Water! Filtered… coffee! Filtered… swimming pools! No! Filtered… Photoshop! 🙂 Yes, I went hunting for some filters today – I think I got most of the main ones I wanted – a few are still missing though, like the Kaleidoscope one I used to use, and a few of the other fancy-shmantzy lighting effects ones I used to have… Give me time, I’ll track ’em down 🙂 Unfortunately, some of the ones I found that did have those filters (or similar) in their libraries were from “not safe”, or “don’t download from here unless you want your computer pwned!” download sites, so more digging will be needed. But I did get Super BladePro, which was one of the ones I was hanging out for, so I had a bit of a play with it all this afternoon and came up with some fairly credible fire opal and other gem-like effects that I’m thinking of using in a type of “gem encrusted” border, along the lines of one of my freebie web sets I made countless years ago… 🙂 So many things I want to do, so little time…. *sigh* (and then there’s the teeny little problem of my perennial laziness… 😉 )

I also Rifted a bit this morning – got Lavendermyst up to level 20, so now it’s back to the tedious grind, grind, grindstone to get her up to level 50 with all the others. On the other hand, I could turn her into a Crafter instead of a Gatherer, but I already have Crafters in most of the main professions that we can use in the Guild… There are about 17 Guild members at the moment, 12 of them are me, and the other 5 are Julian – all of the Crafters are me (that is, my “alts”, or “alternate characters”, but they’re all played by me), and they’re all Grandmasters or Savants in their fields (i.e. they can make the highest level goods in Healing Potions, Dimension items and keys, Plate mail, Chain mail, Leather armor and Cloth armor, Shields, Bags, Magical weapons, ordinary weapons, Runes – you name it, and I have someone who can make it! 🙂 ) I even have a dedicated Dimension constructress, and a dedicated Auction Manager… 🙂

Why do I have all these alts? *shrug* I have NO idea… I just seem to have this… compulsion to create them… and if I run out of character “slots”? I either move someone to another Shard to make room for a new character, or else I strip down a character I don’t like terribly much, distribute all her worldly goods amongst her “sisters”, donate her “money” to the about-to-be-created character, and… delete her. And so the cycle goes… endless creation, deletion, and character shuffling.

I suppose it’s better than vegetating in front of the television… but probably not by much… “Unproductive!” as my mother would have said…

Tomorrow my favourite eldest daughter is coming over, so not much Rifting or graphic-ing will get done, but I dare say a lot of conversation will be made and much enjoyment garnered from watching such shows as “Agents of Shield” and “Person of Interest”. Poor old Flipper will not be quite so happy though – it’s tomorrow morning that she goes back to the Vet for the rest of her tests and blood pressure monitoring. They want her for “several hours”, so she’s going up at about 8.00am… She’ll be fine, but she won’t like it!

Weigh-in this morning was disappointing, but fairly expected. It’s a fair drop from 117.5kg to 117.0kg, and I suspect that that was only because I’d missed out on both morning and afternoon tea the day before. Yesterday, I managed to get (force) fed both, and…. paid the price this morning!  I was back up to 117.2kg 😦 But, I’ll get even! I dutifully had my morning tea this morning, but I manged to sneak quietly past afternoon tea without anyone (read: Julian) noticing! HA! That’ll larn ’em! 😉 …you know, it’s funny! I’m still losing my kilo per week (approximately), and I know I’m not standing still, weight-wise, but ever since last week (when I saw Dr. Y.), I feel as though I’ve come to a complete stand-still, and am simply not getting any further… It’s really silly, because I know that I am… it’s just that I feel as though I’m not…

Anyway, tune in tomorrow night to find out how Flipper went at the Vet, and to see if sneakily skipping afternoon tea today makes any difference to what the scales tell me tomorrow morning! 🙂

By Alien Skin, is now installed on my computer – it’s a very good filter for Photoshop, and I had a lot of fun playing around with it this evening… but more on that later 🙂

This morning I woke up with a sore and swollen little right finger 😦 It looks bruised, and it’s probably my fault – I tend to sort of “force” rings off at the best of times, especially when they get “stuck” in the hot weather (I told you it didn’t agree with me! 😛 ) when my fingers tend to be a bit swollen, I still just… keep pulling… until I get the ring off. I think I’ll change my modus operandi, and be a bit more gentle from now on

This morning I did my usual “Rift Drift”, quested a bit, and collected a new Dimension key, to “Dolcega Valley”, from one of my dear little Minions!  It’s a very small Dimension – it’s really not much more than a rather nicely laid out and decorative swimming pool, with a few nice Cabanas dotted around it. I haven’t had that key before, and didn’t want to use it just yet, so if any Guildies are reading this, it’s in the Guild Bank waiting for someone to claim it 🙂 Actually, I wanted to have a look at some of the other “Dolcega Valley” Dimensions before having a go myself (Elizandra can make that key, too!), but I got sidetracked, looking at some of the Dimensions in “Anywhere”. “Anywhere” is the biggest Dimension so far, and it’s simply an enormous, flat, empty plain. No hills, no water, no vegetation, no nothing. It’s fantastic – you can make your own hills… grass… ponds… waterfalls – whatever your heart desires, that can be made with nothing but the Dimension items you can get, and your imagination! 🙂 Elizandra crafted her butt off to get to the level where she could learn to make the “Anywhere” key, too (so there’s plenty of them around) Wyntercat has an “Anywhere” Dimension called “Hobbit Manor”, and it’s quite beautifully done too, even if Cersie did build it for her! 😉 Of course, it’s still unfinished – the house part is all done (made by skillfully joining several houses together) and decorated, but the landscaping still needs a lot of work… The main problem is that to make things, like the ground covering I’ve used, is very material intensive, not to mention expensive – the materials needed don’t come cheap, and I decided to take a bit of an ‘oliday from it 🙂 So, anyway, when I get back to Rift tonight, after dealing with my Minions, I’ll go looking at “Dolcega Valley” Dimensions.

By about three o’clock I decided to go up to the lounge room and read, and Julian installed my new Eye Candy filter/plug-in (whatever it’s called!), so then, of course, I had to scramble myself out of my comfy chair and come down to play with it 🙂 They’ve changed the ui (user interface) in this version, and it’s much more easier to use! 🙂 However, having messed around with Eye Candy for a while, I have realised that I’ll have to get a few more of the (hopefully still free – they always used to be!) Photoshop filters – filters to make “vignettes”, for example (where the focus is on one part of the picture, fading away to white (or to the coloured or patterned background)) I might go hunting them tomorrow… I’m wondering though – I want to get back into graphics again, but I have no idea what to do… I used to make web sets – but no-one uses them any more… and I used to make skins and stationery for Incredimail – but… does anyone still use Incredimail? I gave up on it years ago… I could, I suppose, try my hand at making windowblinds for Wincustomize, but the mere thought of that absolutely terrifies me – I know there’s a “Skin Studio” utility that comes with Wincustomize/windowblinds to make them with, and honestly, it can’t be any harder than making skins for Incredimail (same concept, so presumably the same sort of principles) Perhaps I’m losing faith in myself, trying to learn something new… the good old “But what if I fail?” fear. Anyway, we’ll see. I need to find those other filters first, anyway 🙂 (that’s a good excuse – I think I’ll stick to it! 😉 )

Weigh-in this morning was another big surprise – well, maybe not so much of a surprise after all, when you take into consideration that I missed morning and afternoon tea yesterday! I was down to 117.0kg, which is 5 whole points! Really good! 🙂 I’ll be up tomorrow for sure though, as I did have both morning and afternoon tea today. I must really think seriously about giving them both – or at least one of them – up for the duration… Let’s see what the scales tell me in the morning (hint: I’m not looking forward to what they have to say! )

Anyway, this has been another long one (I’m trying to make them shorter, honest!), so I’ll leave you all with the usual words – “Stay tuned for the next exciting episode in the exciting adventures of Winter, the “Up One Day and Down the Next” girl!” 🙂

Yup, today was shopping day for me! 🙂 We headed off to The Pines, and went to Autograph first… I was very doubtful that I’d fit into any of their slacks, but I actually fitted into a size 24!  That’s more than 2 sizes down from what I used to be! So I got two pairs (both black), one with “slim legs” (straight line up and down), and one with “wide legs” (slightly wider around the hem than the slim legs)… and Julian was supposed to pick up another pair of the “slim legs” from the Autograph shop at The Glen – but there’s a bit of a story attached to that one 😉 I have to say I was a little disappointed in their tops though – there were a lot to choose from, but, because summer is all but sitting on us, they’re mostly linen, or other non-stretchy material, which I don’t like. I did get a couple, but I did better at My Size in that department. I did, however, get two pairs of bras – 1 white, 1 black (both lace!) – again, down a size, but I don’t think I’ll ever get rid of the “double d” Then on to My Size, which is one door away from Autograph (there’s a Katies store in between them! The competition must be mind boggling! 🙂 ) I didn’t even bother looking at slacks or jeans at My Size, I was already getting very tired of trying stuff on, so I went straight to the tops. I got about four or five, I think, including one very swish black fringed top that looks straight out of the 20’s flapper era 🙂 I just couldn’t resist it! Yeah, it hugs the hips, only just, but it shimmies just great! 😉

By this time, I’d well and truly missed out on morning tea – again! 🙂 (I missed out on it yesterday, remember?) Strangely enough, the change rooms at My Size were smaller than those at Autograph (which were bad enough!), so the only way I could try the tops on at My Size was to… stand up… the whole time. By the time I’d gone through about 18 tops, shoving some into the “buy” pile, some into the “maybe” pile, and the rest into the “Yuk!” pile, my back felt as though it’d been broken into about 3 pieces 😦 All I wanted to do was sit down… so we settled for the “buy” pile, and a couple from the “maybe” pile and departed, quite a few $$$’s lighter! As it was almost 1 o’clock, we decided to come home for lunch, then head out again after we’d had a cup of coffee.

After lunch, and some discussion, we decided that I didn’t really need to go (I wish now that I had!) First Julian was going over the road to David Jones to get a new/replacement kettle (ours died this morning, 1 year into its 2 year warranty!), and get me some more perfume (Estee Lauder‘s Cinnabar – my favourite! 🙂 ), as I was almost out… then he was going to go to The Glen, pick up my slacks, and do some (grocery) shopping. Well, all of this, he did. When he got home and was unpacking all the shopping, he couldn’t find my slacks. It appears that he…umm… left them in the shopping trolley. In the vain hopes that some honest soul had either returned them to Autograph, taken them back to Coles (it was a Coles trolley), or handed them in to Centre Management, he rang all three places, but…. no luck so far. We’ll wait and see if they turn up tomorrow. By this time, I’d missed out on afternoon tea as well! So if my weight’s not down tomorrow, well, it ruddy well ought to be! 😉 🙂

Flipper is still “flouncing”, so we figure she must be feeling more comfortable. She was really funny this afternoon – she’s used to taking a short cut through the bedroom when going from the lounge room to the den, rather than going through the dining area, the hall, and then down the long, dark corridor to the den – this afternoon, someone (we hadn’t realised!) had closed the door from the dressing room into the den… We saw her marching determinedly through the bedroom door, and we casually noted that she was on her way to the den… Then with indignant squawks and grumbles, she stamped out of the bedroom and stamped off through the dining area, the hall, and the long, dark corridor to the den. No cat can “stamp” quite the way Flipper can! She’s quite hilarious! 😀

Weigh-in this morning was better… down to 117.5kg As I said, “better”, but still a lot of room for improvement! Hopefully, missing out on not only morning tea, but afternoon tea as well, will make a difference! 🙂

Will it? Won’t it? Will it even make any difference? Who knows! Stay tuned tomorrow night to find out! 🙂 (currently listening to: Jethro Tull, A Jethro Tull Collection)

Monday again – I can’t understand why Garfield doesn’t like Mondays… Personally, I don’t like Wednesdays. The middle of the week… two more days before the weekend. It’s like climbing up a great, long, hill…. and tumbling down the other side…

Today I had my hair done (brilliant! Thanks!), and this time Julian gave Josh some lessons on Rift (and he did a much more better job than I did! I could actually understand what he was talking about, too! 😉 ) By the time we’d finished, it was almost lunch time – and guess what! I’d forgotten about morning tea again! (this is starting to become a habit!) Never mind, it probably just means my weight will be down tomorrow! 🙂 (cross fingers!) After lunch I finally got round to organising more of my Dimension items, the number of which is growing at quite an alarming rate, as the Minions keep digging them up on their various adventures. You don’t even get to chose which adventures you can give them, either – only which Minion you want to send on the adventure! This sucks, really, because at this particular point in time, I really don’t need any more Dimension items! Sure, I could sell them on the Auction House, but…. they’re… they’re mine!  Mine, I tell you! My dear little Minions gave them to me, to show me how much they appreciate the nice, comfy box I keep them all in… *sigh* Oh well, I’ll just have to stash the items somewhere until I get the Dimension building bug again… 🙂 I really should get back to it, you know – I have some quite lovely sites – one of my girls even made me the keys to a couple of them – and I have some quite good ideas about how to set them up, too… Hmmmm… We’ll see… 😉

It’s taken me ages to work out how to use the new Dimension Toolbox utility that I have – although it comes with sort-of directions, it’s very difficult to use when you don’t quite know what the “X”, “Y”, and “Z” co-ordinates are… mean… what they do… er… see what I mean? The other day I was trying to turn a boat around, in a circle, so that it was facing the other way, and all I could seem to do was turn it upside down 😦 Still Facing the same (and wrong!) way, only… upside down! After about 15 minutes of intense frustration, very rude words, and a lot of yelling, I finally figured out (sometimes it takes a long time for the penny to drop!) that you only change one of the co-ordinates, not all of them! Unfortunately, now, twenty four hours later, I couldn’t tell you which one I changed to save my soul! Don’t worry, I’ll work it out (again!) eventually, but mathematical things like that are like Sanskrit, Russian, and Chinese, all rolled into one, to me. Totally illogical and nonsensical. I should write it down, I suppose, but whenever I think to do that, there’s no-one around for me to ask how to do it. Oh well. I will survive! 😉

Tomorrow, it’s off to buy me some new clothes (Yay!) before it gets too hot for me to venture far from the air conditioner. 25C will do it… especially if it’s humid as well. So now I have to decide whether I want to go to The Glen (lots of other “interesting” shops there! 😉 ), but it’s a lot further away than The Pines (which doesn’t have lots of other “interesting” shops there) but is a lot closer… On the other hand, if we’re going to go the whole hog and get me some items of “intimate apparel”, we’ll have to go all the way down to Seaford, so we might as well go to The Glen… I think…

Whatever happens, I’ll let you all know tomorrow night what I scored 😉 Weigh-in this morning was a bit “meh!”, if you know what I mean… I stayed the same, at 117.7kg. Hopefully, by “forgetting” my morning tea this morning I might go down a bit. But I can’t complain, really! It was a very big drop from 118.2kg to 117.7kg, and my body is probably still resting up after that super human effort… however, rest time is up, body (NO, body! I am not telling you to go up, weight-wise, I’m telling you that your rest period is over! grrrr!) Time to start going down again 🙂

And that’s about it – Flipper is well, and moving a lot more freely after her needle – she even sat on Julian’s lap this afternoon! 🙂 Stay tuned for all the latest adventures, weight ups, downs, and stationary sulks, and all the rest of the goings on here at the (newly named, by yours truly! 😉 ) Telara Tavern!

There’s a small owl made of mottled blue soapstone on the shelf above my desk – once again, the first thing I saw when I couldn’t think of a title for tonight’s post… 🙂

Well, today was our traditional Telara-ing Day, and off we set, with me hoping against hope not to get too many underwater quests. Well, we did get a few underwater quests, but surprisingly enough, I handled them fairly well, all things considered (and I didn’t die once all day, though himself did, once! 🙂 ) We both dinged 62 (reached level 62), and I think we both got a couple of Achievements, for which we got 2 new Minions each. Achievements. They’re like a small award for accomplishing something not terribly important, but something to make you smile, feel a bit proud, and good about yourself – sort of like an elephant stamp you might receive at school for “Good Spelling”, or something. At one stage we set off to do (re-do?) a quest that was bugged and totally unfinishable last week, because in the weekly patch notes they said they’d fixed it, so we thought we should probably go back and do it, if only for the sake of neatness. Oh, they’d fixed it alright – they’d fixed it by removing it altogether! Oh well, so after traveling all that way to find that the quest giver had vanished, we had to turn around and go all the way back to pick up the next (working) quest. Say la vee, as the French say! 🙂 At the end of the session, we’d managed to finish off all of that particular area, as well as take out the Big Bad Boss at the end of it. We’re now in a completely different section of the expanded area, with all brand new adventures waiting next week. You know, it’s weird how you pass from one area to another – on land, you simply gallop (or run, or walk) along the road, and over the border into the next “country” – in this water logged world, you wade into the sea and start swimming… and while you’re swimming, you see what looks like the surface of another pool of water… which you swim through, and lo and behold, you’re in a different “underwater country”! Swim up (or down or along) until you see evidence of land, or a cliff face extending down into the water in which you are swimming, clamber out onto said land, and there you are… Sometimes you won’t hit land before you find your next quest giver, so the first few quests might be underwater… or a combination of land and underwater… quite often there’s no real distinction between water and land, except for the fact that when you’re on solid land, you’re standing upright on something, rather than moving along horizontally using a swimming-type of action when you’re in water.  Weird! (but fun!) 🙂 Anyway, a good day was had by all, and I’m looking forward to “training up” my new Minions! 🙂

This evening we had a very happy and nostalgic time – we watched “Countdown: Do Yourself a Favour” on ABC1 – not a terribly in-depth look at Countdown (in fact, I think it was more in the form of a tribute to Molly Meldrum) but still, full of interesting and perhaps little known (or perhaps just largely forgotten) incidents that happened on camera, and off. Little snippets from the hits of the time, and comments from all sorts of famous people, from Red Symons of Skyhooks fame, to Susie Quatro! It was a good show, and a lot of fun to watch. I don’t know how many of the shows there are altogether, but there’s another one on next Sunday, if anyone feels like re-living the good old days, if only briefly! 🙂

And, all the latest on Flipper… I’m happy to be able to report that Flipper seems to be moving a lot more easily today, and is in fact back to her old, grumpy, noisy, demanding, self! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning was fabulous! I think my scales must have been having me on yesterday when they said I’d gone up 2 points, because this morning, I was (gasp!) down to 117.7kg! That’s almost half a kilo overnight! Well, either they were lying yesterday, when they said I’d gone back up to 118.2kg, or they were lying today, when they said I was down to 117.7kg, but I weighed myself twice, both days (in fact I always weigh myself twice – sometimes even three times – just to be sure, you know? 😉 )

Anyway, tune in again tomorrow night to see if those devious scales of mine are telling the truth or not! 🙂

Yes, I decided I liked my new girl enough to move her across to Laethys. I liked her name, too… It’s almost impossible to get a name that you like, and that means something (to you, anyway) about how you were feeling when you were creating her, what your thoughts at the time were, whether you’re a true romantic or not, and even her colouring at the time of her creation… (which is very easily fixed and/or changed – I don’t know why I get so…. fixated on it, really…) Anyway, because you can’t have the same name as anyone else on the shard, you try and think of names that mean a sort of purple colour… like Amethyst – too late, that name’s long gone… all the myriads of combinations possible of Lilac, Mauve, etc., etc. all seem to be taken… So what about…. Lavender?! Well, that was gone too, but let’s try a bit of “romantic” manipulation here…. Lavendermyst! Great! and nobody else had it! It was mine! Well, hers, really… and I thought it was kinda “misty” like…. er… until I moved her (innit wunnerful how you only think of these objections when it’s too late to do anything about it other than a complete and drastic re-roll, or an expensive name change! ) and I thought…. “Lavendermyst”… “Lavender”… “myst”… “Lavender” “mist”… Oh Noooooo! It sounds like some fancy name for a new “bathroom” deodorizer! Aaarrrgggghhhh!! [feels like tearing her hair out] Oh well, I’ll either get over it, or go and buy some more Credits and get a name change scroll – I haven’t got my allotment of November Credits yet, either… 😉

You might have noticed that in all the above, I kept referring to my character(s) as “she”, or “her”. This is because I always create female characters. The few male characters I’ve rolled over the years have usually been abandoned or deleted fairly soon after creation… I just can’t seem to get my head around playing a masculine character – it feels wrong, somehow…

So there I was… I got her to level 15 (the earliest age when a young Mage can leave her place of birth, so to speak), and I even got her her title of “Merchant of Death” (because it sounds so cool! 🙂 ) (though I had to “visit” just about all the available shards to get the timing right 🙂 ) Made sure her mail box was empty, and that all her bags were packed. Then I went to Laethys to create an empty slot for her… Denuding one poor soul of her pretty Costume clothing and water breathing necklace (please note the water breathing necklace (or “wbn”) – they’re very important to me, and every girl on Laethys has to have one, or they don’t go in the water, and I get cross and upset because I don’t play well in water, as you already know) and sent them off to a third girl in carefully labeled mail packets for her to mind until Lavendermyst got there, when she was supposed to send them all on… Unfortunately, each girl can only carry one wbn for her Class (and as many as she wants to for any other Class) however, as all my girls are Mages of various persuasions, the girl that I sent all this stuff to couldn’t remove the wbn from her mail box because she already had one! I couldn’t send it to one of Julian’s characters either, because they’re what’s called “Bound to Account” – you can only send them to someone on your own game account. In the end I was able to send Lavendermyst the one that the “courier” was wearing, and then the “courier” was able to retrieve the one from the mail box for herself. All sorted out… eventually 🙂 Now I just have to level her up….

Flipper went off to the Vet this morning, and thanks to my brilliant idea of taking the cat carry box down a day or so ago so that she could get used to seeing it around, although there were some fairly loud complaints about being made to go into the nasty, cold, plastic cave, there were none of the usual histrionics we’d come to dread with her going to the Vet, and for once she didn’t wet herself in terror. She got her needle and had her nails clipped, but, although she doesn’t realise it yet, she has to go back again next week. The Vet wants to keep her for several hours in order to do some blood tests for kidney function, and to take her blood pressure several times – we think she might be suffering from “White Coat Syndrome”, where fear of the surgery or place forces the blood pressure artificially high. She seems to have forgiven Julian for taking her off this morning, and she gobbled all her dinner, so I’d say she’s back to her usual self. Ahem! And we have left the cat carry box out where she can “get used to seeing it” 🙂

Weigh-in this morning was disappointing, but expected. I’d had such a good run that I knew it was bound to end, sooner or later, and unfortunately it was sooner… I went up two points to 118.2kg, however, as long as I don’t go up again tomorrow, I won’t get too distraught over it (only a little bit distraught, is that alright?)

Tune in tomorrow to hear all the latest about Flipper, Lavendermyst (and whether or not I’ve decided to change her name), and whether my weight goes up… down… or stays the same… 🙂

You guessed it! I couldn’t think of a title for tonight’s little prattle… 🙂 So I’ve called it “small china cat”, which is one of the first things I saw when I looked around my (for once) relatively clean and tidy desk. It’s rather a sweet little cat, ginger and white, curled up as cats do (and I wish I could!), asleep…  The desk is reasonably clean and tidy because our cleaning lady was here today and I was too busy creating yet another youngster to carry on the good Telaran fight on a secondary shard to say to her “Don’t touch that, please!”, or “Ahhh… just leave that there, thanks 🙂 ” If the new character turns out to be pretty enough and winsome enough, I might (key word that, “might”! 😉 ) consider doing the old Character Shuffle with her and bringing her over to our main base of operations (the shard Laethys). Might. I might even end up deleting her, or re-rolling her… too early to tell yet 😉

Poor old Flipper is off to the Vet again tomorrow morning – her arthritis seems to be getting worse and for the last few days she’s been very stiff and sore… She’s supposed to get a Cartrophen injection for the pain and stiffness every two months, but she usually only lasts about 6 weeks before we have to take her up again, however it usually does the trick – she certainly moves around a lot more easily after one, anyway. Arty, our sadly missed Russian Blue boy, loved going to the Vet! As soon as the carry cage was brought out he’d be clambering all over it, trying to get into it 🙂 mainly because the nurses all made a big fuss over him, and the Vet(s) all gave him his favourite liver treats (they very quickly learned that they had to lock them up as soon as he’s been given his “treats”, because he knew how to open the cupboard where they were kept – walking over the Vet’s keyboard and other stuff to get to it, so he could “paw” it open!) Flipper, on the other hand, hates going to the Vet, and doesn’t like liver treats. One look at the carry cage, and you’d think we were trying to slit her throat with a blunt and rusty knife! Oh, the language! Oh the pitiful wailing and the gnashing of teeth! Oh the struggles! To the point where she quite often wets herself, poor little girl 😦 So this time, I got Julian to get the carry cage down last night, and it’s been quietly sitting under the desk next to where her comfy bed is – so she must have seen it there as she walks past that area many times a day – in the hopes that she won’t get quite so hysterical when we try to put her in it tomorrow morning… Oh well, one can only hope… 🙂

Not much else to report tonight – weigh-in this morning was again better than expected (it’s been almost too good to be true, these last few days, that’s why I’ll most likely go up again tomorrow! I hope I don’t though ) 118.0kg 🙂 Very nice! 🙂 Tune in tomorrow for more Flipper and weight news – or, just more Flipper news, if the weight news is too unpalatable for me to bear talking about! 😉

This morning I was whisked off for my Warfarin blood test, plus one other one wot Dr. Y. ordered, the results of which I will learn either late January next year (or sooner, if they find something dire (but I don’t think they will!)) The Warfarin results came in early this afternoon, and were… the same as last time. I’m to keep on taking 2mg from Monday to Friday, and 3mg on Saturdays and Sundays – just how they work that mix out is anyone’s guess, but I seem to have been remarkably stable on it – I don’t have to have another test done until December 18th. I know some people have fiendish difficulty in remaining stable on Warfarin (common name, “rat poison”, because that’s how Warfarin works. It thins the blood to the point where blood clots can’t form – too little, and I could end up in hospital with multiple blood clots in my lungs ( or elsewhere) again (or worse, I could end up dead!). Too much, and you end up with massive internal bleeding, and a dead rat (or a dead me) So it’s very important to have blood tests done at the time your Warfarin managers (in this case Dorevitch Pathology) say you have to, so that they can make any necessary changes to your dosage 🙂 End of Medical Lecture! 😉

On the way home from the above blood test, we stopped off at the Post Office as there was mail waiting for us – turned out to be my expected package of Optifast bars and soups, and a lamp, that I’d ordered from Innovations, because I thought it “looked pretty”, and I’m a real sucker for stained glass thingies. This is a stained glass/Tiffany wannabe table lamp – it’s quite tall really, 46.5cm high – it fits perfectly in the corner of my desk here in the den 🙂 I didn’t get much of a chance to flit around Telara this morning – as I indicated yesterday, my favourite eldest daughter came over today so after lunch we “ladies” retired to the lounge room and watched Agents of Shield and Person of Interest – again, a very pleasant afternoon. You know, I don’t think I could have played much Rift this morning anyway – I fiddled around a bit whilst himself was picking up said favourite eldest daughter, and I just kept going to sleep! Lisa has been complaining of being very tired, and this evening Julian said much the same thing. I think it’s partly the unseasonable hot weather, but mostly it’s the time of the year. I’ve noticed in years gone by that by late October, early November, everyone seems to get very tired and irritable. The long year is starting to wind down, and, in our White Western (nominally Christian) culture, we’re building up to that big holiday spectacular of (drum roll please!) Christmas!!! Deck the halls, and all that – ghod rest ye, merry gentlemen! Christmas? The Christ child’s birthday? Are you kidding me? It’s coming on winter in Israel, and middle east or not, it gets very cold (and wet!) there in winter! By December, no self-respecting shepherds would have been out in the fields watching their flocks – they would have been huddled in their small huts warming their hands by the fire; there wouldn’t have been a lamb in sight, and  the sheep would have been safely penned up next to the side of the hut in which the fireplace as located, trying to keep warm too! No, this WWnC (see above!) Christmas is solely about profit… and profiteering! What are you giving your kids for Christmas, hmmm? A rosary? Crucifix? or will it be toys… clothes… games… maybe a new iPhone or iPad? Lisa wants T-shirts… good ones… Kate (my favourite youngest daughter (and no, there are no more in between 😉 ) needs a new computer… so we’re writing to Father Christmas early this year, in the hopes that he’ll help us out (if he does, it’ll be a first! 😉 ) But… tradition is, after all, tradition, and we must all honour tradition, or be looked at askance by the rest of the flock. 🙂 Poor Julian, he rang me up the other day from the front door of the local Target store, whimpering. It’s the beginning of November, and they… were playing… Christmas Carols! 😀

Anyway, as I was saying, I’ve noticed that by this time of the year, everyone seems tired… Maybe we should spend more time contemplating… or walking the dog… or murdering Bosses in Telara…. or reading a good book…. or mowing the lawn (while we still have a lawn, before the full summer heat reduces them to wisps of dull, brownish straw!) Anything, rather than spending time spending… End of Sermon in front of the Computer! 😉

My, I am waxing lyrical this evening, aren’t I! Sorry about that… (well, a bit sorry, anyway 😉 )

Weigh-in was good this morning – I have gone down another 3 points, to 118.3kg! (best Queen Victoria voice:) “We are most pleased!” 🙂 Hopefully it’ll be down again tomorrow – if not, I shall try very hard not to wail in frustration – but I may say a few very rude words, sotto voce, of course 😉 Tune in tomorrow night to find out whether it was tears, rude words, or whether I sang the Hallelujah chorus instead… 🙂

I had to work today! Yes! Work (or, “werk”, as we in the industry call it) You see, not only does Julian slave over a hot Body Corporate Committee work regime, he also works as head executive of The Family Business* – I’m the CEO. In other words, he does the phone and paper work, I do the filing. I’m very good at it, and quick…. so I do rather tend to let it build up a little. This morning, after breakfast, I’d just settled down to do a little “ta-la-la-ing” in Telara, when who should appear next to me but himself, wondering if perhaps I could do… a little… filing? …Please? Of course, being the amiable and amenable person that I am 😉 without saying a word, I immediately logged out of Rift and cleared the decks. Moved my keyboard, mouse and mouse mat off to the side and then got stuck into the 3 inch (about 8.8cm) thick pile of paper work. About half of it was TFB**, the rest were Bank Statements, but if someone had put all those papers into one of those big barrels that lucky numbers and raffles are drawn from, and given them a good spin, they couldn’t have been more mixed up and higgledy-piggledy! Not only did I have to file them, I had to sort them first. Alphabetically and numerically! A lot of rude words were uttered when it came to all the multiple page, from multiple banks, Bank Statements – it seems we have something like… 9 or 10? separate accounts with one bank alone (never mind all the rest!), all with 10 number account numbers, most of which have the same first six numbers, but the rest completely different. Not only that, but some time ago, a sheet of paper with all the account numbers written on it was… misplaced. Just to be safe, we had to close all those accounts and replace them with new ones. But all those older Bank Statements still needed to be sorted and filed, and all of the new ones had to be sorted and filed, too, and then matched up with their older counterparts. By about 3.00pm this afternoon I had finished sorting all of those higgledy-piggledy papers and had them all ready for their final processing (i.e. putting all the papers into individual plastic sleeves and into their respective Lever Arch Folders) tomorrow. Now, was that quick, or was that quick? 🙂

Everything was all ready and set to go, but my favourite eldest daughter is coming over tomorrow instead of Friday, because the new WoW expansion will be going live late tomorrow afternoon, and of course I won’t want to be working while she’s over here – she’s coming to see me, not me working, and she’ll want to stay home and play the new expansion on Friday, instead of coming all the way over here to see me. Oh well, says me, I’ll do the end processing on Friday… after our cleaner has been and gone, or the papers might get all messed up again… So near(ly finished), and yet so far (from being finished!) 😉

Hopefully my scales have learned their lesson. This morning when I hopped on them, they dithered a little downwards, then upwards, and finally settled on 118.6kg, somewhere in the middle of where it had been fluctuating. This surprises me a trifle, as they’re digital scales… and where I wouldn’t find it strange or odd that mechanical scales might wobble around a bit before settling on one reading… I somehow find it a little unsettling with digital, electronic scales… Oh well, at least it was down again… Yes, I’m still in a hurry to lose weight – I do want to get down into double figures! Like… 90.4kg would be about right! 😉 So now I’m racing the clock to get there by late January… or at the very least, early February! Anyone want to place bets? Yes? No? Don’t really care? (how dare you! 😉 )

Stay tuned for the next exciting episode of “Who baked my files into a cake this time?”, or “Will the rising heat of summer assist with Winter’s weight loss?” 🙂

*The Family Business – see “TFB”

**TFB – see The Family Business

Well! 🙂 What I had the most difficulty with was actually finding something to wear that didn’t threaten to fall off me if I so much as moved a muscle! So…. it looks like we’re going to have to go shopping for “interim clothing” next week, as I still have a l-o-n-g way to go, and I don’t want to waste too much money on clothes that are only going to get too big for me again – sooner rather than later! 🙂 I hope to get down to only double figures (instead of three!) by late January, when I see Dr. Y. again… I should be able to do it… cross fingers, touch wood! I’m so relieved though…. I probably sweated off about half a kilo in sheer nervousness. Anyway, Doctor Y. seemed pleased, and a bit impressed (I think!), so I shall, as the old Australian ad used to say, “keep on keeping on”, the way I am at the moment 🙂

For a change this morning, I actually got down to playing Rift, and getting one of my junior girls questing, rather than boggling my brain sorting and stacking Dimension items. No such luck tonight, though, poor old Cersie has been getting a steady influx of Dimension goods in her Mail Box, thanks to the sterling efforts of our inestimable Minions – and Mr. Postman will only hold (virtual) letters and parcels for 28 days, after which it’s into the (virtual) incinerator, so I think I’d better retrieve them before the unmentionable happens…

I’m not sure what’s happening tomorrow – but for me it’ll either be sifting, sorting, and stacking, or if I get too bored with that, maybe a bit more graphic-ing. I did consider maybe badgering himself into taking me clothes shopping, but from memory, the weather tomorrow (and especially Thursday!) are going to be horribly hot and nasty, but will supposedly cool down a bit next week (I hope! think! pray!), so perhaps I’ll let the clothes slide until then.. Autograph and My Size will still be getting my custom (only in the next size down!) for a while yet, though I’m not confident of fitting into their slacks and jeans just yet… (but soon!  soon! 🙂 ) Lisa’s Lacies should also be receiving a visit from me for the more (delicate cough) “intimate items” of my wardrobe (blush) Now all I need is to find someone to make me a pair of shoes! I totally hate, loathe and detest, shoes – I only wear them because social mores and custom say I must – and thanks to arthritis, I have beautifully deformed feet that won’t fit into “normal” type shoes. I had a couple of pairs made about five or six years ago, but they’re now starting to fall to pieces, and the guy who made them has moved on into a different business – so I’m at a bit of a loss as to how to get new ones made… Sometimes I think it might be easier and quicker if I just had new feet made and transplanted! 🙂 (and don’t I wish I could!)

Not much more to add tonight 🙂 Weigh-in this morning was quite fraught, as you can well imagine! I got on the scales…. 119.0kg!  I glared at the scales! “I am bloody well not!” I snarled at them – I got off the scales, and tried again. 118.8kg? the scales said, hopefully, and a little timidly. “Are you sure this time?” I replied, “what happens if I try again, hmmm?” Once more, I got off the scales, then back on again. 118.8kg said the scales, this time firmly and much more confidently. “Thank you!” I said with feeling, followed by “Don’t you ever, ever do that to me again, you hear me? Or… I’ll… I’ll… jump up and down on you!” 😉 I think they’ll behave themselves now – don’t you? 🙂

So… 🙂 Tune in tomorrow night, for the next episode of “Winter and the Scales War”, or “will she ever get a pair of shoes that fit her?” 🙂