Precious to Me

 [Since my tablet is broken I bit the bullet and illustrated this with markers.  You'll probably have the click the images to enlarge and read them :)]

I got into a conversation the other day with Spencer about how pearls are my favorite precious gem.  Later, while speaking to my (ex)manager about the same thing, he interrupted me, saying they were semi-precious.  I replied with slight irritation and not-so-slight twang, "Ah don't cay-ure." and then continued what I was saying.

Personally, I don't care if a gem is precious or not.  In my opinion, pearls aren't even gems, jewels, or anything of the sort.  They're more like. . .hardened mollusk snot.  It's because of this that I like pearls so much.  It's almost ironic that something so beautiful and revered comes from such icky origins.

When a piece of sand or something else weird gets inside of a mollusk's shell, if it's irritating enough to the soft tissue, the mollusk will form a pearl around it by adding layer after layer of some kind of hardened liquid.  That's like a human being making the conscious decision to grow something around the tag of his shirt because it's itchy.

Due to my love of such irony, I actually bought my boyfriend and I something pearl related for valentines day.  Girly, I know, but I wanted to give him something strange, nifty, and romantic.  Pearls do manage hit all of those targets.

While visiting a gift shop in Tarapin, Florida I came across a display of "wishing pearls".  Basically, a company farms pearls inside of clams, takes the clam and preserves it in alcohol, sticks it in a can and packs it in a box with a necklace to put the pearl inside.  You're supposed to open the can, open the clam, take the pearl out and compare it to their "colour chart" to see what your pearl represents.  Unfortunately, both of our pearls were some kind of strange, in-between colour of every colour on the planet.

Then, you are to put the pearl inside of the little necklace and wear it forever.  Spencer made his into a keychain to combat the girliness of the whole concept.  I'm glad, because I was super worried about what he'd think of the pearl.  I bought it more for the experience of finding a pearl inside of something even though the label on the box told me I would.

So worried, in fact, that a week before valentines day I called my mom and asked her whether or not it was downright ridiculous that I bought him the thing in the first place.  I told her why I liked pearls and why I wanted him to have one and she replied, "That's hilarious.  Oysters create pearls by smoothing over something rough in their shell and people give each other gifts on Valentines Day to smooth over rough patches in their relationships."  Suddenly, everything made sense.  Or it would have if Spencer and I ever argued enough to induce gift-apologies.  Most of our arguments are mild, include nothing but grumpy faces, and end in both of us going, "Aaaah, I'm so sorry aaaah."

I think it's because we're so dang compatible.  We just don't have much to argue about.  When we do fight, it's because one of us is stressed out.  They're never bad enough to induce screaming and severe anger.  Which is good because if I could grow pearls around things that irritate me, what would stop me from turning him into a giant statue of hardened mucus?  Not only that, but what would stop me from forming pearls around everything I own?

Pearls may only be semi-precious, but I find them to be the most precious of all shiny and coveted things.  A creature as simple as a mollusk takes something obnoxious and turns it into something humans consider beautiful enough to wear as jewelry.  The mollusk doesn't know this is going to happen; all it cares about is fixing the irritation.

We could learn a lot from this.  Why not try fixing things that bug us instead of dwelling on them?  I could drag an argument out for weeks if I really wanted to.  Instead, I like to quit while I'm ahead, wait to cool down and apologize when I'm not in hyper-mode.  I just wait until I've had time to think, smooth some logic over whatever irritated me in the first place, and wait for it to harden into something more clarifying.

I'd rather not waste my time arguing with the man I love when  every moment I have with him is as precious to me as a hardened glob of mollusk secretions.

Runescape - This one is loooooong

 (This is long and wordy, but there's a comic at the end to make up for it.)

            I play runescape.  Unfortunately, everyone’s response to this is, “Runescape?  Ew, why?” so I get extremely defensive and spew things like, “They’ve really improved the graphics!”.  I actually have an entire spiel as to why Runescape is tons better than it was and why everyone should play.  However, I’m not going to bore you with this even though it would be funny to imagine me saying all those things while gradually getting more and more flustered.  For some reason I really dislike the fact that everyone hates runescape.  More so, what people seem to think of me afterwards.

            Or that might just be my paranoia.

            Anyways, I played as a tyke but eventually quit after I had done everything you could in the free game except for the dragon quest which I still refuse to do.  Then, several years later, I realized that I had money and could pay for a membership.  To represent how much better a membership is than the free game, I shall draw a diagram using cake:

           Everybody loves a slice of cake.  It’s sweet, moist and definitely delicious.  Free to play Runescape is a lot like this.  It’s a fun, really great game with okay graphics and plenty to do.  Very cool for a free game.

            Then, you have an entire wedding cake.  Wedding cakes are specially formulated to meet the extremely high standards of a crazed, bridezilla.  Wedding cakes are gorgeous, tasty, and there’s just so very much of it.  Nobody ever forgets their first slice of wedding cake.  The second you put it in your mouth you think, “No cake will ever amount to this.”

            Memberships are indeed wedding cakes.  Not only is there about 75% more stuff to do, but is you compare the size of the member’s map to the size of the free to play map it’s kind of like comparing a small slice of cake to a statuesque wedding cake.

            For a while, the member’s stuff had me super excited about Runescape and I was playing almost constantly.  Unfortunately, with the way I play video games, I soon got bored with actually doing things and just kind of derped around like I do with most other games.

            I hardly ever play a video game with any effort.  As I said before, I really just derp around until something happens, or until I find something completely irrelevant to strive for.  Let’s use the Fable series as an example.  I have beaten the first, haven’t played much of the second, and I’m about to beat the third.  All I did in any of those games was run around finding clothes to wear and people to woo into holy matrimony.  I still have no idea how I managed to beat them.

            I play Runescape the same way.  I’ll spend hours getting the supplies to bake pizzas and while doing so somehow level up four times and beat a quest I didn’t even know I was on.

The curse with this is that once I run out of will to do useless things, I get bored and go do something else.  Therefore, even with all the amazing quests and new skills, I stopped playing Runescape for a while.

Then, a few months later, I decided I should work on my crafting level.  I spent hours making bowstrings on autopilot because I decided I needed to go from level 12 to level 38 in crafting.  I literally made thousands of those things while watching several episodes of Law and Order SVU.  During one of my level ups, I was notified that I could now make a certain kind of robe in a place called Daemonheim.  “Daemonheim?!”  I shouted.  “That’s so many letters!  I gotta find that place.”

So, I pulled up my world map, found the place and walked all the way up there just to see what the heck it was.

In doing so, I discovered the greatest thing ever.

In Daemonheim, you can utilize this skill called Dungeoneering.  Basically, you get thrown in a dungeon with no weapons, no food, no armour, no nothing.  You work your way through this dungeon with a party, sharing skills and working together to get everyone weapons, food, armour, and anything else you might need.  It’s great, because you have to make all of this stuff yourself with what you find in the dungeon.  Paired with puzzles and enemies, Dungeoneering appeals to all sorts of video gaming needs.

Therefore, I fell in love with Dungeoneering and ran dungeons every day for months.  However, they get lonely by yourself and I try to avoid spending time with strangers on runescape (they’re all 12 and very, very angry).  If my sister wasn’t in the mood to Dungeoneer, I wouldn’t go.  Eventually this fizzled out as well, and I stopped playing for a month or two.

The third time I got back into Runescape was a month or two ago when my sister was visiting me.  We were playing together on our laptops so we could get some “quality time” in when we started to notice some really cool looking clothes.  People were running around wearing things we’d never seen before.  We asked around, and people told us what they were, but we couldn’t find them on any databases or at the Grand Exchange.  Finally, we ended up at a clothing store in Varrock only to discover that the Runescape crew had added about a bagillion new outfits to choose from.  Not only that, but it was free for us to change clothes for the entire day.

As Fable taught me, one of my favorite things to do in video games is dress up my characters.  I’ll spend so much money on clothing, dye, hair styles and everything in between.  Runescape had made my day, and I spent an hour completely revamping my entire character.  He went from one big derp to a blacksmith with awesome hair, an entire personality/backstory, and a fictional wife.  This new outfit completely rekindled my love for the game and I suddenly started doing everything with a lot more effort.

Unfortunately, with work and school, I have little time to play Runescape.  Though, my boyfriend has saved me from this, because I managed to get him into the game.  Now I can play more because I’ll be playing with him.  It’s all about that “quality time”, ya know.

In fact, he made his account last night, and my sister and I logged on to meet him.  Once we got there, I noticed that both my sister and my boyfriend play characters who look pretty much like they do in real life.  I do not.

So while Spencer looks like a wizardly version of himself with my hair colour, and while my sister looks like a tanner version of herself with lots of weapons, I look like a burly, white haired blacksmith with sideburns and sandals.  I’m sure the reason behind this is because I do play video games like a giant derp-machine.  I can’t even recall ever playing a character that was the same gender as myself let alone one that resembled me in any way.

The fact that Spencer’s character looks like him is hilarious to me, because we still talk like lovey dovey idiots to each other in the game.  So while we see the conversations as being perfectly normal, the other players see two burly men cooing at each other.

Now I enjoy a good man kiss just as much as the next, but since boyfriend’s character looks so much like him, all I saw was him nomming my Runescape character’s face.  It was such a strange mental image that I actually called my boyfriend and asked him if it was okay if I drew a detailed picture of him kissing Elfleda.

Also, completely unrelated, I just bought two tickets to see the B-52s, heeeeeee.

tl;dr I play runescape (username: Elfleda), Spencer and I are so gay, and LOVE SHACK, BABY LOVE SHACK. 

Feesh

This one's huge, and completely drawn!  If you can't read anything, click the panel to enlarge it :)

 

 

 

 I should add, before I went up to see Bill I asked, "Is Bill naked?" and everyone said no.