Hmmm… there’s really not much to tell you today – we were expecting my favourite youngest daughter and her husband to be coming over this afternoon for a bit of a chat and catch up on things, but as it turned out, they couldn’t make it today and are coming over tomorrow afternoon… So I basically “twiddled my thumbs” (read: played Rift) this morning, while himself went over the road to do the shopping that we forgot to do the day before (and we’d even had a list!). So I made another list today, of all the things we’d forgotten to put on the list last time, and himself went off and got them all.

Shopping lists! If it’s hard to remember all the things you have to get when you’re actually in the supermarket, with everything displayed right in front of you, how much harder is it to remember all the things that you have to write on your list when all the items are not displayed right in front of you?! Don’t answer that, it was a rhetorical question! I’m reminded of “the good old days”, when we didn’t have supermarkets, and everyone made lists in pencil, on spare scraps of paper; and if you wanted groceries, you went to the local Grocer… or bread, then you’d go to the local bakery, which was absolutely nothing like today’s “boutique” bakeries, such as Baker’s Delight or Brumby’s, and the bread really was bread, and tasted delicious! For milk, you went to either the local Dairy or the local Milk Bar (which didn’t sell sandwiches and luke-warm pies from a pie oven!), and the only place you could get meat was the local Butcher. People walked in those days – not many people had cars – so these shops all had to be local. In fact people buying a house often did so because of the reputation of the shops in the area rather than because the house was what they wanted. Sorry, I got side-tracked… My mother had a really nifty shopping list “app” 🙂 It was printed in two columns on heavy cardboard, and listed just about all the common groceries available. It also had a section at the top where you could write important phone numbers, and down each side, next to each of the listed items, it had a little, shiny red “fingernail” shaped marker that you could flip over to point at the needed item, or flip back the other way to indicate that you didn’t need the item. During the week, you’d “mark” things that you were going to need, so that when “shopping day” came, and you wanted to make your shopping list, you just consulted your handy-dandy shopping list “app”, and wrote down everything that had a little red fingernail pointing at it!

Sometimes I wish we still had a shopping list reminder thingy like that… only these days there are just too many items to see all at once, so I guess we’d still forget to put things on our lists…

This morning’s weigh-in was a little better – I went back down to where I was on Wednesday, 123.1kg  But I still feel disgruntled about the loss of three days worth of progress! (shakes fist all the powers that be that weren’t listening the other night) I am working to a time table, you know! (I hope they’re listening this time!) 🙂

Anyway, that’s about it from me for this evening – more tomorrow night! 🙂

Once more, I was stuck with no logical title for tonight’s entry… so you’re being treated to yet another objet d’art from my desk top. Don’t worry, there’s still loads more of these to come – I won’t run out of desktop objects in a hurry! 😉

Another horrible morning – I don’t seem to be running out of those, either! Rifted a bit, and sulked… Himself went off to pick up my favourite eldest daughter around ten thirty-ish; more half-hearted Rifting (most annoyment that the expansion didn’t go ahead as scheduled!) until they got back, then we browsed Bored Panda for a while. Have you ever visited Bored Panda? You really, really should! 🙂 It’s a truly wonderful and amazing place – they have some fantastic photography and art work on display – all mind-boggling things, like “Tiny Sculptures Carved Into The Tip Of A Pencil” (amazing!) :), and “25+ Terrifyingly Cute Halloween Costumes For Pets” (too cute! Especially the first little kitten!) 🙂 ….and…. and…. as the saying goes, “many, many more!” 🙂

After lunch we repaired to the lounge room and watched two episodes of “Agents of Shield”, and two episodes of “Person of Interest”, until it was time for Lee to go home…

And now here it is, almost 11.00pm again, and here I am, writing a new blog entry again (myyyy, doesn’t that sound cheery! )

Obviously there was no-one and nothing listening in to my heartfelt pleas last night, or if there was, they decided to be mean… I stayed exactly the same. 123.3kg 😦

I’m sorry if this post is coming across as a bit negative, but, well, I feel a little bit negative at the moment… but I’ll be back tomorrow night, and no doubt I’ll be a bit more cheerful then (or whenever my weight starts to go down again!), promise! 🙂

I’m unsure just how I feel about today… it started out disastrously, then deteriorated further when there was no sign of the new expansion in Rift. It’s been pushed back to October 22nd Guess those “teething” problems were more severe that usual… So all those nice new goodies will have to wait a bit longer for us players to get our greedy, grubby little paws onto! Sucks big time! 😦

This morning himself and I went off to have my Warfarin blood test done, and to buy him some new shirts and polo top thingies to go with his new trousers. I must say that the saleslady was quite a “personality”, with a thick mid-european accent… Do any of you remember watching the cartoon “The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show”? Rocky was a flying (gliding) squirrel, and Bullwinkle (the Moose) was his best buddy… Anyhoo, they’d have little sketches, Variety Show style, throughout the cartoon, and one in particular was about a totally inept pair of (supposedly) Russian spies – Boris (pronounced Boar-isss) and Natasha, the two speaking in fake, terribly overdone what Americans thought was a Russian accent. Well, this saleslady sounded like that. About the only word she didn’t say to either of us (that I heard, anyway) was [insert best fake Russian accent here] “Darrr-link” [/fake Russian accent]. Boy! was she a tough go-gettem saleslady! I don’t think there was a single item in the shop that she didn’t try to sell us, even when we’d told her that we didn’t like or want checks, horizontal stripes, or licorice allsorts type colours, she kept trotting them out for our inspection. She must have been pretty good though, because she managed to get us to part with around $400 worth of gear… 🙂

By the time I’d had my blood taken and we’d finished dealing with “Natasha” (not her real name! 😉 ), and done a bit of grocery shopping (carefully forgetting the kitchen towels that we’d forgotten to put on the list!), we were pretty much exhausted. Himself picked up some Sushi for his lunch and we headed home for a much needed cup of tea and our lunch.

I played Rift for a while, but my eyes kept glazing over, so discretion being the better part of valour, I decided it was time to go up to the lounge to read a bit (read: ‘have a nap with my feet up’). My favourite eldest daughter rang up to say that she’d finished her second last uni. assignment, and handed it in, so she was free tomorrow; could she come over? Of course 🙂 The last assignment isn’t due until next Monday (she said) so she could work on it over the weekend. It’ll be good to see her tomorrow, doubly so, as our cleaning lady won’t be here (she comes every second Friday) so we won’t have to compete with the noisiest vacuum cleaner in the southern hemisphere 🙂

Now, the reason this morning got off to such a disastrous start, is that my weight didn’t go down… it didn’t stay the same… it went up! Two whole points, to 123.3kg! I feel a complete and utter failure 😦 I weighed myself three times, and it was the same each time *cry* Why?! What am I doing wrong? What can I do to correct this catastrophic and disastrous trend?! …I am most miserabled! 😦

(prays to everything and anything that might be listening) Please, please, let me lose some weight tomorrow!

Well, yet another new Theme… if it works properly, I might even keep this one for a while – I quite like it, and hope you do too 🙂

This morning we went through Julian’s quarter?… eighth? 😉 of the wardrobe… He’s lost so much weight that now nothing fits him and therefore had to go to make room for all my excess clothing… only joking! 🙂 Honest! 😉 I mean, to make room for new things that will fit him (like the four pairs of new trews we bought him the other day, and the two new jumpers…) It was a real shame – there was a really nice suit which I think had only been worn once, and some of the trousers had only been worn once or twice too, not to mention all the shirts All very good quality as well as still having their dry cleaning tickets pinned to them. Rather than sit and look at them for too long and feel awful about getting rid of them (it almost felt like being unfaithful, or something!), himself whizzed them off to St. Vincent’s early this afternoon – I think in the hope that “out of sight, out of mind” would ease our completely unwarranted guilty feelings. At least they’ll go to good homes… (we hope!)

Played Rift a bit after lunch – no sign of the new expansion yet, but it’s only the 7th of October over in the US of A, so no big surprise there… Looking forward to tomorrow though 🙂 (but not looking forward to all the usual teething problems that new expansions always bring with them!) I’ll let you know tomorrow night if it’s any good! 🙂

Weigh-in was very disappointing this morning 😦 I didn’t lose anything… but on the other hand, I didn’t gain anything, either, so that’s good! 🙂 Still sitting pretty at 123.1kg… Hopefully tomorrow will be more “encouraging” (like losing another half a kilo or something… Not going to happen, but wouldn’t it be extra nice if it did? 🙂 )

Anyway, more tomorrow night, regardless! 🙂

Yup, another post where I couldn’t think of a suitable title… “New Theme” seemed a little bit too obvious 😉

What do you think of my Theme, anyway? I hope you realise it took me almost all evening to pick one, and choose the colours. I’m still not entirely happy with it, and after all, they (you know, the ubiquitous “They”, who are always right!) say that a change is as good as a holiday! 😉 I’ll likely change it again before the end of the month – especially if this one doesn’t work, like the first two Themes I chose when I first started this blog… Oh well… fingers crossed, and all that…

Not much happened today – as usual I Rifted in the morning, then retired to the lounge to read this afternoon, so this is going to be a fairly short post. My youngest daughter rang up this evening for a chat, and I missed what passes for “news” these days, so I can’t even pass any of my usual acerbic comments on that 🙂 However, I can say that there’s only two more sleeps before the big new Rift Expansion goes live… Lots of new stuff, especially for Subscribers – minions, who go out on gathering “errands” for you (mining, picking herbs, that sort of thing), for which you get experience, and, so we’re told, they never fail in one of their missions! Actually, it’s a little more complicated than that, but it would take me all night to explain what I’m not even sure I understand myself, yet! 🙂 But it’ll be fun! 😀 It actually goes live on October 8th, but the Yank’s 8th is our 9th, so it’ll be Thursday before it’s online here… Ah is chewin’ mah nails! 🙂

Weigh-in was really good this morning – I had to start a new graph page, too, as I sort of slid off the bottom of the page at 123.1kg! Hopefully, I’ll break the 123kg barrier tomorrow (having said that, It’s more likely that I’ll go up again! *pout*), anyway, here’s hoping! 🙂

More news tomorrow night! 🙂

Yes, it’s another of those posts where I can’t think of a suitable title… Ah well…. So, it’s Monday again, and weather-wise, a dull, dreary day all round.  Himself told me it was going to be warm, but I looked out the window, and decided that probably a jumper was advisable. Went off to the hairdresser this morning – came home not looking much different, except that my hair was cleaner – sort of… they never rinse out all the shampoo; I wonder why they don’t? Just lazy? Don’t see the soap bubbles on the nape of my neck? Who knows – but they end up with my money, and I end up with semi clean hair and an itchy scalp

I Rifted the afternoon away, as usual, then repaired to the lounge room to fold the laundry. Then I decided to clean out some drawers to make room for new, and a smaller size, of underwear. Julian got annoyed because he was playing – I mean busy – with some of his newly acquired Commodore 64 gear, and I needed a hand with a few items.  Oh well, all done and neat and tidy again now, and I scored a couple of empty drawers for ron*, too! 🙂

Not too much more to add – pretty hum-drum sort of day, really…  Weigh-in this morning was as I expected, just a weeny bit down, at 123.5kg. Hopefully tomorrow will be a little more… noticeable… on my graph… You know, I’ve lost 11kg since August 18th, and I really don’t look all that different! Yes, my slacks are too big, and I had to take the ones I’m wearing at the moment in again this morning for a total of about six inches (or 15cm – whichever you prefer) The main problem with tightening the elastic is that the fabric stays the same, and simply bunches up around the tightened elastic, so your waist (waste?) still looks big and bulky… I don’t want to get new clothes while I still have a lot of weight to lose, so I guess I’ll just have to continue to look fat and bulky until I’ve reached (just under) my goal weight – when I shall invest in new gear – in order to really look any different. 🙂

Well, there it all is – more tomorrow… 😉

*ron = “later on… lateron… late/ron… ron”…. natural progression, see?

Well, today being Sunday, we spent the day in Telara… had a nice pic-nic, enjoyed the views, and spent a thoroughly enjoyable day bashing wild boars, wolves, and Aelfwar (naughty elves) over the head… picking flowers, gathering firewood for our BBQ, and fossicking for bits of loose ore lying about amongst the rocks… No, really!  That’s what we did! 😉 Eldest daughter and her husband were on their way to Shoppingtown to get some coffee and called in to say hello, briefly… and we solved the dilemma of what to do about our characters and Wolfsbane. We moved them both over to our main shard (server), Laethys.  Brought them into the fold, so to speak 🙂 Laethys has the best and biggest Guild Bank, and the most money, so Lyndisty (my High Elf Mage) and Sudadii (Julian’s Dwarf Rogue/Hunter) should be very comfortable there! 🙂

Not much else happened today – I have a visit to the hairdresser tomorrow morning, and we both have a few things to pick up, wot we forgot about on Saturday (see? It does pay to make a list before you go shopping! 😛 ) Then I have some washing to fold… but apart from that, the day is mine! [Fx: evil laugh]

Weigh-in this morning was probably the best one I’ve ever had! It was only a once-off; it’ll never happen again (unfortunately! 😦 ), but thanks to the squeeze out of my excess fluid by the Lasix, I dropped a whole kilo!!  A whole kilo! So I’ve already broken the 124kg barrier, almost before I’d even started into it – 123.6kg!!  Fantastic! 🙂 Sad that now most of the excess fluid has gone I won’t lose that much again, but at least it’s a whole kilo that I don’t have to worry about anymore, and by no longer retaining excess fluid, weight loss should (cross fingers, eyes and ears!) be steadier and smoother… hopefully…. cross fingers, etc… I suppose, after having said all that, my weight will go up again tomorrow I sure hope not…. 😐

As I mentioned we would yesterday, we went over the road with the intention of getting himself some new trousers… four pairs, to be precise… We started of at David Jones, and happily found exactly what we wanted. Unfortunately we wanted two pairs in one colour, and another two pairs of the second colour, only in a short leg (Julian has quite short legs for such a tall person, but he’s very long in the torso). No, they only had one pair in one colour, and none in the other. No, they wouldn’t, or couldn’t order any more in, the girl didn’t say why… just glued her lips together and looked cross. I dunno, maybe she had PMS or something, because she was terse almost to the point of rudeness. Obviously David Jones doesn’t need our money… they did get some of it though, because I spotted a very pretty, two wicked candle in an equally pretty, lidded red glass jar, which I persuaded himself that I couldn’t possibly live without in my bathroom. 🙂

Next we went to Myer. I don’t know – I don’t like Myer very much… it always looks dingy, overcrowded, and somehow “grubby”. Well, the Doncaster Myer does, anyway. We threaded our way through the over-narrow aisles (if they could even be called aisles!), not an easy exercise when you’re stuck in a rather bulky electric wheelchair, and eventually managed to locate a bored and disinterested looking sales chick (I say “chick” instead of “woman”, or “lady”, because she was a typical “chick” sort of girl – if you know what I mean!) We managed to persuade her that we really did want to buy some trousers, but when we said “short leg”, she backed off, shaking her head, and saying “Oh, we don’t stock many of that type – you might be lucky to find two pairs in this whole department”, as she waved vaguely around the horribly cluttered area. In the end, she brought us a couple of pairs for himself to try on, neither of which were even remotely suitable. We left, and went to Roger David, downstairs.

Roger David had one or two likely trouser candidates, and after a lot of stuffing around and himself starting to get grumpy and snappish, we decided to give in, and get four pairs of the same sort – because they didn’t have them in any other colours. They had to be shortened, too, so we won’t see them until next Thursday (hopefully they’ll be ready by then!) I also managed to talk himself into buying two new jumpers for himself. They felt so nice and soft and cuddly (Flipper will love them, even if he doesn’t! 😉 ). One is a soft oatmeal-grey sort of colour, the other is what I call “squashed mulberry” – a sort of maroon colour, only slightly redder…

Then himself picked up some sushi for his lunch, and we came home and had a most welcome cup of tea, and our lunch. I started on the Lasix (anti fluid retention tablets) today – Julian had said “don’t take it until we get home!”, so I took it with my lunch time cup of tea, and it’s just as well I didn’t take it before we went! I’ve been running off to the bathroom pretty much since! Apparently it’s working just fine! (contra indications state that taking it in conjunction with Celebrex (anti inflammatory medication for my arthritis) can lessen its efficacy – I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t! 😉 )

I was more than pleased with my weigh-in this morning – 124.5kg, and that was without the Lasix! 🙂 I do hope it goes down again tomorrow morning! 🙂

More later tomorrow night – don’t forget to put your clocks and watches forwards when you go to bed tonight!

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..! 🙂