It’s been a good while since my last post here. As you’ve probably figured out if you’re a follower of The Adventures of Raquel™, most of my lack of time has to do with my upcoming wedding.

This Saturday is the big day and the arrangements have bitten quite a chunk off my free time. Plus a bunch of other stuff which has a timing that has converged to coincide with these days.

My bachelorette party was awesome. Thanking my wedding godmother and my godfather again here for planning the whole deal. Also thanking who attended for their very nice company. It was the best time I’ve had in quite some time. And if I’m not mistaken it was the first and only time anyone but my parents ever planned an event for me. Did I mention it was an awesome party? Because it was, and not only saying this because of the hot male stripper or waiter. The whole day was fun, and I finally went to a Luso-Nippon bakery where I’d been wanting to go for ages and ended up never going.

Last Friday my mother was scheduled to do an intervention at a hospital and I took the day off to be with her. She ended up not being allowed to do the medical exam because of some complications, probably to do with the fact that they left her without eating for almost 17 hours straight, and her liver isn’t the best working organ in the block.

So anyway, Friday was a different day, spent mostly on the hospital, but also with my dad, who I had lunch with, and trying my wedding dress at the store for the last time. The wedding dress tryout was the only excuse I could think of to convince my mother not to freak out because I tooka vacations day to be with her.

My aunt passed by the hospital and we chatted a bit when my mother was already taken to a place where visitors aren’t allowed. I hadn’t talked to her in ages, and I realized that I shouldn’t let so much time pass between meetups with her. She’s cool (and somewhat insane :P).

After my father passed by the hospital (a novelty that was surely influenced by my taking the day off to be with mom), we stayed a bit longer but ended up leaving him with her at almost 7 o’ clock, until the visit hours were over. We headed toward downtown on foot, but not going through the main avenue, instead through some less travelled streets. Found two interesting stores on the way downtown: a goth shop and an… well an ‘indie shop’ which had a ton of original, one-of-a-kind items and clothing, accessories, the works. The shop is called Crew Hassan (check out their website).

It was also my sweetie’s birthday last week and we had a family dinner on the day itself and then a dinner with friends this Saturday. My friend Ana and I expelled him from the kitchen all of Saturday afternoon, and made him a cake, of which I shall put some photos online some time. Learned a ton of stuff regarding cake-making from Ana, who’s slowly becoming a baking goddess.

Gave kitten three gifts, one of which were boxers I bought at Springfield with some origami instructions. The other two were Street Fighter IV (so he can kick my butt as vengeance for getting his kicked by me at Tekken repeatedly :P) and also Guitar Hero: Metallica. I think he liked them though we’ve only had the time to try out SFIV and the rest will have to be played later.

A bunch of other stuff has happened this past month but I’ll stick to talking about these more recent events.

This week will prove stressful since we have to take care of some things that couldn’t be handled before due to logistics and timing issues. My Google Calendar looks like a superstar’s calendar would look like. Tons of stuff to do on these next few days. I’m trying to keep it together despite being very tired of all the planning and scheduling/rescheduling, and to be quite honest, just wishing it was the day already so I can stop planning stuff, and no longer have to run around like a mad person to take care of so much stuff, and so on.

This is probably my last written post before I’m officially a married woman, and possily even the last one before I’m back from my honeymoon in Thailand. So wishing you all a nice Summer. Have fun.

There’s a hype all over the gamer scene on the Internet regarding BioWare’s MMO, Star Wars: The Old Republic mostly caused by the very awesome cinematic trailer that was revealed in E3 a couple of days ago.

I’ve been excited with the prospect of a fresh Star Wars MMO being made by BioWare, but not nearly close to what one would expect, from someone who, like myself, is a huge Star Wars fan and a huge BioWare fan. Having been disappointed with Star Wars Galaxies when it came out a few years ago, makes me more cautious this time around.

Obviously I have big expectations regarding the game, given BioWare’s history of producing great story-driven RPGs, but I’m not having the whole ‘clouded judgment’ thing enough to make me overlook obvious flaws it may have. There are less positive things, like BioWare’s inexperience in producing MMOs, and the rumoured possibility of it being a micro-transactions based game.

I’m still used to the monthly fee model, as every MMO I’ve played and enjoyed, since Dark Age of Camelot, has used that model. A micro-transactions-based model will have to be nicely done so I accept it enough to want to play.

I liked the trailer, and unlike Tobold I don’t think it was badly-timed, not do I think BioWare will make you sit through every spoken sentence each NPC spills out. In fact, anyone who has knowledge of BioWare’s latest games, such as Mass Effect, would know you can almost always ‘fast forward’ through dialogues. And Mass Effect had a *lot* of spoken NPC lines. Although I agree with part of his ‘hopes’ for SW:TOR, it seems like a bit of misinformed knit-picking on Tobold’s part. I don’t think SW:TOR is the second coming of Christ, I don’t believe it will have as many subscribers as WoW has (though it’s supposedly their goal to overthrow WoW), I don’t think it will revolutionize MMOs a lot (it will a bit, yes).

I do believe this has the potential to be one of the best MMOs out there. And let me remind you that before WoW, the subscriber numbers of what was considered a nicely populated MMO weren’t in the millions scale, but in the hundreds of thousands scale. Most of the World of Warcraft population these days weren’t even aware about MMOs until WoW came to the scene.

One of the downsides of WoW’s popularity? Because everyone plus their respective pets plays it, the number of idiot players is a lot higher than what you’d find in previous MMOs. When I dabbled a bit on LOTRO, the difference of maturity in the general chat was astounding. When I look at my sweetie’s screen and he’s playing EVE Online, the general chat also has a lot more quality (and let’s remember this is a free-for-all PvP game, where one would think we’d get more piss talk :P) and less idiocy than WoW.

But WoW’s popularity is not a bad thing, really. It gave MMOs some publicity, set a higher standard for product quality and such. But WoW also *did* eat away some of the market for single player games (mostly PC I’m guessing) by sucking people in to do the same crap over and over again for months.

Seeing my own situation, only now that I’ve taken a ’sabbatical leave’ of WoW, am I playing other games, and urging to play other games. Sure, part of it has to do with me being burned out of WoW itself, and especially of the incredible amount of idiots who populate it, but also because I realize once more how much stuff I was missing by occupying a lot of my indoors time with WoW. I’d done the same when I’d quit the game after months of The Burning Crusade - and much like WoW’s content, it’s a cyclical deal.

Following that train of thought, here’s what I hope SW:TOR will give us: less in-game time required to get stuff done. Blizzard has taken some steps toward that in WotLK (and a bit before), but it’s still not perfect.

Getting back to the timing for the SWTOR cinematic trailer, Tobold should know that MMO developing companies often need to release such ‘delicious crumbs’ to the public, in order to show investors it’s a good thing to give them more money for development because of the build up hype. And if there’s something SWTOR will need more than what it already has guaranteed (which is an already proven good development house and the large target audience that are Star Wars fans) it’s money to develop and polish the game until it shines.

People don’t want another wonderful Tortuga followed by horribly bugged rest of the game, like what we got in Age of Conan.The initial SWTOR will need to be awesome and I mean awesome to the point where after you reach the level cap, you’ll want to keep playing.

I can only hope that BioWare keeps doing what it’s done best in the last few years and doesn’t succumb to probable external pressures to release the game before its ready. If there’s another company, other than Blizzard, who’s known for postponing games a lot but then delivering marvelous products, that’s BioWare.

I’m hoping for this because to be honest (and feel free to call me ‘causal’ :P), whenever I ‘come up for air’ from World of Warcraft I realize I’m missing out on a lot of stuff, games-wise or not. WoW has basically become worn out chewing gum for me.

The initial months after WotLK were quite nice (the quests were visibly improved) but it quickly became ‘more of the same’. I don’t want to be stuck chewing an endless chewing gum. I don’t want to be stuck doing the same over and over in an endless pattern. I want SWTOR to be designed in a way that I can enjoy it slowly, and through a lot of time without getting sick of it.

That’s my hope for SWTOR.

This is the time of the year where the biggest video game event occurs: E3.

Yesterday Electronic Arts presented their twelve most talked about upcoming titles on E3. Among them were of course BioWare’s three upcoming titles (no word yet on their mysterious ‘next gen game’). I watched the EA live video stream and drooled at a few of the titles.

As this post’s title indicates, this will me a video-heavy post.

Mass Effect 2 - An extended cut of a previous trailer was shown and can I say ‘woohoo!’? :p I really want to play it. Too bad it’s only coming in 2010…

Here’s the extended Mass Effect 2 trailer:

Dragon Age: Origins had a new trailer and it was gory as usual. Also very good. Check it out:

The EA guys saved the best for last and showed what I think is the best game trailer for a game that I’ve seen in a couple of years. The game itself will be the first MMO fully voiced, which imho will contribute a lot to the in game immersion, much like it did on Mass Effect.

The first cinematic trailer for Star Wars: The Old Republic. Watch and drool.

If you want to watch the very cool stage entrance that preceded the presentation of SW:TOR, go here.

For a huge list of what this year’s E3’s big action-filled games are, check it out here.

That’s all for now. Hoping for more news on the next couple of days, during E3.

I’ve slacked majorly regarding written posts here. Partly due to being busy but also because I’ve been lazy.

Some news, none are bombastic revelations, I’m afraid.

I started using Wii Fit again, in an attempt to become healthier. I’m not as heavy as I thought, but close to being above the ideal body mass index interval. Although small, the increase in weight would explain why my knees have been aching more than usual lately. Wii Fit is not as good as practicing Iaido, but for now it’s what’s doable, and Iaido will need to wait until September or so. Anyway, let’s see how long I keep up with this Wii Fit practice. Place your bets!

I stopped playing WoW again. On hiatus until further notice, but haven’t really felt the urge to play at all in a few weeks. Not even the prospect of possibly doing alt/social runs with my old guild on my Paladin seems that interesting, so this will likely be a long hiatus. I feel like playing one of the many single player RPGs that have been tempting me for a while now. Which reminds me, is there a kind soul that can advise me on where to buy The Witcher Enhanced Edition? Both Game.co.uk and Amazon UK are out of sock, and at least Game has been that way for months. What must a girl do to buy the damned game? :\

Thankfully Dragon Age: Origins is supposedly coming out on October, so I’ll get my BioWare single player RPG fix. I haven’t enjoyed a new game THAT much, since Mass Effect, and that’s been well over a year ago. Yeah I’m kind of a BioWare fangirl. With good reason, since there’s not a single game made by them that I disliked (exception being the Jade Empire PC port which was pretty crap and didn’t even seem like their work), and several I enjoyed a lot.

I ended up participating in Cookapalooza!’s blog earlier than anticipated since I made some strawberry ice cream (and this week some more with my sweety) and then some mustard-sauced chicken with mushrooms recently (OM NOM NOM!) and took photos of the process. Of course after these two posts it’s entirely possible I’ll not post anything new for ages there, depending on when I’m in the right mood (and have the time) to cook something fancier and take photos of it.

As you may have noticed from the post before this one, we have a new family member at the farm. Ramá is a six month old Alentejo Mastiff and she’s adorable. I thought I wouldn’t like as much as I would a young puppy, but I was wrong. She’s very sociable, playful and sweet. She’s also very calm considering her age, which is something I appreciate a lot.

I’ve been feeling the need for vacations a lot on the last couple of months. Two weeks to go until a one-week break, and I feel burned out every day. can’t wait to rest my head a bit.

Have a nice week.

It had already crossed my mind how this music’s lyrics fit Bram Stocker’s Dracula so very much, and it looks like someone else did too.

“And though my mind is cut by battles
fought so long ago
I return victorious
I am coming home
And if the paths that I have followed
have tread against the flow
there is no need for sorrow
I am coming home”

I really have to watch this movie again.

I’ve been excited about some of the video games that launch this year, and lately the one that has been getting my eye most of all is Dragon Age. Origins.

BioWare did the right decision and made it a mature rated game, instead of going for a lower rating to aim to a broader market. Good. If I had to take a semi-educated guess, most of the BioWare games’ fans are people over 18 years old anyway, a lot of them being a lot older than that and having played classics such as Baldur’s Gate. So. Mature rating is good, and why do I believe that? Because when you have a mature rating you can show all the blood and guts you want, thus depicting things more realisticaly, and also, no idiots can complain about there being a sex scene in the game (much like what happened with Mass Effect). This despite it being an expected consequence of the plot of the game itself and not just a ‘just because we felt like spicing things up’ scene.

Anyway, there was a new trailer out this week (check it out a bit further down in this post), and it looks awesome, which makes me want to go an pre order the game already. However, since there are still several months until it comes out, I decided to wait a bit longer, because with any luck BioWare will release a special edition or something. Not sure but better to hold off ordering the regular version for a while longer.

Meantime, I’ve noticed there’s a prequel novel for the game - Dragon Age: The Stolen Throne. It’s still out of stock on my regular online bookstore, and that can be a good thing actually after the mountain of books we purchased recently (four more books bought at the fair after the photo was taken) - and yesterday we got Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell in hardcover on a cool bargain (we’d both been eyeing that novel for a while now) over at Fnac.

I admit I might be more excited about this one that about SW: TOR, despite the recent announcement of the Bounty Hunter class. I guess the rumors about it being RMT-based game turned me a bit off of it.

People usually do a New Years’ ‘what I want to do this year’ lists, and I did one myself this year, however due to a variety of things I have yet do do much on it.

I have sort of managed to do ‘Read more books and comics’ and ‘Watch more TV shows and animes’, but some of the other points I’ve either not been able to do at all or have failed miserably at so far. :P

Anyway, since there’s a ton of stuff I’ve been postponing due to the wedding planning, I’m going to go crazy here and do the same kind of list but for the ‘after the wedding context’.

So what do I want to achieve after the wedding/honeymoon?

• Start practicing a martial art. Been thinking of Tai Chi for ages now, but the class schedules are always sucky (need a post laboral or weekend schedule). Recently I found out that it’s easier to find weekend schedules for stuff like Iaido or Kendo than for Tai Chi. I’ll just have to warn the instructor about my bad knee so I don’t frak it up permanently. Leaning toward Iaido. Anyone knows of decent martial arts shops in Lisbon? (found one but the Iaitos there were… let’s say ‘pricey’, and we need to get two of those since kitten is also interested in practicing :p)
• ‘Hitting it’ on Cookapalooza!. What’s ‘Cookapalooza!’? So far, still a work-in-progress/prototype idea for a cooking group some friends of mine have decided to create and invited me to. I have some ideas for contributions to it which I’ll only mention AFTER I can actually do them. :p The ‘hitting it’ also includes cooking more elaborate stuff, which I’ve rarely done lately because I’ve been so very tired most the time, and I lack the energy to do anything other than basic stuff so we don’t starve.
• Start having Japanese lessons. Yeah, this one has a minor issue I think. The weekend class schedule of the course I was thinking of attending is probably going to overlapse with the martial arts class. I’ll have to investigate further. The downside? I was thinking of going to a comic book workshop, but that also overlapses with stuff. Decisions, decisions…
• Revamp Corusca. I’ve been wanting to do it for almost a year now. It’s not just a I-want-to-change-how-it-looks thing. It’s a let’s redo the organization, add some new sections and some other stuff I won’t tell you about right now.
• Play pen & paper RPGs. Been feeling like playing Dungeons & Dragons on a semi-regular basis for a while now. May opt to look for rotating between hosting events and doing them on a store where one can play for a few hours or something (like we used to on Devir), just so we’re not always stuck inside our house, so to speak. I like varying my surroundings or I end up heading toward depression. :p I’m completely out of the loop regarding these types of stores in the general Lisbon area - since Devir’s large store closed, I have no clue what are the current tabletop/card games/RPG hangout places. Anyone knows?
• Redecorate -or simply decorate- some parts of our house. The office is most likely getting a cool new desk, and we’re ‘modding’ it. Not a huge mod, a simple, pretty one. The kitchen needs some shelves so we can place some new plants there and host the ones we already have. The hall will probably get a new, discreet bookshelf.  (We need a new bookshelf. So many books, so little book-keeping space… ) And there will be all around framing of pretty images, movie posters and photos, so we hang them in our houses’ bare walls.

I’m probably forgetting something but if I don’t stop writing now, this will turn into a War & Peace-length text. Have a nice week.