Watch The Guild

I've been meaning to post this for a while. The series is already at episode 6!

Anyway, The Guild is an internet-based, original program detailing the life of a fictional group of people playing a World of Warcraft-type game. The main star is Felicia Day, who played a slayer in the Buffy television series (and is currently in a Cheetos commercial).

The episodes are short (only 5-6 minutes) and play off of stereotypes to hilarious (I think) effect. No special knowledge of World of Warcraft is necessary to appreciate them. :)

Here's episode One:

Where I think I'm a 13-year-old boy...

First I start playing World of Warcraft, then I take up Guitar Hero III, and now I try snowboarding. What am I, 13 years old?

Snowboarding! What was I thinking? I have a sore tail bone that's been reminding me all weekend that it's been 25 years since I was 13.

Let me back up. We're planning a week-long vacation in Colorado. Doing the whole rent-a-chalet-for-a-week-with-friends thing. So, Kyle says: Why not snowboard? I'm thinking that it's been 20 years since I tried skiing, and that didn't go so well (big dramatic wipeout on an intermediate slope, which I only tried because it was the easiest way to get back to the lodge), so why not snowboard, indeed?

Kyle has been snowboarding half a dozen times. Dave has been twice. Both warned me that learning involves lots and lots of falling. It's just the nature of the beast. I'm prepared for that...

Friday evening after work, we head up to Wilmot in Wisconsin. I rent my gear, and because the last classes have finished for the night, Kyle takes over the post of instructor. We head to a mini hill in the beginner area (really, nothing more that a mogul, at best) and Kyle teaches me how to stand on the board and how to slide down the "hill" on the board. Evidently, all the workouts I do with a personal trainer are working, and I have excellent balance. I don't fall. Dave and Kyle say they are impressed.

Then Kyle shows me how to turn to the right. Gulp. OK.

I head down, try to turn to the right, overcompensate and fall backward. Straight backwards. Both feet strapped to a plank of wood, back straight, tail bone and head making contact at almost the same instant. It's a bone-jarring, knock-the-headband-off-my-head, hurts-like-the-dickens fall.

I rest for a minute, then a minute more. Shake it off, stand up, fix my headband, climb to the top of the "hill" and try it again.

My next two falls are a little better coordinated. I remember to bend my knees, at least. And these are in the forward direction, so I don't really hurt myself.

Now it's time for the tow-rope up to the beginner hill. I hate tow-ropes. They suck. Wrench your arms out of their sockets and all that stuff. I somehow make it to the top without wiping out on the tow-rope. Even better, I manage to snowboard to the bottom of the hill without falling, although I didn't do much turning at all.

Second trip up the tow-rope, again I manage to make it to the top without falling (although a few kids on the slopes seem to be having issues in that area). Amazingly, the second trip down the beginner hill goes better than the first. I don't fall, and I manage to turn myself a little bit. The guy operating the tow-rope politely agrees with Dave and Kyle that I'm doing really well for having been on a snowboard for only an hour. I think I fell all of four times total (another one snuck in there when I was just walking...).

At this point, Dave and Kyle decide they want to try the bigger beginner hills (which actually involve a chair lift), and I decide that it's best to quit while I'm having "fun". The place closes in an hour anyway.

So it's back to the lodge to turn in my gear and fortify myself after this grueling workout (it *was* hard work). After a while Dave comes tottering in, ice packs in hand. Turns out he had a major wipeout (lots of air and rolling involved) and his neck and wrists hurt big-time. Evidently, he needs to work on his turns also.

Somehow, we manage to make it home. Both of us feeling decidedly old and achy.

So, all weekend, Dave and I have been popping the Advil at regular intervals. I can't sit in any position that involves lounging (it's either perfectly straight in the chair or totally reclined, no in-between, because that hurts way too much). Dave keeps complaining about tingling in his fingers.

What happens when I walk into work this morning? Kyle asks when we're snowboarding again. And what is my answer? Well, it's not the resounding "No" you would expect.

Um. I think we're busy this weekend. And the next, too. But after that, maybe. By then the aches and pains may be gone, and I might be back to thinking I'm 13 years old again...

Pray for me. :-)

As for my other 13-year-old passions?

In Guitar Hero III, I've finished 14 songs on hard level, with my 11-year-old nephew informing me just this weekend that he's quickly catching up to me. Time to start practicing again.

In World of Warcraft? Lasaire is now a level-70 beast-master hunter on the Proudmoore server (Alliance). I'm saving gold to buy my epic flying mount, trying to get my leatherworking to 375 so I can make nether armor, plus working on getting keyed for Kara. Oh, and Kitty is still my best friend (the pet I first tamed at level 10). I've got alt-characters that include a level-10 mage and a level-10 druid (Alliance side) and a level-19 priest (Horde side). Unfortunately, I've decided that the next character I'd like to level is a priest, but I want to go Alliance, so I have to start over...

Grace d'Otare.com

I've been helping an author-friend build a website and MySpace page to promote her upcoming release, The Queen's Tale. It's been a great experience for me as I'm learning to use different web publishing tools. I'd love to know what you think.

So, check out Grace's website. Go to her MySpace page and become her friend if you want.

Most importantly, buy her story when it comes out in February. It's a short story sold electronically for only a few dollars. Oh, and be warned, it's erotica.

:)

Guitar Hero III mystery

Considering I'm *old*, I think I'm pretty decent at Guitar Hero. I'm part way through solving the hard level in career mode. Kilr Bunez, FTW!

We have the game for the Wii and I'd only ever played on our own system until last weekend. Then Saturday night, we went to the neighbor's house to play on their Wii. Two guitars in face-off mode, lots of fun.

Here's where the trouble started. I sucked. I failed at easy songs in easy mode. Tink. Tink. Tink. WTF was wrong with me? Same thing happened two nights later. Something was seriously off with my game.

Everyone else played fine. In fact, the elementary-school-age neighbor girls played amazingly well (but then again, they play the real guitar, too). Apparently it was just me. Perhaps it was the television, we pondered. Perhaps I can only play on a 70-inch HD set like we have at home? (How spoiled is that!)

But then my moment of redemption came on New Year's Day. The neighbor girls came over and we played again. I was back to my normal self, cruising through a medium-level song, then plowing my way through a hard-level song (it's not pretty). This time, it was the girls who had problems. Tink. Tink. Tink. They missed note after note after note.

It's not me! Yeah! Instead, it's some difference between our Wii systems - or perhaps it really is the 70-inch HD television.

Has anyone heard of such a thing? Is there some known issue like this? I tried Google, but no luck.

On a side note: Thanks to Guitar Hero III, I now love, love, love "Miss Murder" by AFI, and my joy with "Cult of Personality" by Living Colour and "Cliffs of Dover" by Eric Johnson has been reaffirmed -- BUT, if I never hear or play "Slow Ride" again, it'll be too soon. ("Talk Dirty to Me" and "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" are becoming close runners-up. In fact, that whole first set is a little dodgy.)

BTW, my husband took the above photo the first day I had the game. I can't begin to describe how amused he was by my fascination with playing. :)

History lessons

This is one of my favorite photos from a weekend excursion with Jules and JC to the Chicago History Museum. Wait, I can't decide between the one on top or the one at right? There's just something I like about that bronze bull's head. Opinions?

Regardless, we finally visited the museum after it was overhauled, redesigned and renamed a year or so ago. Out the door went the stodgy "Chicago Historical Society" moniker and in came the new "Chicago History Museum".

It was a fun time. The exhibits were interesting, although the Crossroads audio tour got a little bit long at times.

Particularly memorable aspects of the museum? For me, it's the same thing that stuck in my memory after my first visit as a Brownie Girl Scout 30 years ago: the melted glass-and-metal artifacts from the Great Chicago Fire. (To view the rest of my photos from the museum, visit my Chicago set on Flickr.)

S-Factor afternoon

Oprah featured it, so that has to make it safe to write about, doesn't it? I mean, otherwise, why would I want to confess that I'd taken an exercise class based on the arts of pole-dancing and lap-dancing? Sounds crazy, doesn't it?

A few years ago, Jules saw the S-Factor book somewhere and gave it and the accompanying exercise video to me for Christmas. I admit that I'm not very motivated by videos, but I did give it a few tries at home, but no more.

Then last year, Jules treated me and JC to a one-off intro to the S-Factor class at a studio in Chicago. It was lots of fun. An hour of yoga-like exercises, followed by an hour of bruising our legs trying to swing around a pole, and then learning a routine to take home with us.

This year, she treated us to another one-off class, this one called Santa's lap-dance. Again, an hour of yoga-like exercises, followed by an hour of learning how to crawl all over a big armchair.

Lots of fun, but talk about awkward. I mean, it's so totally hard to get into the moment when you're there with friends, because the key seems to be forgetting your fears and letting yourself go.

Now, this seems like the place where I should break into some internal dialog (or real dialog) that was occurring during the class. But I'm not going to go there. I think it's sufficient at this point to admit that I took the class at all.

Perhaps if Jules treats us to a class again next year...