Favorite dog breed still remains siberian huskies/alaskan malamutes, but it really does fit my personality as most of my friends would tell you.

In other news, taking a semester off from school to regroup and get my brain screwed on straight again.

In other other news, Jonathan’s brother and his boyfriend moved to our town, so we’ll be hanging out with them a bit more than we could have before, which is awesome. They’re really cool, but don’t tell them that.

Lastly, if anyone knows a good place to find my next motofood restaurant, feel free to leave a comment, I’m taking suggestions.

The shop is up on top of a little hill, and they have tables around outside. Pretty neat little place, I thought. Turns out they’ve only been open for about a year, and I haven’t visited Owen County is likely just as long, so I couldn’t have seen it before. But anyway, I went inside and found out what the buzz was.

Inside, they have several rows of baking goods, and various items that could be helpful depending on your needs. I found everything from potato starch to raw vanilla beans to several rare spices to suit just about any need. The deli, on the other hand, drew me in. The counter was full of meats and cheeses that are available for sale in bulk, or (like mine) for deli sandwiches.

The base sandwich started at $4.09 with 20 options for cheese, and just as many or more for meat. The standard condiments were available, as well. Although, on reflection, only having two bread choices (white or wheat) was somewhat odd for a bakery.

Either way, I got Colby and pepper jack cheese (for an extra dollar) and honey ham, with tomato, lettuce, and mayo. Either because of in spite of the price (I’m not sure which yet), they piled on the fixings.

Also, they were selling half a dozen flavors of peanut butter prepackaged and priced by weight. I purchased the butterscotch, and with some work, I’ll try to mix up some cookie batter with it. Unless I just eat it all, that is.

Info:
Countryside Bakery and Deli
4785 Highway 127 South
Owenton, KY
(9 1/2 miles north of the Owen County / Franklin County line)

Ratings (out of three stars):
Plate: **
Price: **
People: ***
Place: ***

Plate gets two stars for only offering sandwiches, but it was a good size sandwich. Price gets two stars because the extra cheese for a dollar was a bit pricey for the slice, but otherwise a decent deal. The people were friendly and personable with me, even being covered from head to toe in motorcycle gear, so three stars there. Place gets three stars for being advertised with plenty of time to start looking and it was clean, but it is situated somewhat out of the way from major throughways.

Overall: ***

TL:DR: Having a baker’s item shop nearby is a nice perk, and something that I was previously unaware of. I’ll be back.

So, this afternoon, I went to this little store just off the interstate and saw they have a small kitchen for sandwiches. I needed some gasoline for the bike ($13.37 precisely, without looking at the pump) anyway, so I decided to stop off and see if the food was as good as I remembered from when I was little.

The sandwich itself was just over $3.00 which isn’t bad for a sandwich with all the trimmings. I ordered ham, cheese and mayo, topped all the way. Ended up with plenty of veggies and lots of meat, and the nice older woman running the register and kitchen was the sweetest kind you can find.

I forgot that other people actually like onions, so I had to pick those off, but otherwise all the ingredients were really fresh and tasted pretty good. I sat inside and ate; the tables were quite clean. There are also some tables outside to eat, but it was a bit warm to be outside and not moving in motorcycle gear.

Overall, it was a good experience, similar to what I remember from when I was little and I’ll be back.

Info:
BP
Highway 151
Frankfort, KY, 40601
(turn south from exit 48 on I-64)

Ratings (out of three stars):
Plate: **
Price: ***
People: ***
Place: ** (smoking allowed, as it’s outside of city limits)

Plate gets two stars for only being a sandwich, but otherwise was good. Price gets three stars for comparable food from other local restaurants. The people were sweet, quick, and friendly, so three stars for them! Place drops to two stars because it’s not well marketed, but it was clean and it’s very close to the interstate, so it’s not hard to find.

Overall: ***

TL:DR: For a quick bite to eat on the way through, good place to stop and talk to some nice folk. I know I’ll be back.

No, seriously. I can’t imagine going through the after effects of any surgery without something to wash away the pain every so often. I’m a fairly resilient guy, but this is a bit much even for me.

Interestingly enough, I’m almost certain that the pain I’m experiencing now is the pain that the doctor said I should have been in up until this date. Relatively minor issues except in other patients, they’re generally painful, he says. Now that the biggest hurdle is over, I feel that I can take on the next two with less fear than before.

That’s actually a huge step for me. I’ve been terrified of the prospect of visiting the dentist for a while because of what they might find, and what they’d have to do. I’m lucky that I have a pair of parents so willing to spend the time and money to help me take care of this. So here’s to an awesome dentist who worked really hard to take care of me, awesome parents who are doing the same, and an awesome insurance plan that is helping more than I ever expected.

I would very much recommend Dr. Peters here in town for anyone that experiences any sort of dental fears. Gave me some medicine to ease my nerves before the appointment and took care of everything rather quickly today. Got to go back in a week to make sure everything’s healing properly. Then two more visits later on for the more routine stuff. Sedation dentistry is the way to go.

Thank you, Dr. Peters and staff!

Either way, here’s to doing homework and sleeping a full night’s sleep.

G’night all!

The Vault of Archavon, accessible only when your faction controls the outdoor PVP zone Wintergrasp, is teeming with elementals between you and the four bosses. Two of those bosses actually have decent loot. Toravon the Ice Watcher and Koralon the Flame Watcher both drop mild upgrades for me and some of our friends, but more importantly, Toravon drops Emblems of Frost, which you can use to buy equipment upgrades with.

One of the nice things about the Toravon and Koralon fights is that they’re both DPS races to kill the boss faster than they kill you. What this means from a tank perspective is that you just have to not die. Fairly simple. No tricky target chasing, no threat wipes, basically nothing difficult to deal with.

Turns out that one of the two people we were missing from the ICC raid was actually one of our main tanks. Our other ICC tank was already saved to the Vault of Archavon, so he couldn’t come, which left us in the unenviable position of finding two tanks. Since we didn’t need 3 healers anymore, I offered my services to the guild and switched to my Protection gear and followed our other fill-in tank Spartagus into the fray.

Toravon has an annoying ability that’s mildly difficult to heal a single tank through, so the simple theory is to switch tanks several times throughout the fight to keep one tank from gaining all the debuffs and dying to massive frost damage. As usual, it went off without a hitch, except, this time, the second tank was me. I’ve tanked in Heroic dungeons often enough, but now instead of four people relying on me, it was nine. Nothing like a good adrenaline high. I know it may seem sad to get such a rush from doing something so honestly fantastical, but it was the first time I’d had a chance to prove myself to the guild as a tank. Sure, I’ve healed through dozens of raids since I got my paladin to 80, but I’ve never experienced the pure hatred of a raid boss on purpose. It’s hard enough to describe the feeling if you’ve never done it, but even now that I have, it’s not any easier to do.

By the time I was getting used to the idea of taunting the boss to save Spartagus from an awkward death, the fight was over. Yep, I’ll be the first to admit it. I was so in the zone watching my own and everyone else’s threat that I wasn’t paying attention to the boss’s hit points. By the time I’d started to taunt the boss the third time, he died. Yup, I didn’t know what happened. It’s pretty cheesy, but I was thrilled to survive a raid boss mostly unscathed.

Koralon doesn’t require such tricky tactics, but he does have an ability that could outright kill a tank. That fight is easy, I just stand next to Spartagus and share some of his damage. I was over the shock of getting to tank and was actually paying more attention to the boss and the raid than before, so I was able to be a bit more productive as a raider on that fight.

Nothing dropped from either boss that was really an upgrade but more importantly to me, I can honestly say that I’ve been graced with the honor of tanking in a raid for The Seekers of Truth, and that, at the end of the day, was well worth it.

G’night all!

8/13/10

If you click on it and take a peek, I’m hovering over my Attack Power. It’s basically a number that helps represent how hard I can hit with my arrows. Now, I’m usually not one to gloat over having the best of anything because my characters aren’t particularly well geared, but, in this instance… That’s just freaking high! That’s before any of my buffs that only work in combat, so it could have easily gotten up to around 8000 or so. Cool, but not so broken as it might seem.

And for those who are curious, yes, that’s little old me in an ICC 10-man raid. That night I ended up topping the DPS chart even though I’m using the “worst” talent specialization and gear two content patches old. Something to be said for skill versus gearscore.

So here is the first of hopefully several screenshots from my time online. Having the graphics all the way up leads to some fairly beautiful sunsets.

 8/2/10

First off, my freshman/sophomore year of school starts on Monday. It’s actually my second year, but because I’ve only completed 25 credit hours, I’m still considered a freshman for basically all purposes the university cares about. So far, things have been going really freakin’ well. I’ve got all the financial aid I need. This fall semester I don’t even need to take out loans. My grants and scholarships are taking care of everything. Just means I need to do extra well to keep them. My boyfriend has also taken the plunge and will be attending classes this semester as well as holding his job at the local library.

Secondly, my characters on World of Warcraft are doing well. I’ve been recently invited to come along on the guild raids of ICC, and after 3 successful raids, things are looking to turn permanent. The leaders were skeptical at first of my ability to heal the ICC raid but after I proved my worth and impressed them in both the 10- and 25-man versions, they’re coming around. Not all of a person’s skill can be quantified by how much 1337 g3@rz they have, and I’ve proven that fairly thoroughly.

Last but not least, it’s getting late, so I’m going to push these two posts and get some sleep. See you on the other side.

Waffle Boy signing out.