Posted tagged ‘Christmas’

W00t! As part of the Furtive Father Winter event at Blog Azeroth (hosted by Akabeko, who has done a fantastic job this year), I received a surprise guest post!

My Secret Santa was no other than Saif from Raiding after Dark. Saif’s a fantastic writer (WITH CREDENTIALS!) and he certainly delivered again this time. I got all goosebumpy and teary after reading his lovely story.

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I don’t know crap about Holy.

That was my first thought when I sat down to write this. Fear enveloped me. I hadn’t been writing about and theory-crafting Paladin healing for ages. What could I possibly have to say on one of the most popular and successful blogs in Azeroth?

Then I realized I didn’t know much about Christmas, let alone Winter’s Veil.

The real panic set in.

I thought back to the last few Winter’s Veil celebrations and the holiday has come and gone eliciting only the occasional “Bah-humbug” from me as my guild-mates ran about gathering their achievements, carefully wrapping gifts and sending them to one another. I was the Grinch in the guild, muttering darkly about commercialism and errant
dates and stolen culture. All those Winter’s Veils blended together into a gray blur of kill-joy.

But last year’s Winter’s Veil shines clearly in my memory. Last year was different.

Cataclysm was young and new, we were still struggling with Heroics, trying to gear up to take on Nefarian and I was having a terrible Christmas Eve. My car was broken into, a severe snow-storm was on its way, and near midnight, I finally got home from leaving my car at the garage, cold and tired. My family was all asleep yet I was jittery, so
I logged into WoW, and queued for a dungeon.

Before I could click “Enter”, I heard my son stir in his sleep. He was only 2 months old at the time, and as one does with their first child I suppose, every noise he made compelled me to check in on him. I saw he was awake, but content, blinking in the dim light of the monitor trying to make things out, and so I tried to pat him back to sleep but he was having none of it.

He squirmed and I picked him up, brought him back to my desk with me and he focused his eyes on the only part of the room that was illuminated – the screen. We sat down together, and he continued to stare, mesmerized by the colors.

With one arm occupied by the baby, I was left to wander Stormwind, trying to think of something I could do. As the clocks in Stormwind struck midnight, in the midst of drowsy exhaustion, I thought, “It’s Christmas.” Despite the fact that I don’t celebrate the holiday, nor do I have any childhood associations with it, at that moment, I wanted
to celebrate it with my son.

Running to my bank, I saw the plethora of enchants and cut gems that I had stored up from having leveled up my professions quickly. I took everything I had, stood on the bank steps in the Dwarven District and typed, “/join trade.”

The usual mixture of erratic, chaotic white-text flooded my screen but I began to link the cut gems and enchants, with a “Free! :-)” after them. People stopped by, some skeptically, others offering to buy them off of me, but I gave something to everyone who spoke to me.

I didn’t just want to do dailies or quest on an alt with my son watching. If I was in game at Christmas, I wanted him to see me do something even a tiny, little bit meaningful. That’s what sets Warcraft apart from all other games for me – I have the opportunity to engage with other people, and perhaps improve their experience in a tangible way. It lets you affect positive change, if you are of a mind to do it. And I wanted my son to see me smiling and trading with
people, not blinding clicking Accept Quest/Complete Quest on auto-pilot having no interaction with the people around me.

And for the next half hour or so, I emptied out my bag, and when I was done, I looked back to see my son was asleep.

I carefully walked him over to his crib, laid him down, and went back to run that dungeon after all.

This Winter’s Veil, I finished my Merrymaker title.

Happy Holidays!

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Such a sweet story, I love it!

As for myself, if you were looking for a guest post from me on the participating blogs (right, I’m really THAT delusional ;D ) and couldn’t find one, well, someone did gift an anonymous guest post to Beruthiel. I WONDER WHO WOULD DO SOMETHING LIKE THAT, HMMMM?

It’s stupidly cold outside. I frostbit my fingers digging my car out of a snowbank otherwise knows as my parking lot. It’s dark all the time. I wake up in cold sweats every night, after having nightmares about semester finals of Decembers past.

But it’s ok. It’s all ok.

Because all these things mean that it’s just about that time of year! That time of year, oh yeah, for this year’s edition of Blog Azeroth‘s Christmas event!

Look – I know how you feel. You’ve been reading the musings of a certain bossy pally for a long time now – I have too – and you still don’t know what to get her for the holidays. Let me help you out, as someone who even has a pretty pally damage machine waiting just for those times when I want to haul off and hit something with a hammer.

But before I get to that, you need to understand how you relate to Paladinica Bossifica Spoonula. I’m a hunter by trade; the way we handle things is to be as far away from the Big Nasty as possible, steady our gaze, and pew pew pew to our heart’s content – if you spend more time looking at the pretty graphics than you do looking at your cooldowns and making sure you’re on top of when your next shot is ready to proc or that your AP trinkets are up, you’re doing something wrong.

The paladin, on the other hand, is a different, strange, bewildering beast. They hit things up close! They shoot a cloud of righteous fire out of the ground around them! It’s madness! Seriously, the quickest way to a paladin’s heart is to treat them right: understand the class, don’t start shooting until the consecrate goes off, don’t make them heal if they don’t want to, remember that as long as a paladin has mana it’s on, if your pally friend is of the holy variety make sure you give them plenty of room (but don’t go so far as to be out of their healing range!), and then you see them pop their wings, you’ve got some serious competition for the top of the damage meters, so turn up your game.

Okay, is that settled? Now that you understand the heart of the paladin, you may be wondering, what could I possibly get my dear bossy pally for the happiest of holidays? I have the perfect gift: Her very own brand new shiny hunter!

You think I’m kidding, I’m not! A paladin and a hunter? Killer combo when it comes to damage, rep grinding, dailies, leveling, anything! You don’t even have to worry about spec, regardless of your spec or the pally’s spec, you two are destined to make an awesome combination – no foe will stand in your way.

That being said, someone help me tie this bow around my waist? What!? Go find your own pally!

Ophie’s note: Yessssss! I get my own awesome hunter! Phoenix is MINE MINE MINE now! I bet he didn’t know this, but for the longest time in my WoW playing career, my partner in crime was a hunter. And he’s right, a pally/hunter team rocks. My teammate has long since been forced to leave the game and I miss him a lot. (I can’t help myself: “A new hunter? For me? I hope I don’t break him this time!”) Thank you again so very much, Phoenix!

You’ll have to excuse me, I’m not at my best.
I’ve been gone for a week.
I’ve been drunk since left,
And these so-called vacations will soon be my death…*

My parents discovered that the only way to get me really talking is to keep me slightly buzzed and, as a poor starving college student, I don’t turn down free booze. My liver is going to be kaput at the end of these holidays. But it’s ok, I’m usually such a good girl that I need to make up for it somehow.

Apparently, even video games tell me I'm not a hat person.

So are you ready for Christmas?

I totally forgot to farm small eggs this year so I don’t have a kazillion gold a day rolling in. I also couldn’t be arsed to do the Winter Veil quests. Winter Veil is usually the only in-game holiday I follow religiously. Here’s why: I love this time of year with a passion. Bright colourful lights, delicious food in abundance, time to myself, sales at the mall, what’s not to love? And I find Winter Veil does a pretty good job of recreating the feeling, even though in-game stuff is nowhere as pleasant as the real thing. I hope skipping out this year doesn’t ruin the season for me. *crossed fingers*

I did get my in-game Christmas shopping done! On all three of my servers! I’m keeping it simple. Last year, I spent hours getting the mats together for Eternal Belt Buckles and Chocolate Cakes. Then I stayed up until 4 am on Christmas Eve, crafting, wrapping and mailing. And you know what? It was so silly. My gaming buddies would have been just as happy being singled out with a message saying “You Rock, love Ryk”. So, darling internet friends, guess what you’re all getting this year. 🙂
I don’t have plans for Christmas Eve. This is why:

Guildie X: So are we raiding on Christmas Eve?Raid leader: We’re not raiding on Christmas Eve or New Year’s Eve.Guildie Y: Aw, now what I am supposed to do?Guildie X: Ensidia raids on Christmas Eve.Raid leader: Go join Ensidia then.

My family is really small and our Christmases are more relaxing time than anything else. When I was a kid, I’d be invited to my friends’ family’s IRL Christmas Eve raids, but apparently there’s an age limit on those invitations. So I’ll be drinking my parents’ Baileys and playing in the LFD. Which, I hate to admit, sounds way more appealing to me than dealing with drunk uncles anyway. Kinda bummed about not raiding though. How dare everyone else have a life.

Ooooooo, I’m excited to say, I did my Kris Kringle guest post! I made Gnomeaggedon‘s life difficult and added lots of pictures, I hope he forgives me. I’m sure you all have good taste, are subscribed to his blog and have seen it before reading this, but I figured I’d provide some links anyway for those who have yet to click on his feedburner button.

And someone will be guest posting here! I don’t know who it will be yet, but I can’t wait! I’ve never had a guest post before! (I’ve tried to get my funnier, more eloquent, non-blogging friends to write for me, but they just either give me really dirty looks or laugh like its the more hilarious joke they’ve ever heard.)

Happy Holidays everyone!

*The opening song to this post is from Spirit of the West and is called Home for a Rest.

EDIT: I made another guest appearance, this time on my bestest best friend Skip‘s blog. Remember to always /hug your druids.

So with switching guilds and trying to make a good impression, I was thinking of ways I could utterly humiliate myself and how I could go about avoiding such ways. One of the first things I thought of was, you know, getting hacked. I mean, that’s embarrassing (and a pain in the ass) at the best times. So how does one go about not getting hacked? Well, one way is to create an email specifically for one’s battlenet account. Check! How else could I improve my security? With an authenticator (duh!). What an amazing idea! I’ll go buy myself an authenticator!

I grab my credit card and hop onto the Blizzard store. I look around on the page for the Authenticator. I click on a few tabs. No authenticator! I ended up using the search tools, which is probably what everyone else does, I just have a thing against search tools. I think they’re weird. Anyway, I get the choice between the iPhone app and the little keychain. I’m not rich enough for an iPhone (damn 10 years of student loans), so keychain is it! 6.50$ Eh, it’s a lot but the peace of mind will be worth it. I order it and with postage and shipping the price goes up to something like 17$. WTF. Why is shipping more than item itself? I try to find a cheaper option but can’t, so, sigh, I go with the ridiculously expensive keychain. I fill in my address and credit info, press send. Feeling happy with my purchase.

The next day I get a nagging feeling like I screwed something up. “Naaah” I think. I shrug it off.

Sure enough, 3 days later, I get an email from my mom. “A package from Fresno arrived for you!” ….I had entered the WRONG address. Instead, I paid a crapton of money to ship my authenticator to my parents’ house on the other side of the country. Gah! I’ve been living on this island for 4 years, you’d think I’d know my address by now.

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And in other, less fail, shopping stories, I bought myself a Christmas calendar! You know, those calendars with chocolates where you can eat one every day until Christmas! I usually don’t buy them, but the idea of choosing between the Barbie Princess Christmas Calender, the Hot Wheels Christmas Calender, the X-Men Adventure Christmas Calender and the Madagascar The Movie Christmas Calender was just too exciting. When I was kid, we only got to choose between the Snowman Calender and the Christmas Tree Calender. (I always got the Snowman and my brothers got the Tree.) Obviously, I chose the Madagascar Calender since it matches my bedsheets.

When in doubt, always choose the item that matches your bedsheets. (Unless you have the option of something that matches your Happy Feet Pyjamas, in which case, just flip a coin.)

Anyway, it turns out that the calender actually counts down to New Years because apparently Christmas isn’t politically correct anymore. While I am somewhat concerned about the lengths we go to for PCness (seriously, I’m not from a christian upbringing and I’m fine with Christmas calenders counting down to Christmas), I can’t really complain about more days of chocolate. Now I sort of need a calender to help me count down until I’m allowed to start eating my New Years calender. December can’t come soon enough!