Account Cancelled

I say with a heavy heart that my husband and I have cancelled our WoW accounts. Gabi hasn't logged in for a long while having found other projects to occupy his time. I have the interest to play but not really the time. We were both ok with just letting our account live on in case we found the time and desire to play.

Unfortunately, the current economic down turn isn't going to allow us to do that. At least for now.

The good news is that we are still employed! The kinda cruddy thing happening is forced days off without pay to help the company budget. Two mandatory days off a month without pay. It's not so bad but since Gabi and I work for the same company, it's 4 days without pay (almost a week's paycheck *poof* gone). We're not in any kind of dire straights, just needed to trim some fat from the budget until we get to work full schedules again.

This means this site will most likely not be updated and just consider the desdarii twitter finished. I know I haven't been the most active since the baby was born anyway so not a huge loss to WoW bloggers. Still it's been great fun and perhaps someday soon I'll find my way back!

Breaking News: I Played WoW

My wonderful husband was able to fix my WoW issue and I successfully logged it and stayed in game last night!

First thing that happened was I was granted a title "Champion of the Frozen Wastes". I actually should have earned this title last month but WoW somehow had forgotten that I had done the Culling of Stratholme. I didn't think it too big a deal. I would find time to do the dungeon again eventually. Now I don't have to worry about it. WoW suddenly remembered my past victory and I have the title now!

I also finally remembered to take a picture of me riding the Sandbox Tiger. I had fun roleplaying in Dalaran with it. Mostly with my self as is the norm but my chatter in /say did make people stop and stare at me.

Experiencing Technical Difficulties

I definitely had the time to log on and enjoy WoW over this long weekend. Extra long for my husband and I as we had Monday off (without pay) as well. Unfortunately, my laptop is so used to not playing WoW, it freaked out and would turn off when I attempted to play.

I'm serious. I could do anything else I wanted on the laptop without issue. I could fart around on the Internet. I could sort and edit gobs of memory hogging pictures. I turn on WoW and 5 minutes later the laptop is dead.

When I turn it back on it complains about being too hot and shutting down. It shouldn't be hot. I have it properly propped up and ventilated with a fan blowing on it's bottom. I think my computer is just a whiner.

My hubby's been trying to sort out what it's deal is but so far no luck. I know he'll figure it out though. He's super smart like that. Until then I guess I'll just have to find something else to do.

Absenteeism

I don't believe I have logged in at all since getting the Sandbox Tiger. Such are the pitfalls of parenthood but I'm honestly not regretting it. Baby is discovering her hands and learning to smile and giggle and she's great fun!

Plus last weekend we decided to paint the living room. It took all weekend and shift changes for taking care of the little gnome. The room now looks really stinking good if I do say so myself so it was worth it.

So I have no WoW news to report this week and that's just tough cookies. I'm certain I'll find some spare time someday. Baby is starting to sleep more which is nice but right now I usually use that downtime to sleep myself. I'll be back but don't wait up for me!

And now... cuteness.

Sandbox Tiger

My husband enjoys the WoW Minis quite a bit. Not so much for playing the minis game, just because he likes collecting them. He recently graduated from college and for one of his presents we got him two mini boxes.

In one of the boxes there was a Sandbox Tiger card. Since he is a loving and wonderful husband he gave the card to me. I'm sort of a sucker for stupid nonsense items. It's pretty fun to play with. For those not aware, it's like one of those playground rocker toys. This is a spectral tiger on a spring.

Here I would of most likely included a picture of me riding my new Sandbox Tiger but unfortunately my WoW screenshots folder got corrupted somehow. I logged in to take a new picture last night but went and killed Ahune instead and then completely forgot all about my tiger. Sorry. I've always been a bit ditsy though. Maybe I'll remember to take one some other time and include it.

My only complaint would be it only has 50 charges. Why!? Why can't I just have a Sandbox Tiger toy to play with forever? It's just a fun silly item. It makes me sad and now I don't use it as much as I probably normally would just because I want to save it for special occasions.

In other news, I have finished all the Fire Festival events and got my new title. Woo! Desdarii the Flame Warden. Yeah, I don't suspect to be using that one often.

Lil' Game Hunter

Today I broke down and decided to purchase the last 3 pets I needed to finish up this achievement. I had more money than I've ever had before thanks to my lack of doing anything but dailies in game for the past 2 months.

I bought myself a red, green and dark whelp. They were the cheapest ones on the auction house which is odd since the whelps are usually pretty darn expensive. The new winners are the argent dawn pets going for 2.5k each. I was tempted to buy some of the horde pets that was available but honestly... they're ugly. If anything I'd want the blood elf pet because it's so very Fantasia.

After learning my pets I got the achievement and a letter from Breanni. Included was Little Fawn's Salt Lick to add to my collection.

The baby deer is adorable. I love how it prances happily behind me as we proudly march around Dalaran.

It looks like my pet collection obsession is satisfied for now. There are no more achievements at this time for me to strive for. I'll still work on getting the rest of the argent tournament pets and at least the Enchanted Broom. For today though I am a content pet collector!

Battle Bot

Today I redeemed my Battle-Bot pet from the Mountain Dew promotion. It just looks like a bot but it has two empty canisters on the back. I supposedly was to receive fuel for the bot but I didn't get any. I can get some tomorrow anyway. I really just needed another pet.

I'm not sure when the pet became available. I thought they would email me or something with a code. But there it was on the home page staring me in the face. "Battle-Bot Pet: claim now..." Yeah I can be a bit slow at times.

I'm now 3 pets away from Lil' Game Hunter. I have 2 more argent tournament pets to get. I got the sheep yesterday. I just about jumped out of my skin when that Elwynn wolf came out and ate it. I was desperately trying to kill it and save my sheep.

I'll have to either farm for or suck it up and purchase a whelp to get that final pet. Good thing all I do is dailies! I might be able to afford one!

Achievementpalooza!

I finished up my work for all the factions at the Argent Tournament and was bombarded with achievements!

What exactly is the difference between Exalted Argent Champion of the Alliance and Exalted Champion of the Alliance anyway?

I'm just glad I don't have to bring that ding bat flowers anymore. I've only got 2 of the pets though so I still need to continue the other dailies to earn all those!

I Beg to Differ

Travelers stopped coming? Oh really? I guess you haven't noticed me then. I've visited you every day for the past week because apparently the daily is stuck! Here's your stupid flowers now give me the sword... again... and I'll be on my merry way so you can continue on your pity party.

A Night of Raiding

Last night Gabi said he would watch the baby and let me have a night raiding once again. I forgotten how much fun it was. I have missed hanging out with those 9 wonderful people!

Where did we go?

They took me to the Vault of Archavon. I have helped destroy Archavon many times but Emalon was new to me. It wasn't very difficult but seeing and trying the new fight was super fun. Gee even had to save me once when I accidentally got too close to a Tempest Warder. I couldn't help it. I was excited and had to see!

Next we went to the Eye of Eternity to face off with Malygos. I've been in here before but it was just a "Hey lets see what's in there" trip. We didn't even make it past phase one. They have all defeated Malygos since then but I was nervous I was going to muck up the works. I did fine until phase 3 and riding the dragon. Basically I freaked out, didn't stay with the group and died out of stupidness. We didn't defeat him that time anyway and the next time I felt much more confident having seen what was going to happen.

I had thought I would finally get my champion of the frozen wastes title but unfortunately it appears I have yet to do Heroic Stratholme. I know for a fact I have done this before as I helped Earynn get his Bronze Drake. I some how got cheated on credit for finishing that dungeon. Maybe I can find some time some weekend to finish off that achievement.

Was a good night! I had a lot of fun.

Belated Blogiversary

I just realized I missed my 1 year blogiversary! I started this blog and posted my first post on May 6, 2008. Now it's almost June. /blush

I am not as active as I used to be but I'm busier than usual. It is nice to see I did keep this up for so long!

For the Alliance!

I have a serious addition to Mt. Dew. Have for years. Every so often I get it into my head to quit but I always come back to it. Sort of like WoW, actually. This combination just makes sense to me. Right now I'm back on the juice for its caffine goodness for this sleep deprived mama.

Thanks to Good Morning Azeroth for sharing this!

For the alliance!

Snazzy New Hat!

I actually saved up enough cooking awards to obtain the Chef's Hat. It took 100 awards but unlike other dailies, there is a chance to obtain more than one award each day. I also got the achievement for buying the hat.

Luckily I had kept up doing these dailies even after obtaining all the cooking recipes. My reasoning was that if they added new recipes, it would be put on that vendor and I'd be all prepared to buy whatever I was missing.

About a month ago I discovered the Chef's Hat on the vendor (yeah I don't read patch notes anymore). Luckily I already had 60 some awards stored up so in about a month I was able to earn the extra 40.

The crazy thing is that with the addition of this hat, I now have gotten all the cooking achievements available. I focus on the silliest things.

I don't know if I'm going to continue doing the cooking daily. I may just take a break from it for a bit. For one thing I have 200 Northern Spices in my bank. This even while I was using them to make fish feasts for raids. That's a lot of stinking spices. I'll probably pick back up on the daily when this stock gets a little low.

Of the Exodar

I started the Argent Tournament quests later than most. Gee kept telling me how great jousting was and I honestly just wasn't interested. I just kept doing my own little round of dailies and completely ignored that little patch in Icecrown.

That was until Gabi notified me that there were pets to be had from this jousting nonsense. Damn. Now I have to do it.

My first experience with jousting was something along the lines of, "oh my god this is way too flipping hard. I hate it forevers." I couldn't really figure it out and kept dying in attempts to defeat anything.

Gabi and Dumadin came and assisted me with my quests and thank goodness they did or I wouldn't of gotten them done at all. Gabi then helped explain what buttons he was mashing and in what sequence so I could stop dying and maybe actually do the quests on my own.

So thanks to my gnome coach I was able to start adding these dailies to my task list and actually complete them on my own. I made it all the way to Champion and got my "Desdarii of the Exodar" title.

I also got a little squire for a pet. It sounds so wrong to call this little boy that faithfully follows me around a pet. I'm pretty sure I'm breaking some child labor laws by having him carry all my stuff, too. At least I don't miss my little orphan from Children's Week as much now.

Achievement update: I am now 7 pets away from Lil' Game Hunter. Go me!

A Small Jewelcrafting Rant

Specifically I would like to voice my official complaint about the skill Prospecting. Basically, it doesn't work for poo and I'm fed up with it. I have very limited time to play. Mostly I get to login, do a few dailies and then I'm off for the remainder of the day. Sometimes I'm so busy with my new mommyhood that I have to spread those few dailies out between nap times just to complete them.

To sum it up: I don't have 3 trillion hours to hunt for ore that doesn't have gems worth a turd in them.

Beorr was kind enough to go out and spend his free time mining and sent me 5 stacks of ore. Every 5 pieces of ore can be prospected to look for gem so I had 20 chances to get a nice blue quality gem to be cut and given to guildies to use.

Not counting the shiny Scarlet Ruby that Beorr must of obtained mining, out of my 20 prospects I got 2 blue quality gems. 2 sapphires. That's it. Sure that equals a 10% return on my prospecting attempts but I'm saying that's not good enough. The entire process is too random.

I'm not able to keep up with the guild's needs for gems. I have a ton of sapphires and opals in the bank but never any ruby or topaz gems to share. What did I get. More damn sapphires that no one wants. It's very frustrating.

I think my main cause of frustration is that I'm not able to farm for my items like other professions are. I can't go, "oh I'm out of rubies, time to go find some ruby gem nodes to mine". No I have to cross my fingers and toes and hope that the gems that pop out of the prospecting is the ones I require.

Not to mention I'm absolutely swimming in green quality uncut gems that no one wants. They don't even sell well on the auction house.

I need a way to turn all these cruddy green quality gems into blues I can actually use. Yes, I am aware of the Icy Prism pattern but as I mentioned, I'm not exactly going into dungeons any longer. I am woefully short of Frozen Orbs required. Even so I think there's probably better uses out there for Frozen Orbs since the Icy Prism just gives me a random assortment of gems and a good chance of more crud I don't need.

What I need is way to just take a bunch of the cruddy Bloodstone gems and fuse them together into a Scarlet Ruby. That way I know what I'm getting when I'm short on gems and can make one from spare materials in a pinch. I have a bag full and several slots in the guild vault dedicated to collecting these low quality gems we don't use. Why not let me use them towards something I do need!

Thus ended my rant. I just had to get this jewelcrafting dilemma off my chest. I'm doing what I can to keep the vaults stocked and thanks to Beorr for helping make this easier on me by sharing your ore! It's just so frustrating to have 14 Sky Sapphires in stock and ready to cut but everyone is asking for Monarch Topaz and Scarlet Rubies. Ugh!

New Pet Crab

Good news! Today after doing the fishing daily I found a Strand Crawler in my bag. I've decided to keep him and add him to my growing collection of pets. He's very tiny or at least seems rather small to me but he's friendly enough.

I was pretty excited when I got my Unusual Compass a couple days ago. I was super excited when I found a pet!

I didn't even know a pet was available from the fishing daily. I'll have to look into other items available from those quests. Perhaps there are other fun goodies I didn't know about.

Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mothers Day to all the mom's and grandmom's out there!

Today's actually the day my little one was due if she hadn't decided to pop out six weeks earlier. I'm glad she's already here so I can officially celebrate my first mother's day.

I was already treated to flowers, cards and my favorite donuts this morning. I also got a nice gift card for a spa day. I'm really looking forward to that! I could get used to getting spoiled on mother's day!

Higher Learning

I forgot to mention it but a couple days ago I finally found the last book I was missing for the Higher Learning achievement. It was the book in the Dalaran Visitors Center. I stopped in there looking for it I couldn't tell you how many times. I've found many other interesting books sitting there instead of the book I needed. I've been looking for this book for probably about 2 months now.

The weird thing is that popping into the Visitor Center is such a part of my Dalaran routine, I find myself still looking inside simply out of habit. It's sort of strange not to have to do that anymore.

The best news is that I am 9 pets away from Lil' Game Hunter. Pretty exciting!

The Matron

Today I finished the Children's Week event. Only reason I completed all the tasks on day two of the event was because the achievement Daily Chores doesn't appear to be working properly. The way it reads, it makes it sound like you should get credit for doing a daily quest once a day for five days. Instead I received credit for completing any daily quests with my little orphan out.

The most difficult and irritating of was of course the School of Hard Knocks. I have had moderately good success in PvP with other characters but for some reason, I am absolute rubbish on my mage. Given the weekend battleground was Eye of the Storm, that proved to be the most popular and most difficult battleground to complete. It was for me anyway. I had no difficulty in Warsong Gulch. I've spent way too much time in that battleground in the past to not do well even as a gimped mage.

I went so far as to actually purchase my dual spec ability and start building a PvP set for Desdarii. That is something I had not planned on doing. I really didn't see a purpose for it but I ended up dead so quickly and often in EotS that I actually found it necessary.

I did get everything done thanks to Gabi and Gee's assistance. In turn, I helped Gabi with Warsong Gulch. I left him to do Arathi Basin himself. Goodness, I dislike that battleground.

I also owe a huge thank you to Gabi, Beorr and Brimlsye as they allowed me to stay in Utgarde Pinnacle with them when unexpected company arrived and I had to go AFK. I had done all the bosses but King Ymiron, which was of course the reason I was going for Hail to the King, Baby. They allowed me to stay and finished the dungeon and got me the achievement. To them I am very grateful.

All said and done it is day two of Children's Week and I am already known as Matron Desdarii. This is definitely my new favorite title.

I do love the little draenei orphan. Even after turning in the quests for the new little pets, I asked if I could continue taking Dornaa out and the Orphanage is allowing me to continue to mentor her. I'm sure there are plenty of other things I can show her that she is interested in.

I'm Done with Eggs!

Well I am all done. I have gotten all of the achievements associated with Nobelgarden. I got several sets of all the clothing available so I didn't have to purchase any of those with chocolates. I didn't actually buy the bunny ears, though. The picture was taken just after I was hit with them by some passer-by.

Probably the hardest part for me was finding a female orc for Shake Your Bunny-Maker. It seemed like I always saw one while my flowers were on cool down. (Which by the way 5 min cool down? Why?) I finally ended up just stalking one who was taking care of business in Dalaran. I followed her to a shop where she probably repaired her armor, then on to the bank where she conducted business until I was able to slam some bunny ears on her head like a crazy person.

I also got to feel helpful as I have one of the rarer of the alliance characters, a female dwarf, in my line up. So I took some time running around Dalaran with Goldy to give people a chance to finish their achievements.

I also took the time to collect an extra 100 chocolates to purchase my Rabbit Polymorph spell. I of course needed the option to turn things into wabbits. I just wish I could polymorph multiple things at once and create a farmyard at my feet.

As a side note, take a look at those Spring Robes! Holy moly my girly parts are barely covered. I don't think I should be posing in outfits like that now. I'm someone's mother!