So, I figured it was time for  another entry.

Not much have happened really this last month. I have mostly chilled, done quite a bit of costuming, had what I am pretty sure was food poisoning, worked and so on.

Claire and I are now sharing a room. It is going wonderful so far though we really need to clean (I am planning on doing that + laundery today). we chill, hang out and do random shit which is nice.

In  wow news (don't know if anybody cares) I left my guild to start working on one of my own. One consisting of smithies and former smithies. If you play wow and want to join up on this we are on the Madoran Realm, horde side. We do need more signatures to get the guild started, so if you want to join just find Adirian on Madoran or contact me on aim/gmail/twitter. And if you aren't a Smithie (former or not) and still want to play with me, just give me a hollar on there.

The idea behind this guild was two things, mainly it was that I heard over and over again people saying how much they missed the community in wow, or how they just soloed everything and never really talked to anyone. While that is one way to do things, I certainly solo most of my quests, I think it is sad that many people don't find the community in it. In many ways the fact that most of the people in the game are real people and not an equation in a computer is infact what makes this game different. I thought that if we created a guild with people who had something in common besides just sharing a love for the game, we might create an enviroment that encourages this. Since Madoran isn't an rp realm I missed the rp in it so that was also part of me wanting to start a guild.
Things we want to focus on
-Creating a community where our guildies can interact and have fun
-Running instances one or two nights a week (this depends on what our players want/have time for)
-Having an rp night a week, once a week, our characters meet up and talk about their adventures..
-Other help, like help with professions, a guild bank, leveling help etc. (we'll get there when we get there)

Feel free to pass this along to any Smithies/former Smithies you might know who play wow.

So, this summer I am playing wow again. I am having a lot of fun with it, mostly been working on my (very) soon to be level 30 Tauren shaman. He's elemental focus, as I am mostly soloing and thus can not afford to focus mostly on tanking or healing. If you know how to read these things here are his wow armory page. I really love playing him, the guild I am in, Horde Knights (corny name I know, blame Panch) is a decent guild. Though we recently had a 30% drop of members and I am curious as to why. I get along nicely with most of our officers. Though I feel a little useless lately as my connection is not near good enough for instances, mostly what I do is that I solo quest. Sometimes I quest with Kilakay, Claire's druid. But I also focus a lot on my secondary skills. Mainly cooking and fishing. The problem there now is that my skill is so much higher than it is supposed to be at this level that I am supposed to go fishing in areas with monsters 20 levels and up higher than me. One of the types of fish that will let me make some nice and really useful soup is  in a ?? area.

The realm I am running this character on is interesting. It's Barren's Chat is mostly in trade chat, which you can ignore. Though sometimes trade is useful to pay attention to. A week or two ago I answered a guys call for some wool cloth (I had some laying around) and he traded me 20 silk cloth for 6 wool cloth. Now this might not have been very useful to most people, but I am a tailor and I had just hit my tailoring level where I work in silk. He then also offered me pretty much any enchant I wanted for free and a port back to Orgrimmar. This is something I have seen quite a bit of, at least horde side, high level players helping lower levels out. It is an interesting contrast to what is going on in the trade chat. Another example is from my guild, right after this one of the players asked me in guild chat if I needed silk cloth, and  I said yes. Then he went and stuck a bunch of it in the guild vault for me.

On the other hand there are high level players, a lot of them Death Knights, who would walk up to a lowly level 15 shaman and challenge them to a duel. I never accepted these. Do they honestly think I got nothing better to do than being killed? I got nothing against the dueling system, in fact I rather like standing outside Ogrimmar watching the duels there, but you could at least ask me if I didn't mind dying for your honor points. However this is something I have mostly seen from Dranei Death Knights in Ratchet so I would say it seems like it is more of an alliance thing than a horde thing. Another thing I find highly annoying is when people just hand you a guild charter to sign. Thankfully that stopped after I joined a guild. But honestly, I am not going to sign a guild charter you have not talked to me about.

But that is all about my experience with the people while playing the game. I have also been catching up on a couple of podcasts. One is the Instance which I highly recommend if you are into wow. They have a very nice production value, and I really like their humor, the way they talk about things and so on. Another one is How I wow which is a series of interviews with people who play wow and how it affects their life. It is not so much about the game but rather about the people. They have talked to people like Curt Schilling, Jonathan Coulton, Felicia Day and many more. I found both through itunes.

I got a lot of little things that needs to be done and in order to remember them all I decided to make a todo list

Today:
-work (well that is given eh)
-finish sewing Claire's skirt
-Write posts for Mercy, Changes and Crime and Punishment
-Start cleaning my room
-Do laundery
-email Sue

Tomorrow
-Finish cleaning the room
-work
-Write posts again
-shop food food the weekend
-go out for late night coffee at Sam's (anybody want to join me)
-Go to the gym
-mail obi

Saturday:
-go to Boston

Sunday
-Do any left over cleaning
-cook dinner for Claire and me
-finish Fires at Midnight

First of all

Yes I am still alive, have just been busy and not really had anything to say

Mostly the things I have to say can be said in short little tweets... I am craftyviking on twitter.

Can someone please explain the logic behind going vegan or vegitarian to promote animal rights? I am not criticizing it as a lifestyle, in fact I respect it very much, but I have not heard a logical argument to why you not eating meat (or other animal products) is promoting animal rights?

My reason for wanting to hear an argument behind this is that to me it makes more sense to continue to eat meat, but focus on getting local, ecological animal products from farmers/companies that promote animal rights. Because by this you show that there is money to earn by taking care of your animals instead of not buying animal products at all where all you show is that they will lose money no matter what. Infact there is more money in taking care of your animals since people generally are willing to pay a little more for it. But I would very much like to hear a strong argument to why going meatless is preferable

( Small side rant on domesticated animals that really has very little to do with this )

Poi (like most things in life) IS better with friends

No and yes.

I believe that for some people serial monogamy works, for others it don't. I believe it is none of my buisness who or how many people you sleep with as long as a) it is all consensual b)all parties involved are mature enough and c) all parties involved are aware of what is going on. If you are dating one person, but at the same time sleeping with someone else and neighter of the two others know, then you are cheating on them (yes you are cheating on both of them). However if they know and have accepted it, then you are in an open relationship, which is different and alright.

Yesterday I ended up in a conversation about knitting in class. All of the people I was talking to, sans one, was against it. ( Read more... )

Click on the picture to see the series

Figured it was about time for an update, I am back at Smith as many of you know. I went up to  visit Claire on Saturday, she was told that she didn't need a visa when in fact she did. She did not discover this until she was at the border in the UK. So she was sent home. I traveled up thinking that if nothing else I would give her something else to think about, it seemed to work. I was back here monday morning. I am sorry to everyone I missed graduating.

Am going to Salem this weekend, will be back on monday

Dear everyone.
Tomorrow at 3 until Monday noon (roughly) I will not be at campus. I am needed elsewhere. I am terribly sorry to everyone I have had made plans with but this is more important.

First of all, the gym. I went yesterday, because I feel like I should keep up what I started this semester with rugby and kickboxing. The plan is to go 3 maybe 4 times a week, and since my schedule is pretty open I think I can do this, I am also working on figuring out a decent work out that won't have me want to kill myself half way through but still gives me a work out. If anybody has any comments feel free to add them, I don't know much about these things and thus I am trying to learn. Mon-Wed-Fri, one hour after work, 30 minutes on the elipticals, and then working on the machines. The muscle groups I want to work on is stomach and core, back and shoulders. Possibly also chest, since that ties in with shoulders. Since I am big busted I have had problems in the past with my back muscles not being able to fully support my upper body weight and thus putting presure on my spine, not comfortable, let me tell you.

I also started proper work on the corset last night. The pieces have been pinned to the fabric and I will cut the fabric today, maybe also seal the edges. I got inspired again, by reading corsetmakers  posts. Since it has been requested pictures will be taken. I also have a couple of other corset ideas, among others an underbust with cable ties, because I really want to test that as boning. Other than that the half of the room that I am not using have turned into a craft station, and as long as I keep it neat I can take it down in minutes, in case they toss a room mate at me. Which I hope not. If anybody has any desire to hang out and chat while doing crafts, feel free to drop by.

Speaking of rooms, I am now out of Ziskind for good. It feels weird not walking up the stairs to the third floor and thinking about the fact that I now officially need someone liviing in the house to escort me around. Strange how things are changing. I thought about little things, like the fact that for the last three years I got a favorite bathroom stall and used pretty much only that one.

This summer I am working a research job here at Smith and it is quite strange I have to say, I am used to more structured work and I am still getting used to this. I am also the newbie on the team and it feels like everyone else knows more than I do. And some of the projects for this summer plain old scare the shit out of me, and others are better suited for people with the appropriate background.

I saw Norway's entry into Eurovision 2009 for the first time yesterday, and I got a few things to say.
( Read more... )

I never thought a Smith bed could feel big, but after three and a half weeks of sharing one with my love I am suddenly alone. It took me two hours and a lot of will power to fall asleep and I woke up at 7something this morning, feeling very alone. Thankfully I was tired enough to just roll over and go back to sleep. I consider that a good thing because of the plans we have today. I feel terribly alone and am trying to fill my day with being with people so it won't hit me as much. I know it is strange and possibly very childish of me to be this dependent, but I have not been away from her for more than two and a half three weeks since we got together. And now we are spending most of the summer apart. 11 weeks and a day until I see her again and then  we spend Sunday-Friday morning together and then it is another four and a half weeks until I see her again. It feels incredibly long right now. I know it won't when I am settled into my room and got more things on my mind, like work and workouts and sewing and all that jazz. Thankfully I got friends here. Jay called me yesterday and wanted to hang out sometime, we decided that next week is a good week. There are Deadlands stuff going on. Stubbs and I have craft plans..

And there is always Skype and webcams right.

And I think xkcd but it nicely, sometimes *hug* doesn't quite cut it

I had some people show their interest so here is what I suggest
The futon-couch move to the SSFFS library (it's possible new home) - thursday right after lunch
This will need at least 3 people myself not included. Otherwise we can't move the couch

Box move to the Ziskind basement - Friday afternoon
I will try to keep it to less than ten boxes.
This means that if 3 people show up on friday there will be 3 trips up and down for each of us, if 4 show up only two trips...

I am willing to double bribe (ie. show up both days and get 2 rolls of sushi)
If you know anyone not on f-list who might want to help for sushi please tell them about this.

Thanks

The last few days I have felt stressed, and I don't really have a reason to. Unlike everyone else I had hell week last week and thus this is calm in comparison, but I sat down and thought about it and here are the likely causes for my stress.

People around me being stressed - oh yes, high up on the list this one. Sadly it is not something I can do something about, however it is something that affects me. The people I know react to stress in very different ways, some shut themselves off from the world and others get aggressive or grumpy. I am a person who is often described as being very in tune with other people and their feelings, so when people around me feel a certain way for a long time, chances are I'll get that too... Nothing I can do something about, but if I can reduce the other stressful things I should be doing well.
Clutter - My room is a super mess and I am wondering how I am going to get it all packed down. So I will clean my room, all before SSFFS senior banquet and that should be solved
Grades-I am doing badly in physics. But well in my other 3 classes. However I can't fail another class
Summer housing - I have not heard from the housing office, I'll be better once I know if I got a place to stay this summer or if I have to couch surf
All the little things I have to have done - I will work on this
Library Keys - Seems like a silly thing, but I would really like to have access to the library over summer.
Things I keep forgetting - my ex-roommates's birthdays, picking things up, dropping things off etc. fucking annoying

So last year I offered sushi/icecream/coffee to people willing to help me carry boxes down stairs to the trunk room. I ask for the same assistance again. Help me carry 2-4 boxes and get a roll of sushi (or an ice cream or a coffee). Probably next Friday but I am willing to change the day if it works better for people

comment if you are interested