Is Where Ratter's RL Avatar Says Sumthin'

Hello, you buggers.

Me RL avatar, he got sumthin' he be wantin' ta say to all of ya. Now, he's a good lad, does his dailies and all, but he do suffer from the delusion what he be the real one and I'm the one what be a buncha pixels. Hehehe. What a noob. But we's gonna humor the kid, and listen ta his wordifying.

/break the fourth wall

Hi everyone.

I wanted to take a few minutes to let everyone know some things that have been going on here in the real world, and explain a bit about why I had to take a few months off.

Back when I was raiding with Aetherial Circle over on Drenden, we had a resto druid in the guild by the name of Shianti. There were a number of characters in that outfit, but in addition to being a really good raider she had a personality that was funny and colorful and nice, and it felt natural to include her in some of my posts. Whether she was trying to farm Badges of Justice or flirting with Maurice or helping Kinnavieve in her attempts to get some epic pants to drop, it was always fun to have her here.

Last year, Shianti and I started getting to know each other outside of the game. Instead of Shianti and Ratshag we became Julie and Michael. We found we had a lot of things in common, one of which turned out to be a strong mutual attraction. We began flying out to see each other for weekends, which turned into longer and longer visits. She applied for a nursing job in my hometown, and was offered a position for significantly better pay than what she was making. We made plans on how we wanted to spend our lives together. Things were going great.

In October, we got hit with several pieces of bad news. By far the biggest of these though was that Julie was diagnosed with Stage 3 breast cancer. To fight it, she immediately had to start four months of chemotherapy, with surgery to follow. Of course, this meant putting our plans on hold and focusing on just getting through the here-and-now. Putting the time and effort into working on this silly little blog just was something I didn't have the heart for at that time, so I put up my "gone fishing" post.

One of the good things to come out of Julie's cancer has been the overwhelming support and encouragement we have gotten from our friends and family, both in the real world and in WoW. If this story sounds familiar, yes, my Julie is the same Julie that John the Big Bear Butt Blogger and all the other great people in the Sidhe Devils guild (where we currently have our Alliance toons) organized the Raid for the Cure for. It was a really thoughtful gesture, and the effort and enthusiasm that people put into it, as well as the many generous donations to the Susan G. Komen for the Cure charity, really meant a lot to both of us.

So now, three months later, how are things? Julie is two-thirds of the way through the treatment. It's a rotten process, with a lot of nausea, bone pain, fatigue, hair loss and lots of other minor crap. But the tumors have all shrunk significantly, and some have gone away completely. Her odds of surviving the next five years have gone up a lot. She had to postpone starting her new job, of course, but they were very understanding and it looks like it is all go for her to start in March. (It helps that she is awesome nurse and they really really want her ;) ) Things are looking up, and I felt ready to start thinking about blogging again.

One last thing - I wanted to say thanks for all the lovely comments, both when I stopped in October and when I started again this week. Need More Rage is something I enjoy writing, and I am glad so many of you enjoy reading it. Okay, enough of my yapping, let me hand you back to the orc.

Yeah huh. Great googly moogly that boy talked a lot, but it seemed real fuhggin' importants ta him. Okies, that's all fer today, all though if yer intersted is a post from Vyprania recentlies over at Need More Words. Is all serious and emotionals and whatnots, so is there and not here.