Another Saturday… another day… spent Rifting – what else? I did get Persha up to level 40 – about mid-afternoon. I could have got there earlier, but I kept getting sidetracked, chasing after “special” hunting trophies – not at all conducive to getting one’s levels up, I fear! But, you know, the thrill of the hunt, the lure of the unobtainable… I even went shard hopping (you can do that now – have been able to for a while, really) trying to find these elusive – and some even say mythical – creatures. Each one will gain you a special Hunting Token, five of which will win you a (*gasp!*) special Achievement award, and, I think, a Title (but, as seldom as it happens, I might be wrong about the title part!) Anyway, I got carried away, chasing all over Scarwood Reach for these “specials”. They “spawn” (that is, suddenly appear) in specific areas – some as large as a couple of football fields, others as small as the topmost branches of a tree – and it’s just a matter of running round and round these areas, spamming “tar/[insert name of creature]” – “tar” meaning “target”, of course. If the creature is within a certain distance, a little yellow dot will light up on the map, indicating that this is where it is. Then you run off, kill it, and claim the trophy to take back for your Hunting Token. When you finally get five of these tokens, you can hand them in to the Hunt Master for your Grand Reward. If you’ve had no success in finding the beastie, a quick right-click on your top left hand portrait will allow you to magically “teleport” to the exact same place… on another shard! Chances are that this creature may have spawned there – and you have six shards that you can teleport to. When you’ve either bagged your beastie, or decided to give up in disgust, you can, just as magically, be whisked back to your original shard. Easy Peasy. So there I was, as I said, running after these shadows, these will-o’-the-wisps, these chimeras… when I happened to look at the time… Crikey! Not only was I wasting valuable leveling time, I was wasting expensive, as well as valuable experience boosters! Hunting Tokens might win you an Achievement award, but they won’t boost your experience! Hastily I took off for the next little quest hub and worked really hard for the rest of the afternoon, and at about 3 o’clock I “dinged” level 40! As I was in the middle of a quest, I finished it off, handed it in, and spirited myself back home to Sanctum. I dusted down, got rid of my junk, put my prizes in the bank(s), and mailed my water breathing necklace off to Satai. Then I spent the rest of what was left of the afternoon, setting Satai up and making sure her boots were polished to a high sheen! I won’t be able to start out with her tomorrow – it’s Sunday, and himself and I will be happily terrorising all the mobs in beautiful downtown Shimmersand 🙂

I might have made a ghastly mistake in not doing my nails a couple of days ago, when I was supposed to… Quite some time ago now, I’d snagged my left thumbnail rather badly, but I filed it, and shaped it, and nursed it along until it grew to a stage where I thought it’d grown past that snag… Apparently it hadn’t outgrown the snag, and the snag had become a tear mark. It was probably only the nail polish on my thumb nail that had stopped it from tearing earlier (I know I’m short-sighted, but surely I’m not so short-sighted that I wouldn’t notice a tear starting across my nail?!) Anyway… last night it said “I give up! I’m going home to the big Thumb Nail in the Sky“, and it… tore off 😦 So I didn’t do my nails today because, quite frankly, it’s too short to paint – it’d just look silly. I’ll just have to wait until it grows a bit longer – I hope I have enough nail and cuticle oil to last that long…

Weigh-in this morning. A trepidatiously good result. I dropped down to 97.4kg – down four points! Of course, this means that I’m probably destined to bounce back up again – goodness knows by how much. Hopefully not too much, but one never knows, does one?! Especially with my body, which doesn’t seem to know what it’s doing anymore than the man in the moon does! Oh well, I don’t think it can bounce back over into the 98kg zone – it is possible, I suppose, but not very probable. I hope. Let’s see what the morning brings…

I was reading an article (blog post, actually, I think) that my favourite eldest daughter linked on Facebook – very broadly, it dealt with how the people who congregate within a given game “sphere” (e.g. Rift, World of Warcraft, Halo, et al.) tend to think of those within their game group as a sort of “family” – like-minded people gathered together to play this particular game. That made me think – going off at a complete tangent from the rest of the article/blog post, that we do tend to feel a certain “affinity” with those who play the same game or games that we do, when really, we know next to nothing about them, unless we happen to know them in real life, outside of the game, of course. It’s the same with other interests, too, from fan fiction to animals – “Hey! That person thinks Professor Snape (in the Harry Potter books) is a really cool person! I think so too – we’d get on well, I’m sure!”, and “Oh, they must be a nice person, they like cats too!” The ubiquitous “They” say that we judge others by our own standards… Perhaps so… but… is it a good, or a bad thing? I’ll let you all think about that for a bit… Let me know your conclusions – I’d be very interested, if you’d care to share… 🙂

So there it is – another day, another blog post, another grizzle, and another slightly philosophical query… Tune in again tomorrow night and find out all the latest news and musings from moi-même. Will I decide to paint my nails after all, and just try to keep my left thumb hidden under a glove, or something? (I could, you know – that’s a thought – I might actually try that…) How will Julian and Winter fare tomorrow, pushing Orange quests in Shimmersand? Will we die? (we’ll get better though! 😉 ), and what will my weight do? See-saw back up? Continue on its slow downward spiral? Or annoy the hell out of me by staying the same? All will be revealed to those who want to know, this time, tomorrow night. And so, gentle readers, once more the time has come for me to admonish you all to bee good, make sure the cat is warm enough tonight, and above all…. stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂