You see, right after my last post, life started getting BUSY. Good things in real life, not-so-good for gaming. Obviously, real life is more important, so let's start there!
Good Thing #1: I is now a homeowner!
For the first time in my life, I own real estate...for as much as anyone with a mortgage "owns" anything, that is. Stalkers beware, my house looks a helluva lot like every other house in the neighborhood, so I feel safe in saying that I'm now a resident of Rancho Santa Margarita, CA, living in this house:
I wish my lawn looked like the picture above. Both front and back yards have a number of dead-spots, but it'll come together in time. I have a lot to learn about yardwork! My younger days involved tons of lawnmowing for my dad, but that's about as far as I ever went.
The previous owners were also nice enough to leave 8 metric shittons of trash behind, but a dumpster, a maid, and a carpet cleaner later, the house is quite comfortable :)
The new layout has also shrunken my living room, but more than doubled the size of the master bedroom, making it the best place to house the computers. All I need is a mini-fridge and I could go a week or two at a time without leaving my bedroom!
Good Thing #2: Jonathan Dorian Schuster
Of course, the above doesn't apply when you have kids to take care of. And yes, I said kids - as in more than one! I think I mentioned here at least once before that my wife was preggers, and on July 11th, my son found his escape route and joined the rest of the family.
The above picture is posted because it's super-cute; the outfit "joke" won't make any sense unless you work at my company. Was a nice gift from them, in any case :)
Bad Thing #1: Death of a Computer
Mid-pregnancy and mid-house-hunt isn't a great time for one's computer to take a great big shit.
Trying to get it fixed by the responsible parties has been an utter nightmare. I'll be writing all about it when the saga is finally over, but for now just know that I haven't had a decent gaming machine for many months.
Bad Thing #2: Death of a Guild
Well, no point in paying for games I can't play, right? My EQ2 account expired recently. I had decided I needed to cancel months ago, but I was on a 3-month sub that had just come due, so my account has been quietly bleeding to death.
I'll admit that the death of Circle of Shadows was set in motion before this. In preparing for all the real-life good things to come, I began to distance myself and attempted to find someone to take up the mantle of guild leader.
This...didn't go well.
Perhaps I'll expand on this in the future, but for now suffice to say that my once-great, 150+ member, top casual guild of Permafrost is now a ghost town. I'm none-too happy about it, but there's really nothing I can do about it anymore. And if I ever do get back online, I highly doubt I'll have the time or energy to try to rebuild.
I've found myself resorting to the "casual game" world, since they tend not to have robust video hardware requirements. I'll definitely be writing about my travels through this sometimes-frightful land in posts to come!
