(no subject)

[mellicious]

Somebody really needs to do something about the elevators here at work. I got off at 8 but the electronic display said 7. Very confusing. There's one over on the other side of the building that will tell you it's on 42 or something (it's a Douglas Adams elevator!) despite the fact that there's not more than 12 floors anywhere in the complex.

I got my hair done yesterday, which was a relief. There comes a point - it seems to come about 2-1/2 months after the last color - when my roots get long enough that all that gray suddenly starts driving me absolutely insane. Now it is nicely dark plum with no gray visible, at least for the moment (and hey, when they're colored the silver hairs become highlights!), and I think I even like the cut, too. And it is not too short, which is Rob's main criteria for my haircuts. Not that I disagree with him, anyway - I don't like my hair terribly short. Since I have started letting them layer it more the sides are shorter, so it feels shorter overall, but in the back it's still pretty much the same length it's been for a long time, which is sort of vaguely collarbone-length. A little longer than shoulder-length, if you follow me.

(GuildWars stuff under the cut!)

In GuildWars, I started a third character - a monk. (Well, technically she's my fourth character, if you count the one left over from the Factions preview thing, but I don't really count that one. Since it's going to be a while - probably a long while - before I'm ready to play Factions, I'm not planning on keeping her until then. She's just a placeholder until I think of a fourth Prophecies character I want to start.) (Hmm, maybe a Ranger? or possibly a Necromancer... but not either one any time soon.) Anyway, monks have healing powers, which is what they're really valued for in the GuildWars world, but they also have "smiting" powers, which I think is sort of hilarious, but that's how they attack. They take a little longer to kill monsters than either of my other characters, but they can do it.

As far as my other characters go... we figured out that I couldn't get better armor for Rima at Lion's Arch than what I already had, so Columbine pulled out the big guns - his highest-level character, a mesmer named Kaeleen - and ran me to Beetletun, several zones further on, so I could get armor with more protection. It looks exactly like the old armor (the "blue bikini" model) but it's level 39 where the old stuff was 30, so that ought to help. At Lion's Arch, they do sell a new & different kind of armor - aeromancer armor - but it was exactly the same basic protection, 30. And where the hydromancer armor has extra protection against cold attacks, the aeromancer stuff only protects more against lightning attacks, which you don't really see that much of. (Gargoyles have it, I know.)

The deal with elementalists is, as you might guess, that all of their attacks have to do with the four elements. You have fire attacks, water attacks - flying ice shards, for example - air attacks, which mostly seem to be lightning, and earth attacks. The only earth attack I use a lot is Eruption, but I like that one. Calling down lightning strikes is fun, too. You can use all four elements, but eventually you need to specialize. Right now I've got most of my points in water and fire magic, I think, and also some in marksmanship so I can use my way-cool bow that one of my guild-mates gave me. (You also have a second profession, and mine is Ranger. Thus the bow, and also the pet, which I don't think I've mentioned before. Rima has a big cat named George. I mean a big cat, like a cougar. George is very cool.)

Anyway, the element you attack with is really completely separate from the armor thing, because the armor has to do with what's attacking you. Thus the hydromancer armor in the mountains, where there are lots of things that use cold attacks. There's also pyromancer armor, which has been available since Ascalon, and which would be useful, too. (And eventually there's the fourth one, geomancer armor, but I can't really see wanting that too badly.)

(The icon is one of my elementalist things, too - it goes with a fire attack that I just got in the last couple of days.)

This weekend is Beach Party Weekend in Galveston, which means that the traffic will be in major gridlock all weekend, and my mother wants to celebrate my birthday this weekend, so we decided that rather than deal with the traffic, we will just spend the night in Houston Saturday night. We got a reservation at the Best Western near Hobby Airport for a very reasonable price. Since we will be going out on Saturday when everybody is coming in, and in on Sunday when everybody is coming out, that should keep us away from the worst of it. (What I really wanted to avoid was going to the mainland Saturday and then dealing with coming back Saturday night, because I've had some really awful experiences with that in the past.) I think we will probably go someplace in Kemah for my birthday dinner. Maybe Saltgrass Steakhouse, I don't know.