I had my eldest daughter Lisa over today – I had to go to the doctor to pick up a couple of repeat scripts, so we picked her up on the way home as she lives close by. We’d just got home when our cleaning lady, E., arrived with a (private) tale of woe – then it was on with the vacuum cleaner and Lisa and I sort of shouted at eachother over the noise until E. had finished… it has to be one of the loudest vacuum cleaners in the southern hemisphere! Then we did what good Victorian ladies always did and retired to the Drawing Room (read: “lounge”, and, well, we live in Victoria, so doesn’t that make us Victorian? 🙂 (can’t vouch for the “ladies” part, though! 😉 )), where we watched a couple of episodes of “Person of Interest”, and one of “Marvelous Agents of Shield” (I think that’s what it’s called, anyway. Good show, too!)

So, all in all, I didn’t get to log into Rift once today, until just a few minutes ago, and they seem to be having a few…. problems… It was fine last night, and their new expansion is due to go live next week, so I can only surmise that in adding a bit of new code prior to the expansion, something kind of important got “overwritten” Hope they get it fixed soonest!

Tomorrow I have to take himself clothes shopping to get some new trews; he hates shopping in general, and shopping for new clothes for himself in particular, so I don’t know that it’ll be much fun for either of us (though I must admit, I get quite a giggle if I have to pull him along by his ear, as I had to do once, many years ago! 😉 ) I need to get a few things for myself, too, and I’ll be able to look in that nice handbag shop near the Valet car park! 😉 I’ll let you all know how we went tomorrow night 🙂

Talking about ‘how things went’, weigh-in this morning was very pleasing! I broke the 125kg barrier, and am down to 124.9kg… I know it’s only a bit under, but it’s under, and that’s the main thing! And this weekend I have to really get going with my exercises, which himself has to help me with by holding the stretchy elastic for me.  We’ve both neglected the exercises somewhat shamefully, I fear, and I have my next visit to Bounce next Wednesday…

Anyway, more tomorrow.. hopefully I’ll be a few notches further down the graph! 🙂

Ooooh! I do so hate having to think of relevant titles for these posts! (I think I’ve said that before, somewhere else!) I sit here and stare at the screen, racking my brains for something pertinent and intelligent for the evening’s post – and go totally blank. So, as I think I also said before, I’ll just put in the first thing on my desk that my eyes land on – so, “mini (17.5cm), sparkling laser lamp”! 😛

Another fairly quiet day here – Rifted this morning, and managed to get all my girls on Wolfsbane the title “Merchant of Death” (because it sounds good! 🙂 )  You have to kill this grizzling merchant who periodically appears with a broken down caravan and a bunch of bullies just outside the entrance to Meridian, the Defiant capital city. Now, this is easy enough for Defiant (the believers in all things technical ) characters, but just a tad harder for Guardian (the gods are responsible for everything) ones… a bit like fervent Christians turning up outside the gates of jihadi base, waving crosses and singing Christian hymns at the top of their voices. Not a good look! 🙂 However, the title can be got if you stand on a large rock close to where the grizzling merchant appears…. and just… wait. He’ll eventually turn up… Anyway, they all managed to get their titles today, plus a Defiant Porticulum (think “energizer” from Star Trek!) in case they ever want to go back looking for Artifacts (collectables that you can exchange for odds and sods when you get an entire “set” of them, and there can be anywhere from between 3 to 15 or more per set)…  Oh, come on, it’s fun!! 😉

This afternoon, I was very noble minded and went back into the lounge room to finish watching the last three episodes of Survivor… mainly because a new Survivor: San Juan Del Sur, Blood vs. Water, started up last Thursday night, and of course I recorded that, and the episode tonight… I wonder if it might be a smart idea to watch them every week, instead of saving them all up to watch in one (and sometimes two) Survivor ultra marathons… hmmm…. I might think about that… 😉

Well, I might have been right about the early morning weigh-in not being accurate yesterday, as today, I weighed in at 125.1kg! Wow! With any luck, I might just break the 125kg barrier tomorrow, or the next day… [wistful look] 🙂

You know, before I started this weight loss thingy, we honestly didn’t know how much I did weigh… Julian sort of (as it turned out!) over guestimated that I was around about 150kg, so of course, when anyone asked me how much I weighed, we’d always say “We think, around 150kg” And that sort of became my “official” weight… When it became imperative that I lose weight for some surgery that I have to have, we finally got a set of scales that would actually take my weight (which we thought was 150kg) That turned out to be quite wrong. I weighed in at 134.something kg! (yippee!  less weight to have to lose! 😉 ) The weight loss challenge was officially “on”. The trouble was, all my doctors (well, two of them, anyway) vowed and declared that I wouldn’t be able to do it on my own, I was going to need Bariatric surgery – and that’s when all the hoo-ha about bariatric surgery started.  After talking to a couple of Bariatric surgeons, I thought “Nah, this isn’t for me. I can do it on my own.” Honestly, it would have been funny, if it wasn’t such a serious step that they want you to make – they all push their own preferred form of surgery and denigrate any others so hard that, as I said, it would have been funny… if they weren’t thinking of such drastic steps as removing 2/3 of your stomach – permanently! Sorry, that one really appalled and upset me (actually, I cried! The thought scared the hell out of me!) – I’m 68 years old and probably only have another 30 years left in me, if that, and if I’m horrified at the thought of such a dire procedure, how the hell can a young, 38+ year old ever be persuaded that it’s a good idea? Listen peoples, if you have weight problems, unless you have that very rare condition in which you never feel full and consequently feel the need to eat large amounts of food almost constantly (I don’t know the name of it – sorry!), DON’T let them talk you into drastic, irreversible surgery! Just don’t! Have a lap band put in if you must – at least that’s reversible – but please, do your homework! Read everything you can find on the Bariatric sleeve surgery, not just the print-outs and pamphlets the surgeon will give you, and see if you can find out what the long term outlook is (>5 years!). You know what? It doesn’t have a long term outlook report longer than about 5 years! It hasn’t been around long enough for one to have been formed! The best they can say about it is “so far, so good”! And peoples?  If I can do this, anyone can! It’s not a matter of willpower, it’s a matter of being philosophical and saying “yes, it’s boring, bland and repetitive… but it’s not forever!” and you can dream of next Easter, and its chocolate eggs and hot angry rabbits..! 🙂