Himself is flying off to Adelaide to see his mother tomorrow – just for the day – but it’s wheels up at 08.05am, so it’s out of bed for us at 05.30am 😦 Do not want! 😦 Still, he doesn’t see her often (though he talks to her every night), so I can’t complain 🙂 Well, I can, and I shall, complain, bitterly, about being dragged out of bed so early! *pout* (why isn’t there a smiley to indicate a pout?!) This means that my weigh-in will probably be quite inaccurate – I usually weigh myself about 07.45am – tomorrow I’ll be weighing myself around 05.45am, so who knows what sort of a mess that’ll make of things…

I can’t decide what to do tomorrow – should I clear up some space on the Foxtel IQ box hard drive and catch up on some pre-recorded TV programs that he doesn’t like much, or should I just Rift on, regardless? Go back to bed and have a good sleep in? Write the first episode of The Adventures of Darth Carla? (I got the “About Darth Carla” screed done this afternoon – Yay me! 🙂 ) Knowing me, I’ll probably dither until it’s too late to do anything useful and I shall have to do as I promised and delete (gulp!) all those programs that I should have watched ages ago, but never got a Round Tuit.

Anyway, we shall see what we shall see…

Weigh-in was much more betterer this morning 🙂 125.5kg, which was very pleasing indeed! I’ll let you all know which way the scales swing way too early tomorrow morning… I have a feeling that if it’s up, I’ll blame the early morning and discount it, and if it’s down I’ll be pleased and think that of course it’s accurate, and enter it in my graph! 🙂

Oh well, as I said, more later…

Well, here I am again, after a fairly busy day (mumbles: levelling up yet another new character on Rift…), and so forth.. 😉 Oh well, it’s better than sitting and vegetating in front of the TV… isn’t it? 😉

Himself was very busy too – doing a massive shop!  The fridge and the larder were, almost literally, bare! Now, we get to eat again! 😀 Well, he does, and the cat does, but I still get the same old, same old… it’s very tedious, and very boring. Vegetable soup for dinner last night, Tomato soup the night before that. Tonight was Chicken soup, and tomorrow it’ll be back to Tomato soup again. Still, it’s not forever, and at least it’s working. It’s also teaching me that I don’t have to eat something, whether I’m hungry or not, just because it’s there. And I’m finding that I really don’t miss it all that much anyway. The funny thing is, while I sometimes think that I wouldn’t mind a chip (french fry type of chip), or maybe even a couple of them, the thought of sitting down and eating a bowl full of them almost makes me feel nauseous. 🙂 Weird, eh?  The same goes for a piece of chocolate cake – yeah, I’d love a taste, but I shudder inwardly at the thought of having to eat a whole slice! I wonder if it’s because my stomach has shrunk, or whether being away from things that I used to eat quite a bit of, has made me realise that I didn’t really want them or need to eat them in the first place. I dunno.. I am looking forward to getting rid of the weight I have to get rid of, and then starting to eat more normally again (only without the bad habits I had before), but I’m not pining for it, or counting the days, or whatever… it’s more of a “next year in Jerusalem” type of thing – if it never happens, I’ll be wistful, but not heartbroken, if you know what I mean. I hope you do, anyway, because I’m not sure that I do! 🙂

Anyway, weigh-in this morning was j-u-s-t slightly better than it was yesterday, at 125.8kg (thank ghod that the scales only go to one decimal place! 🙂 ) And that’s about it from me for this evening.  More tomorrow night…

Well, we had a very pleasant day in Telara, smiting nasties, getting some OK loot and quest rewards, although if you want really good gear, sell everything you can, kill as many nasties as you can, and amass a bit of platinum… then buy your gear (armor and weapon(s)) from the auction house. At exorbitant prices, of course… so just because it looks good, and is exactly what you (think you) want and or need, think carefully… is it a piece of equipment or gear that comes up fairly often on the auction house? If “yes”, then don’t buy it – wait a day or two – either another one, or something very similar, will come up at a cheaper price – or else the person asking the ridiculously high price will find that the damn thing isn’t selling and subsequently lower the price… a bit…  If the answer is “no”, it’s a fairly rare item, and is really, really good, cry a lot, beggar yourself, and pay the asking price. 😦

We both went up a couple of levels, and I think we only died once or twice… The trouble with levelling as a team, though, is the fact that I’ve amassed more “loyalty” points than himself, because I spend more actual $$ on “credits” with which to buy… oh, I don’t know… dimension items, costumes (pretty pretty!) etc. etc. And, of course, the more “loyalty” you’ve managed to accrue, the faster you level… so I tend to level faster than he does, which means that I either have to turn my experience counter “off”, which means that I don’t level at all, or he has to use an experience “potion” which makes him gain experience at a faster level than I do with my “loyalty” bonus.  Unfortunately, one or the other of us seems to always be as much as half a level behind the other, and so either of us is always secretly a trifle resentful… *sigh*  Oh well…

Anyway, as I said, we both had a good time and are looking forward to next Sunday’s Telaran “bash” 😉

Weigh-in this morning was good… I managed, by the skin of my teeth, to squeeze in under the 126kg barrier at 125.9kg! Phew!  Just made it! Hopefully, tomorrow I’ll be able to make it a more permanent loss – all too easy at 125.9 to creep up a bit to back over the 126kg mark… That would be too tragic! 😦

Anyway, more from me tomorrow with the latest news… 🙂

Today was quite a busy one for both of us. While I Rift-ed, himself washed all those little ornaments we found in the boxes (they were quite disgustingly filthy) and brought them in here to me. “Where do you want them?” says he. As I was in the middle of a battle royale and about to be killed (several times over), I think I muttered something to the effect of “…#$@!&%#…“. Not very helpful of me, I know, but I was hard pressed… When the fight was over and I’d escaped with my life (for once), I found a safe place to hide and left the game…

Three shelves of my bookcase were cleared, several very large Lever Arch folders were moved to a more convenient shelf, and the newly cleaned ornaments moved into the newly vacated spaces. They look very nice there, too… but it took the best part of half a day to get it all organised.  The hanging/hang-able ornaments we left until after dinner, and now they, too, have been hung on the bookshelf wall, next to my calender, where they look really pretty! 🙂 How much does anyone want to bet me that the next few boxes we sort through will also have ornaments in them, and we’ll have to re-arrange everything all over again?

Tomorrow is our Telara day; himself even did the laundry today, so that he wouldn’t have to do it tomorrow! 🙂 Now, that’s what I call “organisation”! 😀 However I don’t expect that anything much apart from killing Telaran nasties will eventuate, so things around here should be reasonably quiet…

I almost, but not quite, broke the 126kg barrier this morning, weighing in at 126.1kg Maybe tomorrow? Keep all your fingers, toes, and eyes crossed for me! 🙂

Well, I couldn’t think what to call this post! And anyway, himself managed to clean the ancient old “pen and ink” (read: “biro”) picture up very nicely indeed.  Now all he has to do is upload it somewhere so that I can put in a link to it – or whatever! 🙂

I’m toying with the idea of starting a secondary blog, telling of the arrival of Darth Carla, how she had almost caught up with her dastardly twin brother Darth Vader, in order to bring him to Truth! Justice! and The Darth Carla Way! when her luxury space capsule was accidentally joggled by a sperm whale flipping his tail and deciding what to call it as he fell happily and unconcernedly towards the fabled planet Magrathea where he would meet an unfortunate and untimely end – and all that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias, as it fell, was, “Oh no, not again! Anyway, the luxury space capsule was joggled, Darth Carla chipped one of her beautifully manicured fingernails on the tractor beam console and said mildly: “Oh bother, now look what you’ve made me do!” to no-one in particular.

If anyone is interested in the story, leave me a comment to that effect! 🙂

My eldest married daughter was supposed to be coming over today, but rang this morning to say that her equal but more masculine half was home sick, so she thought she’d better stay home and look after him… So I’ve had to miss out on an afternoon of watching “Person of Interest”, as well as the company of my lovely daughter. 😦

So I decided to spend the time rearranging the Shard of Wolfsbane – well, my characters on it, anyway, and spent the day “neatening them up”, and re-organising the Guild Bank – no, I’m sorry WordPress, I am going to spell “organise” the Australian way! Like it, or lump it! 🙂

And that was pretty much how my day went…  Oh, the weigh-in this morning? I did manage to go down just a teeny bit – to 126.3kg, so I was quite well pleased… I just wish I could hurry up and break the 126kg barrier!

[Best Alfred Hitchcock impersonation] Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Tonight’s story is perhaps a trifle sad. Our aging and overweight protagonist is having a few problems with her scales; they’re not telling her what she wants to hear, and she’s searching for a sledge hammer… [/Best Alfred Hitchcock impersonation]

No, indeed, those scales must be faulty – or need new batteries! They seem to think that I weigh exactly the same as I weighed yesterday, 126.5kg 😦 Why?! I’m not doing anything different, or sneaking forbidden treats! Have I plateaued out so quickly? Am I bashing my head against a brick wall? Fighting a losing battle? Was I getting over confident, that I could indeed lose the weight I need to lose in a hurry without losing 2/3 of my stomach (permanently!), or having a plastic band put around it, forcing me to eat half a cup of food three times a day, chewing each tiny mouthful until it becomes liquid, and then waiting a timed minute before repeating the process, until the half cup of food is finished? Quite frankly, I think I would rather die, than live the rest of my life like that; I firmly believe that quality of life is more important than quantity of life.

I’m getting depressed…

Well, we got stuck into the remaining boxes today – remaining in the hallway, that is, not remaining in the storage bin. There’s still plenty of those left! 🙂 One box was little ornaments – cats, mostly, and a dear little pink elephant. Another box held books, the “condolences” book from The REAL CONNECTION/death… by chocolate BBS when we closed it down in 2002 with one last “Gathering” as a wake… and a real treat! A portrait of Darth Carla, done by herself (signed, even!) 🙂 It’s on a scrappy and yellowed piece of old note paper which has scribbled notes on the back of it, but if we can scan it and clean it up a bit, I’ll try and post it here so that you can see what she looks like 😉 I think it’s quite a good likeness… 😉 (she was quite a bit thinner then!) The rest of the boxes (there weren’t as many as we thought there were!) contained ancient towels and linens that I think must have come out of the ark, and an old teddy bear, dressed in a hand made and embroidered singlet of my father’s when he was a baby… He’s such a darling old bear, he’s almost totally bald, so he needs the singlet to keep him warm, and though he still has his eyes, his eyesight is rather poor, so he wears a pair of father’s old gold rimmed bifocals. He’s now back in his favourite seat in the lounge room, looking towards the hall… Needless to say though, most of the towels and linens went into the “not keep” box. Time for himself to go off and get another load of boxes, methinks!  Who knows what lies waiting to be discovered! 🙂

And that’s about it from me tonight – more hopefully not such miserable news about my weight tomorrow night….

Well, I’m not quite as put out as I was yesterday – this morning I weighed in at 126.5kg, the same as I was the day before yesterday… but at least I didn’t go up again. If I had, I think my tears of annoyance and frustration would be shorting out the keyboard… 😉

We didn’t get to unpack any boxes today – I rang my gym place this morning to see when I was supposed to be there, and guess what!  It was at high noon… very neatly cutting the day in half… By the time we got home again after stopping off at the Vet to get some more pussy biscuits (kibble, really) for Flipper – it’s just around the corner from Bounce – dropped off some dry cleaning, and had lunch (an Optifast Cappuccino Bar for me – himself had a sandwich), it was really too late to start on the boxes… and besides, I had to work bloody hard today – I had to do my exercises at double time, and the stretch in my elastic thingy was made stiffer? harder?  I dunno, anyway, I had to work pretty hard… I reckon I’ll have a few sore muscles tomorrow… They’re still easy enough for lazy me to persevere with though 🙂

We’re still wondering what to do with the two Realms on Rift.  Should we move characters around? Consolidate the two Guild Banks? My… what important and life changing problems to overcome we have! Anyone would think we didn’t have a life! 🙂 However, it’ll be back to the boxes in earnest tomorrow morning, so I guess these world shattering problems will have to wait a few more days.

Not really much more to add tonight – hopefully my weight will start going down again tomorrow (unless all the work I did today has turned the fat into muscle instead of just eliminating it!) Hmmmm… so, what’s the difference between a rock and the ocean?

Weight and sea… 😉

[Please insert rude words here] I’m feeling a bit put out this evening – I went up a bit this morning to 126.6kg 😦 Perhaps I should take two of those 4000mg celery capsules… and drink less water, less tea, and less coffee (no sugar, low fat milk) Oh well, let’s hope for a better result tomorrow morning…

Himself was right – we did start early on the boxes in the hall this morning… unfortunately there wasn’t all that much of interest in them this time – lots of ancient and yellowed pillow cases, which did go right in the “rubbish” box, lots and lots of himself’s work documents and papers from about ten or more years ago which will need to be shredded (ooo-er!  Lots of Top Secret stuff there!) 😉 A couple of books… and two surprises from my dim, dark past 🙂 An gen-U-ine silk Happy Coat, heavily embroidered, and a scarlet and bright yellow silk sash.  These, needless to say, did not go in the “rubbish” box – they will go off to the dry cleaners to be cleaned and prepared for vacuum storage – somewhere safe.  I remember my Nonno (my father’s father) bringing them back for me from a trip to the Orient – I would have been all of about five years old at the time, and quite thrilled with them – except for one thing.  I wasn’t allowed to play with them in case I damaged them! There was also a straw “coolie” hat, which I was allowed to play with, and maybe they were right in not letting me near the Happy Coat and sash… the straw hat lasted about a week and a half before it… umm… disintergrated, basically. And there was an old hand knitted jumper of Julian’s that will also go off to be cleaned and repaired.  One of the cats caught a claw in the neck and all the knitting there has unraveled… a bit…  I think it can be repaired, anyway.

There actually weren’t as many boxes as we’d thought there were and we were finished by lunchtime.  After lunch, himself taped up the rubbish boxes and loaded them into the car for a one way trip to the tip. After that, he went back to the storage bin for more boxes. We’re hoping to get onto those tomorrow, but it depends on what time my exercise “class” is – we forgot to write it down last time I was there so I’ll have to ring them first thing in the morning and find out. I’ve actually been very good with my exercises this week and have been (mostly) doing them every day… or so…  There’s only one I can’t do because I have nowhere to attach the elastic thingy to. Julian said we could use the door handles on the balcony doors, but I don’t feel comfortable using them.  I mean, I know I’ve lost a fair bit of weight already (nearly eight kilos), and the doors are steel, but I’d be pulling pretty hard on them and I just don’t feel comfortable doing that – what if I broke the doors, and Flipper got out on the balcony and wanted to chase a bird over the balcony railing?  We’re five floors up…. (so that conveniently gets me out of doing that particular exercise! *smug look*) 😉

Anyway, that’s about all from me this evening – more tomorrow night – hopefully with better news about my next weigh-in tomorrow morning! 🙂

It’s going to be a long, slow slog – I “found” another Shard (Realm, server, whatever) that I’d “forgotten” about in Rift, and realised that not only did it have about seven or eight characters that I’d started and then shelved, for whatever reason, but it also had a Guild (called “Grumpy Old Farts” (‘cos that’s what we are!)), and two Guild Bank vaults stuffed full of goodies and nearly 400 Platinum!  Umm… Instead of the usual Gold, Silver and Copper of some of the other games , Rift has Platinum, Gold and Silver, and 400 Platinum can buy you quite a lot of desirable items, such as better armor, etc.  So, as I was saying, I re-found it again today, and got quite a surprise as to how… well off… the characters were, and decided to… resurrect it. We (I) haven’t quite decided if we’ll (I’ll) use it as a mine, or actually work the characters.  You can transfer characters between Realms for free, but only once every seven days, and they can only carry a certain amount of money with them.  You can stuff their pockets and their private bank vaults full of material things, but money is, I think, limited to how “old” (what level) your character is, so…. I can either ferry things across to our secondary Realm, Greybriar, on a weekly basis, or I can bring characters across from Greybriar to the more affluent Realm of Wolfsbane.  Still thinking of the logistics… In the meantime, all those nice little girls have to be tidied up, their bank vaults sorted, decisions made as to whether I want to keep them as they are, delete them and donate the money from all their worldly goods to some other deserving character, or as I mentioned, use them as “mules” to carry things to Greybriar.  Decisions, decisions, decisions…  and that’s why I said it was going to be a long, slow slog. Sometimes I wonder why I bother – why I continue to play this game… then I give up wondering about it and go and roll yet another character! 😀

So, enough of the Gaming side of things. I’m told that tomorrow I’m going to be a very busy girl… unpacking more of the boxes waiting for us in the hall… Crikey!  They were only packed up in 2007!  Couldn’t they wait another seven years? (Apparently not – the cost of keeping them in storage has just gone up (again!), so this time I think we’d better get serious about unpacking them all!)  Actually, It’s quite exciting – one has no idea whatsoever as to what’s in the boxes; they all have cryptic descriptions, like “Contents of Winter’s desk”, and the box is bigger than your average Tea Chest! Or “Bedroom ornaments”… holding, of all things, boxes of CDs and tapes that we thought had been lost because we hadn’t seen them for… oh, about seven years? (blush)!  The trouble is, himself wants me to be “ruthless”, and to some extent, I am… usually… but it really, really goes against my grain to throw away (as in ‘down to the tip’ throw away) perfectly good, useful and in good condition (alright, maybe in need of a good clean… but hey!  They’ve been packed away in a dusty box in a dusty storage bin for seven years, and dirt washes off… doesn’t it?), so we’re occasionally at loggerheads…  But anyway, it is exciting discovering old treasures (looks meaningfully at himself!), so I’m quite looking forward to it. 🙂

And now to the good news! 🙂  My weigh-in this morning was most pleasing! 126.5kg! 🙂 I think these new celery capsules are working! 😉 Hopefully tomorrow morning it’ll be even less! 😀

Oh, and I’ll let you all know if I come across anything really nice and/or interesting in the boxes, too! 😉

🙂 I couldn’t think of a suitable heading/title/whatever again, so you got something else from my desk that my eyes just happened to fall on…

Well, today being Sunday, was our traditional “Save Telara Day” where we go rampaging across the fair world of Telara, righting wrongs, and saving the hoi poloi from the nasty and the evil that is trying to take over the world. i.e., we played Rift. We had rather a good day, with both of us going up several levels – himself died once, I didn’t die at all for a change! Us “clothies” (so called because a Mage’s armor is made of cloth ) are fairly fragile…

Watched Dr. Who this evening, and quite honestly, I couldn’t make head nor tail of it.  Sometimes I think that the screenwriters try to be just a bit too clever… I wish they wouldn’t – sometimes it gets too hard to try to figure out what’s going on for it to be really enjoyable – I don’t like having to work or think so hard for my enjoyment!

Not much else going on at the moment – Oh, I took one of the 4000mg celery capsules this morning.  It was still hard to choke it down, but at least it had a nice slippery capsule coating surrounding the celery stuff inside!

Ohhhh… you’re waiting to hear how my weigh-in went? Didn’t I already tell you?  No?  Oh, sorry… 😉 Well, it was rather good actually – I’ve broken the 127kg barrier, and am down to 126.7kg! 😀 I’m feeling very pleased with myself! 🙂

More tomorrow night 🙂