I like chocolate

Well, it's been a while and I've been busy!

I had my Death by Chocolate day finally



There was too much chocolate and not enough people, so I have a huge amount left over and I'm struggling to eat it. I had one chocolate bowl and I lost interest in the chocolate, which is what I found most disheartening about the entire day! Bek and I did make some very nice chocolate cocktails however!

I've also been baking some nice dinners- had my first roast ever. A roast chicken! I'll try to upload the photo soon- it looked and tasted really really great!

I've been offsite at work on a new project and it's funny how in Sydney, even the different areas you work in are quite distinct. Up near the financial sector near Wynyard, everything is just that little bit more posh. People dress better, look better, even maybe work better! It seems a lot more professional, but also friendly. I'm enjoying myself, but am looking forward to getting back to my work computers, my desk and the internet! I miss all my little odds and sods and the fridge and my mugs of tea at this new place, as well as all my normal work mate friends, but it's been challenging and interesting work-wise, so I'm happy. I've been pulling over 8 hour work days however, and it gets a bit tiring.

Just a short post today, cos I have to make it back to the offsite place now!

I like.. uh... you

This post should be titled more appropriately with "I dislike cars", but tradition and order and themes are very important to me, so I shall endeavour to stick with said tradition of "I like x" (where x = something).

Ok... so why do I dislike cars you may ask, well it's simple- I am in need of buying a new one and I have to make multiple decisions such as:

• new or second hand?
• model and make?
• colour (most important!)
• when?
• how?
• money- most likely will have to borrow money off my parents

There are many considerations, and I'll have to do the researching. Why is it that I can happily research for days at end for silly little things (today I was reading the history of the jedi and sith), but when it comes to something that's relatively important and that will actually impact my day-to-day living, it's too big and I'd rather pay someone else to do all the grunt work?

Laziness I suppose.

So I've got to buy a car since my one is worse for wear. I'm not going to do a trade in with it, so whichever car I buy, it's going to be paid for outright. I've already decided that I'm going to have to bite the bullet and borrow money from the parents, which'll put a strain on my income, but not as much as the bank would! I could even set up an automatic transfer every week of $100 or so to pay it back, which means it should only take me about 2 years to pay dad off if I borrow $10K. Ok, so money-wise I'm covered (if I add in all my savings that is). If I buy a new car, or any sort of decent car, I'll be getting comprehensive insurance, which I'm hoping will be slightly less ridiculously priced now that I'm 25. So... do I buy a new car? I'm leaning towards 'yes' if there is a good year-end run out deal. The car I'm currently thinking of is a Hyundai Accent (since I love my Excel) and the colour needs to be blue. I've looked online briefly, and an auto 5-door Accent will cost me at least $16K which is too much (unless I borrow more). But... I'm hoping my dad would be able to bargain them down to something reasonable. Surely there will be some sort of year end deals like $14,990 and no more to pay! (except that's probably for manual, which I suppose I could get used to driving... but I refuse to get 3 door- they're so inconvenient!)

I had a very nice family Christmas. The entire NSW immediate family all gathered at my parents place on Sunday. We played cricket, Who Wants to be a Millionaire, Trivial Pursuit: Star Wars, chatted, and most importantly, goo-gahed over the twins, who are the cutest little munchkins around! Jackson sat around banging on chairs and everything else- he didn't need to have his oxygen on which was great as well- made passing him around from person to person a lot easier ;-) Luca was running around everywhere, and especially liked being outside playing cricket with the boys. She took an immediate dislike to George however, and refused to go anywhere near him. She would often be smiling and laughing whilst playing, and would suddenly stop and look at G cautiously. It was quite amusing, but frustrating for G I'm sure! It's funny how kids can do that. I remember Amanda (my little cousin) would cry going anywhere near Joel, even though she'd be happy to point him out in photos and from a distance, she just seemed to be awe-struck when near him. So it was a lovely day.

Boxing day was spent with Angus and the best moment was sitting in the park at Burwood with the breeze and the sun, just relaxing. We also went to G and Bek's and saw the end of Lost, which was frustrating. So now I need to see Season 2! I also need more Season 2 4400 episodes since I've finished them all!

And now I'm off to lunch cos I'm hungry. It's so hot here today, even in my airconditioned office, that I'm worried what the weather outside is like. I would brave the crowds at Myer if it wasn't so hot, for I need to purchase a few things, but crowds, heat and sore foot make Michelle go something something ;-)

I like druids

Only a few more sleeps until Christmas! I'm not really as excited about it all as the exclamation marks would suggest however. This year, it just doesn't feel like Christmas at all.

I had a great session last night on WoW. Brond and his new Troll friend Arslan did an instance run of Ragefire Chasm that rocked. Brond got to get up close and personal with all the mobs in his bear form, although he would've preferred the cat form. The party mix was actually pretty good- druid in bear form as MT, Hunter for pulling and pet being next tank, Warlock for pulling as well as some spells, mage for DPS and a Priest to keep us all healthy. After our run, Brond and Arslan grinded for 60 quillboar tusks each, so in the end I think we ended up killing roughly 100 quillboar. If only I could skin em, I would've been in heaven! I'm slowly getting through all my Barrens quests and then have to decide if I go to Stonetalon Mountains, Ashenvale, Thousand Needles or make the zeppelin trip to the other continent. One thing is for certain though- I appreciate my bear form a lot more after last night, and I really love my cat form... after being a slow hitting, low DPS Priest, cat form rips through those kills like nothing else!

Kimbel from work has two sons that are very keen on WoW and he bought one of them the WoW world map coffee book which looks so great that I'm going to get one for myself, as well as buy it for Boy (on behalf of my parents). I'm doing that today and I'm really looking forward to opening up the book at work ;-)

My foot, was getting better... after my 2 days off (where I didn't do anything much but play WoW, watch all the tv series' that my brother had given me and start a jigsaw), my foot was feeling a lot better. But Wednesday I went for a 30 minute walk at lunch to pick up some things, and now it's back to hurting a lot. Not very happy, but hoping that over the Christmas break, it'll calm down again.

What else...? Nothing much has been happening lately. I'm really back into WoW and it's a lot of fun. I did some hard thinking about my life in general over the 2 days I had off as well and now I've just got to be good at keeping those resolutions. Call them new year resolutions if you will, and I'm hoping that I can pull them off and make myself a stronger individual.

I like candy canes

It's funny, but I really really do like candy canes. It's what I almost look forward to most at Christmas. We had my work Kris Kringle today, I got a really nice large scented candle. I got my KK mini bottles of liquers- baileys, bacardi, bundi and midori. They were really cute, and I know the guy really liked them. Let's hope he shares them with me! ;-)

I'm a bit annoyed with mehfew atm cos he's levelling so much more than me and he has heaps more time to play! I'm never going to be able to play steadily Brond AND Danae as I hardly have time to play either of them! Think of the rest XP! Think of the rest XP!!

Well.. that's really all I had to say. I really like candy canes- especially the large paduke poles... yum! They have to be mint candy canes though- not so crash hot on the other flavoured candy canes.

I like nights at home

Every night this week is booked up with something. I suppose it's a good thing, but all I want to do is eat the food I cooked on the weekend and sit and watch either Lost or play WoW. Alonzo will be worried what has happened to his buddy Brond! I try to think of the rest XP to cheer me, but I would like to play it more!

I've also been progressively getting tired-er cos I keep doing lots of things and then tumble into bed to get up in the morning to do all the things I meant to do the night before before tumbling into bed but I was too tired. (that's gotta be worthy of the worst sentences)

My sister enrolled the family into auditioning for Family Feud, which is held at Drummoyne this Saturday afternoon. I don't particularly want to go, but it seems the rest of the family is excited about it. I'm not sure how I'll be getting there- I might brave public transport- because I smashed my car and although it's still driveable, I really don't want to drive it around anymore :(

Good news however is that I have next Monday and Tuesday off! I don't think I'll be going away like I originally wanted, but I'm planning on putting my foot up (still quite sore) and doing nothing much.

Then it's Christmas! I can't believe how quickly it has come around this year! I feel like I'm unprepared, even though I've had all my presents bought for a few weeks now. Lots of things to do over the Christmas holidays, although I only have the public holidays off work, otherwise I'm working through.

I like Serenity

Dammit! I'm going to call it Firefly!

We started a new RPG campaign based on Serenity.

I'm posting my character description here:

Jhiki came from a wealthy family and went to top notch schools in a core planet. At an early age she felt drawn to being creative. It started with her brother's mecho (ie mechanical lego) set which she quickly adapted and created a walking, talking thesaurous raptor robot which would follow her brother and list synonyms to every word he said with a length equal to or greater than 4. She would also adapt and change all the household appliances which drove her parents mad so they tried to channel her creativity into more benign ways, ie painting. She enjoys painting, although when she moved out on her own, she took up metalworking and prefers that.

A natural linguist, she does not know any language extremely well, but has enough smattering of most languages to get by in most situations. It came in handy when she started hanging with the "in" crowd. After a few years of living easy off her parent's money and her paintings and metal art, she made an enemy. Jhiki refuses to talk about how and why, it is the only subject that she won't chat away for hours on and can become quite touchy. The enemy was powerful and within her set. It was becoming increasingly awkward for Jhiki to remain on this planet, or any central planet. After a failed attempt to blow up her art exhibition and after successfully destroying her apartment, Jhiki knew she couldn't stay. A friend offered to give her some money to transport out of the core planets and set up on a different planet and assume a new identity and live comfortably. Jhiki had different ideas. She didn't want to rust away on a frontier planet, especially as they wouldn't pay top dollar for her artworks, and may not even be interested in them. Walking around a dock one day, she fell in love with a ship and finding out that there were buyers needed, used all her money up in becoming a quarter partner in the Mosquito.

Her deadly enemy and her closest friends don't know of her purchase, nor where she is now. Most wouldn't consider that she travels on a spaceship as she's always had a terror of deep space since she was 9 (haha sorry couldn't help it!).

Jhiki likes working on board the ship, and found that her creative urges can be fulfilled by repairing and maintaining the ship as well as all the technical mechanical objects. She's since become a wizz at electronics and altering/creating technical objects. Feeling an integral member of the crew, Jhiki can say that she could live out the rest of her days aboard... as long as the portholes are covered. She still produces the odd artwork in painting or metal, and is learning a bit of medicine from the good doctor, so life is good.

I'm continuing to enjoy the RPG sessions. The people even came to my place last night as I have hurt my foot and couldn't walk very well. Stairs are a killer. Basically, I took a day off work to pick up Khanh from the airport (yay! K's back!!), but I also had my basketball grand final on that day, so Khanh very nicely agreed to come watch the game. It was probably the best game we've played- both teams were basically on par with each other, and it showed as at the end of full time, it was 15 all. A very low scoring game due to some great defense, lots of fouls and both teams sucking at actually getting the ball through the hoop. In extra time, however we managed to get 5 points whilst the other team scored nothing! We were very much elated! I got elbowed in the back of my neck as I was standing around the hoop trying to grab the ball from the other side, and my foot (arch) was kinda sore. I had a nice cool shower and Khanh and I headed off to meet Ian and have some lunch. The foot felt progressively sorer and by the time we got back to my place, I was limping slightly. The next day I could hardly walk and at work it started to ache and throb even though I had it up and I had put heat on it in the morning and tried to stretch it out.

So I decided to go see a doctor as knowing me, I could've slightly fractured it. Well! Dr. Dodgey lived up to his name and didn't even want to look at the foot, let alone touch it. It took four attempts at telling him that I was limping quite badly for him to even appear to believe me. Diagnosis: superficial strain, rub voltaren on it. I could've prescribed that myself! Annoyed with him and my foot, I went home, had a soak, put my foot up and played WoW with Matt who was also suspiciously "sick" at home from work... until the guys came for our RPG night!

As Rose from Buzz! would say "Lovely".

I like my shoes

I now have three pairs of shoes sitting underneath my desk at work. I generally wear my slips or joggers to work and then change into nicer shoes that I struggle to wear walking around all day. I wish I could wear nice shoes without my feet complaining, so this is the best compromise. I bought a pair of pointy shoes a month ago. They look a lot nicer than my usual sorts of shoes, but I still can't get used to the excessively long pointy bits.

I started a new character on WoW the other day. A Tauren called Brond. He's a druid and currently level 13. He likes to kill animals and skin them and turn their hides into nice clothes that he can wear or sell and make money from. Brond likes to moo an would like to one day lead a guild called "mooers". His best friend is a fellow Tauren called Alonzo who likes to hunt and skin, but doesn't turn any of the skins into good clothing and he can't understand that.

One day the two friends found a fierce and unique cat in the forrest that Brond thought would make a good set of bracers, but Alonzo wanted him for a pet. Ever the obliging Tauren, Brond healed Alonzo while he and his pet were becoming acquainted. Luckily the pet couldn't sense Brond's desire to rip the skin from his back and befriended Alonzo who then asked Brond for meat to feed his new pet. Brond sometimes feels that he is a bit too honourable and obliging. After all, how can he become a famous cook if he has to give his meat away? Brond offered the fish he caught the other day, but Alonzo's new pet doesn't like fish. Fish are plentiful, but a nice steak of cougar or wolf is very hard to find. The slow mind of Brond was soon happily diverted as the friends continued running errands for the Tribal Elders and proving their worth to their clan and kin.

The next day as Brond was getting rid of some bothersome harpies, he stumbled across a wild dog called Ghost Hound. He thought his friend Alonzo might like to have kept him for a pet, and so was sorry that he wasn't around and Brond had to kill him. Being preoccupied with the harpies at the same time, he even forgot to skin the animal before it had decomposed. Brond sometimes day dreams about what sort of fine leather that special animal would have made. Perhaps some leather for the new vest pattern he learnt from his Master the other day?

Now Brond has matured and started venturing into other surrounding lands. He met his first Orc the other day. They are ugly. Brond is glad he decided not to be an Orc. Female Orcs would be worse. Brond wonders how baby Orcs are born because female Orcs are so ugly. Perhaps it is dark in Orcland? Brond is happy that his new vest fits snuggly over his ample furry chest. He has to hunt tonight for some more plainstrider beaks as they are becoming a nuisance and too populous. Obviously the female plainstriders are more handsome than female Orcs, although Brond can't tell the difference between the males and females and happily kills and skins them both alike.

:)

I played Danae last night and it was a nice change to be able to kill quite a few things with more than just 2 spells... instead I used 5 :P Now that I bought her a new staff, she hits so much better- she critically hit for 250 last night, which is a LOT for a Priest! A spell did a crit of nearly 800 which is also quite good for me. I joined a party in ZF that was kinda tiresome. It was obvious that some people were new to the whole partying and instance business. They got Danae killed!! You never let the Priest die! So being a bit miffed with them, and Nebilim making a surprise online appearance, she left them. Funnily enough, some of the other party members couldn't understand why the leader was saying that they had to leave the instance now. He had to explain why they wouldn't survive without a healer. Children!

In normal news, G and Bek are coming over for dinner tomorrow and I don't know what to make! I'm kinda tempted to order yummy pizzas but we're probably having pizza tonight at role playing and he had pizza the other night as well. So back to the drawing board!

Bek and I are going to host a "Death by Chocolate" open house day at my place. We're going to be making everything chocolate and invite people and they can turn up and stay and eat as much as they want. We're thinking of playing movies like Charlie and the Chocolate factory (old one) and Chocolat in the background for fun as well.