I started making a list of non-Horde-settlement, non-dungeon, non-Cataclysm locations that my Alliance Mage could visit in her quest for 50 coins to buy the Lunar Lantern pet and soon realized that a) she would have a very hard time getting to some of those places unassisted and b) there weren’t quite enough of them. She’ll just have to collect as many Kalimdor/Eastern Kingdoms coins as she can this year, then pop them in the bank until next year.

In the meantime, I decided to make some lanterns. There are probably tutorials for how to make paper lanterns floating around on the web somewhere, but I had ideas in my head for how I wanted to make them, so I didn’t bother looking up anything.

Supplies
20 gauge florist’s wire, waxed paper, purple and red tissue paper, clear Elmer’s glue, DMC E211 Pearlescent Effects Lilac embroidery floss, electric tea lights

Tools
needle-nose pliers/wire clippers, transparent plastic ruler, pencils, red purple and lilac Sharpies, clothespins, cups or bowls, scissors, a small piece of cardboard, tape

First I made the wire frames. The rectangular lantern is approximately 3x3x6 inches. The smaller circles for the round lantern were formed around the rim of the little pink cup and the large, pseudo-equatorial circle was formed around the rim of the small glass bowl. My measurements were only approximate and I was making it up as I went along, so they ended up rather lopsided.

I decided to cover the frames with a base layer of waxed paper before putting on the outer casing of pleated tissue paper. The rectangular lantern has already been done, and the object covered in clothespins in the lower left corner is the round lantern, in progress. I am also working on making tassels by wrapping the floss around a piece of card. Each tassel is wrapped eight times. I’m not very skilled yet about binding off tassels.

Rather than wrapping the lanterns with a continuous sheet, I decided to make four panels to go around. The panels for the rectangular lantern are in three layers — a base of waxed paper, a layer of purple tissue paper with just the central oval of the design cut out, and a second layer of purple tissue paper with the whole design cut out. I used the full width of the waxed paper for the height of the panels.
The short sides of the panels for the round lantern are approximately 1/4th of the circumference of the smaller wire circles in the frame, and the width at the middle of the hexagon is approximately 1/4th of the circumference of the larger wire circle in the frame. The height of the panels is 4x the average measurement from the smaller wire circles of the frame to the pseudo-equatorial larger circle. I did something a little different with the design for this lantern; it still has a base of waxed paper, but I put on only one layer of red tissue paper with all the holes cut out and filled in the outer parts of the design with lilac Sharpie.

When all the tissue paper layers were dry (I worked on this project over two days), I cut apart the panels and folded them accordion-style. The rectangular panels are being glued to the frame. In the front, I’ve put wire clips in the tassels to attach them to the bottom of the lantern frame. As you can see in the third picture, the tassels were initially quite frizzy. I smoothed them out with a little bit of glue. I used similar clips to attach strings at the top of each lantern for hanging.

Hang up your lanterns and enjoy some Lunar Festival Dumplings and Five Dawn Dumplings from The Gamer’s Fridge by their flickering light!

How do you express your geekery? Do you own obvious paraphernalia like a Horde-symbol bumper sticker, in-joke tshirts like the dps/ups pun, or less obviously related items like a gift from a guildie? Rather than physical indicators, do you mix nerd lingo into your everyday speech or talk/post about geekdom in non-nerd spaces? How do you advertise your nerd tendencies? Does it help you to attract new nerd friends?

Back in the day when Harry Potter was my major fandom, I was not shy about expressing it. Come to think of it, I’m still not shy about my love for JK Rowling’s world.

I have one of the black T-shirts from Warner Bros that says “I solemnly swear that I am up to no good” on the front and “Mischief Managed” on the back. I have another T-shirt with a custom Quidditch design that was made for a fan party I attended in 2004 that I still wear regularly. I went to midnight release parties for Books 6 and 7 in costume. I assessed new people I met in social situations by asking first, what they thought of Harry Potter in general, and second, whether they thought Hermione should end up with Harry or Ron (hint: “harmony”, in certain contexts, still makes me LOL). I had bumper stickers from a couple of my favorite HP fan sites on my car. I have a wand I bought at a Ren Faire, the Time Turner replica from Noble, a pint jar full of Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans (for display only!), and the Latin translation of Book 1 (no, I haven’t actually read it).

I made Hogwarts House scarves.

The body of the scarves is a knitted K1,P1 ribbing, I charted the letters myself, and the edgings are two crochet rows of my grandmother’s afghan stitch.

As a TA, I liked to give my students a fake quiz on the first day of class so that I’d have something to give back to them at the next class, to help me learn their names. The questions on my quiz were Snape’s three questions to Harry at his first Potions class (Philosopher’s Stone, p 137-138 in the Scholastic edition), and I noted at the bottom of the page that I’d stolen the questions from Snape. I’ll probably print up some new copies of that quiz to bring to my first Chem 112 lab classes next week.

When I was doing undergraduate research, I drew Snape on my fume hood.

No, really.

I drew a more elaborate mural on the fume hood I used as a graduate student:

and with paper behind it, to improve the contrast for the photo…

Left to Right: Telemain, Max & Valerie from “The Princess Bride”, Snape, Harry & Hermione & Ron, Morwen

My undergrad advisor was amused, but my graduate advisor was not.

Speaking of fume hoods, another of my favorite T-shirts is the one I picked up from an American Chemical Society meeting that says “Experiment With A Chemist” on it. I have another T-shirt with the periodic table showing the Nuclear Magnetic Resonance spin properties of each element, which I got when I went to the Experimental NMR Conference one year. I have a few other chemistry shirts from undergrad chemistry club. I never managed to get the physics club T-shirt that had on it “And God said: [Maxwell's equations of electromagnetism] And there was Light.”, but I have many times wished that I did. I always tried to wear one of my chemistry shirts on the days when I was in lab with my students.

I’ve been more subtle about my World of Warcraft geekiness. I try not to talk about WoW on my LiveJournal or my Facebook, because I know that potential employers will probably find those places — as far as I know, there are only two people in the whole world with my real first name, which makes me ridiculously easy to Google-stalk. And both BTH’s parents and my parents disapprove of how much time we spend playing the game

Still, a few years ago, I bought BTH and myself matching Dalaran University T-shirts from J!NX as an anniversary present. I talked BTH into getting me the Windrider Cub, and then I bought the Gryphon Hatchling “for him” — but because he is FOR THE HORDE, of course he wasn’t interested in the in-game pet and I got it anyway They sit on top of my art desk in the living room, and if we had people over more often, I’m sure I’d get questions about them. I like to doodle during church — many of the pictures in my Gallery were done on Sunday — and sometimes the people sitting next to me ask me about what I’m drawing. I usually answer that I’m drawing characters from a computer game that I play, but I don’t specify that the game is WoW very often.

Even though I don’t really advertise my WoW-geekery and can’t necessarily say that it’s gained me any new nerd friends “IRL”, it has given me a funny story or two.

After BTH and I got married and “graduated” from the Singles Ward, I was called to be a leader in the Young Women’s program in our new ward. One evening, I was at a mid-week activity that was combined, with both the Young Women and the Young Men. As I was roaming around watching how my girls were doing, I passed by the older brother of one of my girls, talking to his friends, and something in their conversation caught my ear. I slowed down so I could listen. They were talking about Death Knight DPS, and at one point the boy was trying to remember the name of the ability that spreads diseases around. “Pestilence,” I said. “Yeah, that’s it!”, the boy said, and the three of them continued their conversation for a few seconds — and then they all looked at me with a supremely wierded OUT! expression on their faces and fell silent until I’d moved on.
Later, that same boy started seeking BTH and I out at church to talk to us about WoW and raiding and epix and suchlike, and I was glad that we could be adults that he could talk to about the game as fellow fans.

Drawn a couple years ago with Crayola “Color Surge” markers and paper.

I am beavering away at picking up Festival Dresses & Suits with all the alts I’ve rolled since last Lunar Festival. Last year at this time, I had 27 toons at or over level 10. This year, I have 40. Even Kaumalea gets to pick out some Lunar Finery, because it is purchased with tokens rather than gold. My Night Elf Mage, Katelyra, got herself a Festival Dress last year. This year, she’s decided that she needs a Lunar Lantern. As she’s only level 26, getting 50 Coins of Ancestry is going to be quite the challenge!

Then I wondered what the elemental reagents will be called. They were simply “Elemental” this-and-that in vanilla, “Primal” in Outland, “Eternal” in Northrend, and “Volatile” in Cataclysm… what comes next? I think that either “Forgotten” or “Mystical” would be appropriate to the setting of a lost continent.

I’m not going to write out a comprehensive, semi-detailed “bucket list” of things I want to do in WoW. I’ve found that, for me, making a written list can turn a creative project into a series of chores and effectively kill my enthusiasm for actually finishing the project — better to keep the list in my head and risk forgetting a few of the items of lesser importance. A lot of the stuff on my list runs along the lines of play through zone X with character A, zone Y with character B, and zone Z with character C. The only thing on the list that is really time-constrained by needing to be done before Pandaria is playing through Theramore/Dustwallow Marsh from the Alliance perspective, and I’ve already got an appropriately-leveled toon parked in Theramore waiting for me to just do it.

BTH got accepted to the other guild he’d applied to and transferred his Bear Tank over to the new server, leaving his Tankadin and his Hunter in ES (for the time being). Kamalia and Kerisa are still in ES. I’m not sure what BTH’s new guild’s policy on social members is, and their 25s team already has two Resto Shaman. I also don’t want to move Kamalia out of ES until mini-Kam is prepped to take her place — or at least level 85 and ready to give back all her heirlooms.

BTH’s new server is Bloodhoof. It’s a PvE server, and I’d have moved my lower-level Tauren alts and their guild over there already except for a couple of difficulties. First, I already have toons on Bloodhoof. Bloodhoof is where I’ve been keeping all my “gimmick” characters — the underpowered Death Knight, Thrifty-lynne and Iron-lynne, the Goblin Time Capsule, and the Gilneas Time Capsule. Kaumalea can be server-transferred, but the others can’t. I’d have to delete them — setting back my 2012 in 2012 progress — and reroll them on a new server if I wanted to bring Kamalia’s family over to Bloodhoof. And if I did that, I might not reroll the Chiselspark twins at all, as I’m having more fun with my own variation on the concepts (the underpowered DK). Second, when I looked up the guild transfer information, I discovered that a guild has to be at least level 2 to be eligible for server-transfer. My alt guild is just under 50% of the way from level 1 to level 2 — and I’m not sure I even really want the 5% bonus XP perk from guild level 2 for those characters, anyway. I could get more guild XP by going questing and dungeon-running with those characters, particularly the two highest level toons in the guild — Kregga the DK, who would, at some point, like to go to Well of Eternity and see how she looks as a Night Elf, and Ketura the Hunter, who recently dinged 81 while doing Argent Tournament dailies and mining around Icecrown.

But leveling mini-Kam and leveling my alt guild conflict with each other. Mini-Kam is already in ES and actually wants the guild bonus XP perks. Adding another degree of conflict just on Lightninghoof, because I went to all the trouble of getting Kerisa a Tsunami card, I feel like I really ought to get her geared for Resto and run some endgame content — dungeons and maaaaybe LFR — with her as a healer.

And doing things to advance the goals of my higher-level characters conflicts with 2012 in 2012, because that objective will advance most rapidly if I pile on the levels by playing with my lower-level characters.

As you can see, I’m having a really hard time prioritizing my various objectives. I usually end up just playing whatever I feel like at the time, and while I have a lot of fun, most of my goals don’t advance very quickly at all. Not to mention the things I’m doing or want to do outside of the game…! Too many fun things to do, too little time!

sigh

Now that you’ve listened to me whine, how about some cheese to go with it?

My Hunter is a Beast Master, so I’ve felt like she ought to have at least one Exotic pet in her stable. I wasn’t really interested in most of the Exotic pet families, however. Finally, I decided to tame Arcturis, the Spirit Bear…

… and I named it as an anagram of BTH’s Bear Tank’s name.

I am very impressed with how clever Navimie is to have come up with all of these crossword puzzles for me and others!

I do feel a little guilty that my desire to be done with regularly scheduled raiding for awhile (and not do Heroic modes) has contributed to the downsizing of ES’s raid team from 25s to 10s. The thought of leaving ES makes me sad, I’d still like to participate in the Thursday night alt run from time to time, and we got BTH’s sister invited into ES over Christmas vacation — but she won’t be playing WoW again until summer because of school. So I’ve rolled up a Mini-Me — a re-creation of Kamalia in her younger days — to stay in ES after BTH has found a new guild to run 25s with.

Loaded up with a full kit of Heirlooms (except for the Dread Pirate Ring, as I haven’t really bothered with the Northrend Fishing Tournament), mini-Kam is ready to HEAL ALL THE THINGS.

We’ll see how far she gets in the next couple of weeks. After that, her progress — and that of all my other characters — is likely to slow substantially. I’ve gotten a job as an adjunct professor teaching a couple of general chemistry lab sections at a local university, and the semester begins on January 30th. I chose to take morning sections, which begin at 7:30 am, so between having to get up significantly earlier in the morning than I’ve been used to doing for the past two years and keeping up with the grading, I’ll have a lot less evening time to play WoW in addition to a lot less middle-of-the-day time for it!

Not long after I drew this picture, I had the opportunity to create the scenario in-game in Ashenvale, although my Orc character was a Shaman instead of a Hunter.

Of course, turning off one’s interface and taking screenshots while in combat is often a good way to get killed — but at least Keshona and her opponent went down at the same time!

Or was?

I was all excited to go finally defeat Spine of Deathwing on 25s and make our first attempts at Madness of Deathwing on 25s this week. BTH was looking forward to completing those encounters on Normal difficulty — he ran LFR every chance he could get during our vacation (I haven’t set foot in it yet). When we logged into WoW and Mumble on Tuesday night, however, we joined instead a solemn, serious, saddening conversation about how the RL Boss has taken away enough of ES’s raiders that the officers are considering downsizing to 10s.

I’ve said for a long time that I don’t really care whether I’m raiding 25s or 10s, as long as I get to raid at least some of the time. BTH thinks that 25s are a lot more fun than 10s — but I think I’d rather run 10s with people I like than 25s with people I don’t like. I have enjoyed raiding 25s with ES, but a lot of that has really been because of the personalities in the guild, and not so much because of the larger raid size in and of itself. I told the officers that I’d be happy to stay in ES if it becomes a 10s guild, but that if BTH goes looking for another guild/realm, I’d probably end up going with him.

I was uncertain about switching to ES even though I wasn’t really socially happy in our previous two guilds just because I didn’t know what to expect out of a new guild. Now I’m even more socially insecure about leaving for another guild/realm because I actually enjoy being in ES. (I already miss the people who are gone for RL reasons )

BTH is starting to consider realm-switching, and I’m not quite sure how I feel about that.

If BTH goes to a PvE realm, though, I would definitely want to follow him. I hate — like Alizabal hates — being ganked while I’m questing or farming. Kamalia is only on a PvP realm because that’s where BTH already had friends and a high level toon when I started playing. Guild/raiding ties, my ever-growing number of alts, and now an alt guild & guild bank have been keeping me there. It would cost a lot of money to move eight characters plus a guild and guild bank to a new realm… but then, I spend money on transferring one or two characters at a time every three or four months anyway as I change my mind about how my various alts ought to be sorted.

If BTH goes to another PvP realm, I’d still transfer Kamalia & family to a PvE realm, and I’d power-level Kilauea to raid with him. As much as I like being part of the ES community, social ties aren’t enough to keep me on a PvP realm in the absence of active raiding involvement on that realm — though I might leave a newly-rolled alt in ES just to keep in touch. But raiding with a Resto Shaman that wasn’t Kamalia, and not raiding with Kamalia herself… well, it just wouldn’t be quite the same.

~*~*~

The official raid was 10s again this week, and people who’d been away for the past two or three weeks were given priority for the spots. We cleared through gunship easily on Tuesday, and last night we took on Deathwing.

Madness of Deathwing took only four or five attempts, and while it was a fun fight indeed, I must confess to some disappointment that we didn’t spend a month wiping on it the way we did with Cho’gall, Al’Akir, Nefarian2.0, and Ragnaros2.0.

Unless we manage to get enough people to continue doing 25s, Normals are finished. And yet, I’m not particularly enthusiastic about doing these fights on Heroic (especially Ultraxion). I’ll still stick around until Falowin completes his legendary daggers, but I wasn’t expecting Dragon Soul to be over nearly so quickly.

The world has changed, and now we must all find new places within it.

My goal before 2012 is over is to have two thousand and twelve levels between all my characters.

In other words, during 2012, get the sum of the levels of all the characters on a single WoW account to 2012 (or more).

Being the confirmed altoholic that I am, and having already expressed my intention to stop raiding and focus on leveling alts after ES completes its first set of Fangs of the Father, this challenge is absolutely irresistable!

I summed up the levels of all my existing characters (42 of them, not counting placeholders) and found that, with 1295/2012 levels, I am already over halfway there. I don’t have two Rogues, though, so I guess I’ll have to roll another one.