Surviving with a little help

There's a quote by the late Robert Heinlein (and by lots of others too) :

"What a wonderful world it is that has girls in it"

I'm struggling at the moment, through the after effects of things like new shoes, the cold and the various long term niggles that I carry around with me. I try to keep my shoes going as long as I can, because I know that when I do change, there will be a few weeks where they will dig holes in the back of my feet (achilles area). Gets a bit sore and distracting. I have other niggles too, like the continuing saga of the audio blips on the amp ... (they're still happening but I have progress and an idea).

So - struggling on the whole but surviving with a little help. Where's the help coming from ? Well, I wanted to give a special mention to the online people, which brings me back to that quote ...

When I'm in Warcraft, there's often calls of "Ice - come on Mumble". "Ice" is my nickname to the Warcraft people, short for Iceangel. Mumble is the voice chat software we use when people in the guild are doing things together. Usually that's instanced dungeons where 5 of us will team up to spank the bad guys. Or there's just generally kicking back and having a natter.

I've been very lucky in that when the guild on The Maelstrom server broke up, I was welcomed into the Violence Reborn guild as they moved to a different server. The core of VR is Swedish although, as is the norm for online game guilds, it has turned truly multinational. We're all Horde out for a good time. We also stick by each other, which can be tough when you start getting involved with the wider WoW community (think toys escaping from prams). We have fun with our mistakes, whereas people picked up at random just leg it or get an "it's not my fault, must be your's" attitude which isn't helpful.

The blokes in the guild tend to be fairly quiet (although if you start talking WoW Theory, they turn Juggernaut), it's the ladies who make the guild what it is. It starts with the Swedish accents. But it's mainly the free spirited, uninhibited Wanna Have Fun attitude they bring in. They don't take things too seriously, never forgetting that it's a game and games are supposed to be Fun.

They'll quite happily drag the boys along with them too. There's two cases recently where I had the privilege to be included :

Instance run with Shidra and Alex. Alex was being a bit quiet, this was the Shidra show. There was me, trying to learn the place we were in and the rest of the group were nattering away as if they were wanting to get the words out before rationing came in. And it was insane too. I started grinning early and by the end of the activities, I couldn't help myself, the Cheshire Cat Grin and laughter was threatening to turn my noggin into a Flip Top Head.

The other one is just the other night, which starts with an "Alex is singing on Mumble" in guild chat. Gotta check that out, so I join the voice comms server. Within minutes, I'm grinning from ear to ear again and laughing along with the rest of 'em. And that "drag the boys along with them" thing ? Yep. Couldn't help myself, I joined in late with the singing too. And my mic headset is so dusty from disuse, I have to get Rentokil out to fight off the Dust Bunnies before I let it near my head.

A little laughter is good for the soul, so you can probably imagine the boost that comes from being involved in this select group of people.

The Mercs had one or two ladies around too, although they tended not to stay too long. I suspect they didn't want to stay around because of some of the drama the guild had (some of which was centred around me !). Caira was pretty special though, would love to know how Caira & Auraka are doing now.

It's not just in game though. It's the people on Facebook and the people at work. I still seem to be a favourite of the Canteen Girls (although that has implications on my waistline). I've been lucky with work as well as with the VR people, it's a pressure project but we all pull together to get through the work and solve the problems. There's one of us who's trying to give up smoking at the moment ... I'm passing on tubes of mints (I keep 'em to moderate excess stomach acid) to help her beat the cravings. She's probably through half my supply by now but if it helps liberate her from smoking, it'll be so Worth It.

Wait ... Why am I still writing this blog post when I could be in game seeing what the VR Girls are up to ? Cya !

PS English is the second language for a lot of the VR people, they tend to talk in Swedish in places like Facebook. Which is where Google Translate comes in ... It doesn't translate everything but it does a great job. Oh - and even though it's a second language, their English is far better than some of what I read and hear from people born and raised in this country ...