Bargaining Already?

It's day four of NaNoWriMo, and I am already resorting to bargaining to get myself to do my writing. As of right now I have written 4,540 words. I promised myself that if I made the day three word count goal (5001 words) and did my homework before going bed tonight I would buy myself the Celestial Steed for WoW. I will finally have my sparkle pony. I submitted my homework over an hour ago, and I've been writing pretty steadily since (except for the break I'm taking to write this).

I was directed to this forum thread by a friend and I think that it will be what gets me through NaNoWriMo this year: http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/node/3737543. I've scrolled through the first two pages and owe over 7k words. It's helped me write 1-2k already tonight. Writing 100-200 words at a time definitely makes it more managable.

This thread is also very cool: http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/node/3821427.

EDIT (12/16/2010): I did do the writing and but myself the sparkle pony. My priest rides it everywhere because it looks so cool in shadow form. My warlock chooses to ride her Dreadsteed instead and I haven't played my druid or death knight to see if they'll be riding it.

Loremaster Update 01

Gnavie completed the achievement "Loremaster of Northrend" last night.

I also remembered my great disgust for Icecrown. So many group quests. I got my ass kicked several times and I had to pick carefully to avoid as many group quests as I could (because there were so few people willing to help).

NaNoWriMo 2010 Version and Loremaster

The NaNoWriMo website has been reset for 2010. The forums are new (but definitely not neglected, it's only been aday or two and already there are threads everywhere) and everything looks all shiny and pretty. It's almost NaNo time!!

I've decided to attempt the Loremaster achievement on Gnavie. She's completed two zones in Northrend and will work through the rest of Nothrend and all of Outlands before heading back to Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor to finish up the achievement. I will post updates on her progress as I go.

Doodlegazing in Azeroth

I've done a bunch of puttering around WoW today. I played a bit on the warlock I started on the PTR. I also tried to play a little on the copy of Aevelyn that I put on the PTR, but I kept getting booted off and having to relog. That got old pretty fast. I ran a random heroic on Gnavie and ran heroic Halls of Reflection. I really want the Shriveled Heart off hand that drops, but it hasn't dropped for me recently. It was a really smooth run though. I enjoyed healing it. I'd love to get Gnavie healing bigger things, like raids, but I get really nervous about my healing ability. I don't want to put her into an ICC (pretty much all that people run now for raids) and suck horribly. My gear score is also a problem. It's below 5k add on, and very few people will take me into raids with that. And getting badges two a day through randoms is going to take me forever to get any t10 pieces.

Back to WoW

It's been a while since I really played WoW. Night before last, though, I ran 25 ICC on my warlock. I did HM Gunship and got Nibelung. I've also been working Brewfest on my three 80s and today I finished it up and got the title on all three. I spent last night doing some farming ad flask making on my druid. I put the flasks on the AH and made about 350 gold very quickly. I did some more farming and made some more of the flasks that sold well, Endless Rage and Frost Wyrm, and stuck those on the AH as well. Now I'm working on leveling Inscription on my warlock. It's been at 100-something for far too long. I'd like to get it up to 450, so that I can use all the spare Adder's Tongue and Deadnettle lying around my banks and make some money. Also, not having to buy glyphs will save me a bit of money.

I'm A Dork and I Get Bored Sometimes

I'm A Dork. My druid has finally made it to level 80. I was so excited when she dinged last week, but then didn't get to play her at all over the weekend after. She's still wearing pretty shitty gear, but I think I'm doing okay as a healer. It's my first non-dps toon to make it to 80 (and my 3rd 80 total). I've healed all the lvl 70-80 instances (except for Halls of Reflection) on regular, and I've done all but three of them on heroic. I also healed the weekly (Razorscale) which was my first 10-man healed on the live servers. I know I need to spam run a bunch of heroics and get all the triumph gear I can get so that I can be in ICC soon, but I've been doing a bunch of dailies (and some TLPD camping). I'm only 1400 gold away from epic flying which would make dailies a lot faster. Also she's a flower picker and alchemist so it would make farming herbs faster too.

I Get Bored Sometimes. When I get bored I like to learn new things. The new thing I've decided to learn with this patch of boredom is ho to write shorthand. I've looked at a couple sites for shorthand and the one I've found with the most (and best) information is Pitman For Geeks. There is a lot of information there, but it's organized very well. The site is well written, and funny as well. For now I struggle through sounding out and using the write symbols for everyword (and putting the symbols in the right place is a little bit crazy). But I pick up codes fairly well and I've already started to remember a bunch of the consonants. It's going to be the many different vowel sounds and not spelling things "correctly" that will be the hardest for me. However, the idea of being able to write very quickly and concisely is a huge plus for me, at work and when doing crazy things like NaNo (and especially trying to fit in some NaNo writing on my break at work). 100+ words per minute? Yes Please!

If I ever get a new pen for my tablet I'll post some pictures of my shorthand, for now though it's probably best kept hidden in notebooks because I may be doing it so wrong that it could offend people.

On two other notes I think I may be getting an ear infection (I haven't had one since I was a kid) and Adobe CS5 (Photoshop in particular) looks super sexy. Erin showed me the following video yesterday: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NH0aEp1oDOI. It almost looks like easy mode for Photoshop, but I can see where using that tool and then tweaking that area even further will be really awesome.

Quick WoW Note

Aevelyn, my lovely destro lock hit 80 on January 30, 2010. I switched her to affliction to get better dps out of her, but with 3.3.3 she was able to go back to destro. She's not really amazingly geared, but she's been into ICC a couple times and can run any other raid that I feel like.

My DK,name-changed from Cylana to Melaenah, has been doing a lot of nothing. I got on her last week for the first time in a while and took a long look at her gear. Yeesh. It's not pretty. And I had thought she was well geared. It's going to take a lot of work and learning to get her back to being able to run raids. She's still a hundred or two points over hit cap.

Gnavie is my druid. I finally logged onto her again and switched her back to healing. Once I was able to get into groups for stuff other than the Orange Crystals side of Mara healing got a lot easier for me. I'm actually pretty good at it, but it scares me to think about trying to heal a heroic or a 10 or 25-man. She's 56 now and I was so excited to get tree form.

Erylie (name changed to Aerialynn) is my newest time drain. She's a level 21 gnome mage. I really like playing her, and she's easy to level (when I don't get called onto Aevelyn) because she's got three pieces of heirloom gear (chest, shoulders and a trinket). I've got a frost leveling spec for her and she holds her own in groups. Slow fall is a lot of fun. I've also been leveling professions as she goes which is considerably faster, easier and cheaper than leveling them at 80. She's tailoring and enchanting so that she'll be able to make herself some lvl 200 epics at 80 and get into the que for heroics. All I have to do is get her to 80.