Maebius Musing

As referenced in my prior post, I will be taking a self-prescribed holiday from the Intarweb.

I will still check my email, I will check blogs from my friends (Nettle, Kwitchery, etc), but otherwise my browsing will cease, and my online game playing will be generally suspended.

Originally, I was going to start yesterday, but World of Warcraft beckoned me.   I now have, as of Thursday evening, June 5th, 2008.  My first max-level character!!!   I know it seems petty, but with my playstyle, I was surprised I made it that far.  I’m always more than willnig to help lower-level guildmates,  to go questing and help collect 5 stacks of some crafting material in the starting zones, and the like.  Plus, I roleplay and fish, and dance, so I’m not into powerlevelling.   However, I’m there, and the excitement leading up to that DING was quite palpable.  It honestly feels like a huge achievement.  Like stepping back and looking at a garden you planted which is full of little green sprouts after weeks of digging, tilling, and weeding.   I made it.   Yay me.

Tonight, I’m going to see friends of ours in a locally filmed and produced movie (on the big screen!).  It’s not particularly my usual style of movie, and I fully expect the cheesy factor to outweigh much erudite enjoyment.  But, The Abandoned does play on the local theatre screen, with private tickets only.  Which I have to admire, for even helping get some guy who lives near me “published” like this.   Hope it’s not too bad a movie. 

So now, with that out of the way, I’m offline.   See you in two weeks!

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As a bit of an experiment, I plan on taking an entire week off from the Intarwebs.

I’ve noticed my blog feed-reader has grown quite sizable, and it takes me a good 2 hours to scan through all the juicy things I’d like to read each monday.  More if I actually start commenting on things, which I tend to do if work allows.  Fark, Digg, Goggle Reader, Warcraft forums.  Too much time invested.

I’ve also been playing World of Warcraft a lot lately, and am about 2 hours away from DINGing the max level on my priest Kanandi.  This is huge to me, as whilke I’ve played casualy for years, I never made it to max level, while others in my guild have gotten one, sometimes, two characters within reach of lvl 70 in the past couple months.

Yet, the internet is not life.  It is a virtual life.   I need to take a breath and enjoy the real one a bit more.

So, I have set myself some rules.  This is not a complete and total disconnecting, since my employment requires I be online a lot.   Some of our sales reps use my gmail account to communicate with remote offices.  I also want to maintain contact with my friends Wren, Nettle, and Varwolf.  Friends fall under the “Real Life” clause after all. 

The rules:  Starting this Thursday, I will unplug from the majority of my online life, for a period of approximately two weeks, or the Full moon.  Permission hereby granted to extend this timeline as required.

I will limit my email correspondence to work-related activities, and members of the Zen-porch gang (varulv included).

I will limit my own Blog reading to Nettle’s Blog and Kwitchery.

I will not play World of Warcraft, with the exception of logging into my guild leader character once a week, for a MAXIMUM of one hour, in order to resolve any administrative banking stuff.  Grinding XP, gathering loot, and killing pixallated monsters are taboo for this time period.  That character will be stationed in the capital city near the mailbox, ONLY. (this I count as work-related because it is helpful to others in the guild and decidedly the least “fun” I have in the game.)

The time I generally spend playing online at night will be dedicated to either sitting outside (weather permitting) and meditating,  or sitting inside meditating on topics.   I have gotten too far out of the habit of quiet time that is not distracted by electronics.  Personal intervention is required if I want to be in shape for a planned ritual at Starwood.

….that’s it for now.  This blog will be fairly inactive for the next few weeks or month.  You’ve been warned.  Wish me luck.

/|\  Maebius

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I have a full-moon post in draft, honest. It concerns navel-gazing and friend-visits. It’s just still stuck in outline form and needs fleshing out, which is tough at work this week due to being the only one in the office (coworker vacation FTL)…. so, in no particular order a few mini-posts glommed together over the course of this week:

We have four new pets in the house, who look surprisingly like Mitosis. (brought in after their nest got lawn-mowed and fur-poofed.) They are SOOO CUTE! Will get pictures ASAP.

I am really enjoying “World of Warcraft” again. Apparently, I am getting a reputation as a darn-good healer even with quasi-crappy gear, and am starting to get randomly spammed invites to lvl 70 instances when I am online. Just dinged lvl 68. Also, Kanandi’s guild-mastering is getting much easier, since we now have a stable core of active people, and officers got clearly defined roles. Our casual nature made me frown upon seeming authoritative, but once I hammered out some basic outlines of what I needed people to handle, they offered to help and there was a sudden, blessed, synergy. It just works now, with little administrative crap to deal with. This frees me up to random-group heal. (Fact that a call for donations to upgrade our guild-bank resulted in 1,200 gold being donated over one week says a LOT for the loyalty and cooperation of my guild, with only three of our members at lvl 65+)

I completely rearranged my buttons, made a few simple macros, and such for my hunter, Nookni. While he is still stuck in Azeroth, I used the techniques and habits I got into with Kanandi-healing to put the most commonly used abilities on the same keys. This suddenly made using my hunter to farm and grind XP a whole exponential-level easier. Not sure why I didn’t do it before, but suddenly, it’s FUN to play the [solo] hunter again, and the lack of fun is why my prist is lvl 68 after my hunter of ~3 years is only lvl 55.

Also, just felt to need to brag that I was fighting a group of 4 demons a level below me, and managed to chain-trap one of them FOUR times, kept the crab off-tanking one, and proceeded to kite the other two with spams of wingclip, concussive shot, and WyvrenSting. Oh yeah, I was awesome! (drained mana pretty well, but only got hit a few times and was still at 90% health! I coulda taken 5!) I had never, ever done something like that so efficiently before. WoooHOO!

In other news, the garden has some tiny sprouts visible now, the seed-trays are going outside this weekend, and I hope to string-out my labyrinth on Sunday or Monday so we can begin officially hauling piles of poop to outline it. I was somewhat holding off in hopes of borrowing a roller to flatten and properly prepare the site, but recent walks around the area seem to lean me towards keeping it as-is. Might have better ‘natural resonance’ that way?

The hops bine[sic] is climbing steadily up the tree-post and is about level with my shoulder now, for those of you keeping track.

I have this sudden general sense of anti-ennui regarding my life. Nothing I can put my finger on, or point to other than the weather getting warmer, getting more stubborn in making my son go to bed ON TIME, and work being busy enough to keep me occupied, yet not overly stressful. Busy, yes, but hectic, less so.

A recent visit from friends of ours (who is an engineer) showed that a bit more structure might not be a bad thing. Doug almost wants to go to bed, and is fussing less and less now at night, so we might be over the initial hump of being firmly “Do it, now…because we said….now”. (more on this with up coming Moon-post).

That’s all for now…

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Two friends and I are engaged in a fun Iron Chef challenge, using Artichokes as our secret ingredient.

See my blogroll (Kwitchery, andalso Nettle’s Blog) for details and updates.

My own entries, are all cold dishes, making a subtle nod the Northern regions we live in (relatively speaking). Simple picnic fare mostly, representing the humble joy of country life, and it’s casual connection to nature, yet still holding within it’s myriad ingredients a mirroring of the complex web of life. Each dish is topped with a fresh violet, symbolizing the spring season, and offering a token of friendship towards this chef’s lovely challengers. (Sound sufficiently Asian/esoteric?!?!)

-=- Appetizer -=-

First, we have a Artichoke Pâté, served on a bed of fresh Romaine leaves, surrounded by various multi-grain crackers and pita slivers. Garnished with a fresh violet leaf and flower. Recipe was mostly followed, with some minor adjustments in terms of slightly less olives, slightly more garlic, and a touch of cilantro-sprout to bulk out a slightly insufficient quantity of Parsley.

* 15oz artichoke-hearts, drained
* 4oz low-fat cream cheese
* 1/3 cup grated parm cheese
* around 3 Tbls fat-free mayo
* 1.5 tsp minced garlic
* 1-2 tsp lemon juice
* 2 Tbls finely chopped parsley
* 2 Tbls finely chopped black olives
* 2 Tbls chopped, roasted red peppers
* Salt and Cayenne pepper, to taste
Process the heck out of all ingredients, then leave in fridge for a while to let flavors blend. (will it blend? Yes!) Serve with starchy/firm accoutrements like crackers, breads, or melba toasts.
The taste was pleasingly subtle, with the initial tartness of the peppers, lemon, garlic, and artichokes offset by the cooling firmness of the cream cheese.

-=- Main course -=-

Artichoke pasta salad with grilled chicken. Grilled chicken tenders, marinated in artichoke juice & minced garlic, rubbed prior to grilling with a mix of paprika, oregano, salt and pepper. Served on a nest of linguine pasta tossed with more artichokes, black olives, peppers, olive oil, and cider vinegar, plus the seasoning mix used on the chicken, atop a plate of fresh romaine lettuce leaves. Served cold, except for the chicken, which was added at the last moment steaming hot off the grill.

While using similar ingredients to the appetizer, this meal was quite tasty. More tangy and very full of marinated artichoke flavor. The kid loved this a lot, especially due to “slurpy noodle” potential.

-=- Dessert -=-

I had planned to make an artichoke-based ice-cream (since EVERY japanese recipe seems to involve some sort of frozen treat using almost any ingredient you can imagine), but ran out of time to prepare it again, as the initial attempt did not work right. More of a sorbet, I rinsed marinated artichoke hearts to remove most traces of the vinegar and oil, and pureed them until smooth. Then I added about a quarter cup of table-sugar and some more water (less sweetness than traditional European Sorbets, more like Asian “green tea ice-cream” in palate).

Unfortunately, the making of good sorbet requires a constant freeze/mix cycle that I was unable to work into our schedule properly, and am not submitting without a proper consistency and last-minute tweaks of recipe to ensure a quality entry. My initial result either froze solid and needed quite a lot of blending/refreezing, or started to separate a bit and freeze mostly sugar-water on the top of a denser artichoke-dust.

While this entry may sound rather off-putting, it was not too bad by my initial test. The artichokes, once rinsed, became more of a binding agent than a flavor, and added merely a slight subtle ‘greenish-bitter’ taste to the otherwise sweet frozen sensation. I think removal of a bit more vinegar, or using fresh artichokes blanched/boiled, then powdered, might work better. Still nothing earth-shatteringly well received, but a unique dessert which does compliment the other two dishes in flavor.

Summary, the initial sweeter appetizer, with crunchy crackers, followed by a more hearty and savory-salad made for a fairly well-rounded meal. While the desert course was initially unsuccessful, it was mostly due to time and technique rather than a failure of ingredients, and got a head-shaking (semi-sarcastic) bonus point for creativity and risk-taking.

Bon Appétit!

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Not much to muse about lately….so here’s a brief update on random life.
It’s the grind of tax season for Mrs Maebius, so my evenings are filled with the joy of playing with the sprogling while she does the hermit-thing in the computer room.

My World of Warcraft playing has gone down slightly, though I am currently at a nice lvl 64 with Kanandi the Holy-troll priestess. Lots of fun with playing healer, moreso than any other class I’ve played, which is reflected in the fact that while Kanandi is the second-youngest character I created, she is my highest level now…. and my guild is awesome. (also have a lvl 12 rogue just to have an unused bank-mule who can craft me some minor potions for everyday use).

Otherwise, the official spring-time holiday is fast approaching. Birthdays coming up for Varulv and Mrs Maebius…Easter just around the corner, so last night we coloured a few eggs (more this weekend when company visits).

I’m sure I’ll have more time in the evenings to wax muse-ical [sic] and include a slighty more thought-provoked posting here. Until then, we are just sitting around, enjoying the slightly warming weather, seeing the light at the end of winter’s tunnel just ahead, and getting ready to head back outdoors to play before it gets dark too early.

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