"Free" Time

Been busy over the holidays and such. December had hubby's parents visit, which is always nice. But work was incredibly busy with a huge case scheduled for trial Jan. 4. It mostly settled, but not until after I'd done pretty much all pre-trial work. At least my billings are good. January continued about the same, with the big case going to arbitration, plus two other biggish cases that needed briefs.

What free time I have is spent either doing cheerleading stuff with my oldest, or my computer games. Hubby doesn't really care for C's "sport of choice" so its pretty much up to me to take her to all practices and competitions. Sure, its not soccer or some other "sport", but its very much like gymnastics, plus it promotes a team spirit. Whatever she likes that keeps her active, and while not necessarily cheap, its less expensive than some other activities. And at least the times of her practices are workable with my work schedule. So many other kids activities start right after school, 4pm and such. Still, hopefully E will chose some activity S likes more, so he won't mind chauffering her to practices and programs.

I've been splitting my computer time between raiding in Rift and leveling in SWTOR. SW has been a lot of fun, the story line is, imo, far superior to the fantasy story lines, or at least a lot more engaging and involved. Likely having a known backstory is a big help. From what I understand, there's so many different ways to play the game, even doing some of the same quests will provide a good variation in how the stories play out. For probably the first time in years, I'm actually looking forward to running several alternate characters.

Hopefully there will still be others doing the same, so I'll have people to group with for the heroic quests. That's one problem a lot of games have, after the initial few months, the lower level areas become ghost towns and difficult to get groups for certain quests. I play SW mostly on the weekends, when not rushing around at cheer stuff. Haven't yet seen or heard much about the end game, I don't know if SW has the raids comparable to the fantasy games. Guess we'll see.

My weeknights are mostly spent raiding with my guild in Rift. I wish some of my old guildies had kept at it. I do like the new people I've met in the game, but I miss a lot of my old friends as well, both from LoD/EQ/WoW and my old Rift guild. Its pretty ironic that my old Rift guild, Penumbra, broke up because a couple of key players were unsatisfied with our slowish progress, so they joined DHB to "raid better." Yet only a few months later, after I too had joined DHB, they all quit playing Rift completely.

The new guild is pretty fun, but sometimes I still feel like the new person. And it gets frustrating sometimes when bad luck in a fight means I have to sit out a 10 man raid in favor of someone else who didn't have the bad luck.

For the most part, at least, there's been little "guild drama" that I experienced a lot in EQ. But then, I'm not part of the officer crew as well (for at least partly that reason). We did have one, when another guild merged with ours, and one of its officers got upset when she wasn't told about a problem over another merged member who was trying to set up weekend raids outside our established guild loot guidelines.

The merged officer threw a fit, and threatened to quit taking her 15+guildies with her. When our guild leader called her bluff, she did leave, but only 3 others followed. The rest remained with our guild. This officer and her 3 friends ended up transferring to another server to find a guild to join. In applying to another guild, they said how their former guild hadn't progressed more in Hammerknell because some members had "issues with following instructions and game mechanics." Yet, the first raid night we have after those people left, we downed the next two bosses in Hammerknell that we were stuck at when they were here. Hah!

At least by playing two games, I'm not getting bored with either one. While I certainly could do more stuff in Rift to improve my character (I'm behind most other players in getting the ton o'planarite needed for resist cores, factions for the extra stat boost food/runes and attunement experience), I know I'd get bored if I had to grind for all that several days a week, when not raiding. As it is, I try to do some of that a few hours a week, its slow, but at least it doesn't bore me.

So what have I given up with no other free time? Reading books mostly. I read some on the train, but usually with my kindle. I have a good dozen books at home that I had bought (some were pre-kindle, some were after but far cheaper bought used than through kindle) and I wonder if I'll ever get through them. I've gotten spoiled with my kindle so I don't want to carry around a big book, so that limits reading them at home. But I don't have much time for that anymore. Takes me a good month to get through a book these days.

I need to find some new authors soon. Some of my old-favs seem to be running out of a lot of steam in their series. I suppose after 20 books with the same characters, it all starts to get very repetitive. Hopefully ASOFAI will finish up in another two books or so, before that becomes stale.

At least I don't have to waste time watching the news these days. Its all politics, presidential primary/campaigns. I don't have time, or need to hear that stuff. I don't think anything will change my mind on my votes, so I'd rather just fastforward to November, please. All this money in politics just makes the whole process so extended, I can't wait for it to be over. Please, give us our TV/media "free" time back.