Unexpected accomplishments, and a fond farewell

During my week-long vacation with the parents and my brother, I was able to clock in a few more FFXI hours than usual (we had quite a bit of down time because my parents are a bit... slow to get going). I finally managed to cap my Great Axe skill during a Periquia Assault session with Feon & Cozmos & the gang. I'm still working on unlocking that pesky latent on the Rampager, though.

I also got quite a bit of fishing done, because I was automatically resuming my "limited FFXI time" activities without realizing it (old habits die hard, even on vacation). Cone Calamary skilled me up more quickly than I'd anticipated, and I climbed a couple of skill levels while targeting the money fish (bluetail, nobles), up to 35.

During one of my trips back to Whitegate, I overheard a fellow San D'Orian shouting for a Mission 7-2 party, and of course I joined up while I had the chance. It was a pretty easy fight even with our group of 4.

After ranking up and earning a nice 60k, we picked up a couple more players for Mission 8-1, which was also a pretty straightforward fight especially since we intentionally let Valor despawn before we defeated Honor. We would have gone on to complete 8-2, but needed to wait until 12AM JP time the next day to launch, and I wasn't on the next day. I'm sure the opportunity will come up again later.

On a sad note, my good friend Lexxi is preparing to leave the game at the end of the month and has been selling off her equipment over the course of the past few weeks. As I told her on our LS community board, I'll miss her terribly but will be happy to know that she's finding enjoyment and peace outside of the game. I'm certain our avatars will meet again in another virtual world someday. In the meantime, we'll be lurking each other's blogs ;P.

She needed to get her taru mule from Windy to Jeuno to speed up sales a bit (rather than sending stuff constantly to her main and sitting in Jeuno). So I accompanied her through the Canyon and Sauromugue, chatting the whole time and forgetting to invis her (der):

That mule is the cutest Taru I've ever seen, by the way. Pity she didn't level it more ^_^.

My most recent session was comprised of a relatively quick Sabotender Bailarina camp with Feon and the gang, for Ninjax's Dune Boots.

After this was completed, we made another attempt at the Elvaan for ZM 14 (the last one for Ishmael and me), but were again unsuccessful. Yes, my kiting still sucks, and I still hate that Elvaan with a passion.