Quitting: Day Thirteen

Cigarettes Today: 2

Not exactly my zero target but not bad considering my lapse over the last three days.

Quitting: Day Twelve

Cigarettes Today: 6

The last of the pack I bought the other day. With those gone I'll be able to get back on track. My target for tomorrow is zero ciggies.

Quitting: Day Eleven

(Posted late)

Cigarettes Today: 8

The side effect of buying that damn pack yesterday; just knowing I have ciggies in my pocket makes it almost impossible not to have one when I feel the urge.

Well, that leaves five for tomorrow. If I burn all five that's the end of it, and I can go back to where I left off the other day.

Quitting: Day Ten

Cigarettes Today: 6

Bad day. Whoever's supposed to take care of the roads around Denver should be fired - there's still snow left lying all over the place, and in some places it is of course compacted by the traffic.

The upshot of this is that the back end of the car broke away just after I negotiated the curve from I-25 onto 6th avenue; I got control of it but as the back end snapped beck into line it overshot and went the other way. I steered into it again and got it back, but by that time I was pointing at the barrier, on snow - I gentled the brakes but there was just no traction and I hit at maybe 15 mph - not even enough to fire the airbags.

I was a little bit shaken up but more than anything I was just angry - if I'd still been working at the USDA I could have worked from home, but where I am now they insist on my presence even though there's useful work I could have done without coming in.

In any case I lost it and bought a pack at a gas station on the way in, and I've burned six. I'm trying as hard as I can to make those the last for the day.

Quitting: Day Nine

Cigarettes Today: 1

It snowed all night, from the look of things, and although it wasn't heavy it built up to about four or six inches. The main roads had been ploughed, though, so it wasn't too bad for the first hour of driving to work - I wasn't about to do the speed limit but fifty or even sixty in places was okay.

Then I got down to about mile 217 and ran into heavy snow, and everything slowed to a crawl. It took another hour to cover the last fifteen miles to work, and it was pretty nerve-wracking in a few places because there was almost no traction; in one place I hit the brakes and even with the antilock the car started to slew. I'm pretty careful in these conditions and I had a big gap between me and the car in front, but I was more concerned that I'd slide into the lane to my right since I lost the steering for a moment. Scary.

So by the time I got in I was twitchy again, the willpower went again, and I scrounged another cig off Leo (a guy I work with). That set me straight and I'll be okay now for the rest of the day.

Quitting: Day Eight

Cigarettes Today: 0

Basically the same situation as yesterday; no stress but I have to guard against boredom, because that gets me thinking about a smoke.

Yesterday I watched The Matrix and about half of The Matrix Reloaded on my portable DVD player; today I watched the second half and then completed the trilogy by watching The Matrix Revolutions. That kept the boredom at bay but right now it's not quite 3pm and Kate has Miss Potter on TV - a good film but it's been on about a dozen times in the last couple of weeks; I could probably quote Ewan McGregor's lines from memory.

So the plan is, first, to run up to WalMart to pick up some milk, eggs and a few other things including some silicon-based sealant; second, to use said sealant to fix Kate's little table fountain in the living room; third, pick out another movie to stay occupied - I'm thinking about the X-Men films, but we'll see.

Quitting: Day Seven

Cigarettes Today: 0

It's Saturday, so I don't have to worry about driving to work, or work itself, and the associated stress bringing on any craving for a smoke. What I do have to consider is other factors such as boredom, since it's habitual to light one because of having nothing to do. So I'm trying to stay busy to keep that from happening.

Quitting: Day Six

Cigarettes Today: 1

(Actually posted on Day Seven...)

Not doing so bad today. The drive in was okay but I got feeling a bit twitchy in a gap between meetings this morning. Same as yesterday, I wasn't able to concentrate on reading some important technical documents, and had to scrounge a thinking stick off a colleague. The good news is that I haven't had any cravings since then - about five hours ago as I write this.

Quitting: Day Five

Cigarettes Today: 1

I was trying to read the documentation for Metro (a web services package from Sun); there's a lot to it and it's quite heavy going in places, and the craving was making it almost impossible to concentrate. I caved in for the sake of sanity and scrounged a smoke off a colleague; at least I'm now able to focus on what I'm reading. I had to make a commitment to myself that this one would be the one and only for the day.

A note on the colour coding; if the number of cigs shows in red that means I'm not happy with it - it means I had more than I meant to (which for the most part means more than zero). If it's in green that means I feel okay about it.

Quitting: Day Four

Cigarettes Today: 0

Another rough traffic day but this time I was able to resist the urge when I got here despite the twitchiness - thanks to coffee, chocolate covered blueberries and Eclipse chewing gum.

Quitting: Day Three

Cigarettes Today: 1

I got stuck in traffic on the way to work and when I got there I was so twitchy I couldn't stand it - I had to scrounge one off a co-worker. I made it last all day by just getting a few puffs at a time then putting it out. Shameful, but better than breaking down and buying a whole pack, as I was sorely tempted to do.

Questing in Terokkar Forest

We went after the couple of quests that we'd picked up in the Refugee Caravan south of Shattrath; they weren't too difficult. The first was to knock down a bunch of bad guys in an area south of the caravan and the other involved going into an underground area to the west (not a dungeon in the usual sense, since it wasn't an instance) to locate three items that turned out to be held in three lockboxes.

The first part wasn't too tough at all although some of the spellcasters could be a challenge, especially if another bad guy happened to latch on at the same time; they had pretty damaging fireball spells. All the same it didn't take long to whack the necessary quota and move to the northwest from there to find the underground area.

That part didn't take too long either; there were basically three rooms, each rooms having three or four bad guys and one of the lockers we needed to raid. There were rooms to the left and right and another a little more distance and down the central path. That last room was bigger and had a level 65 baddie standing close to the locker, but it wasn't an elite and wasn't too hard to knock down.

On the way out we picked up another quest to escort a Draenei from that central room back to the Caravan and while he managed to pull a couple more enemies on the way it wasn't that hard.

All in all, something like 35,000 XP for the three quests together which made for some good progress toward level 63 for both of us.

Quitting: Day Two

Cigarettes Today: 0

Would have been easier if I'd realised, or someone had told me, that today is Martin Luther King Day and therefore a federal holiday. As it was I drove to work and only found out when I got there, and had to turn back. It would have been extremely easy to drop into a gas station and get a pack of twenty, since it's an hour and a quarter drive home. I managed to resist the urge although it was a close thing. That was about 9am, and since I got home it's been mostly okay; although I've had the cravings a couple of times I've managed to suppress them by keeping my mind on other things.

Nagrand

We decided to make a push to get the next level, only this time instead of wasting time with low-level quests and dungeons we figured our time was better spent grinding for points in higher level areas.

Accordingly we flew out to Shattrath (actually we'd started there and took a portal to Ironforge to clear out our packs from the day before, then flew to Nethergarde Keep and rode to and through the Dark Portal), and rode out into Terokkar Forest.

We headed south and then west to explore the region and found ourselves crossing the border into Nagrand. This area is a little higher than Terokkar; level 66 mobs were generally the highest level we saw compared to about 64 in Terokkar. Since we were level 61, that put those higher level mobs five levels above us, making this area a bit of a tough proposition.

All the same we did pretty well, apart from one point where I was noticed by a couple of level 70 elite guards from what appeared to be a Horde outpost in the northeast. That was a wipe, of course.

In an attempt to find refuge we made our way to the middle of the region - where the map showed a settlement - and found a place called Halaa, which turned out to be an Alliance outpost.

From there we went southeast - a quick look at the map on WowWiki.com showed another, larger settlement there called Telaar. The place turned out to be neutral rather than Alliance-friendly and we weren't able to make use of any of the facilities except the mailbox and the flightmaster. I'm guessing that would change if we upped our reputations with the right faction, but at least the place was a relatively safe haven. It's also rather beautiful; see the picture, a snap I took from the flightmaster's platform high above the town.

From there we started out north but Kate hit level 62 before we'd gone very far and we turned back to take a flight back to Shattrath. I flew on to Honor Hold, since I was only eighty percent of the way to that level, and rode out to grind for as many points as I could from the level 61 boars and other things in the general area.

It didn't take too long and by the time Kate had finished her business in Shattrath I was ready to get back to Ironforge for training.

After that we went back to Shattrath and spent just a short time exploring a little more to the south and east of Shattrath, picking up a couple of quests in the Refugee Caravan we found out there, before we hearthstoned back to Shattrath and called it a night.

Quitting: Day One

Cigarettes Today: 1

What's the Cigarettes thing?

I've decided to make a concerted effort to quit smoking, and as part of the effort I'm planning to put a little note every day to keep a track of progress - nothing too long, and some days no more than the heading. I'll probably only write more when there's something worth writing.

Watch This Space.

The Searing Gorge

We had some open quests in the Searing Gorge so we decided to go and try to clear three or four. Unfortunately it wasn't quite that simple.

As we've been getting higher levels, more and more quests are turning out to be Dungeon quests, which we don't like too much - they take too long, and the instances are filled with elites which means that (1) they're tough but (2) you only get the same XP as you would for knocking down a regular mob of the same level.

Yesterday was a case in point - we found ourselves in the Blackrock Spire instance and although we gave it a fair shot we just could not locate the item we went in there for - the minimap showed a location but there were several floors and it could have been on any one (it wasn't on any of the ones we checked). Finally we walked into a room full of level 58 elites; we'd had no problem up until that point taking these guys on in threes and fours (well, mostly - Kate got wiped at one point and I nearly bought it myself), but a whole roomful?

We figured that the XP from fighting these guys wasn't worth the effort, and that our time would be better spent elsewhere.

Also, we've started to get quests marked PvP, meaning that they're Battleground quests. We're really not up to battlegrounds - we found ourselves in the Alterac one a few weeks ago and it was extremely annoying - I could barely see what was going on because the fighting was all happening around some fat Tauren and nobody would move far enough away from the dopey sod where I could see what I was doing; Kate couldn't react in time because her system wasn't fast enough to provide a decent screen refresh rate with so many Horde guys on us.

So as a result we're restricting ourselves mostly to whatever plain, ordinary, non-dungeon, non-PvP quests we can find. Unfortunately, they're getting a bit thin on the ground.

So we did actually manage to clear up one quest that meant collecting thirty Dark Iron fragments, but other than that the only real achievement was that we completed mapping the region.

We'd hoped to hit level 62, but we didn't get enough XP to push us much more than about halfway, so I think our plan next is to explore the Terokkar Forest area near Shattrath; the mobs around there are high enough level to get us a level in a reasonable time, and at the same time we can be gathering valuable materials (adamantite and fel iron, in my case) to help with the cash situation.

More Mining and Herb-picking

We haven't taken a lot of time for questing or anything else that would get us some XP and level 62; instead for the past couple of days all we've really done is continue with mining and picking herbs in an effort to replenish our cash supplies.

Kate's been sticking mostly to the Western Plaguelands and while I've spent some time there mining thorium and mithril, I've also done the same thing in the Eastern Plaguelands and Hinterlands.

The money's coming up a bit at a time; I'm back to having over six hundred gold in the bank and after last night, when I picked up almost thirty chunks of thorium ore as well as a handful of mithril, I'm hoping to be closer to seven hundred when I check tonight.

As for tonight, it's Friday so we're planning a bit of a marathon session with the primary goal of getting level 62.

Mining

We're still trying to recoup some of the cash we spent on riding training - partially because we'll both need it to buy new equipment pretty soon, and partially because we're not terribly far from the level where we'll be able to buy flying mounts, and we both want to be able to do that. There's a little bit of confusion about how much a flying mounts costs - 5000g is a figure we hear a lot but according to one source that's for an epic flying mount, and there's another, lower-level type that you can get for 800g. I'm also unsure about whether Paladins get a cheaper alternative, as we do for the horses.

Either way, we need the cash so for yesterday's trip we decided to do nothing but gather materials for auction. Kate went to the Western Plaguelands and pretty much stayed there; I started off in the Arathi Highlands to pick up as much iron as I could find to replenish the stocks I'd used the other day, and while I was there I found a decent amount of mithril as well as a small amount of gold and tin.

After doing the circuit of Arathi, I took off for the Eastern Plaguelands since I know it's a good place for thorium; as it happened, though, I ended up spending more time fighting than mining (including getting wiped when two level 58 elites jumped me near Tyr's Hand), so I decided to move on somewhere else. I'd seen thorium and dark iron from the air in the Searing Gorge so I took a trip down there and did find some dark iron and more mithril, but only one thorium outcrop.

By now I was running out of time so I decided on one last attempt to find something worth some money and so I went through the Dark Portal and flew to Honor Hold, then from there rode southwest into the Terokkar Forest. I was hoping to find fel iron and adamantite, but no soap - it looked like someone had cleaned the place out before me. I was pretty close to Shattrath so I decided it was time to call time and take a portal back to Ironforge. I smelted the iron (apart from a few chunks that I prospected, getting one measly moonstone in return) and put that in the bank; the rest went for auction and with a bit of luck that lot should put the better part of a hundred gold back into my account.

Jewelcrafting, First Aid and a Huge Mechanical Monster

We didn't have much time to do anything yesterday; Kate spent a lot of time helping our son, who just started playing a couple of weeks ago, by finding weapons, armour and other things on the auction house and also making a few things, for which I donated some iron bars and a couple of other things. While she was doing that I spent some time burning up some of the materials I've collected in an attempt to push my jewelcrafting up at least a few points - this was largely fruitless because I very quickly ran out of jewels while still having quite a few stacks of metal bars, especially bronze and mithril.

I think the only way to go forward with this is to go out mining for ore and then prospect it for jewels; the problem with this is that doing so will certainly reduce the amount of cash I can get by auctioning the ores off (although it might result in more excess jewels that can be auctioned), at a time when I really need to be pushing for as much gold as possible to recover from the cost of the riding training.

In fact I've been seriously thinking about dumping the jewelcrafting profession altogether and replacing it with another gathering task, probably skinning. Jewelcrafting is an expensive profession and the returns are limited, at least at the level I'm at; perhaps that'll get better as I get the ability to make more and better stuff, but who the hell knows? It's a tough choice, given how much I've put into it so far that would be lost. Perhaps I'll go mining for materials purely for prospecting, then see how things work out.

Medic!

I headed out to Hellfire Peninsula to take care of one particular thing - obtaining two sets (one set for me, one for Kate) of two books that teach the making of Netherweave Bandages and the 'heavy' variant of the same. The books come from Burko, a Draenei Medic in the Temple of Telhamat in the northwest corner of the Peninsula.

I made my way out to Honor Hold by way of the Blasted Lands and the Dark Portal, rather than hearthstoning, for the same reason as before - I wanted the hearthstone ready in case of an emergency. While I was at the Hold I found a master mining trainer and at last was able to get a bit more training - I can now smelt adamantite and fel iron, among other things.

We hadn't been out to Telhamat before so this was terra incognita and I only had a rough idea of the Temple's location. While the Peninsula was pretty hairy at level 58 it isn't too bad now that we're at level 61, but there is one very scary thing in that area: a Fel Reaver. It's huge, it's level 70 elite, it has a hundred and four thousand health points compared to my slightly less than four thousand, and it wanders all over the western part of the Peninsula.

I rode out from Honor Hold, sticking to the road and moving as fast as I could while watching for the Reaver, and I saw the Temple off to my right at the same time as I saw the Reaver heading on a path that would take him across the road I needed. He didn't seem to be moving too fast - although that could be an illusion caused by his sheer size - so I decided to get ahead of him on the road I was on then cut north to the Temple.

This was a bad move; when I left the road I ran into some kind of vulture. It was about level 58, so not too bad, and I knocked it down fairly quickly - but then another one latched on, then as that one went down another attacked. And all the time I could see the Reaver getting closer.

After about the fourth vulture went down the Reaver was just southeast of me and I was sure he'd spot me if I stayed where I was so I ran for it, with at least one more vulture still pecking at me, until I reached the Temple steps and safety.

I found Burko and got the books and also found, thank Dog, a flightmaster. By this time Kate was running a quick herb-gathering pass of the Blasted Lands on her way to the Dark Portal, so I flew back so that we could hook up and then we went together back to Honor Hold and she followed me from there back out to Telhamat so that she could map the area and get the flight path. This time it wasn't so bad - it was a pretty straight run and the Reaver was well behind us, and Kate made one quick stop to pick a herb she spotted. The Reaver was just coming into sight over the rise to the east as we ran the last short distance to the Temple.

Time was up; we flew to Shattrath and did our usual tidy-up before quitting for the night.

Faster

Plaguelands

I flew to Lakeshire then rode to the Eastvale Logging Camp to get Journeyman riding training (480 gold - argh!). After that I rode across country to Stormwind City and went to the Cathedral of Light to get my Charger training (another 16g, but at least it's cheaper than a horse). The Charger is distinctly faster than the Warhorse.

I was planning on flying direct to Chillwind Camp in the Western Plaguelands but Kate decided after all to say hell to the expense and go get the same horse training; I took the Deeprun Tram to Ironforge and we went back to the Logging Camp together and Kate got the training and a Fast Palomino.

We made our way north to Chillwind Camp the fastest way we knew: ride back to Lakeshire (definitely quicker on the new faster horses) then fly from there. Once there I started by making a circuit of the Western Plaguelands looking for ore and whacking the odd spider, bear, wolf and Scarlet Lumberjack.

After that I ran across the bridge into the Eastern Plaguelands and detoured north to the Terrorweb Tunnel to grab the last five crypt fiend parts I needed for a quest, then did another circuit grabbing more mithril and thorium. I found a road leading north out of the area and took a second detour to check it out; it leads through a portal and takes you into the Ghostlands, a low-level hostile area - I saw a couple of level 17 mobs and a copper vein and that's all, then I headed back.

Kate spent longer in the Western Plaguelands and followed through to Light's Hope Chapel after a little while. We had a new plan - explore the area around Shattrath City.

Terokkar Forest

We could have hearthstoned to Shattrath directly but that would have been taking a risk - with a sixty minute cooldown on the hearthstones, if we'd got into a bad situation in the wild we wouldn't have had an easy escape option - so instead we flew down to Nethergarde Keep and rode to and through the Dark Portal. On the other side we found the flightmaster near the portal and flew to Shattrath.

We did a few quick things in the city - dumping auctionable items in the bank temporarily, and finding Haris Pilton in the World's End Tavern (she sells a pair of sunglasses for five copper that go for ten gold and up on the auctions). After that we went to the bridge on the east side of town and headed out into the Terokkar Forest.

It's a high level area - mobs from level 59 to about 64 - but although it was a bit heavy it really wasn't that bad; about the worst thing that happened was that we'd get attacked by nearby baddies while trying to mine ore or gather herbs. Kate was able to get some of the rarer herbs and I found Adamantite and Fel Iron.

We made our way northeast and found a path leading back directly to the Hellfire Peninsula (bypassing Zangarmarsh) and we went a little way that direction before heading back.

The path runs along the edge of the world - Outland is the largest remaining fragment of Draenor, the destroyed Draenei homeworld, and we'd seen from the air that it's easy to get to the edge and look over. Unfortunately it's a little too easy... out of curiosity I went to take a look and went onto a part of the slope that was just a bit too steep. Strangely, my body appeared near the edge of a cliff on the north side of the Terokkar Forest, so I had to make my way north while Kate came back west, and we met up on the road just outside Shattrath.

Time was up - we headed back into Shattrath through a short tunnel that leads right into the Lower City, then took the portal to Ironforge and after grabbing the stuff we'd put in the bank for safekeeping, set up a whole bunch of auctions and packed it in for the night. I'm curious to know how the Haris Pilton shades will sell...

Plaguelands

We'd left off in Light's Hope Chapel in the Eastern Plaguelands, and from there we went back to the Western Plaguelands to see Chromie in the ruins of Andorhal and close out a quest, then after that we moved around the region gathering ore and herbs and grinding for XP.

After a while it became clear that there wasn't much left to gather so I flew back to the Chapel and rode to the southern border, then west to find what ore I could. There wasn't much - perhaps a couple of mithril outcrops.

When I reached the river I headed north along the eastern bank and found the entrance to Terrorweb Tunnel, which leads through to Terrordale. The great thing about the tunnel is that there are a bunch of Crypt Fiends in there and many of them drop crypt fiend parts that we need thirty of for a quest. I started with about four parts; by the time I got to the far end of the tunnel I had twenty-five.

There's also a level 60 elite Nerubian Overseer in there - basically a bigger, tougher Crypt Fiend - and he drops several parts in one lot but he is very challenging to take down because I largely rely on Consecrate, Hammer of Light and other spells in the tougher fights and he keeps "silencing", which stops you casting any spells. You're basically relying on regular damage and being able to throw in the occasional spell during the moments when the silencing spell wears off.

Kate moved to the Eastern Plaguelands by road rather than flying at about the time I was making my way east along the southern side of Terrordale, so I made my way around to where she was so that we could meet up. At that time I was just a few thousand XP off level 61 and Kate wasn't far behind; I got the level and hung around giving Kate the occasional health boost and curing poisons and diseases until she hit 61 too. Once we'd got to that point we hearthstoned to Shattrath and took the portal to Ironforge.

I'd picked up a fair pile of thorium ore and a little mithril, gold and truesilver, as well as a couple of greens and a bunch of junk; I sold the junk, auctioned the rest and got repairs done. Then it was time at last to get my Charger spell.

I was disappointed - the spell didn't show up in the available training and I had to check a couple of things before I figured out why. It turns out that one of the requirements is that I must already have Journeyman Riding skill, so after all I have to pay the 480 gold for that. Once I have that, I can get my Charger.

That changes things; I have easily enough cash to pay for the training, but not enough to pay for Kate's at the same time, so I may have to wait until I have at least another couple of hundred gold so that I can do what I need without leaving me too skint to pay for new weapons, armour and whatever other kit I'll need going forward.

Talking of going forward, we've managed to trim down our quest list to a more manageable number but many of the open quests are in dungeons; I don't think we'll have a choice but to do a few of those before much longer. In the meantime the Ghostlands area is just to the north of the Eastern Plaguelands and although it's a Horde area it's low level; we may go in there very soon to map it and to find our way to Eversong Woods.

Level 60

It's been busy, busy, busy for a month and I haven't had time to write here, but I'm intending to get back to my old daily (or at least almost daily) schedule.

We've come a long way since Felwood. Since then we've finished exploring the Burning Steppes and covered part of the Searing Gorge; we've explored the Western and Eastern Plaguelands, and some other areas. Along the way we hit level 58, and that let us go through the Dark Portal to the Hellfire Peninsula on Outland. We took the opportunity to finish exploring the Blasted Lands, then went through.

We had no idea what to expect; we knew that Shattrath City was somewhere the other side of the portal and I had the impression that it was very close, but that turned out to be wrong.

The first thing we found on arriving on the peninsula was a group of very high level mobs fighting each other. My guess is that one group was fighting the other to prevent them getting to the portal. In any case, we didn't want to be involved so we kept our distance and slipped around the north side.

We made our way west, avoiding bad guys since they were all quite a bit tougher than us and seemed to be staying in groups. It was pretty tough going, especially as we had no kind of map to go by, but we did manage to find Honor Hold - a friendly area - and take refuge for a while before continuing northwest into Zangarmarsh.

Zangarmarsh was also a bit of a tough area but we seemed to be relatively safe as long as we stuck to the roads - something that did not appear to be true of the eastern part of the Hellfire Peninsula. We found another friendly (well, neutral, anyway) settlement - Cenarion Refuge - in Zangarmarsh. From there we headed south and thanks to a roadsign or two we soon found or way into Shattrath City.

One thing that's really cool about Shattrath is that there's a large room in the middle with portals to every major city. We set our hearthstones to an inn in Shattrath, so now we can get to any place we need to in just a couple of jumps - hearthstone back to Shattrath then portal back out to where we need to be.

After Shattrath we continued to explore the Western Plaguelands and then moved into the Eastern Plaguelands, whacking mobs for points and completing a bunch of quests. Along the way we hit level 59 and then 60, which is where we are now - perhaps a little more than halfway to 61.

At level 60 we gained the ability to train for Journeyman level Riding skill and get faster horses, but we haven't done that yet for a couple of reasons - first, as a Paladin I get the Charger spell which will summon a Charger rather like the Warhorse I currently have; I can get the skill now by going through a rather complicated quest chain, or I can wait until level 61 and get the skill from a Paladin trainer. The second reason is that Journeyman training costs 480 gold and a fast horse costs another 80; that's quite a pile of cash.

So I've decided that I'm definitely getting my Charger at level 61; that'll mean that Kate will be stuck with a slower horse and that will hamper us, so I'll pay for Kate's riding training and horse so that we'll be running at the same speed. I've got a bit over 700 gold so I can manage that and not leave myself flat broke.