College, Why Do You Hate Me So?

What a way to kick off the new year...

I've been very busy. It doesn't seem very evident to you all since all you are witnessing is a complete lack of updates... but I have been busy... and very unfortunate.

December was insane at my place of work. Just to give you an idea of how busy the grooming department was, my paycheck was twice that of a usual 2-week period. I was a dog-scrubbing maniac.
December 22, I had an accident at work. I was carrying a small dog to the play area, and I managed to slam my other hand in a big, heavy door. My middle finger and index finger were both hurt, with my middle finger getting a diagonal cut just from the force of the door itself. I ended up dripping blood everywhere and bruising both nailbeds and my finger bone. Needless to say, I couldn't work for the rest of the day and the day before Christmas Eve. I lost the oppurtunity to make around $100 or so, which was extremely upsetting.
Christmas Eve, I got sick with a cold. By the 27th I was feeling pretty much better, and was back at work. Things were slow, but it felt good just to be making money again.
On the 30th I went to Delaware to visit Jon for New Year's. Every year he has a New Year's Eve party with his friends, and we end up eating lots of food, watching tons of movies, and just generally having a good time. We watched the first 3 Star Wars movies, which was great because I don't know squat about it. (I never had any friends who were into it, so I never saw any of the movies.)
Sure enough though, something had to go wrong. I GOT SICK AGAIN. This time I was coughing up a storm, and keeping poor Jon up at night.
I came home on the 3rd, worked on the 4th (all the while being dizzy and completely out of it), and then took a day off on the 5th because of my unchanging state of sickness.

Now for the kicker.
I called my local community college today to see if they got my college and highschool transcripts. I need both of them in before I can sign up for classes, which start on Jan 20th.
NEITHER PLACE HAS SENT THEIR TRANSCRIPTS.
I requested my transcripts early and mid DECEMBER.

I feel like curling up in a ball and hiding in bed.

I just want to go to college and get it out of the way so I can someday move out of my parents' house... so I can pay the rent, make more than $10/hr, have a future together with my boyfriend. Is that so much to ask?
Apparently it is too much to ask, and these damnable people with their comfortable college employee jobs are just sitting, high on life and raking in the dough while not doing what they're being paid to do.
As someone who slaves away at work, always comes in on time and tries to make an honest living, I feel so defeated and frustrated.

All I can do for now is call them and leave them messages, since nobody there ever picks up the phone... and just hope for the best... please...

Bethesda Made Me a Hoarder

If the gaming world were reality, I'd be in a lot of trouble...
You see, I am a hoarder. An item hoarder.

For anyone who has played Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, or The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, you are well aware of Bethesda's usual gig: TONS of in game items strewn about the environments, and the ability to have a house of your own.
When I was introduced to my first Bethesda game by Jon (which just happened to be Oblivion), I immediately was amazed by the sheer number of items laying about. Much to his entertainment, I began picking up items I thought were interesting and cluttering up my inventory. He had played the game for hundreds of hours so he knew which items were common and which were harder to come by, but everything was new to me. I WANTED IT ALL.

I kept nearly EVERYTHING. My house in Bruma was small, but after painstaking hours of item placement, I had a dreamhouse. As a member of the Dark Brotherhood, I had lots of questionable items. Jon was slightly horrified when I picked up a rotten, severed head of a woman, and placed it on a shelf facing my bed. (It was a unique item, why wouldn't I keep it?!) I also stacked books I had gathered in my bookshelves, collected one of every gemstone and displayed them on a shelf, and placed various weapons all over my house.

In Fallout 3, my addiction to collecting and decorating only got worse.
When first I got my house in Megaton, I spent nearly 20 minutes rearranging my items. Just plain entertainment, or a bit of womanly instinct? Who knows. Either way, I decorated my room with items remniscent of old Americana. A baseball, baseball bat, baseball mitt, Nuka-Cola truck, Nuka-Cola, and toy car are just a few of the items I had placed around.
The need to decorate my house with things I found throughout my adventures only grew when I went through my second playthrough as an evil, mohawked Raider-wannabe named Rodd. I brought mutilated body parts, teddy bears, and lots and lots of knives back to my suite in Tenpenny Towers, which made Jon question my sanity a bit. (I swear, it was all in good fun! I'm not crazy!)

For Fallout: New Vegas, I actually have SCREENSHOTS.
I decorated my Old World Blues base with all of my favorite items, which wasn't easy at all.

Some collectables, plasma axes, a Tesla Cannon, animal skins, and my favorite headgear.

Every animal egg, items from different DLC, all of the different scientist gloves, and those awesome blue headpieces.

Animal parts and other collectables.

 My dinosaur collection (the ones that make noise, not Dinky the Dinosaur), my teddybears, and other items.

So yes, you can see I had a lot of fun with New Vegas. You wouldn't exactly call it hoarding, more like... "collecting."

(...Okay, so those boxes were filled with tons of useless stuff, but nobody would know that unless they checked, right?)

Skyrim, however, is where the true hoarding began.

On my main character, Rakta the Khajiit, I got to the point where I simply had so much money that I didn't NEED to sell ANYTHING. I could afford anything I wanted, had everything I needed, and generally was at a loss of what to do with all my items.

So I began to hoard.

I guess you can't call me a true hoarder. I don't keep just anything... just gems, soulstones, and jewelry. It's started to become somewhat of an obsession though. I can't leave behind any gems or stones without thinking "That could go into my house! YEAH!"

The result? This.

So thanks, Bethesda.

YOU MADE ME A HOARDER.

And I'm only going to find MORE gems...

Observations about this blog

I've been looking at some of my older blog posts lately, and I just realized how this blog has degenerated from a personal blog to one that just updates when I put new things in my shop.
Things have been busy with the holidays... Work has been quite brutal, I'm almost constantly tired, and generally just haven't felt like writing anything at all.
That being said, I don't want this blog to become... well, boring. Updates to the shop is nice and all, but I know that you could just check our Facebook or Twitter page for those things.

It's going to be my goal to update this blog a bit more often, and give glimpses into my crazy life once again. After all, that's how this blog gained so many followers in the first place. Views have really been dropping off since I stopped updating regularly, and I can understand why.

Also, spell-check doesn't recognize "Facebook." You would think...

This Is Why Skyrim Is Awesome

The Battle of Talking Stone Camp.
Below is a chat transcript I told Maddie about a battle I had witnessed and fought in, on the plains of Skyrim, Tirdas, 8th of Heartfire, and 10:34am.

The battle took place on the plains/river area between Talking Stone Camp and Orotheim (West of Whiterun).


The Good: Oh
The Good: Let me tell you about my epic dragon fight
The Bad: Oh! I forgot!
The Bad: Yes, you must tell meeeee :D
The Good: I'm playing as my Orc, and I finally kill the first dragon at Whiterun's watchtower
The Bad: hehe
The Good: and I get the note from the courier telling me about a Wall at Eldersblood Peak
The Good: So I decide to travel there. I know there is a mountain pass that I can use near the Ancient Nordic ruin there that can make my journey shorter
The Good: so as I'm climbing the mountain trying to find the pass, the Blood Dragon guarding the Wall noticed me
The Good: So I decide to run around the mountain to try to evade the dragon and find the fucking pass.
The Good: Well, finally I get to the foot of the mountain, and I'm smoldering a bit because this Blood Dragon wants some barbecued Dovakiin......
The Good: and then the dragon sees a Giant camp nearby and decides to attack them for a bit
The Bad: Oh gawd lol
The Good: So he flies over there and starts to burn the mammoths and giants, while I shoot arrows at him
The Good: Finally I think I got his attention and he flies back to me, but he flies over me
The Good: as I turn around I see like 5 bandits all fighting mudcrabs and I'm like "WTF? O_O"
The Good: The dragon does a strafe and and starts to attack the bandits, but they shit themselves and start to run back to their cave across the river
The Good: I follow them and as I turn a corner the bandits start to fight with the mudcrabs again
The Bad: Hahahaha
The Good: and then the dragon come by and KILLS ALL OF THEM with one breath
The Bad: Well maybe they're hungry for mudcrab :P barbequed mudcrab
The Bad: HAAHAHA
The Bad: Epic
The Good: It gets better
The Good: so as I run to quickly loot their bodies and evade the dragon
The Good: I hear a Bear
The Good: Apparently we had woken it up, and he decided to go after me
The Bad: LOL
The Good: so I run across the river to try to put some distance between me and the bear so I can focus on the dragon, which is now going after me again,
The Good: and as I try shooting arrows at the dragon, the bear hops across the river, so i'm like "fuck this" and dual weild my axe of whiterun and a dwarven sword to make quick work of him
The Good: but the bear tore up my health a bit so i use my last 2 potions
The Bad: Uh ohs D:
The Good: You with me so far?
The Bad: Yeah lol
The Bad: This is one crazy tale, haha
The Good: At this point I figure I should head back towards the giant camp to see if they will help me fight the dragon, since I have no potions
The Good: So I run back across the river and towards the camp, the dragon follows and starts to breath fire over the camp
The Good: and i see 2 ice shards shoot past me
The Good: now I'm completely caught off guard by this
The Bad: Oh gawd lol
The Good: So I look around and see a necromancer running at me, with a mammoth behind him
The Good: and the mammoth totally fucks up this dude and kills him in one hit
The Bad: HAHA
The Good: So I'm like okay that was completely random
The Good: by now the dragon is back on me, but he was weak enough to where I finally got him to land and I finalllllly killed him X_X
The Bad: lolololol
The Bad: And this is why Skyrim is fucking amazing


I will add photos of the aftermath when I can, and I will write my own summary of the story so you all don't have to deal with a chatlog.

On the other side, finals are finally upon us so life is hectic.
Keep warm. Keep safe. As the Starks say, Winter is Coming.

Gaming Geekery Update!

I've just updated our Etsy shop with 5 gaming-related items!
(3 styles of earrings, and 2 charms.)

Click on the photo below to see the other 4 items!