I took a mighty tumble

My knees hurt today. Not as much as I was afraid they were going to hurt yesterday, but they still hurt. The reason they hurt, as the title of this post suggests, is because I took a mighty tumble yesterday. Picture yourself walking out my front door, you’ll see in front of you the street on which I live, and down and to your right is a sidewalk. In one direction this sidewalk heads out to the public sidewalk running along my street, and in the other direction it runs along the side of my house to the steps leading to my side door. At the corner where the front of my house meets this little sidewalk is a relatively low spot in my yard. So this last weekend and early this week when the temperature was above freezing it was a natural place for the water from the melting snow to collect. The temperature has since dipped back below freezing, and this pool of water has become a patch of ice. A fact I failed to take into account as I was walking to my car on my way to work yesterday morning.

I was at the point where I wasn’t going to be late for work, as long as I did nothing but walk briskly to my car, and drive straight to work without any stops or detours. When I hit the ice at the corner of my house my feet slipped out from under me, and I feel forward. My knees took the brunt of the impact, followed pretty closely by my hands, and finally the rest of me. I am somewhat amazed that when I landed on my knees I slide forward into what I can only assume was the one exposed bit of dirt and grass in my entire town resulting in dirt and grass stains on my pants. My first reaction was to roll over onto my back and think, “ouch.” The second thing I did was check to see if I could bend my knees without an unreasonable amount of pain - I could. Then I noticed the stains on my pants at which point I knew I was going to be late for work - I was. So I got back up, hobbled my way back inside, changed my pants, and made attempt number two at walking to my car. This time I avoided the ice, and arrived at my car without further incident.

This was not the mightiest tumble I’ve ever taken. A few years back I slipped on some ice and sprained my ankle. Now that really hurt. While that fall would be my mightiest tumble, it certainly isn’t the worst fall in my immediate family. That distinction goes to one of my younger brothers, the middle child, for those who’ve heard the story this would be the one whose butt I shot with an arrow. However that is a story for another time. Anyway again a few years ago (although not as far back as my ankle) this brother of mine managed to fall off a second story landing outside of an apartment above one of the bars in my hometown (yes alcohol was a contributing factor). That he a) isn’t dead, and b) has proved to be basically physically unaltered I’m going to chalk up to a miracle. He certainly did sustain some serious injuries, was hospitalized, and it is only years later that I can look back on this and find it kind of funny (rest assured I found no humor in it at the time).

Physical injuries both minor and major aside, I was considering WoW a bit this last week and I realized that for the first time I have a main character. This is the first time in a MMORPG that I can point to a single character and say this is who I’m focusing the majority of my attention on. I cannot say that about any of my characters in City of Heroes/Villains, and prior to Chipple hitting level 70 I couldn’t say that about any of my characters in WoW. I've certainly had characters I spent more time with, but I never before in my mind differentiated between Chipple, my warlock Cominius, and my hunter Steinthror. In honor of her main character status I give you a picture of her on her flying mount (as well as pictures of her on her other land mounts).

I find this funny because Chipple was never intended to be a permanent character much less a main. Chipple was created during the fairly brief period of time after I signed up for the 10 day free trial, but before I decided that I was indeed going to buy this game (two or maybe three days later). I wanted to try out a mage, and I wanted to try grouping with a friend (which my time on City of Heroes had taught was much more fun than soloing). I had mentioned to Dan and Paul that I was giving the WoW trial a go (at a BESM gaming session) and I still remember they both looked at me, Paul looked over at Dan, and then looked back at me and said, “he’s got better guild connections.” At some point around this same time Dan also sent me an e-mail mentioning that he’d just started a warrior alt who I would be able to quickly catch up to in level.

So I rolled a mage on Dark Iron, but since I was still in the, “oh I’m only going to use the free trial, I’m not going to buy this game phase” I wasn’t thinking terribly seriously about naming this character. I hadn’t tried rolling a female toon yet, I wasn’t impressed with any of the names being generated randomly, and then I thought of Chipple. I will only say it is a personal reference that amuses me greatly. As a brief aside I just went and googled Chipple and on the very first page of results I learned that there was a professional baseball player named Walter Chipple whose entire career spanned 18 games for the Washington Senators in 1945. I also learned that chipple is a sexual slang for something you can go look up yourself if you really want to know. Both of those facts amused me, neither is what Chipple is referencing. Now as to why I didn’t delete Chipple and reroll a mage named Cominius (the name I’ve been using for most online activities ever since I played that character in college) I have to blame Dan. Right around the time I was hitting level ten, he mailed Chipple four netherweave bags. I hadn’t yet gotten around to rolling another character on Dark Iron, and I wasn’t really familiar with the implications of the bind of equip mechanic as yet. And since having lots of bag space is just so damn convenient for a new character I never replaced Chipple, and instead used Cominius as the name of my warlock.

That is enough for today. Hopefully sometime this weekend I’ll post my thoughts on Oh! Edo Rocket, and Lucky Star both of which I’ve finished off, and both of which I enjoyed greatly. I’ve also received move three from Erik, so I need to get him my response and I should toss the moves up here for everyone’s personal kibitzing pleasure. I leave you with one final picture of Chipple - an oldie of her in her mid 40s on her original land mount. Also woot for post 80.