Currently - March & April 2019

Helloooooo my favourite friends!

Given that I took an unscheduled hiatus to move into a new apartment, I figured it would be a good idea to catch you all up on what I've been up to since you last heard from me (not counting my recent post reflecting on the 6 year anniversary of the VlogIggles, which you should go check out btw!). Let's get started with my favourite category - GAMES!

 I'm not gonna lie, the game (and overall thing) that has taken up a large percentage of my life over the past while has been playing World of Warcraft. And no, I'm pretty sure I'm not addicted XD But since the new expansion came out last August, I've been logging into WoW as often as possible, and it's been especially fun because my boyfriend recently re-joined WoW, and he became a member of the same guild as me!

My WoW character Allaéda and my boyfriend's WoW character Grunn during Love Is In The Air 2019

Mostly when the two of us play together it's during a guild activity like raid nights or other things like dungeon runs. But Kurt has been really awesome in helping me improve as a player, because I want to become a better raider and make my guild proud! I'll tell you guys a secret - just don't tell anyone in my guild XD - but for years I played WoW as what you would call a "clicker" - aka using the mouse more often than the keyboard for attacks and spells. I've been working really hard to overcome this habit and re-train myself to play with the keyboard. Kurt has been patient with me as he's helped me create key binds and macros to make raiding a whole lot easier.

Group shots of the raiders in my guild, Safe Word, on the Kilrogg US server. The left picture was taken on the boat that took us to the fight with Jaina (each of us seated on the rarest mount we own), and the second picture was taken after we finally defeated Jaina on Heroic difficulty.

Originally I was part of a guild called Storm, but a big chunk of the members of that guild decided to start a whole new guild, which is called Safe Word (I didn't get a vote in the name, I swear 😝). Since Battle for Azeroth has released, we've been enjoying playing together through Mythic+ dungeons as well as progressing through Normal & Heroic raiding. We've been dipping our toes into Mythic raiding a little bit but our guild doesn't currently have enough members playing at a Mythic level in order to progress past the 2nd boss in Battle for Dazar'alor. That being said, raiding with these guys has been a lot of fun! I used to main a Blood Elf Rogue but was asked to change my spec for BfD, so now I play as a Nightborne Warlock.

Video games haven't been the only games I've been playing lately! A couple months back, a group of myself and 4 of my friends started getting together to play regular sessions of Betrayal: Legacy. For those who don't know, Betrayal at House on the Hill is an incredibly fun tabletop game that has massive replayability, and a large percentage of my friends adore the original game. When I learned about this new legacy version I was both excited as well as intimidated at the idea, because I'd never played a legacy board game before or done any sort of regular gaming session like D&D or anything like that. But playing with this group has been insanely fun, and it has me looking forward to Sunday each week! Although our board gaming sessions will be put on hold for the foreseeable future, as one member of our group recently had surgery so we'll be waiting until she is in recovery and feeling good enough to start playing again.

Somehow among all this time spent gaming I've managed to find time to get a little reading done too 😄 I've gotten a little behind with regard to reading novels - right now I'm currently reading My Almost Flawless Tokyo Dream Life by Rachel Cohn & I've been reading it since February or March XP - but with the recent move, I was able to get a library card for the area I'm living in now, and this library allows me to access this site/app called Hoopla, where I can get access to books, audio books, movies, TV shows, and even comic books, absolutely FREE with my library card!

Thanks to this awesome new development, I've decided to take the opportunity to get caught up with a few of the comic books series that I had been following a few years back that I was never able to finish. Specifically, I've finally been able to continue reading Amanda Connor's Harley Quinn series from 2013-2016, which is the very first comic book series I ever read. I'm also hoping to use Hoopla to read the final two graphic novels in G. Willow Wilson's Ms. Marvel from 2014-2015 & the final graphic novel from Cameron Steward's Batgirl from 2015-2016.

Don't laugh at me, but in February I realised that my mom and I have access to Amazon Prime Video - and we've probably had access to it for a while now and didn't figure it out until recently XD The first show I immediately started bingeing is The Grand Tour. I've never been a car person (I don't even have a drivers' license), but I always loved watching Top Gear mostly for the hilarious repertoire between Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond & James May.

fffffffffffff While browsing through Prime Originals, I found that a live-action J-Drama had been made that's based off a manga series I really enjoyed, Happy Marriage!? Its pretty damn adorable. I haven't finished watching the series yet, but I'm liking it so far 💕 Also, after putting it off for waaaaaaay too long, I finally started watching Steven Universe! And I freaking love it! A friend of mine from Toronto tried to get me into this back in 2015 and I hate myself for not watching past the second episode back then XP

And I've been watching more than TV shows lately! A couple weeks ago I got into playing a bunch of my old DS games - finally managed to beat Lost in Blue 2, and I played & beat Urbz: Sims in the City for the zillionth time - but I also broke out Trauma Center: Under the Knife for old time's sake. Man, if there was ever a series of games designed to be rage-inducing (before Getting Over It of course), it was the Trauma Center games by Atlas 😖 While re-playing the game on the DS I got farther than I managed to when I was a kid, but I still hit a wall after a while. I was dying to know what happened in the rest of the story, so I decided to look up a let's play series of the game. I watched Game Grumps play Trauma Center: Second Opinion for a while (basically a port of the original game for the Wii, but with a new playable character and an additional story line to correspond with her), but their voices started to give me a headache after a while XP Then I found Mr250's channel, where he's played both Second Opinion and Trauma Center: New Blood, and I've been watching them non-stop lately.

This is where I would normally talk about all the fun things I've been doing with my planner lately, because I'm a total Happy Planner sticker addict, but just before moving I gave myself a break from planning and decorating in my Happy Planner. Basically I was spending waaaay too much money on stickers and other accessories and I needed to cool my jets for a little while. That's also included avoiding any videos or social media posts that showcase new Happy Planner products, which has been pretty difficult, but somehow I've managed to keep myself from running to Michael's for another shopping spree 😝

As for actual real-life plans, one thing that I plan on doing in the very near future is spending more time with my adorable nephews, Charlie and Elliott. Charlie's 3 1/2 years old now, and he'll be starting kindergarten in the fall, which just feels WAY TOO SOON! I'm not prepared!!! 😨 And I can't believe how quickly time has been flying by because Elliott will be turning 1 on April 27th!!! It feels like he was just born a couple of weeks ago, it's so crazy! Since moving I haven't had a chance to spend as much time with these guys as I would like to, and I plan to remedy that ASAP!

There are actually a fair number of geek loves that I'm currently obsessing over right now. Getting back into comic books thanks to the Hoopla app has really jump-started my inner fandom motor, and it's made me miss chatting and hanging out with my fellow iggles more than anything XP Since I work remotely from home (Oh yeah, forgot to mention, I got a job last week! Booya!), I can more or less be a full-time iggle if I want to, but it's not as simple as it sounds. My mental health tends to get in the way of me getting involved with the community as much as I'd like to, and it's a constant struggle that I'll always be dealing with.

One geeky thing in particular that I have been downright obsessed with lately is re-watching Bee and Puppycat, which has become a lot easier now that Cartoon Hangover has released the entire series on YouTube! The reason I'm including this show under the "loving" category instead of the "watching" category is because the big thing I'm excited about lately is my decision to cosplay as Bee for the next convention I attend! I'm not sure whether I'm going to try to buy/hunt down all of the pieces of the costume or if I'm going to get my mom to help me sew it. I'm more than likely going to keep growing out my hair so that I don't have to buy a wig for the costume (my hair's already plenty long enough anyway), and putting together this cosplay costume gives me an excuse to finally buy myself a Puppycat plushie!!!!!!! I can't wait until I can get the money together to order my very own Puppycat! 💞

While I haven't been as active of an iggle as I would like to be, I was still able to participate in a couple of things with the community recently. The big one was participating in the IggleNom's Greatest Iggle Bake Off - Season 2. Due to a personal emergency I was only able to participate for 2 of the 5 weeks. For the first week I made mini apple pie pops, and for the second week I made a Hearthstone-inspired roll cake!

To thank me for participating, I was recently sent a cute little ribbon-tied care package in the mail! It included a very sweet note card from @JustCombined, a handful of IggleNoms recipe cards, and a laminate certificate of participation for the Greatest Iggle Bake-Off - Season 2. How freaking sweet is that?! I'm sure they didn't need to send this off to me, since I didn't get to bake something for all 5 weeks, but I really appreciate it! I can't wait to find a place to display my certificate in my bedroom!

Those are pretty much the biggest things that I've been up to the past couple of months. I hope you enjoyed catching up with me! 😁 Let me know in the comments below what sorts of fun and nerdy things you've been up to lately.

As Always...

I'll Keep You Guys Posted! 💌