New Year's Weekend

Bringing in the New Year
We spent New Year's Eve at the in-laws' new house in the country. It was insanely cold that night. We had a low key celebration by breaking in their fire place and playing with the baby. A nice way to bring in the New Year.

Then back home and more WoW.

Dailies
I finally figured out how to open up the Oracles dailies. So, now I'm working on getting to Exalted with them so I can get that egg. It's going to take a while, as I'm only 1/2 way to Revered at this point.

Still no mount on the Hyldnir dailies.

Reached revered with Sons of Hodir, so I now have a Mammoth mount. It's huge and doesn't fit through doorways, but it's still a lot of fun to ride. :-)

Achievements
I got a few achievements this weekend. The mammoth mount was one. The others were all instance related. At some point I'll go back to the old world instances and get those, but I'm too motivated by rep and emblems of heroism right now to leave Northrend.

Raids
Tried each night to go back to Naxx, but could never get a full group. Hopefully we'll do better this next week.

Guild
Lots of guild runs this weekend. Holiday weekends are good for that. I'm glad my guildmates are finally reaching high levels so I can run with them. As much as I enjoy PuGing (yes, I really do enjoy PuGs), I prefer going with my friends.

Speaking of my friends, I need to vent about something. We had the usual loot problems this weekend. Not the problems that other guilds have, but those that seem to be unique to my guild. Several of my guildmates are passive aggressive martyrs. Instead of following standard loot rules of "Need on items you need, pass if you don't (or Greed, if we don't have an enchanter in the group)", they greed on items they actually need. This is especially problematic when we have an enchanter in the group because he is always greeding for DE purposes. What this means is that the passive aggressive martyrs often miss out on loot that they could definitely use. The enchanter gets it and he DEs it. What a friggin waste.

Don't get me wrong. I'm all for DEing the items that aren't upgrades for anyone. What annoys me about all this is the behavior of those who are greeding instead of needing. They then later complain about not finding any good gear and finding the content difficult. Grrr... I have to take a deep breath and let them play how they want to play, to not let it bother me. But, I honestly worry about what's going to happen when we hit heroics. They're going to be undergeared and they're going to not be aggressive about getting the drops that they should rightfully get, further gimping our progression.

It's just a game. It's just a game. It's just a game. It's just a game. It's just a game.

Honestly, there's a part of me that is sad about the rest of the guild reaching 80. In many ways, PuGs are easier than guild runs because of the loot antics and other things. Had we all leveled at the same rate, I can guarantee I wouldn't be as geared as I am now. Because they would be holding me back. I was lucky to hit 80 first and to be able to PuG with some great players with great equipment. I feel like a hypocrite when I say that. I truly do love my guildmates. So I'm torn between my desire to progress and my desire to hang out with them. I have to find a healthy balance for myself.

I rank!
I just found a new site today called Warcrafter.net. For each server it lists the guild ranking and invidual player rankings. I filtered my server by priests and I see that I rank 45th of all the priests. I'm pretty proud of that! :)

December 29th, 2008

Dailies
Last night I spent most of my time on my priest. I did several dailies, including the couple that could lead to the White Polar Bear mount -- no luck.

Heroic Nexus Pug
I also did a PUG Heroic Nexus run. It was a mess from the beginning. The main tank and his RL brother (dps druid) were AFK at the summoning stone for what seemed like forever. I did the "harpoon the drake" daily while I waited. I was about to leave when they finally came back.

No apology, no explanation.

We got inside and the MT's computer crashed. A couple more minutes...

We got to the first boss in the hallway, the guy who whirlwinds everyone to death. Suddenly my mouse started giving out. I could barely get my healing spells off. Interesting thing was...despite many spells never actually casting, I healed fine. Makes me wonder if I generally over heal. I'll have to experiment a little more with that.

Anyway...after rebooting and getting my mouse problems "fixed", we did the second boss -- the one who currently drops the santa hat -- then went on to the tree boss. My mouse died again, but I still healed fine with no deaths. Miracle of miracles.

After that...the MT's computer died. We waited for about 5 minutes while his brother explained what was going on. But, I decided to bail. It was the slowest PUG I've ever been on, due to external factors. Computer and mouse problems are forgivable. But general AFKness with no apology or explanation -- rudeness to the extreme.

WoWHead Client
Besides that, I installed the WoWHead client last night. I figured I use the site so much, I might as well contribute to it.

Guild Stuff
Nothing happened in guild...really, nothing at all. Only 4 of us were on and no one was interacting at all. Slow night overall.