Life Update

Being a new mom makes me physically exhausted, which makes me not want to do anything. I enjoy snuggling with Liam and sleeping when I can though. I have started applying for jobs again and have applied for seven in all since I started two weeks ago, and have just got my first rejection letter. Luckily it was one of the jobs that I didn't really want but figured I would apply for anyways, the non-library admin position. 

I have been able to catch up on reading, though I'm still way off my 200 books read this year goal. I recently finished the new Gail Carriger book, Heartless, which was amazingly hilarious as usual. It made me want to start regularly drinking hot tea again, well that and the high tea that I had with my family and friends the other day. Ok, it also made me crave cucumber sandwiches and British tea cookies. 

I've started playing MMORPG games again. Originally my hubby and I did it so we could play online together again, but my laptop's graphic card isn't very good so games don't always work on there. We tried this cool-looking game called Dragon's Nest, that looked like anime, but I had to set the graphics so low that it didn't work. So now I'm trying a game called Forbidden World from the makers of another game I had previously tried called Perfect World. Very pretty graphics even on the lowest setting, but it keeps crashing my system because the graphics card is overheating. However, I have managed to install it on my dad's computer and I play it when it is available. 


All the things I have mentioned above is what has been keeping me somewhat busy, but I would love to meet some more people my age so I have a chance of not going stir crazy being stuck in this house all day everyday. 

LOTR online update and football news

I am addicted to LOTR online. There I've said it, and admitting it is the first step. I played it for like 8 hours yesterday. It's cool now because I deleted my minstrel character and created an even harder character, a Lore Master (female elf). She's basically a wizard that can summon an animal companion to help her fight, which is great because she has low health and dies easily. But I've got her up to level 15 or 16 in two days, which is pretty awesome, and she finally joined the kinship that my other two characters are part of. I like her bear companion as he is less annoying than the earlier raven, even though the raven had some cool protection. I had wanted to create a female hobbit character, but they're mostly fighters, so maybe next time if I buy another slot. My other characters, the human female guardian and the elf female champion are finally getting some more play. I was able to start the Lone Lands quests (a separate set that you either have to buy with cash or Turbine Points from the LOTR online store) finally after getting enough TP, so that gives me 100 extra quests to do. I think I will buy North Downs and then Rivendell when I finish Lone Lands. I am loving the Lone Lands quests so far because it helps level up my guardian character, who is my favorite because she is easy to use, so she can do the upper level  Book 2 epic storyline quests.

 

I know most people will have no idea what I am talking about as they don't play the game, but it is basically like this: When you start playing the game, there is a limited amount of areas you can play in. You can basically play for free in Erid Luin (home of dwarves and elves), The Shire, or the Breelands. You can do epic storyline or craft quests in other areas, such as Lone Lands or North Downs, but you can't participate in solo quests there unless you buy quests in that particular area or you are a subscriber for $15 a month. So as I am broke and can't afford any extra monthly expenses, at least until I get a job, I am paying for things through Turbine Points (TP) or through occasional $7 purchases through the store, which is how I got my third character slot (as everyone starts out with two in the free-to-play game).

Moving on to football news, which is more realistic than all this role-playing fantasy gaming. So the two big news items of the last couple of weeks are Liverpool and Wayne Rooney. Liverpool was bought by New England Sports Ventures (NESV), the company that owns the Boston Red Sox. My hubby and I are hoping that they will do an equally good job revitalizing Liverpool as they did with the Red Sox. The other big news is that Wayne Rooney (aka Shrek - not my nickname btw) of Manchester United fame has decided he wants to leave the club and go elsewhere. Now personally I think he is overrated (I think there are better strikers out there and ones with much less attitude) and I find it interesting that this happens right after he has been caught with a prostitute while his wife was pregnant (which I think makes him the lowest of the low). He of course says it is because Man U can no longer "attract top quality players", and I'm sure it is a shock to everyone that he's leaving since he's been there since Sept 2004 and has always praised the club.

J.R.R. Tolkein and the Lord of the Rings

Since my hubby and I have been playing LOTR online obsessively for the past week, we thought it would be appropriate to start re-watching the extended Trilogy on DVD. We finished The Fellowship of the Ring and it was funny because we kept comparing it to the game and wondering what levels the characters would be. I told my hubby he should read the trilogy because it was a great set of books, once you got past all the Gimli son of Gloin son blah parts. John said that was the reason he didn't think he could get through it. I told him all he needed to do was read The Laxdaela Saga, an Icelandic saga which was similar to Tolkien's Silmarillion and Lord of the Rings trilogy, and he could read it no problem. They are really good books, some of my favorite in fact. I read the trilogy in college, and yes it was around the time that the first movie came out, but all three right in a row because I got so pulled in to the storyline and Tolkein's world. I have tried twice to read (and once on audiobook) The Silmarillion but the book is just too dense. I've heard it's brilliant though once you get through the beginning parts. I would also love to read The Children of Hurin though I've heard it's not as good as his other works.

I was telling my husband that I would've loved to be at Oxford when he and C.S. Lewis were teaching there. They were friends, you know, and I bet their classes would've been fascinating (though I'm not sure how good I would've been at Anglo-Saxon). Re-watching the movies has made me think about The Hobbit, in both book and movie form. I was so excited to hear they were doing a movie version of it and that Peter Jackson would be involved, though not as director. I was especially excited to hear that Guillermo del Toro, director of the Hellboy movies would be directing it, but I am sad now that he has chosen to leave. I grew up watching the 70s cartoon version of The Hobbit, so I'm very curious to see what they do with two live action versions. It also makes me want to re-read the print version, so I'm borrowing the audiobook version once I finish my two current books.

Finally got my car back and other distractions

So I have been two weeks without a car and let me just tell you how much that blows. It blows big time especially if you are used to having one to run errands and suddenly you have to rethink everything and keep putting things off, like a library visit to my internship site so I can finish up my booklist and get more info on the library for a paper I have to write due next Thursday, which I haven't started yet. The good thing was that we got to pay less than we thought because they took so long (it was supposed to have been done a week ago). I think I'm doomed not to have A/C because they apparently didn't fix that, even thought they did every flush and change imaginable since they took the entire engine apart.

humanThe other thing that has been uber-distracting is that I've discovered Lord Of The Rings online, which is now free to play up to level 50. So my hubby and I have been battling wolves, giant spiders, goblins, and brigands for the past three days. I have played online games before, my first being EVE (a space adventure game) that I started playing with my hubby before we were married, then I played a couple of free games named Rappelz and Flyff. For LOTR online, I started with a minstrel female human character and even though I love her random lute playing during battle, she has really low health and is more of a support character versus a fighter. So I started another character today, a female guardian (a tank character for those gamers out there) and she fights way better and has much higher health at lower levels. You can also pick a craft or craft area. The first time I was metalsmith/jeweler/cook and I love making the jewelry and mining, and this time I am metalsmith/weaponsmith/tailor since I always find a lot of animal skins out in the woods and again love mining. I'm a little miffed that the only hobby you can have is fishing as that's kind of boring. Once you get to level 15 you can get a house, which is great because you'll have collected a lot of stuff by then and you seriously have no room for it until you finally get to the town of Bree and can get a vault. However a house is a bit more permanent and once you've paid for the initial price, you wouldn't have to pay for upgrades like in a vault. So now I'm off to play again, assuming I can get on the server.