My obsession continues to develop. My druid finally hit level 20 last night, which means I can turn into a cat. It's hot. I'm installing The Burning Crusade (WoW's expansion pack) right now, because I am an addict and connot help myself.

Pandora came up with another gem the other day. You should listen to it. It's the one called Starlight (second one down). Do not be fooled by it's fifth-grader-ish name; it is actually a worthy piece of music. Lovely tune, good harmony.

And, for the record, I hate Myspace, but it's the only place on the web where you can hear the whole song for free. Damn obscure Canadian bands.

A couple of points of interest for this post. First, yesterday was St. Patrick's Day, a day when I usually sit around by myself being bitter because I can't go to bars yet. But this year, I actually hung out with some friends, and I had my first Irish car bomb. Now, I've never been great at chugging things in general. I was somewhat disturbed when, during the first drink, wherein the shot of liquor was half whiskey and half Bailey's, I was certain that I would throw up. But once the amount of whiskey was dropped to a third, I found the process much easier to bear. Ironically, I always finished chugging significantly before my drinking buddies, both of whom were more accustomed to this sort of thing than I was. I guess I have a talent of drinking. Well, I am Polish. And German, for that matter.

On the WoW front, I remain completely and utterly addicted. My druid is now a level 17, and I started an alt on my sister's server. The alt is now a level 10 mage. However, I haven't been playing the mage as much as I should, because Undermine (the server) is older and less populated than mine, and so I find it harder to find people to group with when my sister isn't there (which is most of the time). And because my sister is a level 64, group with her nets me almost no XP to speak of (which is what makes you level, the whole point of things), thus making the alliance almost a waste of time for everyone involved (though I do get plenty of loot out of it, which is nice).

I had quite an adventure with my druid the other night. I was tired of Auberdine, the level 10-20 elf city, and so I decided to take the boat over the the main continent, where the humans and dwarves are. While wandering around, I get picked up by a group heading to Ashenvale. Of course, I didn't realize that Ashenvale was just one region south of where I went all the time in Auberdine, and so I let them lead me all the way across Kalimdor in order to get there, instead of just going to Auberdine and having a nice, short, easy run south. So, as we're running through The Barrens, which is horde territory (the opposing faction; elves, humans, and dwarves are Alliance), this orc starts to follow us. Because we're not on a player vs. player (PvP) server, he can't do anything, so we keep running. However, the rogue in our group gets twitchy and starts attacking the orc. Once you start attacking someone, they can start attacking you indefinitely. So since there are four of us and only one of him (and he was only level 20), we think we're safe. Oh no. For some reason, he's a total badass. And so we die. And he waits for us to respawn. And we die again. Over and over... until finally I manage to run south. I shadowmeld (become partially invisible) behind a tiny little pile of rocks. Everyone else in my group has scattered. I see the orc coming my way. I pray that he doesn't see me, but he does. And then he stares at me. And stares some more. So what do I do? I figured that this kid is probably a fat, bored, horny 14-year-old boy, and the elf dance is pretty hot. So I start to dance. And after a minute, he goes away. So I think I'm in the clear, and start running north to find my group. But no; he starts following again. He keeps killing everyone but me. Finally, eventually, everyone else has managed to sneak away, and the kid gets bored. After "flirting" and such with me (built-in game commands), he finally apologizes and leaves. And so we keep running towards Ashenvale, dying along the way for various reasons. Finally we make it, only to try the cave twice and fail due to complete and utter incompetence on the strategy side of things. So, it was all for nothing. But it was quite an adventure.

Today I tried my first instance, Deadmines, and got completely owned. Another three or four hours with not much to show, though I did get a pretty decent amount of XP and some good loot out of the deal. Here's the finding some people who aren't completely incompetent to run it again later...

So, twelve hours after I began downloading WoW, I started to play. That wait, I think, was just a hint of the utter time-sucking abyss that is WoW. As a night elf druid (a friend talked me out of doing the rogue thing this time around), I've gained 12 levels in roughly 48 hours. I had already put off assignments and skipped class because of the game.

I am addicted.

It has begun.

Ave atque vale...

This is Robyn's blog, v4.0. The previous blog have been too full of personal drivel, and so now I will strive to post only interesting things (or things that are interesting to me, anyway). Instead of the "what I had for lunch" mode of blogging, I hope to ascribe to the "amusing anecdotes and notes on new and exciting hobbies" school. While batting around ideas for a new blog, I've thought of making a music blog, gaming blog, political blog, angry-grad-student blog, cat blog, etc. And then I realized, why choose? So, here it goes, for real this time...

In music news, my love affair with Pandora continues. (Pandora is a free, highly customizable internet radio client. If you haven't been, go now. I'm serious. Stop reading and go.) I've been mostly listening to my Bill Leslie Radio lately, as it tends to play calming new age type stuff, which is always good when there's drama going on. On Leslie's CD I Am A River, the cuts that have the vocals are not great, but the majority of instrumental tracks make up for the shortcomings of the few others. If you like well-constructed new age instrumentals with a hearty helping of beautifully melodic flute parts, you should definitely check the CD out.

In gaming news, I am currently downloading World of Warcraft, and have been for the past 5 1/2 hours or so. I am very excited to start playing, but less excited about the 6 hour download time. However, this option keeps me from having to purchase a hard copy of the game, which I consider to be a victory, as I have been taking "broke" to a whole new level lately. Alas.

I keep waffling back and forth between making my first character a night elf druid or a human rogue. I'm leaning towards the latter, as the guides say that rogues are more suited to solo play, which is what I intend to do initially (so that I don't embarrass myself with my n00bness(I love the the word "n00bness" is already in Blogger's dictionary)). The ability to cast spells and the possibility of riding a white tiger are tempting, though. But rogues get horses, and rogues are the fastest levelers, so I figure that'll probably be the best starting point.

I intended to pimp out the cuteness of my cats in this first post as well, but because WoW is taking up all of my bandwidth and then some, the pictures are refusing to upload in a timely fashion. So we'll save that until next time.