full of mishaps. Our RNG was having problems, so we'd picked up an RDM and went to Gustav Tunnel for a change. I was pulling. Our problems started when we realized that we were on top of a gob spawn point. We also weren't getting much in the way of exp. It wouldn't have been so bad if our BLM hadn't had a brain freeze night and miscast on the wrong mob. Eek! We gave up after our pickup RDM D/Ced after he leveled... >.<

I didn't have to work too late Saturday, so we planned on trying again around 11pm. Only our BLM and PLD were nowhere to be found. We'd already replaced our missing RNG w/an LS member who was doign SMN. So after a bit of searching, we got a RNG and a NIN tank. Yay! I didn't have to pull! We went back to the desert, but to western at the mountain. In 3 hours we got 10.4K exp. I went from 42 to level 44. /hurray

We were starting to drag so we called it quits.

At anyrate, Jez's BLM & WHM are both 28. I was trying for 29 last night, but never made it. I wanted to do BLM, but offered to change to WHM for the sake of the PT. No WHMs were searching. After a bit my stomach started to hurt so bad that I got Jer to play me for a bit. Not too long after I came back to play me, the tank had to leave. No new ones were available and one of the RNGs was 500 tnl. So we figured we'd 5 person a couple of Mandies. Shouldn't be that hard, right?

Wrong. Our RDM cast Blizzard on a White Lizard. Got himself slaughtered. Now we have a mad lizzard. Who does the liz come after now? My poor barely 300 HP Taru WHM, that's who. I barely make it out of camp before I'm dead. I have no idea what the remaining 3 members did, but they all survived whatever happened. The RDM HPs.... then disbands. Without a word. That's what really pissed me off. You know, death happends, people make mistakes. All there is to do is to apologize, fix your macros, and go on with life. But running like a coward after a stupid mistake is unforgiveable. What was even more horrible... was the PT leader was an LS-mate of his! I was promised the dude was gonna get a talking to. I want to slap the little shit when I see him next.

But the PT disbanded and I was left to HP. I promptly changed to BLM. Found a PT chaining mandies and some gobs for a little while (although one of the gobs killed half the pt). It disbanded, I waited for a bit, then gave up. It was time to do a BCNM!

I logged to Mery and headed for Bastok. We were doing "The Worms Turn". After a bit of waiting and killing of turtle-backs, we got started. The first try was a wash. The PLD got killed a couple of times. I wound up tanking for awhile, but the NM worm just wouldn't die. I finally bit the dust, then our RNG and RDM. Jer (WHM) and the BLM made it out. Ram (RDM) and I HPed to Jeuno... before we found out that we'd be discharged from the circle after 3 minutes. D'oh. So we rethought our strategy during the wait.

And tried again. This time it wasn't so bad. We were down to 4 worms when the PLD D/Ced. Uh-oh, that's ok. We're almost done. We finally killed all the worms at 28 Minutes & 30 Seconds. Time Limit was 30 minutes. And then we got a crappy drop out of it. Stuff we got was worth about 60K.

But we're gonna try again next week.

Resolutions.

It's a brand new year. This is the year that I turn 30. It's the year that my daughter turns 1. It's the year that I will have been playing FFXI for a year.

I don't do resolutions. I always fail at them, and I don't need a new year to make "new" changes, or at least try to make them. I guess you could say that the only New Year Resolution I do & keep is "I resolve not to make any New Year Resolutions". Twist your mind around that one.

Audrey decided to show us that she could crawl on Christmas Day down at my MIL's. We set her on the floor, and she started moving. She's gotten really good at it, crawling all over the place, and good at pulling herself up, too. She'll be walking soon. What do we do then? She's getting cranky again, as well, since her second tooth is ready to punch through.

I did make it to the xmas party for my dad's side of the family on the 26th. Got to see my Aunt's "new" house.

Well, in the past 2 weeks, I've gotten some things accomplished.
Meryell - NIN to 30, Cooking to 55, Clothcraft to 41.
Jez - BLM to 26, WHM to 28.

I also did the New Year quest and got all of the items for Mery, but only a couple for Jez. I may finish it, I may not. I have until the 10th. It's a lot of stuff (7 items total) and I'm already cramped for space.

I had the joy of changing a flat yesterday. I was on my way to work, heading up the hill of one of my backroads when I felt that plodding feeling. Car was pulling left. I had to keep going up until I got to a flat spot. By the time I got there, it was obvious I had a flat from the hot tire smell. I'd blown it out on either the bridge or the train tracks.

Changing the flat wouldn't have been so bad, but... The lugs were air tightened. I couldn't get them off. I'd left my cell phone at home charging, so I couldn't call anyone to bitch. Traffic kept going by me, it was fairly obvious that I was trying to change a flat, and no one spared me a second glance.

I did (finally) get the lugs loose. In a fit of temper, I brought my foot down on the crowbar thingy. And the lug moved! /hurray! I used my foot for the other 3, and I was set to jack up. The jack is an annoying POS, I've decided. It's horrible to use. I got the car jacked up high enough and was taking the lugs off when a kind grandpa-type guy stopped to help. Yay! (Too bad I'd already done all the hard stuff). He finished the rest of the job (while I stood there and started to feel the effects of over exerting myself), and we were both on our ways. Mine was back home. Not only was I dizzy, but my muscles were shaking, and I was already starting to feel sore. I needed to lie down and I didn't want to risk the other front tire blowing out on the road, then I'd be in serious trouble.

So I called out, logged onto ISCA to tell Jer what was going on, asked him to make an appointment with the dealership to have my tires replaced. All 4. I took some painkillers and drooled my way to sleep on the couch..

Still stiff & sore today. But I should start working out.