Premature return

It looks like my proclamation of being "back" was premature, as I was apparently announcing this during the calm before the storm. The moving in stage by far superceded the moving out stage in terms of chaos, which combined with holiday relative madness, and some Fresno variant of the holiday flu to create a perfect storm.

My only means of articulating this to the linkshell, as I hastily logged in and out to sell poison potion before passing out from the Nyquil, was:

Sorry I haven't been on much, folks. Life has really been kicking my ass.

Of course they all understood, but I still felt badly about missing out on some of their coffer hunts and AF fights. I spent what meager time I had with the poison potion routine, since prices had climbed to 20k per stack over the holidays. This made for an easy though slow rise from 300k to 800k. I'll consider this gil to be padding for my upcoming Alchemy skillup sessions, and will try not to spend it. [Stares at that Assault Earring on the AH; looks away].

I had a very welcoming return to the game last night. It was uncanny how much I felt restored to my old and true 'self' by just interacting with my old friends. I still felt under the weather, but the feeling of contentment and belonging outweighed the physical discomfort.

My good friend Feon proposed a Great Axe skillup session for me, which turned out to be the perfect way to ease back into the game. I had the fortune of meeting his significant other and several of his good friends. They were a warm group of people, and quite funny in their own idiosyncratic way. It really is a pleasure to stumble into these small groups of close friends in FFXI.


We warped out to Altep, and Feon entertained the idea of taking on Cactrot Rapido who was spewing dust all over us as we made our way to Kuftal, but Audessa elected to defer that challenge to another day. We made our way to an Ovinnik camp, those nasty tiger mobs in the tunnels, one of whom killed me long ago as I was running, lost & mapless, and without invisibility -_-.


Aside from the occasional pop at camp, we didn't have any close brushes with death, and my Great Axe slowly skilled up to 261 (and change). I still have quite a ways to go until I hit the 276 cap, but this was definitely a fun way to spend the evening. I forgot to mention to Feon that this party also refreshed my lost EXP from a death in a prior party earlier in the month, and earned me a few Limit Points in the process.

So...I think I'm actually back this time. Although I will be taking it easy and won't be grinding though 2AM parties as much as I used to, mostly due to health issues that I won't go detail about. It certainly does feel good to be back, though.