Tahas tagged me to do it and Forreststump started it.

A post of resolutions:

WoWRes#1:  Get Loremaster.  Srsly - I WILL have it.  If I don't manage to get it this year I will be severely disappointed with myself.

WoWRes#2:  Pick a fel-damned main.  (Maybe this should be my #1 before I work on Loremaster, huh?)

WoWRes#3:  Find friends and a good friendly guild on whatever server I end up on.

 

RLRes#1:  Find a job.  While I know that beggars can't be choosers, I'd like one that doesn't kill my brain, whether from boredom nor yet stupidity of the job.

RLRes#2:  Knit something more complicated than socks. 

RLRes#3:  Be happy.

I know that some of you are severely allergic to memes, but if you're not that type, feel free to tag yourself for this post of resolutions.

More than two weeks after Anexxia started the whole thing, I'm finally getting around to doing it, after Naithin tagged me.

Without further ado:

What did you do in World of Warcraft that you've never done before?

Played a Death Knight.  On a PvP server!  On a PvP server whose name doesn't somehow correlate to the race of the DK!  The sky is falling!

What was your favorite new place that you visited?

Northrend!  A whole new continent to explore!  As beautiful as all the areas were (most of them, anyway) I loved Storm Peaks the most - the landscape, the music, the quests... love it!

What would you like to have in 2010 that you lacked in 2009?

I would like to get a second character to 80 (I have four characters sitting at 70 right now!  Four!)  I'd like to tank - successfully.  And I want to get Loremaster, dammit!

What was your biggest achievement of the year?

(I feel so horrible that I envisioned the Achievement page in WoW when I initially thought of this question.)  And also that an achievement doesn't immediately come to mind!  It could be that I finally beat the Frogger boss on my own (really!  Without making Lus do it for me!)  Perhaps it could just be the humble achievement of reaching 80 on Anea. 

What was your biggest failure?

Altitis.  By far.  I just kept making alt after alt after alt, trying to find "the one" and I wasted months of time and effort with it.  I try not to think about what could have been done with all that time if invested in only one character, but that makes me want to cry a bit, so we won't think about it.

What did you get really, really, really excited about?

Besides little silly excitement about vanity pets here or there, I think the thing that's had me most excited all year in WoW was the LFG tool.  That thing is AWESOME.

What do you wish you'd done less of?

Alting :(  Or perhaps overthinking - if I could just clear my mind of all the worries and concerns that seem to be inherent when I'm finding a "new main" I may have been able to enjoy one before December!

What was your favorite WoW blog or podcast?

Even though I have several favorites, it seems like some have either stopped updating or just don't update hardly at all.  Perhaps few updates make for part of the allure of Letters to Azeroth - in addition to the writing itself, of course.  (I wonder if I can elicit another post from him - let's see!)

Tell us a valuable WoW lesson you learned in 2009.

"If at first you don't succeed, try and try again."  This is applicable in so many ways - from boss fights to class info to attempting to play a class that just never ever worked for you until you try a spec that no one else will endorse, or a class that you swore you'd never play.

 

Also: don't forget my RSS/link notice!

... an award!

Faulsey has so kindly complimented me by awarding me with The Honest Scrap award.  Faulsey!  Who way back when I met him said he was "bad at commenting" as an excuse for not commenting on my blog; I maintain that I can't comment on his blog because I know less than nothing about hunters, so we more than made up for commenting stalemates with Twitter madness.  (BTW, Faulsey, I want proof of this rapid-fire brogue you claim to have.  This is for scientific purposes only and has nothing at all to do with the fact that I get all bubbly inside when I hear a Scottish accent.  /nodnod)


"This award is bestowed on a fellow blogger whose blog content or design is, in the giver's opinion, brilliant."

1. When accepting this auspicious award, you must write a post bragging about it, including the name of the misguided soul who thinks you deserve such acclaim, and link back to the said person so everyone knows she/he is real.


2. Choose a minimum of seven (7) blogs that you find brilliant in content or design. Or improvise by including bloggers who have no idea who you are because you don’t have seven friends. Show the seven random victims’ names and links and leave a harassing comment informing them that they were prized with Honest Weblog. Well, there’s no prize, but they can keep the nifty icon.


3. List at least ten (10) honest things about yourself. Then pass it on!

In keeping with the other recipient's/giver's honest things about themselves, this will be RL-flavored:

1. Even though I now live (way) down south in the swamps of Louisiana, I am a Colorado native and will always think of myself as a Colorado girl.


2. I'm a southpaw.


3. My dearest wish is to be able to go back to Egypt.  I'd also love to learn Arabic.


4. I LOVE to travel and learn & experience different cultures while I'm abroad (not just sit on some beach or in a hotel.)


5. The large majority of the books in my library are historical fiction.


6. I used to play classical piano and even dabbled with the harp for a few years.


7. I am attempting to learn how to knit.  I have yet to finish a pair of socks though.


8. When I can, I keep fresh flowers in a vase on the dresser - it makes the room so much brighter.


9. Laundry is one chore I really don't mind doing - I like folding things just so and putting them in their correct places.  Dishes can DIAF.


10. I don't care about making my hands pretty, but I regularly indulge in pedicures.  Pretty toes make me happy.


11. I am not as girly as I have made myself sound.

Even harder than coming up with ten (slightly interesting) things about me is naming only seven other bloggers!  But I will try my best. In order of random:

• Jov & Seri of World of Snarkcraft - their content is always helpful and informative and that injection of snark pushes WoS to the top of lots of reader's lists.


• Kagrra of The Druid Team - I got drawn in by the Housing posts and every graphical post that my favorite plum tree makes is above and beyond.


• Keeva of Tree Bark Jacket - Keeva's blog caught my attention by the interesting name and by the layout and header that matched so appropriately and beautifully.


• Anna of Too Many Annas - I don't think that I could say enough good things about her blog and content so I won't even try. I will just say <3


• Salanthe of All My Mains - we go back all the way to wow_ladies, so I was pleased when she restarted her wow blogging at AMM!


• Grimtorn of Me and My Ghoul - my favorite DeadCow to /glomp and chat with. Me and My Ghoul also has a very unique look that actually made me stop and look at a *cringe* DK blog. ;)


• Aurik of /hug - I've lurked on this blog for the longest time. Aurik's blog has the distinction of being the only blog whose header makes me go, "d'aaawwwwwww!"

Klinderas tagged anyone who read his post about the meaning behind your character's names and Fulguralis had started the initial inquiries.  I had hesitated to partake in this because with Anea, I hadn't really thoroughly researched a name, put a meaning into it and made sure the meaning matched the character and class as I usually do.  I could give you a whole list of names I put work into but the character that ended up being my main was Anea, priestess of the Nice Sounding Name.

Really, I did choose Anea after it satisfied several criteria, but they were largely subjective: Did it sound pretty?  Was it "Draenei" enough?  Was it a name a priest would have?  Did it make you feel calmed when you said it out loud? (Very important if she was to be a healing priest.)  So, I felt good about the name.  I felt it matched the character.  They meshed and felt like one.  (I'll elaborate on this in another post.)

When I rolled Anea, I rolled her as a-NAY-a.  I soloed my way to mid-60s before I was guilded, not thinking that the name could possibly be mispronounced.  Then one day I was guilded, so I hop on vent and I'm greeted with a chorus of, "Hey, a-NEE-a!"  Because I was new, I didn't speak up and never corrected their pronunciation and a-NEE-a I stayed.  Yes, I was sad that I hadn't said anything.  The name wasn't as pretty as the one I had picked out.  But it worked.  (Looking back, I think a part of it was that I have an extremely hard name to pronounce IRL, so I'm used to people messing up my name, so that's probably another reason why I didn't correct them.)

At any rate, because this is a post about what the names mean too and not how they were bastardized over vent, I decided to see if Anea really did mean anything.  Through links that were linked on a link, I found a page that listed "Aneya" as a Greek version of the Hebrew name Hannah, which means grace.

I am really quite pleased with this and will willingly put the "meant to be" tag on it, since that's a large part of what I was trying to convey with Anea's name when I created her.



As Klinderas did, I will decline to tag three people since I don't want anyone to feel left out but I will strongly encourage everyone to participate!

Follow up this post with Naming names: a query.