“I sick,” in breathy tones.

“Oh, are you not feeling good?’

“Nope. I’m sick.” I was feeling very sorry for her, and she went on to say, “Mom beat me.”

I was flabbergasted and so confused. Mom doesn’t beat children, but there’s Kimberly acting like she doesn’t feel well, and I was pretty sure I’d heard her right. “Mom beat you?”

“Yeah, Mom beat me.”

“…huh…”

She points through to me to the game table behind me. “At foos ball. Mom beat me at foos ball.”

The Oregon coast is very pretty. There are some sand dunes. My favorite places for shopping are the toy stores, and my favorite restaurant is Mo’s. One time my sister Stephanie pushed me into the water, and I GOT SOAKED! My family and I would walk around a long time. When we get to the beach, I go wild!

A couple years ago, my family and I got to rent a beach house. One day while I was walking to the horseshoes, I saw two of my sisters playing tether ball, and all of the sudden I’m on the ground. Guess why I was on the ground? Someone hit me with the tether ball! Meanwhile at the house I got to pick a bed and set it up. Then I got an ice pack for my face. “PRESENT TIME,” called my mom. I raced out of the bedroom and sat down SPEEDY FAST. As I got to open my present from my sister Carey I smiled really BIG, and I said  a wine glass! As last it was time for bed, but as soon as I got in bed I fell fast asleep.

A new expansion also always rearranges some of the rules of the game by introducing new features, changing up stat values, and so on. Cataclysm was not an exception. Among other things, talent trees were re-worked, stat values were simplified, and a new system of guild levels was introduced.

Guild leveling has been an interesting experiment. For every level gained by a guild, a new perk and sometimes a reward is unlocked. Perks    are a guild wide benefit applied to any member of the guild and include bonuses like faster mount speed, increased experience and reputation gains, and so on. Rewards generally have to be purchased in-game money by a player’s character and sometimes require a certain level of reputation with the guild. Guilds gain experience through player actions such as questing, running dungeons together, participating in player-vs-player combat, and completing guild challenges. The maximum attainable guild level is 25. Many guilds have been level 25 for months. Cuteness, on the other hand, is still plugging along. We’re getting close to 20. It will be a while before we hit 25. We are not a large guild, and we don’t have enough folks to level quickly. That’s okay with me. The perks and rewards are nice, but when I see someone spamming chat with “LF level 25 guild,” I cringe. A lot of WoW players are reward oriented and walk all over others to get the rewards. I’d rather not, thanks. I’ll keep it small and play with people I like.

We are small. Despite our roster jumping around some in the last year, we can’t seem to get more than about five regular players. People come. People go. And then sometimes, they come back. WoW is like that. Our newest player is Stephanie. She’s busily leveling a hunter (and getting an earful from me about all the naughty things she’s doing) and a priest. What’s been fun about having her start (besides being able to pick on her for being a bad hunter ) is that she just plays. Like I said earlier, many players are motivated by the reward. Getting gold or purple rewards is a fun part of the game, but so is stuff like taking screenshots of Stephanie’s dwarf hunter cozied up to the inn’s roast pig.

Some hunters go too far in being friendly to animals.

We’ll keep plugging along and enjoying the resultant silliness.

Fortunately no one was hurt. Stephers was standing near the stove preparing to place a loaf of bread in the oven. Kalyn was at the refrigerator getting ice or something, but there was not enough force to make the glass damage them. The pieces themselves didn’t seem all that sharp, more like safety glass than the glass I use to make stained glass pieces.

What was very strange, though, was how it sounded. After the initial blowout, where fairly large chunks of glass hit the floor, the heated glass kept cracking. It was snap-crackle-popping, to borrow a line, for some time until it eventually reduced itself to many small pieces.

Spontaneous Shattering

Interestingly, while I’d never heard of this happening, it’s not apparently all that uncommon. Take a look at this blog post, or run a search yourself. Kinda freaky, huh?

Once upon a time, it would have been Stephanie! The Googer is brilliant.

So… tonight’s plans include the second half of the Fellowship and probably all of the Two Towers along with the chips and dip, chocolate, champagne, and I forget what else. I’m sure it will be good, whatever it is. XD

Happy New Year’s to you!

I suspect I’m not the only one who misses stuff thanks to the presence of a text message, as illustrated by Stephanie, Shelah, and Kimberly. Stephanie does a lot of texting, and of course texts are no respecter of dinner tables. Her phone buzzes, she pulls it out to reply (under the table for some reason), and Shelah starts squawking from across the table, “No texting at dinner! No texting at dinner!” While Stephanie is busy with that, Kimberly swipes Stephanie’s glass and drinks all the water. Stephanie resurfaces to an empty glass, having completely missed Miss Sneakypant’s stealth slurping!

Really, the best part is that Kimberly, who is not known for being a Miss Sneakypants, pulled it off. She had to move pretty quick to take advantage of the commotion.

Kalyn piped up. “I hate leeches, even though I am one.”

Kimberly's expression after drinking eggnog

In case the huge smile isn’t enough of a clue about her feelings for eggnog, she also gave me her package of M & Ms to help talk me into sharing with her.

“Down in the valley where the green grass grows,

“There sat Patie pretty as a rose.

“Then up came Mike and kissed her on the cheek.

“How many kisses did she get in a week?”

This is one of my favorite rhymes. Here’s how I saw this rhyme. I was reading a book called “The Daring Book for Girls.” It tells you about history, sports and crafts. So I was looking through it [and found] a couple of pages on jump rope rhymes. So that’s how I got it.

P.S. If you like jump rope, try the rhyme. Bye!

Mike and Patie are otherwise known as Dad and Mom. Pretty cute, huh?