December 24, 2015

Forgot to mention the old house was officially sold yesterday. The buyer signed all the papers and my mom stopped by later to pick up the check. It is a bittersweet moment for us. My mom had lived on that cul-de-sac for thirty-five years and I had always lived there. It's kind of weird knowing that it is officially over. It is also really nice that it is officially over. My mom can stop stressing out about not only worry about the house selling, but also keeping track of things going on in the house, like the latest water in the basement. Overall, the good outweighs the bad. Someone has a new house and we no longer have to worry about it.

Today my main goal was to wrap presents. And I did it. I started before lunch and didn't finish until almost four o'clock. I bought way too much crap, which was part of it, but the big issue was that I wrap things multiple times. About half of the presents were wrapped twice and the other half were wrapped at least three times. That obviously extended the process. I also wrapped my sewing machine, which took awhile because it was a big box. I obviously saw the box but I made a point of not actually “seeing” the box, if that makes sense. I didn't really attend to any of the pictures or read any of the text. I'm saving that for tomorrow.

Tonight I made a pattern for what will hopefully be a cross stitch for my grandma. I'm not entirely convinced by it yet because it is too big for the three inch hoop and I think it might look weird in the four inch hoop. I made a rough layout that turned it into a circle, cutting off the extra, but I'm not sure how it will look if I didn't get it quite right and it ends up slightly too big and cut off by the hoop or too big here and not quite to the edge there. And I'm running out of time so I can't really afford to fiddle with it. Hopefully I'll have enough time to work on it tomorrow. Ideally I would get the whole thing stitched, washed, and pinned out tomorrow so I can put it in the hoop on Saturday. We'll see how that goes.

While wrapping and working on the pattern and even later while playing Tera, I watched Christmas things. It still doesn't quite feel like Christmas (even though it is almost one o'clock in the morning on Christmas day, currently) and that is probably because the weather is not very Christmasy at the moment. We'll see how it goes after I wake up on Christmas day. I'm looking forward to hanging out and opening gifts. I am happy with the gifts I bought and made and look forward to seeing the reactions, which will hopefully be positive. I also have no idea what I will be getting. Nothing is always a possibility. My mom didn't ask for a Christmas list this year and when my sister asked I just told her “food”, which doesn't really narrow it down because she makes so many good things. So the only thing I know for certain is the sewing machine, because I bought it. The one plus of not having a list is that I don't have to worry about not getting something I asked for, because I didn't ask for anything. Everything will be a surprise and a bonus.

Tera tonight was pretty deserted. I have several “friends” in the guild and none of them were online and only a few of the other guild members were online. I tried to get into Corsairs' Battleground several times throughout the night but there weren't enough people to even get a match going. That was surprising. I did manage to get matched for two dungeon runs, bringing me up to five out of ten instance-matched dungeons for that achievement. It was the same dungeon both times and it was the first time I had been in it. I hadn't even been near the place on the map before. It was also the highest dungeon I had been in. I might have barely been a high enough level to do it, possibly even a level or two below. Thank goodness for healers. I managed to level up twice tonight because after the first level I got another experience scroll that gave me the full experience to get to the next level. I think I hit 45 in the dungeon and then the experience scroll moved me immediately to 46. Or it might have been 46 to 47. Doesn't really matter. Point is, I leveled up and got some cool gear in the dungeon. I also came across a couple big Santas and a couple small Santas throughout the world. The big ones have the potential to drop cool stuff, like the antlers my character is currently wearing, but whether a drop even happens is random and neither of the big ones dropped anything, which was a bummer, because they don't spawn that often. From one of the little ones I got a scroll that turned me into a tiny snowman. It was kind of funny but it only lasted until I interacted with the world again. I'm not sure how long the Christmas event will be going on in the game but hopefully I can get some cool things before it is over. I think there is the possibility of getting a Christmas-themed mount, which would be really cool.

Now I'm going to bed because it is one o'clock in the morning and if I don't go to bed Santa can't come. I think that's how it works. I'm not sure when we're doing stuff tomorrow but I think it is around brunch time. So I need to wake up somewhat early and actually get out of bed. I want to set up one of my TVs (that I use as monitor for my computer