Pah. Fie even. I hate English weather.

Not that this makes me unique, pretty much everyone does here, even the ones who were actually born and raised here. It’s mid-June, and the weather is cold and grey, with a real mean wind blowing. It’s threatening to rain at any moment. This is a problem for the brisk walk that I had planned on taking during my lunchtime, both for stress management and for exercise.

Sometimes I get really, really nostalgic for Los Angeles. I know that it’s not all beaches and sunshine (it wasn’t even when I did live right on the strand at Hermosa Beach, just steps from the sand and water). I have this very idealised vision of what it was like to live there, kind of a “good parts” version. You know, the one without gangs and smog and traffic jams and the possibility of getting shot. The good stuff.

Just once, though…just once I would like to have a proper summer. One where the sunshine and warm weather last more than just a few days. I’m a hot weather girl, I really miss sunshine – I’m probably a much nicer (less depressed) person in the sun. I want an endless stretch of sunny, hot weather, frosty drinks by the pool, sleeping with the windows open to catch the moonlight and night breezes.

That’s why everyone I know here has a dream of moving to Spain. Or Portugal. Or Greece.

Even though I am already nostalgic over the changes to old areas that I have loved, I’m loving a lot of this. Stormwind and Ogrimmar both look amazing. *squee*

I’ve done a lot more healing this weekend, and although Kes isn’t ready for the runs that I really want gear from, I’m getting more used to healing groups (otherwise known as Not Screwing Up). I really need to figure out Grid, however – although I can heal five mans by clicking on bars, it would be much too slow and clunky for anything more demanding. I overheal like mad, which at this point is ok by me as long as everyone stays on their feet. I’ll work on more efficient healing as I go on.

Oh, and Miz? “One of the things a new paladin needs to learn is not to be timid with Holy Light, but to be willing to use it a great deal, even if there is a lot of overhealing.” So there. :P

I would love to see the Hyldnir as a playable race. There’s something about these stout blue ladies that I really like. Although they, undeniably, do look stupid on a sparkle pony.

Now that I’m back in my enjoying-Warcraft phase, I’m thinking about looking for a guild. I have no intention of going back to 25-man raiding – the thought fills me with absolute horror. I quite enjoy having free time off, an actual life that doesn’t involve raiding five nights a week with people who I consider to mostly be a bunch of irritating pricks. (Not all, of course – I’ve been very lucky in my guilds, to be honest. But there are always those people who I would never have chosen to spend so much time with were it not for raiding.)

I think a 10-man guild sounds like the perfect solution. People who are experienced raiders, of course…although I love friendly, social guilds, I would hate waiting for endless periods of time while people put children to bed or have dinner or whatever. I want to raid hardcore on a casual basis, if that makes any sense. Raiding with respect and responsibility to guildmates, but only three or four nights a week. Raiding with people who show up early, repaired and stocked with consumables. Not with idiots.

This may take some time.

A guest post from one of the Warcraft blogs that I enjoy most: Jaedia’s The Lazy Sniper. This entry is entitled A Rant About Tanks 2: Electric Boogaloo, and it totally made me laugh. (And I have to tell ya, I desperately needed some giggles today, it’s been one of those weeks that’s on the Honor Roll of All-Time Shit Weeks.)

This is everything that you need to know about tanking:

• Use your hurty attacks to make the mean people not kill everyone.
• Every last healer and DPS is a wanker.

Enjoy. :)

That said, I’m totally going to try tanking this weekend. Be warned.

I had an inordinate amount of fun this weekend in Warcraft. I’d been on a WoW break for some time, due to work pressure and general meh-ness. I played some Red Dead Redemption, and levelled a Priest/Knight to 21/20 in Runes of Magic, but otherwise I hadn’t done a lot of gaming.

I heard that a good friend (Hi, Raz!) had come back to Warcraft, so I transferred my new-80 Paladin back to my original home server and set about gearing her up for ” friends” runs and 10 mans. Raz, Kaz and Miz were kind enough to let me experiment with healing for the first time on several runs, which astonished me with how easy and smooth it was to do. And then we realised that the instances had been set to normal, so we went back and did them again on heroic. lol…

It was fun. It was different, which is what I really need, and it was genuinely fun. I let people die several times when things got manic (sorry Kaz and the little pug mage!) but overall it was great. I was in greens, and had virtually no mana to speak of, so it was slow. I know I was probably overhealing, which didn’t help the mana issue. But I did enjoy it, very much.

And afterwards, I was kitted out in crafted purplez and blues through the immense generosity of friends. Thank you all for the time and effort and all of the titansteel and other mats…I promise to grind until I pay you back!

A good weekend, overall. It’s nice to rediscover a love for the game.