January 2019

I Just Want it to Work

Time is precious to everyone, but when a majority of it is eaten up by kids, some things change. For me, that things is I simply don’t have the hours free any more to try to fix stuff that doesn’t work.

My computer was a major issue. Trying to find the time to solve why it wouldn’t start up ended up being a week long endevour. I can’t just ignore my family to work on it.

This week, it was my old fitbit charge HR. It should have been simple. Plug it in and charge it, put the receiver into my PC, link the device to my profile and ta da. Instead my PC refuses to acknowledge the device, though it works well enough on my laptop (an issue with bluetooth and windows 10 I’m told). Now it doesn’t want to hold a charge, and I’ve been troubleshooting what I can but there’s just no way for me to spend hours trying to diagnose the problem.

At this stage of my life I just want things to work. I want them to work as they should, out of the box, without having to spend hours and hours figuring it out. That’s one of the main reasons I contemplated going to a pre-built gaming laptop rather than futz around with my PC (again).

It feels like for a lot of things, that’s just too much to ask.

Getting Healthy Together with Challenges

One of my 2019 goals is to get back to my pre-baby weight. I gained an enormous 70lbs with my second child, and I’ve lost 35lbs of it, which leaves me with roughly 40lbs to lose this year. My husband also wants to get more fit, his job requires him to be in the best shape he can be. I decided that we should have monthly mini challenges we do together to motivate and inspire each other, along with one major challenge for the year. Unique to each of our goals, they’ll reward us with non-food rewards for a job well done.

My year-long goal is of course to lose the 40lbs. The reward? A peloton, something I’ve wanted for a few years now. The monthly goal for January is to go the entire month without eating any fast food. With two young kids we have a habit of grabbing whatever is fast and easy for ourselves, spending far more money than we have to and eating food that doesn’t exactly give us the most nutritious of starts.

If I acomplish this goal for the month of January, I get to buy some yarn – which I am very excited about. Initially I had decided on just a single skein, but my husband decided it should have a monetary value of $100. Each month the goal changes but hopefully leaves us with better eating habits. February I might be able to eat fast food but I’m hoping that because I’ve abstained through all of January the urge to eat poorly will be reduced. By December I’m hoping to be 40lbs lighter with much healthier food choices.

Will it work? No idea. In 2016-2017 I lost 70lbs (after the birth of our first) so I know it’s not an impossible task, but things are so much more hectic with 2 children instead of 1 and I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep up. At least I’m trying.

Road to 5 million – for the casual gamer

Before BfA released I was making a fair amount of gold in Warcraft, but that was before my second child was born, and as surprising as it is to say, I had a lot more free time back then. Now, not so much. I earned just a hair shy of 5 million gold and then I spent it on subscriptions, the BfA collector’s edition, all of the battle pets from the shop that I didn’t previously own, and a few other bits and bobs. That depleted my gold but not down to zero.

For 2019 I’d like to try to reach 5 million – but in an ultra casual way. I’m not starting from scratch, I’m starting with a little over 1.5 million gold. I’m averaging things out to 14,000k a day, 365 days, and we’ll see how long it takes me to get there with my play time which ranges between 10 minutes and an hour daily.

I’m confident it’s possible, and I love that it’s something that will span over the entire year rather than just a few short months (that way I don’t feel pressured or that it’s too hectic). I’m not sure what I’ll actually DO with 5 million gold, I haven’t decided if I want to purchase the AH mount – but I probably will, if for no other reason than to be able to use the AH at remote locations where I won’t get phased due to population.

Each month I’ll create a new chart like the one above, so I should have a collection of 12 that put me closer and closer to the end goal. Exciting? Well, depends on how you like to play. For me, yes, this is exciting. I love making gold in WoW, and while I may not be the best at it, it IS something I think I do OK at.

I plan on doing some farming, some crafting, and whatever else manages to pop into my timeline that I can handle. End game? Probably not, but that’s alright.

I probably won’t write about it here every single day, but I’ll try to post at least once a week with the progress, maybe I’ll set it to be every Wednesday just to follow with tradition. Check back next Wednesday to see if I’ve met my goal of 126,000 gold (this is a joke, I’m already at 1,500,000, so if I can’t keep above 126,000 there are some serious issues we’ll have to look at).

Happy gaming no matter where you find yourself!

Priestapalooza

One of my game resolutions for 2019 is to run more player events on Sklotopolis. I’m kicking January off with Priestapalooza, in preparation of the priest changes update that we all hope land on our server in the future. At 100 faith priests are able to cast a new spell, but getting to 100 can be a drag. Sermons with listeners can speed up the process, so I’m hosting a week long event where priests can come for sermons, have some great food, and do some meditation. My goal is for as many people to hit 100 as possible.

In my own roster I have 2 of each priest type, with one Skloso priest. In the future update priests have the ability to cast spells at 100 favour instead of 120, so batteries may become a thing of the past – which I personally am looking forward to. That will let me drop off and ignore 2 alts, rather than continue with 6 characters as I have been.

I’m looking forward to the event, and I hope to run it a few times this year. Hopefully it goes nice and smooth.

As always, happy gaming no matter where you find yourself!

Sklotopolis Server Events – Troll Invasion

Engineer informed us that some over zealous trolls had taken control of a town on the Novus server and it would be up to us to rescue any survivors and free the town from their wrath. We showed up on horses, no wagons, no carts, our best armour polished, war cries on our lips and we were ready to go.

A lot of troll bodies hit the ground… a lot of players, too. It was awesome. In the end we DID rescue the village, and we were rewarded with donation chests that contained sleep powder for our efforts. It was a fantastic event, a nice change from the player-run slayings, and the rifts that happen.

I’m looking forward to more of these events in the future! I went with Minxes, my Fo priest, and I’m really glad I did – although next time I’m going to take a surplus of gems with me so I can have more favour for healing..

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Nomadic Gamer