While our first choice for a wedding venue was the picturesque Nagrand, my mother-in-law's deathly fear of mage portals led us to compromise on Scottsdale, Arizona instead.

Screenshot because it totally DID happen.

My dad escorted me down the aisle, and — much to my relief! — managed to prevent me from tripping on my way to the altar. (The real problem with cloth armor? No agility!)

One of the most fearsome bosses Keaton has ever had to tank: my Dad.

I walked down the aisle to what my parents assumed was a lovely but obscure piece of classical music...

Don't let the "Bradenburg 12" fool you.

... it was actually Zelda's theme, arranged for a trio — courtesy of the amazing Sweetwater Strings.

Drawing on four years of raid leading prowess, Keaton managed to slide my wedding band onto the wrong hand.

It's a wonder he managed to kill Onyxia in Vanilla, much less again in Wrath ... and again in Blackwing Descent ... and again in ...

He was a little embarassed, but honestly? It was my favorite part of the ceremony.

This may have been his:

/kiss

A few of our Canadian guildies caught a wyvern to Arizona for the occasion! Needless to say, we were both touched by their presence and delighted to meet them face-to-face for the first time. It was the continuation of what I hope will be a lifelong friendship.

We took screen shots while waiting for the reception queue to pop. (Resto shaman, feral tank, fury warrior, hunter and shadow priest? Looks like a heroic group to me!)

Heroic Deadmines, gogo!

We entered the reception to "Do You Wanna Date My Avatar?" Under the circumstances, it seemed appropriate.

My actual face. (His too.)

We attempted to dance.

I look like a demented chipmunk.

It's a lot harder in real life, without the slash commands...

/dance

... But I did get brave enough to attempt a little twirl at the end!

We cut the cake after dinner, to the tune of Still Alive from the Portal.

Our cake toppers were moose(s?).

The music was Keaton's choice and oddly prophetic considering the surprise groom's cake I had custom-made for the occasion ...

Not a lie.

He liked it so much that it's currently sitting in pieces in our freezer. He informs me that its been humanely euthanized — again.

After the obligatory wedding events were done, it was time to party!

Cyn likes bubbles.

And drink!

This was either a Canadian drinking song or the impromptu re-enactment of Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog. Both happened.

And sing!

Seriously. There was a lot of singing.

Also, if you ever wondered what a fury warrior looks like seconds after pulling boss aggro and getting smacked in the face with a giant flaming axe...

I'm pretty sure this is it.

Defensive stance! Defensive stance!

It was without a doubt one of the best nights of my life.  It ended far, far too soon.

Arizona -- or Blade's Edge Mountain? -- at sunset.

The next week found us honeymooning in Puerto Vallarta.  As you might expect, Keaton spent a lot of time in aquatic form.

I think a Squee! might actually be appropriate here.

Two months later, our Fiance Visa arrived in the mail and we were actually able to move in together.

And just last week, Keaton's green card application was approved and I felt that I could finally share this without jinxing us.

Consummate geeks that we are, we celebrated by killing hard-mode Alysrazor.

The End.

An Update, In Pictures. is a post from: Altadin

So, naturally, I opened a ticket.

(Click on the image to embiggen.)

Best. GM. Ever.

Game Master Scogonn — you totally made my year. 

Hey, remember that warlock pet bug? is a post from: Altadin

By five million years, do you mean three days?

"The last one doesn't count, and you know it."

Fine.  Whatever.

Since you asked so nicely...

"Are you using your sarcastic font?"

Always.

For the record, my sarcastic font is 10 point Verdana unless you're reading this on a reader, in which point it's actually your browser default.

Anyway.  As I was saying.  In the five millions years since I last posted, I have been:

• planning a wedding;
• buying a house;
• preparing to sell a house;
• raiding new content (Icebound Frostbrood Vanquisher = MINE!);
• raiding old content;
• not raiding at all (QQ);
• leveling alts (final count: 5, including a sexy mohakwed beast master hunter);
• collecting pets (I named my seagull Ignus and he is every bit as lame as his namesake, but -- like his namesake -- I heart him anyway); and
• feeding my Netflix addiction by watching back-to-back seasons of Lois & Clark, (Dean Cain is the most adorable Clark Kent ever), Roswell (read: Twilight with aliens), Veronica Mars (HOW DID THIS SHOW GET CANCELED?!) and Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles (interminable cliffhangers FTL). 

I've also become a regular over at TheKnot.com — ostensibly a wedding planning site, but actually the eighth layer of hell.  Seriously.  It's a train wreck over there.  I love it. 

I don't know if I'm actually back yet.  I want to be back.  I miss blogging.  But I'm in the middle of a move, and I'm getting married in just 68 days (according to the rapidly moving ticker on my TheKnot.com signature).  There's still a lot to do, and that's on top of the 10 and 12 hour weeks I've been working.

Oh, and there's the small matter of Cataclysm dropping in the middle of it all, and my desperate need to keep up with the rest of my rapidly leveling guild so I don't fall behind and miss out on the first days of raiding.  :3 

So, I may not be back just yet.  Or I may be.  I'm a Libra; I /waffle.  It's what I do.

A long over-due and rather jumbled update is a post from: Altadin

You know it’s time to end the blogging hiatus … is a post from: Altadin

Or we could kill the Lich King.

So. is a post from: Altadin

Surreality is in a precarious place right now. We lost a few members to Real Life: finals, family commitments, schedule changes, sports, even wife aggro. We have a healthy Friends & Family rank and are filling enough spots to manage 10/12 and even 11/12 clears each week, but we are still two or three players short of a solid progression team. It's been a few weeks since we made serious attempts on the Lich King ... and since nothing kills a raiding guild faster than not raiding, a small handful of our newer members have left in search of purpler pastures.

Needless to say, this has only compounded the problem.

I honestly don't know if we'll have the numbers to raid this week. If everyone shows up on Tuesday, we'll be fine; if anyone has a conflict, we won't be.

And yet, in spite of the lows, there have been highs, too. Thanks in no small part to the hunter formerly known as Elam, we are running two solid 10-man teams for the first time in our history. Both have cleared Icecrown Citadel several times on normal, and are now pushing hardmodes. (Blood Princes: 18 - Surreality: 0.) We have also picked up several new raiders, including an exceptional — and, by all accounts, sane! — holy paladin, a restoration shaman who blows my HPS out of the water, and a shadow priest who I want to shrink and keep in a jar.

There have been some fantastic late night conversations, too. For the first time since TBC, I find myself running mindless laps around Shattrath (I'm leveling a wee hunter through Outlands) and using WoW as a glorified chat engine: too tired to quest, but far too enthralled by the green text to call it a night.

At this point, we could go either way. We could recruit two or three or four new players to replace those we've lost and return with a vengeance, or we could continue to hemorrhage members until we are no longer able to raid at all. I'm hoping for the former, while quietly preparing myself (emotionally!; I have no intentions of looking outside Surreality for a home!) for the latter.

The late-night crew is full of encouragement. We've been together for almost three years and gotten through low points before, as the same spirit of community and camaraderie that keeps me up far too late at night also keeps us going, in spite of periodic setbacks. We've addressed the few divisive issues, such as our chronic inability to field two 10-man raids, and emerged stronger as a result. And, as Elam points out — with the notable exception of the holy paladin we lost to hockey — everyone we've been forced to replace, we replaced with someone who was either a stronger player or a better fit for our guild or both. "I wouldn't stress too much," he texted me this morning. "There are people who are loyal and people who will switch guilds when it's convenient. We're steadily growing the former."

I hope so. I really, really hope so. There is no game without the guild for me, and there is no guild without the people I've come to consider friends.

I don’t know why you say goodbye; I say hello. is a post from: Altadin

If you've been following me for any length of time, then you know I met my fiance in Heroic Underbog.  (And yes, I am still tempted to name the head table at our wedding reception "Zangarmarsh" as a result!)  However, our guild — and, more specifically, leading it — is what really brought us together. 

Apparently, the Chain Lightning strikes twice.  (Okay, technically — thrice.  Shut up.  This is my brie-laden analogy, thankyouverymuch.)

Last night, at the beginning of our weekly foray into Icecrown Citadel, our caustic warrior tank and perpetually sunny guild bard (the Brazilian mage who never fails to serenade Surreality to victory!) announced their engagement.

And guess where they met?

Serpentshrine Cavern, circa 2008.

I'll admit, I'm kind of giddy.  And not just because I consider them both friends, and am fantastically happy that they've found each other (and, like Keaton and I, crossed international boundaries to do so).  I'm totally tickled by the idea that my little guild — which started as a haven for a few friends and family members on the virtual cesspool that is Black Dragonflight — has led to not one but two lifelong partnerships. 

It's really kind of amazing.

(Also, for the record: the happy couple coined the tagline so I'm insulting neither of them when I respost it!)

Surreality: Uniting Geeks and Losers since 2007! is a post from: Altadin

To quote my most favoritest rogue ever:

Fucking finally.

Finally! is a post from: Altadin

I don't know why we even bother to raid on patch days.

The hamster has Tuesdays off, you see. is a post from: Altadin

... And when I say "we," I actually mean Annah, because he totally took charge of making two groups happen.  The guild didn't exactly make it easy on him: we seem to have a collective aversion to using our forum as anything other than a glorified Photobucket, so Annah tracked every last raider down in-game and then created a massive Excel spreadsheet to track everyone's interest in, and availability for, off-night raids. 

See?  There's a reason this man has a legendary!

As for the raids themselves?  They went basically okay.  The teams weren't quite as balanced as we had hoped: the Saturday afternoon group cleared Icecrown Citadel through the Blood Princes, but failed to down Blood Queen Lana'thel in the ten attempts we had remaining after investing five of our fifteen alloted wipes on Putricide.  Meanwhile, the Sunday group one-shot both encounters.

In hindsight, the main difference between the teams was one part healing — the Saturday group ran two raid healers (myself and a holy priest), while the Sunday group ran two main healers (a paladin and a dual-specced holy/disc priest), in addition to a hybrid elemental/restoration shaman as a potential third — and one part DPS, as the Sunday group had the stronger ranged team. 

Keaton, who tanked for the Sunday group, mentioned that the tips I was feeding him from Saturday's run saved his team a few wipes as well.  I guess they adopted our strategy for Council and two shot it with three healers.  We wiped several times while experimenting with different combinations of tanks... and wiped a couple of more times as we learned how to two-heal it.  (Which I am actually quite proud of, by the way.  I was assigned to heal our warrior MT as he tanked two of the Princes.  I screwed up two or three times before I hit my stride and managed to find a happy balance between big and little heals.  Keeping Coffer alive and making my mana last the entire fight was the most challenging thing I've done since two-healing Tribute to Insanity with Annah.)

At the end of the day, I'm glad we were able to include more people in the 10-man runs.  Truly, I am.  At the same time, I'm a little disappointed that my group turned out to be the "B"-team this week ... and even more disappointed that in order to make two raids happen, I not only had to sacrifice the one selfish thing I do every week, but I also had to give up the opportunity to play with my fiance.  

For what it's worth — and, honestly, it's worth a lot because Annah arranged it with my feelings in mind (seriously? how many guys do that?!) — it was supposed to be temporary: I am officially assigned to heal the Sunday run, and made a last-minute sub to the Saturday team to cover an absence.  Of course, when I did that, I realized that without me, the Saturday team wouldn't have had a shaman for Bloodlust.  I don't think that will be a huge issue in the future, but for now, when the content is new, a little raidwide haste at a crucial moment goes a long way.

We may shuffle things around once the third run is rostered in order to get me back on Keaton's team, but for now, we're split between the Saturday and Sunday runs.  So instead of celebrating my guild's success — even if the Saturday group wasn't quite as successful, it still downed Putricide and sampled Blood Queen, which will go a long way towards 25-man progression — I find myself somewhat resentful of it. 

I don't think it would be so bad if Keaton and I weren't already struggling to maintain a long-distance relationship.  (And it is, at times, a struggle.)  Since we only manage to see each other in the real world every three or four months for a week or two at a time, WoW has become the way we connect.  It's the one hobby we share that can bridge the geographical distance between us and make us feel almost as if we're in the same room.

We spend three nights a week with our guild, organizing and leading 25-man raids.  I don't think it's too much to ask for one night a week to play together in a more intimate setting, with several of the people we have known online for years and come to cherish as friends.  If it were a date night, no one would begrudge us the time away.  But since it's online, everyone stakes a claim.  After all of the time and effort and money we invest in Surreality, the flak we take for making time for each other strikes me as cruelly unfair.

Emo shaman is emo. is a post from: Altadin