Stitching and Slaying

What a week it's been for Warcraft, huh?  The pre-expansion patch released on Tuesday, which mainly included the release of demon hunters as a playable class, available to blood elves on the Horde side, and night elves for Alliance.  It also included the Broken Shore content, which if you haven't played through, go do that right now.  I'll wait.

Okay I heard an anguished cry, we're all caught up now.

I am SO looking forward to the direction that the writers are going in.  I mean it's not enough that the Legion is invading our world, but sure yeah let's shake up the leadership of the Horde and Alliance, why not!

Oh, also meet Felyx.  He's my demon hunter, a guildie helped me pick out his name.  Yes, he's named after my cat.

Demon hunters are a fun class to play, the glaives are beautiful to watch in combat, and the abilities are fun and make combat seem streamlined and smooth.  I won't be changing up my main, but this will definitely be a fun alt to play for a while.  The starting experience was amazing to play through, and I can't wait to take a night elf through there as well.  

Also, the INVASIONS were introduced as a big part of the pre-expansion event. Oh my gosh, they are ridiculously fun (and sometimes painful).  They spawn in two zones on a four hour rotation, and once you enter the zone you are put into a zone-wide scenario.  There's an NPC who cheers, or jeers, you on during the four stages of the scenario.  It centers around a main town or questing hub in the zone, sends you out into the zone, and then back for a final battle against a Big Bad Demon.  

There is a special set of armor you can get, which is item level 700, so very good for alts or people who haven't raided to get their armor as strong as possible before all hell breaks loose in a couple weeks.  I have also heard rumors of pets and other things dropping from the chests you receive during and after the scenario, but haven't seen any myself.  There's a vendor who you can purchase fun stuff from with nethershards that you get from doing the Invasions.  

When I haven't been slicing and dicing and dying my way through demons, I've been working on Top Secret cross-stitch projects!  I've talked about it before, but cross-stitching is a hobby I really enjoy.  It's very soothing, to me, and I think it helps with my anxiety and stress.  I  bought a couple patterns off Etsy, and ordered some floss, and have begun a new project!

Hello pretty floss

This embroidery floss is gorgeous, I really like these colors and can't wait to see the finished product!  It's hard to use the floss as it comes, with the two paper closures keeping it from getting ridiculously tangled in transit, so I wind the long strands around plastic bobbins.

OH NO TANGLES

It always tangles, but luckily they are fairly easy to unwind as long as you don't let the knots get too tight.  The small stickers with numbers indicate what color floss it is, according to DMC.

All wound and ready to go!

It begins.....

All of the patterns I'm working on for the Secret Project use a single color floss (Okay I lied, there is lettering which uses white floss) so I don't have to worry about switching colors or counting all that much.  The finished stitch will be about 6" x 7", and you probably guessed since there are four colors, there will be four stitches.  I won't be showing a ton of pictures of the WIP, since the recipient of them may read my blog, and I don't want to spoil the surprise ^.^

My plans this weekend include mundane chores such as cleaning the house and doing laundry, but I'll also be dabbling in Diablo, doing more invasion stuff, and working on my secret cross stitch project.

What are your plans?

Demon Hunting

I'm really good at keeping up schedules, you see.  I was going to do a blog post on every other day of the week, but instead that snooze button is more and more appealing each and every morning, so I roll out of bed with just enough time to inhale a cup of coffee and make myself presentable to the outside world.  I've been planning blog posts in my mind, it's just the sitting down and writing them part that I've been skipping.  OH WELL. Here we go!

This past weekend, like most, my time was spent divided among house chores, gaming, and other projects I'm working on.  With WoW at a standstill (kind of) until the patch that released yesterday, I dove gleefully into Diablo III, Season 7.  

Meet Chani!

Level 1 Monk! So smol. So nekkid.

I decided this year to take a screenshot at every 10 levels, to kind of earmark the leveling, but also just because why not!  I really like the armor and weapons in Diablo, and it's neat to me seeing what 'outfits' you acquire naturally as you equip stronger and better items.

I STAB U

Levels 1-10 I played myself.  I chose to level her via Bounties and Exploration, some Seasons I do a mix, but this year I just committed myself to the insanity (and bonus loot) early!

SUDDENLY, A WILD BNET FRIEND APPEARS.

Belghast and a couple other friends, Grace and Kat, invited me to their group, and the power leveling fun began!

20

With power leveling, the way it works is pretty simple.  A higher level friend invites you to a party, dials the difficulty up to something you definitely cannot handle on your own, then you find a safe corner to hide in while they run around and kill monsters and you soak up the XP. And when two friends are 60+, another friend is 50+, and you are a tiny wee baby who will die when the monsters look at you... it's entertaining to say the least.

30- nice sword

Did I mention I died a lot? It was fun though.  Chatting with old friends, and a new one, and poking fun at Bel when he also went SPLAT.

40- hello creepy skeleton ghost puppy!

50- Illidan wings? Illidan wings.

Yeah this post is mostly pictures, so sue me! Actually please don't, I don't have a lot of money.  Also that's rude.

60- Idk, gonna smack you with a stick I guess

70- nice hat, dork

Now that we're max level, I'm going to focus on the Seasonal Achievements to get the bonus items, something I have never accomplished in a season before, mostly because my short attention span wavers and I get sucked up into something else.  (Like Demon Hunters and the Broken Isle in WoW, which will be a post for another day) However, that all changes this year! I am gonna do it, dang it!  Mostly because you get a pet and cosmetic item, and let's be realistic, I'm a sucker for in-game pets.  

70.. again? I lost count? I doubled a screenshot? Idk.  TRIDENT.

The new short-term goal for my lovely lady up there is to get her armor all matchy-matchy and pretty, and then begin gearing up so I can tackle the Seasonal Achievements head on! Or weapon-on.  Hands and feet on? Eh, whatever.

Anyone else decimating swaths of demons in Diablo this Season?  What class are you going with?  The same old same, or something new?

A New Season

We made it, it's the weekend!

What am I up to today? Let's see...

DIABLO SEASON 7 IS LIVE YAAAAY!!!

While I wait for Diablo III to reinstall, how about a blog post! Diablo is one of those old familiar games that is really easy to get back into, and is great for mindlessly murdering massive amounts of pixels at the end of the work day.  For me it's also a very cyclical game, in that I really only log in to play and murder when a new Season rolls around.  The 7th Season began yesterday (today? idk, I should pay more attention) and as such, I'll be creating a new Seasonal character! The seasons give you that 'blank slate' experience that I think honestly a lot of us gamers really like.  You start off fresh, no shared inventory space like the regular Diablo characters, no shared money, nothing.  Fresh start.

My demon hunter, at some point last season

You can level through the story or jump straight into bounties and exploration, which allows you to go all over the map to each Act of the story, complete bounties such as "Kill 100 enemies" or "Kill Certain Named Mob", and I kind of do a mix of both, depending on my mood.  The story can be fun to play through, but is a bit slow-paced and doesn't offer near the experience as the bounties.

*Checks the download* Okay we're at 'playable' so almost there!

WHEEEEEEEEE

While the Demon Hunter class is best for getting all the achievements, I haven't played a Monk in a while, so I think that's who I'll take a spin on this Season.  Now for the super hard part of thinking of a name!!! 

In general, naming my characters in ANY game is the toughest part for me.  For some I might have a name in mind already, but it might be already claimed.  It's kind of fun browsing the 'net for baby names, or for names from a certain place or country or time in the world.  Or even finding the silly name generator sites, which sometimes I find the perfect name, and other times I'm sitting there laughing as I keep asking it for new names.

Diablo is just.. fun.  It can get repetitive though so I usually just pick it up when the Seasons go live, get my achievements, have some fun blowing stuff up with friends, then move on to other games.  

Other plans for the day include the usual weekend activities of cleaning the house, doing laundry, working on a couple cross-stitch projects, and giving oh so much attention to my little fuzzball friend.

Reader, what are your plans?

TGIF: Finally

In some respects, this year has flown by, but suddenly time seems to be crawling by.  There have been quite a few changes in my life the last month or so, a new position at work, which has me way busier, changes in my personal life, and just me kind of coming to the realization of a lot of things about me and the world around me.  Like anyone else, I suppose.  Each day we learn something new, something might become clearer to us, or something we thought we understood is suddenly hazy, or we become unsure about it.  

I haven't had much time for gaming this week, with work being busier I am ending up curled up on the couch reading, or spending my time working on cross-stitches (for those new here(hi!), or those who haven't read my ramblings about that in the past, yeah I cross-stitch, and I really enjoy it).  Today I'm not going to mutter endlessly about stitching small x's onto fabric using strands of colored embroidery floss, maybe tomorrow, but I'm going to talk about World of Warcraft.

I had instated a "State of the Game" idea a few months ago on this blog, and today is kind of going to be that, for WoW.

Legion, the next and highly anticipated expansion, goes live at the end of this month.  The pre-patch, with some new content and the changes to our classes and some quality of life improvements, went live a couple weeks ago.  I've had a little time to play and get more acclimated to the changes to my main character, and have tried to spend a little time on my army of alts to reacquaint myself with them and how they work.  Byx, an enhancement shaman, still plays pretty much the same as she did before the patch, and I actually really like the changes they made to that class and spec.  I like the new buffs we have to keep track of, and while I will miss my totems, it's one less button to worry about and I think I'll get used to it in the long run.  Plus it gives me the opportunity to play around with my addons, and maybe even change up my UI before the demon army invades and we all die.  I mean uh, not die, nope, we're gonna fite 'em. 

I'm less concerned than I was with leveling ALL my alts, my main goal is to get at least one of my Alliance alts (I primarily play Horde) up to 100 so that I can see the new content from the other side.  Other than that, I'll probably continue to level up my alts, I want to get Byx's archaeology skill up to max level, and a couple other little side 'projects'.  Top secret projects that aren't really top secret, I just don't have my notebook that I scribble things down on right in front of me, leave me alone! Some game sessions I try to Get Something Done, but other times I just log in and burn up rest xp on alts. 

Other than WoW, I spend my gaming time in Guild Wars 2, which there is always way too much to do in, mostly playing with dye.  I also lose the occasional day to Stardew Valley, like you do.

Tomorrow's post will be me summarizing the 'morning play session' of WoW.  Spoiler: it usually involves me logging on an alt that can't fly, summoning a flying mount via the random mount button, and plummeting to their death.  It's quite fun!

It's Blaugust Time!!

Please excuse me as I brush away four months of dust from my 'new and revamped' blog.

Blaugust is a fun tradition that my good friend Bel (who I 'stole' the header image from so oops enemies now ;) ) began about four hundred years ago in the dark ages.  We used to have to carve our thoughts into stone, but thankfully someone invented the internet along the way and it has made things a little easier.  This year's event is a more laid back than some, not out of lack of interest, mind you, but more in that Bel was himself tabulating and keeping track of all the posts, which is more than a full-time job itself.  

I will be attempting to post three days a week, in the past I have tried to do the daily posting thing and I usually do fine until the second week.  I like blogging first thing in the morning, but some mornings don't allow that, usually by the end of the day I need to veg out from the work day and oops suddenly it's September.  I digress. Let's talk about what I've been up to the last four months!

Nothing at all. I kid! I've gotten a promotion at work, which is going to be very very busy for the next month or so, Legion is coming out any day now (okay fine August 30), and I of course have my ever ongoing to-do list in game that I will never ever get done ever but that's okay! It gives me something to do when I log in.  

I'm forever messing about on alts, trying to relearn everyone's abilities and talents from the patch.  I'm working on various cross-stitch projects, some personal and some gifts.  When I revamped my blog, new name and site, I did so with the thought that I would be blogging about more than gaming.  I think part of the reason I stopped blogging was because I wasn't sure if people would really find my other interests as... interesting... as I do.   This blog is for me, I'm not trying to make money or garner a following, so I'll just have to keep trucking and push those silly thoughts aside and keep writing whatever I wish, dang it.

I'm looking forward to Blaugust this year, as I have every year, and am determined to meet my self-appointed goals! I'm excited to see what everyone else posts about, and also uh, updating that really lonely blog roll over there --->

I hope everyone has a great day, see you soon!  I leave you with my girl Byx, ready to leave her garrison and go punch demons in the face.

State of the Game

I've been keeping a personal diary of late.  I don't write in it every day, and not every entry is the same.  Sometimes I just rant on and on, sometimes it's just simply me jotting down what happened that day, or what I need to remember to do for the week, etc.  I've decided I'm going to do something similar with the blog, albeit try to be more consistent with the entries.  Therefore, I introduce State of [the Game].  This will be a space where I kind of make a memorandum, if you will, of what I've been doing in whichever game, and also what's on my to-do list.  Those that are familiar with my last blog, and those familiar with me in general, know that Lists Help Me Get Things Done.  Or so I pretend.

I'll try to keep each State post consistent with one game, because I have the tendency to jump all over the place in these posts.  Key word is try ;).  

World of Warcraft

This game is my bread and butter.  I've let my sub lapse in the past, but I usually always come back.  Currently with the pre-expansion lull, there's a lot of lulling going on, but my guild has events going still, and I'm actually having a lot of fun leveling alts and finding other things to do to fill my time.  I'm not going to lie, yes a lot of days I just can't find the desire to log in and play, but I find if I try to accomplish something during the time I play, it helps! Currently I'm mostly taking advantage of the pet battle bonus xp weekends, as that's an aspect of the game that I think I'll always enjoy.  Plus, gotta collect 'em all and get those nerd points!  I'm also leveling up a couple alts to help my guild and our sister guild with 'murder the other faction' achievements.  

My main, Byx :D

Guild Wars 2

This is a game that I also really really love playing, but there are Too Many games so sometimes a week goes by and I realize I haven't logged in to play.  The classes are all so different, it's such a gorgeous game, and the game play is really fun and alt-friendly.  Plus the cash shop is dangerous so it's fun seeing how long I can hold out on buying - OMG NEW GLIDER SKIN AAAAAAAA

Yeah.

My only 80 (for now), Katla Byxdottir, a Mesmer

It's a game I haven't fully explored, which is another aspect of it that draws my attention from time to time.  

Other Games

Let's see... What else.. Ah yes, Stardew Valley is one that will suck away a day of your life if you're not careful.  I also have been playing, to a lesser extent: Skyrim, Minecraft, Creativerse, Divinity: Original Sin, and Diablo III.  

I'm hoping this 'new thing' will stick for my blog, and for my writing schedule. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got games to play!

 Also, bringing back the cat gifs at the end of my posts :D

HOORAAAAY

Day 20

I usually shy away from discussing exercise and my eating habits online, mostly because Everyone Has An Opinion.  However, today that mindset changes slightly.

You may have noticed the Health and Fitness tab above, along with all the gaming and hobby tabs.  I created this blog to cover various topics, and how I take care of my pathetic meatshell is one of those topics.  Probably the most important, at least until my robot body is ready for my brain to be uploaded into it.

Don't look at me like that, I'm not the only one who thinks it ^.^

For the last 20 days, I have been eating super clean. I won't throw out the term for my eating plan, since that dreaded word tends to cause um, conversations, which sometimes turn into arguments, and it's not the point of this post for me to say I AM RIGHT AND YOU ARE WRONG.  I just wanted to take the time and sit and talk about what I'm doing to make my self feel and work better.

Just a disclaimer before I begin -I'm not writing this to try to turn everyone over to the dark side, so to speak.  I'm not in any way, shape or form shaming what people eat, or trying to make people feel guilty. I hate it when people do that to me, so it is in no way my intention to do that here.

So what am I eating? Meat, veggies, fruit, nuts.  Nothing processed, no sugar, no bread, no dairy, no booze.  It's tough (that last one especially, I miss wiiiiine), it's strict, but I enjoy the self-discipline that comes from it, I'm still getting all of my required nutrients and everything, if anything I'm getting way more than from how I used to eat.  I'm enjoying cooking again, I'm having fun filling up my cart at the grocery store with healthy, good food, and I'm also finding that I'm no longer craving empty carbs or super processed foods.  Sure, a slice of cake looks amazing, but I can also have a giant bowl of fruit and melons and be just as happy and get that sugar 'fix'.

I have a great support team in the form of a few friends, and my mother is actually doing the same meal plan as I am.  I really really don't like to call it a diet, because I'm not cutting or counting calories, weighing or measuring my food.  I feel so much better now than I did on day 1 of this.  My clothes fit a little looser (which is always good), I feel like I have more energy, and my depression and anxiety seem a little less severe than they did almost a month ago.  At the beginning of next month, I'll start slowly incorporating all the NO foods back into my diet, but I'll see how I feel after I shove each one in my face hole.

I haven't really been working out at all during these last few weeks, mostly because I wanted to focus on the food I was putting in my mouth first, and then once I get that down I will focus on working out again.  Once the weather gets warmer, I'll probably start my Couch to 5k (C25K) again, which I'll most likely be doing updates on here for.

All and all, I'm proud of myself for sticking with it, I'm very happy with my 'support group' who deal with my random out bursts of 'WHY ARE THERE DONUTS AT WORK ARE THEY TRYING TO KILL ME AAAAAAAAAAAARGH' and talk me off my metaphorical ledge.  Emergency raisin stashes are crucial!  I'm very happy with the results, both physical and mental, and I'm excited to see what happens after the 30 days are up, if I stick with it, what happens when I reintroduce those foods I've been not allowing myself to eat, and how hard I fall off the wagon and start devouring chocolate ;)

Thanks for reading, have a great day!

(Re) Introductions

Welcome to Byx Bytes!

There are a few of you that know me from elsewhere; my previous blog (I may end up moving the posts over here, I'm not fully certain yet), Twitter,  or even that scary place known as the real world.

For those that don't know me, HI.  I'm only as insane as my writing shows me to be.

This site is visually a work in progress, and I'll be fidgeting with layouts, widgets, fonts, etc., as I see fit.  I'll try to keep posting on the regular, and as I type this I am well aware that it has been over half a year since the last time I sat at my computer and flailed away at the keyboard, struggling to string words together cohesively.  As such, I'm not going to allow myself to take that much time off again any time soon, as I find myself greatly enjoying putting these words to digital paper!

But enough about all that.

You'll see above ^ that there are a few different different pages to my blog.  My previous blog, by the name, was pretty cut-and-dry a gaming blog, specifically a World of Warcraft gaming blog.  I'm still going to blog about games, but the blog title is a kind of play on words, as I will be talking about different bytes, or pieces, of my life.  Like most everyone else, I am a diverse human being who is often easily bored, and I sometimes flit around from interest to interest like a hummingbird flying around a garden.  I'm way less graceful, though.

I'm excited to embark on this new adventure.  Is this where I put another metaphor? I could say something like "Oh, what a strange feeling, about to embark down a familiar path, but it is yet unfamiliar..."

No? Okay, whew.

Thanks for reading, and I look forward to posting again soon :)