Book 8 of 2012: The Wind Through the Keyhole: A Dark Tower Novel by Stephen king.

I loved this book so much. So very much. King is such a good storyteller, and a story is exactly what this book was...

( Minor minor spoilers back here. )

I feel like I'm behind in my reading, though I have no real schedule*. I had been hitting two books per month, which was a nice pace, but I'd need to finish two more in the next two weeks to maintain that. Cruise is coming up, but unfortunately I'll likely have even less time than usual to read (which seems backwards...).

On words, now there's even more reason to like merriam-webster.com. They have comments enabled on all of their definition pages. "What made you want to look up [word]? Please tell us where you read or heard it (including the quote, if possible)." It's so interesting to read!

Today the word "tupping" came up in RP. It's unusual for me to not know a word (happy day! New word!), I usually just look things up to find out the spelling. Look at the variety of comments on that word! So interesting. :)

* I started tracking the books I read because of the 50bookchallenge comm. I knew I'd never get to 50 in a year, so I'm posting here instead of there. My goal was half that, 25 books in a year, which would mean basically two per month.

Edit: Oh hey, YAY! I just noticed my IC Twitter account crossed the 10,000 message (tweets/IC "pages") mark! Luckily the books are ICly magic, otherwise Thistle would get a backache lugging around a 10,000 page book. :D Here's to 10,000 more IC posts!

Tags: 2012 books
Current Mood: accomplished

I love it when TV stations do marathons (or at least when it's not a show I hate). I have an odd history with Eureka though. When I catch random eps in the middle of the series, I love them. This was one good Sunday, ep after ep with so many stars from other scifi shows (BSG! SGU!). But, when I sat down to watch this show from the beginning, I couldn't get into it. I don't know why. Luckily I still have season one saved -- as much as I loved all the eps from today, I really really want to watch this show from beginning to end.

WoW: I spent most of the day PvPing. 1,300+/22,000 HKs! But more than that, I enjoyed it. Mostly. The BG chat is so god awful sometimes (someone named Fartstain mocked my name (Clove)...). It's nice once you start getting gear (and trinkets and fix your glyphs... I should look into enchants, too). During one fight, I heard a noise behind me, like someone swinging. But I was busy and couldn't move my camera to see what it was. Turns out some guy was beating on me from behind for minutes and my HP wasn't moving. I have no idea if he was just really bad or if I had healer love or what, but it was amusing.

I wish I had more of an idea what graphics in WoW looked like (or that WoW heals didn't have such violent-looking graphics). Half the time I want to move away from them. I suppose it will come in time and with exposure.

It's surprising how quickly I'm able to gear up. Today was only the third day of PvPing and I already have three purple honor-bought pieces plus a trinket.

It's really odd (and kind of fun) to care about gear. This is the very first time in Cata that I have. Other than an AH bought one, this is the first time I've had purples in this expansion. (Gear doesn't matter for playing the AH or doing archaeology.) Having a mini-goal while I go after the larger (HK) goal is pretty nice.

Tags: tv: eureka, wow
Current Mood: tired

Okay, that didn't quite work. A cat and a Korra and a WoW!

djinni, the fellow who does hundreds of free icons at a time, was drawing them on livestream tonight, and I caught it. AND he was doing mine! EEE! Unfortunately he stopped for the day in the middle of my batch (I get three this time, since I donated). But I got to see the first one being drawn! I love seeing sketches and things in progress, it's like getting to see how a magic trick is done. :)

( Three images back here... kitty! )
Unfortunately I messed up taking a screenshot of it finished/colored. It came out so spiffy! "No matter," I said to myself, "I'll get a screenshot when he starts on my next one!" But that was the end of his hour of work, so he stopped. Hopefully I can catch the next time he does a livestreaming, so I can see my next ones made, too. Otherwise it will be a surprise, which is great as well.

Korra is so amazing. o.O I need a Korra icon. I cannot believe how much happens in one ep! It feels like a whole season in a half-hour. It's boggling and so very great. Other shows would draw out the bending tournament for an entire season!

WoW: I've finally made a full circle in WoW. I leveled my first alt to 80 (then cap) through PvP only... now I'm back to PvPing. Warlock PvPing is pretty darned fun. I'd like to think people kill me first because I annoy them too much with damage and fearing them, but likely it's more like "Hey look! A clothie! Easy kill!". It amuses me to make myself as challenging to kill as possible. Oh it'll happen eventually, sometimes sooner rather than later, but I do enjoy making them work for it.

I'm up to 900 HK (of 22,000 needed). Twin Peaks is the Call to Arms, and I gave it two shots, but I HATE it. HATE HATE HATE. It's just WSG with a more annoying layout. And let me tell you how much I hate WSG! So mostly I've been TBing (since hitting 85, before that it was all BGs).

I hope this isn't all for nothing. A blue post said for hard achievements, like 250K HKs and 2,500 daily quests done, progress would be shared across alts. I'd think 100K would have to fall under that, too. Fingers crossed.

Tags: icons, tv: legend of korra, wow
Current Mood: headache

This bullying story is making me so sad and so upset. Five different people of varying political parties have come forward with stories of how Romney bullied gay kids in school. All say he was the ringleader. One described in more detail the bullying I posted about yesterday, the look of terror in the kid's eyes after they chased him down and held him down and cut off his hair.

"But he was just a kid, everyone does stupid stuff in high school!" Yes, that's true. I did some very bad things as a kid too. But know the difference between Romney and myself? I have changed. I'm not doing the same thing now. My thoughts and my actions reflect that. What's your stance on gay rights now, Mitt? Oh, right, you're still a bully, you just have more power to hurt people now.

I hope this doesn't go away. I hope people don't forget about this. This is unacceptable in anyone, let alone someone trying to become president.

---

So, WoW. In MoP, achievements are going to change. Not only are they going to be account-wide, the progress will be, too:

If Alt A does X number of quests and Alt B does Y number of quests, and X + Y = Loremaster, ding! You're a Loremaster.

It seems safe to assume this will apply to other achievements? Between all of my alts, I have about 78,000 HKs. So if I get 22K more on some alt, I'll get the 100K HK achievement and the 'of the Horde' title.

I PvPed on Clove yesterday (my only non-85). In three hours, I made about 150 HKs. Blah.

I'm semi-pondering working on this. 'of the Horde' is a rare title, I've only seen it once or twice the whole time I've been playing. (Though people might mistake it for some rep-related title...) Problem is, 22K is a darned lot of HKs.

If I really hated myself, I could combine this with WSG rep (I have the other two done) and get the Conqueror title. Problem is, I hate WSG more than anything else in the whole game. I think I'd rather get geared up and raid over spamming WSG. :/

Option #3 is to wait for MoP and level my last alt (#11) through BGs. I did that with Kianlar and ended up at then-cap 80 with 50K+ HKs.

Tags: people scare me, political, rl, wow
Current Mood: tired

I know I'm generally preaching to the choir in my LJ, but this was just so horrible I had to write about it anyway.

I was watching the news when a story came on. Mitt Romney apologized for bullying gay people while in college. My first thought was "A horrible thing to do, but at least he's apologizing", but then the story went on. This only came out because FIVE people came forward about his acts of bullying gay people.

Here's a story on one case, Romney followed a classmate most thought was gay, and when the kid was alone, knocked him down and cut off his long hair. The school photo of Romney at the time make him look at least 20.

Good job, man. Apologize now, only after it comes out in the media. He claims he doesn't remember this happening at all. (Abuse so many gay folks that it all blurs together, huh?)

I wish I didn't know who I would vote for, so I could say this decided it for me, but I can't. This makes me so angry. It makes me sick to my stomach that this will make some people like him more.

Tags: how do i not have a gay tag?, people scare me, people suck, political, rl, rl sucks
Current Mood: sad

My president. <3 Obama supports gay marriage. Yay! New icon time!

Soon enough people will look back on this whole mess in the same way we now do the whole anti-interracial marriage battle.

So often I want to post rants. I don't understand how anyone can be against equality for everyone. I don't understand how it matters to anyone what strangers do in the bedroom. I don't understand how people who not too long ago didn't have the right to marry anyone they wanted could now work to deny others of those same rights... but I won't spam you all. You know how I feel, I'm sure. :)

Tags: how do i not have a gay tag?, people rock :), political, yay!
Current Mood: happy

How fitting is that sign for my LJ? :P

TV: Confession time! I wasn't in love with the first season of Game of Thrones. Sure I watched it, I even sometimes looked forward to it, but at least once per ep I got bored in the middle of things. I have no idea why, I loved the books, but the show didn't hook me.

I'm happy to say, this season is different. I've been looking forward to the new eps ("Hey, tomorrow is Sunday, yay!"), and they seem to be over in the blink of an eye. Was I expecting less of the show this season, since I didn't really love it last season? Or is it actually better now? I'm not sure.

However, it's not my favorite show currently on TV. That honor goes to Korra. Seems like my entire friends list wrote about it this weekend, so I'll keep this brief: The show is perfect in every way. It's a children's cartoon, yet it treats the audience like an adult. Even just a few eps into the series, and it's endlessly cool and has had honestly creepy moments. So nicely mature.

WoW: I love you, Darkmoon Faire. I bought yet another Crimson Deathcharger yesterday (gotta catch 'em all?), so my money fell below a million again, which made me flail. Stupid, stupid brain, that's no reason to panic. The horses are an investment at this point. With account-bound mounts coming for sure in MoP, I expect the price of mounts to go through the roof (you're basically getting up to 10 of them for the price of one! Or is it across servers, too? Even more, if so!). I'm hoping to sell each of them for at least 500K, when MoP drops.

So anyway. DMF. I had about 300 quest items saved up. I was certain I would never move them all, I stopped buying about two weeks before the faire, but amazingly they're almost all gone now, on the first day. I have no idea how much money I made, but I bought them all for 20 gold or less (with a few exceptions, some of the rarest ones I bought for up to 50), I've sold them all for 50-200 (with the rare ones for 200-300). It boggles me, flat out boggles me, how many people do not buy these items ahead of time. But hey, I'm willing to take advantage of their lack of planning.

I think I need to start adding 'liquid' to my amounts, when I speak of my money: Liquid gold and goods. I easily have a million in mounts, pets, Lich King drops, mats, and other assorted things waiting to sell. (Or in the LK items, just holding onto.)

Plants: Alas, my basil went the way of tersa's. I brought it home, planted it, and right away the adult plants started to die. I saw younger ones were just growing leaves, so I thought maybe the young ones would replace the older ones, but as soon as the young ones got to adult size, they all fell over dead too. No idea why. I guess it just doesn't like growing in this area.

Everything else is growing well, though the poor sunflowers are running flat along the ground. They're still so small and thin, it's really hard to stake them up.

Ellie New Cat: I got her a new carrying case (case #4... sigh). But I finally got one she's not afraid of! As in she's willing to be in the same room with it without fleeing. So I've been working with her, putting her in it (without closing it), then giving her all the pats. It's backfiring though, I'm going too fast, now she's back to being afraid of being picked up by me. :/ Sigh. Poor kitty.

It's got to be hard for her. She wants to be brushed, she seems to very much like it, but she's afraid of both the brush and being in a position where I could easily keep hold of her. She's so clearly torn between wanting to be brushed and afraid.

I feel guilty, but even now, more than a year later, I think about how things would have been if I had gotten a different cat. I'm glad to have given Ellie a home, her foster mother said she wasn't happy living with so many other cats, but a loving, not scared cat would be so nice. I know she's made lightyears of progress, and she'll still keep improving, but... :/

Tags: ah pvp, ellie new cat, tv: game of thrones, tv: legend of korra, wow
Current Mood: busy

Oh how I miss the West Wing. But the cast got together to make a PSA! It's so great to see the old faces again, and the music at the end! Such memories. :) The one small thing I didn't like was the joke at exactly a minute in, but that's a minor thing.

There seems to be no way to embed it, so you'll need to click: See it here!

( IC back here, a letter left for Aenstrian. )

Tags: ic, rp, tv: west wing

I often call people insane, but in this case I mean it literally.

I had no idea who he was, until he threatened the president a week or two ago. I knew he played music, but nothing at all more than that.

This morning he did an interview on the CBS Morning News, and it was scary. Here, in my house, I was scared of the man. I have no idea how the people there in the room with him didn't flee.

In the middle of the interview, unrelated to anything, he started ranting at the off camera CBS producer. You could see how startled the interviewer was. It went on for minutes, full of F-words (beeped, but it was clear). About how this producer (Molly) was keeping freedom/him down, and things that made even less sense. He was vicious and rabid.

After the interview, he called the station. He told them he was rushed to the hospital right after to "have a kidney stone removed", that's why he verbally attacked her. (Um, kidney stones don't work that way, personal experience here. They don't cause insanity nor are they "removed".)

The Secret Service went to see him, after the initial threats against the president. He said the interview with them was "adorable". The interviewer, again startled, asked him if that's the word he really meant. He said yes. He said it was "cute" that they were doing their job. He said his hearing wasn't as good as it used to be, but he's certain they whispered that they were on his side.

The hair on the back of my neck stood up. Isn't it a good feeling that this man is so rabidly pro-guns?

Edit: It was so bad that ABC did a news story on the CBS news story. The "adorable" quote is in there, as well as insanity I didn't write about (how Mitt Romney is on his side, no matter what he says in public).

Tags: people scare me, ted nugent
Current Mood: scared

kiva.org is a microloan site. As the name implies, a microloan is a tiny loan, often $25. Here in America, that's not really all that much money, but in other countries it makes a big difference.

Right now, when you sign up (which requires nothing more than an email address or a facebook account) you can loan $25 for free. This means $25 will be loaned to someone and will not come out of your pocket.

Kiva loans have a 98.93% repayment rate. How amazing is that? So your money is not only doing good, you're almost certain to get it back.

There are so many people who need help, I had no idea how to decide on one. I finally went with this woman in Kyrgyzstan for the silly reason that I like dumplings ("she works in a factory that makes dumplings"). All of them are good causes, so no matter who you help, it's a good thing.

Now that I used my free one, I'm looking for someone else to help. It's a pretty cool feeling, knowing that I can help someone. Not some generic group that's aiming to help poor people or animals or whatever, but to know the person's name and why they need the money. It makes me happy.

Edit: Okay, second person, lending out of my own pocket, is this person, in Benin (Africa). :)

Tags: kiva
Current Mood: touched