Category: Real Life

5am, and I’m awake. My body thinks it’s 8am and that I’ve over slept. I’ve been up pretty much every hour on the hour but I think that’s to be expected when you’re sleeping in a new bed unless you’re quite used to it (and lets face it, I’m not). I did get a little bit of time to pop into Eq2 last night and let people know that I’d arrived safely, but aside from that the gaming for the next three days will be limited. Not that I really figured I’d be gaming that much.

The houses here are placed oddly, was the first thing I noticed. Along hills they’re one under the other, in rows. I guess I’m just used to seeing homes on flat streets and not on hills at all, so it caught me off guard. When we flew in I didn’t even see a city or anything below, it just looked like I was flying over a whole lot of dirt and hills and then bam, plane flew right over head. I imagine the cars driving down those roads where we barely cleared them must be used to it.

When I leave tomorrow I’ll be flying to LA first. Another first for me, I bet it’s huge.

Well, better keep prepping for today.

P.S. yes, that is my winter jacket hanging on the chair. Detroit and Ottawa were still pretty snow covered and there was no way I could go without a coat.

The view, from my flight from Minneapolis to San Diego. The day started at 3am for me. I boarded at Ottawa international and flew to Detroit on a tin can of an airplane where the pilot joked that we were heading to Hawaii instead of Detroit. Suited me just fine. Customs was typical, I have nothing to declare and while I didn’t enjoy removing my shoes, c’est la vie. Opened up the laptop and that was fun. I thought about smuggling over a polar bear or a beaver or something oddly Canadian but decided against it. After flying to Detroit I caught a flight to Minneapolis, window seat to myself again. Very uneventful flight except for the fact that I have never flown before and suddenly I’m flying across the country, and not even my own country.

Landed, with 15 minutes to spare to boot over to the next flight from Minneapolis to San Diego. Two gentlemen seated beside me and we’ll just call one of them ‘the mouth’. By the time the flight landed, I knew more about this man’s life then I know about my interviews tomorrow.

I got in to the hotel suite at 2pm PST and check in wasn’t until 3, so I sustained myself on gum and mints for another hour before getting to my room which is of course amazing looking.

I’m tired. It’s (checks watch and moves it three hours backwards) 6:50pm and I’m going to bed very soon. I’ll be up at 7am and hopefully coherent enough to actually do my job. No promises though. I haven’t had time to let everything sink in yet since I’m still dealing with with time difference (and won’t have time to get used to that before I go back home), the culture shock (more about that later) and just the whole fact that – I’m in San Diego. Wow. That’s pretty amazing.

P.S. that is not a bullet hole for those who are concerned, that’s ice, in between a little hole and two panes of whatever windows are made out of. I’ve not been shot, promise!

Some times, you just get those magical groups where everything goes right. Where everyone gets along and it moves like magic. Last night, was not one of those nights but I still had fun. There seems to be a surplus of ‘if you don’t have your mythical you’re not worth anything’ attitudes that are going around, and I don’t particularly care for it. I realize that mythicals have been out a while now, but what happened to the casual player who perhaps doesn’t have theirs. Well, that’s me. The first group myself Ultann and Wpus headed into was for The Crucible (that seems familiar) to see if we couldn’t get the shield to drop for Ultann. The group was alright, but the fury refused to heal (even though they were far superior to my non-raiding mystic) and if we didn’t do things their way we were doing it the wrong way. We beat the instance though, obtaining shards. All was well. 

Afterwards the group dynamic changed a little and we decided to check out the loping plains instances. I’d never been there before except briefly to wander around picking up shard quests. The first zone tore us apart. We couldn’t defeat the first named that summons duplicates. We had no enchanter. It hurt. So we headed off to Evernight Abbey (I believe that’s what it called) to vanquish vampires. That one went far better, and even though it took a little time we did well and cleared the zone. The script for the final vampire with the bursts of light while everyone uses the god-like powers on him was a lot of fun and I enjoyed it a great deal. 

I’m slowly saving up shards to purchase my T2 set. I believe I’m up to a whole six now, I know it will take a great deal of effort. Hopefully my guild mates don’t mind doing this instances as often as possible. 

Less then 24 hours from now I’ll be on my way to San Diego. I’m still exceptionally nervous. Today I’m getting last minute things done like printing out those boarding passes (you can’t print them out any more then 24h in advance) and packing. I bought some ear plugs in case my ears gave me trouble on the flight (I am prone to ear issues and have been since I was small) as well as a few other smaller things that need to get tucked away. I feel more nervous then excited right now since this is my first time, and it feels like an incredible amount of pressure when everyone keeps telling me I’ll do well. While it’s great to know I have such a very supportive amazing group of friends, it also just makes me feel really nervous. Excited too though! Please don’t take these words for face value I’m so filled with so many emotions it’s all a jumble right now. I’m running off of 4 hours of sleep for the past two days, so I can sleep well tonight (early, we’re talking 8-9pm here) and then get up at 3am to head to the airport. Time to get the day started!

See you in Norrath San Diego!

Sorry about the lack of posts! I haven’t been able to find the few moments I need in a day in order to recap things, and when I have my mind has been else where (namely on this trip to San Diego). I’m a bundle of nerves but it’s also exciting at the same time. I’m sure there are a million things I’ll do wrong, but hey that’s what learning experiences are for. 

I’ve been playing some W101, and some EQ2, and keep inching my way into LoTRO before I get dragged away by something else in real life.

I’m all set for my trip aside from converting some Canadian money into American, getting some new shoes, and of course the actual packing process which I’ll do tomorrow (as well as print out my boarding passes). 

I fly from Ottawa at 6am Tuesday morning, switch planes in Detroit, and then switch planes again in Minneapolis. On the way home I’ll be stopping in LA and switching again in Detroit. I have maps (thank you Gnewton) of the airports, so it shouldn’t be too bad (I hope).

Excited? Yes, yes I am. 

See you in Norrath San Diego!

(( A recap on how I’ve been feeling and a bunch of mushy stuff in regards to the trip to San Diego, if you’re looking for gaming specific things you’ll have to skip this post, feel free! )) 

I mentioned in part I how lucky I am, and every single day I remind myself how lucky I am. I have such a wonderful and supportive group of friends and family, I hope they know just how much I appreciate them. I owe an enormous amount of thanks not only to the people at SOE for making this possible and Beckett for allowing me the opportunity, but to all of my friends and family for standing by me. They have such faith in me and even though I’ve been questioning myself and whether or not I can pull this off, I have not heard a single time from any of them that maybe I am in over my head. 

A huge thank you to my parents, Brenda, Mike, Nick, Brian, Scott, Tom, David, Flavius, Kirsteen, Cory, the Bulsara’s, Matt, and especially Cyrus for listening to me these past two weeks as I’ve been going through everything and for helping me out. I know there’s people I’m forgetting (and no, that list is not in any particular order) and I don’t mean to. If you’re name’s not there just substitute it in! Another huge thank you to the people at SOE, especially Kiara who helped me keep my sanity, and Katie for all of the email correspondence not to mention those involved that I don’t even know about. I also have to give a huge thank you to the readers of this site, it’s grown to over 3,000 daily hits over the past three years and while I would write no matter how many people read it it’s also motivation for me and I appreciate it so much. I truly do.

I realize that I’m going there to do work, but that doesn’t mean I can’t still be thankful for the opportunity. You have to understand that if you had of asked me two years ago what I thought I’d be doing, going on site to work and that work being writing would not have been one of the things I mentioned. I’m nervous, and excited. I haven’t flown since I was 12, I’ve never flown alone (though I have taken the train to Nova Scotia alone before, not quite the same thing). I’ve never been to the US alone that’s for sure. There’s so many ‘first times’ for me here if I sat down and wrote them all out there would be quite the list. I stop in a few places and I’m worried about finding where I need to be next, I’m hoping to run into some friendly airport folks who can point me in the right direction. The Ottawa international airport is not that large, and certainly not that large in comparison to lets say, LA (which I stop in at on my way home). It’s 10 hours of flight, and a 3 hour time difference from where I am now. The weather will also drastically change from where I am now. Today it’s -5F and in San Diego it’s 80F. That’s a huge difference and it’s going to be a shock to my system since we’ve been in the midst of winter for a few months. 

Above all of the nervousness and fear and stress is a huge bundle of excitement. HUGE. I am excited to meet people I’ve only written to or communicated via email with, I’ve done email interviews before with members of SOE for articles but never in person. It’s going to be one of those amazing experiences that I’ll remember for a long time to come and I’m hoping (personally) that it opens the doors to other things. Not only is this important as far as work goes but this is a huge step for me. An important step. I’m breaking out of a shell that I’ve had for far too long. 

Throughout everything the one comment that keeps popping up into my head is how proud my great grandmother would be. I’ve always been a family girl and when I was growing up I used to write her letters every month, and she’d reply. This is back when I was 13-14 years old (I’m now 27, almost 28). She used to tell me that I needed to do something with my writing, and that I had such talent. Very few people ever take those sorts of compliments at face value, we tend to shy away and shrug them off, underestimating ourselves. While it’s good not to have too much of a bloated ego when it comes to our particular strengths, it’s also important to realize that others will have faith in us no matter what level we personally feel our skills are at. I never really believed her, but I kept writing. 

She passed away a few years ago, and I finally understand what she was always telling me. I think I’ve finally listened and I know she’d be so dang proud of me. 

So what’s next? Packing and trying not to need an actual suitcase because I don’t want it to get lost along the way (overnight bag ftw), hope my laptop fits. I need to get some money exchanged into US currency, I need to do some shopping. There’s a million other little details I need to go over and figure out. Thankfully all of these little things leaves me too excited to worry that much about everything that could go wrong. Am I nervous about meeting people? Only slightly. 

I will be at the airport at 4am on Tuesday morning, flight leaves at 6am. It’s going to be a very long day, and I couldn’t be happier.