The Week In Review

It’s been a pretty social week out this way, which has been a lot of fun, on the whole.

Monday is one of the four nights a week that my guild, The Grim Covenant, does 25 man raiding. Not too long ago, we had cleared all of Serpentshrine Cavern (though we never did get Lady Vashj on “farm” status), and were banging our heads against Prince Kael’thas in Tempest Keep. Then the new patch came out and we took a break to play with the new content, and some people left and some new people joined, and now we have a situation where about half of our core raid group is left and we’re trying to train up some green 70s to take the place of the people who went away.

Monday night was what you would call a disaster. We only had one boss on the agenda: High Astromancer Solarian. Like most of the Tempest Keep fights, Solarian is a coordination fight. It’s not so much a DPS race as a “pay attention and know when to move” fight. She will periodically target a random member of the raid and give them a debuff. If you have the debuff, you have about 5 seconds to run away from everyone else before you are thrown hundreds of feet in the air. You will take no damage from this. Unfortunately, anyone standing close to you will *also* be thrown up in the air, and they will die on impact. This is known as “blowing up the raid” and usually means a wipe if you do it in the centre of the room where everyone is standing.

This isn’t a hard boss. In fact, it’s probably the easiest boss in the instance. But we failed to get her down, after several attempts, which is frustrating. But rebuilding is always frustrating, especially for those of us who remember being on the doorstep of Tier 6 content.

On Tuesday, the Defensive Perimeter folks, minus Don, met up at the AMC Mansell Crossing to see the latest installment of the Indiana Jones franchise, Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull. We gathered at the theatre for the 7:15pm show, evaluated the trailers to determine which films, if any, we might want to see later, and then settled in for 2 hours of rollicking fun.

Verdict: I LOVED it. It was everything I wanted in an Indiana Jones film. Yes, the story was preposterous, but no more so than the previous ones. It was well paced, Harrison Ford slips very comfortably back into his character (I *howled* with laughter when he muttered “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”), and the ending was satisfying. Yeah, it was formulaic, but it always was, and above all else, it was fun. If you’re tsking over the plot, you came to the wrong movie. This was good old fashioned pulp adventure the way they just don’t make them anymore. Highly recommended.

Wednesday night was our monthly Movie Night Open House. The last couple of months have been a bust in terms of attendance, but we had several people promising to make it out this month, and we were not disappointed. We had anaisdjuna, joyeuse13 and abovenyquist, along with the impossibly cute Baby Z (who does not, as yet, have a livejournal of his own), and thatcrazycajun.

This weeks fare was the surprise indie hit Juno, and let me tell you it was a delight. I loved everything about this movie. I loved its wit, I loved its charm, I loved its dialogue, and I loved its characters. Not one character in the film strikes a false note. (I know some reviewers found Juno’s wisecracking a bit too precious, but I think Ellen Page *utterly* sells it.) Better yet, this is a teen pregnancy coming-of-age story that manages to be real without ever becoming tragic or melodramatic, and without slipping into trite platitude. I almost hate the fact that any sequel to this film would ultimately be disappointing, because I really want to see more of these characters; by the time the credits rolled, I cared that much about them.

On a scale of 1-5 stars, i give Juno at least a 7. If you haven’t seen it, go grab it on DVD. It’s well worth your time.

We had no plans for last night, and it’s a good thing, because kitanzi came home with an awful headache and I got dragged into a mysterious work problem. By the time I’d figured out that the work problem was some sort of network issue beyond my control, kitanzi had taken a pain killer and gone to bed, so I logged onto WoW and ran around doing daily quests for cash for a couple of hours.

And that’s been the week in my exciting life.