Time Sinks

Guiltily, I’ve realised it’s been almost a month since I last posted. My bad, I keep saying I have no time, but really I could have more time if I just organised things a little better. Unfortunately, that takes energy, and that’s something I don’t have a lot of at the moment.

Sort of brings me onto the title of today. Everyone has a limited amount of time and energy, and sometimes (like it has been for the past while) my cap is lowered due to my anaemia. And whilst naps are delicious, it means that I’m not doing other things.

So what have I been up to lately?

Well World of Warcraft: Legion got released on the 30th August. After waiting in all day for amazon to deliver my collectors edition (I’m a sucker for the art books), I got it, and I haven’t really stopped playing it since. Well, there’s been food and sleeping, but I took a week off work so that I could play it, and it was so worth it.

Trying not to spoil anything whilst still enthusing: This expansion is about the return of the burning legion to Azeroth, and so we’ve gone back to the Broken Isles where they first invaded 10,000 years ago, and that’s the home place of the Highborn (elves) and druidism. As someone who plays a Night Elf druid, I have been hyper about this for a while, and playing it has absolutely lived up to my expectations. The lore and the quests have had me amazed and tearful at times, but really, it’s an amazing expansion, and the first raid is going to be The Emerald Nightmare, something I have been waiting YEARS for. That, and the artefact weapons are really, really cool. I love how they’ve implemented them.

So that took up a week. And then I managed to pick up an infection, so I was ill for some days, got dragged to the doctor by my boyfriend (i’m one of those people who’s really resistant to going to doctors, although I have no idea why, they’re actually quite lovely), diagnosed and given antibiotics, and then I spent a week off work being ill and having side effects. I mean, I could still play Legion, but that was about the only good thing. And I watched a lot of daytime TV.

One bad thing, because the illness took a lot out of me, I didn’t end up going to the last Empire of the year. It was the right decision, and I know that I feel a lot better for having had a weekend of nothing rather than trying to push myself when I had no energy left, but still, it is the first time I’ve ever missed one.

Basically, now I’m back at work, and trying to pick up on all the things I’ve been ignoring (registered for my new uni year, paid my fees and chose my optional module yesterday, which felt good to have gotten done), and I’ve been reflecting on the last couple of weeks a bit.

Yes, I spent a lot of time on WoW, and no I don’t regret that, (being ill sucked, but what can you really do about it) but it does make you think – when you only have so much time and energy, how is it that we choose what to spend it on? I had a lot of things I could be doing, but mostly I want to play the new expansion, so I did, to the exclusion of a lot of other things. It is a huge time sink. I also find that when I watch TV, I end up watching more than I planned to, and suddenly three hours have gone by. I’ll be listening to a new tune I’ve just put on my music player, and then suddenly it’s 1am and I should have gone to bed an hour ago. Stuff like that.

Maybe it’s because I know I was ignoring a lot of things that I’m having a bit of a weird brain loop thinking day today, but it is just something that strikes me. I have a lot of things to do, and I don’t always make time for them all.

In better news, I’ve managed to write 7,000 words over the last few days, so I’m catching up where I should be with the 365K challenge! Although I think I would do much better with everything if this hot weather would go away. Honestly, it’s an English September, it really shouldn’t be 27 degrees out.

Precious Time

So yesterday, around the time I had half an hour between coming home and starting the raid (2/7 Heroic, yes!) I thought to myself, it seems that I have very little time for stuff these days. I mean, all the activities that I do that take up my time are things that I want to do, but when do I actually have free time?

So I made a spreadsheet to work it out.

So the white space is time that I actually have free. I mean, the Orange parts, where I’m walking to or from work, or getting ready for bed, don’t take me the whole hour, so I have a little more time than represented. And of course some things, like LARP, roleplaying and tabletop don’t happen every week.

But it just made me think. On an full week I have 36 free spaces. And let’s be fair, being a lazy person I can spend quite a lot of those weekend spaces sleeping. I’s my one true vice.

The reason I’ve been thinking about this is that I’m currently editing my novel. Currently I am doing this with comments in the word document. But honestly? I really want to get out my highlighters, coloured pens, and start marking the paper copy I have printed out up. I just really want to feel the paper and pens in my hands. It’s almost like a craving.

However the problem with that is I need to be at home, with my folder and highlighters and pens. And from the graph above, you can see that it’s a bit of a rare thing. Admittedly, I could have done a lot more on Monday/Tuesday, but instead me and my boyfriend were playing Pokemon. He’s got Omega ruby, I’ve got Alpha Sapphire. We beat up the elite four and the champion. It was epic, but I digress.

Finding time to do things is hard. And given the past week, it is very easy for me to just flop on the sofa and then not get up again until bedtime (Being on a VLCD isn’t helping with energy levels either). What I need is a little more discipline to find the time, it’s the same thing as it was with NaNoWriMo. The work will get done when I make the time for it at home. This may mean I don’t get to read that book, or play Pokemon. But even if I can just squeeze in a half hour everyday, that’ll make a difference.

Of course it would make a big difference if I just did it on the computer, but considering I can’t have the food I’m craving at the moment, I’m in no position to deny this writing craving.

You’d think after finding the time to write a novel it would be easy to keep finding the time to continue and edit it. But apparently not. Oh well, I think I can squeeze in a hour before kickboxing today, and this weekend is looking rather clear as well. So if I can get my butt into gear, I should be able to get quite a bit done.

Warlords of Draenor

I have my collectors edition, and I have passed through the Dark Portal opening zone.

Both are beautiful.

I am in love with Shadowmoon Valley already.

I know NaNoWriMo is still going on. But I already did 50K. I can slack off for a little bit, right?

Man, November is a busy month. How are the rest of you getting along?

Progress for the Sake of Progress

If you know what I mean by the title, you just might be doing Camp NaNo, or some other project similar to it, as well.

Camp is progressing, although I have hit a stumbling block. Partially because I have been doing the smae thing over and over and I need variety to keep me going, and partially because I have step a and step b and there’s a bridge between the two points that I can’t really figure out. But that’s plot for you. And this is the plot revision, so it’s got to make sense!

But, I’ll get there. Eventually. Once I get over this bridge it should pick up again because I know what I’m doing once I get to point b. And yes I could skip it, but then I’ll have to come back to it and I would rather get the hard bit out of the way and then have a nice easy bit as a reward then have to do the hard bit later.

Other things in my life are going well. Holiday (because working in education means I get 6 weeks off over the summer!) is progressing well, and I am doing things that I want to do, mixed in with small chores. Mum’s wedding is soon and I have my dress! It is so shiny, and lovely and I am looking forward to next Monday. It’s scary that it’s so close.

One thing I was going to do was apologise for not posting so much on the blog over the last week or so. I did a dragon’s post last thursday, and that’s been it for a while. This was because I was the other side of the country away from my desktop and then THINGS got in the way. Namely the novel, but really I should be writing everywhere.

But you know what? My stats are excellent!

I mean look at that! Today, before I even logged on to come and do my theme for today, I was at 40 views! And I’ve had 30’s and 20’s over the weekend.

I mean, compared to other people’s blogs that might not be much, but for my blog this is fantastic! And I haven’t been posting anything!

So I have no idea what’s going on there, but I am damn pleased about it, and I hope the people who have visisted enjoyed the blog 🙂

How are other people doing this summer? Work wise? Play wise? Heat wise? (I am dying a little in the heat, I will admit).

 

Dragons in Video Games

Video games are a fairly big part of the entertainment industry these days. And within them are a fair selection of fantasy games. And within that, are the dragons.

It may surprise you to learn that I haven’t played all the video games with dragons in them. In fact, the number of video games I have actually played is fairly small. More often than not it takes me years to get round to playing a game. I still haven’t played Mass Effect, for example, but I have watched my house mates play it, so I know the major story lines.

Oh, and just as a warning, some spoilers ahead. Just in case anyone else is worse than me when it comes around to playing games!

We’ll start with a game that I have played. Dragon Age. Now I have only played origins, but that very, very good. It’s an RPG game, where you play a character that become a grey warden for a reason that depends on your class and race as each one gets a different introduction chapter, which is really really cool. I went with a Dalish Elf Rogue, duel wielding swords. All of the stabbing.

For a game being called Dragon Age, it didn’t contain all that many dragons, but the title does make sense. The Darkspawn are rising again, with an Arch-Demon in tow, and they threaten to wipe out the human, elf and dwarven population unless the Grey Warden’s stop the horde before it gets going.

The Arch-Demon takes the form of a dragon, and he pops up in your dreams every now and again, because your a Grey Warden and you can sense these things. There are also a couple of other dragons around the place, and as befits them, they are super hard to defeat. In my play through the only one I did defeat was the Arch-Demon, the other ones were too hard for me when I found them. Maybe on another play through I’ll get to them.

The next game is one I haven’t played, but I did watch my partner playing through it. Dragon’s Dogma is another RPG where the dragon is evident right from the start. The first thing it does in the game, is called your character the chosen one, and then rips out your heart. Yes, it is a bit of an evil dragon. One of the main plots is to then find the dragon and get your heart back. No, you don’t die from having your heart ripped out. Well, you technically do, but then magic happens and you’re kind of fine. Fine enough to go on an adventure quest.

I quite liked this dragon because it was huge, and made no secrets about being evil and going on rampages, and it was terrifying in that opening scene. If a dragon is going to be a baddie, then it’s got to be a really scary one for me.

World of Warcraft, does indeed have dragons. These ones are mostly good and on your side, but sometimes they go a little bit mad and evil and you have to fight them as bosses. The dragons are split up into flights, which are based on their colour. Red, Green, Blue, Bronze and Black are the main dragonflights. There were others, but they are not as big, and have mostly dwindled away.

Each flight has their Aspect – the leader of the flight and the embodiment of what the flight stands for, as each one was given powers over an aspect of the realm:

• Nozdormu, the Timeless One, Aspect of Time, Bronze Dragonflight
• Alexstrasza, the Life-Bonder, Aspect of Life, Red Dragonflight
• Ysera, the Dreamer, Aspect of Nature, Green Dragonflight
• Malygos, the Spell-Weaver, Aspect of Magic, Blue Dragonflight
• Neltharion, the Earth-Warder, Aspect of Earth, Black Dragonflight

Neltharion later goes a little insane, as does most of the black dragonflight, and this forms most of the expansion of Cataclysm, as he takes on the name Deathwing and tries to cause a cataclysm to end the world. His the last big boss of the expansion, and I must say, fighting him with the other four dragon aspects on your side – it was epic.

Spyro is a game I vaguely remember playing in my childhood. I love the little purple dragon, since he was small but courageous, and there were elements of puzzles in the games. I got so stuck trying to find my way around certain areas of the map, it was great.

Of course I have to give mention to Elder Scrolls as well. Another game I haven’t played but do intend to get round to doing so in the future (maybe in those six weeks off I have coming up). Skyrim will be the one that I start on, and boy does that have a lot of dragons in it. The main character is even a Dragonborn – a man who was born with the soul of a dragon, and can therefore use powers known as dragon shouts to accomplish things others cannot. The most prolifiv of these being ‘Fus Ro Dah!’, the fling things across the map shout.

Dragons form a lot of the enemies, and they tend to turn up randomly and when you least expect it, giving you a nice battle for your life. They fly, breath fire, and generally are a bitch to kill, but when you do kill them, you as the Dragonborn, get to absorb their soul and power up. It’s almost like recycling. In a sense at least.

But it does looks amazing from what I have seen other people play of it, and it’s so open world that you can do whatever you want in whichever order, so I don’t even feel like anything has been spoiled for me. And the glitches can be hilarious as well.

Now I know that I haven’t covered every game out these with a dragon in it, but these are the ones which stand out in my mind, and this post is already rather long. So do you, my lovely readers, know of any games with dragons in them that you enjoyed playing?

Time

Time has become a valuable luxury for me as of late. I mean, I love this job and I’m actually shadowing and doing things and putting my name on the end of emails to the clients and things and it’s great. But Jesus my to do list just keeps piling up and I have a very active social life and all sorts of thing to do and arrrrrrrgh!

So social life, there’s a game on Monday, which this week was replaced with a birthday party of all you cane at sushi which was really quite brilliant. I ate sooooooo much. But it was good, although I didn’t have any other time because after we got back home I went straight to bed. yesterday I had to, well, not had to, but you know, really really should have so did, all the stuff on WoW that I hadn’t done in the previous week from the new patch stuff. So the new raid finder, and some of the daily quests, and the new world boss (boy was that a chore). Tonight is more WoW stuff since it’s raid night and there are new parts of raid finder. Tomorrow there is probably Tea and Typing, although I am checking that, but if there isn’t then that does give me a free evening, and I think Friday evening is free, and Saturday during the day is free, and during those times I need to work on my Empire armour, because that’s rapidly coming up and I need my costume to be made by then and hopefully all the things I’m getting from ebay will have come by then as well! Although it turns out that finding rabbit fur, fake or real, is actually quite hard. I want some to edge my hood in. But it’s not absolutely necessary. It would just be a nice touch.

But that’s the main thing that I need to do soon, my armour. After Empire I can start to make another list of to do things, which I am sure will get quite long, but there we go. Having no time at all is just making me appreciate the little free time that I do have, and my freaking amazing social life. I can  being doing activities every night of the week and have basically no free time and I still love it! I regret nothing. Having a job is great. Although my lunch breaks are something I do look forward to.

Day 28 — This year, in great detail

Well. This is not going to be in great detail at all. I keep telling you I have a bad memory, don’t I.

January onwards I was still at university, doing third year things like my dissertation and modules and things, although I only had one module plus other work, it was pretty sweet. I was still doing my blog back in January so there might be some things on there and…oh! Hey, I just remembered. Finally, a use for facebook timeline! Right, so looking back, I was blogging, eating sushi, and getting drunk at something. IoD was still really new at that point as well, so we were setting up things in that. Not much else.

February: There was snow, a friend was moving to another university and was horrified to discover they have no games society, so we suggested she start one. I was doing ref things for LARP, doing my dissertation in the library, went to Nandos at some point, bought plant vs zombies in a steam sale and went to Animus soc which was it’s usual fun self.

March: Lots more IoD and shopping for IoD. I really should stop shopping for characters. More essay writing, because 5000-6000 words is a hell of  lot for a scientist! The shipping wall was born and thus started a run of angst since I wasn’t allowed to see it. Went to Great Yarmouth with my dad, had the 24 hours roleplay and stayed up for 39 hours to enjoy it. Dyed my hair red, again. More dissertation (screw references!) which I actually finished this month and then even more IoD. I have an obsession with it.

April: More IoD, that’s just standard. Though there was that awesome comic Irina drew about us. We managed to kill deathwing in world of warcraft. Bad weather in england – shocker.  I finished university work and started preparing for exams and for some reason which isn’t explained my boyfriend was awesome.

May: Revision was the first thing this month! Followed by IoD of course, although there was that utterly annoying national plot in changeling. More classic british weather. Then i did my exams and was free of the education system. Then there was a birthday party.

June:  I was a bit ill, and I think there may have been some sort of national that happened, either tha or leading up to it. there was talk of requiem at least. Oh yeah, this was the month where there was that mouse in my toaster. I got rid of the toaster and refused to open the new one until we moved house. Moved house and everything was good, even though I hate packing and stuff.

July: Has a visit from a friend, there was summer time fun in the garden, found a hedgehog in the garage. graduated. That was a big thing. British summer hit and I started to melt. I went with ym boyfriend to meet his nephew for the first time, and got some incredible cute pictures.

August: I rediscovered scrambled egg on toast. Hmm, might have to go make now as that sounds delicious. Kept leaving my facebook logged in around my friends. Lost my purse, found ym purse, but then that started off the whole chain of having to replace my debit card. More IoD.  Had a birthday at which I got very drunk and passed the rule that I am never allowed to drink wine. Ever. Walking dead game started up. I started applying for jobs and job seekers, those little bundles of joy. Moved again in my current house which is full of lovely people.

September: Applied for a job tht was door to door sales in disguise and was not impressed, but at lest I got to play with kittens. Debit card arrived. Went to my first adult event when two of my friends got married. It was an amazing wedding. Also went to her hen party before the wedding. Cineman doughnuts are delicious. There was a new expansion of WoW and I played the crap out of it, still am. And then there was the best shades downtime forever.

October: More job searching, job seekers and IoD in general. A good day happened as well, which was a surprise at the time. Apparently a rather boring month other than that, so I have to suppose that I was playing a lot of WoW.

November: Fireworks and NaNoWriMo started November. There was a lot of shades thing going on around the game.  More IoD and a day out in London with my mother which was awesome and amazing and I discovered tapas. Had my first job interview, which I didn’t get, but the interview was good experience. Broke my laptop and then got a netbook from a friend which I fixed up with help from my housemate. Well, he did most of it actually. NaNoWriMo was great as well, I won this year.

December: Christmas thinking, I learnt to knit to knit my presents for this year and broke reality by knitting a Möbius strip. Yeah, I’m not sure how that happened either. Did a christmas spring clean and realised that my housemates manage  to shove a lot of crap under the sofa’s, although I too m guilty of that. Went home for christmas, decorated the christmas tree, bent a spoon with my mind (and a mixer). Had about four roast over the period of a week, watched Dr Who, and cleaned out my room at home.

So actually, with the help of facebook, I can tell you about my year in detail. 🙂

Day 27 — This month, in great detail

Hmm, well I can summarise a little I guess.

Early December I was doing much the same as I have been with looking for a job and then playing a lot of WoW. There was the tail end of term, so a requiem game, and other tabletop games happened.

I went home for Christmas, met up with the family and new family (my mum has a new partner and I was meeting my potential brother in law for the first time) and had some fun times. Met up with my friends on christmas eve and we did our secret santa thing. Then christmas, with presents and everything eaty. Boxing day was pretty relaxing. Day after we did Dad’s side of the family, then there was some cleaning of the room, then a spa day before I headed back home for a new year’s christmas party.

Back in Norwich there was an awesome new years party, then some more job searching since I had my meeting on the 2nd, and then there has been some tabletop gaming, some socializing, more jobsearching, and the usual faf that fills my life these days.

That’s my last month of so. Christmas was awesome though.

Day 26 — Your week, in great detail

Aw man, remembering? At least it’s a freaking sunday.

Monday: Fairly boring day as I recall, coming down from the IoD high of the previous night, played some WoW, oh went out to the university and got to talk to some people about things that needed doing, like getting on the temp register, baked some cakes for out GM for the game that evening and then attended our Mirrors game.

Tuesday: Did some things on the internet. Did some more things on the internet. That’s about it.

Wednesday: Raid day! Lots of WoW, found out I have an interview! Which was good, unfortunately depression hit and I spent most of the day in a flump.

Thursday: More flumping!

Friday: I described in great detail already. See previous post.

Saturday: Got up rather late, again, as I am bad at getting up at the moment, and someone came and knocked at our door. It’s not like I was properly sleeping until 3pm, but getting out of bed seemed like a bad idea. Then I did get up, had a shower, put my things together for Requiem that evening, spent some time on the internet working out what I needed to bring since I was hosting the event with other people, then spent some time making Darkmoon Fair cards so my Monk could have a relic (yes this is WoW talk) and then it was time to go to Requiem. Hop in a taxi, say hi to the wargamers, go get food, come back and start setting up for the game. Game happened! Oh my god it was good, there were changelings in my vampire game. Then back to Ellie and Robin’s for after game talks which was awesome and went on until like 4am, it was insane. Then came home back to bed and somehow end up at Sunday through the magic of sleeping.

It’s been a flumpy week. Also my memory is bad past about yesterday.

Day 18 — Whatever tickles your fancy

Hmm, this is a bit open ended. Well, since I;ve been playing a lot of wow yesterday, and in general, I’ll find a screenshot for you.

So this isn’t my main character, but this is the cutest. This is my low level goblin, Neverlone, surrounded by turtles :)I like turtles, as anyone who knows me will know.

This is my main character, a night elf druid called Leraa:

She’s the one kneeling down with white hair, in the middle. This is just after our guild killed Deathwing, the end boss of Cataclysm. It was great.

I don’t have a screen shot of my alt, my warlock. Ah well, I shall have to get one in the future.