As I write this post, it is 8:00 Christmas Eve night. The boys are in bed, but I suspect they aren’t asleep yet. We’ve spent the day in my hometown, at my mom’s house. We got back home after 7:00.

Before bed, the boys spread magic reindeer dust on the front lawn. (The dust is sparkly, and can be seen by Santa’s reindeer from high in the air.) Then Cowgrit read them the Rudolph story. Lastly we put some cookies on a plate and placed it on the table next to the Christmas tree.

They were in bed at 7:45, but Calfgrit3 got up a couple more times. Calfgrit6 knows that Santa won’t come until everyone is asleep, but CG3 doesn’t quite understand that concept, yet.

What time will they wake up in the morning?

* * *

Calfgrit3 came out of his room again at 8:10. We put him back to bed.

* * *

They woke up at 5:45. Oh boy. I’m going to need a nap sometime today.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

I took the boys to the pizza buffet again. I didn’t feel like cooking or cleaning, and they didn’t feel like waiting. We had unfortunate timing arriving at the restaurant; we came in right behind a family of 12.

It took the family of 12 over five minutes to finish at the register and go to their table. I don’t know what their problem could possibly have been, I mean, it’s a buffet. There’s no food decisions to make at the register. All I could figure, from hearing snippets of the talk, was there was confusion about who was paying for what, in what way. The clerk even had to call the manager over to do something on the register.

When we finally made it to the register, it took us only 30 seconds, and that included having the clerk welcome us and give her and her manager’s names: Lakeisha and Mokeisha.

Something I’ve noticed at all buffets is how people pile and stack food on their plates. The plates at this restaurant will hold two slices of pizza, maybe three if they’re thin enough, without stacking. I saw several people stacking five, six, even seven slices of pizza on their plates. What the hell? Do they not understand the concept of a buffet — you can make more than one trip through.

Interestingly, it’s big and small people loading up their plates. When I see the skinny people load up on seven slices of pizza, I wonder just where they’re going to put it all. When I see the fat people load up on seven slices of pizza, well, I don’t really wonder at all.

There was one odd person in the restaurant. The place is not a high-end establishment, as you can guess by it being a pizza buffet. This one guy was dressed in what looked to be a tailored suit, but he was enormous. His neck was wider than his bald head, and his circumference was probably six feet. But he wasn’t eating anything. He was just sitting there, in his black pants, florescent purple shirt, and yellow tie (his coat was on his chair behind him), all alone, right beside the buffet line. He had no plate, no glass, nor anything else with him at the table. He was there for at least 20 minutes, alone and mostly still. Strange.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

Several months ago, I dared/bet a friend to take his orc rogue into Stormwind City. He used stealth to get in and took screen shots for proof. I paid the 10 gold reward.

Just for the fun of it, I thought I’d try the stunt with my 70 orc hunter. Hunters don’t have stealth abilities, so I figured to just ride my epic mount in past the guards and see how far in I could get. It’d be cool if I could make it to Deeprun Tram.

So I traveled to Elwynn Forest and sat on my mount outside the Stormwind gates. “Here we go,” I said. I rode straight past the guards, who immediately pursued me on foot, and right through the gate. By the time I reached the main city square, I had six or eight guards chasing me. I continued running through the city and by the time I’d made it to the Dwarf Quarter, the guards were no longer pursuing me.

Oddly, some of the patrollers in the city didn’t bother with me. I ran right through a couple of them and they didn’t change their walking patrol. The standing guards always came after me when I passed, but the walkers didn’t care.

I continued on through the Dwarf Quarter, to the tram entrance. I picked up a couple of new guards along the way, but once I entered the tram instance portal, I lost them.

The tram terminal was empty except the couple of low-level NPCs who hang out in there. I noticed that my PvP flag was turned on by entering the human city — an unexpected, but logical situation. So any PCs I encountered could attack me. While I waited for the tram to arrive a the station, a level 70 draenei shaman came in the terminal. We looked each other over for a few moments, sizing up the challenge.

I really didn’t want to fight. In fact, I didn’t even have my keyboard and mouse arranged for normal playing. Usually, for play, I have my keyboard sitting on top of my desk, at an angle so my hand and fingers can easily, without looking, reach all the necessary keys. And my mouse sits in a nice big open area, with no pad to limit my movements. At this time, because I only intended to run through the city until I died, my mouse was on its small pad, and my keyboard was still on its tray under the desk. I had the keyboard tray pulled out just far enough to put one finger on the forward button to move. If a fight broke out, I’d be screwed more than just by my lack of PvP experience and skill.

The shaman started dropping totems around him. I backed off and ran to the other side of the station. Then a tram showed up and I boarded. While waiting for the tram to leave the station, an Alliance warlock came into the station. The shaman and warlock both boarded the tram, too. And then the tram was off.

I was on the third, and last tram car; the Alliance guys were on the second, middle car. I had the feeling that the were going to jump me at any moment, so I tried to get off the tram. It was frustrating, reaching under my desktop, trying to move around and jump off the tram — guard rails prevented me from leaving the easy way.

Eventually I managed to figure my way off the tram. I fell down into the tram tunnel, just started running back to the Stormwind end of the tunnel. I toggled auto-run and just let my hunter run straight down the tunnel. I only half paid attention to my monitor while I shuffled stuff around on my desk. After a minute or two, I noticed my hunter was hung up on one of the spotlights on the tunnel floor. I grabbed my mouse and tried to shake my guy off the obstacle.

At that moment, the Alliance duo showed up. They had apparently jumped off the tram, too. I was below half health before I managed to pull out my keyboard tray and get my fingers on the keys. I think I fired one shot and then noticed my health was at 200-something. I tried Feign Death, but they didn’t fall for it. I died.

It was a rather embarrassing death. But up to that point, it was a fun little excursion through Stormwind City and into the tram system.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

I hadn’t gotten Cowgrit a Christmas gift yet, and there was only a few days left for shopping. Now, I didn’t forget (no, really), and I’m not the type to always put it off till the last minute (again, really), but with all the crazy busy I’ve been these past few weeks, I just hadn’t had a chance to shop for her. She knows this, and she hasn’t had much time to shop for me, either. We’ve even discussed our busy situations in relation to getting each other a Christmas gift.

I’ve been to various stores a few times, but either she’s been with me, or I was on a defined mission, with limited time, to pick up specific stuff for our boys. I simply haven’t had time to freely shop for anything.

Yesterday, I took the boys out to look for something for her from them. While shopping with them, I found a perfect gift for her from me. Unfortunately, the store was out of the item. I was determined to get it, so I planned to go back out later last night to find the item in another store.

After the boys were put to bed, and the house straightened up, I told Cowgrit I was going out to shop. (I’ll call the first store I went to that morning, “A1.”) I was heading for store A2 to see if they still had the item in stock, but on the way, I saw store B1 (a different name store). I figured it couldn’t hurt to check it out, since I’m passing it anyway.

Store B1 had just one item of the category I was looking for, but it wasn’t the one I wanted. I picked up the item to read the box and consider it just as another man came up to the shelf to look. After a few moments, it became apparent that he was waiting on me to decide whether to get the item or not. We exchanged a few polite words. Although he never came out and said he was hoping I’d put the item down, he did hover pretty long beside me, at the empty shelf. I decided to get the item just in case I couldn’t later find the one I really wanted. I left the poor guy broken-hearted at the shelf. I purchased the item and left to continue my search.

I went to store A2. They had just one item of the category, but not the one I really wanted. As it was actually better than the one I had just bought, I decided to buy this one, too. I could just return the first one.

I then went to store A3; they were sold out of all items in the category. I then went to store A4, and they too were all sold out.

So I went back to store B1 to return the first item. I had purchased the item with my debit card, and the category of item is moderately expensive, so I wanted the refund put back in my account. For some strange reason, the store could only give me cash back. Annoying, that. Now I’ve got this wad of cash to put back in my bank account, but it’ll be four days before any bank is open again.

I got back home at 11:30 p.m. — two and a half hours of driving and searching for the gift. But, I’ve got the gift I want to give Cowgrit. Now to just get the time and privacy to wrap it up. At the rate my time has been going lately, she may just find it under the tree wrapped in the plastic store bag.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com