Last night himself pulled down a very old movie… and because there was nothing worth watching on TV tonight, we watched that instead… 🙂 It was “The Great Race”, starring Tony Curtis, Jack Lemon, Peter Falk, Natalie Wood, and Keenan Wynn as The Great Leslie’s co-driver/mechanic, Hezekiah. OK, it’s old! OK, it’s as corny as they come, and has a plot with holes that you could drive a battalion of tanks through, but it’s damn good fun! So, here I am, starting this blog off at 11.00pm – the time I’m usually just finishing it – so it’ll probably be fairly short…
            All right! I heard that collective sigh of relief!
I’m sorry, but once I start writing, I can’t seem to stop – s’not my fault! Writing runs in the family….

I found out today that I was due to have had my Warfarin blood test last Thursday – but due to all the worry about Julian’s mother, we both totally forgot about it, so I’m going tomorrow instead. I’m not too worried about it – I’ve been stable enough on the dosage that I’m currently on that they’ve only wanted to test me every month, so a couple of days over isn’t going to kill me (I hope!) Anyway, it’s good that I’m getting another chance to go out to do some shopping – I don’t have any stocking fillers for himself yet, the problem being that although the wheelchair gives me mobility, it doesn’t give me access to a lot of shops! So for stocking fillers for himself,  I need a helper who isn’t him, to go in and get things I can’t get to, and to get things off out of reach shelves for me – in other words, one of my two favourite daughters. Lee lives the closest, so it’s usually her. So tomorrow, after my blood test, we’ll go up and meet her and her other half at The Glen, and the two men can amuse themselves whilst I borrow her for an hour or so. I don’t think it’ll take all that long – I know pretty much what I want and where I want to go – and I also know that one of the shops is extremely difficult to maneuver a wheelchair in, and the other has most of the stuff I want to look at on high shelves! I also want to get to Priceline – I noticed the sides of my feet this afternoon, and quite frankly, they’re a mess. I think I need some sort of pumice stone on a stick… or perhaps some really heavy duty wet and dry sandpaper, or whatever it’s called

After we get home, we have the fun job of wrapping everything – or rather he’ll wrap, I’ll sit and watch, and tear off the bits of sticky tape for him… Then I hope we’ll have one free day before the evening’s eggnog-ing and stocking hanging commences. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I think himself and I will be able to heave a great sigh of relief on Friday morning… It’s not been a real fun run up to Christmas this year…

Weigh-in this morning was a very happy early Christmas present for me 🙂  111.9kg! 🙂  j-u-s-t  past the Half Way marker of 112.0kg! I don’t expect it to stay there, of course – knowing my stupid body it’ll probably shoot back up to 112.4kg tomorrow morning – or something equally as tragic – but at least I know that I can get down under the 112.0kg mark!

So, tune in again tomorrow night – find out if I managed to get himself’s stocking fillers, and if I found my sandpaper/pumice on a stick thingy for my feet… and, of course, whether I went up…  or down… or stayed the same! (heaven forbid!) in the weight stakes… News at ten… 😉

A Red Velvet Trifle! 🙂 What can I say? 😀 My favourite youngest daughter “helped” her husband finish his… My favourite eldest daughter and her husband ate theirs too quickly for Kate to get a chance to steal help them with theirs… and I…. didn’t have any 🙂 Not sure about Julian… I think he just ate quickly and quietly 😉

It was a good day… and for the first time in over five years, thanks to Kate, we managed to get hold of “Motta” (brand) Panettone! That was the brand we always got when I was growing up, and in my not so humble opinion, they’re the best, and the only truly authentic Panettone. Probably because my Nonna liked them 🙂 It’s called “Italian Christmas Cake”, but it’s not really – that’s just what Australians have dubbed it.  it’s generally eaten around Christmas time, but, like a fruit cake, can be made and eaten at any time. And it’s not a “cake” – it’s made with yeast, has sultanas and candied peel in it, a very “open” or “holy” texture, and is really more of a sweet bread… It’s delicious just chopped into slices or chunks and gobbled, it’s delicious toasted, it’s even more delicious made into ye olde English “Bread and Butter” pudding – but for heaven’s sake, whatever you do, don’t butter it before eating it “plain”, or toasted!! Sacrilege! The only time you should butter Panettone is when you’re making it into a Bread and Butter pudding! The true tragedy though, is that now that we’ve finally managed to get our hands on Motta Panettone, I won’t be having a taste *cry* But I’ll be able to at least smell it, so that’s better than nothing, I guess…. But next year, watch out! 🙂 I’ll be in there, boots and all, at the next Big Double Birthday Bash! Which will probably be held at our very favourite Chinese restaurant, The East Empress in Glen Waverley (closed at the moment for renovations, unfortunately), and if we can get our hands on Motta Panettone next year, I’m having a whole one reserved, just for me! Only kidding, but you can bet your socks that I’ll be having some, not just sniffing it! 🙂

An “interesting discussion” (read: loud argument) was begun between my two favourite daughters (well, they are siblings – they’re supposed to argue, aren’t they? 😉 ) over the new “remake” of Annie, with a…. crikey! What’s the latest politically correct term this week?! I don’t know either… Alright, damn me for always saying the wrong thing – a “non white child” playing the part of Annie, and the wrong sort of dog as her pet. Kate thought it was just plain wrong; it wasn’t written about just any old orphan, it was written specifically about a little red headed girl… Lisa thought it was bringing “equality” to the theatre… I stayed out of it – I learnt very early on that even though I can still yell louder than she can (and whisper more menacingly than she can) you can’t even start to get an opposing point across when Lee decides to ummm… stand up for someone’s or something‘s rights, even though she’s just being blinded by good intentions. When it got to the yelling point, I had to step in (Julian was starting to get involved too, by this stage – Terry and Neale apparently seemed to think it was somewhat amusing…) and change the subject… which also started an “interesting discussion” – but peace was finally declared and the afternoon ended happily ever after 🙂

So, all in all, I didn’t get very much of anything done today – I will have to work on a couple of additional formats for my project – hopefully it’ll resize well. If not, I’ll just have to move things around a little (oh, the joy of working with layers!) But all that’s for Ron (er… later-ron!) You know what I want for Christmas!!! I want a keyboard that isn’t always offset by one key! I’m forever hitting “f” when I mean to hit “g”, or “s” instead of “d” – and repeat for every letter on the [insert rude word here] keyboard! I spend more time correcting typos than I do typing! All the keys are one key too far to the left for my hands – and I can’t touch type, either 😦 Aarrrgggh! (tears hair out in despair) (not really, but I feel like doing that, sometimes!) grrrr!

Weigh-in was better this morning – everyone must have had their fingers, toes, and ears crossed properly, for a change! 😉 I went down to 112.2kg – only two more points to half way! Ummm… I shouldn’t have said that, should I! I’ll be up again to 112.7kg tomorrow – me and my big mouth! Does mineral water contain calories? I had two glasses of mineral water today – but on the other hand, I didn’t have the amount of coffee or tea that I usually have, and that has milk in it (skim), so perhaps the mineral water will be O.K…. Oh, and I looked at Red Velvet Trifle (and it looked very nice, too!) Oh dear… now I’m worried about weigh-in tomorrow!

Stay tuned to see if I go up… or down… but I’ll probably just stay the same, knowing me *sigh* Will I ever reach that oh-so-elusive Half Way Point? Plus, of course, all the usual gossip and guff that abounds here, so… see you all tomorrow night! 🙂

Get organised. It’s not easy, trying to get organised, when just about everything is in flux… Still, it is what it is – I just can’t seem to get terribly enthusiastic about anything at the moment. Everything’s been sort of… knocked out of order… For instance, our cleaning lady came today, Saturday, when she usually comes on a Friday. Tomorrow is Sunday, and we’ve got the Big Double Birthday Bash – when we normally romp carefree and wild through Telara. All week, the two of us have been thinking we’re in the wrong day! I think it’s a combination of (a) being the end of the year, when just about everyone (well, everyone I know, anyway) feels tired, jaded, and just badly needing a holiday (we haven’t had a proper holiday for about 10 years!), and (b) Christmas has been getting more and more commercial every year, and the build up towards it has been starting earlier and earlier every year – by the time December comes along, I think most people just want to get it over and done with.

This morning I thought I’d get Lee’s copy of the project done… Unfortunately, she wants an “A” on it, instead of an “L”. Her given name is “Lisa Alexandra”, but she prefers to be called “Alex”, hence the “A” on the project; all her friends call her Alex, but we, her family, call her Lisa, or Lee, or Lily. An “L” would have been much easier to do with the font and style that were being used, but no, she wanted an “A”, and it wouldn’t fit properly, so I had to go through all my fonts (all 2000+ of them, again!) looking for an “A” that looked good, would work with the style, and would fit. I eventually found one (with that many fonts it would be hard not to!), and it’s O.K.… but not as good as the original… One good thing came out of all that work this morning though – we finally worked out how to wrap a pigeon! 🙂 Very ingenious, even if I do say so myself! 😉 Then as I said earlier, our cleaning lady turned up, and that was the end of work for me (she likes to chat!) Now the house is all nice and clean(ish) and tidy(ish), for it to be all messed up again tomorrow, at the B. D. B. B.! Everyone will be having Nandos chicken tenders, chips, Perinaise sauce, and a couple of salads… probably a glass champagne will be consumed each, plus a bottle of wine and/or beer… and there’s Red Velvet Trifle for a Birthday Cake. I’m having an Optifast Berry Crunch Bar, a glass of water, and a cup of coffee afterwards 🙂 Hey, look! I’m not complaining or feeling sorry for myself! 🙂 I’m quite content to see everyone enjoying their food – I totally and honestly don’t miss eating those things, this time around. This time next year will come, and by then I’ll be having those things again – in moderation, of course – so it’s absolutely no biggie to go without now. It’ll be the same this Christmas, and I’m happy to go along with it while I have to.

After lunch we decided to have a sort-of mini day (or should I say “afternoon”) in Telara, and I think that I might have mentioned in an earlier post that we’d entered the third and final new area, the Glacier… Now, remember way back when, when I said that I hated questing and fighting under water? Really, really hated it? Well, I’ve found something I hate even more! Questing and fighting in near zero visibility, in a blizzard! Arrrgggh! With snow blasting you from every which way, and everything shrouded in foggy white, it’s hard enough to see your cursor, let alone the things you’re supposed to be picking up or interacting with! I hope we have to go into a nice, deep cavern, or into a nicely roofed building, where de snow don’ blow and de wind don’ moan, and you can see your hand (and your cursor) in front of your face, soon! Ages ago, when we were playing WoW (World of Warcraft), Julian developed a bit of a reputation for falling off the edge of high places. It was called “doing a Demelza” (because Demelza was the name of the character he was playing) He still tends to do that quite a bit (although these days the sudden stop at the end of the long fall no longer kills you!), and this afternoon we had to go around fixing these broken… robotic monks? Not quite sure what they were – but they were all perched on top of very high cliffs, and what with jumping down to try to reach these whatever-they-weres, or over-jumping and sailing off the edge of these very high cliffs, we spent more time climbing (or bouncing) back up than we did in fixing the darned things! It was quite fun though… 🙂

Weigh-in this morning was another “yawn” – stuck on 112.4kg. I’m beginning to think that there’s no way in a blizzard that I’ll get to Half Way (112.0kg) by Christmas! 😦 Apparently not enough people crossed their fingers, eyes, and ears last night… C’mon, I know you can all do better! 😉

Anyway, tune in again tomorrow night – find out how the Great Double Birthday Bash went, whether or not I had a glass of champagne with the celebrators (I won’t!), and if I managed to budge my big fat backside off 112.4kg and down a notch or two! (but not up… please, please! Not back up!) Seeya then! 🙂

It’ll all be over, bar the shouting, the returns, and the endless, endless, summer sales. And you know what? Sometime next week, Hot Cross Buns and the first of the chocolate eggs will be available in all the supermarkets. Depressing, isn’t it, how the Christian religion has morphed into a commercial enterprise. Still and all, that’s not what I’m going to be lecturing you all about tonight (well I might, actually, if I run out of things to say about today! 😉 ) Julian is back home from his trip to Adelaide, and he’s marked his mother’s report card with a B+, so apparently she’s doing fairly well. She has Home Care services in every morning, and his sister Melissa will be back there tomorrow, so we shall “tread gently” for now and hope for a good outcome.

Getting up at a quarter past five this morning wasn’t fun though! 😦 still, it gave me the opportunity to finish off my project, at last! Yes, I finally arrived at the right combination of colours in the style I needed to finish off the final “flourishes”, and over all, I’m quite pleased with the result (especially as I really had no idea what I wanted to do with it when I started!) My favourite eldest daughter came over this morning, a little earlier than usual – she came by bus from Glen Waverley, rather than waiting for a lift from himself. She called me from Shoppingtown when she arrived, did a bit of shopping, and then trundled over. I was just finishing off the project when she arrived, and I have to say that she liked it so much that she’s commissioned another one, just like it, only with one different element 😉 It shall be forthcoming Lee, and should be ready for you on Sunday – I’ve left the template complete, so changing just one element will take less than 5 minutes.

Julian had managed to get hold of the latest episode of “Agents of Shield” the other night, so Lee and I went off to the lounge room pretty much as soon as we’d exchanged pleasantries, and watched it. Things are getting very interesting, although another good character was sadly killed off. Then we watched “Person of Interest” (4 episodes!) and it looks as though [fx: dramatic music] the War of the Machines [/fx: dramatic music] is about to commence! 🙂 There’s only two more episodes left before the end of the season, and I think Lee only has a few more from the following one, as all those shows are heading off – or rather, have headed off, into the almost compulsory end-of-year  “Silly Season”, with ancient re-runs the only offerings because of all the sport shows that some really weird people seem to like watching.

Mid way through the afternoon I got my favourite eldest daughter to do some present wrapping for me, but her back was almost as bad as mine today, so we did it together. Unfortunately the wrapping ended up a little wonky, but the presents are “disguised”, and that’s the main thing, isn’t it! 🙂 Now there are two presents under our tree, but as yet they don’t have gift tags attached to them… because I couldn’t find them (I know we have some, somewhere!) Never mind, I know who they’re for – I’ll attach the name tags when we get some new ones 🙂 I’m not really sure how it happened, but there don’t seem to be as many “bits and pieces” this year – the usual things like the packets of  “shortbread biscuits for Aunty Mavis”, and “boxes of chocolates for the Evans family” – we used to buy lots, but this year I have half a dozen boxes of shortbread biscuits, and I haven’t a clue who they’re supposed to be for! Himself took his mother’s Christmas present(s) over with him, unwrapped, and gave them to her early (tsk!), I think we’re organising some sort of Christmas Hamper for his sister, which really should have gone today, with him, but as it’s not organised yet, it couldn’t. Then there’s the stuff that Lee and Kate usually send over to them (that’ll be some of the biscuits and chocolate), and there’s an Aunt, and an old family friend that we send stuff to and which will have to be sent off Express on Monday, I suppose. And apart from the immediate family, there’s not much else to go under the tree this year…

Weigh-in this morning was much more satisfactory – down to 112.4kg, and this time I didn’t cheat, I did it properly. Mind you, it was 5.15am, so the scales may have been a little confused and still a bit muddle headed with sleep, the same as I was – but Julian and I both saw it, and, as usual, I weighed myself three times (just to make sure, you know?), so everyone, cross all your fingers, toes, and ears that I go down again tomorrow, and if I do, I’ll be a happy little Vegemite! 🙂

Stay tuned tomorrow to see if any more presents turn up under the Christmas Tree, and if they have name tags on them (otherwise I’ll get them confused with the ones that were put there today), and if I manage to get Lee’s project done for Sunday… but most importantly, whether my weight has gone down or not! Perhaps, with enough fingers, toes, and ears crossed on my behalf, I will! 😉

Up! 🙂 The wreath is on the door, and Julian is off to Adelaide – only for the day this time – tomorrow morning at sparrow’s, ummm… “yawn”? 😉 My favourite eldest daughter is coming over under her own steam to keep me company, make me cups of coffee, and watch “Agents of Shield” and “Person of Interest” with me, and himself touches down in Melbourne again at 7.00pm, so Flipper and I will get dinner 😉

We had the lift repairmen in today – we only have the one lift, and although it’s being fully dismantled, repaired, refurbished, and re-mantled again in February, it’s been very rattly and jerky for the last few days, so rather than wait for Christmas Day and a major lift outage, we called in the repair guys and it’s now faster, smoother, and quieter than it’s been for about five years! Apparently something went bung in one of the guide rollers under the lift… it only took them about 25 minutes to fix, so I hope they did it properly! I worked on my project today – mainly downloading brushes, gradients, patterns, styles, and textures that I might use with it – at the moment I’m having the most problems creating a suitable style for some of the elements in it. Oh, a style? A style is a way of applying a colour, bevel, effects, and/or texture to an image, all in one foul swoop 🙂 They’re very handy little beasties, but sometimes you can spend quite literally days, trying to get just the right look… and that’s exactly where I’m at with my project! My main problem today has been tiredness. All day, I’ve had trouble keeping my eyes open – I have no idea why, I slept well last night, and I feel perfectly well… it’s been most annoying!

We put the Christmas Tree up about mid-morning, and it’s looking very pretty indeed, with twinkling stars and pretty baubles! Flipper was asleep in her lounge room basket when we started, and was most intrigued when we took the tree out of its box! If it had been Artie, he would have had a field day, diving in one end of the long, narrow box, pelting along it, and out the other end, then reversing the process and scuttling, helter skelter down it the other way! Flipper, as I said, was most intrigued, but contented herself with peering down one end of the box, walking down the outside of it, and peering through the other end. She’s an old girl, and getting quite stiff, despite the injections of cartrophen that she gets for her arthritis, but she had fun 🙂 All that’s left to do now for Christmas is wrap the presents… I was going to give himself’s present(s) to my favourite eldest daughter to take home and wrap for me, and I was a little worried as to how she was going to get it home without himself to drive her… until it was pointed out to me that she didn’t have to take it home to wrap it where himself wouldn’t be able to see it – because he’s not going to be home tomorrow, is he, so she can do it in comfort, on the dining room table, over here, and it can go straight under the tree! (if I can find the wrapping paper, gift cards, and the sticky tape!) 🙂

I know I rabbited on a bit last night about presentation (of places), and the general attitude to people with weight problems, but it also occurred to me that there is a genuine lack of thought in food that is prepared, by the weight loss industry, for meal replacement products and supplements. Everything is sweet! Milkshakes come in chocolate, strawberry, and vanilla, and so do their “desserts”. Meal replacement bars come in chocolate, berry, and cappuccino, and probably other assorted sweet flavours… Can anyone spot the problem with this? No? If I were a cynical person (which I am!), I would say that this was a deliberate ploy by the weight loss industry to reinforce the desire for sweet foods… Shouldn’t they rather be attempting to steer the overweight person away from sweet foods (and when they’ve finished their weight loss course, probably towards more sugary foods) It’s a problem. As far as I’ve been able to find, and I have been looking, Optifast are about the only meal replacement program that offer soups as part of their products – only three, Tomato, Vegetable, and Chicken. I also went looking for both calorie-less or low calorie savory essences, or food additives, which could be used to make more savory alternatives in meal replacement foods… I didn’t find very many. Why? There seems to be a plethora of low calorie sweet additives, but only about one or two of the more savory kind. If the powers that be are truly interested in reducing the amount of obesity in the country, why isn’t more research being done?! Or is there too much money at stake? (see? I’m cynical…)

Weigh-in this morning. It was not good, and I have a horrible confession to make. I hopped on the scales, and they said I’d gone back up again to 113.0kg. They said this three times. So I cheated. I’ve found that what you weigh depends (a bit) on how you stand on the scales… So I weighed myself a fourth time, standing just a little differently. Bingo! 112.7kg, one down on yesterday, and back to what I was two days ago. I did it again twice more, with the same result. So while my graph shows a drop, I know, and now you know too, that I cheated. I’m not sorry, I’m human, but I do feel bad about it. In the end, I really only cheated myself – but I’ve probably disappointed some of you, and I am sorry for that 😦

Tune in again tomorrow night – find out all the latest in news, gossip, and gripes. See if I’m still cheating (hey! At least I was honest enough to tell you – I didn’t have to, you know! 😉 ) or if the scales have finally got it right 🙂 Catchya then! 🙂

Appearances. I don’t just mean how people look or dress, I’m talking more about buildings and their exterior and/or interior presentation. Julian and I went shopping today (again!), this time to get a slightly smaller (alright, a lot smaller) Christmas Tree. We (read: “I”) decided to go first to Myer, then Big W, Target, and finally, DJ’s. I was reminiscing about how I used to enjoy going shopping at Myer, many, many years ago, but didn’t particularly like DJ’s, because I thought of them as being a little bit too “snobbish”, yet these days, I avoid Myer, and usually make straight for DJ’s, even though it’s almost impossible to get served there. Why? Because Myer have begun to let themselves get very “down at heel”. The floors are overcrowded with racks of dubious quality goods; if you’re in a wheelchair, or have a shopping trolley, it’s very difficult to get around the display tables that they (and just about everyone else, it seems!) insist on placing in the middle of their fairly narrow aisles, the ambiance is gloomy and “feels” sort of dark. What’s more, for seven years, they haven’t bothered to re-number the floor listings in their lift, so that you’re not always sure which floor it is that you’ve arrived at. Generally speaking, the whole store has an air of dowdiness and tiredness. Compared to DJ’s, or even Target for that matter, Myer just doesn’t present well. So anyway, we did our shopping, bought the tree, etc., but instead of going home, we went off to a certain shop which deals in undergarments for the larger woman (*rolls eyes*) I haven’t been there for a long time – many years, in fact – I usually get whatever I have to from them online, but seeing as I’ve lost some weight, I thought that this time perhaps I’d better try the items on (I was shopping for a nightgown – my old winter caftan is almost falling off me, and it’s too hot to wear in summer, anyway) I have to say that when we got there I was a lot taken aback. They made Myer look like the crown jewels! Frankly, it was a pretty horrible place… shabby, grubby, messy, and extremely depressing. There were two other ladies there, one was trying on some undergarments – there wasn’t much privacy, I’m afraid, the other lady was just walking around. They both looked hot, tired, embarrassed and miserable. You know, it’s bad enough that fat people have such a hard time finding anything that fits them. It’s bad enough that those clothes are expensive, but not worth the materials used to make them. It’s bad enough that we have to put up with the sidelong glances, the looks that clearly say “If you didn’t eat so much, you wouldn’t be so gross!”, impatience if you’re clumsy or slow… All those things are bad enough on their own, but to have to shop in places like that totally crushes your sense of self worth – you begin to feel that perhaps that’s really all you do deserve! I don’t care if big people tell you that they’re proud of who they are, I don’t care if they tell you that they do love themselves, and that everything’s alright – because I think they’re lying. I do the same thing most of the time, and when I do, I’m lying. There are only two decent shops that cater to the larger figure, My Size, and Autograph. Unfortunately, a lot of big people can’t afford to shop at those places, My Size in particular. Even I, who can afford their clothes, find great difficulty in justifying buying an only reasonably nice top for over $100. Target and Kmart do stock some larger fittings, but not nearly enough… I’m losing weight, and it’s really not that hard – I’m not going hungry, I’m not really missing out on anything. Sure, it dull, boring, and monotonous – and it’s not forever. But it is fairly expensive, so please, don’t blame fat people for being fat. You have no idea what sort of lives they lead. You have no idea what sort of problems they face. And you really, really have no idea if their problem is a simple case of over-eating, or whether there’s a chemical imbalance which prevents them from ever feeling satisfied, let alone “full”. Could you cope, if you felt really hungry, all the time? Please think about that, next time you’re tempted to sneer, or “fat shame” another person!

Sorry about the rant! 🙂 It’s just that that place today, and those two miserable women, made me almost want to weep at the way society treats us “fatties”

Weigh-in this morning wasn’t quite so bad – things could have been better – but then again, they could have been worse! I went down to 112.8kg – not quite the 112.7kg that I was the day before yesterday, and I suppose I’ll do what I always do when I want to annoy myself (??), I’ll stay the same tomorrow, and probably the day after, before starting to go down again. I think I’ll call them “mini plateaus” 😉

Anyway, tune in tomorrow for more guff from me – I promise I’ll try not to get so carried away – we decorate the tree tomorrow after breakfast, so stand by for a blow by blow description! My project is coming along nicely, thank you very much, and you’ll even get to find out whether or not I’ve annoyed myself by fluffing around on 112.8kg again, or if I’ve gone down another couple of notches! 🙂 See you all on the flip side! 🙂

That I thought of last night that I wanted to get in Rift? I tried it out on Faeblight, and then thought.. “now I have to get her to level 15, and then play Shuffle The Characters” to get her across to Laethys… What to do? what to do?? In the end, I bought a few more Credits, and did a Race Chance in the Barbershop on the character who used to be known as Mossrose – I turned her from a High Elf into a Mathosian… Then I bought a Name Change scroll, crossed my fingers that I’d be able to get the name I wanted, and renamed her…. Roseinbloom! More expensive, but much quicker, cleaner, and far less stress 🙂 So, that’s what the name was… “Roseinbloom” – I thought of it last night while I was desperately looking around my desk for something “inspiring” to use as the nightly blog title. My eyes fell on the roses that Julian had given me on Sunday for our Anniversary, and it went like this: “roses”… “rose buds”… “rose blooms”… “roses blooming”… “rose in bloom” “hmmmm… Roseinbloom – wouldn’t that be a pretty name for a character! I wonder if I could get it… I must try!” And that, folks, is pretty much how all of my characters come into existence! I stumble across a name I really like, and the next thing you know, I just have to create a character with that name! Of course, I feel that I can’t possibly ditch the name, so the character has to remain… to be shunted around from shard to shard as I have to make room for new names… I mean characters…

So that’s what I did this morning – I also took Belezza up another couple of levels, then quit out of Rift and worked on my project for a while. It’s so sad that things have become so “nasty” on the internet that whenever I want to download Photoshop filters, or brushes, or styles, or whatever, I have to get himself to vet the download site first and make sure it’s clean – there are so many really nasty viruses out there, even on really “nice” sites, so it’s far better to be safe than sorry… Anyway, I downloaded a number of brushes, and much to my annoyance, the person who had made one of the brush sets I really wanted to use, had put bevelling on them! This might look fairly smart when used with a solid colour, but adding effects or styles just made them look lumpy and misshapen. Grrr… However, after a bit of trial and error, I found a work around for it. If you’re into graphics, this is how you do it. Make your brush picture on a new layer in a solid, dark colour (black is good!). Click the magic wand in the centre of the image, and you’ll get the familiar “marching ants” around the image, but just slightly outside the edge of the brush image. So go to your Select menu and go to “Modify”. Choose “contract” – and this is where the slightly fiddly bit comes in. You pretty much have to guess how many pixels you have to shrink your “marching ants”! Now, I’m a person who can tell you, within one pixel, where the centre of something is, or where the edge of a pattern is, or whatever (says she boastfully – but I can! Just ask Julian!), and even so, it took me two tries. I “guestimated” 4 pixels, but that wasn’t quite “tight” enough, so I adjusted it to 3 pixels, and it was a perfect fit to the brush image. OK, so now you have your bevelled brush image nicely selected. Still with the area selected, open up a new layer, and use your Paintbucket tool to fill the selection on the new layer with… well… black. Now you have your brush image as a flat, black area that you can style, colour, use a glass, chrome, or bevel filter on, without any of the “lumps” or “bumps” you got when you were trying to do it on the original pre-bevelled brush.

End of tonight’s lecture on graphics! 🙂

Ahhh… so you all heard that unearthly shrieking and wailing sound this morning… well, it wasn’t the wind… It was me. Weigh-in this morning was absolutely, totally devastating! I couldn’t believe it. I’m still not sure if I believe it even now… but I weighed myself three times, and each weigh-in was the same. I’d gone from a svelte-feeling 112.7kg… back up to an ugly, fat-feeling 113.0kg – the same as I weighed the day before yesterday. It was horrible! And this time I can’t even blame my medication, because I’m not taking it at the moment, and haven’t, for over a week! I don’t want to talk about it.

Tune in tomorrow night for more of the goings on at Casa Nostra (our house, as opposed to Cosa Nostra, [literally] “our business”) Hopefully today’s weigh-in was an “aberration”! See you then….

A lovely new name to try out in Rift! I wonder if anyone else has already got it… No, I won’t tell you what it is in case anyone reading this plays Rift too and tries to pinch it from me 🙂 I’ll tell you if I manage to get it, though 🙂 And all because I was trying to think of a title for tonight’s blog… I was looking at the roses that himself gave me yesterday, and… no! no! I’ll give the new name away if I continue down that path! I had a very nice day today – even more hair chopped off (I think I still have a little left… 😉 ) and it looks like last week, only better – so I am most pleased! 🙂

I can’t believe that it’s Christmas next week! We haven’t even got the tree up yet, but I’m informed by a reliable source that we’re to do that tomorrow. And then there’s the wrapping 😦 I hate wrapping presents – I used to do a good job, wrapping, but it absolutely wrecks my back, so by the time I’ve wrapped about two small presents, my back’s so sore I can’t concentrate properly anymore, and, well, the “gift neatness factor” suffers a great deal! I think I’ll do what I did last year – give himself’s presents to my favourite eldest daughter to take home and wrap for me, and bring them back on either Sunday, The Great Birthday Bash, or Christmas Eve, when they come over for eggnog, the traditional reading of “The Night Before Christmas”, and the Hanging of the Stockings (except they’re not “hung”, they’re propped up against the back of the couch, from which Flipper’s bedding will have been removed)

This afternoon I played Rift (so, what else do I ever do, hmmm?), and decided to take Belezza a bit further. I took one of the Experience enhancing Vials that all the girls were given, and…. I know it boosts your experience gain by 160%, but I’d forgotten just how quickly they level you up! Five (5!) levels in a short afternoon! I’m now level 23! Of course, it’s all “baby stuff” at the moment – quests I’ve done so often I can almost do them with my eyes closed, and one hand tied behind my back – except that having one hand tied behind my back tends to make jumping a little hard! There’s an Achievement you can get at Smith’s Haven, by jumping off the bridge into the water and not taking any damage (not that anyone takes any damage, jumping from high places, anymore!) It’s called “A Quick Escape”, and roughly equates to the Silverwood Achievement “So Much Fun I Did It Once”, where you jump off the bridge outside Sanctum, again, “without taking any damage”. Anyway, there I was in Smith’s Haven, and I’ve never been able to find the right place to jump from to get this Achievement – visibility ain’t too good, and it’s only a very narrow strip of water you have to jump into, so I thought I’d “just have a look over the side here” – but there was a wall in the way. I didn’t want to waste my jump and have to swim all the way back for nothing, so I tried to jump very carefully, so as not to go right over… and *splosh*, into the water I went, and must have fluked the right spot, because I (finally, after all these years, characters, and multiple tries!) got the Achievement! Yayyy! 🙂 I know where the spot I accidentally fell from is now – I don’t think I’ll ever forget it – so I can take all the others who missed out, so many times, and they can all get it (if I can be bothered, that is! 😉 ) And I really must get back to Dimension building, too – Cersie is having real problems storing all the Dimension stuff coming her way… mostly from Minion activities!

Weigh-in this morning was extra good! I did it! I did it! I’m into the 112kg zone at long last! I was down to 112.7kg! Almost half way! (half way is 112.0kg) So as you can imagine, I was pretty excited 🙂 Now, if I can go down another 3 (or 4) points tomorrow, to 112.4 (or .3), and then another 3 (or 4) points the day after that… I still might not be exactly half way, but I’ll be darn close! 🙂

So call by again tomorrow night – see if I’ve managed to get any closer to that magical, most elusive 112.0kg half way point, or if I’ve come to another stand-still. If I’ve gone back up, I expect you’ll have already heard my wail of disappointment; my howl of anguish… hopefully, it won’t come to that, but if you do hear a long, loud cry of despair, that’ll be what it is 🙂 So don’t miss out! That news, and lots of other waffle will await you here! See you then! 🙂

24 years ago… 🙂 At the time, people were astonished… horrified… amused… said things like “Oh, it won’t last!”, or made snide remarks about Miller* and her toy boy 🙂 But, I guess they were all wrong (and as anyone who knows me well will tell you, I’m the sort of person who gets great enjoyment out of proving people wrong! 😛 ) Yes, 24 years ago himself and I, my two daughters, my mother, and Julian’s parents, turned up at the Registry of Births, Deaths, and Marriages in Melbourne, and were married by a Mr. Dullard. We’d been living together for five years, so you couldn’t really say that it was a hasty, or a spur of the moment decision… but I was more terrified, this second time around, than I think I had ever been in my life – what on earth was I doing, marrying someone who was 20 years my junior?! I needn’t have worried – it was the best decision I think I ever made! 🙂 After all, who else would have put up with me for 24 years? It’s been a fun ride, and hopefully there’ll be many more years of me stubbornly refusing to pick up his dirty socks! 😉 He gave me roses, and I gave him a heart shaped stone… we never buy each other a big, “special” Anniversary present, just something little for the day itself, then we go out and get ourselves something nice, together.

Enough “mush”! 🙂

Despite it being our Anniversary, it was also a Sunday, so off we went, hand in hand, and singing gaily, into Telara. Well, after killing a second big, bad Boss (another Dragon – I think I died twice there – himself didn’t! *pout*), we figured, after looking at the map, that that was about it for that area! I’d hit level 64 – only one more level to go – himself was close to levelling, and the second of the three new areas, Drauheim, was completed. Time to move on to the third and last new area, The Tarken Glacier (level 64 – 65). We thought. No, the big blue dude had another nasty up his sleeve for us. This time we had to head off to kill not one, not two, but three, big, nasty Bosses! This was where I died big time! I think I died about 8 or 9 times… cost a Pope and an Emperor’s ransom in healing! 😦 We killed the first one with only major difficulties, we managed to bump off the second one with a great deal of trouble (we both died multiple times here!), but the third one? We didn’t have a clue how to handle him, so we went looking for strategies on the ‘Net… one of the videos showed a level 65 and his companion tackling him… the companion got killed very early in the piece, but apparently couldn’t get back into the area to assist her friend, so the poor guy had to try to solo this monster… Throwing loaves of bread at him weakened him (??? apparently), and there were sorts of pustules growing around the circle which healed him, I think (or was that the second Boss, and it was himself who used the pustules while I was recovering from getting killed, yet again?) Anyway, it was a very long fight – he was doing it solo – but he did manage to kill him in the end. Julian and I decided that there was no way a level 64 and a level 63 were going to be able to manage him, so deciding that discretion was the better part of valour, we left it until another day – when we’re both level 65!

As we had already started a couple of the Tarken Glacier quests, we went there and got a fair bit done, but it was starting to get late-ish (we usually finish up around 4.45pm or so), so we went back home to Draumheim, dusted down, and called it a day. I can’t help thinking, though, if that last Boss in Draumheim (a level 63 – 64 area), wot we couldn’t manage was so tough that a level 65 had trouble handling him, what can possibly await us in Tarken Glacier, a level 64 – 65 area? I shudder to think….

Weigh-in this morning went very well… down to 113.0kg! Hopefully, tomorrow I’ll be in the 112kg zone – wouldn’t that be good! In fact, wouldn’t it be really, really good if I could get into the 111kg zone by Christmas! Dream on, Winter, dream on! 🙂

So that was our 24th Anniversary day! Julian actually went and dug out our Marriage Certicate, cos neither of us could remember if it’d been 23 years, or 24 years, and it was December 14th, 1990 – so that makes it 24 years.. 🙂

Tune in again tomorrow night – find out if I relented and picked up his dirty socks (I won’t!), see if I sank below 113kg and into 112kg waters, or if I spent yet another day treading water at the same weight (again!) Who knows? Tomorrow night, all will be revealed… 😉

*Miller – back in those days I was known by the surname of “Miller” – don’t ask! It’d take too long to explain at this point in the blog! If you really want to know, ask, and all shall be revealed….

Already, and summer has only just begun! 😦 Oh well, looks like I’ll just have to stay at home and cower under the air conditioner… Once again this morning we had to go and do some shopping – yet more things that we forgot… it must be the heat! However, we gobbled through breakfast a lot more quickly than we normally do, and left early, before “The Great Christmas Shopping Race” started in the car parks. It was actually quite good, getting there so early… it hadn’t had too much of a chance to get hot, the Valet Car Park was almost empty, and the shops weren’t bursting at their seams yet. I even managed to maneuver my wheelchair into Cardiology, which is, as its name suggests, a Card and Gift Shop, with teeny-weeny, itsy-bitsy crowded aisles and lots of very pretty, very breakable things in very awkward to get around places. I felt like a very nervous bull cow in a china shop! 😉 Still, I got what I wanted in there, and Julian only had to pilot me around one corner of the aisles. I really need a rear view mirror on that contraption – the only trouble is, there’s nowhere to attach it to! We got what we really needed to get, but poor Julian had to walk over again this afternoon to get a few things that he was going to get this morning – until I decided to go too, and “cramped his style”, so to speak 😉 Hmmm, I wonder if it/they could have anything to do with our Anniversary tomorrow! 😉

I took Belezza through her Christmas Dailies when we got home, and discovered, to my enormous delight, that just about all my girls, on all shards, had been given a “gift” from Trion Games (the guys who run Rift) It’s a “Trove” (or “set”) of Boosts. Nearly all of them got 10 each – some (who have had these once before) only got seven, and some, who still had a few left over from last time, got none. They boost things like your Experience (from any source), Favor, Notoriety, Prestige, Skill, and Currency by 160% for two hours, and they last through death (so that if you use them, and you get killed almost straight away or something, you don’t lose the remaining 2 hours worth of “boost”, which is pretty cool!) Anyway, they all got them, including one who was supposed to be an experimental character, created by a friend to play over here, if he wants to 🙂 It took the rest of the afternoon just going around from shard to shard collecting and collating all of these! Oh dear… I just went and counted up how many characters I have altogether! There are…. *gulp* 58 of them! Oh my! *blush*

And now! The item you’ve all been waiting for! (Ta Daaa! *drum roll*)

Winter’s Famous Eggnog

6 egg yolks
3/4 cup of castor sugar
1 cup of brandy (250ml)
1 cup of dark rum (250ml)
2.5 cups of milk (625ml)
1 cup of thick cream (250ml)
6 egg whites, stiffly beaten
Freshly grated nutmeg to taste

Separate the eggs and beat the egg yolks until they are light. Gradually add the sugar and beat the mixture until thick and pale. Chill in the fridge for a few minutes. Slowly beat in the brandy and rum. Using a wire whisk beat in the milk and heavy (thick) cream, beating constantly. Using a clean bowl and whisk, beat the egg whites until they form stiff peaks, then fold gently into the eggnog mixture and sprinkle the surface with nutmeg to taste. Serves 12.

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So there it is. Enjoy! But remember – it IS very strong, it IS very rich, and it IS very probably lethal if you drink it and drive! so whatever you do, DON’T! Promise?!

Weigh in this morning made my teeth grind, and I’m afraid I said quite a few very naughty words… actually, I didn’t say them, I yelled them (I hope the neighbours didn’t hear me!) I was most displeased! And annoyed. Scratch that, make that furious! I stayed the same! Again! 113.4kg! I am not amused. Tomorrow’s weigh-in had better be better! (or else! *dark look at scales*)

So tune in again tomorrow night and see if the scales remain unscathed, and if I have moved up, or down the hopefully still intact scales (heaven forbid that I stay the same, again!) – oh, and any and all other interesting and exciting items that I deem to be of interest! 🙂