Athene Numphe

Monday evening the Frenchman showed up at my hotel room and we (eventually) headed out and walked up to the North End. Ended up on the rooftop eating area of a nice little Italian place. Then we wandered around and looked at the water a bit before wandering back to the hotel.

Tuesday I taught class to 15 people, which is a lot. There were some interesting technical problems in the training room, so I was really glad that I had a senior trainer with me for my first time on the road.

After class, I rested in my hotel room for a bit and then I took the T and met up with bellebet and headed over to a Chinese/Sushi restaurant where we met up with rogueactor and the Frenchman. Had a lovely dinner with belle and rogue, full of wonderful conversation and really amusingly named after pop-culture things rolls.

Wednesday my co-trainer taught the class, and I played TA. After class I took the T out to meet kiten. It was so awesome to see her. The Frenchman, and I hung out at her place with her adorable polydactyl kitty cat, who is OMG so cute. He was doing that "I'm so tired but there are people and I want to play but I'm going to fall over at any moment" thing that was adorable to watch. Got some good hanging out and cuddling with dear friends. :)

Thursday morning I had to say goodbye to the Frenchman. :( He's going back to France soon, so I'm glad I got to spend some time with him before he goes. Then I got to the training room nice and early because it was a whole new class with a new group of people. There was some confusion because my schedule said class started at 9, but the schedule that was emailed out said class started at 9:30, so I had to wait around for everyone to show up. Because of that, class ran a little past 5.

Took the T to Davis Square. (See how every evening starts with that. I felt all super hip and urban taking the T every evening, wearing my iPhone headphones, listening to music, and being confident with where I was going.) Met up with omnia_mutantur and wandelrust and went out for gourmet pizza. The pizzas were good, but the dessert, which was hot pizza crust covered with nutella, fresh strawberries, and a touch of basil, was amazing.

Friday was the last day of class. Finished it up a little early, which was good cause people (including me) had flights to catch. After the last person left, I got my bags and took the bus to Logan airport for my 6:50 flight back home. When I got off the plane in Houston, there was a woman with 3 kids who was really confused and I thought that maybe she had never flown before or was having a panic attack or something. Since I overheard that she was going to Austin too, I helped make sure that she found her way to the right terminal. She asked my name like 3 times. It was weird. Turns out that she had had a drink and it was stronger than she expected (or so she said) and so she was just a little drunk. Well, I'm glad I was able to make sure that her kids got home, even if their mom was being weird/irresponsible. When I got to the gate for the flight to Austin, i found out there was a flight to New Orleans leaving at almost the exact same time at almost the same terminal, literally. All that separated them was a partition. I joked with the guy checking my boarding pass that it was a tough call, do I go visit my mamma and sister in New Orleans or do I go home to my husband. Ultimately the husband and cats won out over the sister and mom. Got in to Austin with no problem. lordaerith was waiting for me and we went home where I said hi to the cats and fell over.

This weekend has been nice and relaxing. Spent a lot of time just hanging out with Aerith Got to play some regular WoW (my guild had a Cow Throwing party...throw your cleverly named level 1 Tauren off of Thunder Bluff and hit a specific spot while yelling some sort of bad pun. I LOST spectacularly!) and some of the Cataclysm beta (my Worgen is finally out of the starting zone).

Life's been crazy busy, in a good way. So here's a quick list of what's going on:

• The Sunday before last lordaerith and I rolled up 3.5/3.75 characters for a run. It's the typical gamer ratio (7 guys and me). My character's already annoying everyone. :)

• Last Monday I went to a Marian Call house concert. She's amazing. She's touring all 50 states, so go find out when she'll be in a city/town near you and go see her. She's a total nerd and cute too. Oh, and she'll be performing at the SDCC w00tstock! There were many nerds there and we all flocked together. Flirted with a guy who works at Blizzard. Hey, anything to get into the Cataclysm beta, right? ;)

• This last Friday was lordaerith's and my fifth wedding anniversary. Year 5 is the wood anniversary. Don't worry, we already went there. We both took Friday and Monday off from work. Friday we went to Schlitterbaun (which is becoming our anniversary tradition). The rides there really are the best! After riding tons of rides on both sides of the park, we headed back to Austin and went to the Melting Pot for the first time. Very nice. They found out it was our anniversary and brought us complimentary champaign with dessert.

• Saturday night we went to the Gilbert & Sullivan Society of Austin's production of "Yeoman of the Guard" with moonwick and byskwik. Is a rather interesting opera. Not quite so light and airy as their usual fair and a weird ending.

• The rest of our four day weekend was spend lounging around, getting stuff off of the DVR, playing WoW, and cleaning up the house a bit.

• Work is going well. I'm starting to teach more. I'm developing curriculum for a new feature coming out in our Summer release, which is kind of like shooting a moving target. Oh, and work's sending me to Boston in mid-August to teach four days of classes. The current plan is for lordaerith and I to go up together a few days early and see people and then he'll head home while I teach. Let me know if you want to see us.

• Other than that, life is busy with work, husband, cats, yoga, social engagements, friends, and WoW.

You can get these in game outside of the starting areas. It's awesome to run around with a Night Elf Mohawk mask!

Had a good Memorial Day weekend.

On Friday lordaerith and I bought a little portable propane grill because we were tired of not having a grill and this one we can take with us :) So we grilled a lot over the weekend. There were hamburgers and hot dogs on Friday, chicken and zucchini on Saturday and bison steaks and asparagus on Sunday, and we're thinking more burgers and sausages this week. Also we tried grilling peaches for dessert on Saturday...they came out okay, but it probably would have turned out better if they had actually split in half when we cut them instead of resisting being pulled apart and falling apart/getting mushy in spectacular ways.

We also played a lot of World of Warcraft, which was what I wanted to do. Got my Tauren Druid a few more levels (so close to level 30 and a mount!) and I even made some money at the auction house! Ran our Blood Elves for a bit yesterday. Man, that guild is silly. Undercity is very confusing. Also, Ogrimmar (Ogrimmar...I got an Ogrimmar slaying knife, it has a +9 against Ogrimmar) doesn't have a Druid trainer but Silvermoon does.

Did go shopping on Saturday. We both got much needed new headphones for our iPhones. I can hear people again, yay!

Lastly, this weekend we started on Operation Reclaim Bathroom From Cats (ORCBRFC). Made some headway but it's still to early to tell who's winning.

Edit: I forgot to mention the joy of being woken up at 5am this morning by Natasha, who was right next to me, starting to cough up a hairball. She ran out into the living room and I ran out after her (to try to get to her in time to pick her up and get her on tile) and so then I had to clean up her hairball. Left me rather awake and made it hard to fall back asleep.