Consumed by the cowardice...

BLM:75 WHM:74 SMN:47 THF:75 WAR:61 RNG:44

I know you guys are probably thinking, "What's up with the sunsets?"

Well they haven't given me a new schedule yet and they HAVE given me a new bunch of errors, hmm what does this sound like. Another "put that dog Hohito on his last legs" month. Sadly, I expect not very good things from work this month. More people have found that I am easily annoyed and they have deliberate methods of keeping me irritated while I am trying to work. It really is nothing but harassment but what are you gonna do, slappin that ass ain't wrong if the girl likes it, heh. Ew, that was harsh. I guess that's what they think, that I must like all of this "attention". Boy, are they mistaken. I tell my team leader about it and he just mimicks their behavior like there isn't anything to do but to get used to it. How do you get used to everyone insulting you, everyday, all day long?!

Well, back to FFXI. Since my sound doesn't work I am far more efficient in Dynamis I think and have found that I don't have to have sound to play which makes it far less interesting but makes me a much better player in some ways. It's funny my car is all keyed up, my sound is not working, my XBOX has the three rings error on it and is broken, if my "nose" could break, I swear right now it would be broken(maybe it is), and I am used to stuff breakin when I lose my temper but it seems as you get older people lose their temper for you. Ok, on a happy note, I ate something, so now I am fatter. Oh no, that was not positive!

I have been thinking of using the Fire Staff with RNG. What a boon, since now with -2 enmity from the Staff Grip you will be able to unload shots at will! But I will lose a lot of Racc from not using the dagger plus I haven't actually bought the Staff yet so who knows by the time I get up to that level(51), the price will be back to the 100ks.

I have needed to get some merits for my BLM since I want ICE level 5 and need 3 more merits for it but it's hard to find BLM merit pts. My WHM seems able to find pts no problem though so I guess I better get on up to 75 and start getting my merits that way.

Yesterday I finished the Ark Angels ZM14 mission and was delighted to finally get through the mission after a long set of battles. We had to do EV 3 times and no wonder that mob is famous. It did Spirits Within and KO'd the PLD both of the first times. But after some thought, I remembered that the PLD/WHM is light based and the light is weak to dark so I decided to keep Bio II on him and determined that I would use weakening strategy on him. As BLM I always try to counter the character with the one elemental skill that the character is weakest to. If we are fighting a THF I cast Frost, if we have a NIN tank I cast Rasp since I know he will be maxed on evasion gear, and for PLDs although I don't always do this a Drown and Shining Ruby strategy will help the team most since the armor is the focus with a PLD. In this case, with a Spirits Within that was KO'ing the PLD it seemed all the more obvious, so I set about to minimize damage until I could unleash my AM magic. I casted Bio II and Poison II and then it occurred to me that Poison and Drown were water-based so then I casted one round of Flare regular and it landed for 900 or so damage. A pittance for a PLD with Benediction so I immediatelly got off of that and kept Poison II and Drown up and now she was weak to water. I stayed in my Dark gear to maximize the benefit of Bio II also. After all was said and done the PLD was not close to KOing this time and was in the orange even after Spirits Within. I let loose 2 blasts of Freeze II with Aquilo's and level 4 Ice merits in tow and she was gone. We were all like wow that it was over. We had lost twice already when Spirits had KO'd our PLD and then the rest of us. The beautiful thing is that there is no exp loss on these battles so we didnt mind the losses. We also had a much easier time with the next two fights. After the HM victory our WHM had to go so we were left with PLD WAR MNK RDM and me BLM. We had only the taru left. He was tough and was even moreso due to AOE Petrify and we had just lost WHM for Stona! No matter, we decided to just wait it out and make it a slow fight like it was for EV. But it wasn't really, this guy only had one HP bar with no Bene. He also used a lot of status effects and spells and since our PLD was used to kiting EV, we did a lot of running around that didn't allow his spells to land. When he was close to dead, 2 blasts of Freeze II and an Asuran Fists put him down and we were done with our last fight with only 5!

Afterward, I changed to WHM and Teleport-Yhoated 3 of us to Norg and talked to Gilgamesh, then went back and entered the Shrine for a final cs.

It was a long night but at least it was fun.

Apathy, arrogance, cowardice, envy, and rage. It was funny how closely I identified with those feelings. I don't feel like I am a dark person though.