Sigh... It was BOUND to happen...

I blame Hope.

Hope being my supervisior.

And blame meaning she sent me a 10-day trial to World of Warcraft.

And now I'm play a level 21 Night Elf Hunter on the Bleeding Hollow server. And actually, I'm loving it. Blizzard has always had a knack of making good games that anyone can pick up and play, and caters to the casual and the hardcore gamer. I'm really impressed with the amount of detail that is in the game, and it's a blast to play. And it's 20 bucks for the original, and Walmart is selling Burning Crusade for 20 bucks as well. And since you can get game cards to redeem instead of using a credit card, it's really easy to get cards to use (and game cards make GREAT Christmas/Birthday Presents).

And I always thought it was weird that people had formed WA (WarCraft Anonymous) groups. But after playing the game for 3 weeks (give or take a day), I can fully see why some people take the game to a bizzare level of obsession. Blizzard made the game so easy to pick up and play, but so deep that you could probably play it forever and not be bored with it. I can understand how some people have lost their jobs, their spouses, their kids, their friends, etc. to the game. It's addicting. They combined the cool weapons and armor like you'd find in Diablo II, mixed in the world they created and then make it a MMORPG. And made it so simple to play that once you start playing, it's not easy to stop.

During the week, I actually have to force myself to stop play around 10pm, because I have to work the next morning. And actually, it works out great. That way, I know that I have X amount of hours (usually 2-3) of game time, and that I'm not letting the game take over my life. So far, it's been working out great.

Now if I could just level up to 22, i'll be all set :)

A very late post....

Due to the fact that for the last 6 days, I've had the absolute WORST case of diarrhea I've ever had in my life. After last Saturday's Scrabble tournament (4W-3L... but more on that in a bit), I came home, and was feeling fine, but Sunday night - well... let's just say my ass exploded. Multiple times. And it did that for 5 DAYS! I'm on antibiotics now to help cure what ever is in my system, and yesterday I had my first NORMAL looking poo in a week. At least I'm getting better.

Onto the tournament!

I went in seeded 14th out of 20 and finished in 9th place. I'm rated at a 692, with 4 wins and 3 losses. I Bingoed in 5 out of 6 games and had my best game ever with a score of 448 points.

Here's a list of my bingos:

Game 1 - played PLANETS for 91 points on a TWS.
Game 2 - Two bingos! NAILERS for 66 and vAINEST for 77
Game 3 - Three bingos! (you see a pattern?) Phonied a bingo PELTIN(G)S for 69, FOCUsED for 83, and then I had my best play of the game - I bingoed out with ENSNAR(L)S on a TWS for77 points.
Game 4 - INcITI(N)G for 66
Game 5 - D(E)FICITs for 61
Game 7 - HuNTERS for 74

All in all an excellent tournament. The next one is on June 9th, and I'm planning on attending that one as well.

In other news, I finally - after years of waiting - bought a real MP3 player. It's a Creative Labs Zen Vision:M 30 GB mp3 player. But it also playes Movies, Music and photos as well. This little piece of equipment has a TON of features.

It has a built in radio, microphone to do dictation with, it can import contact info from Outlook, you can use your own images as wallpaper. It plays Movies (Divx, Xvid, MPG and AVI - and if the format isn't compatible, it'll convert it so it is), music (which I already have a bunch on there), and photo slide shows. 250 bucks at Walmart, and it's quite the little package. My only concern is that the touch pad you use to navigate with is very sensitive - make for selecting what you want to do a bit frustrating at times. But other than that - a great mp3 player.

Ready! Aim! Fire!

Not a weapon, but a camera. A Digital Camera to be exact.

I bought a HP Photoshare digicam for 99 bucks up at Wally World last night. Along with a camera case, rechargeable batteries, and a 1GB memory stick, I spent about 140 bucks all together. I worked 10 hours of OT at work, so I could afford it. I also got my tripod back from Heather.

In Scrabble News – I registered for a 7 Game tournament next Saturday. Sharon and I are gonna carpool down to Dover NH, and I hope to do well against the novice group.