Balance in All Things, 12/31/17

Last day of the year, and I am feeling introverted and introspective. Have a party to go to this evening, and have some shopping to get done for my son, who starts college in three days, so less play time focus than organisational stuff. I spent a few minutes flipping processors and ran off to do other things. Have a macro issue, which I need to take the time to figure out what I am doing wrong, but until I do it kind of precludes afking. I'm not mad about that: once I get my space sorted out, I'll be able to afk every night, but while my computer is set up in the livingroom, that's not really feasible.

After the party, I logged back on to flip processors and incubators and got a boom on first stage of a Torton. Now that I have processed up some pretty decent 20s, I feel better about my chances of making the Carax, the newest mutation unlocked on Legends. I could gush all over the devs commitment in this iteration to keep adding in tidbits of new stuff. It's very gratifying to come to the game with so many of the old issues being addressed.

For example, one of our biggest issues as BMs was buff retention. A dev fixed that with a patch within the last 6 months to allow any beast pulled while the owner is wearing ent buffs to retain those same buffs. It is such a nice change from before, with meticulous applications, or just ignoring the lack and playing on. It makes my beasts much more survival-prone when we are out doing dangerous shit like krayting for hydros (which I do probably one out of four gaming sessions, because the demand is so high and I find the process soothing).

Anyhow, it's well past midnight now, and I am, inclined to pass out soon.

Retail Therapy, 12/28/17

Running about buying enzymes. C elements to help kickstart hydro production and isos as we have a dearth of the more commonly used colours. I will say, in reviewing the blog from a year a go, how much healthier the game's market it. there are still quite a few hard to find items, but the production stuff like spun hydro elements are there in enough quantity to get clear valuations.

Lifa is on Lok, thence to Rori then to Tat. 60 million creds on hand. I wish someone had a WG Magseal they'd part with for less than 80 mill though. Really need to get Aerys's rank 5 specials: her critters are not really measuring up without them. That said, Bugly Too makes a pretty kickass Krayt hunting partner.

Finished the shopping (ooh, rugs!) then went Krayting quickly with Aerys. hour and a half, 19 dragons killed, and 15 processables out of those. Pretty good hunt. Fired up the processors, trying to get back up to 50 20s in stock so I can get back to taking custom orders, since I am running low on creds.

Did get a hold of our old Mayor to find out what had happened to the deco stuff I had put down in City Hall. He claims he has it "saved". That's nice. It's all mine and I'd like it back, please. :(

Heading off for a few hours of social time IRL.

Holiday Humbug: 12/30/17

False advertising: I actually really like the holidays and all the silly holiday events this game has. I am not, perhaps, as committed as I could be to getting them done everyday: the loots and deco are nice and all, but I am not really that keen on amassing tonnes of stuff (see Life and Losses Part 1, as to why.) But I have fun running about and trying to accomplish the holiday things. It does get repetitive, when the rewards are the same year to year and vendor to vendor. I did run about and buy some of the rare Life Day deco I have not had a chance to earn yet. Mostly Wookiee deco for when they bring in the Kash treehouse buildings, and Osho can live in his big playhouse again. Gonna deck it out as a hunting lodge. Ya know, in my copious spare time.

I logged in for a couple hours this evening, to flip the Bols I am cooking on Lifa and Aerys. No booms on second session, so now I just want to finish them and load them up onto the vendor.

Not really focused, kinda tired in the aftermath of a morning headache, so I ran Aerys to Tat for buffs and dragon hunting. Glad I did: the pulls were great, even from the canyons and giants in the valley. I got a 7/7, which is not something I'd ever seen before. In an hour and a half, I got 25 hydros (should have had 28, but had targeting and button fumbles, so I missed a couple of corpses), 20 of which were worth processing.

Popped back and dropped those off and when I switched over to Lifa, I realised I was way low on processing canisters, so I sent her off to buy whatever. Found some 3/.86 which is the best I have ever seen: don't think I ever saw better on live. They weren't cheap, but I have the creds, so why not spend them on stuff I know I am going to use. If it can bump my 20s up over 10 mutagen on the regular, I can't say it won't have been worth it.

I really need to do up a prioritised list of game tasks, so I can have just a bit more focus on what I am doing from day to day. I don't have a lot of game time, and maybe being better organised would help me get stuff actually accomplished. :) I will likely draft up the To Do List soon, and keep it as a draft post here on Blogger so I can refer to it as I need to. Or a public post, that I can then cross items off? Would that be of use or interest to anyone? Who even reads this blog?

Tomorrow looks to be a busy day: last day of 2017. I supposedly have some get-togethers to attend, but we'll see if I bother.

Life and Losses, Part 1 12/29/17

So I mentioned in the last numbered post (50?) that a friend had died in August. She had been a client of my horsemanship instruction for the past year and a few months, mostly for emotional therapy, as her mother had terminal cancer and she was not coping well with the impending loss. Horses have a healing energy, which science is only just quantifying now, but she definitely reaped the benefits of regular lessons and fun rides. In the process of sharing some of my life philosophies with her, we became pretty good friends.

She was loud, opinionated, hyper-intelligent and pushy: some of my favourite things, but also some of the things I have the hardest time dealing with in other people. I am a peacemaker, by inclination: I grew up in an abusive family, but after my joints failed, I lost a lot of my inclination to fight with people, or the world. Injustice is still a major hotbutton, but I am much more inclined to pick my battles carefully and marshal my combative energies to have the most effect when I choose to spend them.

Caro was a fighter. She took the world on with her teeth fully bared, expecting attack from every quarter, and as should be obvious, she often found the fights. She was brusque and abrasive and not quiet about her opinions, and a lot of people have a hard time dealing with people like that, especially women like that.

That said, she did some phenomenally dumb things, too, and then sought my advice after the fact. I gave her the best advice I could, and never judged her for those choices she had made, but I was aware, more and more as time went on, that this was a person who was not really all there. I knew she struggled with depression and motivation, but I had no idea, until it was much too late, just how hard that struggle was for her.

She took her own life in the week after the eclipse, August 21, 2017. A friend found her, and I was in the loop from the get go, because the note she had left named me as her heir. That was a shock to my system. Her mother had died in September, she still had surviving siblings, but she had consigned what to do with all of her belongings to me. And she had a LOT of belongings. So six truckloads came back to my place (I still wasn't fully unpacked from my move in May), and four truckloads were donated to various thrifts stores and charities, and two truckloads went to the dump. A month later I was called upon to help clear out her storage locker, so another truckload came home with me.

I have spent the last five months sorting, divvying and sending along the belongings of someone I have known for a only very short period of time, relatively speaking. I have learned a lot about her as an individual in that time, but also about myself. I have also outgrown my attachment to SO MUCH STUFF.

I am still emptying my house of all the extra things. It has become crystal clear to me that one of the worst things about our modern western society is our addiction to stuff. For Christmas, I spent the absolute minimum amount of time and money shopping for STUFF to give to people, in token. I feel like the less stuff I have, by far the happier I will be, so I am divesting my life of so much. It's also a gift to my sons, when I go, I hope to god I am not leaving all these unimportant items for them to find homes for.

In getting to know Caro, I had told her about SWG, and how it had been a haven for me in my worst days. What I loved about the game, what I wished I could improve about the game, how much I had enjoyed and even still enjoyed being a Senator for Beast Mastery, all of that. I even attended a Senate meeting from her house, as I was overnighting there the day after one of the big events I had run. I loaned her the disks and got her machine talking to the Legends server, and we tried to get her playing on her own, as I both wanted my friend to play with me, and I thought it could do her some good. (Bear in mind, all of this was her idea, and knowing how similar of people we are, I agreed it might be a great outlet for her.)

Well, she seemed to have some issue getting signed onto the Legends forums, and after not trying very hard, she gave up. She kept the game installed on her system, so I could play on those occasions I was over, but she never did get signed up and logged in. I wish she had, but then again, perhaps it's better for my mourning process that I don't have her digital memories to deal with as well as all of her physical ones.

TL;DR? No one needs 120 tee shirts. No one needs every old text book for every class you ever took, the pattern for every craft you started, or the complete collection of coloured glass bottles you were saving for that one project. And no one wants to deal with your junk when you are gone. So a) get a real will, b) live a life with a LOT less stuff. and c) let your friends know how much you value them, while they are alive.

RL BM

I say it a lot: Real Life Beast Mastery. It's even more true now than it was when I first used the term five years ago.

Horses were a big part of my life growing up. My dad loved them, and when he had a job and a place, he bought one. Loving horses and knowing things about horses are actually two different things. So there my parents are with a house full of kids and dogs and cats, a farm with chickens and cows and this horse, who was now an adult purebred stallion, with no one in the house with much of a clue as to how to train him or anything.

My mom did the best she could, and to be honest, she didn't do too badly. When I was 8, a local teenaged horseperson rode over and asked if we wanted help with him, so for the next 5 years, I went to her place after school and she taught me everything she knew. I had lessons with her coach, showed extensively and trained ponies and my own horse. It cemented a lifelong love of horses for me.

I worked in the industry in several places, was everything from a stablehand to barn manager. I had to rehome our pony when my arthritis kicked into high gear some 10 and a half years ago, and I stopped riding then, trying to work a "regular" job. When it became clear that my health simply could not support the expectations of that job, I sank into introversion and depression, and never realised how much of my mental health balance had been the horses.

Then my sister took me to this place that had horses, and got me back involved with them. As soon as I was there, I felt better. Within 6 months, I didn't need my cane to walk anymore, and within a year I was there five days a week, doing whatever needed doing.

The place is the Grene Wode in Langley, BC, where I still work, managing the equestrian side of the operation and teaching horsemanship and riding to a small group of folks. My own education as an equestrian has continued, and this year I am hoping to offer some clinics with some international coaches. (I am developing a blog for the Wode, so click here to follow that, when I get that link up and running.)

In May of 2013, I met and fell in love with an adorable 2 day old puppy with the unique name of The Woodge. (There's a story there). I brought him home in July, and had to move in September as a result. He's a very smart and very lovable mutt, has some 30 tricks in his repertoire, and more character than I'd care to admit.

We moved again, in May of 2014, in with a family that had a Canadian champion Rhodesian Ridgeback stud dog, and some large quantity of goats and chickens. RL BM, all around. They had to rehome the livestock last year and while I didn't miss the racket and smell and mess, I do miss the fresh milk and cheese! I still get the eggs, as the chickens were rehomed to my workplace.

Now I live with a couple of great friends, their two cats, and my two dogs. I inherited Sam from one of my clients, who took her own life in August of this year, and while she had willed her younger puppy to me, there was a return clause in her purchase contract from the breeder, and her elderly dog had nowhere else to go. He's a sweet old man, who loves his outings to the Wode, and makes me feel appreciated in unique and fulfilling ways.

I don't talk a lot about the RL BM stuff on this blog, but know that I am always down to talk dogs and horses with likeminded or even just curious gamerfolk.

All Done with the Day Posts

It was getting unwieldy, and on top of that, I had to take several shorter and longer breaks for various reasons over the past several months, so the narrative (such as it was) was disjointed and problematic.

I had notes for the next 12 or so posts, and I will follow up on them eventually. I stopped with the numbered posts at 50, so this is technically 51, but should be considered almost GG 3, since I took a few months off. Much of these bullet points will be posts in their own right, I will try to go back and hotlink to the relevant posts, in case anyone actually a) reads and b) cares.

• I did take over from Hoggle as BM Senator, and it was good timing to do so, as we were coming up to GU 10, which was the 
• last live BM update, and there were 
• some significant issues I could input on. 
•  I moved in May, then my summer hit and as a 
• RL BM, I am super busy during the summer months
• the actual machine I used for gaming is my son's, so playtime is seriously limited
• a friend committed suicide in August and 
• I spent four months dealing with her belongings
• including her elderly, arthritic Collie cross, Sam.
• I ran aspects of four different events in my medieval hobby group
• stepped down from Senate due to lack of time, 
• a revamp of how the Senate was going to work, and because
• an awesome BM was running, and I knew he'd represent us very fairly
• and we kinda got or had in development everything I felt we needed
• Got given a laptop for Christmas because I have an awesome roommates and boyfriend!

So as things stand now, in the waning days of the year: I have two dogs, more responsibilities at work and a few health issues I am coping with. As far as the game goes, I have less time, but a dedicated system I can use anytime, and that means I am greatly enjoying playing the game again, and finding the wherewithal to write again. Whee!

Day 50: Swoops and Silliness

Logged on and just had time to check incubators and processors, had at least 2.5 hour waits on all the incubators, then ran Aerys up to Nashal to run the Swoop races. Figured I should just get those badges on her.

I logged on again in the evening, flipped incubators then ran the Swoop races at Agrilat Swamp on Corellia and, The Old Mos Espa Track. Then I helped Hoggle clean up the city hall for the place he was starting prep on. Since the blow up in Darasuum Tome, the city has lost rank, so it lost it's shuttle, making it much harder to get to the grind spot. As a service to the BM community, and aware he was probably setting himself up for personal attacks, but it needed to be done.

So now I need to make up my alt and get her into the new city to help it hit Rank 4. He and Atlan are also changing the guidld's name and focus to Beast Mastery, which of course makes me happy.