Yesterday we went to the Lourve.
I’ll pause for a minute to let that sink in.
The Lourve is big. By big I mean massive. By massive I mean gi-fricking-normous. By gi…you get the idea. Much walking was done. Our legs and feet were still sore and tired from the Day of Stairs so we managed to stumble through the Lourve, stagger outside, and sit down going “boy, my feet hurt.” We did get to see the Mona Lisa and I now have a costume idea if only I can find some thin, supple leather and learn how to press designs into it. For those of you of the more perverted bent (ie: most of you), get your minds out of the gutter. 😛 I’m going to try to make a Roman-style warrior costume patterned after the painting “Minerva.”
One cool thing about going to the Lourve was getting to ramble on about Greco-Roman mythology. Hey, I spent four years getting a degree in history and a minor in Classical languages. I spent an entire year in high school translating Ovid’s Metamorphoses. I have earned the right to brag about my knowledge of such things.
Today we’ll be heading over to Versailles. Pictures from yesterday and today here: http://picasaweb.google.com/reggydejongh/StormcrowsVsParis#
Update Coming Friday
With Grog and Crit being down, I’ve not gotten as much chance to clear up the backlog as I wanted. I’ll be making the next update to Alayne’s Story on Friday and I’ll try to spend more time on it Saturday and Sunday to get caught back up to the point of where two five-page postings a week won’t cause me a problem.
Stormcrows vs Paris (Day 2)
Yesterday we had a lot of fun with stairs. My legs still hurt. 😉 We decided to go see Sacre Coeur over in Montmarte.
There are a lot of stairs to get up there.
After that, we headed over to the Arc de Triomphe and proceeded to go up to the top of it. 284 stairs. By the time we got down, we were all pretty worn out. We walked down the Champs d’Elysses and got some drinks, sat for a while until our legs weren’t shaky, and then came back to Bourg la Reine for supper. After supper (and washing up) we headed back into Paris to see the Eiffel Tower at night. We decided not to climb the stairs there and came back home (well, it was creeping up close to midnight, too). 😉
Pictures here: http://picasaweb.google.com/reggydejongh/StormcrowsVsParis#
Stormcrows vs Paris (Day 1)
Grog and Crit arrived today. I went to pick them up from Gare du Nord. I actually made it to the Thalys line before the train got there so we missed the fun of playing telephone tag trying to find each other. We came back to Bourg la Reine and got them settled in to their hotel before heading back to my place for lunch. I knew, even though they had lunch on the train, that they were going to be hungry again when the smell of macaroni and cheese and roast beef hit them so I made plenty for everyone.
After lunch, we went into Paris and did a bit of sight-seeing. We went to the Luxembourg Gardens first. They really seemed to like it there. I showed them the Fountaine de Medicis where I used to read and feed the ducks. We looked at the statues of the queens of France and saw all the pretty flowers. We sat there for a while, just relaxing and enjoying the scenery. We’re definitely going to go back there and have a little picnic lunch. I’m hoping my husband can join us. After that, we walked down Boulevard Saint-Michel to Notre Dame. We stopped and saw the fountain at the place de Saint-Michel and then crossed over the quai to the church. There was a mass in session when we got there so we had the fun of seeing the processional start. 🙂 We went into the Treasury and saw all the cool stuff back there and walked all through the church. We wanted to go up to the top but by the time we were done, they had closed that off for the day. We’ll go back another day and see it.
We sat outside for a bit, our feet all hurting from all the walking we’d done. We came back home, picked up my husband, and went out to this great Morrocan resturant nearby. After we stuffed ourselves on food, I took them back to their hotel. Tomorrow, they’ll come over again and we’ll hang out for a bit before deciding what we want to go see. We’ll probably try to go to the towers of Notre Dame if we can and may go see the Eiffel Tower in the evening when it’s all lit up. I think we’ll hit the Arc de Triomphe as well and walk down the Champs d’Elysee and the Champs Mars.
Pictures coming soon. 🙂 It’s so cool to have my guildies here!
Edit: You can find the pictures here: http://picasaweb.google.com/reggydejongh/StormcrowsVsParis#
Latest Update Posted
I’ve just posted the latest update to Alayne’s Story over on the WoW-Europe RP forum. I’ve been slacking a bit in my writing lately having to juggle too many projects (poor time management skills on my part, really). I’m only 20 pages ahead of where I’m posting. I’ve got next week off but Grog and Critic are coming down from the Netherlands to visit me so it may be a fair bit of work for me to get back on target. Starting next week, my weekly page count added will be 15 pages instead of 5. I’m a little ahead already this week and am hoping I’ll have the energy to crank out three pages tonight after the Ulduar run.
At any rate, I hope everyone’s enjoying the updates. I had a hard time re-outlining things to take into account events playing out in Wrath of the Lich King that I wasn’t aware of until the latest patch. At least it gives me more material to work with. 🙂 I had been afraid that Part III would wind up being much shorter than it’s currently arced to be.
Work on The Unexiled continues apace. Jesus, I almost wish I could quit my real job and just write all the time. I enjoy it so much but I feel like I have so little time to do it lately. Any rich readers out there who could afford to pay me €30,000 a year just to sit at home and write? 😉 Kidding, but man…a girl can dream, can’t she?
Yay!
My guild just finished our first Ulduar run this week. We got Flame Leviathan, XT, Razorscale, Kologarn, and Aurianya down. We gave up on Iron Council and will start with them on Friday. This is the first time we’ve been able to get so far into Ulduar on the first night. Here’s to hoping it’s merely the first of a trend. 🙂
Next week, there probably won’t be any Ulduar runs. Grognak and Critic are coming down here to visit me so the three of us are out. That leaves them short one maintank, one healer, and one DPS/tank. Aereli, another healer, is going out of town as well so they’re down two healers. The only other tank they could take, Aichylos, doesn’t have the gear for Ulduar yet. He’s switched from DPS to tanking and still needs upgrades from Naxx 10 for his tanking set. I’m hoping that enough people from the guild help him next week so that he can get Naxx 10 cleared and, if the RNG is kind, get some good upgrades.
We’re so close to having a second ten man group that I’m starting to get cautiously optimistic. If we can find two or three more dedicated raid healers, one more serious-not-an-asshole raid tank, we should have it. That’ll save us all a lot of headaches since right now, the biggest issues in our guild are people QQing about having to sit out Ulduar raids.
Ah well. Here’s to hoping. 🙂
Geralin the Diplomat
It took me a while but I finally finished the rep grinds for The Diplomat title. Since I’m bored with running heroic dungeons and we’re only raiding a few nights a week, I spend my days doing dailies and rep grinds. I’ve managed to get exalted with 29 factions (currently working on Consortium now). I’m debating going after “The Insane” title just because it describes me so well.
And, I’m finished with this week’s updates. 🙂 Yay! That means I can get some extra pages in for next week.
Lastest Update Added
I’ve just posted the latest update to Alayne’s Story over on the WoW-Europe RP forum. Now that the Battle for Undercity is over, it’s time to start looking at the ramifications of the Forsaken’s choice to fight in the battle without calling on their allies. Some of the things that come about as a result of this decision and of the battle itself will play out through the entire rest of the story.
Also, we get to see Callie’s last name for the first time (Morton). 🙂
And now to get cracking on the rest of this week’s work.
Raid Drama Redux
Well, our PuG managed to clear Naxx 25. We one-shotted everything up to Kel’Thuzad, wiped twice on him but managed to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat on the third attempt. Thanks to everyone who came, was on time, and helped us clear this dungeon.
And, speaking of being on time: if you /w me at 13:59 for a raid that starts at 14:00, don’t bitch when I tell you “the raid is full.” Even if you did come on Saturday, if I looked for you up until 13:45 and you weren’t online, I’m going to assume you couldn’t make it. Especially if you did not tell me you were coming. Now, once I’ve told you “I’m sorry, the raid is full. We looked for you but didn’t see you and you didn’t say anything to us so we went on,” don’t keep /w’ing me QQing about it. I will ignore you for a while but if you keep it up, I’ll add you to my /ignore list and put your name down on my “don’t invite” list. Seriously: if we say “the raid starts at 14:00,” that means you need to be logged on before then.
Meh. Stupid people are stupid. I probably would have been better about the whole thing if that guy hadn’t kept it up and if I hadn’t managed to pull a whole friggin’ shelf down on myself while cleaning my apartment this morning. I managed to bruise myself up pretty good, twist my ankle, bang my head, and create a bigger mess than the one I was trying to clean. Go me. It scared the shit out of my downstairs neighbors, too. He came running up the stairs and started buzzing the doorbell and banging on the door, afraid I was being attacked or something (there’s a “zone sensible” not too far from us). I managed to crawl out of the mess and tell him “no, I’m a klutz.” He stayed and helped me get the shelf back up and offered to take me to the hospital if I needed it. Since nothing was broken or bleeding, I told him I’d be fine, finished cleaning, and then dug my painkillers out of the medicine cabinent and proceeded to go raid lead my Naxx 25 run. Now I’m relaxing on the couch, comfortably buzzed from pain-meds, and am working on the next updates to Alayne’s Story and The Unexiled. If I can keep up the workload, I might actually finish The Unexiled by the end of the fall. I hope I can find an agent to help me get it published. I’m pretty excited about it.
Stormcrows Naxx 25 PuGs and Loot Drama
I’m one of my guild’s raid leaders. Okay, actually, I’m the one who generally has to organize the 25 man pugs we run in Naxx on Saturdays and Sundays. I enjoy doing it but it is a lot of work. Yesterday, we had these two morons in our group who acted as if the dungeon were going to disappear after the run and they’d never get their lewts.
Fastest way to get on my nerves? Loot drama.
I run the pugs because I enjoy giving people who might not get a chance to see the 25 mans a chance to get in there. I’m there to have fun and see the encounters. Getting nice gear is a bonus but it’s not the primary goal. I cannot stand people who come on these runs and ruin it for everyone by trying to get every last piece of gear for themselves. That’s not fair to the others who come. That’s why we have a rule: one need roll per raid. If you’ve won something and someone else wants something you’re rolling for afterwards, it might go to the other person if they’ve not won anything. The goal is to let everyone get a chance to walk out of the run with a good drop. The goal is NOT to gear up one or two characters in full 25 man gear in one go.
The end result of yesterday’s drama was two names added to our “never invite” list. That list has several names on it now. Those people will not be coming on anymore of our runs. And, since our runs are getting to be fairly well-known, it’s just going to work against them in the long run.
Ah well. Just needed to vent about that for a bit. Now time to grab some lunch before I have to log on and put together today’s run.