1.8 kg

That's how much candy this is, give or take a few that disappeared before I had time to get the camera out.

Do you want to know what's worse? Nobody came "trick or treat'ing" at our door tonight!! That means... 1.8kg of candy is heading straight for my hips! Eeek! 8-)

Ding 70!

After 17 days online with this toon, Glömsk has finally turned 70. :-) Nothing much exciting to add to her skillset, but there are a few mobs out there which will just be a fraction easier to slay now. :-)

Shortcuts

I realise I miss a few functional commands from Aion in WoW, not bad Aion, not bad. :-) The most missed was one of the ones I had the hardest time to learn to use - right-click to auto-walk to mobs and items. But other than that WoW now feels just like it does when you come home from work and pull on the comfy baggy soft attire mostly worn out of public view ("mjukisar"). :-D It feels good.

End of Aion

Ding level 10. Tested flying. Enjoyed the interface. Enjoyed the combat. Got tired of the music. Still don't stand the look of robes in the game. My free gaming time should be just about to expire.

My conclusion: Easy to play (easier than Oblivion, for sure). But too expensive to subscribe to, or rather, not good enough to spend the monthly money on.

I like my character, I will miss her freckled green-haired energy. :-D

Aion

Nippertippa, scout, main char (tiny)

Aion came. And we waited. And waited. And waited... my gosh, servers are totally swamped and it is no use trying to log on during the afternoon or early evening. Thankfully my "free" time starts after 23:00 so the waiting time isn't too bad then. I created three characters, mostly for fun, the character creation features are great!

Glomsk, priest (tall and chunky, just like a priest should be, right?)

However the actual game questing and combat is, well, so-so. It doesn't quite cut it to Warcraft standards. But I'll give it that - it could well be 'the new warcraft' to me, if I could only give it the time it needs. It's "pretty" (although, MY GOD why couldn't they animate the robes so that they look at least somewhat real??) and the combat is easy and graphically appealing. The sounds aren't too annoying, the voices ok, the music is good. The quests are reasonably easy to pursue, guiding you into and onto gradually more difficult areas and mobs as you progress your levelling (unlike Oblivion, where you can easily stumble onto an end-game instance-like mob with your newborn character...). The function-keys and menus are semi-logical although for my Warcraft-demented brain my muscle-memory makes me return to the old familiar shortcuts over and over again, to no avail... X-) Some of the built-in features, like maps and navigation and aid to find npc's are stuff that I'd really like to have in Warcraft too.

Teehe, warrior (slender and cute, like a warrior) ;-)

I had lots of fun creating the characters. But will I ever again invest the hours required to get to the point of comfort I am with Warcraft? I doubt it... :-] Tough luck Aion.

What happened to Warcraft?

MY ACCOUNT IS TEMPORARILY UNPAID FOR OH MY GOD.

:-o

I haven't had time to look into it but I suspect I used my old credit card to pay for the subscription and now it's no longer valid, ergo, my Warcraft account is temporarily unavailable. I feel a horrible void growing inside, despite not having a single minute of gaming time available. X-)

63.3

That's what I weigh in on right now. That means I'm truly down to what I weighed before I was registered as pregnant at the local health center (I weighed in on 65 then). :-)
Will not specifically aim to loose any more weight, but I will be happy if I could get down closer towards 60 kg next year. Can't really diet as I am constantly hungry right now, all due to wee David's habit of eating every hour upon the hour (nearly) when he's awake and I need to make sure I stay upright and lactate well . :-D

Chocolate

S had the opportunity to taste a new brand of chocolates some time ago and came home passionately describing it to me. I have had some issues with dark chocolate since the start of my last pregnancy (you wonder what this will mean for young David in the long run?) so haven't had much chocolate since as the echoes of nausea still lurks at the back of my mind when thinking about having some. Tonight he had bought some and insisted I'd try it.

It was Cocoa Farm Wine Chocolate Pinot Noir by Farm by Nature - yummy!

It's like a serious heavy-weight champion deluxe variant of the old Swedish classic ice cream "romrussin" but with chocolate and wine, not ice cream and rum. Oh, um, that's a poor comparison now isn't it? It is someway also not too far from another old Swedish classic "Skotte" (soft, rich dark chocolate, raisins, crunch...). But that's the first impression and I happen to love the ol' romrussin ice cream and the "old ladies chocolate" Skotte... :-D

Anyway, they make this chocolate using a special technique where they infuse raisins with wine (Pinot Noir, Shiraz or Merlot) and cover them with chocolate (38% in this case). It is absolutely looovely.

Try it out!

Ding 69!

Imagine that, Glömsk has reached level 69 all of a sudden. I'm happy S nagged me into Northrend, it's much more fun to quest up there and levelling seems to go faster there. Or maybe it is the whole shadow priest thing?

Over to the dark side

Tonight I finally caved in and respecced Glömsk to "shadow priest". Apparently it will enable me to finish off mobs a lot quicker. 8-) I've been running strictly "holy" up until this point (and I'm proud of it! :-p) but it's getting increasingly tedious to flap away with wand and shield to kill mobs. Though I must say, faster as it may be - shadow spells have _not_ got the flare holy spells have. I already miss the thunderous sound and lightningflame-effect of Holy Fire?

The Guild

"The Guild" beats "The Office" hands down... :-D S have been talking about it for a long time but I've never taken the time to watch it before. I just finished the last released episode (season 3, episode 1, released now in September) and I have been laughing a lot these past few hours. Funny thing though, despite watching a show about Warcraft playing nerds the entire evening I haven't actually logged on WoW (or, errh, except to check AH that is) the whole time...

What the?

This ad makes absolutely no sense! :-D If they have to use babelfish for translation I can only guess how bad the game must be...

Ding 68!

New level. Northrend level. Nice goggles too. :-)

Aion

Right, I managed to muster up a few hours to try out Aion before the closed beta was locked and beta testing terminated. I ended up rolling a scout. :-)

Initial impression - it's a 2009 version of Oblivion, with the ease and familiarity of shortcuts resembling World of Warcraft. I didn't have enough time to learn any particular skills so my combat experience is hardly worth disclosing. :-)

I look forward to it's next step though, release scheduled for September.

Five years

Fortunate for us, Warcraft was released AFTER we met. :-D Thank you for five absolutely fantastic years my love. I love you.

Chanter or cleric?

When I roll a new character in the closed beta version of Aion online, will I roll a chanter or a cleric? That's the thousand dollar question of the evening.

Chanters are better than clerics for solo play as they can handle more melee as well as heal. But even though they are a little bit hardier than clerics they're pretty useless when the going gets tough and you meet multiple mobs. That means I'd have to pace myself carefully and not advance on the safe side of levelling e.g. focusing on lower level mobs etc. Which in reality is not as much excitement as if you're a little bit ahead of level. Perhaps I should roll a completely different character instead?

These are my options/classes available:

• The Warrior - templar or gladiator (very much the same as warrior and palladin in WoW)
• The Scout - assassin or ranger (rogue or hunter in WoW)
• The Mage - sorcerer or spiritmaster (mage or shaman in WoW)
• The Priest - chanter or cleric (priest in WoW)

Hmm... perhaps I'll try a ranger instead? Will have to do some more reading before making up my mind. Shouldn't be a problem. Downloading the install and patches seems to be a bit of a task, 6G waiting to trickle down into our house with the speed of a murder snail... *sigh*

Ding 67!

New baby, new sudden urge to play Warcraft... how do you work this out?? I certainly don't know. X-)

Time to go to bed now, only one level to go before this toon can go to Northrend (new lands available since last expansion "Wrath of the Lich King") but that's for another evening. :-)

He's here too

David
3565 g
52 cm
10 July 17:06

He arrived one day ahead of schedule. Longed for. Loved. :-) Big brother have patted his head and welcomed him home. Both boys are fast asleep now.

Both.

We have two boys now, S and I. It is an incredible feeling! We see that David is quite different from Tobias, but most of our rellies think they look very much like eachother. It is going to be über cool to watch our two sons grow up. :-)

A very merry movie marathon Christmas

We spent the holidays up north with my sister's family. As soon as the kids had gone to bed we got a fire going in the fireplace, snacks dished up on the table and got seated in the lounge in front of the telly to watch a movie. :-)

Thoroughbred wholesome adult relaxation time, perfect for tired parents in varying stages of colds. :-)

We watched:

• Casino Royale (imdb link) - it gets 8.0/10 on imdb and I have to agree with that, it's the best Bond movie since Sean Connery.
  
  
• Quantum of Solace (imdb link) - also this one of the best Bond movies in years. I like it for the sense of closure, and it's a twist that you actually learn about Bond's "junior years" in these two films. Daniel Craig is not as "smooth" as some (all?) of the previous Bond's, he doesn't have a very expressive acting style but he wins on the blue eyes, the rough edges and the very realistic action scenes (that may be thanks to the director off course but still).
  
  
• Seven Pounds (imdb link) - oh what a film!! It gets ten out of ten from me. It surprised me, it had me crying (just a little) and it had me aww'ing and it's almost too much for a weakened mother's heart to handle. It's awesome and very very different.
  
  
• Hancock (imdb link) - Ha ha! I like this film! It was many different films in one and you go from corny "redemption" type film via love story to a sudden hit of sci-fi to end up with a lot of feel-good. :-)
  
  
• Constant Gardener (imdb link) - Serious stuff this one. I'm not going to theorise about whether or not this is the way it is out there in reality. But it's a frickin scary movie and it makes me want to be a better person. Apart from that I just LOVE the actual filming technique, it's the first time I've actively noticed a technical aspect like that (in a positive way). It's blurry and unsharp at times, but the flow of movement and people, colours and sound is just awesome. And Ralph Fiennes made it again, another beautifully set slightly dry love story under his belt (note: The English Patient being the other).
  
  
• Days of Thunder (imdb link) - a rather sweet and simple minded early 90's film. So close to the eighties that I get the same "embarrassment vibes" as I always get when watching clothes and acting from that time... :-D I'm guessing this is when Tom and Nicole met for the first time.
  
  

I also watched short bits of "Tropic Thunder" (the guys watched the whole of it and absolutely loved it for unknown reasons) but it's so bad I'm not even going to use words to start describing it...