Story Time

Training today went well, in a semi-chaotic way. It was a very free form kind of class, but I think it went well. There were several good questions and discussions of why things were done and how things affected this plant.
I also finally got to meet one of my long time customers. She's a riot and a trip and a true Northern Jersey native. I like her much more in person that I do dealing with her over the phone.

Anyhow, I think last night I promised you a story. A story of daring ratling adventure with her wonderful troll and other friends.
Well, here it is.

Sunday morning I get up and procrastinate doing anything about leaving. So what do I do, but log in to the computer. Our friend Syn is online and so is Rodentia. The four of us decide that we were going to explore Mistmore Catacombs. As we were gathering, who would happen to log in but our friend Kasias, who is another healer. I'm always game to have another healer along. Sure enough, he was up for the adventure of the morning as well. While waiting for him to show up, our friend Charitee shows up in her wizzy disguise of Omim, the gnome. Cool. now we have a full group of 6, including two big time damage dealers and a troll of a tank.
We finally get out act together and head out to the catacombs. For some reason we can't seem to follow the direction of 'stay close' that morning so kept breaking the sneaking cloak that Rodentia has over us. That's ok, we survived.
We make it to the catacombs and a few people pick up the various quests at the entrance way. We then sneak around a bit and explore the lower level. Rat-man has been here before and says that the zone's not really all that big and we were safe using sneak on the first level, but the guys up top could see through.
Mind you, we were on Vent as well as in the game so it was much easier to have conversations.
We explore a bit, tackle a couple of large groups of mobs (remember that problem with staying close....). Then the Rat-man finds a named critter on tracking, so up the walls we go. We decide that the bad guy commander must go. And go he did. And he had some nice things in his possession. They promptly became ours.
Well, Rodentia decided to log because he wanted to take his lady mouse out to breakfast. (Hey, living in Key West, I would too....) That's when he tells us that the zone's not really that big. We looked at the map and saw that sure enough, it looks like we'd been most places.
We pick up another healer. I call him Phred, but his name is really Phaedrus or something like that. Phred works better. Kas was our climbable wall finder that day. Boy are we glad he found this wall.
After climbing this wall, we found some new areas on the map and kept going up. Eventually we end up in what appears to be the sub-basements of Mistmore Castle. The area is huge!
To make a long story shorter, there was much mayhem (including about a half minute or so where Gak and I lost power completely to the apartment) and much loot to be had. We actually ended up with better loot and much more of it in about 2 hours that morning than we had found as a full raid in about 4 hours the night before.
We had fun, but we ended up in a fight we probably wouldn't win, so I pulled the plug and evacuated us to the front. We decided that this would be a good time to take a break.

I have found that adventuring with a group of friends, both in the game world and especially in real life is lots of fun. There's nothing quite like getting lost, or walking or driving for hours with friends talking and enjoying life and whatever happens. Maybe that's why I love orienteering so much. I haven't done anywhere near as much this year as I have the last two. I blame most of this on my travel schedule. Not directly really, since I'm usually home on a Sunday, but indirectly. Because of how much time I've spent away in recent months, the last thing I want to do on a Sunday is get moving early. I'm usually awake early, but not really in the mood for moving. I'm also so mentally exhausted, that I can't think my way through the courses. I feel really bad about it, since I have several friends I only see on the O-trails. Maybe come spring I'll feel more mentally alive for it. I've been so exhausted that I've stopped doing a lot of things. This seems very strange in some ways since I've been working out more and getting in somewhat better shape. I guess this travel is taking more out of me than I thought.

Ok, I didn't intend for this post to be this long. I guess I'm done rambling for tonight. (I really intended that last paragraph to be my sign off paragraph...)
Peace to all and my you have many happy adventures with many good friends in your life.