Well, I’m starting late again – as usual – my favourite eldest daughter was over today, and we had a great time watching the “Orphan Black” Season 3 final episode, and then a few episodes of Season 2 of “The 100”. They’re all very exciting, and I can’t wait for Season 4 of “Orphan Black”! It’s an amazing series, and Tatiana Masleny does a truly fantastic job of playing five different characters (the clones), all with completely different personalities, and sometimes all on screen together! Well, watching all those episodes alone would have given me a very late start, but when Lee arrived this morning, she told me that she and Neale had started playing a new MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online game – like Rift, and World of Warcraft) The one they’ve just started playing is “Final Fantasy XIV“, and so of course I had to go and have a look at it, and then I see that there’s a “Free Trial” that you can look at to see if you like it enough to buy it, and so once again, of course I had to download it and try it out. It took forever and a wet week to download, so we left the machine to deal with that while we went off to watch our shows… When we packed it in for the day and we came back down to the Den, the game had finally finished downloading, so Lee very kindly stayed a bit longer to help me through the setting up process, which is not only complicated, but in places, actually downright “user unfriendly”. Once that was done (with only a few snappy, annoyed words between the three of us) Julian took Lee home, and I…. was supposed to start writing this… but… Character creation is a subject very dear to my heart. I just had to see what the character creation tools were like on this new game (seriously, I think I enjoy creating the characters more than I like playing the actual game!) (hey! maybe that’s why I’m always creating new characters! Hmm….) So I started off the game… which went through the usual (well, usually!) short intro about the world, what’s happened to it, and why you have to be The Hero to put everything to rights again… only, this wasn’t a short intro. This one would have been quite suitable as the pilot episode for a new mini-series on TV! It went on, and on, and on… Finally that ended, and I got to my favourite bit, the character creation set-up. First, a name. On a mad whim, I tried “Satai Winterborn” (the name “Winter” was already gone, as was “Winterthyme”, but I thought “surely no-one would have “Satai Winterborn”!”, and they didn’t, so I got it! 🙂 Yay me!) Then I had to set up the features – height, *rolls eyes* “bust size”, because I’d chosen to roll a female character, and lots and lots of other things. However, out of a score of 10, I’d give their character creation set-up a 4.7. There were lots of options, none of them were explained, and none of them were intuitive. Unless you’d set up new characters before on other games, you wouldn’t have had a clue what you were doing! The same with choosing your “patron deity” – there’s nothing to tell you what skills are favoured by which deity, or deities! So what are you supposed to do? Choose the deity who wears your favourite colour, or something? What utter piffle! 😦 So anyway, I created a really cute little “elfin” type girl, and thought “Now! I can start playing” – not so! Remember how I said that there was an awfully l-o-n-g game intro that nearly drove me mad, it was so long? Well, once I’d created the character, it went into another, even longer (if that’s humanly, or even inhumanly possible!) cut scene sequence of your character sitting in the back of a cart, with a nosy peddler talking to you, on and on, and on! Then some bandits ride up to ambush your cart and they attempt to rob you, but your character (as a magic user – I don’t know what the other classes do) casts a spell which brings down another group of bandit “enemies”. This distracts the bandits, and your cart (plus the nosy peddler, unfortunately) get away… more talk from the peddler, and you finally arrive in town. Still you don’t get to play! You go through an “how to move around” tutorial (which you can, and I did, skip – for goodness sake, I know how to move around with a ruddy mouse! *sheesh!*) All this time I’m muttering to myself “c’mon, c’mon, get on with it!” – I wanted to have a bit of a play before Julian got home from dropping my favourite eldest daughter back home, and before I had to start writing this! But it was not to be. I’d wasted too much time being blathered about by long-winded intros – probably suitable for the total newbies who’ve never played an MMO before, but really… it was far too long, even for them – most new players would likely die of boredom before they even got to their first quest! (I didn’t even get that far – I didn’t have time to!) Unfortunately, this does not bode well for my rapidly wilting interest in Final Fantasy XIV… I doubt that I’ll have time tomorrow – the packing lady will be arriving at 8.00am, and the furniture will be walking out the front door between 2 and 3 o’clock. I think my best bet will be to keep my head down, and myself out of everyone’s way tomorrow. Poor Flipper – we really feel terrible for her! Her bedroom “floor” (the couch), and the “Daddy Patting Chair” are going, and just to round off her week of torture, we received two letters from the Vet about her today – one was to remind us that it’s time for her next Cartrophen injection (for her arthritis), and the other was to remind us that she’s due for her regular six monthly examination and her inoculations. We’ll take her up on Tuesday morning for all of those “nice” things, and “board” her there overnight – we’ll pick her up on Wednesday afternoon. The painters will be in on Tuesday, doing last minute “touch-ups”, and the paint fumes will only exacerbate the poor little girl’s confusion and distress. Hopefully, when the new “rented” furniture is put in on Friday afternoon, it might help her feel a bit better, but… I doubt it. Mummy and Daddy will just have to jolly her and comfort her through it. 
Weigh-in this morning. You remember that one point I lost yesterday? I got it back this morning. I’m back to 84.4kg again. I hate those pills! Only another two days…
Anyway, once again, that’s about all from me for tonight – do drop back again tomorrow night and find out how the packing went (I never realised just how much still had to be packed before all the cupboards could be moved out – I totally forgot that they’re all full of crockery and crystal “stuffs” – not to mention all the books on the bookcase in the spare room!) and what the place looks like, bereft of all its major pieces of furniture! I have no idea what my weight will decide to do tomorrow morning – at the moment I’m thinking that it could sky-rocket to 86.9kg, or stay the same as today, at 84.4kg. If you hear a long drawn out scream tomorrow morning, it’ll probably be me screaming in frustration because I’ve gone down one point… again. Better check back tomorrow night to find out what it really did, though – I might not scream, I might just sob quietly to myself. But once again, there’ll be heapses and heapses to tell you all, so don’t miss out on all the latest! 😉 Until then, though, please try to bee good, remember to laugh when you can, apologize when you should, and let go of what you can’t change – life’s too short to be anything but happy! Don’t forget to drive carefully, to look after yourselves, and to keep warm… but above all, remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂
My Word! 