Well, since no one seems to enjoy rules anymore, I might as well bask in that glory with a little awesome thing known as a blog.

To start off, thank god, the semester is finally over! Even though I start another semester in just a few short weeks, college has been tough! (Especially Japanese, which I scraped by with a 64%. >_> Nihongo wa honto ni muzukashii desu ne..)
But, I guess the real reason I’m here is the fact that I’m a little depressed.
My husband shipped off for basic training for the Air Force last Monday, and I’ve been missing him horribly. I guess you really don’t know how much you miss having someone around till they’re gone. But then, to make matters worse, I hear from Sergent Peters (his recruiter) that he won’t have 2 weeks break after 6 weeks of basic. He’ll go directly into tech school, so I can’t even go visit him (which means buying an airplane ticket, which I can’t even afford at the moment), until about 11 weeks from now.

But I do have a very long story to tell you, from before he left. To continue from where I left off, the straw that broke the camel’s back on Phantasy Star Universe was the fact that we couldn’t find a needle cannon (one of the rarest items in the game). The system on drop distribution was retarded to start, with it relying on every party member’s luck, then the rarity of the map, then a very small percentage at that. That, combined with the constant glitches and rollbacks, leading us to be months behind the Japanese servers.
So, one day, Mikuru just said, “Let’s just stop playing. Let’s find something new, I’m done with this.” So we did. We liquefied all our assets, and played one last time for old time’s sake, and guess what we found.. a needle cannon. We both laughed so hard, but it added quite a bit to our total selling profit. We were both kind’ve disappointed, however, at the fact that with the 360 version of this game, you couldn’t transfer the characters to other people, just items.
It wasn’t the fact that we were losing money by just closing our accounts and deleting our characters. It was the fact that our characters couldn’t live on, even in someone else’s hands. All those hours and memories, were boiled down to a single monetary number, which we ended up selling for about $780.

So, after that, we had the very easy task of finding another MMO to play together. Simply put, there was only one other MMORPG available on the 360. FFXI. So, we both bought copies, along with some other college friends, and that weekend was epic. There we were, all 8 of us, with 8 XBOX 360s scatted across the room, in a very tiny dorm room, wondering how many power strips we could daisy chain before we burned down the building. One friend was even set up on the top bunk of the bunkbeds, while another had set up his stuff ontop of the fridgette. We had all installed the game earlier in the day, since with the updates and installs, it took over 7 hours each. (This situation reminded me of that South Park episode. >_&gt

It was amazing. We all started our boxes at the count of 3, and to hear the whirs and clicks of boxes starting, the bright lights from the televisions dancing across the dark walls, and then the xbox logo, it’s low bass echoing throughout the room in unison was simply epic.
We started playing on Friday night, armed with Dr. K soda and tortilla chips, and began as follows:
I was a white mage tarutaru, simply because as everyone knows, I am always the FS healer in most games, or a thief type. Mikuru ended up being a galkan warrior, because no one else wanted to be a warrior. Joe and Dave became black mages, although Joe was a hume and Dave a tarutaru. Jasmine became a mithra red mage (but ended up changing later because she said ‘she didn’t like being naked’), Cody was a elvan monk, August was a hume thief, and Ben was another elvan monk.

We all began in San D’Oria, on the server of Ragnarok, because we hadn’t heard from our online friend where he wanted us to start, so we all just started there. There were some epic moments, like when we tried to invade the orc camp and the grunt, and me being the white mage, saw our warrior tanker die, instinctively.. well, booked it and left everyone there. Since we were about 5 levels up in our dungeon, I was the only one to survive our inital wave of death, hearing everyone complain about their exp loss, but then suddenly, everyone was crowded around my television, cheering me on to make it out alive. I ran and ran, gradually leading a train of orcs back to the entrance. I was so close! My little tarutaru legs were waddling as fast as they could, but I died just as I was almost to the teleporter. Everyone in unison gave an ‘aww..’ and I received a round of pats on the back and good trys.

We played solid till about Saturday evening, when we had all gotten sick of chips, and the soda was running dry. Joe, Mikuru and I decided to make a run to McDonald’s, which was about half a mile away. We all piled into Mike’s car and drove off. Once we got there, we pulled up to the drive-through and we were greeted with the casual “Welcome to McDonald’s, what’s your order?”
Mike leaned out the window and said, in absolute calm seriousness, “I’d like 20 McChickens and a bag of fries.”
She repeated the order, as though she had misheard, “2 McChickens and a large fry?”
“No. TWENTY McChickens and a bag of fries. You know, like a whole bag.”

There was a pause, and some mumbling in the background. I heard an “Are they serious?” and other random mumbles, but after about a minute and a half, she came back to the window.

“Okay. So 20 McChickens and a bag of fries. That’ll be $32.90. Pull around to the-” She stopped herself short, and changed her sentence. “You should probably park and come inside, you’ll need a few arms.”

I lawl’d. Epic.

So, that mission was sucessful, and we returned to the dorms, triumphant, with enough food to last us until Sunday! Things from there were pretty uneventful, we continued to play until about Sunday afternoon, when we all disbanded to actually be college students and finish our homework, cramming for any Monday assignments.

For me, that meant my love was leaving in just a week. I wanted to make it last longer! But it went by in a breeze, we went to see Iron Man on opening day, which we thought that the part after the credits were disappointing. We went to the city’s festival for a few days, which was really fun, and I had some of the best funnel cake ever.

But, finally, in just a few short days, it was over. The time was last Monday, at about 6 in the morning. I couldn’t sleep the night before, so I just lied there until the alarm went off. Mike stumbled out of bed, I could tell he was tired though. The whole morning, up until Sergent Peters picked him up, was a depressing haze.
It was raining out, so it wasn’t a cheery mood to wish him off in. We packed up his stuff, and then he smiled and kissed my forehead, “You gonna be okay, kiddo?” (He always called me kiddo, since he’s 23, a little more than 4 years older than me.) I guess he could tell I had been crying and I knew my eyes were red. “Yeah..” I mumbled, sniffling, as he grabbed my hand and led me outside, so we could go walk over to Sergent Peter’s car, since she was going to drive him over to the recruiting station with all the other newbies.

So, we stood outside the car, and he held me close and kept that strong smile of his, even though I knew he was sad inside too. Unfortunately, I am not nearly as strong as he is. I cried in his arms as he whispered in my ear, “I love you so much, babe. I miss you already, but I promise you, when I get out of this, I’m going to make you the happiest woman in the world.” His hand gently brushed under my chin, leading my face up to his, my tears now mixing with the rain in a moment that I wished could last forever. He kissed me, with more love and passion then I had ever expected from him, my eyes closing tight, just praying that I could hold on just a little longer. “I love you.” I whispered just after he broke the kiss, and he just smiled, and let go. He climbed into the car and I waved, choking back tears again. Why does love do that to you? You think you’re over it, that you’ll be strong, but then that special person says one thing or gives you that one look, and your knees are weak again.

The walk back to my room was the longest ever, the drizzle feeling colder than it had ever been. My feet dragged over the sidewalk, sobbing once I was out of sight. I miss him so much.

~Mip

(Moosics for you.)
(Mikuru and I.