Day 1: Who is red cow?

I have finally jumped on the bandwagon of Saga at Spellbound's 20 days of...WoW blogging challenge. Despite the recent flurry of posting about the new Call to Arms! system, I have been feeling a little lost as to what to post next. I have a few posts waiting in the wings, some of them stories, but when I go to hit publish they just seem out of place or inappropriate somehow. Hopefully after some more editing I can feel good about sharing them. Until then, please enjoy some shameless red cow talk. More participants can be found here.

Yeaahhh this makes sense

I am a US expat living in west Japan teaching English straight out of college. My majors were Japanese and Spanish, not education, so I've recently been floundering about while considering the total shit job situation in the US and my lack of real marketable skills.

I have been a nerd since I could read, correcting my dad when he skipped a word of The Chronicles of Narnia, always having a book in hand at all family gatherings (my aunt has a picture of me reading from, like, every Christmas), staying up till 4 am playing Pokemon with my best friend, writing outrageous fanfiction on a cookie and Vanilla Coke-induced sugar high with the same friend. In high school, I woke up at 7 am in order to watch all 6 Star Wars movies, including the final one which (unreleased at the time) was an awful pirated version. Also generally awful, but I digress. I helped my dad build an extra bookcase to house my Sailormoon manga and sat with my mom after school, sketching Sailor suits and meatball hairstyles while she read the newspaper. My need to collect things extends to music as well, especially after I learned the term "discography". I was an honors, AP class student and a percussionist in our award-winning high school band (I miss it so much!!), adding more marks to my long tally of nerd points.

In game I am a resto druid, and have played the same character since I chose a main. I love raiding, gear, achievements, mounts, pets, basically anything that can be collected. (I blame Pokedexes for this) It took a while to dredge this timeline up, but I started playing at the end of my junior year of college as a human priest on a 10 day trial. Much hilarity was had, but I didn't being playing in earnest until after returning from a summer study abroad in Tokyo. My Alliance friends weren't playing very regularly, so my Horde buddy encouraged me to reroll and join her guild for company. While in Japan, we traveled to Aizu on a weekend trip and visited a lacquer store that gave us akabeko keychains as a thank-you gift. Akabeko is "red cow" in Aizu dialect. My friend had been describing her deep love of the curvy, fuzzy cowgirls, and it occurred to me that the cute akabeko would make a good name for a cow lady. As soon as I got home, I rolled up a red-furred cowgirl and never looked back. Since then, I have been called both Aka, Beko, and many humorous misreadings of the non-English name. Also, I've been told that it's a name or reference used for something in an anime, which has led to a few strange conversations where someone assumes that I am a fan of...whatever anime that is.

Looking back, I'm really glad that I chose a multi-purpose class as my main character, because it has enabled me to perform all roles when necessary. I heal in group situations, dps when questing, and tank when I want to solo bosses!

Go to Day 2: Why blog?