About damned time?

It was looking to be a nice lazy night off, nothing on my plate and I was still after all this time sitting at +17k tnl 75 so I decided to try my hand at solo exp while seeking on BLM.

The last time I went to solo in this place I died a horrid death on my first pull and swore off solo exp. It should have been very easy exp, fight a rng type mob that wont melee me to death, add little stoneskin and a round of nukes for easy exp, unfortunately I linked a thf mob who stabbed the shit out of me interrupting my attempts to sleep/warp the hell out of there.

This time I packed a RR pin, no point in making potentially negative exp any worse than it needed be.

Arrived at camp, popped my exp ring wandered around till I found something that deserved to die and bam ...

O.o 414 not shabby at all, and I didn't die. It did take my entire mana pool to pull it off but the mobs have a 15 minute spawn time and with three in a room so I should be able to pace this out nicely. I managed to pull a few chain 2's and every other time I cleared the room a chain 1 never once coming close to death. Couple of hours later I was a little over 5k tnl when I got a party invite. I almost didn't take it, its been so long since I used Blm for anything other than friend or LS help, but I did. Traveled to the mire, met up with the party and proceeded to blow things up for a little bit when one member took off ; ;, his replacement arrived killed a few things then the nin and rdm wanted to go without finding replacements, we finished the rdm's {Last} and he warped then nin said it was time for her to go I was sitting at 1k so the nin stayed ....

{/Hurray!}
Nin disbands 2hrs and I look down and lead has been passed to me /sigh. I asked the party (all jp now) {Looking for members.}??{Disband}??{Leader} {Do you need it}?? and pretty much all at the same time "{Yes Please.} {No thank you} {No thank you.} ^^" So after all this time out of the "high level game" I'm no charged with being the leader of a party, what you say that doesn't sound bad? well considering I have been in a lead position few times than I have fingers to count on I wasn't exactly confident. After some begging/harassing/silent treatment and a sneaky nin who agreed to come than changed to sam before I busted him we were back in the game.

I ended up 8k into 75 with no Kirbyprime to spam {job} Thunder IV {You can have this.} to. Not a bad night at all. Ran to the AH to see if there was anything cheap that would show off my new status, a hat or staff etc.., sadly BLM gets the shaft with auctionable goods at 75 ... I was kinda hoping there would be a silly staff that ww's skill on or a crappy cap .. hell anything .. I think all there that I could find were some melee earrings so no sexy new anything /sigh.

Poked around with the merit box, not allot I am really interested in except maybe a Tier 2 AM or something since my career path is still blurry.