Friday, April 29, 2011

Productivity Week - Day 4

Day 4 is over, and I'm feeling better than ever.
I could have never imagined what a sense of well-being could be achieved just by... well, achieving things!

I started out my day pretty oddly. I somehow woke up at 7:30am and couldn't for the life of me fall back asleep. My body was aching and I felt like I absolutely needed to just leap out of bed and start my morning.
Needless to say, that's what I did.
To be completely truthful, I have no idea what I did this morning. Maybe my brain is just fuzzy from it being late at the moment...
From what I DO remember, I kind of just messed around with Creatures 3, chatted with Jon through Steam, and tried to clear some space on my hard drive. (Apparently World of Warcraft won't run if you have less than 7GB free. Weird.)

Being the optimist when it comes to gaming, I decided to try out the new dungeon again.
I had a 15 minute wait time in the dungeon queue, which is nothing compared to the pre-patch wait times. (50 minutes waiting to play, oooh boy!)
All seems to be going great as we hack and slash some trolls, but once we get to the first boss encounter, we realize there's a problem.
See, the first boss is a troll adorned in vestments that look like an eagle. He's able to summon the powers of the eagle god, which allows him to control a bunch of eagles to do his bidding, and lets him create violent lightning storms. In other words, when you engage him in combat, you get divebombed by dozens of brown eagles, one of your teammates will get picked up carried around by a giant albino eagle (with very pointy talons), and then there's the occasional deadly storm.
We were doing great until it was storm time. During the storm summoning, he'll lift one teammate into the air as a "lightning rod" to draw the storm's power to the surrounding area. If you aren't directly below the hapless floating teammate, you're going to get fried.
Our healer and another team member failed miserably and got roasted... not once, but TWICE. This led to the rest of the group not getting any heals, leading to lots of dead bodies around a happy eagle man.
After the second wipe, the tank and another member bailed. I followed suit.

So I tried again.
11 minute queue this time, which was quite refreshing.
We die no more than once on particular bosses, but the first boss fell like cake to a fat kid.
Some people go, some people come... by the last boss, the only original members were me and the healer.
I might also mention that I had lost every loot roll to that damn healer, who didn't even NEED it as a healer. He just wanted it for his damage-dealing set. Me on the other hand... I play a hunter. All I can DO is deal damage, therefore I should have had first priority. That's proper WoW etiquette right there, and when you do win at least 2 rolls, you usually pass the third so the the other person gets something. Nope.
But I was willing to let that slide. WE WERE AT THE END!
We jumped into the battle, and unfortunately we wiped. We tried again and...
DISCONNECTED.
We all log back in swearing and cursing, and I just shut off World of Warcraft and storm upstairs with my tray of polymer clay.

So here's where the productivity actually begins.
I was really bummed that I had wasted nearly 3 hours in that darn dungeon, but I had tons of clay before me.
IT WAS TIME TO CREATE!
So I decided that today was the day where I'd finally try working on a larger scale. No little quarter-sized charms. I'm talking 3 inch tall figurines!
...okay, that's still quite small, I know. But you have no idea how much easier it was!
I really ended up enjoying myself, and it amazed me how much more detailed I could make my work.
When working on a small scale, it's easy to accidentally squish or deform the clay you're trying to shape. A perfect circle can easily become flat-sided with just a small amount of force.
When working on a bit of a larger scale, the clay is thicker, leading to less mess-ups. You can also attach parts a lot more easily since you don't have to worry about squishing something else in the process.
I ended up making a strange little quail popping out of a half-eggshell, a lily with two leaves that I want to turn into a pin, and a strange rooster.
I was overjoyed with the amount of artistic liberty working on a larger scale gave me, and immediately popped them in the oven the moment I was done making them.

Even better... while I was working, I got a phone call from the person who had posted the job listing for the part-time nanny job.
He told me that the position was already filled since it was posted more than a week ago. He had, however, read my email and noticed that I live in the same town, and that proximity was of high importance. If things with the person who currently holds the position don't work out, he said he would definitely give me a call.
So, I didn't get the job... but I am basically next in line if anything goes wrong.
And who knows? Maybe the nanny can't show up one day, and they need somebody on short notice... it could happen, and I could work for the day!

So today, progress has definitely been made.
I have a faint hope of getting a nanny job, and I made some interesting clay pieces!
They're currently sitting upstairs unglazed, but that'll change tomorrow.
Best of all, though... Tomorrow Jon comes for the weekend!!!

That's all for now! Time for sleep, at last...

No comments:

Post a Comment