So lately, Missy and I are back doing the World of Warcraft thing again. We like playing it with our girl, Katiebug. It's a nice thing-to-do-together-at-a-distance, and we're really enjoying it. We rolled new toons, which is WoW-speak for creating new characters.
They're all pandaren, big anthropomorphic panda bears. Think Po from Kung Fu Panda. Mine's a healer-spec'ed shaman named Hôgô. (It's a munge of the Japanese word Hogo, or 保護, which means "protection". I'm the medic for our little troupe.)
There's an aspect to the game that Missy is really into called "battle pets". It's like this meta-game-within-the-game. As you travel from place to place there are these little animals all over. All sorts of animals, like rabbits, squirrels, vultures, exotic birds. You can pit a team of three pets you've already tamed against these animals in the wild, and if you beat them, capture them.
The whole thing has flavors of Pokémon, and collecting stuff, and a lot of the battle pets are just adorable. No wonder Missy digs it. She loves collectibles, and loves cute things.
The other night I was upstairs in my home office, massively catching up my gratitude backlog, while she and Katiebug were playing, and she stumbled across something very very cool. She shouted upstairs to me, "Hey Mako, you've got mail. ". (Because she got me a present!)
I bet you can guess what it was.
The pet's officially called "Left Shark". Isn't he ADORABLE?
She rushed upstairs to see if I'd opened the in-game mail, and then we both decided together that I just had to name him Chum.
When I run around in the game, Chum air-swims next to me, in the most adorable way. He's just precious, and I really, really love him.