The End is Here!

Today was my official last day of summer vacation. Which is funny since I have been in to school every day this week trying to get ahead so I can still have a life when school starts. I think I'm ready! I don't have lunch duty this year and have a last period study hall again which is exciting. Lunch duty was just too boring for me. I have one section of Chemistry with only 9 students so that will be a blast for sure. I have a 9th grade homeroom again (meh). I shall lay down the law and we will get along just fine.

I sort of kind of lead my first raid last Sunday. I normally just do healing and help some with DKP, and Yakra and Ruff really run the raids. But neither Yakra or Ruff were able to be on. Both of our DPS officers were on, and they did their job, but they are brand new. The new healing officer was a HUGE help handing out SR gear mats. And our pally tank did all the marking and trash, which he is very good at and has done plenty of times before. But I was the senior officer and sort of had last call and stuff.

Related to leading my first raid was downing Mother Shaz for the first time, on the first raid I lead, the very first time we attempted her. We used a 3 camp set up: 1 Melee camp and 2 ranged camps (with healers split between the two camps.) We also used Easy Mother. (The key is to not follow it blindly through the raid/tanks, and run even if it says stop if you are too close to the raid/tanks.)
We did healing for Mother Shaz as follows:
9 healers
2 Paladins on the Main Tank
1 Paladin on both Off-Tanks
1 Druid rolling HoTs on all three Tanks
1 Shaman on Melee
4 CoH Priests, Druids, and/or Shamans assigned one to each ranged/tanking group.
(I prioritized druids, then priests to the group(s) with tanks in them, to give the tanks some more HoTs. After that I assigned people to heal their own groups for simplicities sake.)

Last summer I called myself the lucky druid because whenever people wanted gear, if I thought about it really really hard, it would drop. This summer I seem to be an even luckier druid! First I received my e-mail informing me that I had been chosen to buy a FigurePrint! Yakra has been on a business trip this week and has eaten as little as he can so he can pocket the cash so we can buy one. I figure we will get on of Yakra since its not just his WoW character, but his alter ego. (And he likes presents.) And yesterday I got my e-mail inviting me to the Wrath of the Lich King beta. So far it has done nothing but patch and say "connected" on the very pretty blue login screen. I only wish I had more time to play it. I wonder what my students would think if they found out I was in the beta!

In other real life/sort of WoW life news, the great RuffianX spent last weekend at our house. I had freed up my schedule and stress load totally so I was able to relax and have a very nice time. We played board games and went for dinner with some other guildies. Yakra and Ruff went Kayaking and Ruff beat Yakra a bunch of times at brawl. We tried ZA for the bear mount, but missed it yet again, and went for ice cream way late at night.

I've also been hanging out with another RL/WoW friend. We went to college together and were close then. She transfered servers some time back, so I have never gotten to raid with her. Her guild is well into Sunwell now. We are like a year behind them. Then they moved to the other side of the river which put them far away, but since I got the new job I am out her way all the time. So both of us have been busy with raiding and houses, but she has some stuff going on that I want to be able to be there, so I'm making time. And actually its really nice to not have to explain WHY you NEED to be back home by 7:45. So its really cool because I've missed her.