I have the jitters… I’m trying very hard not to think about tomorrow (and not really succeeding), but telling myself “this time tomorrow night will come…” I’m not going to talk about it….

This morning I had my hair done, very nicely as usual (thank you Josh! 🙂 ), after which I attempted to show him how Rift was played. I’m afraid I’m not a terribly good teacher 😦 It’s very hard to explain to someone how an MMO like Rift, or WoW is played; I spent about a year or so just watching – first my favourite eldest daughter playing various games, until she started playing World of Warcraft, then when Julian started playing it too, I sat and watched them both playing (not at the same time though! Lisa during her weekly visits, and Julian in the evenings when he got home from work) I’d also watched him play first Diablo, and then Diablo II, excitedly yelling out such valuable advice as “Look out! Behind you!”, and “Quick! Take a pot (healing potion!) now!” I never got bored watching them play, but never rolled a character because I didn’t think I’d be a good gamer – too slow, or reflexes not up to it, or whatever… but one day we needed a “mule” (someone to stay in camp and act as extra storage space for the real player, because you couldn’t play two characters at the same time – then! 😉 ), and I rolled a character. That, I’m afraid, was the beginning of the end for me… I became hooked. I developed my own rather idiosyncratic playing style (which I’m afraid didn’t go down terribly well in groups, especially on WoW – Rift players are a bit more lenient, though I still avoid playing with groups wherever possible 🙂 ) I play once a week with Julian, and we make a good team because we both have roughly the same playing style. A lot of people play to get from point A to point B and kill the big Boss as quickly as possible – we like to take a more leisurely approach, smell the flowers and explore a bit – a ‘what’s over that hill?’ type of attitude… The rest of the time I play on my own, only calling in Julian for things like… jumping somewhere. I’m hopeless at jumping onto things, or from things. Sometimes there are quests that end in mini rift-type situations with very high mob density (usually set for a group of 3 party) and because I count my pet as being a “group member”, so to speak, I look on myself as a group of 2 – but very occasionally (as in the final mini rift sequence in Scarwood Reach – Julian, and possibly Lisa,  will know what I mean!) I really do need that extra group member… so it’s “Jooooliannnnn” 🙂

So although I do play a lot, and quite well too, thank you very much (3 level 60’s, 5 level 50’s and, and 4 “teenagers” – not too bad a count for one shard!), I found out today that I’m not very good at explaining it, what to do, or how (and when) to do it. Sorry Josh 😦 Hopefully if you start playing a bit by yourself, you’ll work it out as you go along 🙂

Weigh-in… I was most annoyed this morning… I weighed myself several times because the scales couldn’t seem to make up their mind what they wanted to tell me. First it would start on 118.8kg for a couple of seconds, then it would suddenly decide that that was wrong, and go back to 119.0kg! It did that three ruddy times in a row! Three!! Maybe I was so close that it was six of one, half a dozen of the other… but why couldn’t it have opted for the lower [rude word] weight!  Arrrggghhhh!

I do hope that tomorrow, being a “very important day”, it’ll go down again… just a bit… to, say, 118.5kg… It probably wont – it’ll probably want to drive me mad by going up some more… But alas, I fear that mine is the triumph of hope over experience

Stay tuned… I’ll either be here tomorrow night, celebrating, or not here, weeping alone in the dark… 😉

As everyone knows by now, himself and I have our Day in Telara on Sundays… today was no different, and, luckily for me, there was very little underwater action to bamboozle me (though there was one section where I had no idea who I was fighting at any one particular moment… and, well, it was watery, and it was like fighting in cloudy ammonia – visibility was poor, and I couldn’t see my targeting thingy. A small amount of yelling in frustration occurred) We died once – we had to close a rift, and there were lots of little mobs that ganged up on us before we’d had a chance to buff up or “charge our weapons” properly. We didn’t make that mistake again (though they still tried to gang up on us) We didn’t go up a level, though we came close – I think I have about 3/4 of a bubble to ding (sings, somewhat off-key: “shut up and grind… grind… grind…”) – not too sure how much himself has to go before he makes it to level 62… and the pace and intensity of the quest chain was a lot more full on than we’ve been used to… but the part that really got me was just after we’d scraped ourselves through some particularly fierce bouts of fighting, and got back to hand in the quest(s) and pick up the next section of the chain… For a start off, the quest rewards were totally and utterly pathetic! Our level and a half old gear was better than what was offered to us after a particularly tough segment??! Honestly! But!! This is what our kindly quest giver then says to us:

“I want you to infiltrate the Bloodfire fleet, distract the invaders with explosions and assassinations, then sneak onto the Command ship. Once aboard, disable the defenses and steal the source of their power.”

What??!!  They didn’t want us to steal the magic ring and marry the princess as well? 🙂 Though if that had been the case, they would have waited until we’d mungled our way through that lot, arriving back all hot, bloody, and sweaty to turn the quest in, then they would have asked us to go back and steal the ring etc…

Oh, and did I mention that we had to jump on sponges sticking out of the water to get onto the ships? I didn’t? And did I ever tell you how pathetic I am at jumping onto things from other things? I didn’t? Well….. honestly? You don’t want to know! 😉

What amazes me most is that we did manage to do that part of the quest chain, without dying! Though my stupid pet did manage to drag trains (trains = multiple mobs) of nasties off the ships and into the water with us, leaving us with a largely unnecessary fight *sigh*, though it’s all xp! 🙂 My pet seems to have a singular talent for things like that! Pets (who fight with you, by the way) are supposed to go into passive mode when you’re mounted and running along the road or whatever, which is fine! Mobs occasionally chase you, but if you don’t stop to fight they usually give up and go home… but when you’re just running along the road, not mounted…you see the mobs and give them a nice wide berth, but your wretched pet just runs along behind you, not making any effort to stay clear of the waiting mobs, gets a little too close to something, and before you know it, you have a full scale battle on your hands You’d think they could smarten up the AI of the fighting pets a little bit, surely! Plus, they have a nasty habit of standing right on top of the plant you want to pick, or the ore you want to mine, or the corpse you want to loot! (shakes head sadly) Oh well, but it is good to be able to stand well back and fire off spells at the enemy while your pet goes in for the jugular (so to speak 😉 )

Enough about Rift for tonight – I just thought that you might be mildly amused by the great amount of things we were supposed to do at the Bloodfire fleet… just the two of us, and a (somewhat simple minded) pet. 🙂

Weigh-in this morning was somewhat surprising! I don’t react well to hot weather – if it goes above 24C I start melting 😦 and try not to leave the house where I can sit in air conditioned comfort! This morning I woke up feeling hot, and sweaty, and heavy (why heavy, I don’t know, but that’s how I felt!), but I hopped on the scales, fearing the worst – twice, in case we’d misread the first time – and I was…. wait for it…. 118.8kg! Maybe I melted it off? 😉 Anyway, I ain’t complaining! 🙂 Hopefully it’ll be down again tomorrow, or at the very worst, the same… 🙂

Tune in tomorrow night to find out! 🙂

I’m looking at an unlit candle… I think it needs its wick trimmed, something himself said he’d do, only it doesn’t look trimmed to me. We got this fancy, long handled wick trimmer when we got the candles (I had forgotten that we bought two, so I didn’t have to go out in the heat today to get another one! 🙂 Wasn’t that clever of me! 😉 ) The wick trimmer looks like a pair of long handled scissors, but the finger holes are on an angle to the scissor bit, and the base, or bottom, of the cutting edge is higher than the base, or bottom of the other side, the side that has the groove for the wick in it. You’re supposed, I think, to rest the thick part with the groove in it, flat against the candle, with the wick sitting (sort of) neatly in the groove – when you close (cut) with the wick cutter, it’s supposed to trim the wick off neatly at the correct length. Now, I don’t know if I’m just extra clumsy (possible), not doing it the right way (probable), or just too old to understand the question (many would say so)… but with the finger holes of the wick cutter on such a weird angle, and the base that’s supposed (I think!) to rest flat against the candle, I just… get it all wrong Julian seems to be able to do it, and he’s the klutz in the family… so why can’t I? *pout* Well, I just trimmed the wick, and as usual, managed to gouge the candle wax quite nicely – luckily the wax melts smooth again soon after lighting – and lit the candle, which produced no visible sooty smoke, so I must have done it correctly. And this time we’ll be more careful removing the last bits of soy wax from the only-painted glass when it’s finished…

This morning, pretty much straight after breakfast, I started work on my Dimension items overhaul… So far I have eleven separate holding “pens” for the different categories – two of them are “part 1”, and “part 2” of the same item, because even shrinking things down to their smallest size, I run out of room to store them, long before I run out of the number of items I can store in that particular holding area. I just had a brilliant thought! 🙂 (Sometimes I can be so clever that I even amaze myself! 🙂 ) I can…. go up! Build a second floor! Why didn’t I think of that earlier?! This morning I almost went cross-eyed stacking up 32 ruddy floor panels! I could have used them to create a second floor on which to store things! Of course, there is the very small problem of – what happens when I’m working on a Dimension, and I need to use those floor panels… I don’t keep that many floor panels just for their decorative properties…. Bother!  Maybe I’m not clever enough to amaze myself, after all! 😦 Back to the drawing board… *sigh* Oh well, looks like there’ll be more “part 1” and “part 2” Dimensions needed after all… I think I have two more spare…

Tomorrow, of course, will be our usual Sunday “Picnic in Telara”, or “How many nasties can you kill in four hours?” The only parts I’m not particularly looking forward to are the underwater bits… But there are also plenty of areas that are not underwater, so that’s OK 🙂

Weigh-in this morning was pleasing, to say the least… down to 119.1kg! Wouldn’t it be fantastic if I could get down under 119kg by Tuesday! It’s possible, but probably not likely… I shall do my best! 🙂 That would be 15.5kg in about 3.5 months… which isn’t too bad, I suppose (says she, very grudgingly!)

Anyway, tuned in tomorrow night for the next exciting episode of “Will she lose weight? Or will she drown in Telara…?” 😉

Ah, misery me! It was 35C today, and it’s not even summer yet! 😦 What’s it going to be like when it is summer?!  I think I shall have to do what I was always threatening to do when I was at school… I’ll have to stow away on the next ice breaker to Mawson Bay! Honestly, what good is summer, anyway? All it’s good for is getting all hot and sweaty for no particular good reason (personally I can think of at least – oh, half a dozen good ways to get hot and sweaty? and have an enjoyable time doing it! 😉 ) At least in winter if you get cold, you can always add more warm clothing… in the summer, when it gets hot, there’s only so many items of clothing that you can remove and still remain decent in public! *sigh*

If tomorrow is hot again, I’m staying home with the egg-nitioner on, but if it’s cool enough I’ll go shopping with himself… I used up all the nice candle I got from Dusk a week or so ago, and I must say I was quite disappointed when I found out (the hard, scratchy way!) that the black glass jar (which turned out in fact to be a very dark reddish purple!) was really only painted on, and scratched off in patches when we tried to clean the last vestiges of soy candle wax off it. So I want to get another candle – this time I’ll get a big ordinary type candle. Hopefully it’ll last a little longer than this last one didn’t, and at least we won’t be able to scratch off the pretty colour on the glass jar, like we have with this one. I shall complain to the people at Dusk, too! I would have expected much better quality for the price we paid for it!

This morning I struggled along sorting a few more Dimension items, and disposing of them in newly created “holding areas” (“A All Large Decorations”, “A All Kitchen Related items”, “A All Vegetation and Rocks”, and so on and so forth) It’s getting there, but it’s a long, slow, tedious process. So much for getting back to questing! Then my favourite eldest daughter arrived, and we had lunch, whilst I finished off the last of the Vegetation and Rocks that I had left to transfer to their new home. After a most welcome cup of coffee, we repaired to the lounge room and watched the remaining episodes of season two of Person of Interest. I think I’ve said before that it’s a good show, and the plot is quickly thickening, like properly cooked custard, or gravy 🙂 Next week she’ll have season three, and we can find out what happens to Elias, and Carter, and the rest of them. I’m also hanging out for the return of Orphan Black, which is about a gaggle of clones, who didn’t realise they were clones, but now they’ve all got together to try to find out why they were created and why they’re being killed off (well, that’s roughly what it’s about, but it’s complicated, y’know? 😉 )

I must also get himself to re-install our 2008 version of Eye Candy – if it doesn’t work with this version of Photoshop, the Alien Skin website says that people who have licensed copies of their filters can simply pay for an upgrade – much cheaper, too (can’t remember what it was off-hand – I’d have to go and re look it up again. If you’re really interested, and ask me nicely, I’ll go fetch, but if you’re not all that bothered about it, I won’t, OK? 🙂 ) I’m a trifle amused at myself – getting all interested (welllll… a little bit interested, anyway 😉 ) in getting into graphics again! I wouldn’t mind trying my hand at wallpapers…. now, there’s a thought! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning was tres annoyment! Same as yesterday – 119.3kg *sigh* Looks like the gremlins are putting me through another bout of  “Let’s annoy the [rude word] out of Winter! Just for the fun of it!” for a few days! I really wish they wouldn’t… Oh Noes! I shouldn’t have said that!! Oh dear… now they’ll make me pay for admonishing them like that – they’ll make me go up again! *sob* What have I done to myself!? [flings back of hand to her forehead in dramatic gesture]

And with that heartfelt and passionate declaration, gentle readers, I shall leave you all to wait, with bated breath, for the next installment of “The Trials and Tribulations of a Desperate Dieter!” – same time, same place! 😉

I have had a most productive day today, for a change! I started work this morning on trying (“trying” being the operative word!) to organise all my Dimension stuff. I used to have it all nicely divided up between several of my largest Dimensions, e.g. “All Plants, Trees and Rocks”, “All Kitchen related items” (food, plates, cups, goblets, etc.), “All Building Materials”, etc., etc., etc… Then I started “shuffling” various characters around, and to prevent “accidental losses” of Dimension stuff due to oversights, I decided to collect everything into one central point, namely my poor, long suffering Dimension looking-after girl, Cersie. I still have nightmares about trying to fit everything into her personal Bank vaults, even after opening up every available Bank vault, and filling her up with the largest backpacks that credits could buy, it was still too much… bits and pieces fell out and had to find alternative homes, and this is why I was trying to organise it all again today. I persevered for a while, then gave it up as a bad job and went looking for yet a “better” theme (here).

One of the main problems I have with these themes is that (a) I hate writing my blog on a white “page” – if I want white pages, I’ll use Word, and print it out on white paper, thank you very much! (b) I like to be able to pick and choose which font will give me the best effect – and let me tell you, there are precious few fonts available in WordPress! (says she, who is an incurable fontaholic with over 2000+ fonts to her name!)(er.. that includes dingbats and other decorative fonts, as well as ordinary and decorative writing fonts), and (c) I like some sort of graphic “header”, to set the mood… there are also precious few Themes that have header graphics, and there ain’t much choice there, either!

So, I decided to make my own. Back to my up until now sadly neglected Photoshop. First I did some research on how big to make these headers (they’re all different sizes!), so then it was a matter of finding which Theme I liked enough to make a personalised header for. This is the one I chose (it’s actually the same Theme as I’m using for “The Adventures of Darth Carla”, only with a personalised header instead of the one it comes with, and different colours 😉 ), and the header you see at the top of the page is the one that I made. Do you like it? 🙂

Since working with Photoshop over the last two days, it’s been niggling me that something seemed to be…. missing. It somehow didn’t feel the same… yes, I know it’s a newer version than the one I used for so many years making free web sets and free stationery for Outlook Express and Incredimail, but…. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it – until I wanted to make some changes to a pattern I had made and was experimenting with. It then dawned on me that what was missing were my wonderful dont-leave-home-without-them plug-ins, my Eye Candy (Alien Skin) and my Blade Pro! Hmmm… I wonder where they are, and if they’ll even work with this version of Photoshop? We shall look into it….

Himself has gone off to parts unknown to pick up and give a good home to yet another piece of C64 hardware (I can’t remember what it’s called, off the top of my head, and he’s not here to ask, so you’ll just have to sit there, chewing your nails, and wondering what on earth it could be, that’s taken his fancy so! 😉 )

When I finish this I shall get back to Rifting a bit, I think… My Minions should have finished their 8 hour runs that I sent them off on this morning, but I’d like to actually get a bit of questing in for a change! My favourite eldest daughter will be over tomorrow, and I dare say that after lunch we’ll spend most of our time up in the lounge room watching episodes of Person of Interest and Agents of Shield, which I am most anxious to catch up with! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning was very pleasing… I should be right in the middle of my usually out of control upward moving Provera spike, but I actually went down to 119.3kg! I was pretty chuffed! (…or maybe it’s because I missed out on morning tea yesterday morning? If so, I must try to do that more often! 😉 ) Hopefully I’ll go down again tomorrow…. (hope, hope, hope…)

Anyway, tune in again tomorrow night for all my latest adventures, graphics-wise, weight-wise, Rift-wise, comment-wise and gossip-wise! 🙂 Don’t be afraid to leave me a comment or three to let me know what you think of my header… 😉

Not being able to make the text smaller. I just felt it was way too big. So let’s try this Theme for a day or two – see how it beds in! 🙂 I’ll just as likely change it again in a few days…

I worked on my new bookmarks desktop this afternoon – himself found a free WYSIWYG HTML editor, which works – after a fashion 🙂 You remember how I said that I used to use a program (which wasn’t free!) called Front Page, and how it was great for placing elements of the page, layout, etc., but used the most execrable HTML? Well, this program, called Kompozer, makes Front Page’s HTML look like the very best HTML programming ever written by a really top notch web designer! I kid you not! 🙂 It was certainly good enough for me to set my page up correctly, but after a few vain attempts to correct the HTML manually, I gave up. I don’t want to know. As long as the page looks right, and works properly, I don’t care! Maybe one of these days when I’m feeling particularly masochistic I might venture into the dark side of HTML again and attempt a clean-up, but I can think of lots of things I’d rather be doing… like… staring glassy eyed at the TV screen, voluntarily watching a sports program (hint: that will happen when hell freezes over, the seas all dry up, and we’ve evolved wings to fly with, and a tail, for fun!) 🙂

I didn’t have much time for Rift today – we picked up my two rat poison (Warfarin) scripts from Doctor B., and by the time we got away from there it was almost time to head straight off to Bounce for my exercise class (of 1! Me!) My “trainer”, Mr. Anderson, was well pleased with my progress – so much so that he’s given me a tougher? harder? less stretchy? Thera Band (the great long piece of elastic-y stuff that I use for stretching exercises, and pulling my arms out of their sockets 🙂 ) plus two new leg exercises designed to strengthen my upper leg and thigh muscles (something tells me I’m going to have sore thighs tomorrow ) All in all I’ll be doing five exercises in cycles of 20 per individual exercise, three times each. He says it should take me about 35 minutes 😦 I had to laugh though, he’s just come back from a nice long holiday…. getting up each morning at 5.30am and taking children for running and exercise-y type things all day! I said “That’s not a holiday! That sounds like hard work!”, but apparently it’s his idea of a good, fun time *shrug* Some people are really weird! 😉

We had a nice late lunch when we got home, and a very welcome cup of coffee, but I missed out on my morning tea (let’s hope that shows up in my weigh-in tomorrow morning! 🙂 ) Then I got stuck into my bookmarks desktop thingy, and worked pretty much at that until this evening when himself had to go off to (yet another) Body Corporate Committee meeting. By the time he left for that I had just about had enough of computer-ie things, so once I got the page looking right, and working properly, I retired to the lounge room to read – and that was my day that was! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning could have been better, but considering the fact that I’m right in the middle of my Provera fluid retention week, I guess you could call it “good”, i.e. I was the same as yesterday, 119.5kg. Hopefully I’ll start going down again tomorrow, but I won’t be too surprised if I don’t

I’m afraid that you (collectively) weren’t quite good enough for me to take a screenie of my new bookmarks desktop to show you what it’s like – well, it was either that you weren’t good enough, or it might have been that I was just too tired of working on it – whichever comes first/delete whichever excuse does not apply! 😉 Stay tuned for all the latest news, gossip, and inconsequential chatter coming your way tomorrow night! 🙂

Since I did any graphics work… so today, I decided that I’d had my desktop “Winter’s Bookmarks” for quite long enough, thank you! (about… 4 years?) and that it was time to haul out Photoshop and make a new one… [insert hysterical laughter here] Well, you know how they say that you never forget how to ride a bicycle? Unfortunately, I’ve never been able to ride a bicycle… a horse? yes! I was a very good horse back rider – after all, they have a nice, solid post on each of their four corners so that they’re easy to balance on… but bicycles?? Let me just say that I used to fall off exercise bicycles that were bolted to the floor! So, did I remember all my smart Photoshop moves from way back then? Nahhhh…. I floundered. I got frustrated. I got annoyed. And I felt really silly. But, I persevered, and I think I’ve come up with a fairly nice, if somewhat “noir”, bookmarks desktop. IF I can work out how I moved the tables over to the right. I know it’s something to do with the transparent filler .gif I used for spacing just about everything, but the trouble is, I can’t see them, where they’re placed, or how big they are. I used to use a terribly badly behaved program called Front Page. It wrote truly horrible HTML, but it was a fabulous WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor, and it was easy enough to do all the placement and visual editing first, then go in and tidy up or correct its woeful HTML. I used to have a copy of Front Page. I probably still do have a copy of Front Page. But, as with everything else that you really, really need, or want in a hurry, I don’t know where the [rude word] it is, amongst all our programs and files. *sigh* Himself is having a go at hand editing it (I think), so I’ll just have to see what he can do, or find myself another not-too-expensive WYSIWYG HTML editor (does such an animal even exist?!)

So, what else happened today… I managed to track down all the collective Dimensions that my girls have, was semi-tempted to have a go at creating a new Dimension in one of the newer areas, like the Crypt in Stonefield, which is gi-normous! but… wasn’t quite tempted enough, so I went back to gathering Autumnal stuff for the current World Event for a bit, but all of those quests are dailies which don’t take long to complete, and you can only do them once a day, which is a bit dreary… It was about then that I thought it might be a good idea to change my bookmarks desktop – full circle. Once I’ve finished writing this, it’ll be back to collect all the goodies that I hope my Minions will have brought in (they usually do – himself has been making quite a killing on the Auction House with goods mostly brought in by his Minions!) I doubt that I’ll have much time to anything sensible in Rift tomorrow – I have to go to the Doctor to get repeat scripts, for which we’ll probably be kept waiting for up to 3/4 of an hour (sometimes more! ) She’s a very good Doctor, but 3/4 of an hour to say “Hi Doctor B., I need another script for my Warfarin!”? I guess that’s what happens when you go to a really good Doctor… Then practically straight after that I have my Bounce session (exercise thingy) in the afternoon. I don’t expect we’ll be home before 3-ish, especially if we have to stop off on the way home to do a bit of shopping… Never mind…

Weigh-in this morning was better, I went down to 119.5kg again – where I was the day before yesterday. It seems I’m entering the Provera see-saw fluid retention business again – at least until I stop taking it on the 10th, anyway. Oh well, as long as I don’t go back over 120kg again, I’ll be reasonably happy (though I’d really love to break the 119kg barrier over the weekend! 😉 )

Anyway, that’s it for tonight – another short one for you 🙂 Stay tuned for all the latest, and if I get my bookmarks desktop done (with Julian’s help), and you’re all really, really good, I might (no promises, mind!) post a link to a screenie of it 🙂

Yes folks, it’s yet another “New Look” for the blog… Why? I don’t know… they say that a change is as good as a holiday, or something, don’t they? 🙂 How long this one will last is anyone’s guess – until I get bored with it, really, which might be tomorrow, or it might be next year (unlikely though!) Expect the colours to change on a regular basis – I just can’t seem to get the right colour combinations; mind you, I don’t know what they are yet, but I’ll know them when I see them, so until then, prepare to be challenged with some weird combinations 🙂

This entry will be a bit shorter than the last few (I heard that heartfelt sigh of relief from all of you from here!) because, quite frankly, I’m finishing too late, even when I start writing from the moment I hit the Den at 9.30pm! So! 😛 shorter from now on, unless I have a lot to say, that is – and when don’t I? Pray tell? 😉

Had my hair done this morning – looks very nice too… will have to get it done next Monday as well, as I have what may well turn out to be a very interesting appointment on Tuesday – I already have stage fright!

This afternoon I just… Rifted around a bit. It occurred to me that with all the character shuffling around I’ve been doing lately that I no longer have any idea as to who’s got what Dimensions – so I went through them all, one by one, and made a list. It seems that I’ve moved some of the girls with a few of the best Dimensions to other shards… Oh well, I have 4 newbies with blank slates (so to speak) where I can create new homes and furnishings – it’ll be interesting to try out the new version of Dimension Toolbox, too… and Josh, if you’re reading this, I’ll message you via Facebook about playing. I haven’t done much with my Dimensions for a while – I’ve been too intent on getting as many characters up to 50 before the expansion as possible… I don’t know why, really, as I much prefer playing with backup when I get to the higher levels (I’m not very brave, you see!), and himself doesn’t have a plethora of level 50’s waiting to team up with mine, so that sort of leaves my higher level girls in a bit of a limbo… I’m better than I used to be though – I used to get them up to about level 25, and then… abandon them, only to re-roll them later on as I got new ideas for names (it’s as good an excuse as any! 😉 ) Tomorrow being Cup Day, I might get back to Dimensioning again… and then again, I might not – “undecided at this moment, Captain!”

Weigh-in this morning What can I say? I was expecting it, but I think I was fruitlessly hoping that my weight would go down a bit more before it happened… Yup, I went up! 😦 Only two points, to 119.7kg, and I know it’s only fluid, and that it’ll go down again, but I can’t help being disappointed 😦 Oh well, say lah vee, as the French say… Maybe I’ll go down to 119.1kg tomorrow… maybe I’ll go up to 119.9kg tomorrow… maybe I’ll stay the same… Let’s weight and see… 🙂

Listening to the sound track of the movie “The Dish” at the moment – lots of old songs and music from the 60’s in it – “I Am The Real Thing”, “Classical Gas”, “The Loved One”, and many, many others… good listening! 🙂 Can’t help feeling cheered up listening to it… 🙂

Stay tuned for all the latest on Rift, my weight, our music, and Flipper the cat, tomorrow night! 🙂

Yeah… I think I mentioned once before that I hate (hate, hate, hate!) playing underwater… in Rift (or any other game, for that matter – I was hopeless at it in World of Warcraft, too!) And, of course, the bran’ new zone that opened up with the expansion, is, largely, underwater…. I can cope, sort of, if we’re just going from point A to point B – but fight nasty mobs and bosses in a quest end? Not get hopelessly stuck under ledges? That’s what happened today. We got to the tail end of a particularly long and repetitious quest chain – you see, as you work your way through the countryside, looking for the pillar or icon that you have to destroy, you encounter new groups of nasties (herein after called “mobs”) that you get extra points for killing “x” number of. F’rinstance, you have to go over there, but there’s a big monster blocking your way, and no way around it. So, you kill it (as one does!) Then the words “quest accepted” flash across your screen and you find that you now have to kill anywhere between 10 and 18 of the blighters… and sometimes they can be a bit hard to find, especially when you have multiple players all doing the same quest chain. This is a regular occurrence between point A and point B, but we usually don’t mind because after all, it’s all experience points, right? 🙂 However this particular quest chain said things like: “go and destroy that pillar over there”. So fine, we go off and destroy the pillar. Then it says something like: “oh, by the way, would you mind going back a few blocks and pick up some tasty dandelion leaves for me? Ta…” Well, no, it didn’t say that, exactly, but words to that effect. For crying out loud, why didn’t they just say that they wanted this done while we were over in that neck of the woods?! Then, when you’ve finished those bits, it’ll tell you to go and destroy another whatever. And another one, when you’ve finished with the last one. At the moment it wanted us to close a Water Rift (don’t ask!), and it took us ages to find one, and because it was a big one there were a lot of people all joining in and working on it, so it didn’t take as long to close as it took us to find the [rude word] thing in the first place! Then we’re told that we have to close a Fire Rift. I know we trundled past one while we were looking for the Water one – if only we’d known! (grrrr!) Do you think we could find another one? Noooo…. that’ll have to wait until next Sunday… Anyway, eventually we got to the big nasty Boss’s chamber – underwater, of course – and we set about trying to kill him. We did have a bit of help though, one fishy-type guy who could, and did, heal us – when we could find him. He moved around a lot, you see, and it’s damn hard to watch where all the Boss’s hench-guys are, stay out of the way of all the fire balls and killing curses etc. that they’re hurling at you, fighting off their biting and slashing minions, plus keep an eye on the Boss himself – and follow fishy-face around so that he can heal you! Especially for me, who tends to get a bit flustered and confused with a lot of very impressive visual effects going off around me… then when you add the fact that I don’t know which way I’m going when I’m underwater, well, let me tell you that it’s not a very pretty picture! We both died three or four times… Julian got cross with me because we’d got everything killed off and were down to Mr. Nasty Boss himself, and there I was, hurling dots at him (dots = “damage over time”. You hurl a couple towards a nasty, and first they say “Ha ha, you missed me!”, then they say “Ow, I don’t feel so good…”, then they go “aarrrggghh!” and die! 🙂 ) …so there I was, hurling dots at Mr. Nasty Boss, he looked at Julian – and Julian died. Having just resurrected himself, he was coming back into the chamber when Mr. Nasty Boss keeled over from my dots. I completed the quest chain, he didn’t. So he got mad at me, because he had to do the whole thing all over again. So this time, reverse the positions. This (second) time, I got killed (again!), and as he had, I ended up outside the chamber. I couldn’t resurrect myself because I couldn’t reach my body, but that was OK, I could go to the nearest Graveyard and be resurrected there, and wait for himself to come and find me – after all, I’d completed the quest chain, right? There’s a great big button on the top of the screen saying “Return to Graveyard”, so I pressed it. Nothing happened. Well, we tried just about everything to resurrect me and nothing worked! I was doomed to be a wandering ghost for the rest of my life, maybe… then I remembered that there’s an auto fix for people who inadvertently get themselves stuck in walls, or in deep water at the bottom of sheer cliffs with no way up… well, it was worth a try… I typed “/stuck” and guess what! I ended up in the local Graveyard! Yay me! It cost me a very large fortune to heal myself after so many deaths, but at least I’m now back to whatever passes for normal in Telara these days 🙂 And shortly after that we decided to start dusting down for the day.  Still and all, it was a good bash, and we did go up a level, to 61, and I got to have my first look at the new Masteries (wot I told you about a couple of posts ago), and all they did was confuse me (this confusion business is beginning to get tiresome!), so as soon as I’ve finished here, I shall log back in and get himself to advise me…. 🙂

End of Rift Lecture Notes 🙂

Weigh-in this morning was really cool!  I can finally say (with only a little trepidation) “Yay! I’ve broken the 120kg barrier!” I clocked in at 119.5kg! That’s pretty good, I reckon! 🙂 Let’s see what happens tomorrow….

Stay tuned for all the laters news, and whether Winter goes up… or down… or remains static! 🙂

Well, I might not have been doing much today, but himself has been a very busy boy!  For ages he’s wanted to go through all our music files, de-dupe them (get rid of duplicates), delete corrupted files, and roughly categorize them into genres. He created a list of all the directories involved, and printed it out. The directory tree ended up being 44 pages long… That’s a reasonably large amount of files! Before getting rid of the dross (duplicates and corruptions), there were 26,500 mp3’s spread over 7,000 directories… which equated to 200Gb of data.

How did we come to have so many music files? Most of it is from our combined collections of old vinyl records, tapes, and CDs, “ripped” (or converted) to mp3 format over about twenty three years. We still have a awful lot of ancient vinyl records left to convert, and who knows? we may even get a round tuit one of these centuries 🙂 As to the why we copy them? It’s always a good idea to keep backups, especially with the old vinyl records, most of which are irreplaceable – one of them even comes from as far back as before vinyl, or even shellac, or acetate were invented, but seems to be on some sort of thick waxy material on top of a light cardboard-like backing! That one is an oral rendition of the old fairy story, The Princess and the Pea, spoken in Italian! 🙂 Try replacing that one in a hurry! Anyway, the main idea is to make a backup of as many as we can, storing them on our 3Tb hard drive on our file server (which is going to have to be replaced – erm, the hard drive that is – we’re rapidly running out of room on it, and that’s not just from music files!) Apart from the backup idea, it’s also great to be able to play whatever you want, whenever you want, without having to go through tapes and CDs – some of which will invariably be in another room, or a storage box, just when you want to listen to them… So it’s kept him busy nearly all day (and he’s not finished yet, by a long shot!), whilst I….

…Played “shuffle the character” on Rift. I know I said that I didn’t want to do that again, but I needed some good old fashioned, boring, “bringing up baby” characters on Laethys, and I’d managed to find a name that I liked, that apparently no one else had thought of (seeing as how we’re on the Oceanic server, and not the European one 🙂 ) So Lastrega was born, off-shard, raised to 15, and “shuffled” over to Laethys whilst I “shuffled” one of my level 60 girls across to yet another shard. Lastrega – a contraction of “la” and “strega” – because you can’t have a two part name, though you can have a first name and a second name… I wonder if you could get away with calling your character “La” and then buy a second name of, say, “Strega” – more than one person can have the same second name, so you can create “families”, I guess – Hmmm… I must try it sometime!  However, I digress… La Strega means “The Witch” in Italian, which I thought was rather fitting 😉

Weigh-in this morning was unexpected! I thought that for sure I’d have gone up again, but I didn’t! I’m still not far enough down that I’d be willing to risk saying that I’d broken the 120kg barrier, but if I go down again tomorrow, instead of up, as I’m expecting, then I might be willing to say “Yay! I’ve finally broken the 120kg barrier!” This morning I clocked in at 119.8kg – one point down on yesterday’s effort… So here’s hoping, but I’m still not holding my breath! 😉

Stay tuned tomorrow for all the latest in the Weight and See Game – if we all cross our fingers, toes, eyes and teeth, I might go down again! Here’s hoping! 🙂