Link up Monday and A Brief Update

Hopefully now I'll be updating daily again.

The kids all started back to school today. They all had great days! Our basic schedule is (and should stay) me getting up at 5:45, I get a little me time to shower and drink coffee till 6 or 6:15 depending on the needs of the day, then wake everyone else (trying to get DS to wake up to his alarm, he did today, but I'm still the backup waker-upper for now). He walks DD1 to school at 7, back here at 730 and then bikes to his school by 8. She loves the quiet time walk with her big brother, and he needs the additional daily exercise (I hate you Depakote for your side effects, but thank you for controlling his seizures knock on wood).

I have a busy day tomorrow with errands, but should have a fairly relaxed morning. I've been debating what to make for dinner using my trusty crockpot and decided to hit the pantry for inspiration. Then I realized I haven't made something particular in a long time and decided what the heck, so it's the crockpot right now!

EASY OVERNIGHT CROCKPOT OATMEAL

2 cups rolled steel cut oats or other hulled grains (rice gets pretty mushy this way, but it CAN be used for a GF version)
2 cups milk
Huge dash of cinnamon
Huge dash of brown sugar (it melts in soooo lovely)
any dried fruits, if using

Cook on WARM, not low, overnight if your "overnight" is longer than 4-5 hours. Otherwise you can use LOW. I do WARM since it's going to be in there for a minimum of 8 hours and scorching is bad, which it can do on the bottom as it thickens.

In the morning it smells delicious. Add fresh fruits if you like, top with more meltly brown sugar yumminess, or maple syrup, or whatever you like really. I add some soymilk for my youngest, and heavy cream for the those of us who can have milk (I cook mine with water and not milk if youngest will be eating it.) I've also used rice and other milks fine, it's very adaptable. Just make sure you use at LEAST a 1:1 ratio on the grains and fluid.

Bonus: Use a crockpot bag and in the morning when done eating, remove bag and PRESTO clean, prewarmed crockpot to throw dinner into immediately. It doesn't get easier than this. For extra special easyness, follow with the pork tenderloin I posted!

For those of you with kids starting school, I hope they all had awesome days and really nice teachers and interesting subjects! Now, go have a drink and relax because it starts all over tomorrow!

I'll be posting reviews shortly of BeautyBox5, BuluBox, Ipsy, LootCrate, PopSugar, and GoodiesCo (both kid and regular boxes) all of which came last week when I was too busy to post about them (whoops!)

Link up Monday

Linking up to OrgJunkie's Menu Monday.

Today's recipe is the EASIEST THING TO MAKE IN A CROCKPOT, EVER.

Line the bottom of the crock with small gold or red potatoes (whichever you prefer). You can add carrots, onions, or other stew veggies as you like (fresh, not frozen). I don't, because chopping that shit up takes time and this one is all about the quick before dashing off to something on short notice.

Lay a pork tenderloin on top. I love the applewood bbq flavor for reasons I'll describe later. This doesn't taste bad on the potatoes. If unflavored, toss in some rosemary (fresh or dried). The tenderloin CAN BE FROZEN SOLID. IT'S FINE.

Pour in enough water to cover the potatoes entirely, but don't come up much on the meat. That's why you want the potatoes down as evenly as possible.

Set to high for 6-8 hours if frozen, low for 6-8 hours if completely thawed pork.

I like to do 2 of the skinny tenderloins (overpacking the crock slightly) for RollOverLeftOvers. This makes the meat so tender that it falls apart when you fork it.

We save the remains (of which there is a lot, this is 2 portions for a family of 5) and our RollOver the next night is pulled pork sandwiches.

This will become a staple for one of my early morning raid days!

Thoughts on WoW

First of all, here's Panser with the weekly WoW vid. I'm sorry this post is so late.



This has been part of what's going on, and why I haven't been posting much.

I switched servers. Again. It's still Oceanic (which I've found a few drawbacks to, but not many). I have to play Oceanic right now because believe me, I have tried, and outside of heroic progression raiding groups, there are no US groups I have found that raid in the early morning hours of Central Standard Time. I really miss the people from both previous guilds that I spent months in. I hated, in each case, the circumstances that caused me to switch servers and leave. Really awesome players both in Epic Phail and Shadowhaven - the former isn't responsible for the server dying; the latter isn't responsible for my IRL raid time needs. The loss of running raids with Krenyn still stings. I love that chica far more than she knows and have mad respect for her.

Which brings me to my last and most recent switch.

Whether or not he intended it that way, one of the raid leads contacted me following our attempt on Lei Shen (12/12 tier boss) last Monday. He suggested that I speak with one of the other warlock players to get my DPS up.

On the surface, this is a routine suggestion, if anything. It's good advice. Where it didn't make sense is that person plays affliction (I play destruction, a totally different spec); and that this was the first time I've ever done Lei Shen on normal, compared to it being I don't know, maybe even the 50th time that person was doing it. The other warlock close in range to me on the dps chart also plays affliction, and their DPS was only 1k over mine - that's not a gamechanger.


I let the raid lead in question know that they were a different spec than me, but that I WOULD contact them (really, there's no excuse not to take an opportunity to see if there IS something you don't know. This happens and it's part of the gaming experience.) At this point, he told me to play the spec with the highest DPS.

And that is where I decided it was time to leave and I was not a good fit with that guild. I know that many people switch specs without issue, don't mind it, or even like that they are able to do that. I know that really good players make sure they have the ability to because some fights do need it.

I am not THAT good of a player. I've been on WoW for exactly one year. I have always played a destruction warlock. In that time, Destro saw 1 complete makeover (going from Cata to MoP) and many other patch or balance changes. I can and should put in the time on learning the other specs, but with the changes coming in 5.4, I don't really want to use my free time to do that right now. The drop of 5.4 will present a good time for me to indeed explore this, however.

The guild (and server) I have joined now straight up do not mind me sticking to destro - but this time I knew to ask specifically that and was brutally honest about my deficits so I wouldn't waste their time or my money (it's $25 to change servers. Ouch.)

They have pushed me in ways I needed pushing and didn't know. I kicked turtles on Tortos and while I actually suck at kicking the turtles (seriously), the process of learning that taught me the raid better. When I was taken off of turtles, I had developed a better awareness of what was going on. I appreciate that in ways I haven't been able to explain to them.

I did screw up the time zone conversion - they raid from 7am-10am my time *wince*. Even though I'm brand new, I appreciate that they are willing to bump it to 7:20 when school starts so that my peeps are out the door before I need to push with them. I did express my appreciation and that it was totally my fault and if the 20 minutes did become a concern to just let me know. It has had me quickly getting used to getting up at the butt crack of dawn well in advance of school, though! That's a good thing by the way hehe.

More to come later, but this post is totally too long already. Keep Calm and WoW On.