Yesterday when I came downstairs for coffee, I saw that the green bird, the Amazon parrot who loves the Sober Husband and hates me, was clinging to the Sober Husband's finger with her beak while lying across his shoulder. "She won't let go of my finger," he said, demonstrating on how he tried to pull his hand away but the bird clenched it all the more tightly with her beak and one claw.
We both regarded the parrot. It was splayed across his shoulder, with a death clench on his finger, throbbing and making cooing noises. These noises built until the parrot appeared to reach a peak, after which she exhaustedly let go of his hand and slumped quietly on his shoulder.
An awkward silence filled the room. I turned to the coffeemaker without comment.
Friday, April 29, 2011
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
excess, in its various forms
Over the children's spring break, we took them down to see the Hearst Castle. My original idea was to drive down to Death Valley and go camping. Back before I had children, I loved backroads camping, and Death Valley was my favorite place to strike off and set up camp far from any other human being. I also wanted to make a run up to to the Pacific Northwest to visit a slew of friends up there, including my best friend from high school, but that was going to either $2,000 in airfare or thirteen hours in the car with the children. Death Valley would be about a ten hour drive.
As the time grew nearer, I started thinking more realistically about what road tripping with the children would be like. Also, the Sober Husband has only been at his new job for two months, which is early to take much time off. I couldn't face the idea of thirteen hours of driving the children without adult backup, and camping with them by myself was even scarier. I imagined curling up with the children at night in a tent, with them nonstop complaining of the cold, the hard ground, the lack of television (on Iris's part) and the presence of feared cryptids (Lola). So instead I decided to take the children to the Hearst Castle. Iris uber Alles, who is insane for Oprah, has been wanting to see nearby San Luis Obispo ever since Oprah explained on her show that San Luis is "the happiest place in the United States", so the matter was settled.
I booked our tour of the Hearst Castle ahead of time, since these tours often sell out. There are four different tours to pick from, each visiting a different part of the Castle, and I selfishly didn't want to take the first, introductory tour because I've done that one before myself. Less selfishly I picked the tour which features visiting the bathrooms of the North Wing, because Lola is obsessed with bathrooms. Particularly nice ones are called "lands of wonder", and sometimes she draws pictures of imagined lands of wonder.
When we got to the Hearst Castle, I noticed a middle-aged woman on our tour was holding a Barbie and a Ken while we were waiting for the bus to drive us up from the visitor center to the castle. She carefully put them into a large ziplock bag before the bus came. Up at the Castle, she took them back out of the bag so they could see and be photographed in front of the magnificent Neptune Pool. I noticed she was wearing a Warhol-styled Barbie shirt, with four Barbie faces.
As the tour went on, the Barbies went in and out of the ziplock. Sometimes the Barbie enthusiast would give them to her male companion to carry. I found this oddly fascinating, but it soon turned to annoying. The Barbie woman explained loudly to our group that the Ken she was carrying was "the first brown-haired Ken", from the sixties. She explained what made this Barbie so special and worthy of mating with the first brown-haired Ken, but I didn't pay enough attention to absorb that. Whenever something in our tour reminded her of the Barbies, she'd speak up in a loud, carrying voice. Some reference to travel made her, in a world-weary voice, explain to the world in general that she attends Barbie conventions every year, which take place "wherever they want us."
The children were dumbstruck by the Castle and said nothing (later Iris confided that she had so loved the Neptune Pool that she had been considering staging a fake fall into it). They kept close to the tour guide and moved quickly, their eyes wide. Meanwhile the Sober Husband, who hates tours and groups, lagged at the back. His strategy was to linger in a room after the tour had moved on, so he could feel he was exploring by himself. (Back when we were touring elementary schools to pick one for Iris, he used to break off from the group altogether and go into completely different rooms of his own choosing).
We arrived at a room in the North wing famous for its portraits with following eyes. The tour guide explained that because these portraits (of rather stern nobility) had been painted facing straight on but with no apparent light source reflecting in the eyes, wherever you were, you had the feeling that they were watching you. The group made the kinds of jokes you would expect about how it was a good thing these paintings were in a sitting room, rather than a bedroom, but the Barbie woman had a world-weary attitude about it. Addressing the group she explained that she was "used to it. In my bedroom, I have over one thousand Barbies. All watching." Her male companion said nothing.
As the time grew nearer, I started thinking more realistically about what road tripping with the children would be like. Also, the Sober Husband has only been at his new job for two months, which is early to take much time off. I couldn't face the idea of thirteen hours of driving the children without adult backup, and camping with them by myself was even scarier. I imagined curling up with the children at night in a tent, with them nonstop complaining of the cold, the hard ground, the lack of television (on Iris's part) and the presence of feared cryptids (Lola). So instead I decided to take the children to the Hearst Castle. Iris uber Alles, who is insane for Oprah, has been wanting to see nearby San Luis Obispo ever since Oprah explained on her show that San Luis is "the happiest place in the United States", so the matter was settled.
I booked our tour of the Hearst Castle ahead of time, since these tours often sell out. There are four different tours to pick from, each visiting a different part of the Castle, and I selfishly didn't want to take the first, introductory tour because I've done that one before myself. Less selfishly I picked the tour which features visiting the bathrooms of the North Wing, because Lola is obsessed with bathrooms. Particularly nice ones are called "lands of wonder", and sometimes she draws pictures of imagined lands of wonder.
When we got to the Hearst Castle, I noticed a middle-aged woman on our tour was holding a Barbie and a Ken while we were waiting for the bus to drive us up from the visitor center to the castle. She carefully put them into a large ziplock bag before the bus came. Up at the Castle, she took them back out of the bag so they could see and be photographed in front of the magnificent Neptune Pool. I noticed she was wearing a Warhol-styled Barbie shirt, with four Barbie faces.
As the tour went on, the Barbies went in and out of the ziplock. Sometimes the Barbie enthusiast would give them to her male companion to carry. I found this oddly fascinating, but it soon turned to annoying. The Barbie woman explained loudly to our group that the Ken she was carrying was "the first brown-haired Ken", from the sixties. She explained what made this Barbie so special and worthy of mating with the first brown-haired Ken, but I didn't pay enough attention to absorb that. Whenever something in our tour reminded her of the Barbies, she'd speak up in a loud, carrying voice. Some reference to travel made her, in a world-weary voice, explain to the world in general that she attends Barbie conventions every year, which take place "wherever they want us."
The children were dumbstruck by the Castle and said nothing (later Iris confided that she had so loved the Neptune Pool that she had been considering staging a fake fall into it). They kept close to the tour guide and moved quickly, their eyes wide. Meanwhile the Sober Husband, who hates tours and groups, lagged at the back. His strategy was to linger in a room after the tour had moved on, so he could feel he was exploring by himself. (Back when we were touring elementary schools to pick one for Iris, he used to break off from the group altogether and go into completely different rooms of his own choosing).
We arrived at a room in the North wing famous for its portraits with following eyes. The tour guide explained that because these portraits (of rather stern nobility) had been painted facing straight on but with no apparent light source reflecting in the eyes, wherever you were, you had the feeling that they were watching you. The group made the kinds of jokes you would expect about how it was a good thing these paintings were in a sitting room, rather than a bedroom, but the Barbie woman had a world-weary attitude about it. Addressing the group she explained that she was "used to it. In my bedroom, I have over one thousand Barbies. All watching." Her male companion said nothing.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
grounding Pigwidgeon
The conclusion the Sober Husband and the children came to, after our African grey flew away and was lost but then found and returned to us, is that Pigwidgeon's flight feathers need to be clipped more often to try to ensure she won't be lost again. I had a different take. After she came home from her big adventure, she's been flying around the house constantly. She gets so much joy from flying that I find it highly depressing to clip her wings.
The take-away lesson I got from losing her was not to take her into the garden (which I find sad enough; the green parrot's happiest times are spent in the backyard. She spends hours climbing around in our magnolia tree, and on the few truly hot days we have, we spray her with the hose, and she spreads her wings out wide and beats them happily in the spray). I felt that if we were careful, she could have a happy life flying around in the house. We already have to be careful with the doors, as we more often than not have undersocialized feral cats staying with us from my volunteer work, so I felt it wasn't a big increase in surveillance and caution.
The Sober Husband found this attitude of mine maddening. "I refuse to be held responsible for the parrot escaping! If she gets lost again, you have to promise that you will never say it's my fault!"
"I can't make that promise; I'm a lawyer!" I said. "I can think of lots of scenarios in which it would be your fault."
"But what if it was an accident?"
"If it was your fault, it's not really an accident; it's negligence," I quibbled. He looked disgusted.
Later he said, "I just really don't understand it, because when we got the green bird, I was on the other side of this. I thought it was sad to clip her wings, and you were so firm about it."
"That's because Amazons really aren't great fliers; it's really enough for them to be able to climb. But Piggle's not an Amazon; she's from Africa. She's not as much of a climber." The children broke in to back up my statement, reminiscing about the time I put Pigwidgeon in the magnolia tree and she fell out.
In reality I have all along had Piggle's wings clipped, just not very frequently. I wait until her talons are too long, and I take her to have both her wings and talons done at once. The Sober Husband argues that now she should be clipped regularly, "every two weeks. It was stressful and expensive when we lost her." At the time we got Piggle back, he was happy to write the reward check, but now that time has gone by, the joy of the reunion has faded but the memory of writing that $500 check remains strong.
After some very intensive nagging from him, I took Pigwidgeon down to be clipped yesterday, even though her talons weren't yet in desperate need of a trim.
For the children, this was not done soon enough. In the morning I asked Iris to get me a cup of coffee, and a crazed, caffeine-craving Pigwidgeon flew directly at the cup in Iris's hand. Iris jerked her arm reflexively, and the coffee splashed everywhere, but still Pigwidgeon managed to get a few swallows of it. Iris went for a refill, and the same thing happened again. "Pigwidgeon's going to be terrible this morning; she's had coffee," predicted Iris direly. In actuality she wasn't discernibly different (she's usually manic in the mornings and then settles down by afternoon), but the children, who are usually at school of a morning, thought she was too noisy and crazy.
In the afternoon we took Piggle to get her wings clipped. To add to the general inconvenience of having the bird trimmed, the man I take her to has become semi-retired and now grooms birds only two afternoons a week. There's always a long wait (you can't make an appointment).
Another reason to dislike taking the birds for grooming is that I always get a guilt trip of some sort or another from the bird experts. Usually it revolves around my giving Pigwidgeon too much freedom (and yes, I am fully aware that the bird people have been proven right on this). Once they told me off for giving her an entire banana, which so impressed the children that they thereafter have treated bananas with the utmost suspicion and tried to stop me from bringing this suspect fruit into our home. Yesterday I was luckily able to head the incipient guilt trip off at the pass. The bird grooming man raised his eyebrows and looked at me over his glasses. "Don't you have two parrots?" Clearly he was expecting me to confess that the other one had died or been lost. "Oh, that one's my husband's bird," I said airily. "I can't get it into a carrier without him. And we're more worried about this one." Thankfully that went over well, and there was no guilt trip. Indeed I looked like a model bird owner compared to the ones who were ahead of me, who brought in four tiny birds in a shoebox. One escaped and had to be stalked and captured.
But there was no escaping the final thing I hate about taking Pigwidgeon to have her wings clipped: the same horrible, eternal conversation. "Oh! I see you have an African grey! How many words does she know?" It is so profoundly humiliating to be the only stupid owner of a stupid African grey whose stupid parrot doesn't talk. Yesterday was no exception, with the proud owner of a roseate cockatoo looking shocked and disappointed in me after his admiring sally, "You must have such conversations with her all the time!", was met with a shameful confession that the parrot only knows how to make cat noises.
At home, Piggle was effectively grounded. She can't fly more than a few feet with fresh, severely cropped wings. I felt sad for her, but everyone else felt that it was high time indeed. The children cited the coffee incident as proof that Piggle had gone too far. "She drank coffee!" Iris said repeatedly. "She flew right at me and stuck her beak in the cup!"
The take-away lesson I got from losing her was not to take her into the garden (which I find sad enough; the green parrot's happiest times are spent in the backyard. She spends hours climbing around in our magnolia tree, and on the few truly hot days we have, we spray her with the hose, and she spreads her wings out wide and beats them happily in the spray). I felt that if we were careful, she could have a happy life flying around in the house. We already have to be careful with the doors, as we more often than not have undersocialized feral cats staying with us from my volunteer work, so I felt it wasn't a big increase in surveillance and caution.
The Sober Husband found this attitude of mine maddening. "I refuse to be held responsible for the parrot escaping! If she gets lost again, you have to promise that you will never say it's my fault!"
"I can't make that promise; I'm a lawyer!" I said. "I can think of lots of scenarios in which it would be your fault."
"But what if it was an accident?"
"If it was your fault, it's not really an accident; it's negligence," I quibbled. He looked disgusted.
Later he said, "I just really don't understand it, because when we got the green bird, I was on the other side of this. I thought it was sad to clip her wings, and you were so firm about it."
"That's because Amazons really aren't great fliers; it's really enough for them to be able to climb. But Piggle's not an Amazon; she's from Africa. She's not as much of a climber." The children broke in to back up my statement, reminiscing about the time I put Pigwidgeon in the magnolia tree and she fell out.
In reality I have all along had Piggle's wings clipped, just not very frequently. I wait until her talons are too long, and I take her to have both her wings and talons done at once. The Sober Husband argues that now she should be clipped regularly, "every two weeks. It was stressful and expensive when we lost her." At the time we got Piggle back, he was happy to write the reward check, but now that time has gone by, the joy of the reunion has faded but the memory of writing that $500 check remains strong.
After some very intensive nagging from him, I took Pigwidgeon down to be clipped yesterday, even though her talons weren't yet in desperate need of a trim.
For the children, this was not done soon enough. In the morning I asked Iris to get me a cup of coffee, and a crazed, caffeine-craving Pigwidgeon flew directly at the cup in Iris's hand. Iris jerked her arm reflexively, and the coffee splashed everywhere, but still Pigwidgeon managed to get a few swallows of it. Iris went for a refill, and the same thing happened again. "Pigwidgeon's going to be terrible this morning; she's had coffee," predicted Iris direly. In actuality she wasn't discernibly different (she's usually manic in the mornings and then settles down by afternoon), but the children, who are usually at school of a morning, thought she was too noisy and crazy.
In the afternoon we took Piggle to get her wings clipped. To add to the general inconvenience of having the bird trimmed, the man I take her to has become semi-retired and now grooms birds only two afternoons a week. There's always a long wait (you can't make an appointment).
Another reason to dislike taking the birds for grooming is that I always get a guilt trip of some sort or another from the bird experts. Usually it revolves around my giving Pigwidgeon too much freedom (and yes, I am fully aware that the bird people have been proven right on this). Once they told me off for giving her an entire banana, which so impressed the children that they thereafter have treated bananas with the utmost suspicion and tried to stop me from bringing this suspect fruit into our home. Yesterday I was luckily able to head the incipient guilt trip off at the pass. The bird grooming man raised his eyebrows and looked at me over his glasses. "Don't you have two parrots?" Clearly he was expecting me to confess that the other one had died or been lost. "Oh, that one's my husband's bird," I said airily. "I can't get it into a carrier without him. And we're more worried about this one." Thankfully that went over well, and there was no guilt trip. Indeed I looked like a model bird owner compared to the ones who were ahead of me, who brought in four tiny birds in a shoebox. One escaped and had to be stalked and captured.
But there was no escaping the final thing I hate about taking Pigwidgeon to have her wings clipped: the same horrible, eternal conversation. "Oh! I see you have an African grey! How many words does she know?" It is so profoundly humiliating to be the only stupid owner of a stupid African grey whose stupid parrot doesn't talk. Yesterday was no exception, with the proud owner of a roseate cockatoo looking shocked and disappointed in me after his admiring sally, "You must have such conversations with her all the time!", was met with a shameful confession that the parrot only knows how to make cat noises.
At home, Piggle was effectively grounded. She can't fly more than a few feet with fresh, severely cropped wings. I felt sad for her, but everyone else felt that it was high time indeed. The children cited the coffee incident as proof that Piggle had gone too far. "She drank coffee!" Iris said repeatedly. "She flew right at me and stuck her beak in the cup!"
Monday, April 18, 2011
games night
One of the main benefits of having children is having people around to play cards with. Iris and Lola and I often play crazy eights or a delightful game called "Rat-a-Tat Cat." Lola refuses to play poker because it is too heavily identified with Iris (once Iris had a marathon poker session with another child, ending in cleaning out the other child's accumulated allowance entirely, which we made her pay back later). We've tried many other games, but veering away from crazy eights or Rat-a-Tat Cat usually ends in disaster, and last night was no exception.
Last night after dinner I started up a game of Fan Tan, a card game we learned a few years ago when visiting relatives. Lola, who had wanted to play Apples to Apples, was indignantly fussy after her father's victory at Fan Tan. I said, "Lola, if you said, 'I'd like to get Apples to Apples' now, that would be a lot nicer than your screaming and crying, 'I wanted to play Apples to Apples." Lola cut me off in midsentence: "Please, darling exalted Lord Mommy, I would like to get Apples to Apples."
Sadly Apples to Apples didn't go any better for Lola than Fan Tan had. At one point it was the Sober Husband's job to judge, selecting the best fit for "protective", and he was determined to select Lola's card because she hadn't won a single hand yet. He peered closely into Lola's face, looking for a tell to see which card she'd played. Unfortunately however Lola was charmed by the card I'd played and reacted most to that one, so he chose that, and Lola burst out in tears. "Oops! I made a mistake! 'Flying Squirrels' is what I meant to pick!" he said.
Iris was outraged. "Flying squirrels, they aren't even protective! Why did you play that? Flying squirrels!"
"Flying squirrels are famous for how protective they are of their young," I said.
"I've watched as many nature shows as you have, and I don't remember that," said Iris fiercely.
"I don't just watch television, I've traveled," I said. "I've been to places like Borneo, and flying squirrels are famous for being so protective of their young. They will just FLY AT YOU."
Iris grew more and more indignant, not accepting this. I continued. "And don't step between a flying squirrel and its nuts! That would be a terrible day for you, indeed."
Around this point it became clear that carrying on a civilized game of Apples to Apples was no longer possible. The children wandered off to create their own Apples to Apples cards, with such curiously-omitted-from-the-real-game subjects as "Lola's Buttocks."
Last night after dinner I started up a game of Fan Tan, a card game we learned a few years ago when visiting relatives. Lola, who had wanted to play Apples to Apples, was indignantly fussy after her father's victory at Fan Tan. I said, "Lola, if you said, 'I'd like to get Apples to Apples' now, that would be a lot nicer than your screaming and crying, 'I wanted to play Apples to Apples." Lola cut me off in midsentence: "Please, darling exalted Lord Mommy, I would like to get Apples to Apples."
Sadly Apples to Apples didn't go any better for Lola than Fan Tan had. At one point it was the Sober Husband's job to judge, selecting the best fit for "protective", and he was determined to select Lola's card because she hadn't won a single hand yet. He peered closely into Lola's face, looking for a tell to see which card she'd played. Unfortunately however Lola was charmed by the card I'd played and reacted most to that one, so he chose that, and Lola burst out in tears. "Oops! I made a mistake! 'Flying Squirrels' is what I meant to pick!" he said.
Iris was outraged. "Flying squirrels, they aren't even protective! Why did you play that? Flying squirrels!"
"Flying squirrels are famous for how protective they are of their young," I said.
"I've watched as many nature shows as you have, and I don't remember that," said Iris fiercely.
"I don't just watch television, I've traveled," I said. "I've been to places like Borneo, and flying squirrels are famous for being so protective of their young. They will just FLY AT YOU."
Iris grew more and more indignant, not accepting this. I continued. "And don't step between a flying squirrel and its nuts! That would be a terrible day for you, indeed."
Around this point it became clear that carrying on a civilized game of Apples to Apples was no longer possible. The children wandered off to create their own Apples to Apples cards, with such curiously-omitted-from-the-real-game subjects as "Lola's Buttocks."
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
readjusting to home
So Pigwidgeon, our affable yet dimwitted African grey parrot, has been home for a week after her harrowing freakout and flight from our yard, resulting in her traveling a mile in the middle of San Francisco, spending a night and a day outdoors, and being caught by a stranger and staying with him and his roommates for three days.
I can see some side effects from this experience. The most noticeable is that she flies everywhere, all the time now. We actually have her flight feathers clipped from time to time, so she isn't as strong a flier as a wild bird (in general these kinds of larger parrots aren't great fliers; they use their beaks to be gifted climbers. This makes sense because they aren't migratory birds, and in the wild they spend a lot of time climbing up and down in trees). Previously Piggle got around in our house mainly by walking on the floor. Sometimes you would be startled by a little peck on your foot, meaning that Pig had walked up to you and wanted you to pick her up. But now, it's like how in Harry Potter Fred and George would apparate across the room once they got their apparition licenses. No matter how much more sense it would make to walk, she's going to fly. To compensate for the trimmed flight feathers, she beats her wings extra hard, so it's sort of frantic.
The first morning after she came home, she flew into every room in the house, touring the house crazily. Then she settled down on my shoulder and groomed herself extensively. The next day was spent intensely grooming as well on my arm. Those first few days she was incessantly noisy as well. "I can't believe I missed this bird so much," I said over the racket.
Now she has calmed down, but yesterday she flew into the upstairs bathroom and settled down on the shower rail. She had never before gone into the bathroom alone. In the past, she'd ask, by incessant screaming, for me to bring her in there when I was doing my makeup, and she liked hanging out in there with me, but she'd never go in by herself. But in the apartment she stayed at last week, she lived in the bathroom perching on the shower curtain rail, and yesterday she went in and stayed in there by herself. In the bathroom Piggle made every noise she knows how to make at top volume, perching on the shower rail and making a hellish racket. Was she reminiscing about the apartment she stayed at? Or just enjoying the acoustics, like a person singing in the shower?
I can see some side effects from this experience. The most noticeable is that she flies everywhere, all the time now. We actually have her flight feathers clipped from time to time, so she isn't as strong a flier as a wild bird (in general these kinds of larger parrots aren't great fliers; they use their beaks to be gifted climbers. This makes sense because they aren't migratory birds, and in the wild they spend a lot of time climbing up and down in trees). Previously Piggle got around in our house mainly by walking on the floor. Sometimes you would be startled by a little peck on your foot, meaning that Pig had walked up to you and wanted you to pick her up. But now, it's like how in Harry Potter Fred and George would apparate across the room once they got their apparition licenses. No matter how much more sense it would make to walk, she's going to fly. To compensate for the trimmed flight feathers, she beats her wings extra hard, so it's sort of frantic.
The first morning after she came home, she flew into every room in the house, touring the house crazily. Then she settled down on my shoulder and groomed herself extensively. The next day was spent intensely grooming as well on my arm. Those first few days she was incessantly noisy as well. "I can't believe I missed this bird so much," I said over the racket.
Now she has calmed down, but yesterday she flew into the upstairs bathroom and settled down on the shower rail. She had never before gone into the bathroom alone. In the past, she'd ask, by incessant screaming, for me to bring her in there when I was doing my makeup, and she liked hanging out in there with me, but she'd never go in by herself. But in the apartment she stayed at last week, she lived in the bathroom perching on the shower curtain rail, and yesterday she went in and stayed in there by herself. In the bathroom Piggle made every noise she knows how to make at top volume, perching on the shower rail and making a hellish racket. Was she reminiscing about the apartment she stayed at? Or just enjoying the acoustics, like a person singing in the shower?
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
the truth about pugs
More Warcraft talk, as it seems that certain readers who would never be caught playing the online sensation can't get enough of reading about it!
I've written before that for years I was frustrated in Warcraft because I couldn't reliably find other players to help me do things which require more than one person to work together. I usually quested in those days, and it was a red letter day when I'd find a stranger or two who worked well with me. Whenever this did happen and I was able to get a lot of group quests done, I was very happy indeed. In the early years I never did belong to guilds who had it together enough to run high-level dungeons as a guild (which requires five high level players), but I did belong for a long time to a guild where a player would run our lower level characters through dungeons. This fellow had an amazingly powerful Warcraft character but was himself really lacking in social graces. I didn't care, though, because while I was leveling Chlonnaa, a draenei mage, he'd take me through Zul'Farrak and the Scarlet Monastery, and all Chlonnaa had to do was scuttle behind him picking up loot from all the corpses in his wake. Later he was kicked out of our guild, and I complained fruitlessly. "Who else will run the lower levels? Who?" I said in guild chat, and of course, the answer turned out to be nobody.
Once Blizzard created the "find group" tool, enabling players to get matched up with others and put into dungeons appropriate for their skill level, I was happy not to have to beg for runs on any of my characters. It was much more interesting, after all, to fight the elite monsters on your own, rather than just pick through their remains. But a problem remains, which is beyond Blizzard's ability to solve: a lot of Warcraft players are really awful human beings. There is nothing like a pug (a group of strangers is a "pick up group" or "pug" for short) to make you have sorrow for humanity.
Many players enjoy insulting their fellow players as much as completing a dungeon run. It used to be that the word "noob" was the most common insult, but currently the adjective "fail" is the most popular, as in "fail tank pulled the whole room", "fail healer sucks", "fail shammy doesn't know how to rez", etc.., etc...
And there's the equipment snobbery. This has become worse and more ubiquitous since Cataclysm came out. There's some underlying justification: a character's powers are largely determined by their armor and weapons. As you run more and more dungeons, you can get better equipment, but the catch 22 is that if you aren't geared very well, no one wants to run a heroic with you, and thus it's hard for you to get geared. When I was just-geared-enough to run dungeons in Cataclysm on heroic setting (harder than normal and with better loot to be had), I sat them out after a couple rough ones. I waited until I was mediocrely geared. Now the character I play most is really well-geared, and I don't get any criticism, but it was a rough haul getting there.
In order to prevent groups from being stuck with a truly awful player, pugs can vote a player out. This, however, can be really disheartening and disorienting. You don't have a chance to argue your case; you simply find yourself outside the dungeon, alone, with no warning. I remember the first time I was voted out. I was stunned. Another time I found it crazily maddening: I waited for an hour to get a pug, and then the pug took two hours to complete the Lost City of the Tol'vir. It was a fractious group, and we were having a rough time, but we were finally on the last boss. We wiped (all the players died) due to the mistakes made by the worst player, a hunter who didn't speak English and didn't know the dungeon. Then, for reasons which were completely mysterious to me, I found myself out of the dungeon. I was so angry at having spent an entire afternoon trying to get this damn dungeon run, only to get thrown out in the last few minutes. It was profoundly unfair to boot, because the recounts proved I'd been playing much more effectively than the hunter. It was extra maddening because while the others had been squabbling, I'd kept a shut mouth and stayed out of the fighting.
Studies show that everyone considers themself to be a better than average driver, and likewise Warcraft players tend to think they are all more fabulous than the rest. I, however, will admit that I am an extremely uneven player. I have my moments of brilliance (for example, in one pug everyone died but me on the boss, but I pulled out my earth elemental and got that boss down by myself when no one expected it. "So epic!!" typed the other players). I also have moments of stupidity. The one pug where I most truly should have been booted I wasn't. I logged on to do a daily random pug after a boozy dinner party I'd hosted, and I landed in Deadmines. I was so inebriated that my character could not make her way up the series of rickety gangplanks onto the ship coming back from Vanessa's nightmare. So the other four players had to kill the final boss without me, while enjoying a laugh at my expense (which I freely admitted to them was their right). I shouldn't have gotten the credit for that run, but then again, I shouldn't have been booted from that Lost City run, either.
Sometimes a player wants more people out than he can vote out or he can't get the others to agree on voting someone out. Once a tank [a tank is a player who has the strongest kind of armor and who knows protective spells. This player's role is to draw the attention of all the enemies, so they will focus their efforts on attacking the tank, while the other players attack the monsters with impunity and the healer tries to keep them all alive] threw a giant hissy fit. He didn't think the rest of us were up to his standard, and there was a particular bit of loot likely to drop on the next boss which he wanted. He sat his character down and said that if the rest of us had any decency, we'd each and every one of us leave the group voluntarily so he could get new players in and win that trinket he wanted. Of course we voted him out instead and had a good laugh at his expense.
In another pug, a pair of players were rude and obnoxious. One kept saying "I'm a god! I've downed Cho'Gall! You are all fail!" and trying to get everyone but his friend voted out. The group instead voted that player out after we'd wiped, and he childishly refused to resurrect his character and leave the dungeon. The other player in that horrible group with whom I'd bonded purposely sat his character down upon the bones of the rude, voted-out character, and we laughed with each other in little typed whispers. Finishing that pug felt like a triumph of the human spirit (and yes, I realize I should get outside more often).
Lately pugs are usually a joy for me, because my character is well-geared, powerful, and I've put a lot of work into refining her equipment. It's been a very long time since anyone ever voted me out. I've done a lot of reading online about my character's class, and I've put so much time into reforging her gear, changing her glyphs, getting the right enchants, etc.. Even a particularly immature stranger can't normally find something to complain about with me. However, I hear my guildmates complaining constantly about their rude pugs, being rejected for being insufficiently geared, etc.. "There, there," I type to them. "Don't listen to those idiots. There, there."
I've written before that for years I was frustrated in Warcraft because I couldn't reliably find other players to help me do things which require more than one person to work together. I usually quested in those days, and it was a red letter day when I'd find a stranger or two who worked well with me. Whenever this did happen and I was able to get a lot of group quests done, I was very happy indeed. In the early years I never did belong to guilds who had it together enough to run high-level dungeons as a guild (which requires five high level players), but I did belong for a long time to a guild where a player would run our lower level characters through dungeons. This fellow had an amazingly powerful Warcraft character but was himself really lacking in social graces. I didn't care, though, because while I was leveling Chlonnaa, a draenei mage, he'd take me through Zul'Farrak and the Scarlet Monastery, and all Chlonnaa had to do was scuttle behind him picking up loot from all the corpses in his wake. Later he was kicked out of our guild, and I complained fruitlessly. "Who else will run the lower levels? Who?" I said in guild chat, and of course, the answer turned out to be nobody.
Once Blizzard created the "find group" tool, enabling players to get matched up with others and put into dungeons appropriate for their skill level, I was happy not to have to beg for runs on any of my characters. It was much more interesting, after all, to fight the elite monsters on your own, rather than just pick through their remains. But a problem remains, which is beyond Blizzard's ability to solve: a lot of Warcraft players are really awful human beings. There is nothing like a pug (a group of strangers is a "pick up group" or "pug" for short) to make you have sorrow for humanity.
Many players enjoy insulting their fellow players as much as completing a dungeon run. It used to be that the word "noob" was the most common insult, but currently the adjective "fail" is the most popular, as in "fail tank pulled the whole room", "fail healer sucks", "fail shammy doesn't know how to rez", etc.., etc...
And there's the equipment snobbery. This has become worse and more ubiquitous since Cataclysm came out. There's some underlying justification: a character's powers are largely determined by their armor and weapons. As you run more and more dungeons, you can get better equipment, but the catch 22 is that if you aren't geared very well, no one wants to run a heroic with you, and thus it's hard for you to get geared. When I was just-geared-enough to run dungeons in Cataclysm on heroic setting (harder than normal and with better loot to be had), I sat them out after a couple rough ones. I waited until I was mediocrely geared. Now the character I play most is really well-geared, and I don't get any criticism, but it was a rough haul getting there.
In order to prevent groups from being stuck with a truly awful player, pugs can vote a player out. This, however, can be really disheartening and disorienting. You don't have a chance to argue your case; you simply find yourself outside the dungeon, alone, with no warning. I remember the first time I was voted out. I was stunned. Another time I found it crazily maddening: I waited for an hour to get a pug, and then the pug took two hours to complete the Lost City of the Tol'vir. It was a fractious group, and we were having a rough time, but we were finally on the last boss. We wiped (all the players died) due to the mistakes made by the worst player, a hunter who didn't speak English and didn't know the dungeon. Then, for reasons which were completely mysterious to me, I found myself out of the dungeon. I was so angry at having spent an entire afternoon trying to get this damn dungeon run, only to get thrown out in the last few minutes. It was profoundly unfair to boot, because the recounts proved I'd been playing much more effectively than the hunter. It was extra maddening because while the others had been squabbling, I'd kept a shut mouth and stayed out of the fighting.
Studies show that everyone considers themself to be a better than average driver, and likewise Warcraft players tend to think they are all more fabulous than the rest. I, however, will admit that I am an extremely uneven player. I have my moments of brilliance (for example, in one pug everyone died but me on the boss, but I pulled out my earth elemental and got that boss down by myself when no one expected it. "So epic!!" typed the other players). I also have moments of stupidity. The one pug where I most truly should have been booted I wasn't. I logged on to do a daily random pug after a boozy dinner party I'd hosted, and I landed in Deadmines. I was so inebriated that my character could not make her way up the series of rickety gangplanks onto the ship coming back from Vanessa's nightmare. So the other four players had to kill the final boss without me, while enjoying a laugh at my expense (which I freely admitted to them was their right). I shouldn't have gotten the credit for that run, but then again, I shouldn't have been booted from that Lost City run, either.
Sometimes a player wants more people out than he can vote out or he can't get the others to agree on voting someone out. Once a tank [a tank is a player who has the strongest kind of armor and who knows protective spells. This player's role is to draw the attention of all the enemies, so they will focus their efforts on attacking the tank, while the other players attack the monsters with impunity and the healer tries to keep them all alive] threw a giant hissy fit. He didn't think the rest of us were up to his standard, and there was a particular bit of loot likely to drop on the next boss which he wanted. He sat his character down and said that if the rest of us had any decency, we'd each and every one of us leave the group voluntarily so he could get new players in and win that trinket he wanted. Of course we voted him out instead and had a good laugh at his expense.
In another pug, a pair of players were rude and obnoxious. One kept saying "I'm a god! I've downed Cho'Gall! You are all fail!" and trying to get everyone but his friend voted out. The group instead voted that player out after we'd wiped, and he childishly refused to resurrect his character and leave the dungeon. The other player in that horrible group with whom I'd bonded purposely sat his character down upon the bones of the rude, voted-out character, and we laughed with each other in little typed whispers. Finishing that pug felt like a triumph of the human spirit (and yes, I realize I should get outside more often).
Lately pugs are usually a joy for me, because my character is well-geared, powerful, and I've put a lot of work into refining her equipment. It's been a very long time since anyone ever voted me out. I've done a lot of reading online about my character's class, and I've put so much time into reforging her gear, changing her glyphs, getting the right enchants, etc.. Even a particularly immature stranger can't normally find something to complain about with me. However, I hear my guildmates complaining constantly about their rude pugs, being rejected for being insufficiently geared, etc.. "There, there," I type to them. "Don't listen to those idiots. There, there."
Thursday, April 07, 2011
miracle on 17th Street
My idiotic parrot is home, safe and sound!
Last Saturday, in the late afternoon, the Sober Husband and I were working in our postage-stamp sized garden, replanting things which had been temporarily moved due to the neighbors' construction project, weeding, and cleaning. My not-very bright African grey, Pigwidgeon, freaked out during this and flew crazily off, up over a neighbor's roof and out of sight. We went in pursuit, and until it was too late to bother people, we went into as many yards as we could on our block. I told every dogwalker I saw and asked them to keep an eye out.
We made a poster and put it up around the neighborhood. I put Piggle's cage outside, to help her find our yard. Lola and I stayed up until nearly 3 AM, periodically calling Piggle. The next day we searched more yards and talked to more neighbors, and I posted a $500 reward on Craigslist.
The children and I were concerned that we didn't have good enough pictures of Pigwidgeon, but the Sober Husband scoffed. Noting that all African greys look alike, he picked a photo off the web for our "LOST PARROT" poster. I followed the same strategy with my Craigslist ad. I did find a blurry picture of Pigwidgeon standing next to my laptop as I typed, and I held on to it to use as evidence of ownership if she did turn up somewhere.
On Monday, after the children went off to school and the Sober Husband off to work, I spent the entire day crying. "I feel like such a fuckup," I confided in various friends and the Sober Husband. "I lost my parrot. All my life I wanted a parrot, and I lost her." I quickly gave up on calling for Piggle during the day. PG&E is replacing all the gas lines in our neighborhood, and on top of that, the city was replacing all the water meters, which involved digging into the cement in front of each and every house on our block. If Piggle were out somewhere, she wouldn't be able to hear me in all that hellish construction racket.
The Sober Husband came home early from work, and we went on another parrot search once all that construction had stopped for the day, expanding our area and combing yet more yards. We stopped when it got dark, as I had learned from a "Parrot911" volunteer that there is no point in looking for a lost bird in the dark, as they hunker down and will remain silent, even if they hear a beloved owner's voice ("Parrot911" is a charity existing to help reunite lost parrots with their owners, and they contacted me after seeing my Craigslist ad. Parrot911 gave me some useful information, such as that lost parrots usually double back on their tracks and are therefore typically found in the opposite direction from where they were last seen and that African greys in particular are usually found within a 1-2 mile radius of their home. The Parrots911 people also kindly cross-posted my information to a variety of other lost-animal resources online).
Tuesday was a cold and windy day. Early in the day I decided that I'd make a last, gala search, but as the day wore on, cold and windy, I gave up. It had gotten down below 50 degrees the night before, and rationally there was no point in searching outside. I was in tears all day again. There were no sightings of the bird. Then late at night, I got an email from someone whose friend had found a tame gray bird. "Oh my God, Piggle may be alive!" I told Lola (in all the sorrow, bedtimes had been completely ignored and everyone was living off junk food from a convenience store run). We ran up to tell Iris. I talked more rationally to the Sober Husband. "Either someone has an African grey, or they want to mug me for my reward money," I said.
On Wednesday I was REALLY riveted to the phone, but no call came in. Finally just as it was time to go pick up the children, a friend of the person who'd found the bird called. The bird's finder was having cellphone troubles (it later emerged that his cellphone had been cut off that day). After emails and calls after I got the children, the finder's friend arranged that I would go see the found bird after 9:30. My heart sank when I heard the address, which was in the Mission. The Sober Husband also felt it was unlikely to be our bird, but as far as I could tell, no one else in the city had lost an African grey (African greys had gone missing in Gilroy and Oakland since ours had, but not in San Francisco).
The Sober Husband cynically suggested that we take whatever parrot we were offered, "since it will cost twice as much as the reward to get a new one, and we need another one." Later, after thinking it over, he changed his mind and cautioned me not to take a parrot if I weren't sure it was mine. "We won't know anything about its personality." He was highly skeptical that I'd be able to recognize my own parrot. "All those African greys look exactly alike, how are you going to be able to tell?" "I will know my bird, and my bird will know me," I said confidently.
We hung out in the Mission (the children at home with a beloved babysitter) until it was time. I had a longish chat with the owner of a used bookstore about Philip Zimbardo's findings on institutionalized evil and Victor Frankl. This was interrupted by a very tall and slightly dazed looking young man, who informed us that "at the concentration camps, there were four or six people who could heal themselves with the power of their minds. Whatever was done to them, like cutting them up, they could just use their mind to heal it." He demonstrated by holding out one of his arms and staring at it meaningfully. "Afterwards they came to California to show people." The bookstore owner and I, nonplussed, were silent for a moment. Then the owner went back to showing me a fascinating and obscure study of behavior in concentration camps, written by a Dutch psychologist who was himself imprisoned in a concentration camp and then wrote the book afterward. The book was spellbinding, but I couldn't bear the idea of reading something so depressing in my Piggle-mourning state of mind, so I just paid for my not-that-much-cheerier books about horrific invasions of personal privacy by the U.S. government and the nature of evil.
When the time came, we walked over to see the parrot. I felt very fragile, and the Sober Husband was preparing me for the worst. "I don't think this can be her," he said. "It's just too far." A friendly man came to the door and showed us in. He'd put a piece of paper labeled "BIRD" on the bathroom door to warn his roommates. There on the shower rail was Piggle. She stepped right up on my hand. She made her familiar chirps that sound like a smoke detector with an expired battery, and she bent her head over for me to scratch her neck. "It's Piggle, it's Piggle," I said over and over again. The Sober Husband looked skeptical. The bird's finder showed us in to the kitchen, which, very studentlike, had a large number of liquor bottles standing about. When Pig did this very peculiar thing she often does where she holds my fingers in her beak while frantically whipping her head up and down, the Sober Husband reached for my checkbook to write a reward check. Even he had to admit that it was easy to tell that this was the very same bird we'd lost.
Somehow she survived a night outdoors and made her way down through the Castro, over Dolores Park, and into the Mission. Our good Samaritan saw her outdoors. "She was obviously exhausted, I think that's how I could catch her," he said. She nipped him, but without breaking the skin, and luckily for her she had been found by a persistent and kind person who didn't give up until he'd brought her home. "It was hard finding something she'd like to eat," he said. "She's kind of fickle."
Once we got the parrot home, I woke up the children to see her. They were ecstatic. Piggle ducked into her cage quickly for a snack but didn't want to be caged, so we brought both the parrots upstairs for the night. The green parrot had been very noisy and needy during the grey bird's absence, and they settled down nicely on the parrot tree together.
This morning the Sober Husband expressed a new concern that she'd sneak out again. "I'd like to think she learned a lesson," I said, "but probably what she learned was that if you get lost, someone takes care of you and you have a big adventure and then go home again."
Last Saturday, in the late afternoon, the Sober Husband and I were working in our postage-stamp sized garden, replanting things which had been temporarily moved due to the neighbors' construction project, weeding, and cleaning. My not-very bright African grey, Pigwidgeon, freaked out during this and flew crazily off, up over a neighbor's roof and out of sight. We went in pursuit, and until it was too late to bother people, we went into as many yards as we could on our block. I told every dogwalker I saw and asked them to keep an eye out.
We made a poster and put it up around the neighborhood. I put Piggle's cage outside, to help her find our yard. Lola and I stayed up until nearly 3 AM, periodically calling Piggle. The next day we searched more yards and talked to more neighbors, and I posted a $500 reward on Craigslist.
The children and I were concerned that we didn't have good enough pictures of Pigwidgeon, but the Sober Husband scoffed. Noting that all African greys look alike, he picked a photo off the web for our "LOST PARROT" poster. I followed the same strategy with my Craigslist ad. I did find a blurry picture of Pigwidgeon standing next to my laptop as I typed, and I held on to it to use as evidence of ownership if she did turn up somewhere.
On Monday, after the children went off to school and the Sober Husband off to work, I spent the entire day crying. "I feel like such a fuckup," I confided in various friends and the Sober Husband. "I lost my parrot. All my life I wanted a parrot, and I lost her." I quickly gave up on calling for Piggle during the day. PG&E is replacing all the gas lines in our neighborhood, and on top of that, the city was replacing all the water meters, which involved digging into the cement in front of each and every house on our block. If Piggle were out somewhere, she wouldn't be able to hear me in all that hellish construction racket.
The Sober Husband came home early from work, and we went on another parrot search once all that construction had stopped for the day, expanding our area and combing yet more yards. We stopped when it got dark, as I had learned from a "Parrot911" volunteer that there is no point in looking for a lost bird in the dark, as they hunker down and will remain silent, even if they hear a beloved owner's voice ("Parrot911" is a charity existing to help reunite lost parrots with their owners, and they contacted me after seeing my Craigslist ad. Parrot911 gave me some useful information, such as that lost parrots usually double back on their tracks and are therefore typically found in the opposite direction from where they were last seen and that African greys in particular are usually found within a 1-2 mile radius of their home. The Parrots911 people also kindly cross-posted my information to a variety of other lost-animal resources online).
Tuesday was a cold and windy day. Early in the day I decided that I'd make a last, gala search, but as the day wore on, cold and windy, I gave up. It had gotten down below 50 degrees the night before, and rationally there was no point in searching outside. I was in tears all day again. There were no sightings of the bird. Then late at night, I got an email from someone whose friend had found a tame gray bird. "Oh my God, Piggle may be alive!" I told Lola (in all the sorrow, bedtimes had been completely ignored and everyone was living off junk food from a convenience store run). We ran up to tell Iris. I talked more rationally to the Sober Husband. "Either someone has an African grey, or they want to mug me for my reward money," I said.
On Wednesday I was REALLY riveted to the phone, but no call came in. Finally just as it was time to go pick up the children, a friend of the person who'd found the bird called. The bird's finder was having cellphone troubles (it later emerged that his cellphone had been cut off that day). After emails and calls after I got the children, the finder's friend arranged that I would go see the found bird after 9:30. My heart sank when I heard the address, which was in the Mission. The Sober Husband also felt it was unlikely to be our bird, but as far as I could tell, no one else in the city had lost an African grey (African greys had gone missing in Gilroy and Oakland since ours had, but not in San Francisco).
The Sober Husband cynically suggested that we take whatever parrot we were offered, "since it will cost twice as much as the reward to get a new one, and we need another one." Later, after thinking it over, he changed his mind and cautioned me not to take a parrot if I weren't sure it was mine. "We won't know anything about its personality." He was highly skeptical that I'd be able to recognize my own parrot. "All those African greys look exactly alike, how are you going to be able to tell?" "I will know my bird, and my bird will know me," I said confidently.
We hung out in the Mission (the children at home with a beloved babysitter) until it was time. I had a longish chat with the owner of a used bookstore about Philip Zimbardo's findings on institutionalized evil and Victor Frankl. This was interrupted by a very tall and slightly dazed looking young man, who informed us that "at the concentration camps, there were four or six people who could heal themselves with the power of their minds. Whatever was done to them, like cutting them up, they could just use their mind to heal it." He demonstrated by holding out one of his arms and staring at it meaningfully. "Afterwards they came to California to show people." The bookstore owner and I, nonplussed, were silent for a moment. Then the owner went back to showing me a fascinating and obscure study of behavior in concentration camps, written by a Dutch psychologist who was himself imprisoned in a concentration camp and then wrote the book afterward. The book was spellbinding, but I couldn't bear the idea of reading something so depressing in my Piggle-mourning state of mind, so I just paid for my not-that-much-cheerier books about horrific invasions of personal privacy by the U.S. government and the nature of evil.
When the time came, we walked over to see the parrot. I felt very fragile, and the Sober Husband was preparing me for the worst. "I don't think this can be her," he said. "It's just too far." A friendly man came to the door and showed us in. He'd put a piece of paper labeled "BIRD" on the bathroom door to warn his roommates. There on the shower rail was Piggle. She stepped right up on my hand. She made her familiar chirps that sound like a smoke detector with an expired battery, and she bent her head over for me to scratch her neck. "It's Piggle, it's Piggle," I said over and over again. The Sober Husband looked skeptical. The bird's finder showed us in to the kitchen, which, very studentlike, had a large number of liquor bottles standing about. When Pig did this very peculiar thing she often does where she holds my fingers in her beak while frantically whipping her head up and down, the Sober Husband reached for my checkbook to write a reward check. Even he had to admit that it was easy to tell that this was the very same bird we'd lost.
Somehow she survived a night outdoors and made her way down through the Castro, over Dolores Park, and into the Mission. Our good Samaritan saw her outdoors. "She was obviously exhausted, I think that's how I could catch her," he said. She nipped him, but without breaking the skin, and luckily for her she had been found by a persistent and kind person who didn't give up until he'd brought her home. "It was hard finding something she'd like to eat," he said. "She's kind of fickle."
Once we got the parrot home, I woke up the children to see her. They were ecstatic. Piggle ducked into her cage quickly for a snack but didn't want to be caged, so we brought both the parrots upstairs for the night. The green parrot had been very noisy and needy during the grey bird's absence, and they settled down nicely on the parrot tree together.
This morning the Sober Husband expressed a new concern that she'd sneak out again. "I'd like to think she learned a lesson," I said, "but probably what she learned was that if you get lost, someone takes care of you and you have a big adventure and then go home again."
Sunday, April 03, 2011
my heart is broken
Yesterday the Sober Husband and I were doing some much-needed yard work in our tiny, tiny urban garden, and we were careless. My sweet, stupid parrot, Pigwidgeon, flew away.
Mind you, her flight feathers are clipped -- and she's never before reached any impressive altitude -- so we didn't think it was possible that she could crazily fly away down the block, over roofs.
Immediately we went around the block, calling her. I got a couple of neighbors who live in the middle of the block to let me go in their yards to call her and look for her. A very game neighbor got out a big ladder and risked his limbs (ours is a block on a steep hillside) to climb up to look into some adjacent yards. Unfortunately the people who live at the most promising spot on the block weren't home, and there was no way to invade their yards without going through their homes.
We made posters and covered the area with them. I asked everyone I saw walking their dog to keep an eye out. One woman had seen a gray bird in some bushes on the next block, but after investigating, I think it's most likely she saw one of the mockingbirds who live in front of my house. Lola and I stayed up until 2:30, periodically going outside to call her. I put her cage out in the backyard, thinking that if she found her way back to the yard, she'd find it reassuring.
Please, no shame or guilt trips. Everyone feels really terrible and ashamed, and plenty of tears have been shed. All my life I wanted a parrot, and I finally did get one as a generous gift from my husband (I'm not counting the green bird here as "having a parrot" as that one is my mortal enemy), and now she's lost. I worry that she may have already passed away, and it seems wrong to me that she could without my knowing it. The parrot-human bond is so strange and intense, a bit like identical twins. (Watching the Sober Husband with the green parrot is always fascinating, as they appear to be able to read each other's minds). Pigwidgeon and I have a language together and a way of being together, me skritching around her neck, Piggle combing my hair with her beak and making her meowing noises. I can't bear being without her.
Mind you, her flight feathers are clipped -- and she's never before reached any impressive altitude -- so we didn't think it was possible that she could crazily fly away down the block, over roofs.
Immediately we went around the block, calling her. I got a couple of neighbors who live in the middle of the block to let me go in their yards to call her and look for her. A very game neighbor got out a big ladder and risked his limbs (ours is a block on a steep hillside) to climb up to look into some adjacent yards. Unfortunately the people who live at the most promising spot on the block weren't home, and there was no way to invade their yards without going through their homes.
We made posters and covered the area with them. I asked everyone I saw walking their dog to keep an eye out. One woman had seen a gray bird in some bushes on the next block, but after investigating, I think it's most likely she saw one of the mockingbirds who live in front of my house. Lola and I stayed up until 2:30, periodically going outside to call her. I put her cage out in the backyard, thinking that if she found her way back to the yard, she'd find it reassuring.
Please, no shame or guilt trips. Everyone feels really terrible and ashamed, and plenty of tears have been shed. All my life I wanted a parrot, and I finally did get one as a generous gift from my husband (I'm not counting the green bird here as "having a parrot" as that one is my mortal enemy), and now she's lost. I worry that she may have already passed away, and it seems wrong to me that she could without my knowing it. The parrot-human bond is so strange and intense, a bit like identical twins. (Watching the Sober Husband with the green parrot is always fascinating, as they appear to be able to read each other's minds). Pigwidgeon and I have a language together and a way of being together, me skritching around her neck, Piggle combing my hair with her beak and making her meowing noises. I can't bear being without her.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Pigwidgeon's speech report
Yesterday I was ignoring noisy Pigwidgeon, our moronic young African grey parrot, who was in disgrace over a nipping incident, until she croaked out a rough, "Hel-lo?" Delighted I cooed back, "Hello! Hello! Hello! Hello, Piggle!"
"Meow? Mrrow! Myow! Meow?" retorted Pigwidgeon, following up these cat noises with some unnerving imitations of a child with a headcold snuffling up snot. The word "hello" was not heard again.
"Meow? Mrrow! Myow! Meow?" retorted Pigwidgeon, following up these cat noises with some unnerving imitations of a child with a headcold snuffling up snot. The word "hello" was not heard again.
counting them down
Fifth grader Iris uber Alles has been irritated all year long by her math class. Last fall Iris brought up the subject of her math class and said unhappily that she must have done terribly on her standardized tests last year, because she'd been put into a math group that was too easy for her. We parents made inquiries and found out that, for reasons which remain completely inscrutable to us, the children's school doesn't do ability grouping in the fifth grade for math. Iris wasn't, as she thought, cut loose from the higher achieving girls' group; that group didn't exist any more.
The result has been that Iris has been severely underchallenged and bored all year. The Sober Husband, who is the self-designated Math Parent (and indeed he's overqualified for that job -- the man has a highly respectable Erdos number and has taught math at the college level), reached out as tactfully as he could a few times to the math teacher, hoping to get Iris harder work, but it hasn't panned out.
In theory mixed ability groups give the regular students the opportunity to see and learn from more advanced kids, but I doubt Iris's presence is inspirational to anyone. While some of the children are truly struggling with the material, they are confronted by a bored and sarcastic Iris, no doubt sighing and rolling her eyes.
Iris gleefully shared the other day that "we're doing fractions, and the teacher asked, 'I have five fifths and I take one away; what do I have?' and a girl said, "Umm, three sixths?'" Iris laughed heartily. I felt a twinge of sorrow for the child who drew Iris's scorn in her mathematical struggles (I have talked to Iris a few times about the need to be tactful and polite to others in these situations, but I don't think it sinks in).
I feel for her teacher. I can understand that presented with a group of students with a wide variation in abilities, a teacher naturally ends up focusing on the lower-performing end. Additionally, she needs to try to get these students interested in math and to believe that they can be good at it, and how can that be helped by having Iris huffing over the indignity of having to do the too-hard-for-them, too-easy-for-her work?
Yesterday Iris reported indignantly that her teacher taught them a rather time-consuming method for reducing fractions and gave them a big sheet of fractions to reduce. "Momdude, it took forever! Like ten minutes for each fraction to write all that out! So I raised my hand and said, 'I can do all these in my head, so do I have to do that method? Can I just write the answer instead?' and the teacher said no!" Iris was outraged.
"Well, you only have about two more months," I said.
"Nineteen more classes," she snapped back.
"Wait, you figured out how many more math classes?"
"No, the teacher did," Iris informed me. "When I complained, she told me there were only 19 more classes."
I laughed. "Oh, Iris, she probably has a calendar where she's crossing off how she's getting rid of you. Maybe on the last day, there's a smiley face. Or a little drawing of you she can scratch out." We both laughed. (Of course, I am sure the teacher is far too professional for that, but I'm also sure her life would be easier if Iris weren't in this class).
The result has been that Iris has been severely underchallenged and bored all year. The Sober Husband, who is the self-designated Math Parent (and indeed he's overqualified for that job -- the man has a highly respectable Erdos number and has taught math at the college level), reached out as tactfully as he could a few times to the math teacher, hoping to get Iris harder work, but it hasn't panned out.
In theory mixed ability groups give the regular students the opportunity to see and learn from more advanced kids, but I doubt Iris's presence is inspirational to anyone. While some of the children are truly struggling with the material, they are confronted by a bored and sarcastic Iris, no doubt sighing and rolling her eyes.
Iris gleefully shared the other day that "we're doing fractions, and the teacher asked, 'I have five fifths and I take one away; what do I have?' and a girl said, "Umm, three sixths?'" Iris laughed heartily. I felt a twinge of sorrow for the child who drew Iris's scorn in her mathematical struggles (I have talked to Iris a few times about the need to be tactful and polite to others in these situations, but I don't think it sinks in).
I feel for her teacher. I can understand that presented with a group of students with a wide variation in abilities, a teacher naturally ends up focusing on the lower-performing end. Additionally, she needs to try to get these students interested in math and to believe that they can be good at it, and how can that be helped by having Iris huffing over the indignity of having to do the too-hard-for-them, too-easy-for-her work?
Yesterday Iris reported indignantly that her teacher taught them a rather time-consuming method for reducing fractions and gave them a big sheet of fractions to reduce. "Momdude, it took forever! Like ten minutes for each fraction to write all that out! So I raised my hand and said, 'I can do all these in my head, so do I have to do that method? Can I just write the answer instead?' and the teacher said no!" Iris was outraged.
"Well, you only have about two more months," I said.
"Nineteen more classes," she snapped back.
"Wait, you figured out how many more math classes?"
"No, the teacher did," Iris informed me. "When I complained, she told me there were only 19 more classes."
I laughed. "Oh, Iris, she probably has a calendar where she's crossing off how she's getting rid of you. Maybe on the last day, there's a smiley face. Or a little drawing of you she can scratch out." We both laughed. (Of course, I am sure the teacher is far too professional for that, but I'm also sure her life would be easier if Iris weren't in this class).
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
a house full of little dogs
Last weekend Pigwidgeon the idiotic African grey parrot was making a racket during my Warcraft raid. Although I was using a headset with its own microphone when I talked to the raid team, evidently they could hear Pig when I spoke. "Oh! You've got a little dog there!" said one of my team members. "What kind of dog is it?" I could hear the others laughing after I sheepishly said, "That's not a dog. It's a demented parrot."
Recently Iris, a huge fan of "Pearls Before Swine", called into a radio talk show and got to play Trivial Pursuit with cartoonist and fellow recovering lawyer, Stephan Pastis. Iris felt a bit shy and got me to help her, and little Lola shrieked uncontrollably with excitement. "I see you have a little dog there," said the affable Stephan Pastis. "Uh, no," I said. "It's a little girl." Lola shrieked all the louder with joy and amusement at being mistaken for a dog by a famous person.
Recently Iris, a huge fan of "Pearls Before Swine", called into a radio talk show and got to play Trivial Pursuit with cartoonist and fellow recovering lawyer, Stephan Pastis. Iris felt a bit shy and got me to help her, and little Lola shrieked uncontrollably with excitement. "I see you have a little dog there," said the affable Stephan Pastis. "Uh, no," I said. "It's a little girl." Lola shrieked all the louder with joy and amusement at being mistaken for a dog by a famous person.
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
news, happy news for some which others can use to their advantage
So the big news around these parts is that eleven year-old Iris uber Alles was accepted to a school for gifted children down the Peninsula. When her acceptance packet came, it was filled with glitter, and Iris and I threw the glitter in the air as she shrieked and hopped about.
Iris has always had a staunch, unquestioning belief in her own personal superiority, and now she has had outside confirmation. I myself also had a staunch and persistent belief in my own brilliance as a child, but I was alone in that possibly mistaken belief. (One of my parents notably sneered at me, "You think you are so smart, but you're ordinary." Around that time I won a National Merit Scholarship, which would seem to support the idea that I wasn't exactly ordinary, but no one seemed convinced). I don't know what it would have been like as a kid to have people actually say to me, "You really do have a lot of potential, and we want to help you work to your best ability." Looking at Iris, you can see it looks pretty heady. She's drunk on her acceptance letter, and she's pouring over the school's website, agonizing over whether to switch from Mandarin to Japanese and pondering which of the many exciting activities she'll pursue.
The Sober Husband is less pleased. He doesn't see any need to send the child to a special school. He seems to think she should just do projects outside school hours, preferably projects in his areas of expertise: physics, math, and chess. The child herself prefers to knit in front of reality TV on her off hours, pointing out with great feeling that it is unfair to expect her to do extra math when she already puts in plenty of time at math classes during the week.
The Sober Husband keeps asking, "Are you suuuuure about this? You're going to have to take a bus, you know. A loooong bus ride!" Iris pointed out that lots of girls in South Africa used to spend over two hours on a bus to get to school before Oprah created a boarding school, and they were happy to do it because they want a good education. Like Oprah's students, Iris feels that a bus ride is a small price to pay for more challenging classes. I noted that as a child living in a rural area, I had very long bus rides to school, and at the end of my bus route was a crappy school. The Sober Husband rolled his eyes at me. "And it snowed, too! We were cold and wet on the bus!" I informed him. He rolled his eyes more.
But the Sober Husband is, if nothing else, resourceful, and he found a way to use this acceptance to further his own hobbyhorse, making the children do difficult math in their free time. "When Iris couldn't figure something out," he told me happily, "I said, 'I bet all those other children at the other school can do it.' And she wanted to use the iPhone calculator, but I said, 'I'm sure all those other kids can do it without an iPhone, and you'll need to be as good as them.' And then she did it! I'm going to use this all the time to pressure her."
Iris has always had a staunch, unquestioning belief in her own personal superiority, and now she has had outside confirmation. I myself also had a staunch and persistent belief in my own brilliance as a child, but I was alone in that possibly mistaken belief. (One of my parents notably sneered at me, "You think you are so smart, but you're ordinary." Around that time I won a National Merit Scholarship, which would seem to support the idea that I wasn't exactly ordinary, but no one seemed convinced). I don't know what it would have been like as a kid to have people actually say to me, "You really do have a lot of potential, and we want to help you work to your best ability." Looking at Iris, you can see it looks pretty heady. She's drunk on her acceptance letter, and she's pouring over the school's website, agonizing over whether to switch from Mandarin to Japanese and pondering which of the many exciting activities she'll pursue.
The Sober Husband is less pleased. He doesn't see any need to send the child to a special school. He seems to think she should just do projects outside school hours, preferably projects in his areas of expertise: physics, math, and chess. The child herself prefers to knit in front of reality TV on her off hours, pointing out with great feeling that it is unfair to expect her to do extra math when she already puts in plenty of time at math classes during the week.
The Sober Husband keeps asking, "Are you suuuuure about this? You're going to have to take a bus, you know. A loooong bus ride!" Iris pointed out that lots of girls in South Africa used to spend over two hours on a bus to get to school before Oprah created a boarding school, and they were happy to do it because they want a good education. Like Oprah's students, Iris feels that a bus ride is a small price to pay for more challenging classes. I noted that as a child living in a rural area, I had very long bus rides to school, and at the end of my bus route was a crappy school. The Sober Husband rolled his eyes at me. "And it snowed, too! We were cold and wet on the bus!" I informed him. He rolled his eyes more.
But the Sober Husband is, if nothing else, resourceful, and he found a way to use this acceptance to further his own hobbyhorse, making the children do difficult math in their free time. "When Iris couldn't figure something out," he told me happily, "I said, 'I bet all those other children at the other school can do it.' And she wanted to use the iPhone calculator, but I said, 'I'm sure all those other kids can do it without an iPhone, and you'll need to be as good as them.' And then she did it! I'm going to use this all the time to pressure her."
Monday, March 21, 2011
going to the gym
The Sober Husband has taken a new job, which is a good thing. He needed a change and some new challenges, and his old company was sadly declining. Once that job had been a dream job, a job that fit him like a custom-made leather glove, and then it turned into a depressing set of hassles and annoyances.
Overall he's much perkier and happier, but no job comes without its hassles. At this job, the employees all work out together a couple of times a week. The Sober Husband despises organized exercise and complained to me, "They didn't tell me during the interviews that I was going to have to go to a gym!" On the days the office works out, he complains, "I have PE class today", rolling his eyes.
Today he had trouble finding the shorts he wanted to take "for PE class" in time for me to drive him to the train station, and that probably contributed to him not paying attention to which T-shirt he randomly pulled out of his drawer. It wasn't until it was too late that he realized he was working out in one of his weird Burning Man era T-shirts, a relic of the days when we were cutting-edge urban hipsters. This particular T-shirt blares, in huge block capitals, "SUBJUGATE THE GENETICALLY INFERIOR." As I was laughing heartily at his expense that evening, he reminded me that the gym his office goes to is part of a Jewish community center.
Overall he's much perkier and happier, but no job comes without its hassles. At this job, the employees all work out together a couple of times a week. The Sober Husband despises organized exercise and complained to me, "They didn't tell me during the interviews that I was going to have to go to a gym!" On the days the office works out, he complains, "I have PE class today", rolling his eyes.
Today he had trouble finding the shorts he wanted to take "for PE class" in time for me to drive him to the train station, and that probably contributed to him not paying attention to which T-shirt he randomly pulled out of his drawer. It wasn't until it was too late that he realized he was working out in one of his weird Burning Man era T-shirts, a relic of the days when we were cutting-edge urban hipsters. This particular T-shirt blares, in huge block capitals, "SUBJUGATE THE GENETICALLY INFERIOR." As I was laughing heartily at his expense that evening, he reminded me that the gym his office goes to is part of a Jewish community center.
Friday, March 18, 2011
the language developments continue apace
Pigwidgeon the moronic African Grey parrot continues to fail to learn to speak. By this age, she should have a rich vocabulary, but she doesn't have a single word. On the other hand, recently she learned to meow and purr, which has been profoundly irritating. And as of yesterday, she has learned to imitate convincingly that horrible noise children with colds make when they are snuffling up their mucus in order to avoid blowing their noses. Evidently she was paying attention the last time the children had head colds.
I find this deeply unsettling. I keep looking at her when she does this, trying to make sure she herself doesn't have some kind of discharge which is going to cost me big money at the vet's.
I find this deeply unsettling. I keep looking at her when she does this, trying to make sure she herself doesn't have some kind of discharge which is going to cost me big money at the vet's.
Monday, March 14, 2011
the drunken housewife and her time consuming hobby
Several people (including my own Sober Husband) have requested that I write more about Warcraft. Evidently people, like my husband, who find Warcraft uninteresting and have no desire to play it and who may even make fun of me for playing it so much, cannot get enough of reading about it (probably this is so they can ridicule me all the more).
Over the last couple of months I've been playing Warcraft far too frigging much. Why, pray tell? Because I have entered the more elite ranks of players; I've become that glorious creature, a regular raider (for another point of view, substitute the word "obsessed" for "elite" and "pathetic" for "glorious"). "What the hell is that," you might wonder. Fear not, for I shall explain.
The World of Warcraft is a very large and flexible world. Millions of players around the world participate in it. We are housed on various servers, which are based upon our geographical region and our presumed language of choice. Servers also have distinct personalities: you can choose one where the players can attack each other at any time, or you can pick one where you can turn off the ability of other players to attack you until and unless you yourself make an aggressive move first. There are also "role playing" servers, including a very infamous one known for its cybersex, which I have not myself visited.
People play Warcraft in a number of different ways. You can just quest all the time, which is how I largely spent my first couple of years in Azeroth ("Azeroth" is the name for the virtual world in the game). You can join battlegrounds and fight it out with other players, which I love to do. And you can join with other players to enter dungeons, which we call "instances", to do more complicated and difficult fighting against harder monsters.
I never used to be able to run instances, because I was either not in a guild or in a "social guild" where we just yammered to each other all the time but never grouped up to do anything seriously. (I still miss my old Alliance guild from Drenden, where the wit was always sparkling and the conversation always extremely inappropriate). But then Blizzard brilliantly created a tool to enable players to join up with strangers, either for specific instances or for random ones. Servers are grouped together in "battle nets" or "battle groups", which means that when players join together in these random groups, they meet up with players from other servers whom they might not ever see again. (Random groups are called "pugs", an abbreviation for "pick up groups", and this morning I pugged with some lovely players from Chile, who adored me because I am that rare creature, an American WoW player who speaks Spanish and doesn't go off on a tirade if Spanish is the main language of the pug).
Before Blizzard created that tool, it was very hard for me to get a group together for an instance. I remember the day when FINALLY I was running Zul'Farrak with a decent group when our tank had to quit because his mother insisted he get off the damn computer and go outside to play. Now I run a random at least once a day (by running random dungeons, players earn points which can be amassed and used to trade for really good armor).
Even though I spent far too much time playing Warcraft, I was always what the other players call disparagingly "a casual player." For more serious players, there are two much more challenging ways to play Warcraft, both requiring players to form teams which regularly work together. First there are arenas, where teams of different sizes attack each other. There's a sexist saying in Warcraft, that "chicks quest and guys arena", and there's a lot of truth to that. I've never joined an arena team, although I have talked idly of forming one. Blizzard tries half-assedly to turn arenas into a true sport, with actual seasons and rankings and what-have-you, but so far, like a chick, I've sat it out.
Then there are raids. We call anything a raid which requires a lot of players and which is supposed to be hard to accomplish. Raids are usually either ten players or twenty-five players (although years ago Blizzard created several forty player raids, they seem to have given up on the idea of trying to make us herd 40 catlike players). They need to be well-equipped and to know what they are doing. And what do they do? Blizzard purposefully designed parts of the World of Warcraft to be so difficult that it would take a group of ten or twenty-five players several weeks to conquor them, slaying every monster and gleaning every bit of loot.
The places you go on a raid are beautiful and strange. The developers spent a lot of time and energy on them, and the graphics and ideas can be breathtaking, funny, disgusting, disturbing, or deeply moving. The level of difficulty can be huge: one person's fuckup will usually mean that everyone dies (and when you die, you have to run back as a ghost to your body, and your equipment is damaged. You'll be less powerful until you're able to pay for expensive repairs to your gear).
Currently I am on a ten man raid team. My raid team meets twice a week, from 9:00 to 11:30 p.m. my time (the players are scattered around the world). This is my second raid team, the first fell apart after a month or two, but thankfully one of the other players from that first group took the lead in organizing a second raid team for that time slot. I love playing with this group: the players are intelligent, adult, and respectful of one another. When I tried raiding on another server with another character, I got upset regularly as a couple of the other players, extremely experienced raiders, tended to lord it over the more casual players. I felt there was a healthy sprinkling of sexism in that, as well as arrogance which was often appropriate (these players were indeed strong and highly experienced with better equipment), but at times misguided. For example (and here I get more technical), another player was always trying to micromanage my paladin's buffs, despite the fact that he had no understanding of the paladin class mechanics. Every time he'd bitch me out for not giving raid buffs, when at that time paladin buffs were by class only. No matter how many times I explained that paladin buffs were class buffs, not raid buffs, he never learned that and continued to try to correct me. I felt my intelligence was always being insulted, and it was maddening coming from someone who never could be made to realize that he was making factual errors in his criticisms. But my current team is composed of only gracious players, who have nothing but politely worded encouragement and gentle constructive criticism.
Being on a raid team is like having a part-time job. You need to be on time and prepared. You should be logged in, fully repaired, with plenty of expensive elixirs and food (elixirs and top end food give your character heightened abilities for an hour). You should study the fight ahead of time (there are endless tutorials players create on Youtube). We talk to each other both by typing and by speaking; I bought an annoying headset with a microphone and headphones just for raiding. (My family members are united by a hatred of hearing my fellow raiders talk on the voice program we all call "vent", but they love hearing my isolated, out-of-context remarks. Their amused laughter often forms the background when I'm making cogent remarks into my microphone such as "he blew me right off the platform" or "I'm putting my mammoth up for repairs").
And you need to have the time blocked out, without interruptions. I could never have raided when the children were smaller. I remember trying group things in the past and having to have the Sober Husband explain to my group that I'd been called away for a child emergency. Now that they are older, I can shout directions at them while still manipulating my elemental shaman. I do still run into more trouble than the average raider, though. Often I have to ask, "Could you please repeat that? I have a lot of parrot aggro over here; I can't hear you over the birds." This past weekend during a particular intense moment, Pigwidgeon the idiotic African grey parrot decided to join me. I already had Al the moronic orange tabby kneading my chest and Frowst, our majestic trophy cat, leaning against my arm, and Pig divebombed us all, landing on my head. The cats flinched. Al dug his claws in my cleavage. Piggle squawked and awkwardly looked for footing around my head. Through it all I kept playing, not missing a beat as my shaman waged war against a massive air spirit with a rather threatening pelvic undulation. After all, a raider must maintain focus.
Over the last couple of months I've been playing Warcraft far too frigging much. Why, pray tell? Because I have entered the more elite ranks of players; I've become that glorious creature, a regular raider (for another point of view, substitute the word "obsessed" for "elite" and "pathetic" for "glorious"). "What the hell is that," you might wonder. Fear not, for I shall explain.
The World of Warcraft is a very large and flexible world. Millions of players around the world participate in it. We are housed on various servers, which are based upon our geographical region and our presumed language of choice. Servers also have distinct personalities: you can choose one where the players can attack each other at any time, or you can pick one where you can turn off the ability of other players to attack you until and unless you yourself make an aggressive move first. There are also "role playing" servers, including a very infamous one known for its cybersex, which I have not myself visited.
People play Warcraft in a number of different ways. You can just quest all the time, which is how I largely spent my first couple of years in Azeroth ("Azeroth" is the name for the virtual world in the game). You can join battlegrounds and fight it out with other players, which I love to do. And you can join with other players to enter dungeons, which we call "instances", to do more complicated and difficult fighting against harder monsters.
I never used to be able to run instances, because I was either not in a guild or in a "social guild" where we just yammered to each other all the time but never grouped up to do anything seriously. (I still miss my old Alliance guild from Drenden, where the wit was always sparkling and the conversation always extremely inappropriate). But then Blizzard brilliantly created a tool to enable players to join up with strangers, either for specific instances or for random ones. Servers are grouped together in "battle nets" or "battle groups", which means that when players join together in these random groups, they meet up with players from other servers whom they might not ever see again. (Random groups are called "pugs", an abbreviation for "pick up groups", and this morning I pugged with some lovely players from Chile, who adored me because I am that rare creature, an American WoW player who speaks Spanish and doesn't go off on a tirade if Spanish is the main language of the pug).
Before Blizzard created that tool, it was very hard for me to get a group together for an instance. I remember the day when FINALLY I was running Zul'Farrak with a decent group when our tank had to quit because his mother insisted he get off the damn computer and go outside to play. Now I run a random at least once a day (by running random dungeons, players earn points which can be amassed and used to trade for really good armor).
Even though I spent far too much time playing Warcraft, I was always what the other players call disparagingly "a casual player." For more serious players, there are two much more challenging ways to play Warcraft, both requiring players to form teams which regularly work together. First there are arenas, where teams of different sizes attack each other. There's a sexist saying in Warcraft, that "chicks quest and guys arena", and there's a lot of truth to that. I've never joined an arena team, although I have talked idly of forming one. Blizzard tries half-assedly to turn arenas into a true sport, with actual seasons and rankings and what-have-you, but so far, like a chick, I've sat it out.
Then there are raids. We call anything a raid which requires a lot of players and which is supposed to be hard to accomplish. Raids are usually either ten players or twenty-five players (although years ago Blizzard created several forty player raids, they seem to have given up on the idea of trying to make us herd 40 catlike players). They need to be well-equipped and to know what they are doing. And what do they do? Blizzard purposefully designed parts of the World of Warcraft to be so difficult that it would take a group of ten or twenty-five players several weeks to conquor them, slaying every monster and gleaning every bit of loot.
The places you go on a raid are beautiful and strange. The developers spent a lot of time and energy on them, and the graphics and ideas can be breathtaking, funny, disgusting, disturbing, or deeply moving. The level of difficulty can be huge: one person's fuckup will usually mean that everyone dies (and when you die, you have to run back as a ghost to your body, and your equipment is damaged. You'll be less powerful until you're able to pay for expensive repairs to your gear).
Currently I am on a ten man raid team. My raid team meets twice a week, from 9:00 to 11:30 p.m. my time (the players are scattered around the world). This is my second raid team, the first fell apart after a month or two, but thankfully one of the other players from that first group took the lead in organizing a second raid team for that time slot. I love playing with this group: the players are intelligent, adult, and respectful of one another. When I tried raiding on another server with another character, I got upset regularly as a couple of the other players, extremely experienced raiders, tended to lord it over the more casual players. I felt there was a healthy sprinkling of sexism in that, as well as arrogance which was often appropriate (these players were indeed strong and highly experienced with better equipment), but at times misguided. For example (and here I get more technical), another player was always trying to micromanage my paladin's buffs, despite the fact that he had no understanding of the paladin class mechanics. Every time he'd bitch me out for not giving raid buffs, when at that time paladin buffs were by class only. No matter how many times I explained that paladin buffs were class buffs, not raid buffs, he never learned that and continued to try to correct me. I felt my intelligence was always being insulted, and it was maddening coming from someone who never could be made to realize that he was making factual errors in his criticisms. But my current team is composed of only gracious players, who have nothing but politely worded encouragement and gentle constructive criticism.
Being on a raid team is like having a part-time job. You need to be on time and prepared. You should be logged in, fully repaired, with plenty of expensive elixirs and food (elixirs and top end food give your character heightened abilities for an hour). You should study the fight ahead of time (there are endless tutorials players create on Youtube). We talk to each other both by typing and by speaking; I bought an annoying headset with a microphone and headphones just for raiding. (My family members are united by a hatred of hearing my fellow raiders talk on the voice program we all call "vent", but they love hearing my isolated, out-of-context remarks. Their amused laughter often forms the background when I'm making cogent remarks into my microphone such as "he blew me right off the platform" or "I'm putting my mammoth up for repairs").
And you need to have the time blocked out, without interruptions. I could never have raided when the children were smaller. I remember trying group things in the past and having to have the Sober Husband explain to my group that I'd been called away for a child emergency. Now that they are older, I can shout directions at them while still manipulating my elemental shaman. I do still run into more trouble than the average raider, though. Often I have to ask, "Could you please repeat that? I have a lot of parrot aggro over here; I can't hear you over the birds." This past weekend during a particular intense moment, Pigwidgeon the idiotic African grey parrot decided to join me. I already had Al the moronic orange tabby kneading my chest and Frowst, our majestic trophy cat, leaning against my arm, and Pig divebombed us all, landing on my head. The cats flinched. Al dug his claws in my cleavage. Piggle squawked and awkwardly looked for footing around my head. Through it all I kept playing, not missing a beat as my shaman waged war against a massive air spirit with a rather threatening pelvic undulation. After all, a raider must maintain focus.
Thursday, March 10, 2011
the parrot, the hoarder, and the disrespectful mother
The other night Iris, Lola and I were all hanging out at the dining room table with Pigwidgeon, the African grey parrot. Lola asked my permission to give Piggle a pencil she'd found on the table. I hesitated. Recently I'd gotten into a mild dust-up with the Sober Husband over that exact same scenario, giving a perfectly good pencil to a parrot to destroy. I love pencils, and I want to keep a lot of them around the house, handy for my Sudoku puzzle or for writing down lists of ingredients. But as the Sober Husband pointed out, I also pay top dollar for parrot toys, and it would be cheaper to let the parrots chew on pencils (and they do want to gnaw on pencils; they find them irresistible).
Remembering that debate, I said it was okay for Lola to give Piggle the pencil. Pig immediately began destroying the pencil with great gusto, and Lola just as quickly became distraught. "Can we take it back?" she pleaded. "There's no point in taking it back now," I said.
I went into my stash in the kitchen and found a pencil covered with hearts. "Here, Lola," I said. "Have this one to cheer you up!" Lola took the pencil and curled up on the kitchen floor in a fetal position, cradling the second pencil and crying hysterically over the death of the first pencil.
"Lola! I just don't get this," I said. "It was YOUR IDEA to give the pencil to the parrot in the first place!"
Sobbing Lola said, "I just didn't realize how much I would love him."
"Him? Him?" murmured Iris in a low voice to me in the next room after I returned. "She is such a hoarder, Momdude. She is going to be a hoarder when she grows up." We both took a moment to remember "the Cupy family", a large group of used slushee cups Lola had insisted upon keeping in the dining room for years, which mysteriously vanished while I was in the hospital. Lola's wails continued as she mourned the fallen pencil, which by then was just a memory, a memory and a mess of tiny shards on the floor which I instructed Iris to sweep up. "Momdude! That is so unfair!" said Iris.
"Iris, I can't ask Lola to do it; it would be too upsetting," I explained.
Iris began a lengthy set of demands and negotiations aimed at requiring a huge amount of disgusting work to be performed by Lola in exchange for her cleaning up the pencil mess. Lola sobbed in the next room. Finding this situation so ridiculous, I found it hard to keep a straight face, and Iris was incensed. "Momdude! You are making this harder than it has to be! You are not very respectful!"
Remembering that debate, I said it was okay for Lola to give Piggle the pencil. Pig immediately began destroying the pencil with great gusto, and Lola just as quickly became distraught. "Can we take it back?" she pleaded. "There's no point in taking it back now," I said.
I went into my stash in the kitchen and found a pencil covered with hearts. "Here, Lola," I said. "Have this one to cheer you up!" Lola took the pencil and curled up on the kitchen floor in a fetal position, cradling the second pencil and crying hysterically over the death of the first pencil.
"Lola! I just don't get this," I said. "It was YOUR IDEA to give the pencil to the parrot in the first place!"
Sobbing Lola said, "I just didn't realize how much I would love him."
"Him? Him?" murmured Iris in a low voice to me in the next room after I returned. "She is such a hoarder, Momdude. She is going to be a hoarder when she grows up." We both took a moment to remember "the Cupy family", a large group of used slushee cups Lola had insisted upon keeping in the dining room for years, which mysteriously vanished while I was in the hospital. Lola's wails continued as she mourned the fallen pencil, which by then was just a memory, a memory and a mess of tiny shards on the floor which I instructed Iris to sweep up. "Momdude! That is so unfair!" said Iris.
"Iris, I can't ask Lola to do it; it would be too upsetting," I explained.
Iris began a lengthy set of demands and negotiations aimed at requiring a huge amount of disgusting work to be performed by Lola in exchange for her cleaning up the pencil mess. Lola sobbed in the next room. Finding this situation so ridiculous, I found it hard to keep a straight face, and Iris was incensed. "Momdude! You are making this harder than it has to be! You are not very respectful!"
Tuesday, March 08, 2011
the parrots are talking, all right
Pigwidgeon the idiotic African Grey parrot taught herself how to meow convincingly, and it's crazy-making. Last night I was cooking furiously, trying to get a spinach lasagna done in time for the children to eat before bedtime, and I was continually interrupted by stressed-out, trapped cat-sounding meows. As a reasonably dutiful and doting cat owner, every time I heard one of those I'd automatically spring into action, looking for a cat in trouble, before realizing, "It's just the stupid bird again." Finally I called the children and made them take Pigwidgeon away upstairs so I could finish the lasagna in peace.
And then the Amazon parrot, the one who is not supposed to be a good talker, showed off with a new phrase. "Iris! Lola! Come here! Iris! Lola! Come here!" she shouted, mimicking me perfectly. The children, who refer to her as "the Evil Dinosaur", ignored her (unlike their poor stupid mother, they can tell when a sound is made by a parrot and then ignore it accordingly). I made them go to the living room and and acknowledge that she'd called them, to be polite.
And then the Amazon parrot, the one who is not supposed to be a good talker, showed off with a new phrase. "Iris! Lola! Come here! Iris! Lola! Come here!" she shouted, mimicking me perfectly. The children, who refer to her as "the Evil Dinosaur", ignored her (unlike their poor stupid mother, they can tell when a sound is made by a parrot and then ignore it accordingly). I made them go to the living room and and acknowledge that she'd called them, to be polite.
Saturday, March 05, 2011
the parrot is talking... just not in English
Pigwidgeon, our moronic African grey parrot, has utterly failed to learn to talk so far. But! Over the last few days she has taken up meowing and purring. She sounds exactly like our cats.
This seems to be a linguistic development, just not the one we wanted.
This seems to be a linguistic development, just not the one we wanted.
Thursday, March 03, 2011
training up a child
Yesterday Iris uber Alles's fifth grade class spent the day touring three hospitals, courtesy of the numerous parents who are surgeons and physicians. At one point the girls were shown a machine designed to teach surgeons how to perform a particular operation, and they were encouraged to try it. Iris reported that she was the only one who could do it correctly.
"You were supposed to be moving these kinds of scissors, like you would in an operation where you have these things you're moving with remote controls [I understood this all too well, having once awakened during exactly this sort of surgery. It was like an alien abduction, mysterious gowned figures bent over huge machines]. No one else could do it, because your perspective was off. You were seeing it from above, kind of from on the side and above. But I have World of Warcraft fingers, and I could do it! It was just like playing World of Warcraft."
"Did they say you'd make a great surgeon?"
"Yes. Yes, they did. It was so easy, because I have World of Warcraft fingers! And I was the only one who did it right!"
"You were supposed to be moving these kinds of scissors, like you would in an operation where you have these things you're moving with remote controls [I understood this all too well, having once awakened during exactly this sort of surgery. It was like an alien abduction, mysterious gowned figures bent over huge machines]. No one else could do it, because your perspective was off. You were seeing it from above, kind of from on the side and above. But I have World of Warcraft fingers, and I could do it! It was just like playing World of Warcraft."
"Did they say you'd make a great surgeon?"
"Yes. Yes, they did. It was so easy, because I have World of Warcraft fingers! And I was the only one who did it right!"
Tuesday, March 01, 2011
another edifying conversation with Lola
Yesterday eight year-old Lola was feeling chatty as we headed to Iris's orthodontist. "Why don't cars get to go to spas, where they can be pampered?"
I said that cars do, and we call that a carwash. I was starting to explain "detailing" (a concept foreign to the children, as their parents are too cheap), but Lola cut me off. "No, I mean fancy, with special baths, elemental baths. When cars have hair, then they won't be denied!"
"What are elemental baths?" asked Iris with genuine curiosity.
"A bath where there is only one element. You know, different ones with different elements, just one element."
Iris very superiorly pointed out that water itself is composed of more than one element and went on a lengthy rant about the scientific impossibility of Lola's imagined spa, with its elemental baths, but I cut her off. "Iris, you're ignoring the most important part, that the cars have to grow hair first. Cars with hair? And does that mean that bald people can't go to the elemental baths? What does hair have to do with these elemental baths?"
I said that cars do, and we call that a carwash. I was starting to explain "detailing" (a concept foreign to the children, as their parents are too cheap), but Lola cut me off. "No, I mean fancy, with special baths, elemental baths. When cars have hair, then they won't be denied!"
"What are elemental baths?" asked Iris with genuine curiosity.
"A bath where there is only one element. You know, different ones with different elements, just one element."
Iris very superiorly pointed out that water itself is composed of more than one element and went on a lengthy rant about the scientific impossibility of Lola's imagined spa, with its elemental baths, but I cut her off. "Iris, you're ignoring the most important part, that the cars have to grow hair first. Cars with hair? And does that mean that bald people can't go to the elemental baths? What does hair have to do with these elemental baths?"
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