Dogs and Their Humans

I have 2 dogs, a boy and a girl, both Rat Terriers. They are not scary by any means, 17 pounds each of tail wagging energy. The girl, Gaz, is very well behaved, but will always be walked on a leash. It makes me feel better to know that I have control. The boy, Gir, on the other hand is a work in progress. I know he has his issues but we work on them all the time. Passing dogs on our walk being the one that triggered last night's incident.

Normally, walking both dogs together isn't a problem, but for whatever reason, Gir managed to escape both leash and collar, to cross the street to say hi to a boxer and the woman walking the boxer. I wouldn't have panicked, but the woman immediately started screaming at me to come get the dog and calling me names for not controlling my dog. Really? I have no control over a dog that has managed to escape both collar and leash. In my panic I dropped Gaz's leash and headed over to get Gir back. Half way across the street I realized I had dropped Gaz's leash and went back to pick it up. By now the woman is in full screaming mode(Not helping one bit.), jerking on the poor boxers collar who is just trying to sniff Gir and flailing her arms about. I go to pick up Gir, but the boxer has managed to wrap one paw around his chest and does not want to let go. At this point I just want to slap the woman, but I don't, instead I start yelling at her. Yes, I know, not helping the situation, but I was tired and already stressed out from work. I get to yell some names back at her and carry Gir back home.

I really wish the woman hadn't freaked out. The boxer was fine, actually pretty calm, considering a little terrier ran up to it. It just frustrates and irritates me to no end that she just started yelling at me. I think I told her she should socialize her dog more, but I think what I should have said was that she needed more socialization. Oh well.

WoW Update

At the Argent Tournament, I now have exalted reputation with all the represented factions and I need about 3 more days to get all of the pets. Next I'll be working on the mounts. The gold is pretty good and I've only been doing the ones that get my the Champion's Seals so they go by pretty quick.

I got my Northrend Loremaster achievement last weekend and have begun to work on Outlands. So far, I've finished up the Nesingwary Quests in Nagrand giving me the Nesingwary Achievement, Nagrand quests and exploration are complete, Zangarmarsh quests and exploration are complete and Hellfire Peninsula quests and exploration are complete. I am working on Blade's Edge Mountains (BEM) quests and exploration and am a little over half way complete. I hope to complete BEM on Monday and start working on Netherstorm next week.

I've also been doing several of the smaller achievements as I get to them. I finally got the gold together to buy the Inscribed Kirin Tor Ring and have since rebuilt my gold reserves. I completed all the Timear Foresees quests and need 6 more of the Heroic daily quests to finish that out. I also completed the Northrend Gourmet Achievement.

We finally got a decent group together last night and made it through the first three bosses in Ulduar on Heroic. Yay! Hopefully the same group will be available tonight and we can get through Ignus and at least one other boss in the Antechamber.

Recently I pulled my druid out of storage and began levelling her up. She got stuck at 60 when WotLK came out. She's now 64 and counting. She's also my leather worker and skinner. Both skills are up to Outland levels as well. I'm getting her cooking up and I'll start on her fishing once she hits 80. Other than maxing out her professions, she'll always be just an alt and I won't go for any achievements on her. I hope to have her raid ready in a couple more months. I'll try and level her with another guild member at 70.

I also have a shaman sitting at 40. At some point this year I'd like to get her up to level 50. Then I can level her with a different guild member's shaman. I'm very excited about doing that.

A New Beginning

I suppose, when I started a blog, it was going to be just thoughts about my hobbies. I've realized I needed to put something more into it. I need an outlet for all my thoughts.

There have been several things going on in my personal life that has caused considerable havoc. The first happened at the end of January, beginning of February. My last remaining grandparent had a couple of massive strokes. It left my grandmother a shell. She can't do anything and is being fed through a tube in her stomach. I've been waiting for the rest of the family to decide that's its time to let her go and last weekend they finally made that decision. As far as I'm concerned she never came back into her body after the second stroke. Its been a long 6 months of family indecisiveness. The doctors tell us it will take anywhere between 1 and 3 weeks once they remove the feeding tube.

The second we had been planning since last year and that was to go to my cousins wedding in the UK and make a really nice vacation of it. We went and it was fabulous. But all the planning and then the trip itself caused no small ripple in my day-today schedule. I plan to share photos and my experiences in several subsequent posts.

The next is work itself. I work for the State of California. We are currently on 3 furlough days a month and the threat of a fourth come August. Normally, I work what they call a 9/80. this means 8 days of every 10 I work 9 hours, one I work 8 hours and the last I have off. With the furloughs in effect, managers in my department are considering putting everyone back on a regular 5/40 schedule and forgoing any alternate schedules since no one will be working any Fridays. I'm enjoying the time off but it does nothing for my morale at work. I'm already doing the work of a Senior position, but getting paid only for top Rank and File. The extra income would be good, but I'd like the responsibility more. As it is, I answer to several people, not just my official supervisor and I can't get anything done without all of their concurrence. Very frustrating.

So, in between all of this I work on things around the house or mostly play WoW. I've managed to really neglect the backyard. Being away from the garden for more than 2 weeks didn't help either. The weeds and grass are almost hip high. We've started a little on getting that under control. My knitting project is just a little further than where I left it after my vacation, so that's only been neglected for about 2 weeks or so. In addition, I had almost run out of yarn and needed to purchase a little more before I tried to finish it up. WoW, well, raiding has been rather lackluster lately, so I've been working on my achievements. I'll put up a later post on how far I've come.

My quest for achievements continues

I haven't posted in awhile. I've been busy. Way too much going on right now in both my personal life and at work. I've been working diligently on the Argent Tournament dailies. After the first round of 5 daily quests, you become a Champion of that reputation and can buy things from the vendors there. In addition it opened up another line of 5 daily quests for Champions. You can either choose a bag of 10 gold or a Writ that can be turned in for more rep. I've completed Iron Forge, Stormwind and Gnomeregan Exiles. I'm getting close with Darnassus, just a couple of more days. Items at the rep vendors includes a mount for the Tournament, a new mount for each rep, a tabbard and a pet to match the mounts. There are other things there but those are the items I'm looking forward to getting. It will take another 230 days of completing the dailies here to get all the items I want. Although the gold for completing the dailies is pretty good. I've got another month or so before I can get my Inscribed Kirin Tor ring (depending on how many extra dailies I do, I can cut this down).

We completed the Clossal Forge in 10 man Ulduar this weekend. We also got down the bridge guy and the lady with the panthers. We made a couple of attempts at Thorim. Ulduar is very difficult. Even the trash are like bosses and sometimes more difficult than the bosses.

I've been running some of our newer 80's through 10 man Naxx and learning to run a raid. That's been interesting. We ran up against a couple of walls, but everyone was willing to work through them and we made it.

Ulduar 3.1 patch dropped...

and I haven't looked up from the computer since. Bad, I know, but sometimes its necessary. The patch dropped last Tuesday and the instance server stability was non-existent. So, I wasn't able to get in to the new instance until Thursday when they did restarts. The patch included a new area in Icecrown called the Argent Tournament. Lots of new quests and additional World Event Achievements. One for the Argent Tournament and one for the Darkmoon Faire, although the Darkmoon Faire is currently empty, there's still tons to do for the Argent Tournament. I completed all the quests Tuesday night, so I was set up to do daily quests. Blizzard has set up a schedule so you can't blast through the Argent Tournament stuff. Its all based on doing daily quests. The first one took 3 days to complete to get you to the next level. The second step (I'll finish up today) is taking 5 days to complete. Tonight I'll find out what the next step is. In the meantime I'm racking up the Silver Covenant and Gnomereganreputation in completing the dailies. In theory I should eventually be able to get rep for all the main cities and factions represented at the Argent Tournament.

A new fishing daily quest was added in Dalaran which I'm enjoying. It gives some interesting rewards and an achievement for completing all four daily fishing quests. Also, they've added a mount that can be fished up very rarely, a turtle. I want one :P Blizzard is allowing fishing at any level anywhere in the world, what you get depends on your level. They've also allowed fishing in Wintergrasp. Yay! I can get most of the fish I need for fish feast all in one spot.

(There were many other changes made, but the above mentioned ones were the most significant to me.)

Red!

I'm putting aside my darker, winter lips and reaching for brighter spring-y colors. Today I rediscovered my love for MAC's Port Red. Yum! I even put on lip pencil to keep it in place and added a glossy layer with Posh Life. I went very simple with all my other make up. I keep looking for fun corals and lighter pinks for the Spring.

Gardening Woes

This weekend was so beautiful. Hubby and I took a peek out the window Thursday and found we had a lot of cleaning up to do. We neglected the garden all through the winter and now its a complete disaster.

So, Saturday started out with a quick trip to Lowe's for stuff to repair our sad excuse for a garden. We worked on the front first, clearing out weeds and cutting back the ugly ground cover/bushes installed when the house was built. We bought 2 flats of Ice Plants in various colors and spread them out through out the front flower bed. We also laid down a new layer of mulch/bark to cover the bare spots. DH put in a ring around the tree in the middle of the grass and added mulch to it.

We then moved to the backyard, where I proceeded to spend the rest of the time weeding. I only got the center patio and one raised bed done. DH was cleaning up the pond and took down the lattice from last years' attempt at beans and peas.

Sunday we got a little further, but were hindered by the full green waste bin. I managed to weed all of the pathways around the center patio, one and a half raised beds, and trimmed back the passionflower vine. It loves it where I planted it and threatens to take over the raised bed near it as well as anything else within a 10' radius. DH put in a new shepherd's hook for the two topsy-turvys we have planted with tomatoes. He repotted the indoor plants and put in a mulch ring around the dwarf orange tree. He also trimmed the pomegranate and we put in scotch moss under the pomegranate to help control moisture uner the tree.

After all that work, I discovered I had muscles that I had totally forgotten about. I was very sore Sunday evening and chose to do absolutely nothing but watch tv.