Weekly Update, Thursday, September 6th, 2018

Health stuff

… is on my mind a lot today.

First, the good. I had my six month followup with the hand surgeon who did my cubital tunnel release surgery. I was happy to report to that my left hand is mostly back to 100%. The strength in my fingers seems normal again, though I do occasionally get a bit of tingling in the fingertips. She seemed really pleased (I wonder if she was surprised it actually worked!) She’s such a lovely doctor; I’m a bit sad I likely won’t see her again! On the other hand, “no followup appointment is needed” is the nicest phrase in the English language.

I also heard that phrase from the orthopedist this week, although I am still doing PT, and slowly — ever so slowly — getting back to running.

The bad: I have been having weird, nebulous intestinal symptoms lately. Mostly a lot of bloating and fullness right below my belly button, with occasional cramps. It comes and goes in severity, which is why I’m doubting my own assessment of this discomfort. Further adding to the confusion, a friend of mine recently had symptoms like this and was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, soooo, I’m not sure if this is my usual hypochondriac shuffle.

But seriously, my diet hasn’t changed all that much; not sure what’s going on here. I should probably see a doctor. But… I already feel like my entire life is doctor’s appointments. Physical therapy appointments and therapy-therapy appointments. Until recently, hand surgeon and orthopedist appointments. Followups every three months for the statins I take. Annual physical. Eye appointment this Friday. An annual visit with a cardiologist (to manage my hereditary risk) and a pulmonologist (for my sleep apnea).

I’m so bloody sick of this, and so spending even more time and money going down an avenue that will likely lead nowhere conclusive? Is a choice I am avoiding making.

Okay, on to more fun stuff, mostly connected to…

Games and streaming

I have a webcam now! While you now can benefit from my ridiculous facial expressions, this has raised its own technical challenges. First was figuring out that I needed to turn off its mic so that you didn’t get Lise in Poor Stereo. Oops. Now I’m having issues with the FPS on the webcam; seems to be an issue somewhere between the camera and OBS, so I need to investigate that. (Thanks to Marc for troubleshooting help!)


That’s a plush netch on my head. I’ve named it Captain Netchy. It amuses me, if no one else.

I did an extra-long ESO stream on Monday/Labor Day, which was a lot of fun. I was playing Br’ihnassi, my Khajiit stamina nightblade, and doing various larcenous activities, i.e. heists and sacraments, finishing off the A Cutpurse Above achievement, etc. I do worry that some people shied away because of spoilers (I was trying to finish the Dark Brotherhood questline, among other things), but I had good chats with Marc and Beth T and Pickle nonetheless. Sometimes I get disappointed if only my IRL friends come to the stream, but I also have to remember they are precisely why I started streaming in the first place!

On Saturday, I ran a vet dungeon with my ESO “friends-and-family guild” guildies! We dragged Scott and and Matt M through vet Wayrest Sewers II, and even got them the hard mode completion. This is no longer challenging content for me, but I love helping others through it. I still have fond memories of the UESP folks showing me the ropes on vet City of Ash II, so I like to pay it forward. If this trend keeps up, I may need to start my own dungeon help night for the Order of the Golden Path.

Speaking of which, I am healing my way through the veteran DLC dungeons of ESO, and I’ve now completed everything but the two new Wolfhunter dungeons on vet. I’ve found vet Falkreath Hold to be the hardest — I can’t even tell you how many times we died to Domihaus. The Menagerie in vet Fang Lair also gave us a run for our money, and there was a reason we did the /kissthis emote over the body of Zaan, in vet Scalecaller. Vet Mazzatun and Cradle of Shadows were mostly just long and annoying. Still no hardmodes for anything but the Imperial City dungeons.

We’ve also been experimenting with doing dungeons in first-person mode, for an extra challenge. Sometimes it leads to surprisingly good screenshots!

Oh, and hey, my Thursday night unexpectedly cleared up, so it looks like I’ll be streaming ESO tonight at 9pm Eastern — more time with the majestic wizard lizard, who is totally not Garak from DS9. (He may be a tailor, but he’s definitely lawful good).

In WoW news, I have finally admitted that yes, I am going to — attempt to — balance heroic raiding in WoW with other games.

Thus I got Silbuns, my warlock, to 120 over the long weekend. After reviewing all three specs leveling from 110 to 120, I decided to go with Destruction spec, because I really do not like what they did with Affliction — it just doesn’t feel right to me any more. (I enjoyed Demonology a lot, but it felt very underpowered compared to the other two). And while I may die of boredom casting Immolate on everything, Destro is at least an easy rotation.

Our guild went on our first trip to Uldir, the new raid, last night. It was a huuuuuuge turnout, maybe a full mythic raid size. I was irrationally annoyed that on top of the core group, there are the folks who didn’t raid for most of the last expansion. I know they have every right to be there, but I can’t help but remember who was and was not there for the 100+ wipes on heroic KJ.

Anyway, grumpiness aside, it went okay. We definitely did not have enough healers — three for a group of 20-25 — making me further feel guilty for not leveling my shaman. But nonetheless we cleared Taloc, MOTHER, and Fetid Devourer.

My dps… was shite. Considering I was still wearing some quest greens, a few heroic blues, and a Darkmoon Squalls deck, this is unsurprising. It’s hard to commit to making it better while simultaneously considering quitting the game, too.

It doesn’t help that the first round of dps numbers from heroic Uldir show that… yep, Destro is still underperforming. *sigh* Maybe I will switch back to Afflic, Shadow Bolt and all.

If I do keep playing, I need to do something to standardize my keybinds across the two games. I would like to stop mounting/dismounting when I mean to hit push-to-talk…

Oh, and I’m still working my way through Graveyard Keeper, that indie sandbox game where you not only garden, cook, build stuff, and fish, but also dissect bodies and help the Inquisitor with fliers for his witch-burning. I’ve discovered that the alchemy system is not just two dimensional, but THREE dimensional. This may be the game that gets to me learn pivot tables in Excel.

LARP

Larp season is beginning! Thankfully it’s a pretty light one for me. I have Shadowvale this upcoming weekend, and Mad3 at the end of the month. Feel some anticipatory anxiety towards SV, but hoping that works itself out.

Author: Lise

Hi, I'm Lise Fracalossi, a web developer, writer, and time-lost noblethem. I live in Central Massachusetts with my husband, too many cats, and a collection of ridiculous hats that I rarely wear.

One thought on “Weekly Update, Thursday, September 6th, 2018”

  1. That Wayrest run was lots of fun! A++++ would sign up for Dungeon Help Night. Especially in this new world where I hear it’ll be twice as easy to get gear from White-Gold Tower and Imperial Prison…

    Anyhow, I do have to admit that I read the gaming section of this post as “Let me tell you about all the fun and exciting times I’m having in ESO (the best game ever)… and then let me comment on this mediocre obligation that is WoW, that I guess I should play…” — as a strong believer that games should be fun, I think that you should do the thing that you will enjoy the most overall, whether that be “quit the game”, “engage in the aspects of the game that you enjoy most, “play the class/spec that you find the most enjoyable”, etc.

    Also, good luck on all the doctor stuff! That sounds like many appointments, I hope that they at least lead to great things for you in the end.

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