All That and a Cold Wet Nose

Haven't been playing in a while. Landed in the hospital a couple of weeks ago, and then last week the Baby Tank had surgery. No playing means nothing WoW-related to talk about, so there's been no blogging either.

Hoping to get back in the saddle soon, but in the meantime, here's a pic of a puppy:

He's the newest addition to the Aggro Junkie family. Going to pick him up on Wednesday.

Talk at you soon.

Resurrection or Redemption

It's been a long time since I've posted something here. It's been a long time since I've really wanted to.

As we all know, real life has a tendency of getting in the way of our best laid plans. I had every intention of taking my new guild as far into the endgame as I possibly could, documenting our triumphs here. Haven't done either.

Had every intention of leveling a couple of alts to 80. Only managed 70.

Had every intention of being a good guild master. I've barely been online.

H1N1 made its way through our house, we're preparing for a surgery for the Baby Tank, we've had endless drama surrounding a family member and a custody battle, and I've been trying to balance all of that family stuff with work...both my day job and my other job.

Most nights, I don't have the energy to log in. Even some weekends. This past weekend, for example, once I got all the real life stuff out of the way there wasn't anything left in the tank (no pun intended).

I'd like to get back online and playing with some degree of regularity. I've already told my guild that I will likely not be raiding, but in reality I've completely let them down because I haven't even been available..

Bottom line: you can't run a guild if you're not in-game.

Should probably just do what's best for everybody and turn it over.

Broadening Her Horizons - Part III

I decided that, while I wanted to expose the Baby Tank to all of the tank classes, Death and Decay, Desecration, Blood Worms, and Ghouls were a bit much for a three year old.

So here's a picture of her wearing a cute hat and playing in the yard.

/target Readers
/cast Lazy Blog Entry

Catching Up

Big, big weekend for EoF.

Friday night, Cheesi and I had to run the Baby Tank to the hospital. Due to her hydrocephalus (common with spina bifida) she has a shunt that drains the excess cerebrospinal fluid from her skull to her abdominal cavity where it's reabsorbed into the body. We've been blessed so far, but shunts do malfunction and get infected.

So, anytime BT spikes a fever and we're not sure what's causing it, we have to go to the ER. They ruled out shunt problems, strep, and a urinary tract infection (common because she's catheterized) and sent us home assuming it was likely a simple virus. She's doing much, much better now.

While Cheesi and I sat in the hospital, Echo of Fate ran into OS and took down Sarth with 1 drake up. They then knocked out both bosses in VoA.

Saturday night, we flew through the Arachnid and Construct Quarters of Naxx. Sunday, we went back in and cleared Military and dropped Noth. Really, the only fight we had a problem with, aside from one wipe on Grobbulus due to a little miscue, was the Four Horsemen. We banged our heads up a against that one for a while until we could get the best strategy for our group and coordinate it properly. If my memory isn't failing me, I believe we one shot everything except those two fights.

We extended the raid lockout on Naxx to knock out the other four bosses this upcoming week. I really want to get to Sapphiron and start handing out EoE keys to as many people as possible so we can get that one off the progression chart and then start farming it without having to worry if we've got a keyed person online.

We have a number of people who are geared for at least Ulduar 10, so I think, as long as we stay diligent and keep up our momentum, we may just start to catch up to the rest of the field as far as the 10-mans go.

Broadening Her Horizons - Part II

I enlisted our second child's help in demonstrating the abilities of another tank class to the Baby Tank.

See those, Kiddo? Those things are why Daddy says bad words when he fights Paladins in battlegrounds.

Broadening Her Horizons

I'm raising the Baby Tank to understand the ways of the Protection Warrior, but I believe it's important to expose her to the other tank classes...sort of a tank rumspringa, if you will.

Tonight, she learned about Druids.

Behold the power and majesty of Bunny Form.

Baby Tank Says

Go here.

You must obey Baby Tank.

Baby Tank

I do my best to only post RL items as they pertain, directly or indirectly, to WoW. That being said, though, I wanted to introduce all of my readers to someone I've mentioned before...the Baby Tank.

This picture was taken this past Saturday on my cell phone (forgive the poor resolution). We were taking the Baby Tank to see Sesame Street Live, and this was her first opportunity to really show off her brand new epic ground mount to the outside world. It's sort of a modified Turbostrider.

She has spina bifida and hydrocephalus and has had more surgeries in her almost three years than most adults I know. I call her the Baby Tank, even though her Mom's a militantly proud Rogue, because of her ability to bounce back from any surgery, even the most invasive, quickly and with a big smile on her face.

Bottom line, the kid's incredibly smart, healthy, social, beautiful, and always happy. She's tough as nails, this one, and an inspiration to me and just about anyone she meets.

Once in a while, she'll sit on Daddy's lap and help him "beat up some bad guys" while he's logged in. When she sees Mis on the computer screen she yells, "There's Daddy!"

After her third birthday I'll start teaching her about threat mechanics and a proper tanking rotation.

Sons of Oh Dear

As in "Oh Dear, another rep grind."

Last night our guild went to VoA. I received an invite, but was forced to decline because I was babysitting the Baby Tank and our neighbors' kids.

Our other three kids are out of town for spring break. Had that not been the case I would have drafted our oldest (who plays WoW once in a great while and understands that purple loot is wicked cool) to help out while we ran the instance. Now the Baby Tank is surprisingly low maintenance for a 2 year-old, but our neighbors have a 3 year-old son who, by contrast, is not.

When I used to lead raids I had a macro on one of my action bars that said "AFK...kid stuff" and flagged me as AFK. When you're the raid leader you can get away with that once or twice, but when you're the lowly OT you're asking to get kicked out of the raid.

So, as a result, I decided to work on opening up the Sons of Hodir rep. It's much easier questing when there are small children running around than trying to hold aggro on something.

It's not a terribly bad quest chain to get to the point where you're earning rep with them, but I know after doing the dailies for a while (and being repeatedly called "little one") it's going to get really annoying.

WTB Sons of Hodir tabard. Of course it would probably be way too big for me.