Fishing Like a Fiend

Image from wowhead.com.

Awwww, look how ghostly and sparkly he is. I finally found this guy after looking for him for a few days. I didn't camp him or anything, though I heard some people do as the item he gives you is part of Is Another Man's Treasure, an achievement that gives you the title "The Relic Hunter".

The item is Ancient Pandaren Fishing Charm and it gives you the chance to fish up an extra fish/crate/etc on every cast for an hour. I mainly wanted to find him because I have been fishing like a fiend lately in an effort to hopefully fish up the sea turtle mount. I've been fishing the Fish of the Day for the super-sized and zillions of smaller fishing pools it gives you. Still no turtle but I'm looking forward to using my new charm to see if will help. The charm is not consumed on use so go at it, fellow fishermen!

The Fearful Arch-Nemesis

I missed the Golden Globes yesterday (which is a shame as I am a total film and tv buff) because I discovered the obsession that is pet battling. I had only dallied in it before and my highest pets were only around level 8. I did the leapfrog method of leveling where I used my level 8 pets to capture level 10 pets, then replaced my whole team with the level 10 pets to capture level 12 pets, and so on and so forth until I got up to about level 16. The dreaded level 16 where wild pets start bringing their friends. I battled all the Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms battle masters and got the achievements for doing so and then I frolicked through the Dark Portal into Outland where I met her. My dark arch-nemesis.

DUD DUN DUN. Oh yes. This evil little thing kicked my ass five times. GTFO with all your crazy hard mechanical pets. (I actually love mechanical pets, I have a rare Robo-cub I adore.) And of course, two of my team were magical so they got their butts handed to them. I finally admitted defeat and flew off, cursing into the sunset, to go tame other high level pets in the area. Still, each time I tried her, I'd get to where each of us were on our last pet and we each would have a sliver of health left. I'd kill her pet and them BAM! back to life where my last pet would finally give up the ghost and not, you know, magically come back to life.

So, whole team of mechanicals. DO NOT LIKE. Also, whole team of dragons. DO NOT LIKE.

I still have not gone back to try to beat her, though I think with team I have now I could. I went on to Northrend and started taming pets there. Maybe I'll go back and trounce her with a team full of 25s. Just ignore my evil laughter.

Back In the Saddle Again

Sooooo, I'm attempting to breathe life into this blog again. Hang with me while I get my bearings. I stopped blogging here back in Wrath of the Lich King. Let's not even mention Cataclysm. But Pandaria, I'm having a lot of fun in Pandaria so I thought I might attempt to post here once in awhile to amuse you all with my random adventures. I do PVP, PVE, pet battles, retro raids... just about a little of everything, which is why this blog is called THE FRIDGE. You never know what I'm going to pull out of there.

I guess I should give a bit of an update about myself. I'm a casual player right now. I used to be a raider back in Wrath, but I stopped in Cata because of the immense (at the time) changes to healing that made healing 5-mans a complete nightmare and gave me nervous breakdowns. I barely played at all during Cata, to be honest, but Pandaria has drawn me back and I'm comfortable with healing again and I'm loving the expansion so far. My current guild does not have a raid team so I mainly do LFR. Which is really unfortunate as my computer loves 10-mans but hates 25-mans. Haaaaaaaates. Still, I get to raid to my own schedule, which is convenient, and helps me maintain life balance so I don't end up playing WoW all night long. (I did this back in Wrath. And yes, I work full-time. I had no self-control!)

So, I'm in a good place game-wise and thought I would dust this place off a bit. Oh, I probably should mention I'm a horrible alt-oholic. Seriously. I have problems.

Here's to new adventures and new friends!

Mr. I Know Everything

I sometimes think no matter what my guild situation is, I will never be perfectly happy with it. And I don't think that's necessairly a bad assumption or something to be looked down upon. Obviously, I would rather be happy with my guild all the time, but the fact is that guilds are made up of, well, different people and if your mode of communication is guild chat (pixelated words without tone or inflection) then things are sometimes going to come off wrong and people are going to be miffed or hurt or defensive. I go through a cycle of these feelings with my guildmates all the times, even the ones I feel really close to so I think a state of "never quite completely perfect" is natural, most of the time.

That being said, lately I have been feeling the loss of not being an officer anymore. I have been with the guild since it started and only stepped down from being an officer about two months ago due to my hectic work schedule and slight burn out. Stepping down was definitely the best choice. It took so much weight off my back and it was nice to log on and not really have any "responsibilites". I could do what I wanted, when I wanted!

Now that work has evened out though and I'm no longer traveling on business, I miss having the authority to smack people down when their being borderline idiotic or thoughtless. We have a mage in our guild now that is essentially Mr. I Know Everything There Is To Know About WoW. He offers advice when it's not needed or wanted, he has a thousand and one ideas of how to do things bigger and better than what we've got in place now, he feels the need to try and tell everyone how to be better, get better gear -- wait, that all doesn't sound so bad, does it? And it's not, it's really not. It's the way he presents these ideas and opinions.

The other day one of our hunters asked in guildchat where she could buy tier gear. We told her she could go to Dalaran or the Argent Tourney for Tier 9 and suddenly Mr. Mage pops up.

"Hold on, let me RAWR you and tell you exactly what you should get."

I would have said, "Hey, if you want, I can run RAWR real quick and you can see which pieces might be better for you." If I say it like that, it's more of a question, a suggestion really, and my guildie would not be under any obligation to listen to me if she didn't want to. This is what bothers me about this guy - he doesn't present things as options, it's more "here's what I think and here's why I'm right" or "we did this in my last guild and it was awesome so we should it here", etc, etc.

Sadly, after he looked up our hunter (who is rarely online and doesn't raid) he blurts out in guildchat, "WHOA, you really need to get some gear!"

This just burned me up. Our guild does not focus on gearscore. We're there to have fun and we very often carry people through raids that are not geared for the content. We do NOT carry lazy folks who don't bother working on their toons, but we certainly don't mind bringing a slightly ungeared guildie along so they can get some loot they'd actually use.

To me, it was entirely inappropriate for Mr. Mage to pass judgement on the hunter's gear in guildchat. If he wants to talk to her about her gear, fine, lovely, but do it in whispers. Our hunter did not respond to the above - probably either embarressed or annoyed, I'm not sure which - but I did. I just couldn't help myself.
My exactly reply was:

"Hey now, gear isn't everything. :)"

I put the smiley in there so he would know I wasn't yelling at him, but trying to subtly make a point for him to drop it. He replied:

"I never said it was, GeeBee," but he used my full name as if he were scolding a five-year-old. I had to zip my mouth shut after that or risk saying something regretable but it made me wish I was an officer again just so I would have been able to whisper him to tell him we do not address an individual's gear issues in guildchat - or at all, really, unless it's hurting the group as a whole, which it was not. Was what he said really wrong? Not really, it's just the way he comes off - as sort of superior, I guess - that makes me want to take him down a peg or two.

The reason I'm telling you all this is because of a post made by Tam recently. It got me thinking about things that irritate me within my guild, about how the way people say things can really affect my perception of them. Mr. Mage is probably a perfectly nice human being. I just wish he would think a little more before opening his mouth, make an attempt not to sound as if he's deigning to help those less fortunate than himself.

What's possibly more uncomfortable is that I want to like him, I really do, I can see where he's trying to be helpful - but it's his presentation of his help that always ends up rubbing me the wrong way. Probably doesn't help that I'm the boat-rocker, the one who can't keep her mouth shut and has to call people out when they're being ridiculous.

And maybe that's my own annoying habit - Miss Can't Keep Her Mouth Shut And Go With The Flow. I'm not mean about it, but like with the mage, I thought his remark was careless and so I responded. I felt I had to say something so that our hunter would know that we didn't care about her gear, we liked her and knew she didn't have a lot of time online and that was okay with us.

So, Mr. I Think I Know Everying and Miss Can't Keep Her Mouth Shut. I'm sure we make quite a pair.

Whether or not I will become an officer again remains to be seen. I've been told I'd be welcomed back at any time but I'm not sure the pros outweight the cons on this one. Not yet, at least. Until then, I guess I just need to learn how to deal with those who aren't always as polite as I think they should be. Who's to say I'm any better anyway?

In slightly better news, I wanted to report that things with the other holy pally in my guild are going... alright. I have not spoken to her about my concerns. I sort of wanted to see how things played out, but our exchanges have seemed better and she responded to something I posted on our forums with laughter, which I thought was a good sign. I'm hoping things on that front are slowly improving. It's not all patched up yet, but I think it's getting there. If it gets worse, I'm taking everyone's advice and talking to her, until then though, I'm sorta hoping she gets over it on her own.

Ah, guilds. Without them, what would I have to post about?