I am so happy to have had Oestrus from The Stories of O, and OriginalOestrus on Twitter, and she is of course one of the “O’s” of The Double O Podcast, be my guest poster for the Blog Azeroth Furtive Father Winter event!

As you will read, it was no easy feat to try to figure out the “theme” behind Heroically Random and try to put a holiday spin on that, but she did it Brilliantly!

Enjoy!

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It sounded easy enough.

Gift givers should then learn about their recipient and create a [holiday-themed] post using prose, poetry, music, graphic art, screenshots, or anything else of their choosing. There is no quantity requirement; just make something you might like to receive as a gift!

Well, let’s see.  Rilandune seems to be an amazing photographer and likes to post pictures that he takes on Tumblr.  He likes to write posts about why he doesn’t post more often.  He has a WordPress app for his phone – which kind of makes me wonder why he’s having such a hard time with #2.  Oh, and he co-hosts a podcast about World of Warcraft lore.

How am I supposed to tie any of that together into a cohesive, but witty holiday themed blog post?

I spent so much time mulling over this and groping for inspiration that Christmas completely passed me by.  I realized it would be kind of awkward to write a Christmas post now, on the 29th of December, with New Year’s Eve just around the corner.  Hey!  I could write a New Year’s Eve post.  Maybe I could twist around the lyrics to “Auld Lang Syne” into something comedic and heartwarming, but then I realized that song is basically just the same four or five lines over and over again and that even I can’t make that seem interesting.  What kind of New Year’s traditions could I write about?  Well, there’s drinking – and eating.  Drinking while you’re eating.  Yeesh.  I got nothing.

I was feeling downtrodden and annoyed with myself, so I turned to the last place I could think of to tap into some much needed inspiration:  Wikipedia.

The article talking about New Year’s Eve was broken down by country of origin and all the different traditions that various cultures indulge in on the holiday.  Most of them were pretty boring or just downright strange.  For example, in Mexico, people a eat grape for each of the twelve chimes of a bell during the midnight countdown.  Meanwhile, in certain parts of Canada, people go ice fishing and drink with their friends on New Year’s.  After scrolling down far enough, I found a pretty neat tradition or two filed away under the section about Italy:

Italians call New Year’s Eve Capodanno (the “head of the year”) or Notte di San Silvestro (the night of St. Silvestro). Traditionally there are a set of rituals for the new year, such as wearing red underwear and getting rid of old or unused items by dropping them from the window.

Rilandune’s last name does sound Italian and I do have these laying around:

So, in keeping with the ancient New Year’s Eve traditions of the Italian people, I decided to go through my guild bank and find some things that are either old or that I have absolutely no more use for.  Here are some things that I found:

This baby is a keeper.  I leveled Oestrus to 70 with that thing and I think I even used it to level from 70 – 80, too.  The mushroom is incredibly useful and it got me through some tough times.  Not to mention the icon is so cute!

I have had this thing in my bank for so long that it was a plain old mallet when I put it in there and then it came out some time later as a modest blue quality weapon.  I don’t see myself going back to Zul’Farrak anytime soon, but if anyone needs help summoning Gahz’rilla, I’m your girl!

Ah, the good old days of the original Zul’Aman, before it became the bane of our existence in Cataclysm.  I picked this up way back when and I seem to have accumulated a few other useless pets as well, that I already have and that I can’t even seem to give away – like the Turkey Cage

and the Cobra Hatchling

.  Oh wait, they’re Bind on Pickup.  Never mind!

I remember the trouble that I went through, just to get the mats so I could craft my shadow resistance set for Mother Shahraz.  I think I may have even left my guild at the time over it.  Say what you will, but I enjoyed those fights where some kind of resistance was necessary.  The leather caster set was nothing short of hideous and this neck piece was the icing on the cake.  When I look at the Medallion, I think about those struggles and how difficult those encounters were.

This is one of those things that I picked up, yet I have no idea how, or where, or what exactly it does.  It’s just there – doing something, or maybe nothing.  According to WoWHead, it’s used to form a carapace of some kind, or it was.  I don’t see myself building one for myself anytime soon, so I could probably get rid of this.

I think I got these when I did a Molten Core run for giggles with some friends, which is funny because I don’t know how to disenchant things on any of my characters.  Maybe this was after the change was made where as long as someone in the group could disenchant you were set?  I don’t know what I was saving these for, seeing as how I don’t plan on taking up Enchanting soon, much less leveling it up.  Very strange.

Um, it looks cool and I can fumigate people.  Can you do that?  I didn’t think so.

Hopefully this post has inspired you, even a little bit, to go through your bags and banks and get rid of those things that are keeping you from acquiring more new things that could form a special place in your heart.  That’s what the new year is all about, right?  It’s about letting go of the old and making way for the new.

Have a happy and safe New Year’s!