"Waiting for patch"-randomness.

Waiting for the servers to come back up again, I'm feeling a bit too unfocused to write a "real" post, so I'll just list a few things that have been going on:

• Went (semi-)oldschool the other night, and farmed adamantite ore and Kurenai rep in Nagrand. Adamantite is way too expensive to buy in my server's AH, and I really miss the talbuk mounts my old druid has. Paladin is halfway through revered - should be able to get her all the way to exalted in a few more hours of killing ogres, and doing the two group quests I have left there (Durn and Corki's Ransom).

• On a sunny evening last week my sister took me out on their boat. Sister: "It handles like a dream"= me holding on for dear life, making sure my lifejacket's strapped on tight enough. Yes, I know how to swim, I grew up by a lake, and I'm fairly used to boats, but on a windy day, in the middle of the lake, I want to make sure I can stay afloat under all circumstances. She was quite amused.

• I've started re-reading The Sandman, and I've just gotten started on Season of Mists. Such an amazing story, and so, so pretty. I really should try and pick up the final three volumes, though. >.<

• I still haven't gotten around to doing something about the whole "guild thing". I'll get there, I just need to take my time. Or, I just need to do it, and not think so much.

• This morning I had so much fun reading the paper: One of their summer temps is so mindnumbingly bad, and her articles are hilarious. Did I mention I'm a major nitpicker? Whenever she's written a new article it's like Christmas. (Edit: I know my english isn't exactly flawless, and I don't mock just anyone for their bad writing, but being swedish, reading swedish newspapers, I consider myself free to laugh out loud at rubbish written by a paid writer.)
  

• I spent the last few minutes before server shutdown last night (well, 3AM this morning) on my druid, in catform - me and a whole bunch of others were dancing on the steps to the alliance bank in Dalaran, to celebrate the new patch!

• The first character I log on when my server goes online again will probably be a druid. Even though I don't do feral, I'm very, very excited about the new kitty and bear, especially on behalf of feral tauren druids everywhere - the nelf cat was OK, but the orange Richard Simmons-form was... Bad, to say the the least.

• One of my more neglected alts is a level 69 shaman, and one reason for said neglect is the totems. I love totems, and when I play her I want to use totems, but they have been stealing my global cooldowns, and since I haven't gotten along with any of the totem addons I've found, they've been hogging space on my hotbars, and I've had trouble organising the whole thing. Now shamans are getting a major UI boost, and the ability to drop four totems in one GCD, so... Time for shaman action?
  

That's all I can think of at the moment - I know there's a whole lot more, but if I go on, I'll just end up quoting the patchnotes :D I might as well do some laundry and have lunch, since the servers aren't planned to come online until about 3PM (i.e. in about an hour) - then it's time for "ooh" and "aah", and "wth happened to Seal of the Martyr?".

Lunch FTW + my little friend

Just finished my lunch, so comfortably full. I've been doing some cleaning up in my Firefox bookmark list, reading up on blogs I haven't visited for a while, and browsing iTunes. The snow we had last week is way gone now, and yay, one can go outside without putting on the whole hat-scarf-mittens-mega moonboots of doom-extravaganza! Jeans, hoodie and sneakers is perfect - my kind of weather.

The state of my new druid:

Half-way through level 28,
half-way through the quests in Ashenvale,
in love with the idea of getting her a mount in less than two levels :) Spotted Frostsaber on the horizon!
A bit of a weird spec, but I refuse to respec her before 3.1, since talents will be reset when said patch arrives. I'm hoping to get her to 40 by then, so that I can kick off the tree/moonkin plan as soon as possible. So, keeping fingers crossed the "dual spec at 40"-thing makes it to the live servers - can't see any reason why it shouldn't, though.

Been poking around a bit on the PTR version of wowhead, and am very much looking forward to getting this cutie! Being the pet collector that I am, I'll be going for all of them, of course (a bit bummed I don't have a high level horde character, so I could really get all of the pets easily), but the thought of a tree druid with a tiny tree companion is almost too good to be true. Moonkin baby companion, that, on the other hand, would be too good to be true.

And finally, I'd love for the Frostsaber mentioned above to sport some nifty exhaust pipes and awesome flamez!

OK...

... I was wrong... No new patch today, no new level 30 mounts yet. Oh well. I still have a new level 70 to play with, a friggin' BM hunter to do dailies with - yay for me! Also, this gives me some time to try and level that pally up to 30 (she's 22 now) - then I'll have two characters to get mounts for when the new patch arrives. Back to the hunter.

1 more hour...

Wednesday equals patch day in Europe, or, well, maintenance day. Anyway, today they're presenting us with the fancy schmancy patch 2.4.3, and I'm quite excited! In spite of the fact that I haven't been grinding honor at all! My druid has somewhere around 6000, and the rogue a tiny bit more than 2000, so far from enough to buy anything, but there's a whole bunch of other things happening:

• Level 30 mounts - yay!
• New non-combat pet - Nether Ray Fry
• New, roomier herb bags! Time to get Sporeggar rep with the mage, I guess...
• And probably a whole lot of other changes I'll appreciate in time.

While I'm waiting for the extended maintenance to end (usually it ends at 11AM, now it's been pushed forward to 1PM...), I'm typing this, and listening to the neighbour arguing with someone over the phone. She does this quite frequently, and she is impressively loud. Needless to say, I'm very pleased with the fact that I don't know her.

Last night my sweet hunter finally reached level 70! First thing I did was go to the trainer, and get that sorted, then a quick trip to the bank, to get the Valano's Longbow I got for almost nothing around level 45, and the Flying Machine Control I bought off the auction house the other day (I couldn't be bothered trying to find someone to make me elemental seaforium charges, and the hunter's rep with Consortium is way too low for me to bother speed grinding it). Then I went back to Shattrath, onward to Shadowmoon Valley, and then I finally got her the new riding skill. Hopefully it wont take too long to grind the 5 K gold for swift flying, 'cause her little aeroplane is slooooooow... At least compared to my rogue's speedy Nether Ray. Luckily, most dailies since some patch aren't built around flying mounts. I love the Shattered Sun Offensive.

Cheaper Traveling :)

So, patch notes for 2.4.3 are here, and I'm kind of loving it. Mounts will be available at level 30, and riding skill will cost a mere 35 gold! Very nice in deed. I do have one character who's in her 30's, so I guess she'll be getting a mount as soon as the next patch is here. Of course, she is a warlock, so she wouldn't have had to pay 90 gold for training, but still - mount at 30 is so wonderful. Desolace and Badlands will probably not be the pains they've always been before. Ah. Hold on. I'll still despise them. Over all, I think this will boost the leveling of alts quite a bit - I usually start to get frustrated by how slow a character is when I get to level 25-26, which has meant 14-15 levels of frustration - now I'll only have 4-5 levels of "ohmyfuckinggodarewethereyet?".

I'm also very much looking forward to the new mini pet, the Nether Ray Fry! MMO-Champion has a picture. Not as cute as the Tiny Spore Bat, but I'm so going to get one, on the druid and on the rogue!

At the moment I'm trying to decide whether I'm going to go grocery shopping today, and get whatever I'll want to eat tomorrow, or tomorrow, when everyone else is there, and the store closes at 3pm. Decisions, decision...