wish in one hand

blehhh. so at the end of our fiscal year, we have a staff appreciation day. usually it's a really low-key morning with breakfast and mimosas, then we play board games if we want (last year it was at the circa centre and we had a playstation !), then we have a really good catered bbq for lunch, and then we get "surprise" dismissed early at 12 or 1. i'm totally cool with this format ! i feel appreciated ! however.



this year some people on the committee opted to make it a field day type thing so now instead of actually relaxing after a stressful end of the fiscal year, there is a rigid schedule of "fun" including tug-o-war and something called like pass the grape, which sounds like a weird sex thing. i will not be playing pass the grape with my coworkers. i do not need to have elementary school activities assigned to me to have fun. i'm not 8, or from south philly.

i had both of my classes last night. history class was kind of a bummer because i have a lot of academic insecurity and i feel like everyone is so far ahead of me- not in knowledge of the subject, but as far as having the tools and language to discuss it. and i shouldn't compare myself to them, because they're mostly very young and have been going to school for 17 years straight at this point. i also got something wrong in one of my essay questions and i'm wayyyy too embarrassed about it. the added bonus of posting our homework online for everyone to see instead of just handing it in is a bummer, though i understand why it's useful !



german class is fine, but it's weird that the class is being taught in german by the third lesson? like i took german for years but i can't imagine how the people who have never taken it are doing. like, he just keeps saying things loud in german instead of saying it once in english? i mean, it's working, but it's weird.

after class, i did some homework (including writing a german essay and making notes for a history project) and then did the argent dailies with paul. i'm sort of bummed that everyone (including me !) quit wow, but i decided to do those dailies every day to get the three mounts i don't have.



then i had a rousing conversation about merkins and celebrity nudes with mouse (not arousing, rousing), and a little about possible poisoning at jamestown. i tried to talk a little bit about stuff i'm learning to help me remember it, because mouse is the only person on earth who wouldn't be bored by it ! did you guys know that the colonists named "virginia" after their virgin queen and because it was "virgin land", but the name the indians had for it, which i totally forgot (tsenecomaka?), means "densely populated land"?

what else? something less grumpy. there was a thread on my all ladies feminist messageboard about books we read when we were kids, and i ended up picking up used copies of all the books i hadn't read. because i was a nerdy, library-frequenting child, that was only five books. i got:


the ghost next door by wylly folk st. john


wonder by rachel vail


the girl with the silver eyes by willo davis roberts


stranger with my face by lois duncan


daphne's book by mary downing hahn

the majority of those are supernatural thrillers, and i'm really surprised i hadn't read them- especially that i've never heard of wylly folk st. john. honestly i'm surprised i haven't read the other ones either because i also liked books about girls doing stuff (any stuff). haha. have you guys read any of those?

i guess i'm going to get ready to go- the work party starts at 10, and the closing ceremony (aka we get to go home?) is at 1, so i'm going to go home and work on my history homework and maybe eat a big sandwich? then mouse and i are going to the phillies game and tomorrow we're possibly tubing if it isn't raining???

weekend to-do list
- clean ! there's so much grossness that is my fault that i'm oblivious to !
- DROP MY LAUNDRY OFF (this is important, all my cool clothes are dirty)
- finish my history homework (hopefully i'll do that this afternoon)
- do my reading for history next week
- post the german essay i wrote on our class site
- do the other german assignments i have (which is just using this interactive website)
- go grocery shopping

all of that is a pretty tall order but i want to try to be responsible !!!! wish me luck.

there's your answer, fishbulb

man, today is boooooring. i managed to get enough work done from home yesterday that i'm not totally swamped today (i have a lot to do, but it's a manageable load. huh huh load), and none of my aim friends are online and no one is doing anything cool on facebook.

knitting group was kind of foiled again yesterday because the other green line had a show, so christina and i went to the regular green line and had iced coffees and knitted. kathleen ended up not being able to make it too, so "knitting group" may just be the code word for me and christina knitting somewhere besides our couch. hopefully we'll actually be able to get together with the real knitting group though, cause i gotta say that pizza is feeling left out by our current arrangement.


cats don't drink coffee

also the girls at the table next to us were talking about bobby brown and whitney houston and one of them kept saying, "BOBBI KRISTINA !!!!!!!!!!!!" and i was losing my shit ! i did have a weird moment where i started crying because of my teeth? like, talking to christina about the state of my teeth and how growing up poor without healthcare means that i am looking forward to $28,000-$50,000 of dental work as an adult, and my teeth always hurt. it was weird, i wasn't really sad and didn't mean to cry but it happened ! i am also having my period but i hate using that as an excuse for expressing my feelings.



we went to cvs after that because i had ten extra bucks burning a hole in my pocket, and i got mousse:



and, despite having a crying jag about my fucked up teeth, i got some hard caramels ! that one i can definitely cathy away with a period explanation though.



because i don't think anyone who isn't having their period buys themselves a box of chocolate instead of like, regular candy.

our raid last night was poorly attended, so we just did the blood princes. i think paul and i are going to do refer-a-friend with each other, which is um... both of us buying new copies of the game and paying for 2 months of subscription so we can get a mount?



two people can ride in it ! i can take christina everywhere with me !

i think, for lack of better things to talk about, i'm going to post all of my rare mounts. haha. there are still a few i desperately want that i don't even want to talk about, but here's the ones i have:


swift brewfest ram. 1.6% drop rate. you could try for it several times a day, but only during a 2 week period.


rivendare's deathcharger (the baron's mount). 1% drop rate, but you can try to get it 5 times an hour. i got this without trying on my 2nd time soloing stratholme. it looks just like all the other undead mounts.


swift razzashi raptor. 0.9% drop rate, you can try for it every 3 days. i got this my second or third time in zul'gurub.


swift zulian tiger. 0.7% drop rate, you can try for it every 3 days. i just got this after like..40 attempts !


white polar bear. 1% drop rate from a quest you can do every day. it took me about 2 months of doing the quest every day


raven lord. 1.4% drop rate off of a boss in sethekk halls you can kill every day, but a druid has to summon him. i got this on my third try ! this is my favorite mount.


red qiraji battle tank. 1.1-1.8% drop rate. it is the rarest of the qiraji resonating crystals in ahn'qiraj and can only be mounted inside ahn'qiraj, unfortunately


green proto-drake. 2% drop rate off of an oracle egg. this is kind of weird- you get to revered with a tribe called the oracles, buy a "mysterious egg" from them, wait 7 days for it to hatch, and the mount may be inside. it's usually egg yolk or some pets, but 2% of the time it's a mount. i got it on my third egg !

i'm sure that was incredibly boring and stupid for most people on earth (even people who play wow) but i am psyched about it. there's a few more regular (pvp, mounts for sale, etc.) mounts i need to get and some rare mounts i need to try for !

this weekend is going to be pretty busy- kristen is coming to visit christina (and maybe me a little??) and they're going to the maryland sheep and wool festival tomorrow. i feel like such a turd for not committing to go because i bet it's going to be the best time in the world. on saturday, diana is coming down, and nate and mouse are coming over, and we're going to have a super crowded house. but it will be crowded with like almost everyone i like (jeanne where are youuuuuuuuuuu? and anna will be out of town too). on sunday i'll probably make mouse hang out with me and maybe mike?

p.s. this weekend i think i'm going to read the evolution of calpurnia tate if i have time.

it could have been a sauce

mannnnnnnnn today is going to be the most annoying day. like, ever. i have to take minutes for a conference call which i'm not even sure how to do (i'm a slow writer, and i automatically tune out anything i'm not interested in, AND i'm not good at distinguishing between voices !), i have like 85+ e-mails from yesterday (i was out of the office yesterday), and a million other things to do. plus two meetings ! i do want to update though.

i had like, the most laid back weekend ever. christina and i mostly like, hung hard around our apartment and knitted and watched tv and drank sodas. on saturday we met at the green line and went grocery shopping, which was pretty fun (i don't know why, but grocery shopping with christina is always like, the equivalent of going to lake tahoe for spring break with anyone else). i did cravings based shopping again (since i've been trying to work on eating disorder stuff, my brain has basically been shutting down to all the foods i like/should be eating) and ended up with:







right? i'm already sick of everything i got though.

on saturday i finished reading catching fire, the second hunger games book.



i was dissatisfied at first because there's so much re-capping of the first book, and also she adds in details that she obviously didn't think of until after she wrote the first one that will be important later- like adding in that people were related or people did stuff they didn't do. like, the book was good and pretty entertaining/exciting, but i wish she'd fleshed it out more as a series before she started writing. i also really wish there were more books where a female character is brave and strong and clever and capable ON PURPOSE. the protagonist of this book spends so much time being like, "i didn't even MEAN for that to happen !!!!! i didn't know this cool exciting thing would happen, it happened by accident @#)@)(#(@#" that it really diminishes her accomplishments. despite that !!! it's good, you should read this series.

on sunday, mouse came over so he could watch the second episode of the new series of doctor who with us. i'm not entirely sold on matt smith as the doctor yet, but i love the new stories so far. i hope they mix it up a little so moffat doesn't get totally burnt out. my only real problem with this episode is that they have a great villain



but they don't really explain where these dudes came from or why they exist or what exactly they're for. like, obviously to kill people who question stuff sometimes...? but not all the time. or whatever. mouse hung out for awhile and it was nice to see him but i felt boring because we didn't really do anything.

i guess the... big exciting news from yesterday is that after like... a billion tries, i finally got the swift zulian tiger mount !



i've seriously been trying to get this forever- basically there's a 0.7% chance it will drop off of a boss you can kill every 3 days and i've been trying to get it (though not religiously) for almost a year. it was also my 100th mount (i've had 98 for awhile and wanted to fill up the last two slots with rare mounts, though one ended up being the the least rare mount), so i got this super ugly thing as a reward !



actually, due to my commitment to talking about wow in this journal like my readers understand/care i'm going to post all of my rare mounts tomorrow. fuck you !

okay, i have to go have a long stressful day at work ! maybe you guys can see me complain about it on facebook.