I don’t often write RL stuff in this blog. I’m a fairly private person.. but also I don’t want to clutter up the blog with stuff that most people probably don’t care about. But this one has pictures of baby animals!



Anyway – apparently, I have high blood pressure.

When I was told that, I immediately though (fondly) of my guild.

These days, I don’t get much time to do the stuff in WoW that helps me to relax. I’m a bit of a weirdo – I love doing daily quests, grinding for rep, flying in circles for hours and farming herbs or ore. Or just wetting a line, fishing up some food for the bank.

With two jobs, progression raiding, blogging (I’m trying hard to be more consistent this year!), looking after the guild forums and website, selling our BOEs and restocking the gbank, attending to messages and requests, trying to get my heroics done and whatnot.. I often just don’t get the time. I miss it, and I think it’s probably starting to take its toll on me. I don’t have much time to myself anymore.

So I’d like to introduce you to my de-stressing companions: my ratties.

I have 26 rats. Not really by choice; I bought 3 lovely girls from a very friendly but very ignorant pet store, who must have kept the girls housed with boys (before I bought them). A week later, I had 3 lovely girls plus a litter of 11; a week after that, 3 lovely girls plus a litter of 11 plus a litter of 12.

3 + 11 + 12 = quite a few.



My own horde


Note: please, no comments about snakes, I will delete them. It’s not original and it’s not funny.


I’ve had rats since I was about 15. I had a break from them for about a year, but missed them too much (and so went to buy the three girls). They are just fantastic little pets – they each have their own personality, their own little quirks. No two are the same, and I love them. Whenever I feel stressed or sad, they are always there to cuddle. Or to distract me from my work or WoW stresses by destroying something. Bless them. Stress dissolves when I play with them, or when they curl up in my collar and sleep.


Meet Peg

Now, don’t tell the others I said this.. but I have a favourite. Her name is Peg.

When she was a few days old, her mother (being a new mum, and inexperienced), picked her up awkwardly and bit her hand by accident (or so I assume, because she’s not a mean rat). I didn’t notice this bite at first, and sadly it got infected. I did a daily head count to make sure they were all there and had full tummies.. and I found poor little Peg with a grey hand.

To cut a long story short, being too young for medication or surgery, all I could do was treat it with antiseptic, soak it a little, and see if she survived the infection. I wasn’t at all concerned about her having only 3 legs, because I’ve had rats with missing limbs (or tails) before, and they learn to adapt – especially if they are young. I was much more concerned that being only a few days old, such a nasty infection could easily kill her.

But she survived that night, and the next, and the next. She would womble around on her swollen leg just fine. Eventually the hand just kinda shrivelled up like a little peg leg (hence the name).



YARRRRRR.


One day when she was a few weeks old, her peg leg wiggled like a loose tooth, and then dropped off, leaving a little rounded pink stump.



Peg today, at 4 weeks


Now she’s 4 weeks old, and she’s a gorgeous little thing – but trouble. She plays the sympathy card all the time, looking up with those big wet eyes and you can tell she’s saying “…but I only have one hand! (sadface)” to try to sucker you in. Don’t be fooled.


So there you go – these are the guys who keep me sane when raiding is crazy and life is stressful.

If you see me getting around in-game with Whiskers or my giant sewer rat out, and maybe wearing my pirate outfit, it’s because I’m totally RPing RL – probably with a Peg on my shoulder.

<:3, ,)~


PS: Sindy tips coming soon - I just can't post them yet because our rival guilds are still trying to get her down, and I want to keep our head start on Arthas. Don't want to give them insider secrets!

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Sindragosa tips coming soon!

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urg…

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I’m rushed off my feet at the moment, it’s 10:30pm and I’m just about to finish work for the day. While my stuff was saving/compiling I cooked my sushi rice and wrapped more presents, and earlier today I managed to squeeze in time to weed the back lawn and put fresh straw into the chicken pen. Tomorrow I’ll probably assemble the sushi while my hair is colouring..

TLDR: super busy, got lots to write but no time to do it!

However, here’s some blatant filler content, courtesy of Drucie, who is now 78, and last night noticed something a bit funny on the ground in Storm Peaks. I decided to fly around and see what else I could find.



Code on the ground near Dun Niffelem – weird.


Crystalsong looking a little more colourful. Patriotic, perhaps?


Merry Christmas from all of us here at Voltarus!


The Bay of Keys in Howling Fjord (with icebergs painted bright blue and green for high visibility)


This water code was blinking on and off.


Sadly, these worgs don’t survive long in the wild, as they have little capacity to blend into the underbrush, making them easy prey for predators.


This one was my absolute favourite – instead of steam rising up from the anvil area, lines of code wiggled upwards – it looked awesome!


(By the way – it was just a random WoW hiccup – not my graphics card having problems, as I first thought. A restart of WoW fixed it)



Happy holidays everyone, back in a few days

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Q: It’s summer here and my computer seems to be overheating a lot. It’s slow to respond, and makes a grinding noise sometimes. When I play World of Warcraft, sometimes my game locks up and I get stuck on loading screens for ages.


There seems to be a little bit of dust on the case – when is a good time to clean it out?

A: Oh, right about now is probably a good time, I would imagine.





Look how festive! It’s a little snow scene!

*whistles Winter Wonderland*



Edit: In response to a question from a guild member – yes, Azjol Nerub is actually located inside my home computer:



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Quick update before I head to bed.

Icecrown is a breath of fresh air. I’ve quite enjoyed it, although I do feel as though Lady Deathwhisper is a bit of a zzzfest for healing. Bit spammy. Gunship was much more fun than I anticipated.

We didn’t get Saurfang down, which is disappointing – would have been nice to clear it the first night, but we had a lot of issues with disconnects, and we were a healer down for the fight. Being undergeared (going in with mostly 10 man gear, rather than 25 man gear) and down one healer made it slightly too difficult for us. Hopefully we’ll get him tomorrow though. I’m hoping we can get him, despite being undergeared.. then it’s off to do 10s

But here is the absolute highlight of the evening (and may or may not have attributed to a little bit of time lost on Saurfang attempts..):



Holding up the raid to bounce around as a rocketbear is VERY NAUGHTY.

(But I couldn’t stop laughing)

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OK, not a huge deal I suppose – but I was pleased to notice that the Night Elf Mohawk “costume” that has been put into the game persists after you shift into a form and shift back out.

That is, you can be wearing the mask, shift into Tree form (no mask in forms, though, obviously), and when you shift out again – you still have the mask!

Why do we care? Because we never get to keep any of our other costumes! As soon as we shift, we lose the costume and the fun. But NOW – there’s a costume that doesn’t break when you shift!

Please Blizzard – make other holiday costumes and novelty items like the Iron Boot Flask, orbs, Deviate fish, Pygmy Oil etc last through our shapeshifting by making them a buff like the Mohawk. We’re not asking to be Night Elf Mohawk boomkins or anything crazy like that (as cool as that would be) – just don’t make shifting remove the buff and waste the costume.

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I’ve been thinking lately, about all the changes Blizzard makes over time – some of them are applauded, others are opposed. Some are things that we all believe that we should have had a long time ago. For example – remember when..



• HoTs didn’t stack, so the only druid who could use them in a raid was the person with the highest +healing (A more powerful spell is already active) and everyone else was stuck with HT spam duty?

• Gift of the Wild was cast group-by-group?
• Omen of Clarity was cast, and lots of new druids didn’t know it? (so they couldn’t work out why they never got any procs!)
• there was no mailbox in Nighthaven?
• we could wear costumes and use Noggenfogger?
• ToL aura used to affect healing done, not received? (mmm stacking healers)


Your turn!

How long have you been a druid? What are some of the things that you remember and look back on, and find amusing?

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I really wanted them, but I’m trying very hard to pay off my car at the moment. I have $6000 to go, and I will have paid it off in 9 months instead of 5 years. I’m very proud of myself, but it does take a bit of commitment.

When a friend found out about them – he bought them for me as an early Christmas present! <3 Frosty!

(I'll lecture him later about HIS car payments..)


If you aren't already aware - Blizzard is selling these pets for $10 each. Until the end of December, $5 from each Monk sale goes to the Make a Wish Foundation.

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The goblins are out, in cities, for Hallow’s End. This made me giggle:





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