May In Review

May has come and gone. This year is almost half way through. Life has thrown me some curve balls, but I’m still here, doing one of the things I love.

Basic Statistics:
1620 hits.
+706 over April (914 hits).
-1687 under best month ever (3,307 hits, August ‘07).
425 total posts (including this one).
15,795 total hits to date.

Top Referrer:
The EQ2 Players Town Crier section. It’s happened a few times where my blog was spotlighted, but I’d say this time brought the most traffic.

New Linking Sites:
EQ2-Guides. I was also highlighted on the EQ2 Vault website.

Top Posts:
1. Over Two Years of Everquest 2
2. The Norrathian Newbie #4 - Which Race is Best for X Class?
3. Race/Class Combinations
4. Neriak Newbie Guide
5. EQ2 Meme 
6. Dual Boxing
7. 80 at Last
8. The Norrathian Newbie - Control Effects 
9. Neriak Crafter’s Guide (P.O.I.s)
10. The Norrathian Newbie #2 - Aggro Management 

I got a influx of hits this month from some of the EQ2 posts I made last month, along with the ones from this month. EQ2 Players linking to one of my posts, and me giving myself a little pat on the back with a post on the Official Forums helped out as well.

Search Engine Terms:

Top: “everquest 2 blog“ (yes, this is one of those, part of the time)
Best: There weren’t really any interesting search queries this month, nothing worth noting.

A Year in the Past:
In May of ‘07 I ended up without an internet connection for part of the month, so I didn’t blog so much. Only two posts. I had my two year anniversary with Gina, and we set a date to get married. That’s about all that was of importance.

The Present:
May of 2008 was a different story altogether. Me and Gina have split, and though we’re amicable now, there was a lot of drama through me moving out and separating shit and friends getting involved when they shouldn’t be. As of now I’m living with my sister in a little apartment, and it’s been pretty cool, but lonely at the same time. I’m adjusting to being alone and hoping that my future holds something worth living for. Because right now, there isn’t much.

The Plot Thickens

I’m informed.

About what? Well, basically a lot of shit I don’t want to talk about. I’m wiping the slate… there will be no more talk of my ex, or anything pertaining to my relationship with her. We’re over, it’s done, and I don’t have the energy to devote to thinking or talking about it. Honestly, I’m relieved. It feels like the weight of the world is off of my shoulders… Being married (at least to her) fucking sucked.

I’ve been relatively busy since the break. When I moved in here I was a little concerned that I would be stuck at home all the time with nothing to do. Fortunately I managed to make friends with a lot of people on Day Shift at the Casino, so I’ve been plenty busy. I’ve gone out to eat, gone to parties, gone to bars. It’s been a lot of fun. I’ve also been (or will be) hanging out with most of my non-work friends. I’m supposed to hang out with Drews on my days off, and who knows what else.

I’ve been broke as fuck, because I used my check on far too many bills back before I moved. I’ve been fortunate enough to have friends who don’t mind spotting the bill here and there. My Sister has been a great help as well, loaning me money here and there, and though it’s been rough, I’m nearly to pay day finally. Tomorrow I will get my check, and there will be a couple things that need paid, but otherwise it’s going to be all good. I’ll be able to get a new charger for my phone as well, which would be nice. We only had one charger and even after fighting about it I came out empty handed. So my phone has been dead since yesterday afternoon. Thankfully I have the Internet to keep in contact with people.

The subwoofer in my car blew. It wasn’t the most expensive speaker I could have purchased, so it’s not like it’s a huge loss. It’s just irritating to not have bass in the car, so that’s going to be my big purchase for this pay period. I’m going to All For Show after I get my check to get one installed. I think the only bill I have to pay is my insurance, so other than paying my sister, I’m going to have quite a bit of extra cash. I’ve forgotten what that’s like. It should be interesting.

I’ve managed to pick up where I left off with a lot of old friends. People that I wasn’t “allowed” to talk to because of stupid jealous bullshit. I’m thankful that they’ve all jumped right back in to being friends with me, and they didn’t blame me for what had happened. Doors are opening, and the possibilities are limitless. I’m happier than I have been in years.

Getting it Back…

So I’m single again… single after about 5 years of consecutive relationship-status.

1.5 years of that was spent with an ex-girlfriend. It was a boring yet turbulent time in my life. The relationship was dull, but steady. My life in other aspects was crazy as hell. Some of it I look back on with fondness, but part of it was pretty fucked up.

Nearly 3 years of it was spent with my current ex. 2 months of that was spent married to her. It was the happiest and most traumatizing experience of my life. Strangely, I’m not doing so bad after the fact, but that’s probably due to the fact that for the last month we grew apart, fairly quickly. The fact that we never got legally married (we were supposed to get the license shortly after the ceremony, but it never happened) is looked at as a blessing at this point, because I got away from the situation without as much a hassle.

In the past 5 years I’ve done a lot of shit, learned a lot, and grown from my experiences. I know now that I’m not ready for that level of commitment, and I don’t think my ex was either. At least, she wasn’t ready to meet in the middle. So I’m on my own again, sort of.

When the shit hit the fan, it was last Saturday. We talked, and I said I would get my shit together and leave. I didn’t actually intend to move so soon, I was going to give it a while, but the situation went from bad to worse, so I cut my losses. I had hit my parents up earlier to make sure I always had a place to go, but I second guessed myself on that. Probably not a great idea to go there because it not only looks bad on me to be staying with parents, but it also never works out very well. I don’t want issues with them, so I called on my Sister for help, and she gladly agreed. She has a little one bedroom apartment that she shares with her boyfriend, but they were willing to give me a portion of the living room. It suits me for now. Ted and I talked about getting a place together, Tyler’s name has come up as well. Ted had a storage place with some room in it, so he offered me space for the shit I couldn’t bring along. I managed to get all of the moving and shit taken care of yesterday. I put mostly everything in storage, save for my clothes, computer, and my cat, which are all sitting here with me now.

Thankfully I had a router, and my Sister had Internet, that’s the only way I’m managing to blog right now. So I’ll be able to keep everyone posted with what’s going on… that is if any of you care.

Life Goes On…

There’s a reason I haven’t been blogging, because the last week of my life has been hell.

Me and my wife (though we weren’t legally married yet) split up.

I’m staying with my sister now, and just got my stuff moved in today, and just finished hooking up my computer. Thank Jebus they had internet.

So look forward to the regularly scheduled posts shortly, I just need to get settled in now. Wish me luck.

80 At Last

There were some important developments over the last couple weeks that I didn’t touch on yet, EQ2-wise. I went on my first raid with The Covenant, and though it was a largely successful raid, no phat loots for me, nor did we clear the zone. We went to the Temple of Kor-sha, and we wiped quite a few times on the “twins”. It was an interesting night nonetheless, and my first ROK raid, so I was ok with what little came out of it. Here’s a shot of Izlain during our endless wiping session: 

I finally got him some crap gear that all pretty well matches in his appearance slots, I think he looks pretty spiffy.

A couple days later, I took part in a contested mob raid, this time in Kylong Plains. Dominus Atrebe was up in KP2, and our raid leader spotted him and instantly called for a raid. I managed to get in on this one, and we took him down easily. He’s pretty much a straight burn mob, nothing really fancy. He did drop a pretty nice cloak for a caster, and a decent crushing weapon, but nothing I could use. Still, it was easy AA. Here’s a shot of The Covenant preparing to pull:

After this, I went on my merry way questing in Jarsath Wastes. I was sitting 3% away from 80 at the raid, so I wanted to get my level. I had worked on the Clan Stormshield faction quests the night before, grinding out most of level 79, so I went and continued working on that, and soon enough:

DING LEVEL 80!!!

It was a nice feeling to have a max level character again, but I can’t get too complacent with just that, as I have approximately 11 AA to get before I’m sitting at 140, so I still have some work to do. I’ve managed to upgrade mostly all of the Brigand’s gear to legendary, and I have a whopping 1 fabled piece. Hopefully that number will jump soon, as I’ll be able to spend more time raiding rather than leveling… not to mention I’m going to get started on my Epic questline very soon.

After hitting level 80 with the Brig, I got a little bored with the JW quests, and not wanting to feel a burnout coming on, I decided to log on my Paladin, who has gather mucho dust lately. It was a nice change of pace, and it’s been long enough since I did the Kylong Plains quests, that it felt almost new again… almost. I ran him around for an hour or so, and he saw his first level since somewhere around February of last year. So it’s been a while for him. I intend to level him to 80 as well, and since his gear is a mix of T7 legendary/fabled, he’s doing pretty well solo in KP, better than the brig did, though the brig was doing these quests starting at level 68… so the Paladin has an edge overall.

I also started up a lowbie, once again in Neriak. This one is a Necromancer, and I’m not sure if he’ll stick around or not… I had one in the past that got to 30 and was deleted so I never know which alts are going to make the cut or not.

For now, that’s all I have.