Hello Tauren!

Warcraft Cookie Christmas Exchange!

2011-12-13T11:58:00.000-04:00

Disciplinary Action hosted and arranged a cookie recipe exchange amoungst the Warcraft blogging community. I love both Warcraft and cookies, but my blogging is meh at best - but that didn't stop me from putting my name in!

(Go here to see all the cookies we made! http://disciplinaryaction.wordpress.com/2011/12/13/warcookie-christmas-exchange-the-cookies/)

Just before she doled out the recipes via email I made a comment in twitter:

happycho Su-Li

Crossing my fingers for a raisinless recipe in the #warcraftcookieexchange. Raisins: ruining recipes and Christmases since time immemorial.

6 Dec Favorite Reply Delete

Then I checked my inbox and there is was:

Rum Raisin Sour Cream Cookies.

I had to chuckle at my luck. Oh RNG gods - you so crazy! Then I read on and the submitter acknowledged that raisins weren't to everyone's taste so they put in another recipe, Peppermint Munchies.

That is the best name for a cookie ever!

It's true that I don't like raisins and I would never purposely add them to anything. However, since I made a bit of a stink on Twitter regarding raisins I thought that I should at least give them a try. Besides, my husband likes raisins and I like him a lot.

Just to give you proof that I actually bought raisins

I need to invest in more baking pans, and work on my "drop spoonfuls of dough" skill.

The dough tasted really good, by the way.

These did taste very yummy. It was a nice cakey and soft cookie and the raisins did carry the rum flavour throughout. I will definitely keep this recipe on hand to make and maybe cut the amount of raisins in half and add some nuts or dried cranberries.

The next cookie was Peppermint Munchies. These are a nice sugar cookie with a cream cheese peppermint filling.

To make the cookies carry the Warcraft theme I set up a little WoW tree. I even put in the Alliance, because well, it's Christmas. Plus I know that they love cookies too. And I secretly want them all to get super fat so they are too tired to destroy my butt in PvP.

Cookies, Warcraft and Hello Kitty - what else does a gal need?

I also renamed them! Rumsey Rum Raisin and Undercity Peppermint Munchies. (There is really a lack of things peppery and/or minty in WoW - all I could find were the Hallows End mints). The recipe didn't call for the extra chocolate drizzle or candy sprinkles, but I felt they needed a little dressing up.

Many thanks to @Sebyth for sending me a pic her her Night Elf Rogue. I've included the recipes below in case you would like to make them.

Rum Raisin Sour Cream Cookies

Sometimes the simplest cookies are the most delicious. These soft, plain cookies have a slightly crunchy, sugary coating and are wonderful dunked in hot chocolate.

Ingredients
-1/4 cup stick margarine or butter, softened
-3/4 cup sugar
-1 large egg
-1 tsp vanilla
-1/2 cup low-fat sour cream
-1 1/2 cups flour
-1/2 tsp baking soda
-1/4 tsp salt
-1 cup raisins
-1/4 cup rum

1. Combine one cup of raisins with 1/4 cup each water and rum in a small saucepan. Simmer until raisins are plump and liquid has evaporated. Cool completely.
2. Preheat oven to 350°F.
3. In a large bowl, beat margarine and sugar until well combined - it will have the consistence of wet sand. Beat in egg and vanilla until smooth.
4. In a medium bowl, combine flour, baking soda, and salt. Add half the flour mixture to the sugar mixture, stirring just until combined. Gently stir in the sour cream and cooled raisins, and then the remaining flour mixture, stirring just until blended.
5. Drop spoonfuls of dough 2" apart onto a cookie sheet that has been sprayed with nonstick spray.
6. Bake for 12-15 minutes, until set but not yet golden. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.

Makes 2 dozen cookies.

Peppermint Munchies

Sugar cookies with a creamy peppermint center.

Prep: 35 mins Chill: 30 minutes Bake: 12 mins per batch Oven: 375

Ingredients

-Peppermint Filling (see below)

-3/4 cup butter, softened

-1 cup granulated sugar

-1 tsp baking powder

-1 egg

-1 tbsp milk

-1 tsp vanilla

-2 cups all-purpose flour

-2 tbsp coarse white and/or red sugar (for decorating)

Peppermint Filling

-3 oz softened cream cheese (I use light)

-2 tbsps powdered sugar

-2 tbsps finely crushed peppermint candies or candy canes

-1/4 tsp peppermint extract

1. Combine ingredients for peppermint filling in a bowl. Beat with an electric mixer on low speed until smooth. Cover and chill for 30 minutes. (Clean the beaters of your mixer because you'll need them soon!)

2. Preheat oven to 375°F. In a bowl, beat butter with an electric mixer on medium speed for 30 seconds. Add sugar and baking powder. Beat until combined, scraping bowl. Beat in egg, milk, and vanilla until combined. Beat in as much of the flour as you can with the mixer. Stir in remaining flour.

3. Shape dough into 1-1/4 inch balls. Make an indentation in the center of each ball; place 1/2 teaspoon of the Peppermint Filling in each indentation. Shape dough around filling to enclose; roll dough in hands until smooth. Place balls 2 inches apart on an ungreased cookie sheet. Dip the bottom of a glass in coarse sugar; flatten balls until 1/2 inch thick. (NB Baker's note: The recipe says to do this but it didn't work for me; so I flatten with just the glass and then sprinkle a bit of sugar on top of each.) Bake for 9-12 minutes or until lightly browned. Cool on cookie sheet for 1 minute. Transfer to a wire rack; cool. Makes about 32 cookies.

To store: Layer cookies between sheets of waxed paper in an airtight container; cover. Store at room temperature for up to 3 days or freeze for up to 3 months.

Favourite Blizzcon Moments

2011-10-23T13:16:00.000-03:00

Blizzcon was an impulse buy. With The Wayward Initiative besties doing guild chat live updates I wanted in on the action. It proved to be one of the best things I did all weekend! Live streaming at home meant no lines, no one walking in front of the screens or blocking views and, more importantly, I did the whole thing without pants!

So here are my highlights of the weekend in no particular order:

Mists of Pandaria: After watching the panel on the new expansion and seeing the concept art and new changes I'm not worried. Who doesn't love cuddly pandas? I've said it a million times this weekend but I just want to poke their chubby bellies and squish their faces! Kung Fu Panda similarities aside it's obvious that Blizzard is excited for it and has put a lot of time and thought into it. However, it doesn't mean that I'm not not going to make fun of it. /bangs gong.

WoW Annual subscription. Okay - we all know about it, but I got a little teary eyed with excitement as Mike Morhaime made the announcement. It's dorky I know, but I felt like we were getting something for our continued patronage. A free game, a beta key and a mount - it's a lot for what most of us are already paying for on a yearly basis.

Jay Mohr! Jay Mohr was on my "List" in university and I like that we're both fat now.

Jazzed historian: Shawn Copeland! Mostly an inside joke but every time he was on stage it felt like he was trying to motivate us about how awesome his job is. He wanted us to be as jazzed as was and jazz us in the face.

Geeking out over Christie Golden. She wrote Lord of the Clans in 6 weeks. SIX WEEKS! That is very impressive for such a great book.

Dude in the paladin costume. This appeals to the RPer inside of me: HAWT!

Live Raid: Come on! It was probably the most thrilling event of the Con to watch. I have never seen those boss fights and pitting Horde against Alliance really appeals to the competitor in me. I felt that Blood Legion was fighting for my love and for the honour of the Horde. With the race so close I was glued to my seat! Even more impressive was just seeing what hardcore raiding is like. They did in an hour what our guild can do in about two expansions. Grats to Blood Legion! FOR THE HORDE!

The FooFighters show and Dave Grolh signing those fab tits. Hey - a girl can be appreciative of them too.

Probably one of the best discoveries about Blizzard was finding out that Cory Stockton was the most adorable WoW developer ever! (call me!)

Live streaming Blizzcon was a lot of fun. I'm sure that it would have been sweet to experience it first hand but it was great to be able to switch back and forth between panels. It was cool to be able to watch along with all the tweeters at home and especially fun to make catty commentary with Chawa and Regis. We're currently rewatching the Lore Q&A from yesterday as I type this and showing these nerds NO MERCY.
Now that it's over and I've identified the cute boys, I'll leave it up to the real blogs to give actual content from Blizzcon but I can't leave without sharing a rainbow! Here's a bonus shot from the Diablo III/Auction House panel! I don't know anything about Diablo, but it's got my attention...!

See you next year Blizzcon!

Expansion Wish List

2011-10-21T12:51:00.001-03:00

Thought I would offer my little thoughts and hopes for what I would like to see the next expansion what ever it might be.

Turalyon and Alleria! Despite my dedication to the Horde as it is now, I loved how these two fought against the possessed horde as well as their feelings for each other. We last see them follow Ner'zhul through a portal but they never materialize. If they came back to the game I would probably level an alliance toon just to see them.

Thrall: Thrall needs to come back and depose Garrosh as Warchief. I only consider him now to be a substitute Warchief. Probably why I never listen to him, talk through his speeches and throw paper airplanes over his head. I suspect that we will see Garrosh act selfishly to save the Horde just like his father and die in an act of heroism which will make me feel bad about how much I hate him now.

New faction: I would like to have a third faction which was neutral to Horde and Alliance. That way I could enter into the cities and not be pummelled by guards and players. I just want to take a look around and see how the other side lives. And sometimes while playing battlegrounds I wish I could shiv, stunk or spank some of my fellow players for being jackasses.

More mail dresses for hunters!

and um...more achievements?

Of course there are tons more but I'm trying to get this up as fast as I can before they announce the actual expansion and the Diablo III date and all this becomes mooooot.

Happy Blizzcon weekend!

Love,

Hello Tauren

Happy PvP Fun Time

2011-10-17T21:41:00.000-03:00

Oh Blog, I could never quit you.

2011-10-14T13:25:00.000-03:00

It's been so long that I've posted here regularly that I've stopped drafting "Farewell and thanks for reading/Turn out the lights on your way out" posts. This blog has served its purpose of being the place I can spread the happiness my guild, The Zug Initiative, has given me on to you: my dear, faithful readers and fellow Warcraft blog addicts. I thought I would just let it exist in its own little way and visit from time to time to reflect on my journeys through Azeroth.

However.

It would appear that my rainbow bucket is near full again and I can't not share with you all the happy times I have in the game. With all the guild drama, bitching, and awful PuGs out there sometimes you need a little unicorn chaser to balance things out.

So let's play a little bit of catch up.

The summer did not yield too much raiding, if any. We did do some old timey achievements such as a full Naxx clear as well as killing our server's namesake, Kael'Thas (fiiiinally). The mount even dropped and [Enhancement Shaman] won the roll! It was one of those I'm really happy you got it but I wish it was meeeeeee moments.

There has been some PvP. Oh yes. PvP right in my face. I hadn’t entered a BG for about a year and when Regis/Chawa asked if I would like to join them it was like awakening a monster inside of me. I'm sorry Alliance, I know that there are nice players behind the faction but I cannot get enough of killing you. I've also come around from scowling at the BG call outs such as "OMG U SUCK" and "dis is why ally win" etc to finding it hilarious. Picturing them sitting in their room just seething as they violently mash out their frustrations for lack of defence or killing healers- well it makes me chuckle.

In other alt news I levelled a warrior solely through questing as a spin off project from Dechion's LFD only levelling experiment and rerolled a troll rogue which I'm having a lot of fun with. She just dinged 60! Maybe I’ll write more on her later and levelling through Eastern Kingdoms vs. Kalimdor (because one was faster than the other).

Okay, that's enough to go on for today. It's Friday and I think that we're going to the Firelands tonight/Sunday! Hooray!

I hope you have a wonderful weekend!

Hello Tauren: Squee Edition

2011-10-06T12:57:00.000-03:00

You know when something is so awesome that you can't stop looking at it? Well hold onto your wizard hats because I'm about to share with you something very special....

We have this guild member, see? And she's a really great artist, see? And she's very, very, very cool, see?

It was during guild chat that the subject of rainbow-barfing unicorns came about ('natch). Which turned into a rainbow-barfing Tauren which turned into riding unicorns and shooting rainbows in general. I half jokingly asked if Sebyr would take a simple request of a Tauren riding a unicorn shooting a rainbow from a bow. More specifically my Tauren.

You know, the usual type of thing. Oh, and could he be wearing a dress too? Pacheco loves dresses.

Well.

Ask and ye shall receive....

Behold! Pacheco, the Tauren Hunter on a unicorn mount shooting a rainbow from his new PvP bow, wearing a red dress! Just look at him! LOOOOOOOOOOOK!!!!!!

The fabulousness and awesomeness and utter fantasticness of this work of art I could have never imagined. She captured him perfectly! The hair, the ring, the bow, the dress! THE FLOWERS!!!!! Those kill me! I have been staring at this photo for the last few days now and every time it fills me with sunny beams and sparkles!

So I want to give huge thanks to Sebyr for working so hard on my request. It's now my desktop as well as a framed photo on my nightstand, (sorry Archie - consider your ginger mug replaced)! I am in awe of your talent and I hope we see more of your art in the future! /hug!

/Hello Tauren is forever on a unicorn, shooting a rainbow and filled with happiness

Lighting the Raid Fires (but not standing in them)

2011-07-05T14:19:00.000-03:00

There has been some chatter amongst The Zug Initiative for a desire to raid again. I couldn't be happier. Going through Ice Crown Citadel with our bunch of yahoos was always a good time: the aggravation of almost getting a boss, the hilarious and inconvenient wipes and the absolute thrill of working together to get a boss. Love it! (Plus, sometimes there's loot.)

We've always had two main problems when it comes to raiding:

1. LF1M/LF1M(to stay behind)

It has always seemed like we're either short on numbers by 1 or 2 or conversely we have 1 or 2 people who would like to raid but there aren't enough spots. We have enough toons to make up quite a few raids, but we only have about 8 or 9 actual players. On the first part we combat this by either scraping the raid or by doing lower content. There are always alts (and sometimes mains) that need achievements and sometimes it just feels good to pew-pew something really quick.

The second part needs a bit more delicacy to deal with. The fact is that everyone wants a chance to see content and everyone should get that chance. Generally people will offer to sit out, but sometimes that is at the cost of a tank, healer or my incredible DPS*. However, I love seeing raids for the first time and am very happy to give someone else that chance. I might be sore about it for a moment or two, but there are lot of opportunities. Why not let the very casual players have the experience this time around? Sometimes just getting in the door can be thrilling enough.

2. Time Zones

Oh my Earth Mother! Why are we so split up across the universe? Our raid times are usually 7/7:30 server time. However, that's 9:30 local and means that I only have a few hours before I get bleary eyed and belligerent. Some folks have kids and also like a little rest. The Wayward Initiative is just getting in the door from a long day at work and our New Zealand office is just waking up. Scheduling a good time for everyone to get together is just as hard as organizing a bunch of executives for a board meeting (read: annoyingly hard). It means that everyone is inconvenienced just a little but for the good of the raid we make those sacrifices.

When the stars align and we end up with 10 actual people online at the same time it's a small victory already. We summon, we buff, we dance, we summon Archmage Vargoth and we wait for /readycheck. Sometimes it's fun to kill dragons, but it's always fun to kill dragons together.

/Hello Tauren is ready to raid!

*My blog – my imaginary dps numbers.

Well Hello There!

2011-06-01T16:09:00.001-03:00

I don't care for "I Have Nothing to Write About Posts" so I'll just let you know that I'm still here, not playing very much nor having much motivation to document my adventures in Orgrimmar while I alt-tab to play Bejewelled Blitz. As of late I'm having a hard time finding that spark to keep me tethered to the game, but I'm still poking around from time to time.

Things are good and we are well and happy at Chez Hello Tauren. Next week I'm headed to Toronto with my sister in law for some shopping and to see the boy(s) of my dreams. It's okay - Enhancement Shaman knows of my life long commitment to Jordan Knight. (Although I'm sure he would rather I didn't step foot inside the home of the Maple Leafs.) With that trip, some birthday parties and a friend's baby shower my June has been spoken for! It's starting to feel like summer!

I hope that you had a great May and that your June is looking all sunny and rainbows. For those of you still around and reading this, thanks for sticking it out with me maybe more posts will come but if not, have a fabulous summer! Come over for cocktails and cake some time!

Love,
Hello Tauren

Day 19 - your bags and bank

2011-05-04T12:00:00.000-03:00

It will surprise no one that my bags are a jumble of useless items, bits of meat, outdated gear and quest items.

In a word they are a mess.

I use the Bagnon addon to help keep all the bags in one frame. It has a nice search function and you're able to view other character's bags. Look at all that precious bag space! My druid and his three sets of gear is drooling.

Day 18 - Your Favourite Outfit

2011-05-03T12:00:00.000-03:00

As much as I like to put Pacheco in dresses, I don't collect outfits for RP purposes...okay, maybe some mild RP on my own while I ride around Ogrimmar giggling to myself. My favourite outfit is generally the one I'm wearing and have spent the most time on.

For a look at a blogger that does take the time to put together nice outfits, you should check out The WoW Debutante. She's even created a Lady Gaga-esque guild mascot!

I thought this outfit was awesome on my husband's paladin.

I zoned into Trial of the Grand Crusader and that was what his toon looked like. I yelled, You can't tank in that! and laughed but really, his regular gear does precious little more to cover up her lady bits. A ready check came and we initiated the fight, YOUR NAKED!!!!!! I shouted to the next room panicked that we were going to die quickly.

....and that's when I learned about the naked bug.

ugh, save yourself some trouble and don't Google Warcraft Naked Bug....

Day 17 - Favourite Spot In Game

2011-04-30T12:00:00.002-03:00

We're on vacation this week, so what better way than to finish up the 20 Days of WoW challenge!

I don't know what it is about Nagrand that I love so much. Most likely it's the welcome sun and green rolling hills after questing in Terrokar Forest. The floating waterfalls, the peaceful animals. I felt bad when I was grinding Thick Clefthoof leather for my Druid's tanking set. Luckily skinning always feels a bit like cleaning up my messes or covering my sins of the slaughter.

Nagrand is where I brought Thrall home to his people and where the Horde began. I always feel peaceful when I fly there and the site of Garadar always gives me a warm, welcoming feeling, like I'm coming home.

I also like to fly around Grizzly Hills sometimes and listen to the music - it's really lovely.

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Jitters

2011-04-29T08:27:00.000-03:00

I wasn't sure if it was wedding or trip jitters that woke me early but here. Here I am watching the Royal Wedding coverage when I should be packing. No wait. When I should be sleeping.

Ah well, I love a wedding and since we'll be seeing this coverage for the rest of our lives why not watch it live?

In 24 hours we'll be bleary eyed again only we'll be at the airport! Enhancement Shaman and I are going to Mexico for a week in the sun! But it's better than that! We're meeting the The Wayward Initiative there too! What started out as an email suggestion somewhere along the lines of "lf2m sunny vaycay! Must have passport, pst" and a few weeks later here we are on vacation eve!

Those two have gone on ahead while we're afk flying. Hopefully somewhere around noon tomorrow they'll use a summoning stone at some bar and/or pool and that's probably not the last of my Warcraft/Vacation quips!

I wish you all a terrific week and a happy Royal Wedding. It really was a lovely wedding. I think that if you took away the pomp, the jewels. the titles and the McQueen designer gown you would have still had a gorgeous and happy bride - something all weddings should hope to have.

Cheers!

Shoes Are a Tauren's Best Friend

2011-04-28T18:09:00.000-03:00

Maybe you've worn your hoof shoes to too many World Event Galas and all those belf females are starting to talk. Or maybe you just saw the new Christian Louboutin Fall collection and thought, ME WANT!!!!

Either way here are some fab shoes for us lady Taurens and any of you...um...festive...Taurens who like a killer shoe.

First off the Puck Fur Boot, or the Talbuk Toe as I like to call it. That little tuff at the end reminds of all the gentle beasts in Nagrand right before I kill them all for Hemet Nesingwary.

You don't have to sacrifice fashion for Travel Form! With these leopard print pumps you'll be the toast of the town!

As soon as you reach your destination and get into kitty form you'll want to slip into something with a little bit more...meow.

Maybe you're the old fashioned type of Tauren and you don't want to expose too much hide. Then these laser cut, doily covered boots are for you!

Or perhaps when you're tanking, knocking down bosses and kicking ass in general. You need something with a little more oomph.

Adds +10 strength and +1,000,000 FIERCENESS!

Or maybe you're just a crazy troll druid trying to make it in a tauren world.

Joking aside, the collection, view here: http://shoerazzi.com/christian-louboutin-fall-2011-collection/ is awesome. I would find myself lucky to even stand in front of a Christian Louboutin store let alone hold a pair in my hand (however, is someone wants to make the latter happen for me, I'm not going to refuse!) I'm not sure who these furry shoes are for but I would love to see some starlets rocking them on the red carpet!

I'll end on more serious note and present you with this shoe...

...because it's f*cking fantastic.

20 Days of WoW (Catch Up)

2011-04-28T10:06:00.001-03:00

Okay, I’m totally behind in my 20 Days of WoW and I can’t let The Wayward Initiative get ahead of me so here is my attempt to catch up or…

Hello Tauren phones it in!

Day 13 – People (players/bloggers) that you admire.

I really enjoy all the blogs that I read and follow. Seriously – I couldn’t even hope to compare myself to any of you because you’re smart, witty, and excellent writers! Yes, I am talking about YOU!

I also give kudos to people who can play both Horde and Alliance characters. I’ve tried but playing Alliance is like Bizzaro World. Where all the people hate me now like me and all the flight paths are just a little wonky. The folks with multiple 85 toons from both factions must really enjoy all parts of the game and are really getting their moneys worth from the monthly subscription. But deep down I hope that they really prefer Horde the most.

Day 14 – This upsets you

Some stuff happened in the guild in September and as much as I would like to forget it I still think about it from time to time. Part of me wants to hold on to feeling a little bit angry at them, but the other part of me wants to let it go.

People should play the game that they want and if your guild isn’t offering that then you should leave. However, leaving a social guild of friends is much different that a large group of strangers so be sensitive if you have to say goodbye. There are real people at the other end of the keyboard and chances are, you know them in real life.

Day 15 – Your desktop background (on your computer) and why you chose it.

This guy is my desktop background.

Hedonismbot.

Enhancement Shaman put it there a while ago and I haven’t changed it. It makes me laugh every time I see it. I mean, come on, who doesn’t love a little hedonism now and then?

Day 16 – Things you miss (post Cataclysm)

By far the easiest one:

THRALL!

I miss Thrall as Warchief because Garrosh sucks. I guess it’s only fair he leads the Horde because King Varian is sort of lame too. I don’t even recognize Thrall in his shaman robes and the last time I saw him he said I was a stupid Tauren and that I had doomed Azeroth because I couldn’t single handily kill Deathwing. Hey Thrall, that’s no way to treat the person that saved you from Durnhold Keep and reunited you with your family on a different planet. Besides, he was an invalid target, Thrall!

So yeah. I’m hoping at some point Thrall is going to come back, see the new segregated Orgrimmar and destroy it a la Jesus Christ Superstar at the temples. Flip those tables! Sing and shout! Flap your arms! ROCK OPERA!!!!!!!!!!

Ahem.

Sorry.

Miss you Old Thrall! Call me!

Let the Portal Jokes Fly!

2011-04-20T12:30:00.002-03:00

This post is dedicated to two very special bloggers/gents/fellow tweeters. Someone was complaining about the snow and I thought I would cheer them up by offering them a slice.

However, since I’m in Canada and I don’t know how easily you can ship a cake to the States and since I can’t log in at the moment and send them a cake in-game – I am sending them these virtual cakes which I have enjoyed over the years. Yes, I’m the kind of gal that has a photo album of cakes. Oh man I love zee cake!

So for BigBearButt, Dechion and other cake enthusiasts who need a pick-me-up, I present you with a cakewalk down Pacheco Lane.

First up is Chocolate Cake.

It’s your standard, crowd pleasing cocoa powder cake with a hint of coffee to really bring out the chocolate flavour with a thick chocolate fudge ganache. I made this for BrokenTree and Morvis when they came to visit last summer. Yay Guild Visits!

Peanut Butter Cake!

The same recipe above only with peanut butter icing. As a special treat this is topped with salted chocolate peanut bark for added crunch and…saltiness. I made this for my big brother who gave us a surprise visit in January. See what happens when you give me a day’s notice? You get cake.

Lemon Cake

Enhancement Shaman’s more favoured cake is lemon cake. This dessert table was from our party last June when he was Called to the Bar. Light genoise cake with a tangy lemon curd topped with sweet boiled icing. I love making cakes, but I especially enjoy making them for my husband.

Doctor Who/Lost Cake

Another lemon cake for Enhancement Shaman! This was for his birthday that also fell on the night of the last episode of Lost. It’s supposed to be designed like one of the Dharma Initiative stations and that blue thing is supposed to be a minimalist TARDIS.

The Best Chocolate Cake Ever

Sorry, this is for girls only, the chocolate flavour is too intense for boys and their taste for burnt meat and weak beer. I’m putting it here because I know there are lots of girl gamers who might enjoy a delicate slice of rich cake whilst picking flowers and bashing skulls. How chocolaty is it? Well, there are only two or three tablespoons of flour in the entire recipe, the rest is just chocolate, sugar and eggs.

Strawberry Cake!

A simple white cake with strawberry buttercream. That icing tastes just like strawberry ice cream and you know I would never lie to you about such important matters. I made this cake for my 30ish birthday and I swear the recipe called for a quarter cup of my own aging tears since they are definitely in there!

Cherpumple Cake!

Three cakes stuffed with three pies and doused in cream cheese icing. We made this for American Thanksgiving and it is a monster of a cake. White, Spice and yellow cake stuffed with a cherry, pumpkin and apple pie. It took four to five cans of frosting to cover it. Yes, canned, because that is what the recipe said to use as well as cake mixes and store-bought pies! It practically makes and stuffs itself!

Fauxtess Cupcakes

Can you tell that I like making chocolate cake the most? Filled with vanilla bean cream, these cupcakes are just as good as those little ones you got in your lunch (and about 300% more work).

Rainbow Cake

I made this for my niece when she was two as a treat and also to be in the running as Audrey’s Favourite Aunt. Goodness she is cute and little Holly has grown, grown, grown! You just need one cake recipe and seven bowls for your colors, top with vanilla icing and sprinkles and BAM! Best Aunt Ever!
Bacon Cakes

I didn’t make these, but I wish I had. These were for my friend’s 30th birthday made by his husband. One is a white cake cleverly decorated to look like a large slab of bacony bacon and the other is a sweet cornbread cake with maple cream frosting and candied bacon. They were both really good.

Not bacony enough for you?

Well here you go, our New Year’s Breakfast platter. Ham and sausages baked until crispy. When you start January 1st with ham you know it’s going to be a good year.

So to BBB and Dech, I hope these photos helped you forget about the snow and dreary weather for a little bit! The warm weather is just around the corner and there are lots of cakes to be enjoyed in the meantime! Cheers!

EDIT: Oh my - updated BBB's address to take you to the correct one and, you know, not those other bears. Thanks to BT for the headsup and sorry to anyone who's innocence has now been sullied.

Day 12 – A usual day in your life/online time

2011-04-19T15:17:00.001-03:00

As an assistant, my main job is to stay ahead of two key people (my bosses) while making it appear as I've done nothing at all. Sometimes that's easy because I know them pretty well. But sometimes they do things to keep me on my toes, like triple book themselves and I need to make all those meetings work. I also spend a lot of time chasing people (sometimes literally, like in my car), organizing meetings, making sure they remember to go to said meetings and remaining cool and collected while doing so. I don't have to pick up dry cleaning (we have a courier to do that for us), but there is an ironing board here just in case someone's suit needs to look "crisp".

I wouldn't say that I'm a "work wife" because they are quite capable of remembering to eat lunch and get their own coffee (although I have been known to put one of them in a Time Out). In a nutshell I make sure that they are where they need to be most and have everything they need. I deal with little things that take up too much time or takes away from getting work done. I laugh at all their jokes, funny or not, because that is what a good executive assistant does. In turn those two people are probably the nicest folks I could ever hope to work for.

Once all the fires, emergencies and conference calls have been dealt with I usually draft blogposts, catch up on Google reader, emails and eat snacks. I totally love my job!

I start supper when I get home which can be an event. Pouring over cookbooks, searching online and then trying to find my kitchen underneath all the clutter. My main kitchen tools are my chef knives, Le Creuset French Oven and onions. Man I love onions.

Then I try to tidy up as much as I can tolerate and log into WoW.

I don't have a set routine in the game, but I should be doing more reputation dailies. I just play stream of consciousness style doing whatever seems fun until it's not. Sometimes questing or grinding or farming comes easy and sometimes it feels like a chore and a chore is a chore is a chore. I like it when we have enough to do a run of something and I also just enjoy chatting with folks while ticking away at quests.

I try to be in bed by 11ish and while I will say aloud that I'm not tired like an insolent child, as soon as I take my glasses off I can be asleep within minutes or seconds even. It's my super power and I use it for good and for evil.

Day 11 – Bad Habits and Flaws

2011-04-15T11:37:00.001-03:00

Or 10 things we don't know about you continued…

Oh I have tons of bad habits! I burp in public, I can demolish a large bag of sour cream and onion chips in under a half hour, I drink wine too quickly, which causes me to make inebriated speeches at work functions. It's all part of what makes me truly adorable and a delight to be around.

In the blog, I make loads of weird typos and use words improperly and out of context. I don't link to or comment on other blogs as much as I should. I'm reading lots and following lots but mostly I come away thinking, I can't sully that great post with my drivel. There are times that I would la-la-la-love to be one of the big-bloggers, but most times I can't keep up or I'm too lazy to blog…plus I might be a taaaaad bit Guild-Centric which may alienate some readers.

In the game my bars are poorly organized in an odd fashion and I don't know what half of them do. I'm a mouse clicker for the most part – particularly on my hunter (but when I'm healing I'm keyboard all the way), I keyboard turn when I solo quest and sometimes I run around wearing vanity gear and fishing poles by accident. Honestly you think after four years I would be uber or learned a proper play style by now, but noop!

As for flaws there are just as many! I have crap earlobes. Seriously. They aren't level and one of them is doubled at the end. My farsightedness is next to blindliness and I am jealous of anyone that can wake up in the morning and see.

I think flaws are great and they are what make us unique. As for bad habits – they are just habits and I'll correct them at some point but really, chips are the best things ever and I'll never give them up completely. NEVER!

Day 10 – Favourite Websites

2011-04-14T21:09:00.000-03:00

I do have a full time job that keeps me busy but I pretty much read or skim blogs all day long. Thank goodness for Google Reader! It does all my web searching for me! I’ve broken it into a few categories like WoW, Cooking, Crafts, Geeky, Friends, Funny and Misc.

Cooking blogs/sites are about 50% of my subscriptions. I seriously love looking, reading and thinking about food. These are just a selection:

And about 30 more…at least. I get a lot of my recipes, food wish lists and inspiration from these folks who are charming, witty and excellent cooks not to mention take gorgeous photos. How do they find the time to make wonderful things, raise families and go to events?

Then there are lots of WoW blogs. I really enjoy getting some insight from like minded folks about the game. I confess that I don’t read the main Hunter ones as much as I should. I do like contributing as much dps as I can but I don’t need to read about it every single day. Warcraft Hunter’s Union, OutDPS and others are excellent sources of information but I find keeping up with it exhausting. I skim WoW.Com, MMOChampion and those types of aggregators for the latest news and updates but generally I just wait for other people to tell me what’s going on through their blogs. Like the Call to Arms thingy or new pets and such.

I love to have new to me blogs to read! Send me your links please!

Since there are a few members of our guild who run or ran blogs I would remiss if I didn’t mention them here.

The Wayward Initiative – You know them, you love them, you’re here because of them! Starring DarthRegis, Chawakanda and guest starring BrokenTree!

Focused Divergence – by Fal, who I haven’t seen or heard from in a while and hoping all is well!

Dechion’s Place. Even though he has since stopped blogging about WoW (for now, I’m hoping) Dechion’s blog is full of interesting and great writing and well worth taking a revisit. Inside Scoop! Here's something that you probably don't know about Dechion: He has quite possibly the best speaking voice ever. Like 1000 times better than that hobo with a radio voice, and Dechion isn't even a hobo (as far as I know)!

BigBearButt – I think it's important to promote little known blogs like BBB.... :P Go there, tell him I sent you - he will really, really love that.

Other sites that I like going to are:

Best Week Ever (so funny!)

Not Martha (so crafty!)

Design*sponge (so Designing!)

/Film (so slashfilmy!)

BoingBoing (so hipstery!)
Nerdist (so cute!)

Topless Robot (so crabby!)

AskMetaFilter (so many questions!)

And lots lots more! So from this selection you can see why at the end of my day of I am utterly exhausted and only have the energy to drive home, put food in my mouth and play WoW for 6 hours.

Day 09 – Your first blog post

2011-04-12T13:40:00.001-03:00

My first post is here. After agonizing, redrafting and deleting numerous posts I just decided to put one up to get it over with. We all have to start somewhere!

Actually the first post I ever drafted was the one regarding Survival Hunters. I almost called the blog Born Again Hunter but would have felt bad if some actual born again Christian hunters came across my blog and were disappointed it was about a video game.

On a related note, out of the blue someone commented on my very old LiveJournal account. It sent me into a very lovely journey down sentimental lane as I reread all those old posts.

The Zug Initiative Kingslayers!

2011-04-11T08:44:00.000-03:00

Hello - I'm blogging from the past. It's currently Sunday morning August 15, 2010 and I'm writing this to post now because we've just DOWNED THE LICH KING and I knew that I would want to put it up immediately. However my shaking hands and racing mind together with fits of punching the air with my fist would hinder typing out a celebratory post.

OH MY GOSH YOU GUYS WE WON WRATH!!!!!!

Who cares about the ____% buff or the [such and such] nerf - we did it! Thank you so much to everyone who came out tonight. Wear your shiny new Kingslayer titles proudly - we've all earned them.

Present Day

It seems like such a long time ago that I drafted this post and so much has happened since then. The world changed, a new expansion and not to mention that we all got about 50,000 extra health each (at least) One thing that did not survive was the bottle of bubbly I was reserving specifically for this momentous event. No that got drunk over the holidays while watching some episodes of Jeeves and Wooster with Enhancement Shaman both of which set me into fits of teehee'ing frenzies....but I digress.

This is where we were back in November after lots of farming up to Dream Walker, vacations and an insignificant piece of, how you say, le guild drama. We look so young! But now look at us!

Just. Look. At. Us.

And look at us here too!

Even with our added health and dps this is still a fight that requires good situational awareness, coordination and a bit of luck. But we got him!

And because Warcraft is both a wondrous and cruel mistress - some hunter loot dropped.

I love this both from a nostalgia perspective (getting this six months ago would have blown my ever-loving mind) and a Lore perspective. I wonder if I gave this back to our Lady Sylvannas if she would perform a song for me like that time I gave her that locket...

Well done Zug Initiatives! I knew we could do this and it was every bit as awesome and epic as I imagined. For all the casual players and social guilds out there this proves that end game content is never out of the question and it feels good once the achievements light up on the screen. Really damn good!

Day 08 – 10 things we don’t know about you

2011-04-07T13:25:00.000-03:00

This is a tough one because I’ve done nothing for the last two years here but talk about myself. I’ll try to put in some details that you might not know and might be slightly interesting… /crosses fingers!

1. I love my job! Seriously love it. I started 5 years ago as an Executive Assistant and I have enjoyed every minute. I get to do a lot of different things for two very great people who in turn treat me very kindly and generously. Sometimes it’s stressful but never for long. Sometimes there is yelling but it is never at me (just through me). Every day there is a different challenge but I couldn’t be happier. Plus, sometimes I get to fly on private jets to go shopping in big cities!

2. I am still boy crazy and will watch pretty much any stupid movie as long as it has a cute boy in it.

3. To illustrate point 2 (and this almost became a blog post but in the end it was too shameful to dedicate more than two sentences to): I have watched all of the Twilight movies. I know – I’m an awful terrible baby eater for even watching them and now I’m sickly committed to watching the rest of the series. Sigh. PS: They are large steaming piles of glittery wolf poop.

4. I sneeze. A LOT. Like 20-30 times in a row isn’t really all that abnormal. I’ve done it since I was a kid and it’s just something I do. On the plus side – I always carry tissues if you ever require one.

5. I was a bridesmaid 6 times before a being a bride. It’s okay – I adore weddings and was thrilled to be able to stand for all of my brides. The dresses weren’t all that awful and I actually wore one of them again (although I designed and sewed that one myself). That old adage, always a bridesmaid and never a bride, doesn’t have to apply for all of your life. There’s still hope for all you spinsters out there. Love, Your Aunt From The 1920s.

6. My Dad is a minister which means that I grew up in what I thought was a relatively normal manner. You know where you go to church every Sunday, have big family dinners and burst into song in perfect harmony a la the Von Trapps? I didn’t know that other kids were sleeping in or watching TV on Sunday mornings – those lucky ducks. Now that I’m older I still like church and churchy things – especially zany church ladies – they rock and make a damn fine platter of crustless sandwiches.

And no matter how much my sisters-in-law get a kick out of it, Dusty Springfield’s song, Son of a Preacher Man, has always made me uncomfortable.

7. Despite the above and my love of love, happiness, sparkles and unicorns I do have faults. The main one being that I hold a grudge. I know it’s bad but there you go. That mean-spirited clown that embarrassed me and made fun of me when I was 5, the vile maitre d’ at the restaurant I worked at one summer and my insane university dorm-mate who wrote strange things about me in a letter to her mother (which she wrote and saved on my computer). DIAF ALL OF YOU…especially clowns.

8. I love my life with my husband, our friends and everything we have – I wouldn’t change anything about it…but sometimes I am overwhelmed, nay overcome and slightly weepy, with baby fever. However this is generally cured by weekends with my adorable little nieces and sleeping 10 hours a night.

9. I once ate so many egg rolls that I made myself sick. I think the count was around 11 or 13. Then I vomited. Yes. That’s the kind of girl I was at 12 and while I haven’t tried it since then, I doubt I’ve learned my lesson.

10. I love a good rock ballad (or any song) with a key change in the last chorus to really drive the emotion home. There’s is nothing like a well placed key change…well, maybe a choreographed dance scene busted out in a high school movie. I love those.

So there you have – 10 very random things and silly about me. Hopefully they did not leave you in a state of shock due to their dark and shameful nature. Let’s be thankful that this wasn’t 11 Things We Don’t Know About You because the 11th one is a doozy!

Thanks for reading!

Day 07 – The reason behind your blog’s name

2011-04-06T11:30:00.001-03:00

You might or might not know that this blog started out with another name, Tauren Gravy. Yes it awful but I made it to coincide with its sister blog, Bacon Gravy and dudes, I totes love gravy. However, the name was hastily chosen without too much thought and it's also a little stupid so I changed it. I think you can probably guess from it's current name that I really love Hello Kitty.

So uh…there. I guess there isn't really any great back-story because I'm not all that creative. I mean really, Tauren Gravy? Sheesh!

Day 6: Your Computer Desk

2011-04-05T12:12:00.000-03:00

My computer desk?

It is truly awful and I don’t know if I want to share it. At the moment my $30.00 pressboard student desk is covered with notes for recipes, tax papers, craft project bits, and loads of other things that have just been piled on because I had them in my hand when I logged into WoW. The drawer is full of old bills, pens, cookie cutters, memory sticks, two pairs of socks, the apartment lease, receipts and other junk that I shoved in there.

In the interest of getting this post done and up I decided to draw you a picture of what my little area looks like in my head rather than how it looks at the moment. I do intend on cleaning it up at some point this evening/week/month/year so in the mean time I present you with my desktop!

There aren’t any fresh flowers, and there isn’t a bookcase (sigh – a girl can dream though), the monitor should be a bit larger and the chair isn't actually see through. Sadly the only thing to scale or even remotely close to real life are the pencil thin lines of the desk. It wobbles, swags and sags in the middle and it would not surprise me if I find myself typing the words, “afk desk collapse” in the middle of a boss fight. Someday I’ll get a grown up desk to put into a grown up apartment that is filled with grown up things. But until that day comes or until it disintegrates completely it’s good enough for me.

Thankfully the computer is great. I think that it’s two years old now? It’s a hand-me-down from Enhancement Shaman but an upgrade from his older–older one. (Side note: a great thing about having computery-type folks for brothers and a husband is that I always have a great computer that does everything I need but not quite enough for them.) I know I have a big monitor and a black computer but that’s about it. When people start talking about memory, video cards and cables I start to hear buzzing and Charlie Brown Teacher noises. I’m slowly resigning to the fact that technology is passing me by and I no longer understand how things work. Like a 3D printer - how the hell does that thing work and get off my lawn you damn kids!!!

Day 5: Your Favourite In Game Item

2011-04-04T22:16:00.000-03:00

Haiku for the Archmage

Forged from a quest chain

Your laughter rings while I dance

Here comes a (slash) slap

Archmage Vargoth is our guild's unofficial mascot. Lots of us still carry his staff in our bags and I frequently use the quest line to acquire it in order to level to 68 (and to get the hell out of Outland). He (or multiple occurrences of him) will show up for guild photos, in between pulls and when we are rebuffing before a boss and I never get tired of his response to /dance, /wave, /bow, /sexy and /slap.

He's like a party in a staff!

I wish Blizzard would make this staff an official companion pet!

Day 4: Your Best WoW Memory or Happy Birthday Zug Initiative!

2011-04-01T12:08:00.000-03:00

How can I sum up the last four years with one memory? I'm not sure if I can as there have been loads of them and I wouldn't still be playing if I only had one happy time to look back on. Many of them are catalogued in this blog. Raiding adventures, achievements, levelling and swooning in general - it's all here so it's hard to pinpoint down the best ones.

Instead I'll use this as an opportunity to say thank you for all those memories. I owe them all to our guild and it just so happens that it's our birthday today!

When Enhancement Shaman, Darthregis and BrokenTree formed up the guild I was thrilled when they asked me to join. I was in Thunder Bluff and got a whisper to sign the charter from BT who said "I'm on top of the mailbox". My first thought was, Thunder Bluff has a mailbox?? So I had to ask where that was as I was already horribly lost, embarrassed and kept falling off those rope bridges. Finally I found him, signed the charter, got a guild tabard and happily saw under my name.

That was four years ago today and we're still the same group of folks that like to have a fun time, help each other and just enjoy what ever it is we happen to be doing at the moment. We've welcomed a few more like-minded folks into our online family and I always look forward to see who is playing or saying hello when people log on. Thanks to all!

I didn't know back then that I would making a very close friendship with a certain lady Tauren. I only met her briefly in real life and then a few months later I saw the words, Chawakanda has come online. It's been one of the best things to come out of an online game for me. I know her heart belongs to Darthregis, but we are two smitten kittens! Love you darling! Thanks for playing and all the laughs!

Here's to all those great guilds out there who celebrate their members as much as their in game achievements!

Day 3: Your First Day of WoW

2011-03-31T16:35:00.000-03:00

Meet Pacheco from four years ago! Of course back then his name was something different. I wasn't sure how long I would be playing so I didn't put much thought into names. The first day/week/month/year of playing there was lots of questing, exploring, back tracking, dying and shrieking. I didn't know where things were or what to do. I didn't exactly understand what the Horde was nor why I was serving it. I do remember the "pig men" in the Mulgore starting zone. I spent a long time in there and hated every second.

All in all my first day was fascinating enough to continue to play but boring enough that I don't remember it very well.

During my free trial I leveled him up to 14. Once I decided to make the commitment to play I froze him in time and have only logged into him once or twice. He is forever roaming the terrain in the shadow of Thunder Bluff hoping to catch a glimpse of Ara'chea (and most likely being chased by those wolves).

(Pacheco Sr. 2007-20??)

Day 02 – Why you decided to start a blog

2011-03-30T10:51:00.000-03:00

Truthfully, it was to immortalize our guild’s appearance on WoW Insider’s column, Guild Watch. Remember Guild Watch? It was my only way to experience Guild Drama. Loot Ninjas! Bank robberies! Mutinies and guild mergers! I knew people could be jerks in PuGs, raids and groups but I didn’t know that top guilds required so much of their members. And it was so fascinating the amount of work and responsibility hardcore raiders were willing to do to get the best gear.

At the time I was reading a few big time bloggers like BRK and BBB and learned a lot of great info on my class, instances and the game in general. I wanted to see what the regular, casual players like me were up to. It was then I thought I would write about my little adventures in not raiding, not gearing up, not caring about dps and just having fun. It would be about funny things that I observed or did in the game and how much I loved all my friends, sparkles and pastries.

So the blog was born and here we are! I still maintain my small-time blogger status and just recently loads of great people have linked me or added me to blogrolls. I truly feel like I’m part of the community! Thank you!

I never ended up sharing the post from Guild Watch back then, go figure. So here it is – almost two years to the week I started my WoW blog…

http://wow.joystiq.com/2009/04/15/guildwatch-let-them-eat-cupcakes/

20 days of...WoW Blogging Challenge: Day 1 Intoduce Yourself

2011-03-29T09:16:00.000-03:00

You've probably read a few post by bloggers doing Spellbound's 20 days of WoW blogging challenge. I first noticed this over at Specced for Drama (who led me to Spellbound) and then Mystic District started his today and I think it’s a great idea. I love knowing that there will be new and interesting posts to read and let’s face it, I also love snooping into people’s lives a little bit.

Since there is a dry spell of activity going on in my neck of Azeroth I thought this was the perfect way to get the old bloggy juices flowing and that will be the last time I ever say “bloggy juices”. Plus, I'm always game for a meme - so here goes!

/ahem

Hello, I'm Hello Tauren! (Hello, Hello Tauren!)

I enjoy playing WoW, cooking, crafting and napping. You can find me exclusively on Kael'thas as Pacheco (Tauren Hunter), Ianto (Tauren Druid), Bahnee (Undead Mage) and a myriad of other alts but lately I've been playing Ahja, the Tauren Paladin all the livelong day. My guild, The Zug Initiative is comprised of my husband, many of our RL friends and some family here and there. It's a great environment to play in and we all get along smashingly.

I started playing WoW in 2007 as a way to spend time with my husband who, at the time, was going to Law School. I had read a silly article about how spouses/significant others of law students should engage in their partner's activities because of the stresses of school and yadda yadda yadda. Play more video games? Rohkay! Cut to today and we still enjoy playing, although I've been playing a bit more than him lately….something about Left For Dead 2 (oh yeah, and work).

Outside of WoW you can find me at Bacon Gravy where I try to find the fattiest most buttery and completely bacony things to make. (Although as of late we're trying to eat healthy: yawn). I love silly, dorky things, not cleaning our apartment and making messes. I'm still coping with turning 30 (despite it being a year ago – okay 2 years ago, ARE YOU HAPPY NOW???) and I am dreading the day I find a grey hair. So underneath this sunny disposition there is some darkness, as you can see.

If you ever see me in game please say or /wave /hello. If I steal your mob, node or herb please know that I'm very sorry and it was not intentional and I’ll happily give you the mineral/herb and even stick around to help you fight the boss that just respawned. If you see me in real life...well, that would just be really strange. Don't expect an invite in, because the place is a mess! However, if you give me advanced notice there will probably be a cake waiting for you.

Thanks for reading!

Next: Day 02 – Why you decided to start a blog

Wherein I Become Everyone's Grumpy Grampy

2011-03-22T18:11:00.000-03:00

I don't want to sound all like back in my day we had to grind Hillsbrad Mountain Lion Blood for levels and levels until it dropped but...back in back in my day we had to grind Hillsbrad Mountain Lion Blood for levels and levels until it dropped! That, and Dual Specs cost 1000g.

Now it costs 10g.

10. Gold.

Why even bother charging for it? Just give it to everyone and call it a day. I didn't know how offensively cheap it had become and I choked on my own rage for a little bit when I saw that price yesterday. Something that people had to grind weeks or months for has now become something you get from doing a daily.

Anyway - here's Ahja, the fresh new level 70 retribution/protection paladin. Will she ever actually tank? Who knows?

ehhh probably not.

Not an achievement

@hellotauren!

2011-03-22T12:15:00.001-03:00

Morning all!

Twitter has come a long way since I started using it years ago. Now that I can post to mulitple accounts at once I've decided to start tweeting from my @hellotauren profile more often. If you like random WoW things to read through the day to supplement your WoW blog daily reading feel free to check it out! If you are already following my personal feed I will do my best not to do any crossposting, spamming or overtweeting.

Thanks!

My Tauren Costume Is One Step Closer to Completion!

2011-03-16T18:02:00.000-03:00

Just look at these hoof shoes!

Just. Look. At. Them.

Sure they might set you back CDN $2,600 but how can you pass up the opportunity to add these to your armory?Plus with that sexy heel it will go fab with your chain mail gown and white dragonscale opera gloves.

Via

I really love the dude that is working these boots and a tweed jacket. LUV. HUH!

/Hello Tauren is a ladies size 9

Telling the Truth Today So I Can Lie Tomorrow

2011-03-13T11:37:00.000-03:00

Tomorrow morning there will be a lot of pleasant how was your weekend banter at the office. I'll smile and say that I had a nice and relaxing weekend walking down to the farmer's market, baked loaves of bread and caught up on some weeknight TV all while tidying and cleaning our apartment. You know, normal people stuff.

All. Lies.

It was too rainy to go to the market (even though it's 35 steps from the front door), the kitchen was too messy to even look at, all the TV shows were repeats this week and I only clean under the duress of impending company.

So what did I really do? Since I haven't outed myself as a huge WoW-nerd at work I can't tell them that I power leveled my Tauren Paladin nearly twenty levels in 2 days. They wouldn't appreciate the difference leveling in the revised Eastern Plaguelands and they certainly wouldn't understand the pure agony it was to only see grey level mithril nodes when I was thirsty for some thorium. Seriously Searing Gorge - why all the mithril?

This was me on Friday night. Enhancement Shaman was at a work thing so it was supper for one coupled with a marathon WoW session for me. It took about 6.5 hours to get from 33 to 40 Friday night.

and then most of the day Saturday to power up to level 50.

While some of the quests are the same in Hinterlands, Western/Eastern Plaguelands, Badlands and Searing Gorge. There are loads of funny quests and really good story arcs that made this very enjoyable. They now have a quest to board a rocket mount from EPL that flies you to Badlands. Not that you can actually make the Arathi Highlands -> Kargath trek anymore - but it is still nice to do while you reminisce about all the characters who made that rite of passage journey.

I wanted to share these achievements here, with people that understand sometimes after a stressful week at work you just want to get into your jammies, sit your beefy behind in front of the computer, play WoW and forget about the rest of the world. And also so that when I tell my boss how great of a weekend I had doing lots of normal-sounding-made-up things I'll know that some folks out there know the truth.

I'm Still Here!

2011-03-02T14:05:00.000-04:00

Hey remember when I said I was going to post every week?

Well, what good are resolutions if you don't break them every once in a while? I didn't post last week because of numerous reasons the biggest one being that nothing was happening. Lunar Festival and Love is in the Air left me with little enthusiasm to play.

However, we have started to run some heroics that are a lot of fun and frustrating at times. After those months of chain heroics and blowing through content in Wrath I like having the challenge and dealing with difficult pulls. I started a Hunter Crowd Control post but put it on hold because I am no authority on anything, other than Harry Potter trivia and pastry consumption. I love/hate CC because as much as I want to be good at it, I am on the sucky side of suck. It's great when it works but it fills me with self-loathing when it doesn't.

I spent a little time levelling my Tauren Paladin (Ahja, named after yet another Jem and the Holograms character). The revamped Tirisfal Glades, Forsaken storyline and the quests are great. I was as shocked as Garrosh when I saw what our Lady Sylvannas was up to.

I hope that you have been having a fun time in WoW and that all your drops have been blue if not purple. I'm hanging up my hunting hat for a shopping hat and bathing suit cover-up for the weekend: going to Fort Lauderdale for some sun/retail therapy and pretend that I'm an actual jet setter! If you see an awkward looking gal with tears brimming at the sight of a Super Target please, pay no mind.

/Hello Tauren loves the US dollar right now!

I've Had the Tauren of My Life!

2011-02-14T13:08:00.000-04:00

I like this holiday and not having to complete it this year made it all the more enjoyable. This year I can sit back and watch the love rockets and admire all the pink decorations. It warms the cockles of my beef heart as well as my real-life human heart!

There's also this fun hat I picked up this year. You can't just put a flower in your mouth and call it a day. You need to get dressed up real fancy like and hope that Al Pacino asks you to dance! Hoooah!

I hope that you all have a wonderful Love is in the Air day. If you don't have someone to choo-choo-choose you then feel free to print out this screenshot because Pach will be your Valentine!

Pony Sold Separately

2011-02-09T09:30:00.000-04:00

Finally some news!

I tamed Ghostcrawler last night at roughly 8:45 server time! I had been scouting the Abandoned Reef for the past four days once it was brought to my attention that the zone I was questing in also had a pretty cool pet to tame. Honestly I had never been so excited to see a yellow dot on my map. Pretty sure it was just dumb luck that I found him but my strategy was just to roam around a bit and then wait a bit. Ghostcrawler phases in and out of stealth mode but when he shows up he's like a great beacon of light amongst the dull gray of the Abandoned Reef. He showed up after I had been waiting in the same spot for about 4 or 5 minutes but your mileage may vary.

If you can survive mighty wallops with his Nerf Bat he's yours!

Now I just need to think of a clever name.

If you've been keeping up with the Waywards, then you know The Zug Initiative has been taking our sweet time through Cataclysm (dungeons and raiding wise). It's been two months and I only have one level 85 (I blame archaeology). Last week I was looking at my ~~to-do list~~ achievements and saw that I was only one zone short of Loremaster Cataclysm so off I went. After searching and swimming and seahorsing around (as well as a quick download of QuestCompletist) I finally finished. Yay, I beat the game!

Okay guys, NOW I'm ready to raid!

Are You Guys Ready For Some Comedy??!!!

2011-02-03T19:49:00.001-04:00

Or how's abouts: are you ready to help someone break into comedy???

Well, here's your chance! My brother, AKA The Blognositfier, has entered into the CBC Comedy Open Mic Comedy Contest. The participants that get to perform are based on those who get the most votes! It would be so awesome if you guys went to the page, listened to his bit and voted for him. (Or, just blindly vote for him, that is completely cool too.)

The voting ends tomorrow at noon AST so please vote for Weh-Ming right now!

Please and Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

EDIT: He tied for first place! Thanks for voting everyone! I love you guys.

If you are in the Moncton area next week (i.e. Feb. 8) you should go to the show at the Pump House Brewery.

Happy Lunar New Year!

2011-02-03T13:12:00.001-04:00

Leave it to the Druids to make Chinese New Year boring.

Lunar Festival is so tedious, but you already know that. Go here, and here, and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here etc. Spamming fireworks out of obligation for an achievement sort of defeats the purpose of having fun. But the event is good for two things: collecting many of the new flight paths, of which there are approximately 1 bazillion in Northern Eastern Kingdoms and, the pantsuit - I do love a good pantsuit.

But I'm not here to completely trash Lunar Festival (nor the Druids – mad love to you, Runetotem). I love that they included Chinese New Year into WoW and since Enhancement Shaman and I couldn't get home to see my family this is a nice way to celebrate. (And it's really the only way I'm getting and Lucky Red Envelopes these days.)

I usually like to make the day special for us by cooking a big meal, but this year I'm being selfish and letting the professionals do it. I love Chinese take away – the deep-fried goodness and salty sweet sauces and those little containers! They make me feel like I'm in a movie. I'm dorky like that. Just the way eating ice cream out of the container makes me feel like I'm one of the Keaton's and helping Mallory get over a fight with Nick and Alex dealing with his feelings for Lauren. Only when I do it in front of my family they think it's gross. Humph.

What I'm really trying to say is, HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR!!! Eat some noodles and dumplings and set off some firecrackers for realsies! And of course, honour your elders and call your parents!

/Hello Tauren bows respectfully

Cactus Apple Surprise

2011-01-29T13:01:00.000-04:00

Nothing cools you off faster than a piece of that delicious treat.

Before I begin I would like to thank everyone who voted for the WoW Cooking Project: Low Level. It really means a lot that people stopped by and voiced their opinion. Cactus Apple Surprise was the overall winner but Roasted Boar and Herb Baked Egg were also favoured and Crispy Bat Wings were a fan favourite. (I have thoughts on those, but it needs further testing)

In an effort to slap something up here I went ahead with Cactus Apple Surprise first. It didn’t turn out quite as I had imagined and the “surprise” part sort of flopped. I am definitely going to go back to this one, but wanted to share with you my first attempt.

For me, there are three main components in a good apple dessert: Pastry, cinnamon, caramel. If you've got those things you're going to have something tasty on your hands no matter what it looks like. I made this recipe up as I went along (much to the chagrin of Enhancement Shaman).

Cactus Apple Surprise!

4 medium apples
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
2 tablespoons melted butter
2 tablespoons of nuts, chopped
8 soft caramel candies
1 sheet puff pastry (thawed)

Preheat oven to 400F

Did you know that Cactus Apples are a real thing? I didn’t either until I started poking around the internet. Needless to say, I did not use real cactus apples and made do with our favourite variety, MacIntosh!

Peel and core. I saw a recipe that said to peel the apples 3/4 of the way leaving some skin on the bottom. I think that it helps keep the apple shape but it's really strange when you try to eat it. If you don't have an apple corer use a paring knife and then a butter knife to sort of "drill" out the centre but don't cut all the way through.

FLAAAAVOUR +3!
Mix together sugar, cinnamon and butter.
Chop up some nuts (or not - they are optional). I used almonds and pecans.

Sprinkle a little of the sugar mixture and nuts in the centre.

I wanted the "surprise" part to be a big wall of caramel and nuts gushing out when you broke into the apple. Actually, I wanted something along the lines of an explosion! Geysers of caramel magma spewing all over your place! SURPRISE!!!! YOU'VE GOT SECOND DEGREE BURNS! HAHAHAHA!!!

You might not have a big block of homemade caramel on hand (but I'm weird like that) so those little Kraft caramels are just fine. Use two per apple or what ever you can cram in the centre (cram the rest into your face).

Press the remaining sugar mixture onto the walls of the apples.

Cut your puff pastry into quarters and wrap each apple cutting a few tiny slits in the top to allow for steam to escape.

Bake for 30 minutes or until golden brown.

...and here's when things started going array. All the moisture in the apples and the melted caramel caused a little bit of blow out with the pastry but all those juices are form a nice sweet sauce that you can drizzle over the tops.

Let them cool for 20 minutes and serve with ice cream.

While they were very tasty and comprised of some of my favourite things, I need to rethink this recipe (I welcome suggestions). We'll call this an okay first attempt to be revisited at a later date. I think I might have to put my dreams of a caramel volcano to the side for now.

I did find this recipe for an apple snowball that looks very tasty and perfect for these cold winter days. I don't know how many people are regular makers of culinary "foams" but I'm sure that part could be omitted or replaced with a nice big dollop of whipped cream.

For those of you who want to make an herbed baked egg, I made some last year. They are easy, delicious and very, very French (but that could have been because I was eating them with a croissant...and wearing a mime costume).

For (slow) Roasted Boar I recommend you reread Dechion's holiday post for pulled pork and coleslaw. I love me some pulled pork and his BBQ sauce looks awesome!

Thanks very much to everyone for their comments and opinions - I'll get started on those bat wings...

EDIT: I posted too hastily and wanted to say many thanks to Big Bear Butt Blogger for linking me yesterday and for sharing his recipe for some very tasty sounding salsa! If you're here from said link, WELCOME!!

Swamped ('osaurus)

2011-01-24T13:07:00.000-04:00

Sorry about the delay in the cooking post. I had a plan to make one of the items on the list yesterday but between WoW, Rock Band 3, an apartment that needs cleaning and a couch that needs to be napped on - I just plum ran out of time! :)

I should have something to post this week so thanks for your patience!

The WoW Cooking Project

2011-01-18T12:39:00.000-04:00

In an effort to make sure I post weekly, I thought it would be good to give myself a few tasks. Regis was so kind to mention my cooking ability in his post yesterday and some of you will note that I also run a food blog. My plan is to try out of few recipes found in Warcraft and share them here. While it has been done by many fab wowbloggers before I thought I would try to give you some say in it, which means….

POLL TIME!!!

I’ve selected a few recipes from the Beginning cooking list as well as some of the items you can buy from vendors at low level. I would love to hear which one(s) you wanted to see made in my kitchen. I might do 1 or two or three or all! You can vote your choice using the poll on the bottom right, in the comments below or send an email to: hellotauren at gmail dot com

If there is a low level recipe or food item you really want to see I’m happy to hear those suggestions. But please, no recipes that involve actual seafood. My palate has yet to be refined to appreciate it (fish and chips being the exception to the rule) and I would rather not destroy and/or waste good food if I can help it.

Bean Soup
Cactus Apple Surprise
Conjured Muffin
Crispy Bat Wing
Delicious Chocolate Cake
Gingerbread Cookie
Herb Baked Egg
Honey Bread
Roasted Boar Meat
Roasted Moongraze Tenderloin

I’ll see where how the results are firming up at the end of the week and will endeavour to make and post the chosen recipe as close to the weekend as I can.

Have a wonderful day and happy voting!

Just a Game?

2011-01-15T14:20:00.000-04:00

This is just a game right?

Well yes and no. I can shrug off a lot of the silliness and frustration that comes in WoW by telling myself that it's just a game. After the umpteenth resurrection in a battleground I need to remind myself that I'm dying because that's part of the game. Someone has to win (but they don't have to be a dick about it). I've walked away from quests and from groups because it was generally jerky. No monthly subscription is worth getting too worked up about a video game.

But wait a minute. I do pay a monthly subscription to the game and I have invested a lot of time in the game. Granted, it's generally happy time because I'm online with my friends and we're laughing about the same things despite being miles and kilometres away from each other. It's pretty much the reason I keep playing. I've reconnected with friends and family through Warcraft. So is this really just a game?

Towards the end of last year we wanted to do something special for our raid leader, BT. After a two years+ of leading us through fights and mechanics as well as explaining and/or providing refreshers on said fights we wanted to give something back. But what do you give a Tree when he already has a clam necklace?

A Mechanohog, that's what!

Pooling our resources together we purchased him the bike and gave it to him before starting our weekly raid night.

Here we are presenting his gift with our best /cheers, /dancing, and /archmage Vargoth celebrating what is important to the guild: having fun with a great group of people! There might be annoyances in WoW but they are far outweighed by all the good stuff that you get to take part in when you're with the right people!

Happy New Year WowFans!

2011-01-06T20:37:00.001-04:00

I made a little resolution together with my brother and sister-in-law that we would update our blogs once a week. I thought I would up my resolution ante by making an effort to do that here as well. More weekly ramblings about WoW and rainbows and pastries! (PS: you're welcome!)

Looking back at the blog stats for last quarter of 2010 some of the most viewed topics were:

Intro to WoW Archaeology

Rainbow Generator

Guild Banner Ornaments (thanks to Wayward Initiative and WoW.com for that)

And the number one topic with over 878 page views in 2010 was...

Cataclysm Seagulls

Seagulls are way more popular than I thought (as in 877 times more than I thought). This means that I'll have to do more seagull related posts to keep your seagull related needs sated.

I guess what I'm really trying to say is thank you for coming here and I'm pretty floored by all the traffic be it from friends, kind strangers and/or robot trawlers - I welcome you all and hope you'll continue to stop by in 2011!

World of WowCrafts!!

2010-12-23T17:55:00.000-04:00

Remember the other day when I mentioned I was working on a different kind of post? Well the folks at WoW.com are featuring me today on their World of WarCrafts column! Go there for step by step instructions for the guild banner ornaments or click here for the post!

I want to thank them for being so nice to put it up before Christmas and I hope that it gets people thinking crafty thoughts over the holidays! However, it would not have been possible without a gentle nudge from Chawakanda. She submitted my post to their attention and I was very surprised when I received an email asking for me to contact them. Thank you again darling!

I hope everyone has a terrific week getting prepared for the holidays. Once again I'm finding it difficult to juggle my desire to have all the Christmas work done and still play WoW. Dang you expansion and your awesomeness! (I'm just kidding, I could never stay mad at you, Cataclysm). When I think about Santa coming in two days I can only hear Illidan telling me, "you are not prepared". Okay Illidan I get it! Back to wrapping and baking I go!

Merry Christmas everyone!

Love,

Hello Tauren

Chawa! Chawa! Chawa!

2010-12-18T09:41:00.000-04:00

Today's post is dedicated to my in-game hunter sister and friend, Chawakanda.

She completely and utterly made my day, my week, my year for reasons that you will find out very soon. You know when someone encourages you in just the right way and at just the right time? Well, that's what she did and I am very grateful to her. I'm working on a different kind of post right now and I hope you stay tuned!

Winter Veil Eve!!!

2010-12-14T22:48:00.000-04:00

Last year I made some Horde Ornaments to hang on our tree and as a little surprise I sent them to some guildmates tucked inside their Christmas cards. This year I wanted to create something that celebrated my WoW Family. It's been a great year for The Zug Initiative. We've gone to Ice Crown Citadel, we've leveled up numerous alts, we've visited one another and celebrated the birth of a brand new Hordeling! Through time off, pre-expansion blues, 4.0 confusion and the coming and going of members we have persevered despite our small numbers and the guild remains the same: fun and casual (with a delicious layer of sarcasm). Yay us!

This is a very easy craft you can do for your own guild, luckily our crest is quite easy to replicate so your mileage may vary.

Guild Banner Ornament

You will need:

Felt in the colours of your guild tabard
Glitter glue
1 sheet of plastic transparency or other material for template
Needle and thread
String
1 cinnamon stick
Glue gun!

Make a template of your guild crest. I used an overhead transparency sheet I found in our back storage room at work.

Fill in with glitter glue! Yay Sparkles!!!!!

Remove template and let the glue dry.

Using a second colour of felt cut out a large rectangle leaving a little boarder on each side and around the bottom.

Tack the two pieces together with a little thread.

Cut out a design of your choosing like, notched! Select the best looking cinnamon stick from the bunch and cut a length of string about 10 inches.

Time to break out the big guns, the glue gun that is! Knot the string at each end of the cinnamon stick leaving two inches of overhang.

Dab a little glue on the back and wind the string around to secure.

Secure the cinnamon stick to the felt with some glue and let it dry.

Your cinnamon flavoured guild banner is now ready to hang!

And some are ready to be mailed!

Happy Winter Veil everyone!

Happy Friday! or Best. Trinket. Ever!

2010-12-10T12:55:00.000-04:00

Tauren Hunter, all the way across the sky!

It’s no secret that Fridays and rainbows go hand in hand. They are both magical, send people into fits of joy and occasionally cause people to lose their minds out of happiness. I thought I would end this week with a non-archaeology related post and show you some Friday love!

The Rainbow Generator comes from a quest reward in Felwood. Talk to Arcanist Delaris and she will give you a few quests to do that leads to one called Open Their Eyes. I don’t want to give away too much about but it’s pretty cute! The drawback is that this trinket has a 10 minute cool down so you can’t continually blast your enemies away with awesomeness. The Care Bears only had 1 Care Bear Stare per episode, so save it for when you truly need it.

I thought it would have been hilarious to use this on Arthas last week and surprise the guild but was too scared that it might distract and mess up a run. After 4 or 5 wipes sometimes you just need a little rainbow magic to help you along.

It’s a fabulously sunny and somewhat mild day for December 10 on the East Coast. I have a weekend planned for some Christmassy things, some baking and loads and loads of WoW playing and maybe watching Love, Actually a few hundred more times.

Intro to WoW Archaeology: Extra Credit

2010-12-09T11:49:00.000-04:00

As a tiny follow up from my previous intro to WoW Archaeology I have a few more observations to share:

1. The fragments you collect will turn grey somewhere between 90-100 so you will not gain a skill point every time you find one. However, you will still get 5 skill points when you solve a puzzle and make an artifact. So, 5 skill points for 25-35 fragments with an average of 3 fragments per dig means that you'll need to visit anywhere between 8-12 dig sites of the same race to solve one puzzle. When we factor in travel time, air velocity and the position of the sun it will take you approximately FOREVER to get your skill up to 525.

In this regard it is probably better to save up all your artifacts until you hit 100 and then start solving. So you might like to try that if you are just starting out. I'm going to slow and steady route (since I have no choice right now). Level and learn!

2. You get some help. After level 75 (or perhaps it's random) you'll dig up items like the Highborne Scrolls that count towards missing artifacts. You can use these in the slots under the artifact counter which cuts down on the number of dig sites you have to visit. Just click on the little hexagon and your scroll will automatically add in artifacts. NOTE: If you do not solve the puzzle at this time, the artifact is not used but will still remain in your bag. You can only use 1 scroll per puzzle.

3. More digging = more sites. An excavation site will not despawn until you find all 3 fragments. In order to move around the map and collect different types of fragments you'll need to tackle sites currently active on the map. This is random so you will find you're collecting a LOT of Night Elf fragments in Kalimdor (which makes sense) and loads of troll/dwarf fragments in Eastern Kingdoms. Other than those three and the common archaeology fragments I have not encountered any other races. Taurens, where are you?

My advice it to just hit the sites as it's convenient. Only the artifacts you create and the scrolls you find will take up space in your inventory and fragments left over from one puzzle count toward your next project. It's neat for the little story lines that are revealed to you piece by piece and insight into the different races such as Scandalous Silk Nightgown - Oh you saucy Night Elves!

Intro to Archaeology

2010-12-07T19:43:00.000-04:00

First off, happy Cataclysm Day! I was so excited about the release that I kept waking up to see what time it was and counting down the minutes until the servers went live. Then went the clock turned 4:00am (ish) I thought, screw this – WoW can wait and went back to sleep.

Until 5:15 am that is.

But where to head first? Mount Hyjal? Vashj'ir? I wasn't in the mood for competing for mobs. But then I remembered one thing I was sort of looking forward to:

Archaeology!

I flew around Kalimdor for almost three hours surveying, digging, and putting together artifacts. It was fun, it wasn’t crowded and I talked with a few very nice people who were excited about the expansion but were glad for the relief from crowded zones.

Archaeology is a side project you can do while you are levelling, exploring zones or waiting for raids/instances to form. The Archaeology trainer in Orgrimmar is in the same building as Garrosh.

In the Professions tab you’ll see two things. The Survey icon and the Archaeology icon which I will refer to later. You can pull both these icons to your toolbar

When you open your map you’ll see some shovel icons around the zones which indicate where dig sites are. They are usually (surprise, surprise) in the same areas at ruins, bones or places of old magical power. Travel to these sites and you will see a highlighted area where you can dig.

Start digging!

Using the survey equipment will point you the right direction and the light beacon will tell you how far away you are from the fragment. If it’s red, go a good distance in the correct direction and then survey again. It will turn yellow when you’re almost there and green when you are sooooo close! When you’ve hit the right spot a little fragment will show up and you collect it as currency.

Cold!

Warm!

WWWWWARRRMERRR!!!

You're burning up! You're in the desert!!!!...oh you found it.

Where did my archaeology fragment go to?

That’s what I kept asking myself since I couldn't find any evidence I had collected anything. It wasn't under the currency tab (even though it's called Currency)and it wasn't in my inventory. Lo and behold, it’s located in your Archaeology tab! Yay! Click on the Archaeology icon and you can see what types of artifacts you have collected so far and how many fragments you need to complete one.

The second tab shows you what you have already completed. I managed to complete two Night Elf relics during my morning excavation.

You can only collect three relics in one dig site before it disappears. However, as soon as you finish one site another will spawn in another area or zone. So there will be a lot of traveling if you plan to dedicate some time to it but with Azeroth flying and all the new flight paths getting around is fairly easy.

One of the biggest pluses of the profession is that you are not in competition with other players. It’s not like a node or herb or something else people to lose their mind over. After you dig up three artifacts the site despawns and you go on your way even if there are other people doing the same thing. You don’t take anyone’s precious loot and they can’t take yours. Happy times all around.

It’s not a very fast process, mind you. You aren't going to run around like Indiana Jones, cracking whips, and choosing grails but really, who wants to be anything like Indiana Jones after that last abomination of a movie. Aliens and ancient ruins? I was offended both as a fan and as an anthropology major. Warcraft Archaeology is more akin to fishing where you do it here and there until it becomes an obsession and takes over your life until you get every last achievement.

Happy digging!

The Cataclysm Cometh: The Final Countdown

2010-12-06T19:02:00.000-04:00

Oh my goodness you guys! Here we are on Cataclysm Eve – have you laid out your cookies and yeti milk for Garrosh when he blasts down your door and yells at you to death? Yes Garrosh, I am here to serve the Horde, you don’t have to be a dick about it and my Warchief, Thrall, already asked me about a billion jillion times.

I just bought the download so now I'm ready! Getting the digital download means no lines and I don’t have to be on the lookout for the delivery guy tomorrow too scared to go to the bathroom in case he does arrive. It was agony when I ordered the Saturday delivery of Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix. I had to wait until 10:00 freaking AM and knew very well people were finished and posting internet spoilers. Never again!

The game doesn't go live until 4:00AM local time and don’t get me wrong, I enjoy WoW but not enough to purposely wake up that early to compete in the level 85 race (6:00 maybe...just to get a little taste before I have to go to work).

Regardless of when you play or where you go first please do be mindful of the other players. You might not have stood in line to get Cataclysm but you should wait your turn to kill a named mob if there are people there before you.

/Hello Tauren is going to bed early and has The Final Countdown stuck in her head!

The Cataclysm Cometh (Part II)

2010-12-03T11:36:00.000-04:00

T'was the weekend before Cata

And all through the land,

The creatures were stirring

And kicking up sand.

The shields and the swords;

The wands, guns and bows

Were sharpened and polished

For our healers and heroes.

The Lich King was easy

We killed him and his ghouls*

But this dragon is different,

Most evil and cruel.

His shadow washed over us

As we looked up to the sky

And then we were dead – we didn't know why.

He turned back t'wards, we were ready to fight

We wanted revenge for our deaths tonight!

Landing before us, his voice booming with ire.

"You should know better than to stand in the fire!"

-Hello Tauren

Have a lovely Friday everyone! I've got plans for Christmas prep, WoW playing and birthday cake-makin' so it's going to be a fun weekend!

*we didn't actually kill Arthas, yet…but never spoil a good story for the sake of the truth, as my mother would say.

The Cataclysm Cometh

2010-11-30T23:49:00.000-04:00

In one week...

Foxy!

2010-11-27T09:09:00.000-04:00

How could you not love a dear little face like that?

And the Fox is pretty cute too!

He growls and yips a little, but I think I'll keep him.

Now We Are Six

2010-11-23T12:28:00.000-04:00

Dalaran!

It’s only a model.

Shut up!

While moving all my characters out of Dalaran last night to the Horde capitals I could not resist one last look back at the floating city that has been home for the last year and a half (my old computer couldn’t handle the graphics until I got Enhancement Shaman’s hand-me-down-upgrade in July 2009). A city always looks more impressive by night and the glow of the towers and buildings give it the magical aura it deserves. Farewell Dalaran, thank you for your portals (and I’m sorry I called you a stupid face).

Today is also WoW’s 6th anniversary! Thank you WoW! Thank you for being a fun distraction from certain real-life follies and thank you for giving a place for my friends and I to hang out, chat, share and kill some bosses together. I know we aren’t getting a pet today but Blizzard is giving us a whole new Azeroth to adventure in and I think that is a pretty good present.

Have fun in The Shattering everyone!

The Tauren Who Lived

2010-11-19T20:04:00.000-04:00

I had this rather lengthy post regarding some fun Harry Potter/Warcraft mashups but it was getting rather silly.

I think my feelings are best expressed in this screen shot:

If it's wrong to grind two reputations to exalted just for a screen shot, I don't want to be right.

Hello Tauren is heading to Transfiguration class.

Planning for Cataclysm: Character Reorganization

2010-11-17T13:53:00.001-04:00

Oh my darling alts, how I do adore each and every one of you – just at different times. Some of you get to raid and collect achievements, some are just a treat to level, there are those of you who make me money and the rest of you are gigantic purses. None of you complain or vie for my attention. You are all so patient while I pour my heart and time into certain characters while neglecting others for months on end.

However, I regret to inform you that some will not make it to the Cataclysm because of my…

CATACLYSM CHARACTER PLAN!

The Taurens are walking into the light and I want in on that action. I've considered changing my Blood Elf Priest into a female Tauren but I don't want to miss out on those formative levels where I fall into deep admiration for my character. I think a female Tauren deserves that kind of attention, don't you? Goodbye level 24 Blood Elf Paladin! Hello level 1 Tauren Paladin!

Of course I'm going to make a goblin! The female models have the best hair choices! The only class I don't have is a Warrior. I'm going to level one up, make bold declarations of tanking with her and then renege on those declarations almost immediately – stay tuned for that! Goodbye level 7 Bank alt! Hello Level 1 Goblin Warrior!

I have to admit, the troll druid forms are just brilliant. Plus the new flight forms are pretty cool. Horde flight form sometimes seems a little drab to me compared to the Alliance pretty purple. Is it enough to make me want to race change my druid? Goodbye level 80 Tauren! Hello….naw, I'm just kidding. I love healing in Tauren form way too much!

And to the rest of my characters who are epic, old or plain abandoned I do cherish you all! Now get back to work and make me some money!

Hello Tauren is wishing for more character slots!

The Little Guild That Will

2010-11-16T12:55:00.000-04:00

This is a picture I never thought I would get to screen shot. We’re in the freaking frozen throne you guys! This picture wouldn’t have been possible without the months and months of hard work of our team, which has included a lot of different people. Even though some have parted their ways with us but I would like to thank them all the same. Everyone helped in this journey and now we only have one more fight to go!

The funny thing about Arthas is that he really doesn’t care about the little people - even the folks that are going to bring him down. So if you need some comic relief between wipes before the fight you can go on up and sit on his lap and ask him for a pony (you’ll probably get one faster from him than Ghostcrawler). Go up and fart right in his face or have a guild dance party right at his feet – Arthas doesn’t move an inch! This will be Arthas’ downfall – not recognizing the extraordinary power of our guild.

My purely selfish #1 Pre-Cataclysm bucket list is to kill Arthas and my desire to finish has increased ten-fold since Sunday night. We got him to phase 2 and that’s fantastic for a first go!

What Happiness Looks Like!

2010-11-14T23:59:00.000-04:00

I was going to wait until tomorrow to post this, but what the heck - I'm too excited to go to bed right now!

Sindragosa down!

We were going to call it after a few attempts but decided to just give it one more go. Then everything fell into place and we finally got her down!!

We're 11/12 ICC! I am so thrilled with everyone!

Well done Zug Initiative! Well done!

Down With Dalaran!

2010-11-10T16:31:00.001-04:00

I don't know why but one of my biggest annoyances as of late not being to fly in Dalaran and subsequently plummeting to my death in Dalaran. I've had it with not being able to fly over to the bank or to the flight master. Perhaps it's due to the fact that I've been spending a lot of time in Shattrath doing old timey achievements or just because I am so, so very lazy.

Is anyone else tired of Dalaran's stupid face?

The End is Nigh! (and stuff)

2010-11-06T09:26:00.000-03:00

Or so those Twilight Cultists tell me...

I'll refer you to the three exclamation points on my sandwich board, buddy.

We only have a month left (as of tomorrow) until every that hasn't already changed, changes. I haven't done any shopping for alt toons and I have to empty out my bank alt to make room for a goblin. I didn't make a bucket list of things I wanted to do before the expansion but I did do a little bit of grinding in the past few weeks...

Sha tari Skyguard

Tuskars

Aldor! Whee!

and this very cool one...

The best part of this achievement was that after running all those instances I was able to give Chawakanda a grand stack of Sanguine Hibiscus for her rep grind with Sporeggar - yay helping!

In other WoW news, there hasn't been a whole lot. People are trickling in and out due to other commitments and Patch 4.0 turmoil but we did raid a bit last night with a great group. I love just getting everyone together and having a laugh. It is my one big wish before the expansion to kill Arthas and I know that our guild can do it! We might be small in numbers but we are mighty in enthusiasm and great players!

Also, a very big congratulations to The Wayward Initiative on their 1st blog milestone! They are great writers and great friends to have on your side...now if only they could share some of those readership numbers with me. Teehee! I kid! I love all 20 of my readers! Please don't ever change (or go anywhere - seriously, don't go anywhere)!

Hello Tauren is making pumpkin cinnamon rolls. If you would like to come over they will be ready in an hour!

Happy HalloweeEEEK!

2010-10-29T11:18:00.001-03:00

Just wanted to wish you all a very happy candy-filled weekend! Halloween and I have a love/hate relationship. While it gives me an excuse to overindulge on candy and wear as many sparkles as I want, I hate all the spooky stuff because…

I am scared of practically everything. Little things like bugs or slipping on icy sidewalks. Big things like change or the death of loved ones but mostly imaginary things like monsters and ghosts.

Bathroom mirrors? Yeah, no thanks. I've seen too many movies to know what happens when you shut a medicine cabinet door or look away for. Just. One. Second. Creepy ghosts always like to pop out behind you in bathroom mirrors.

Puppets. Oh lord, puppets. Other than Sesame Street and perhaps Casey and Finnegan nothing ever good came from puppets. Sure you can make them talk and make them charming but what happens when you leave them on the shelf and turn out the lights?

Masks. Ick, yuck, gross. It took me a long time to be able to look at The Scream mask without feeling all the blood drain from my limbs and being rooted to the spot in fear. And, I shit you not, I once got spooked in the Halloween aisle at a Michaels craft store.

Clowns also go on the list because of a) the movie "It" and b) a clown was once an asshole to me when I was a kid and I. Will. Never. Forget.

October means once again dealing with my ongoing nemesis: scary movies. No sorry, let me rephrase that: scary movie trailers. See I wouldn't have to be scared of the movies if the trailers didn't pop out at me during commercial breaks. There's a certain movie franchise that has terrorized me for at least 7 years now. One that we're not allowed to even mention in our house and one that just thinking about causes my flee reflexes to heighten. It once had my darling Westley in it – hooray! I haven't seen him in a while, I hope that he gets the girl and saves the da-----WHHHHHHHHHHHHHAATT???? Why is he all chained up and who invited that puppet? It's not the blood, the guts nor the horrific and outrageously implausible way the people die – it's the puppet that scares me the most.

Luckily on November 1^stthe Christmas music and decorations start exploding out on the scene (I have seen them spilling out here and there already) so I only have to endure being spooked for another few days. Most likely the reason that I have such a runaway imagination and heightened suspension of disbelief is that otherwise my life is so uncomplicated and stress free that I have time to over think things like huge hairy spiders walking over my face or the boogeyman in my closet…oh great, now I'm thinking about Mr. Boogedy! Damn you Disney!!

Anyway, my plan on the weekend is to venture outside as little as possible so that I don't have to pretend clown make-up or someone in a gorilla costume does not scare me. I'm arming myself with Kit-Kats and chips and refusing to do the laundry because it's located in the basement…so really, it's business as usual in the Hello Tauren house.

Happy Halloween!

Hello Tauren cowers in fear…and eats some candy.

Hello Tauren: SV&U

2010-10-21T13:12:00.001-03:00

It's no secret that I love SV for a number of reasons: the dynamic shot rotation, explosive shot, the Lock and Load proc and generally being all around…explody. Now that I've got most of my Add-ons updated I feel like I can play my hunter properly. Patch 4.0 gave the Hunters a bit of an overhaul. We now have Focus instead of mana; Armour Penetration has gone out the door (woohoo!) as well as ammunition. So there have been lots of changes to the class, but SV has remained relatively the same.

SV Shot Rotation

Hunters Mark

Serpent Sting

Black Arrow

Explosive shot whenever it is available

Arcane Spam, I mean shot

KILL SHOT

When Lock and Load procs…

Explosive shot

Arcane

Explosive shot

Arcane or Steady shot to build up focus.

Lock and Load resets the Explosive Shot cool down so you want to make sure, especially if you've just used it, that you don't override it.

Reapply stings and black arrow as necessary and use steady shot when you need to generate focus. You could even throw a snake or explosive trap in there via Trap Launcher if you wanted a little more flair. You'll also want to use Kill Command when available as well as Rapid Fire.

Now that list is for bosses generally. I find with trash I can't get more than two steady shots in after I put up Serpent Sting and Black Arrow. I would be temped to just fire off arcane shots instead or multi-shots especially if you've put talents in Serpent Spread.

Focus!

Focus is cool, but I need to get used to it. Sometimes I feel like I can't get rid of it and other times I'm bone dry. It sure beats Aspect of the Viper though!

I've only done one instance since 4.0 went live and that was Heroic Halls of Reflection with a DK that was doing 9000 dps. Instances these days aren't a great way to measure your damage but I was somewhere in the range of 4800-5200 which is fine by me. Once we get another shot at Festergut we should be able to see some proper numbers.

I am also interested to see how they stack up against our Beast Mastery Mistress, Chawakanda. If anyone can squeeze out the best possible dps for that spec, it's her!

Mastery

Talk among the dps nerds is that after Agility, Mastery is our priority stat. Anything that increases the damage of our main shot is going to be a plus. I think I have around 11.8 in Mastery. Unfortunately I have no idea what that means until I'm able to hit up a true dps check.

Thus concludes my little tour of the Survival Hunter. I think that I've hit the major points but probably left something out. It might not be the spec du jour these days but I still get a lot of enjoyment out of it. There's enough variety to keep it interesting but it's not as "whack-a-mole" as Marksman. There's a bit of fluidity as you weave your Lock and Load rotation into your regular shots and what I can only describe as a Hunter Trance once everything becomes automatic. It's just an all around fun spec to play!

Hello Tauren is exploding your mind with awesomeness.

Can We At Least Be Friends?

2010-10-17T09:40:00.000-03:00

I feel like WoW and I have gone through a weird break-up and now we're just starting to mend things back together. Before patch 4.0 things were pretty good. We were raiding regularly and most of the guild was grinding through the pre-Cataclym slump that seems to be going around these days.

Then the patch came and everything changed. Everything. My characters that I have spent so long with suddenly new and I have to figure out how to play them again. So for now I'm just having little coffee dates with WoW before jumping back in with it full time.

Mmmm, delicious coffee - you'll never go and change on me, will you?

The Brides of Ulduar

2010-10-15T12:55:00.000-03:00

I thought I would end the week on a high note. Between the patch 4.0 taking over the WoWblogs as well as staring at characters I no longer know how to play I’ve been reluctant to log in for long periods of time. So I’ll share with you something that we did last week – you know, way back when we had the Old WoW.

Our very own rogue, Rallick, is getting married tomorrow! To celebrate the occasion the always lovely and thoughtful Chawakanda suggested that we dress in our finest and surprise him with a raid full of brides!

He even joined in the celebration and called his wonderful fiancé over to see the screenshot.

Congratulations Rallick! From everyone at the Zug Initiative to you and your beloved!

I would also like to take this time to remind you about the Raid from the Heart event tomorrow on Kael-Thas! Please join the great group of people for this very worthy cause and donate to your local or national heart foundation!

Have a fabulous weekend everyone!

Hello Tauren can’t fight this feeling anymore…

Welcome to Pach(eco) 4.0.1!

2010-10-13T20:00:00.000-03:00

First off, while the Druids are lamenting about their loss of Tree Form, we hunters are taking a moment of silence to bid adieu to Volley. Farewell Volley! I will never forget you!

I have to admit I was not ready for this patch. Despite all the blogs, guides and our very own guild discussion my brain of oatmeal and finger paint just didn’t process much of the information. Perhaps I was in a little bit of denial that the hunters were getting a little bit of an overhaul.

By the time the servers were up it was 9 local time and after spending a good hour going whoa! Wow! Wha??? I was a little overwhelmed to log into any other characters.

When you log in and most of your buttons are missing, your talents are gone and even your pet is MIA you can’t help but feel a little bit naked. I was like a little calf trying to stand on its wobbly legs for the first time.

Things I like:

The dedicated aspect bar. I don’t think I’ll miss Aspect of the Viper. No wait, I won’t miss being in AotV needlessly.

Trap launcher. Now we can launch any type of trap at enemies. This. Is. Awesome! I had a lot of fun with this in PvP.

Reforger. The reforger lets you tweak your equipment to best suit your needs. You can reduce some stats in favour of others. For instance I reforged a ring to reduce hit by 23 for 23 points of Mastery. Mastery increases elemental damage that you do which is great for explosive shot – the moneymaker for all SV hunters.

Anyhow that’s about all I did for the new patch. I’ll figure out how to play later.

Question for my hunter brothers and sisters: did you guys notice your haste rating go through the roof? I don’t remember it being even at the soft cap and now I’m well past it (I think). This new WoW makes me feel so speedy!

I Killed Coren Direbrew 48 Times and All I Got Were 96 Lousy Frost Emblems…hic!

2010-10-06T11:59:00.001-03:00

Well, Brewfest is now over and I think that I was very nearly the only player in the guild who only received 1 Brewfest mount. I don't want to complain because I did indeed receive a mount, but not on the character collecting them. RNG gods why have you forsaken me! Enhancement Shaman got a Kodo (what seems to have been) every time he opened up the keg and I would just shrug it off thinking, I'll get one this time.

Nope. Not even a Tankard of Terror ca. 2009!

Ah well.

I did get really good at running the kegs though. I think my personal record was 7 or 8 in one run – once I figured out how those apple barrels worked (hooray for reading quest text!).

In the end I got the Brewmaster title on three more characters and joined Brew of the Month club again on Pacheco (because he was missing one of the drinks for some reason). So it was not completely a dud event plus Brewfesht ish fun becaushe you get tipshy and shhmashed.

I'm really looking forward to Hallows End though – hands down one of my favourite events. I think partly because you get loads of candy and mostly because you get TONS of candy! I wish they would make the broom a perma-mount because I love riding around on one! Tee hee! Hallows End will always remind me of the day the Achievement System went live and the scourge invasion (and lets never forget the day they lost all of our mail). It sort of felt like the new WoW and refreshed the game in a way. Will we see something like it in the next few weeks?

I hope so!

Raid From The Heart

2010-10-03T09:49:00.000-03:00

Last year hundreds of us gathered in Kael'Thas for the Raid for the Cure organized by Big Bear Butt in honour of one of his guildmate's, Julie, who had been diagnosed with cancer. In a sea of pink we cheered and honoured all those who have suffered the terrible disease. It was an uplifting and positive event and many people donated in real life to help find a cure.

This year BBB is putting together Raid From the Heart! An event to honour his wife's father and grandmother as well as all of those who have lost family and friends to heart disease. It takes place on October 16th on Kael'Thas and is for both factions and I would absolutely encourage you to join. It is one of those nice moments where the Horde and Alliance forget about what side they are on. For details on the event particulars, please visit his blog.

This event hits close to home for me. In 1994 my father had angioplasty surgery to correct a blockage in his heart and then in 1997 he had a heart attack resulting in a triple bypass. It was scary to think of him being anything but invincible and through the great doctors he had, our family, friends and church community he was put back together again physically and mentally. Today he's doing excellent and he's currently embarking on a world trip to Taiwan and Italy - go Dad!

Unfortunately I will not be able to attend the event personally due to prior commitment (guild mates wedding- hooray!), but fortunately there are lots of ways to participate both in game and in real life. Please check out the Cafe-press store of the great design Tish Tesh Tosh created for the event (above). I love how the Horde and Alliance symbols come together to make the heart!

Please mark the date on your WoW calendars and go!

DPS Nerd Moments

2010-10-02T09:36:00.000-03:00

Blah blah focus blah....

Blah blah pet scaling blah...

At the moment, Survival actually has the highest dps in raid gear.

Thanks - that's all I needed to know!

(Source)

Also, Lock n Load resetting the Explosive Shot cool down is A-OK in my book (of mashing buttons).

Ask a Tauren: Do U Wanna RP?

2010-10-01T12:48:00.001-03:00

No thanks...

I'm not here to judge anyone. I play a nerdy game with my nerd friends and we have an excellent nerdy time so what people choose do in Azeroth is their own business. However, it is posts like this one that I have to thank the Earth Mother that RP servers are kept separate from regular servers so I don't have to know what people are really doing out there.

This person and her friend are planning for their goblins to be married. Okay that seems reasonable within the realm of light RP. They are going start a business together. Hmm, well, I don't know how that really works, but I'm sure they will work out the kinks. (Are there lawyers drafting up partnership agreements for WoW related ventures?) They are also discussing the pros and cons of having children. He wants a 'legacy' but she doesn't want kids to bog her down. Seriously – w.t.f? Cataclysm hasn't even been released and people are already having very grown up conversations about their characters which have yet to be created? I don't even have these kinds of conversations with my husband.

The follow-up answers and suggestions to the original poster merit a double face palm across the sky. Birth control is actually an addressed topic in the RP world? There are herbs, potions and voodoo rituals that delay or stop reproduction cycles in WoW? I'm at a loss. Honestly, LJ ladies, I applaud your sense of responsibility but you could take on the entire Orgimmar football team and would not have to worry about being in the family way. As much as you gather outfits, go out on dates with your RP partner(s) or give each other presents you are still playing WoW, not The Sims. And this raises further questions! Are people out there RPing their characters pregnant? How does that work exactly? There's a reason you can't pick an 8-month pregnant dwarf model because family planning is not part of the game.

But I digress - I'm not against RP because there is obviously some level of role playing going on no matter what server you play on and that is perfectly fine. My Tauren hunter really doesn't have much of a back story, but I find that through him a bit of my personality shines through. Sometimes he enjoys killing the Alliance but sometimes he also likes to wave at them and dance with them. He does enjoy wearing the occasional dress but that's only because there are so few occasions where a gal can really dress up! However, I don't worry about things like making sure his clothes match or eating a balanced diet or washing his hands (just like I don't do in real life!). When I'm late for a raid it's because we're scrambling in the door from drinks/dinner or we just woke up from a nap not because Pacheco lost the keys to the Mammoth or ate some Bad Clams. My point is, this game is fantasy and there is only so much realism you can put into it before it goes overboard to a point of impracticality.

I enjoy flipping through the WoW Ladies LJ community. It's full of helpful, friendly people, it can be therapeutic to read through some of the rants and there is a wealth of talented artists out there. But every so often someone drops a crazy bomb in there reminding me how some people take this game very seriously. Not that there's anything wrong with that…

TL:DR. Crazy RP'ers are crazy.

Hello Tauren falls asleep zzzzzzz (and logs out)

Flattery Will Get You Everywhere

2010-09-16T13:02:00.001-03:00

While I really appreciate the sentiment I really have to ask my wonderful fans not to deface property in my name….especially if you aren't going to spell it right.

Photo by Terry Richardson. He's got some great and fun photos of celebrities and things he sees on the street. He also did the Lady Gaga Meat Dress photo for Vogue.

I've been taking a wee step back from the game over the past few weeks working on keeping the apartment tidy and on a few other projects.

Anyway, keep the fan mail coming - I read all your letters and everyone who writes gets a free 8x10 signed glossy photo!

Gadzooks!

2010-08-25T12:28:00.001-03:00

They are taking Volley away! How dare they! No more arrows falling out of my gun and no more competing with pesky mages and OP warlocks? I say good day to you sir!

I SAID GOOD DAY!

No, I guess I'm going to have to agree that this is an okay change and makes sense – we're not wizards or conjurers. Our amazing and awe-worthy dps power comes from our ranged weapon and pet (not to mention good looks), not a mana pool or through some weird lore regarding dragons and mystics gettin' busy.

I remember the day that I started using Volley regularly: during the scourge invasion before Wrath. Fellow hunters and I would just misdirect onto our pets and scoop up all those nasty wraiths and giants and zombies. Ever since I enjoy using it from time to most of the time when I'm feeling a teeeeeeeeeeeny bit lazy and also when there is a group of mobs deliciously close together – sometimes I can't resist!

Farewell volley, I used and misused you well!

Family is a Wonderful Thing

2010-08-21T10:01:00.000-03:00

One great things about WoW in the last year or so is that I've been able to reconnect with some of my family. Many months ago I saw my cousin post on Facebook "going to play some WoW and .... "

Oh my! I immediately sent her a message that I played too and was in a guild and we're on the Kael'Thas and basically dancing on tenterhooks hoping she was horde. I really didn't want to have to discontinue our personal relationship because she choose the opposite faction - but I've been known to do worse.

A few hours later and she and her husband were in the guild! Hooray! Since then we've been able to have them visit a few times while they were in the city and I've gotten a chance to know their very adorable little girls, well, little ladies, I should say.

We've been having a slight problem with hackers lately and while we do have an unofficial password to know if your Zug through and through, I had to make sure that I was about to invite my cousin's alt.

Poor My Brother. It's true that he did play dolls with me. I'm not sure why he had such a fascination with them nor why he got the Ken and Barbie dolls before I did. I think my parents were tighrope walking that fine line of "we do want him to be happy but we don't want him to be ridiculed" so when they had me he was finally able to play with dolls. Anyhow - he turned out fine, I mean, he didn't turn out like horribly demented and utterly insane doll collector or anything. And I don't think he still plays with dolls. I will always remember how when I didn't have many girls in the neighbourhood to play with he would take the time to play with his little sister.

And speaking of family, we're off to NB for my niece's 4th birthday party! I've amassed an array of Hello Kitty goodies, sparkly paper and ribbons into a giant prezzie, but nothing can compete with her affection for Enhancement Shaman. Maybe I should wrap him in a bow?

Hello Tauren is about to eat some cake!

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Hunter

2010-08-19T09:08:00.000-03:00

I love solo questing on my hunter: just my pet and I traversing the country, mountains and shores, and exploring the land. Sometimes we stumble upon a village and someone flags us down asking very humbly for our help. You see they just need 12 more Honey Buns and 8 Bear Claws to complete their village feast but can’t do it themselves. In exchange for a bit of gold could I please go collect those tasty cakes?
Well sure – happy to help especially when there are pastries involved.

Okay – the Honey Buns are in those bee hives just in those trees and you collect the Bear Claws from those beasts that are just sniffing around for the honey.

When you say, “collect the bear claws”, do you mean….

Maybe you just need to tickle them with that gun of yours? Oh and only 30% of the bear will have claws and roughly 50% of the hives have honey buns but you have to check them all.

…. 10 minutes later and drenched in sweat and slightly sticky…

Thank you – here is the gold I promised! Turns out there are some folks that are allergic to bear so why don’t you take the claws with you to enjoy.

And so on and so forth. Collecting and skinning and riding and flying and killing everything I see. Sometimes after hard boss mechanics and chain heroics I just like to click on things and shoot and not have to worry about my positioning or killing my friends.

It’s a good life really – being at one with the environment and my trusted companion by my side. I get a little bit of gold, some food for my pet and satisfaction of helping folks. Then I move on to the next bit of green pasture or fly over to the next mountain summit. If I see a cave I like to go in and check it out – you never know when someone might be stuck inside and need an escort out.

10 Out of 12 Ain't Bad

2010-08-16T18:54:00.000-03:00

We are now 10/12 of ICC! The Dreamwalker fight is crazy – thank goodness for excellent healers, we managed to squeak it out on the 3^rd or 4^th attempt with a few players alive. Woohoo to everyone!!!

For an epic fight, it doesn't really lend itself for a robust screen shot. Here's a glowing box that Link would enjoy.

Then.

Sindragosa.

That's a big one.

I had read before how annoying the dialogue for the Sindragosa fight was and wasn’t looking forward to being irritated with long soliloquies. She’s not nearly annoying as Lady Deathwhisper who talks for 3 or 4 minutes. I do wonder how many times the voice actor had to record “BETRAAAIYS YOU” to get that perfect screech of desperation. If all she does is yell like that it's no wonder Malygos hangs out way over in Borean Tundra - nag much?

Phase 1 and 2 were okay. Sometimes the ice tombs were burned down too quickly or not quick enough. Phase 3…oh boy. Phase 3 gave me some problems. I honestly thought I understood it: target ice tombs, wait until the debuff falls off and target Sindragosa when you can. Hmm. I got confused on how the debuff worked. I thought I had to wait until it cleared in order to kill the ice tombs, and I thought I had to be out of her LoS in order for it to fall off. So I stood behind ice tombs targeting Sindragosa until the buff wore off - oddly enough, it kept restacking. My actions and thoughts do not make sense, I know.

Lots of things were asked after the wipes:

“What’s happening here?”

“Is ranged targeting the ice tombs?”

“Does everyone understand this fight?”

Anyway – suffice to say that I did not understand this fight at first. In the end I only targeted the ice tombs but it still was not fast enough. I was happy when I got frozen because I didn't have to worry about targeting anything.

. Hee hee! No one will yell at me in here!*

When we called it for the evening I checked my recount just so I could prove that I was in fact targeting the ice tombs.

Hmmm……..well, I guess I think this hunter needs to go do some research and stop contributing to raid wipes.

Regardless, we are still 10/12 of ICC bosses and I am very proud of everyone who took part, played their best game and had fun. We don't give our leaders enough credit for being able to do their job well plus watch out for everyone else - so thanks very much to BT and our tanks, Regis and Exec! Sorry for standing in stuff and we'll get her next time!

*no one ever yells in The Zug Initiative - even when we run away from the healers and stroll through fires.

Dear Diary,

2010-08-15T11:14:00.000-03:00

Saturday: 6:30AM

I'm up stupid early this morning for some reason and stared at the following MMO Champion Cataclysm update for a few seconds before it sunk in:

The new 310% Speed Flying Mount skill costs 5000 gold to train. People who already own a 310% flying mount get it for free.

Whoa! That is awesome for those that have done the raiding achievements or gotten very lucky in the past with drops and especially for those that did the Long Strange Trip achievement. I wonder if this means epic flying will be considerably reduced in the expansion or if it will be approximately 10,000g to get uberepic flying.

Sunday: 11:15AM

We've had a pretty great weekend so far. Friday night in ICC was fun - I got a chance to heal Blood Princes which was intense to say the least. Roughly 80% of the fight I spent dangerously close to 0 - 2000 mana and the most welcome words became "All heals on Keleseth tank". It took three (maybe 4) tries but we got them! I used Pacheco on the Plagueworks and Blood Queen - gotta chomp them all!

Yesterday afternoon I spent at a friends place sitting on their dock by the lake. There were boat rides and large pitchers of sangria and chips - then met some folks for a last hurrah dinner at the Hungry Chili: 5 orders of hot numbing chicken, two chili beef, 1 hot and tangy pork and lettuce rolls - so delicious! We're considering going back again today - well, I am at least.

It's a fantastically sunny Sunday and I don't have anywhere to be - my favourite type of Sunday. I'm going to enjoy a leisurely afternoon with a little WoW, watching the Federer vs. Murray Rogers Final and maybe do a craft or two.

Tonight we're going back to ICC and tackle the dragons. Oh. My. Goodness!

Some Day My Orc Will Come

2010-08-12T09:26:00.000-03:00

Poor Pacheco, always a bridesmaid and never a bride. He waits in front of Cairne Bloodhoof in his fancy dress and flowers waiting for a certain Orc to come up the elevator. With Manny as his best pet, the Mulgore birds chirping in the background and Arra'chea roasting over an open flame he just needs a groom to complete his dream wedding.

While I leave Pacheco to contemplate his own identity problems, in real life it’s our fourth wedding anniversary (hurrah!). Loads of people in the guild made the day fabulous for us: Darthregis, Brokentree, Morvis, Darthrosie, Unzymandus, Xanen and Bredarie. It’s hard to believe that I didn’t know Chawakanda during this time – seems like we’ve been fast friends forever!

We had loads of fun with our friends and family and I still think everyday about how sweet and lovely the wedding was thanks to the generosity and kindness of everyone.

There were also hamburgers.

Hello - I Love to Complain!

2010-08-11T18:44:00.000-03:00

My last few (hundred) posts have been a bit too syrupy and I wanted to interject a little bit of darkness and bite into this sea of unicorns and double rainbows. I started drafting a post about a few particular things in WoW that rankle and irriate me. Then those things that irked me exploded into a full rant exposing my vicious side and named names. I didn’t want to read it later on and think I wish I hadn’t called them trash or I heard that made him cry.

So I decided not to post it. Instead I’m going to do what I do best: coat everything with a sprinkling of sugary-sarcastic fairy dust.

1. Gear Score

Awesome! Your gear score is super high, thank you for telling me! I hope that you are also a nice person and know how to play the game with others-Yes, I heard you the first time, you don’t need to repeat it – just please be a nice person-No, I don’t want to hear about that person’s score either…

Also

2. "Huntard"

You know that language might be offensive to some – probably best not to use it at all. Why am I cringing you ask? Oh I was just looking at pictures of medical surgeries....and quietly judging you.

3. Cataclysm Spoilery Blogs

I want to know about some things, but not everything – that’s why I’ve unsubscribed to some of your blogs. I’ll return after the expansion. Also, two months of one-sided-gloating-about-being-in-alpha-posts is not the best way to ingratiate your way back into the community after such a grand exit from the game.

4. My Computer Chair

I would like a new one please.

In conclusion:

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!

Also, check out this unicorn I made!

Raid Roundup!

2010-08-10T12:37:00.000-03:00

Oh The Zug Initiative! You keep making me fall more and more in love with you all!

This is us on Friday before trying out the +3 zerg which we had attempted a few months back. You can just taste the anxiousness and eagerness to get it done.

and then.....

Whee! The Zug Initiative of the Nightfall. Damn we look good!

Oh my! I DO look good!

And on Sunday night we got: The Crimson Hall achievement.

I don’t envy anyone who has to tank Keleseth. The dark nuclei are damn near impossible to target and once you’ve got them on you they are the only things you can target. V. Frustrating!

Directions were call on what to watch for and what to target – it’s quite helpful when there are a billion things happening at once. Thanks to everyone working together they went down on one go. It’s not an easy fight and I’m so relieved we jumped that hurdle.

We then pressed onto Blood Queen - Yikes!

The explanation (as I understood it) from Brokentree in a nutshell: Okay, so people need to stay away from each, but run to each other if you get a certain buff and you also need to run away when she’s in the air and bite people in the right order.

Wait, what? Bite them? Okay crazy raid leader!

The Blood Queen infects you with a curse and you have a little bit of time before it turns you into a bloodthirsty vampire doing 100% increased damage. Then you must bite your friends every 75 seconds to pass on the curse. I had a lot of fun inching toward people to chomp on them. It makes a pretty satisfying “SPLURNCH!” sound too!

This is hands down my new favourite fight.

Hellooo down there!!!! (hello! hello! hello!))

Not my finest camera work....but at least the Archmage made an appearance.

That's two new bosses crossed off the list. Yay! Can you guys believe that we are now 9/12 in ICC? It boggles the mind. We are sure to be Kingslayers in another few months!

A little later we held a private meeting of the four Taurens as made famous by the current Wayward Initiative banner. Chawakanda is choosing her next dance partner and I accept!

Keep up the great work everyone! Looking forward to more adventures :)

Hello Tauren is bored at work.

Wait! Come Back!

2010-08-08T10:48:00.000-03:00

I've been working on my mage a lot for the past week. She was wearing just about every shade of green you can imagine with low level enchants to boot. Now she's got some Tier 9 and does more than 900 dps (yay!).

This means that I've been doing a lot of LFD. I've been in loads of bitchy groups of people complaining that they died and that there wasn't enough dps. Rogues ninja'ing on caster trinkets (grrrrrr). Tanks that want to Boomkin Tank (ps - that does not work for CoS) and tanks that just don't want to wait for anyone - including the healer. But it's hasn't been all bad. I've been in a few really nice groups. There was a Violet Hold run a few days ago where two people in the group were engaged and I thought that was so nice. Plus they were both really funny.

This morning I queued rather early (5AM server time) and was surprised that I got a group within 5 minutes. After we did ToC a few folks wanted to requeue and we did for UP then for VH and further for OK. They were really friendly and it made getting a group all the more faster.

After the fourth dungeon and queuing for a fifth slowly all the party members dropped out without saying goodbye. Ah well, that is the nature of the LFD - people come and go. I wish that I had at least got a chance to thank them so I'll do it here.

To Froost, Rangdipkin of Hellscream and Flashinhealz of Stormreaver: thanks for making my morning fun and being friendly. You guys helped me get a ton of badges very quickly and we all know that can be a challenge for dps. Good luck to you guys and have a great day!

Summertime and the Raiding Ain’t Easy

2010-07-30T13:13:00.001-03:00

Currently, our guild is enjoying some summer time relaxation in and out of WoW. People are levelling/gearing up alts, trying out new class roles or just going on vacation or a well-deserved Wow-break. I'm not complaining - it's nice for everyone to just dabble during these warm summery days and it forces us to get creative when we want to do a 10-man. Sometimes it works (hello Flame Leviathan!) and sometimes it doesn't (boo Festergut!) however, we still have fun because we can laugh on Vent or in game.

I'm still trying to get my head around Death Knight tanking. All of the numbers and the abbreviations make my head spin. Plus, it doesn't help that I giggle every time I read "rune power dump". (Teehee!) I'm not convinced that my play style is conducive to DK's since I hardly ever look at my runic power bar plus I can't seem to gather a lot of threat quickly despite the suggestions I've received. It seems that I'm constantly waiting for cool downs just at the moment where I lose aggro. For now I think that it's a matter of practicing as much as the guild will tolerate so that I can get comfortable with the priority system and my bars.

It's a long weekend here (yahoo!) and even the fog and the overcast clouds outside can't damper my spirit! There's a transaction closing today at work which means leaving early might not be in the cards despite how much I bat my lashes. Ah well – I'm looking forward to the WoW, dinner with friends and a wedding that's going to pack the next few days.

We've had an awesome couple of days with Regis and Chawa: long drives in the countryside, blatant disregard for our livers, loads of catching up plus we've got one more dinner planned with them. I am going to be sad to say goodbye tomorrow – they are such a laugh! However, knowing that I'll "see" them online on Sunday makes it a teensy bit easier to let them go. /tear

Happy Friday to all and I hope that you have a terrific weekend regardless of how long it is!

Yay Friday!!

2010-07-23T13:20:00.000-03:00

I didn’t do a Friday recap last week because it turned out to be a little dreary and it was a slow weekend. However, I did draw a really fantastic unicorn and the self-satisfaction lasted straight through to Sunday. The secret to happiness is taking immense pleasure in the little things – at least it is for me! Maybe I’ll post it sometime so you too can be in awe of my ability to copy a “How to Draw” diagram from the internet.

BUT! This weekend is something entirely different!

1. First off it’s a bi-weekly dinner with friends tonight! We try to get together every two weeks to have a drink, a laugh and a meal. It’s fun – especially when we don’t go to the Rogue’s Roost. I’ve tried and tried to find something on the menu that I enjoy and the quesadilla is the most edible. At least the company and the beer selection are good because their fries are gross.

2. Friday nights are raid nights and the weekly is Flame Leviathan. Awesome! This is an excellent quest during the summer where guilds might be taking a break or down a tank or two.

And now for the most important part…..

Our awesome friends from The Wayward Initiative are in town! I haven’t seen them in like FOR.EVER!!!! I can’t wait to give squeezes to everyone’s favourite troll-mage/Tauren-Druid/race class, Regis and the lovely and gracious Chawa. Wait until they see my Tauren dance! Ho! Ho! Ho! Hee! Hee! Hee!

Chawa has requested pancakes for breakfast on Sunday. I love a girl that’s forward with her carbs. You’ll get pancakes my dear, oh yes, right in the kisser! (‘Cuz you know, that’s where you put pancakes). Pancakes topped with cupcakes with a side of paddy cakes. Oddly enough they did not request bacon. Maybe they know it’s a given. Note to self: break out the good bacon – the company bacon.

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend – here is a picture I took out of my boss’s office. It’s pretty and sunny and makes me happy to work by the water – not that I’m able to stroll out there, something to do about security and compiling with anti-terrorist laws. Still – it’s a nice view and sometimes little boats float by making us wish that we were having a leisurely sail in the sun.

Hello Tauren is very happy!

Double XP

2010-07-20T12:05:00.001-03:00

From time to time I like to look at the Art of M. S. Corley. Early last year he did a series of reimagined Harry Potter books as Penguin classics and they are fantastic (as in frame them for my wall fantastic). I just went to his funny side project called Double XP, a comic strip about video games. I think that you'll get a chuckle or three.

Double XP

Happy Tuesday!

I Clicked Frost Presence, What More Do You Want?

2010-07-14T13:21:00.000-03:00

This is a tale of Gov, the Death Knight that could. It’s also a tale about doing things wrong so that I could eventually do them right. Let’s begin, shall we?

A long time ago Gov turned 80. It was easy to blow through all the content, bypass the quest upgrades in favour of Heirloom pieces and Death Grip my way to the top. The first thing I did at 80 was to respec to add to our short list of tanks in the guild.

I led a group into an easy run of UK. They were over geared and as long as I kept aggro we were fine. The altish group in Halls of Lightning was a different story. I didn’t stand a chance against Loken and we were not able to finish. As we were trying to figure out what happened [Enhancement Shaman] asked, what is your defence rating?

D-fence? I dunno – 374 or something? What, why are you covering your face with your hand?

That’s when I learned that no matter what kind of plate armour they’re wearing, some tanks need defence. Hey my only other tank experience has been as a druid – our best defence is an actual bear-fence. But it’s quite important and that’s when I went on a one Death Knight quest to reach a defence rating of 535 so that I wouldn’t embarrass myself. A few months, quests, rep grinds later together with sneaking him into an alt raid and I’m at 544. Whee!

Then I found out what else I was missing: a proper tank spec. My usual MO is to spec first and ask questions later. Turns out the cookie cutter one I googled back in January was not up to snuff or up to tanking. Well that’s easy to fix – pick a colour, red, blue or green and make yourself a tank. I was Frost but switched to Blood for no reason at all (cough, cough, Badwolf, cough).

Frost Presence alone, does not a tank make

Now that I’ve got the base stats down and a tighter spec next comes the practical part. This involves the grind for emblems and gear, dragging guildmates through low-end instances and developing the sixth sense of situational awareness that all the great tanks seem to have.

In fact, that’s what I’ve been trying to think about while going through this process. When someone gets aggro or a pull gets a little messy I think, what would Executrix, Maggotbrain or Regis do? Those are the tanks that I look up to and I’ve spent almost my entire WoW life happily following them around because they make it look so easy! Since WWEMORD looks a little clunky on a bracelet I just keep this in mind: those guys would take care of fraking business and wrangle all the mobs back in their control.

What does the future hold for Gov? I have always had high hopes for him and picture him taking down the Lich King and triumphantly lifting Frostmourne into his possession. Okay, maybe we could start him in Naxx or ToC before skipping to Ice Crown Citadel but I’m putting it out there – I think I want to tank!

I simply adore playing an Orc. Maybe it’s the plate armour or his evil laugh or those (sigh) hulking muscles but I find that myself wanting to be a little more reckless with him. He can definitely take the damage and I love when he does his war cry animation. Hey, every girl likes a bad boy once in a while, right? Sometimes Pacheco is just too Mr. Nice Guy.

Hmm, what was I saying? Yeah, this post sort of got away from me…

Found you!!

2010-07-12T07:37:00.000-03:00

Sometimes, when we don't feel like tearing through instances or giving ICC what for we venture into older raids to experience content that we missed while it was new.

Over the weekend we took on Zul-Aman. Oh how it would have been so epic back in the day! If you were among the lucky millions that saw this at the height of it's glory I salute you. I'm also super jealous of your mount!

While we were there we found out the truth to the origins of everyone's favourite cuddly bear blogger, BBB:

That's right - I found out your secret sir! You might masquerade as a nice guy from the Midwest, but now we know that you are everyone's favourite Amani Troll leader, Zul'jin.

Here's proof:

Happy Monday folks!

The Internet is Made of Rainbows

2010-07-10T00:50:00.000-03:00

I'm only human. And because of that sometimes I like to entertain myself with LoLCats, videos of cats being cute and cats pretending to be human. It doesn't take a lot to make me happy and fortunately the LoLCats are really dumb.

Then there is the mighty rainbow. Shhh. Don't speak. Let this gentleman show you how to enjoy the fuck out of a rainbow:

Now that you've seen that. Watch this auto-tune version. Auto-tune is also a very simple way to make me laugh. I can't help it - I'm only human.

I know right! It's awesome! Honestly, if I had an auto-tune mic, I would sing so many songs about things that made me happy. Like candy and sparkles! If I awoke to a table laden with pastries and bacon, I would probably start to cry out of sheer joy just as Yosemitebear did...and then I would auto-tune the hell out of it.

Oh yeeeeaaaaaahhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!

Guess Who's Happy?

2010-07-09T13:50:00.001-03:00

Oh sweet, sweet weekend! You are only a few hours away! We've enjoyed a few sweltering hot days and as I look out the office window I see can hazy blue skies over the harbour and the bright blazing sun bouncing off roof and car tops. Its 28C (38C with humidity) so we're looking at one gorgeous day in the city!

I am so asking to leave early this afternoon!

Other weekend plans include, but are not limited to:

1. Dinner at the Hungry Chilli, our favourite Schezwan restaurant. We first had dinner here years ago with our friends, BT and Morvis and since we've moved downtown we go almost once a week. We always have to get the hot and numbing chicken, a stir-fry with schezwan peppercorns, vegetables and cashews. Let me tell you, the dish lives up to its name. First the heat from the dish sears your mouth and about halfway through the meal the numbing zing reaches your lips. It's delicious! Last time we asked for the heat to be ramped up and it was murderous but so tasty.

2. Raiding with the Guild: It's always a fun when we get together and we've got a great group signed up for this evening! I believe our plan is to start at Prof. Putricide and then on to Blood Princes. I know that we can do this fight. We have the strategy down and people know what they are supposed to do. My job is to collect the orbs and tank Kelethes. I wish it were as simple as that – but I think we'll get them down tonight. I have a few more macros and a bit more health. If anyone has done this fight I am open to suggestions!

3. Trip to the Farmers Market tomorrow. To stock up on our eggs, bacon and what ever produce looks good. Also for cinnamon buns, coffee and samosas for weekend treats.

A weekend full of food and a bit or WoW here and there – how can I complain? It's going to be a lovely day and we are promised some rain which will help with the humidity. There's only a few more hours until I see [Enhancement Shaman] walk through our front door and we just had pizza delivered to the office for lunch. All in all life is good!

I hope you guys all have an excellent weekend!

Hello Tauren bursts into dance.

EDIT: Oh yeah, and this too: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=25968987278&sid=1

New changes to Hello Tauren today! PS: I love you

2010-07-08T17:56:00.000-03:00

The other day I found out something amazing: my number of followers in Google Reader is now in the double digits! Can you imagine that?!! I am thrilled and tickled every of shade of pink. Thank you very much for visiting and thank you for subscribing!

You’ll see something new on the left hand side – that’s right, I’m putting my email right out there for you to see. My Read ID name isn’t Hello Tauren in case you were thinking you might Google me and dig up some dirt. I already tried that - apparently I’m very big in the Harry Potter fan fiction community. What?!

Feel free to use that address to send any questions or ideas or comments. I simply adore email.

Then there is Twitter! Whee! Twitter! I haven’t logged into my personal Twitter account for well over 5-6 months so I’m not sure where this will go. But I didn’t want any other Hello Taurens to get their mitts on my handle. Plus I might say something funny during the day – you never know!

Any hoos – thank you again for reading or skimming or marking as read in your RSS Feeders. I’m genuinely flattered and if I knew all your home addresses and names and Social Insurance Numbers I would send you all delicious cupcakes.

Hello Tauren! thanks everyone around her.

Rabble. Rabble. Rabble.

2010-07-07T07:33:00.000-03:00

Nothing unites the WoW Community quite like the idea of change.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=25712374700&sid=1&pageNo=1

That's a 900+ page resounding roar against having real first and last names shown to the public every time someone posts on the forums. It's an interesting change to implement and I have a feeling its about social control. If my name goes up on something public, I usually want to make sure it's good (this blog notwithstanding). It's easy to call someone names or be an idiot when you can hide behind your character icon. Maybe that will be next - our real pictures beside our real names! Blizzard would rather us police ourselves rather than trawl through the cesspool of chatter.

Without stirring the pot too much, has anyone actually found out anything useful on the WoW Forums? I go there from time to time and skim through the topics and not once have I come away thinking, Golly, I learned something new today; I'm really glad I visited the WoW Forums. It's usually more along the lines of Damn. People are bitches. I go on the assumption that anyone who posts anything on there now does not mind being called names or having their innocent post about looking for a guild turned into something related to how many objects can be placed in your behind. It's doubtful that it will cut down on trolling, but we can hope that having their names public will at least force them use wit and sarcasm properly.

Just a few months ago the entire Facebook community revolted because of their privacy settings being like a sieve resulting in people deleting their accounts left and right. It will be interesting to see how Blizzard takes the public reaction and works to appease the masses. Hey - it worked that one time we asked for more pet slots, right?

I guess what I'm really trying to say is, why waste all this time on Real ID when they could be working to give us all more slots in Cataclysm? amiright? imright.