Hailol organised as a secondary shard… The good news is that the loot that the Minions bring in is either based on the level of the Minion “Director”, or the level of the Zone they’re operating in… although that doesn’t really make much sense, either – yes it does, I just went and had a look at the map – it must work on the level of the character who sends the Minions out! Why? Because Winterthyme has taken over the Minion operations. Winterthyme is level 36. Moonshade Highlands is for levels 35 to 39, and Droughtlands is for levels 35 to 40. All of the skins, herbs, timber, and ores that the Minions are bringing in are from Moonshade Highlands and Droughtlands. Ergo, Minion returns are based on the level of the person sending them out! Elementary, my dear readers! 🙂 What a pity that Winterthyme is w-a-y behind in her Butchering, Foraging, and Mining skills! Most of what’s coming in is sitting in the Guild Bank waiting for someone to come along and process them into something Auctionable! But I’ll get a round tuit as soon as possible 🙂 It’s quite amazing how much organisation goes into making a successful Guild… I’ve organised my Auctionator and my Guild Bank Overflow person – now I need to work out which characters are going to pick up the important skills; they’re going to need to pick up two apiece, roughly grouped in “sympathetic” bundles, e.g. Outfitter plus Armorsmithing, Runecrafting plus Artificing, Apothecary plus Weaponsmithing – with Dreamweaving a solo skill to be picked up when and if needed. So now I need to decide who’ll do what. I know they’re all basically “me”, but somehow each girl is a complete separate individual in her own right, with her own personality, her own likes and dislikes, and her own idiosyncrasies. Does that mean I have split personalities? I don’t know… What do you mean, you don’t know! Yes, you know there are eight of us, so don’t pretend otherwise! Riiiight! No, it’s not like that at all, truly! It’s just that each girl turns out… differently from the others. Anyway, I have to turn these girls into a working team, and start earning some platinum! We have two Guild Bank vaults and we’re in desperate need of another two. Vault #3 is going to cost us 1500 platinum – I haven’t dared look to see how much the 4th Vault is going to cost, but from a somewhat wincing memory, it’s 5000 platinum. So, to work, ladies! Hustle, hustle! 🙂 I should have plenty of time to work on them after the ninth of February – the only lift in the building will be out of commission from February 9th to February 25th (approximately), and little ol’ me is going to be stuck in here for the duration, with nothing to do but …. play Rift! (and design new headers for new blog Themes) Quel dommage! as the French say (what a pity!) 🙂

This afternoon himself went out and bought two new GeForce 970 video cards and two 650W power supplies – we got five years out of the old ones, but they weren’t handling the Rift graphics as well as they should, and these new ones should last until we upgrade our computers in about three years time. He swapped his over first, and everything went well and worked straight off – the difference in the graphic quality was amazing! So then he changed mine over… My monitor remained black. He switched cables… my monitor remained black. He swapped the new video card over with the one that he’d just put in his… my monitor remained black… He swapped out the power supply with his… my monitor remained black. We tried it with a spare monitor, just in case mine had inexplicably died – that monitor remained black, too! There was only one difference between his computer and mine (well, two, actually – I use Windowblinds, and he doesn’t) the BIOS. He’d upgraded his just after Christmas, but he hadn’t upgraded mine… In desperation, he put in my old video card – suddenly the screen worked again – and upgraded my BIOS, and tried the new video card again. Everything now worked as it should – but we did have a somewhat later than usual dinner… At the moment he’s busy cleaning up the mess that he made… but tomorrow, being Sunday, we’ll have a chance to see what these new cards can really do as we waltz our way through Telara, either with our new Defiant team, still working our way through the “baby” areas, or as the old team, hoping that that wretched Chronicle has reset itself so that we can finish off that sector and then maybe get to see a bit of the new Zone that’s opened with this latest patch.

Weigh-in this morning. So typical of my wretched body – from 105.5kg yesterday morning, to… wait for it! 105.9kg this morning! I admit, it was a lot to lose in one 24 hour period (106.0kg to 105.5kg) and I did expect to bounce back up – a bit! But this morning I’d put back almost everything I’d lost! I was not happy. I was quite angry, actually – if you heard a funny noise around 8 o’clock this morning, it wasn’t thunder, or an earthquake rumble – it was my teeth grinding in annoyance! How much do you want to bet me that I’ll stay the same tomorrow morning, and the day after! C’mon, two more days the same as this morning – any takers? I’ll bet you five dollars… *sigh* and I start on that “turn me into a camel and store water” medication tomorrow morning, too! I can’t win… Let me see… It’s the first of February tomorrow morning – 28 days in February (it’s not a leap year this year), plus 9 in March – make that 8 days… 36 days in total until my Birthday… Will I be able to get below 104.0kg by March 9th, my Birthday? I’ll bet you all ten dollars that I won’t… Any takers for that one, then? Yes? No? Indifferent? 🙂

So come back again tomorrow night – find out if the new video cards performed up to expectations, and whether we tried to complete the Chronicle again, or decided to give it a miss and take our new Defiant team out for a fun day in Freemarch.  It’s also the day I usually change my nail polish, but this sparkly, pearly red-ish one is still looking pretty good (I just love this Inglot “breathable” nail polish! It lasts so well!) I might leave it until Tuesday – I think I’ll wait and see what it looks like by tomorrow afternoon… but then, I’m also terribly anxious to try out my other new “breathable” nail polish, the gorgeous, lushious, Kingfisher-Peacock-Blue! I’ll let you know tomorrow night what I decided to do! 🙂 As for my weight, well… I’m still betting that I’ll stay the same tomorrow and the next day – I’ll let you know about that, too, unless I go up again, in which case I’ll probably be incapable of letting you know anything, because I’ll be reduced to a sodden, weeping puddle on the floor! So until then, bee good, and stay safe! ciao, all! 🙂

All day today, working my fingers to the bone, for a fairly old and neglected character on what was a “spare” shard! Well, I did! This morning after breakfast I couldn’t wait to get stuck into Rift, have a look at all the new features, both documented and undocumented 😉 and generally get a feel for the new patch. I had a feeling something might have been up when instead of logging in, I got an update for Glyph, the Rift program launcher. “Hullo”, thinks me, “I wonder what’s up?” Glyph updated itself just fine… but it wasn’t a matter of “what’s up”, it was a matter of “what’s not up”! Rift wasn’t up! Again! So I did what I always do when I want to play Rift and it isn’t available – I played Solitaire. Every two games, I’d check to see if Rift was up again… and eventually it was. I logged on and sorted out my Minions, then thought about playing with my newly moved Kelari Jadenfyre, who’s now on Greybriar. But I couldn’t help thinking about the spare water breathing necklace that a character on Wolfsbane had. How could I get it across to Greybriar? Well, I could shuffle the character across from Wolfsbane to Greybriar… but surely there was another way? Going from shard to shard, I came across a character on the shard Hailol that I decided I wanted to use, too, but she was too “young” to move. Of course I became typically side-tracked as I leveled her up – her name’s Satai, as in the Mimbari Ambassador Delen, from the television series “Babylon 5” – one of the best “space opera” series since the original Star Trek. “Satai” is an honorific reserved for members of the ruling Grey Council on Mimbar, and somehow or other, when I decided to try to call this character “Satai”, I was lucky enough to get it! Anyway, I started leveling her up, and got her to level 15. Time to move! Unfortunately a lot of other people were lucky enough to get that name too, on all the available shards I could move her to. It was a matter of move her, and change her name, or leave her where she was and forget about her (again), or… move everyone to her, and make Hailol the secondary shard. Until today, Hailol had been a quiet little backwater that I used as a transition shard for my numerous Character Shuffles between here and there. Today it became an energetic, frenetically efficient, bustling hive of scum and villainy – oh, sorry, wrong scenario! I meant a bustling hive of fun and activity! First, I tidied out all the other characters on the shard. Made sure all their ui’s and key locks were the same, that their hair was neatly brushed, and that they were all wearing clean socks. Next, I had to get Winterthyme on Wolfsbane organised for the move. She was the Guild Leader on Wolfsbane, and as such, she had the option of taking her Guild (and the Guild Bank) with her (but not the Guild Members) or, she could make someone else Guild Leader and renounce her membership. Well, if Hailol was to become the new secondary shard, it was going to need a Guild, and a Guild Bank, so she took it with her. *sigh* This meant going through every character on Wolfsbane in order to see what they could contribute to the cause… and guess what I found! 🙂 A second, higher level, water breathing necklace! Naturally Winterthyme commandeered this, and put it in her backpack, along with about 108 platinum, and everything that had been in the Guild Bank. Unfortunately there’s a limit to the amount of money you can take with you when you transfer between shards – the formula is 3 platinum per level of the character transferring. Winterthyme was only leavel 36, so she could only take 108 platinum… some of the money had to remain on Wolfsbane. The shortfall was made up by Julian moving one of his largely unused characters from Laethys, after “borrowing” a small sum of money from the Laethys Guild Bank. So there it was. Winterthyme brought her Guild, Guild Bank, and two water breathing necklaces to Hailol, Maereke (pronounced “Mereck”!) brought himself and 124 platinum. All the Hailol denizens were inducted into the Guild, the Guild Bank was set up neatly, and by six thirty this evening, it was all done. I have three Rogues on Hailol that I’ll probably never use again, so one will become the Auctionator, and one will become the Guild Bank Overflow Branch. I’ll most likely move the third one to another shard, and either create a new character to take her place, or import someone I like – maybe Jadenfyre, after seven days, because you can only move characters every seven days – yes, I think I’ll do that… I know it doesn’t sound like much, but believe me, it took all day, and was a hell of a lot of hard work! I’m toying with the idea of making either Satai or Winterthyme the recipient of the Minion’s largesse, but unless the rewards are scaled to the level of the Minion keepers, or the zone that the Minion keepers are in, it wouldn’t work, because I don’t have anyone of a high enough level to smelt the ore and tan the hides that they’re currently bringing in… I’ll look into it tomorrow…

Weigh-in this morning was a pleasant surprise, for once! I went down to 105.5kg, which was most gratifying! Hopefully tomorrow will see another drop (but I’m not going to hold my breath!) Actually, we might go off shopping tomorrow, before it starts getting hot again next weekend – my slacks really are too big for me around the waist, look! (discreetly raises her top about an inch, showing a gaping space between her midriff and the waistband of her slacks… quickly pulls top back down again) and they’re starting to feel as though they’re flapping around on the back of my thighs… Besides, the exercise of trying on pairs of slacks will probably help my weight go down a bit more! 😀

So there you go – call in again tomorrow night and see what’s been going on chez nous! Did we go shopping? Was it for clothes, or was it for the comfy sofa bed for the spare room? I fear that the impetus may be running out a little there… Julian “re-claimed” the Library/Office today, and it looks very different! There’s bench underneath where all those papers were! Unfortunately, our Cleaning Lady didn’t turn up today – nor did she call to say that she wouldn’t be able to make it. She’s a lovely lady, and she’s welcome to come and visit and have a chat any time, but I fear we’re going to have to find ourselves another, more reliable, and much more thorough cleaner, toot sweet, as the French say… I’ll look into the business with the Minions tomorrow, too, so I shall be able to fill you all in on that, as well as how the newly promoted shard of Hailol is progressing. Oh, and if you’re lucky, I’ll tell you how my weigh-in went! 😉 So – same time, same place, tomorrow night, for all the latest! Until then, bee good, and stay safe! ciao, all! 🙂

Rift 3.1 Storm at Sea is live! 🙂 and as the title says, I was out, for most of the day! 😦 It was a very big patch too, which took a while to download, and as yet I haven’t had much of a chance to actually play with it… *sigh* I suppose it’ll still be there tomorrow… The new Zone is called Tyrant’s Throne, and isn’t at all where we expected it to be – we expected it to be the mysterious darkened area, attached to the left hand side of Draumheim by a narrow isthmus – but apparently they’re saving that up for something else! No, the new Zone is a smallish island at about 5 o’clock, in the middle of the sea south of Goboro Reef, Draumheim, and Tarken Glacier. At time of writing, I know nothing about any quests, ships, or Porticulums to take us there – but then, I haven’t really had a chance to investigate. The patch has also introduced the changes I mentioned last night: Minions: the ability to “shuffle” Minion Adventures, however I think it’ll cost either Credits or “Aventurine” (the adventures that your Minions go on earn them/you “Aventurine”, a sort of “Minion Credit” thingy, the symbol for which looks like a tiny ram’s head on its side), and the ability to recharge your Minion’s stamina – but each Minion can only be recharged once every 24 hours. You can now have six Minions running Adventures at once, instead of only five, and six new Minions have been introduced (no, I don’t know who or what they are! 🙂 ) Dimensions: Dimensions have been given a bit of a lift – you can now give permission for a specific person, or persons, not on your account, to place, take, or move items around your Dimension – and you can also ban a specific person or persons from ever entering your Dimension! I don’t think I hate anyone enough to do that! 🙂 I briefly tried out the new free movement camera that’s supposed to make editing your Dimension easier, but either (a) I was holding my mouth the wrong way, (b) they left out the instruction sheet, or (c) it just plain doesn’t work (yet!)… Strike out those that don’t apply! Crafting: They’ve added a “Favourites” category to the Crafting Menu – if you make a recipe you use a lot (for instance, smelting ore into metal bars, or weaving cloth pieces into bolts of cloth) a favourite, it’ll automatically bring that recipe up when you right click on the appropriate Workstation (in other words, you won’t have to go looking for it)

Necromancers: There have been a lot of changes to the Necromancer build – far too many to go into here, and besides, I haven’t had a chance to really have a look at them all. I’ll let you know at a later date if there are any important changes to my favourite build (I use Warlock for DoTs, Necromancer for straight out nasty damage, and a pet to help you inflict said damage, and Dominator for backup) In all, I’m not surprised it was such a big patch – not only have they opened a new Zone, there’s heaps and heaps of new features and changes. The Kelari male I mentioned last night, Jadenfyre, reached level 15 and has been moved to Greybriar shard and welcomed into our Guild there – if I really like him enough I might consider moving him to Laethys, our main shard, but I haven’t made up my mind yet… I still have to organise a water breathing necklace for him too – damn! There’s a spare one on Wolfsbane – maybe I should have moved him there?! No, I’ll just have to shuffle a lot more characters, and bring it to him! *fume* Oh well… I’ll look into all of those things tomorrow morning…

Well, I only had a chance to download the big patch, and check my Minions this morning, because we had an early start – straight after breakfast we left to pick up my favourite eldest daughter and take her shopping for shoes – her Birthday present from us – and we spent nearly the entire morning in Athlete’s Foot, while she tried on pair after pair after pair of shoes… which were either… too tight.. or… too loose in the heel… or… too short… or… too long… and very frustrating for all of us, especially Lee. In the end, she settled for a pair of shoes, if they could get the right size in for her. They should arrive by the end of next week, so here’s hoping that they do, and that they fit her… properly! After that exhausting marathon, we went and had a cup of coffee at The Coffee Club – I had an iced coffee made with skinny milk, but it tasted suspiciously creamy, so I didn’t drink very much, just in case it wasn’t skinny milk… Then Julian went off to do some supermarket shopping, and Lee and I went off to get his Birthday present(s) (his Birthday is next week – February 4th) and a Birthday card… all of which was accomplished in record time, for once (it really helps when you know exactly what you want to get someone for their Birthday, and where to get it! 😉 ) We rendezvoused back at the car park, came home… and had another cup of coffee. It was about half past two before we remembered that I hadn’t had any lunch yet (they’d had theirs at The Coffee Club!), so I had a late Optifast Cappuccino Bar with my coffee, and we watched one episode of “Person of Interest”, and one episode of “Lost Girl” before the Podiatrist came. We had our feet done, and then it was time for Lee to leave… I scuttled (I tend to scuttle a little bit better now that I’ve lost some weight!) back here to the Den and managed to get a bit of Rifting done before dinner.

And that was basically my day… 🙂

Weigh-in this morning… Well, at least my body let me weigh in within the 105kg zone yesterday morning, so I suppose I should be thankful for small mercies, because this morning I was back to 106.0kg again. Typical! Listen body, I thought we had an agreement! You behave yourself, and I’ll buy you an ice cream!? What’s that you say? You never said that you agreed? Yes, you did! no i didn’t You did! didn’t… See what I mean? How am I supposed to deal with someone so recalcitrant!

Anyway, tune in again tomorrow night – I doubt that you’ll hear the end of that particular argument any time soon – well, not until next July or August, anyway 🙂 but you will hear lots of other interesting and amusing things, like…ummm… [pssst! can I have some think music with that, please?]… ummm… well, I don’t know yet, because those interesting and amusing things are still in the future – and besides, if I told you now, I’d have nothing left to tell you tomorrow night, would I?! 😉  So until then, bee good, and stay safe! ciao, all!

Been, and is almost gone. Rift: You’ll all be pleased to know that I finally collected the last of my Cuthberts this morning, while waiting nervously to go to The Appointment with Dr. Y. I also did a bit of questing with a male character wot I created the day before yesterday. It’s a bit of a long story, but basically I wanted to see what I could do with a Kelari male – I’d created (and de-created) a male of every race, and so far, only three of them are still standing. I’ve actually managed to not only get this one to level 14, but I also got him his “Merchant of Death” title, so maybe I’ll let him stick around for a bit 🙂 I’m contemplating moving him to a shard where we have a Guild in which I can put him, so how’s that for a surprise, eh?! Oh dear – I just tried to log into Rift, and it’s down… for “extended maintenance”! Eleven hours!!! It seems that a biggish sort of patch (!!), Rift 3.1 Storm at Sea is going live on January 28th – well, it’s the 28th here in Australia today, and in eleven hours it’ll be January 28th in the States as well – I guess that’s what it’s all about, so hang onto your hard drives folks, because it’ll probably be a big update! *sigh* there go my Dailies, and my two middle of the week Patron gifts – hope they’re still there when it comes back online! You know, as good as Rift is, there are still a few things that World of Warcraft has that Rift doesn’t, and I wish they’d hurry up and get with it! For instance, “Addons”. Small programs that run in conjunction with the game and make life easier for you, the player. One favourite that we relied on a lot was called “Altoholic”, where you were able to search the banks and bags of all your other characters, or “Alts”. You couldn’t interact with the items in someone else’s bank or bags, but at least you could see who had what – and when you’re an altoholic like me, it really is a most necessary tool – at the moment, if I’m looking for a particular item and can’t remember who has it, I have to log out of the character I’m currently playing and systematically go through each and every other character on that shard until I find what I’m looking for… and I have twelve characters to go through on most shards! It really sucks, big time! Another handy little Addon, whose name escapes me at the moment, was one that allowed you to add sort of “sticky notes” to the map, saying things like “This is where the stairs to the dungeon are!”, and things like that. *sigh* I really miss a lot of those “Addons”… The other thing that I miss is the World of Warcraft “Armory” – apparently it’s been reduced to an App for phones now – but with the Armory you could (and still can with the App) view not only all of your characters’ gear and stats, etc., or see a 3D model of them using the app’s built-in viewer, but you can also check out any other characters you might want to have a look at, as long as you know how to spell their names! C’mon Rift, how about it!  I dare you to create a similar “Armory” for Telara! 🙂 Unfortunately, nearly all the Rift “Addons” are written by enthusiastic young players with absolutely no imagination (I mean, like six million different Addons to check a Raid Boss’s stats!? How imaginative is that!? Give us something useful, for a change, something like the WoW Altoholic addon, Please!) and a lot of these writers don’t display much stick-to-it-ivity – in other words, it seems very seldom that a Rift Addon author sticks around to upgrade his or her program so that they keep on working when the game is upgraded – the sadly missed and much lamented Dimension Toolbox is a prime example…  Enough complaining for tonight – I shall keep you all updated on this new “Storm at Sea” patch – I think it’s the one where we’re going to get the ability to “fly” around our dimensions – well, not really “fly” fly, but move around (and up!) so that we can build second stories on our houses before we build the ground floor! 😉 I’m also told that we’re going to be able to “shuffle” Adventures for our Minions, instead of having to take “pot luck” with whatever comes up. Anyway, as they say in the classics, “News at 10 tomorrow night!” 😉

Now, my big afternoon. We got to The Appointment with Dr. Y., just as he was leaving – some sort of emergency or other, but he was back very quickly. He’s very pleased with my weight, but wants me to lose more (I want to lose more, too! I’m not done losing weight yet!) He says he can “live with” 90kg, but it would be better all round if I could go lower… remember the other night I muttered something about going lower than my current goal weight of 90kg? Like maybe 85kg… or 80kg.. maybe even 75kg? – he also mentioned 75 – 80kg today… and seeing that I’m not seeing him again for another six months, and seeing that I’m shedding approximately 4kg a month, I should, hopefully, be around 82kg when I see him next. He told us that if I can get down to 90kg (or lower), we’d start conferencing with Dr. D., another of my doctors when I was in hospital with the multiple PE’s (Pulmonary Embolisms, or blood clots) in my lungs. I did discuss this surgery briefly with Dr. D. while I was in hospital, and the theory goes something like this (only it’s much more complicated) Put me in hospital. Take me off the Warfarin, and put me on to another drug, which hopefully will also stop my blood from clotting in the wrong places. Get me stable on that, do the surgery, put me back on this second drug until I start healing properly, and then take me off that and put me back onto the Warfarin, then when I’m stable again on that, I can come home again. Sounds simple, but it’ll probably be a bit of a nightmare all round for the duration. Still, the end is finally in sight! 🙂 All of my results so far have been good – I had another blood test today and should have the results late next week, and hopefully they’ll be good too. I’m starting to feel quite excited, now that I can actually see the light at the end of the tunnel – I only hope it’s not an oncoming train!

Weigh-in this morning saw me clocking in at 105.9kg I weighed myself twice, just in case I was seeing things – so thank you, body, for at least getting me into the 105kg zone for today – I expect you’ll be back into the 106kg zone tomorrow, but listen, kiddo, we have six short months to come up with the goods! So help me to help you! No more stuffing around with simmering on the same weight for four days, and no more high rises in the weight results, OK?! If you behave yourself and get me down to 81kg or lower by July 21st, I’ll buy you an ice cream, how does that sound? 🙂 So, in the end, all’s well that ends well… (hopefully! 😉 )

So tune in again tomorrow night – don’t miss out on any of the interesting bits – my favourite eldest daughter will be over tomorrow because we’re off to buy her her Birthday present, shoes! (please don’t ever get me shoes, or slippers (some nice leather thongs might be alright though!) for my Birthday, I beg you! With tears in my voice! I hate shoes!) We might even stop in at Autograph and/or My Size for a smaller pair of slacks for me, if we have the time…  and I’m sure you’ll want to find out all the latest on the Rift front.. and whether my weight is still behaving itself and going down (it probably won’t!) Thingz will be happenin’ over here tomorrow, so until then, bee good, and stay safe! ciao, all! 🙂

Doesn’t ruin my newly painted nails! Well, if it does (says she, resignedly) I’ll just have to re-do the damaged ones tomorrow morning – I should just have time before The Appointment with Dr. Y, if there aren’t too many damaged ones and I’m extra quick getting ready… I hope I don’t have to though, I’m already starting to get nervous, and I’ll probably be too jittery to paint straight by tomorrow morning! I wish it was this time tomorrow night… Oh dear… This morning I mostly played Rift (so what else is new!) still picking up cute little Black Dire Riding Squirrels – I only have another to shards two go – the trouble is, I keep getting side-tracked! I found several characters that needed deleting (they hadn’t been given the gift pack of 10 Troves of experience potions, you see) and I found several characters who should have been deleted, but they had received the Troves – I don’t know, it just goes against the grain to throw such fantastic, useful, and, well, keep-worthy items away, so I didn’t delete them! At some stage, in the dim far distant future, I may rename them, pull them out of obscurity, and actually play with them. So a lot of my time this morning was spent picking them up, dusting them off, and getting them into “playable condition”, for “ron” (Later ron) After I finish writing this I was going to continue with this morning’s work, but then I realised that (a) I usually don’t finish writing this until close to eleven o’clock, and (b) the Dailies “turn over” (become available again) at eleven o’clock, and I usually just have enough time to pick up and execute my three lots of Dailies before bed time! So I guess picking up the rest of the Cuthberts (Cuthbert – that’s what I’ve suddenly decided to call my Black Dire Riding Squirrel! So from now on, he’ll be referred to as “Cuthbert”, OK?! It’s a hell of a lot easier than writing “Black Dire Riding Squirrel” all the time, anyway! 😉 ) – picking up the rest of the Cuthberts will have to wait until tomorrow – or the day after.

We have a small dilemma to solve. We live on the fifth floor of a reasonably nice apartment building, with beautiful views over Melbourne. There’s only the one lift (the apartment block isn’t very big), but it’s ageing, and badly in need of refurbishment. This will be happening on February 9th, and the lift will be out of action for almost three weeks. Lots of people are planning their holidays, or going to stay with relatives, during this time, but we have an ancient and somewhat decrepit cat (much like its adoptive  “mother”!), and have no relatives close by who can accommodate us. So we have two choices – move out, or stay in – for me, quite literally “stay in”! To move out for the duration, we have to find not only a “Pet Friendly” place, but also a me Friendly place, that’s not too far away for my favourite eldest daughter and others to visit once a week, has wheelchair access, secure parking, a decent sized shower recess, Foxtel, and high speed Broad Band! (we don’t want much, do we! 😉 ) If we stay here, others can come and go via the front stairs or the fire escape, but I’ll be stuck in the apartment. While I’d probably be able to make it down the stairs, it’s doubtful that I’d be able to get back up them again – by the time I got even a quarter of the way up, the lift would probably be fixed and I’d be stuck, quarter of the way up the stairs and unable to get to the lift! Well, I’m not quite that bad, but almost! (Winter goes glassy eyed: ‘Think of the weight I could lose, struggling up and down those stairs!’ then… ‘How would the ambulance people get to me when I have a heart attack, climbing up and down all those stairs!’, followed by a sensible ‘perhaps I’d better not…’ 🙂 ) I have, it must be said, been cooped up in the apartment for two or more weeks at a time, usually in winter when it’s too cold or wet for me to even want to go outside, and it didn’t hurt me – so no doubt I’d cope well enough this time too (and think of the money we’d save because I couldn’t go shopping! 😉 ) So anyway, that’s our dilemma – any sensible and polite suggestions as to how we should handle it?

Weigh-in this morning. I knew it, I knew it! Even before I got on the scales this morning, I knew it! And you know what?! This wretched body of mine had the gall to smirk, at me as I was getting on the scales! (I saw its reflection in the glass of the scales!) Yes, I went up! If I hadn’t been so angry, I would have cried! This week, of all weeks, it does this to me! From 106.3kg I went up to 106.4kg, and I’ll bet you any money you like, it’ll be worse tomorrow morning! Yes, I know it’s only one point up (darkly: but it’ll be more tomorrow, just wait and see!), but that’s not the point! (er…. ) I mean, that’s not what matters to me – anyway, point, shmoint – last week, next week, any week but this week… and I have (have!) to go up?! I’m spitting chips!

Tune in again this time tomorrow night to see how The Appointment went… and whether or not my nail polish survived all the typing, or whether I had to do repair work on them in the morning. I’ll tell you if we’ve come to any decisions on how we’re going to handle the Great Lift Outage, and whether I’ve finished picking up all my Cuthberts yet. You’ll also find out if I’m eyeing off any new blog Themes with a view to a heading 😉 plus anything else interesting that might have been happening chez nous. And, If I’m still on speaking terms with my body, I’ll let you know what my weight’s doing. So until then, bee good, and stay safe! ciao, all! 🙂

I’ve gone and changed the blog Theme – again! Although the header and the background colour are exactly the same code, I have no idea if they look the same to you. They look fine to me on Chrome, so if they don’t match on IE, Firefox, or Opera, please don’t tell me! I don’t want to know, OK?! That said, it was done a bit piecemeal… Julian and I had intended to spend most of the after-lunchtime day Rifting – unfortunately Josh wasn’t able to join us, but it’s probably just as well he didn’t… I logged on around noon-ish, and ran around the other shards, picking up more of my ever-so-cute Black Dire Riding Squirrels, and in the middle of a very short bit of side questing, I got unceremoniously tossed out of the game – right back to the desktop! Trying to get back in again was unhelpful – the server, it appeared, was down for the count. All the shards were offline, to the point where they even disappeared off the shard list! All in all, the game was unavailable for almost two hours… so what did I do in that almost two hours? Why, made the header that you see at the top of the page, of course! What else did you expect me to do? Play solitaire? 😉 Actually, I did (play solitaire) for a bit, but then I got bored and decided to do a little bit of “maintenance” on the blog. Do you like the result? It’s a little different – the text is in “book format” (according to the blurb on the Theme description), and although there was a section for adding “Widgets” (the calender, archive list and meta info, etc.) and I did add them, they appear to have… not appeared, for some reason. I don’t know – maybe they’ll mysteriously appear tomorrow morning, maybe they won’t. Will anyone miss them? Again, I don’t know – I certainly won’t miss them, but if you do, let me know, and I’ll see if I can sweet-talk them into making a reappearance.

Once Rift came back online, we decided to see if we could finish off the last little bit of the Tarken Glacier quest chain. We had one thing left to do… I have to admit that for once in my life I was completely and utterly confused! 😉 In the end I just Tab-targeted, and lashed out with everything I had. Seemed to work, because we accomplished our goal! 🙂 I absolutely hate, loath, and detest Tab-targetting, and it takes a lot to get me to use it – but sometimes it’s the only way to get things done. You see, when you hit the Tab key, it targets (or highlights) what it thinks is the next best dressed mob, or enemy. Unfortunately, it nearly always picks the wrong next best dressed mob, or enemy, which can leave you in a real mess when multiple mobs suddenly all notice you at once, and decide that you look softer and easier to smear into the ground than the other big monsters they’d been attacking. As I said, I hate using it, and it takes a lot to get me to use it – but it’s a damn sight easier to just hit the Tab key than it is to try to mouse click-target something in the middle of a full scale battle! Well, we killed off that Boss, and then we had to go around to various places to “collect our accolades”, which was OK, except that the last one invited us to a party, where we were supposed to drink a lot of ghastly grog stuff, get roaring drunk, and punch people out. Well, I hate to be a wet blanket, but… isn’t that what we’re trying to stamp out at the moment? In Victoria, anyway. I’m sorry, but I feel it really sends the wrong message out – we want young people not to go out and get so bloody blind drunk that they start indiscriminately punching people out, not imply that it’s a really fun thing that all “mammals” (as they refer to humans) should do to have a rip-roaring good time! If people want to get drunk, fine – do it in your own home. If people want to punch things, fine – buy a punching bag and set it up in your garage! Anyway, so we get past that really, really fun time (NOT!), and guess what? We’re politely asked to take part in a “Chronicle”, to end the area, and the game so far. Chronicles, according to Rift Wiki, are instanced areas designed for 1 or 2 players to complete. Most players are able to complete this type of instance on their own. This particular Chronicle was for one player, so although we’d gone through the whole lot as a team, here we are at the end, split up! Not. Happy. Jan! Well, himself went first, to see if I’d be able to cope on my own (if we decided I wasn’t, he would have played my character for me. Not cheating, just teamwork!) The first part wasn’t too hard – I would have been able to do it reasonably easily. The second part was a lot harder – there was a really tough, mean Boss who had a lot of extremely strong attacks – at one point he managed to kill Dramiele (Julian), and re-generate himself. On his second attempt, Julian killed him off, but the wretched instance is bugged! From the number of complaints about it in the forums, apparently it happens quite a lot – you kill the big Boss, and you’re immediately told that he’s planted a bomb in the middle of the area which you have to diffuse before everything and everyone is blown to hell in a handbasket… according to what we read, when it works properly, it’s not a tough job to diffuse it, but – you guessed it! We hit a bugged patch, and now Dramiele is stranded – can’t finish the Instance, can’t finish the Chronicle, can’t finish the segment. Which means that I can’t, either. We’ll keep trying it, every couple of days, to see if we can fluke an un-bugged version, but we may have to raise a ticket (call for Moderator help) to get it completed. So, our two level 65’s, stuck in a sort of a limbo, have retired from the field for now (besides, I have Dailies to do tomorrow!), and… we’ve started up a couple of Defiant newbies – Sylversong (me) and Saudades (himself) – both Mages, so no healing, unfortunately, but it should be fun – Julian hasn’t played a Defiant for a long time, so I’m sort of showing him where everything is 🙂

Weigh-in this morning was disheartening! I did so well yesterday! Today, I only went down 1 point, to 106.3kg 😦 And I was sooo hoping to be under 106kg by Wednesday. Ah well, that’s my wretched body for you… Hopefully I’ll go down a bit tomorrow, but I’ll most likely go up, or stay the same. S’not fair…

Anyway, tune in again tomorrow night to see if I’ve changed the blog Theme yet again, or if it’s the same – or if we’ve managed to get a clear shot at that horrible Chronicle and get the segment finished, or if we’re still languishing in no-man’s land. Find out, too, if my new sparkly-pearly red-like-my-hair streaks nail polish went on OK and if it looks any good, and see if my weight stayed the same or went up – because at this stage it’s not likely to have gone down! So until this time tomorrow night, bee good, and stay safe! ciao, all! 🙂

The first Birthday of the year… belatedly, unfortunately, but it’s still first off the rank for 2015. My favourite eldest daughter’s Birthday was on January 12th, however, she’d been busy each weekend after that, so we finally got to have her BBB (Big Birthday Bash) today. And a good time was had by all! 🙂 Lots of happy chatter, with champagne (and mineral water for me) Nando’s chicken tenders, chips, and a home made salad – a good bottle of red, a nice bottle of white (and more mineral water for me) Followed by a dessert of a kind of white chocolate mousse cake, seeded with dark choc chips and sponge cake layers. I had my Cappuccino Optifast Bar (and mineral water) I also had a sniff of the red wine, a Brown Brothers straight Merlot, 2012 vintage, called “18 Eighty Nine”. It was supposed to have “berry flavours, with hints of chocolate and spice”, and it sounded so delicious that I had to at least sniff it (and you could vaguely smell a whiff of chocolate!) though I wasn’t game to taste it. Not yet, anyway. Wait until I hit my goal weight and get myself stable on a maintenance diet, and then I’ll definitely try some! And have a mouthful of whatever cake’s on offer! Then we all had coffee, and a long discussion about TV series, and what was good and what wasn’t. Julian and I have come to the conclusion that there are too many good shows to watch, and not enough time to watch them all in! As you know, Lisa and I are watching “Person of Interest”, Marvel’s “Agents of Shield”, “Lost Girl”, which I told you about a couple of nights ago, “Glee”, and “Orphan Black” – a really excellent show with an unusual story line. Someone has created 8 (I think!) female clones, and they’re being killed off, one by one. Who is doing this, and why? What was/is their purpose? Why is only one of them fertile, and able to produce a child, when they were all genetically engineered to be sterile? The remaining clones are being hunted, and one is dying from a condition that seems to be, or may turn out to be congenital. The plot thickens… They’re all being played by the same actress, Tatiana Maslany, who’s doing a really fantastic job handling each individual character, and we’re both waiting eagerly for the show to re-start. Before that we watched “Fringe” – another excellent Sci-Fi show – look here for a better synopsis than I could write in this blog. I just found out today that Lisa has the whole five seasons, which we will put onto the file server so that Julian and I can see them from go to whoa. Another of the series we watch is “Castle”, starring Nathan Fillion (anyone remember him from the brilliant, if prematurely axed series “Firefly”? I do wish they hadn’t axed it when they did, it was shaping up to be a really good series!) Anyway, we have the whole series of that to watch, plus there’s our “Star Trek Enterprise”, Julian’s “Callan: the Colour Years, and quite a lot more – so you can see why I said ‘too many good shows to watch, and not enough time to watch them all in!’, before! The next Birthday coming up will be Julian’s, on February 4th, then me, on March 9th (see! I wasn’t born on the Ides of March, so there! 😛 ), then Terry, May 12th, then Neale, December 12th, and then my favourite youngest daughter, Kate, on December 12th… and then it starts all over again in January, with my favourite eldest daughter, Lisa 🙂

This morning before everyone arrived, I took my girls (Rift girls, that is, not my daughters!) through their Daily Grind, and sorted out my Minions. Unfortunately I didn’t have time to go shard hopping to pick up my latest acquisition that all my girls now have – A Black Dire Squirrel. It’s a cute as all get-out riding squirrel, and usually (usually!) these cute squirrel mounts are an extremely rarest of rare drop from a “Limited Edition: Regulos’ Trove” lockbox – the chances of actually getting one out of one of those lockboxes are so slim as to be almost non-existant! Well, when I logged in last night to sort out my Minions and to collect my Daily Patron’s Present, I noticed that they were selling these squirrels,  for a very limited time, from the Rift Shop – for 2,700 Credits. I just checked, and at time of writing, they’ll still be available for another 1 Day and 8 Hours, so get in quick or miss out! 😉 I, of course, promptly bought some more Credits and got myself one! I’ve always wanted a squirrel mount! 🙂 they’re sooo cute! And the beauty of it is, if you buy a mount from the Rift Shop, it counts for all your characters, so each and every one of my girls has one in their mail box! (*hugs self with delight*) 🙂 So that’s what I’ll be doing after writing this – going around, shard hopping, collecting all those cute little squirrels (well, they’re not “little”, they’re sit on-able and rideable, and when they’re idle, they stand up on their hind legs and look just sooo adorable! (anyone would think that I actually like squirrels! 😉 )

Weigh-in this morning was a pleasant surprise – I was, as usual, expecting the worst – that I’d have gone back up (that’ll probably happen tomorrow!), or that I’d stayed the same (and that’ll happen the day after I go up!) however, I’d gone down another 4 points, to 106.4kg! I suppose I can now say that I’m comfortably within the 106kg zone so that if I go up (as I probably will!), I’ll hopefully still be within the 106kg zone. Hopefully. Here’s hoping I go down again, though… (but I probably won’t 😦 )

So drop by again tomorrow night – find out how our Australia Day Holiday went – it’s also Julian’s brother and sister’s Birthdays, too – they’re not twins, there’s three years between them (and then three years between Julian and his sister! How’s that for planning! 😉 ) and honestly, I’m not sure if it’s a good or a bad thing – children having Birthdays so close to Christmas (like Kate and Lisa, for instance! 😉 ) Knowing us, we’ll probably spend most of the time tomorrow Rifting, either together or separately, or in a trio with Josh. I’m looking forward to finishing off Tarken Glacier – it’s been fun, but I don’t think I’ll be too devastated to leave the Plane of Water – it’s not been my favourite zone, actually… Which has been my favourite zone? I dunno… probably Brevane… Anyway, as I said, drop by tomorrow night, and find out how we spent Australia Day. You might even be lucky enough, if I’m not too frazzled and nervous about Wednesday, to find out when we plan on going shopping for some smaller slacks for me, the new entertainment unit, the sofa bed, the end tables (I lied about the Tiffany lamps, we have a couple of very nice lamps already in the room) and the rug! Oh, and I’ll probably even throw in a line or two about how my weigh-in went that morning! 😉 So until then, bee good, and stay safe! ciao, all! 🙂

Colours ain’t colours, after all! Well, the missing header was back this morning, but I decided to switch blog Themes, anyway – after all, I’d just about finished this header, and I thought… why not make use of it? So I did, and this is the result. However, the old Yellow Pages ad: “Not. Happy. Jan!” springs to mind. The background colour of the Theme, and the background colour of the header are exactly (exactly!) the same – #2B222C, or, in RGB parlance (RGB stands for Red Green Blue) 43, 34, 44. So why do the colours display differently depending on what browser you’re using? I use Chrome, and there is a very clear difference between the Theme background, and my header. If you look at the blog using IE, both the background and the header are identical colours. If I twiddle the colours to make them match in Chrome, they look different in IE, and different again in Opera – but we haven’t bothered to check it against Firefox, because the odds are that it will be different too. Apparently, just like oils, colours aren’t colours, either, Ollie! I might try finding another colour system that does display the header and the background properly, but it’s much more likely that I’ll swap Themes again before I do that – so if the colours don’t match on your browser, put up with it until I find a less recalcitrant Theme!

This morning I Rifted – took the girls through their Daily Grinds, and I’m pleased to say that the Artisan Marks they need are beginning to build up. Then I quested Crystalcat for a bit – she’s in a very unique position… She was “born” Bahmi (a Defiant race), and did all her beginner/baby quests in Freemarch, the Defiant starting area. When she was about level 18 or so, she decided to change Factions, and became a Guardian… and this is where her peculiarity lies. She’s done all her “baby” quests, and is now level 24 and should be progressing along the quests that will take her higher and into other areas… but according to the Silverwood Guardian quest givers, she hasn’t done any of the quests that a Guardian character would normally follow, so she’s having to battle it out with level 9 Goblins! Oh, the shame of it all! 🙂 She is getting some experiance points for these baby quests, but really! They hit me once, and die? Just because they hit me? I’m racing through these pointless quests, but it’s a real bore. Trion should flag quests of a similar experience level as “done” once a character has completed them, regardless of Faction, that way it wouldn’t matter if a character changed Faction, they’d be at the same quest experience level, whichever side they were on at the time. When you get to a certain level, and get enough “planarite”, you’re given a pretty “buckle” for your belt that’s capable of holding different enhancement properties, called “Planar Essences” – but Crystalcat now has two of them! One Defiant “buckle”, and one Guardian “buckle” – which one should she wear? It doesn’t really make any difference – they both perform the same function, and can carry exactly the same sorts of Planar Essences – so why did they bother to make one a Defiant one, and the other a Guardian one? So that one can have a pretty red stone in the middle, and the other a pretty blue one? Why not make them both green stones, and be done with it?! Sometimes I just don’t understand the way Game Developers minds work… (*shakes head sadly*) Anyway, Crystalcat romped gaily through Silverwood, slaying Goblins with a glare, until lunch time. After lunch, Jademoss and Dramiele took over and romped through Tarken Glacier, slaying, and being slain! And we’d been doing so well, too! You know, if we have one quarrel with Rift Game Developers, it’s that sometimes their quests are so lacking in information as to be almost unintelligible! “Go and kill 24 parasites” – what parasites? Where? What do they look like? It’s a damn big circle we have to look in – give us a hint, already! and “Lob a bit of broken whatever into a lump of rock and jam it up with fallen star thingies” – well, those weren’t the exact words, but roughly translated, that’s what it meant. Once again, we had no idea… Generally speaking, if it sparkles, you can interact with it. Out there, with all the snow flurries, sparkling frost, glowing eddies, and Elite Mobs at every turn, it’s very hard to tell what’s sparkling for you, and what’s just sparkling! AArrrgghhh! And then we got caught up in a Nightmare Rift and decided to join the Raid group which was battling it. Then he died, and then I died, and no sooner had we both resurrected than we both died again… and then we repeated the process. While we were busy resurrecting for the second time (or was it third, by then? I fergit – I just remember that it took over a platinum at the Healers, afterwards!) the Raid group managed to kill the last Nightmare Boss and close the Rift, and it was shortly after that that we called it a day and went back to town to dust down and process our loot. S’funny, you know – every time I think “This must be about the last quest out here – I wonder what we’ll do next?”, some damned quest giver or other rears their ugly head and hands us a new one! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning was… hopeful? I went down another two notches to 106.8kg – unfortunately, not far enough into the 106kg zone for me to feel “safe” there, yet! Still, it’s a promising start to the weekend – hopefully I can keep on going down – at least until next Wednesday, anyway. As you know, we have my favourite eldest daughter’s BBB (Big Birthday Bash) on tomorrow – much the same as we had for my favourite youngest daughter and Lisa’s husband, Neale, just before Christmas. Nando’s, salad and chips, and a cake – though I believe the cake isn’t a Red Velvet Trifle, which is what they had last time. And, of course, it’ll be a champagne flute of mineral water for me, and my usual Optifast Bar (Cappuccino, tomorrow! 🙂 ) When I get down to 90kg, I’ll think about going onto a maintenance diet, but I may decide to go down a bit more first – after all, I will put on weight when I start eating again, so I want to be low enough that I can afford to put on a couple of kilos without too much noticeable difference. Maybe I should aim to get down to 85kg first… or maybe 80kg… 75kg might be best though… I don’t think I want to go much lower than that…

Anyway, tune in again tomorrow night to find out how the BBB went, what sort the cake turned out to be (and if I tasted it! 😉 ) and what she got for her Birthday (we’re giving her a pair of shoes) Let me know what you think of the new layout of the blog, and how the colours look to you from your end, and I’ll tell you what my weight did – whether it went back into the 107kg zone, or if it stayed the same. Hopefully I’ll be able to report that it went down again, but I wouldn’t count on it – this is me we’re talking about, remember! So until then, bee good, and stay safe! ciao, all! 🙂

At time of writing, is missing its header! Don’t look at me, it was there this morning! Hopefully it’s just a glitch in the matrix – or maybe I subconsciously knew something this afternoon, when I went to see if there were any new blog Themes… I found one that I liked, and started working on a header… I’m not sure what’s happening tomorrow, but if I get a chance, and the header that belongs on this one isn’t back, I may try switching over – no promises though! 🙂

We’ve been very busy today – this morning I completed the three Daily Crafting runs, and got my much needed Artisan Marks – it’s a shame they’re “Soulbound” to each individual character, and that they can’t be shared or “donated” – but I can see the reasoning behind it. Ambitious (read: “greedy”) people might skill up several characters and set them all off collecting as many Artisan Marks, Master Craftsman Marks, and Grandmaster Craftsman Marks as possible, then give them all to one character, thereby gaining an advantage by being able to buy a whole lot of Epic recipes at once – and remember, you don’t have to be a high level character to use the high level recipes, and make high level and Epic items – which you’d then turn around and sell for quite a tidy profit (because you wouldn’t be able to use them yourself yet!) So anyway, I did my daily grind, reset my Minions (I forgot to do it last night! Naughty me!) gobbled a hasty and very early lunch, and then we were off…

I had a medical appointment around noon, and then we went on to Shoppingtown to drop a few things off at the Dry Cleaner and get a few other bits and pieces – I got my Jurlique hand lotion and hand wash (which smells yummy, by the way!), and we did a bit of grocery shopping… but we forgot to get the salad-y type vegetables and the Red Velvet Trifle dessert for the BBB (Big Birthday Bash) on Sunday, so himself will have to go out again tomorrow morning, which we had been hoping to avoid because we’d been sort of planning to have your Telara Sunday on Saturday – ah well, the best laid plans of mice and all that… Once we got home, and had a very welcome cup of coffee in our hot and sweaty little paws, I went looking to see if there were any new blog Themes (I usually check about once a week) – there were a couple that I wasn’t all that impressed with, and a couple of new-ish ones that I did like, so I chose one, and went off to work on a suitable header for it. This one was a bit harder than the other ones have been because I didn’t really have a very clear idea of what I wanted – it was a matter of try this… try that… nah… what about this… what if I did it like that… In the end I found a suitable font (well, it’s not really a font, so much as a dingbat… ) with which to decorate the sides of the header, and I’m still looking for a nice colour for the background, so it’s not quite finished yet, but it almost is… I wonder what happened to the header for this one, though! Maybe it’ll be back by the time I’ve finished this…

I’m just looking around my desk, and wondering at the plethora of sentimental ornamentation on it. There used to be only a few little things… and then, as we tidied up the spare room, and other neglected areas of the house, small objects came to light that we’d forgotten that we had. Well, we hadn’t exactly forgotten about them, we just… hadn’t missed them, if you know what I mean… Julian had said “Be ruthless!”, but how can you be ruthless with a tiny, cute, beanbag tiger? How can you be heartless and cold, faced with a black cat glove puppet that you’ve had since you were four years old? How can you throw out an absolutely gorgeous glass (I think it’s glass!) mottled to look like leopard skin, votive candle holder, with a matching lid featuring a prowling leopard? And the blue and white Chinese Ginger Jar?… I could go on. Small ornaments that the kids have given me over the years, clocks, crystals, mirrors, three calenders – all these things have gradually come to join me at my desk. Instead of having the acres of room that I started out with, I now have only a few small areas of clear desktop on which to put my cup of tea or coffee. But I’m not sorry for it – all of these things are memories, more than objects, and aren’t good memories treasures to hang onto? 🙂

Weigh-in this morning was much more hopeful – I shed three points and went down to 107.0kg  – probably due to all the fretting over my appointment with Dr. Y. next week! Good! That means I should shed another three kilos between now and the appointment! Perhaps I should worry more, generally… trouble is, I start worrying about something, and something else comes along and grabs my attention, and I forget to worry! tsk! Hopefully I’ll be down into the 106kg zone tomorrow – but I won’t hold my breath! Knowing me, I’m just as likely to go up again, or sit on 107.0kg for the next three weeks…

So call in again tomorrow night – see if my header is back, or if I’ve changed blog themes and finished the new header I was working on today, and everything will be new and different! 🙂 Find out if my weight has gone down – I actually did a bit of walking today, so it might have! Cross your fingers, toes and eyes… Isn’t it strange! I really don’t mind walking, but I can’t balace properly in shoes, and tend to stagger around like a drunk – take my shoes off, and I walk perfectly well, except for ending up bent over double because of my back. I need new shoes – the ones I have are not much longer for this world, I fear, so I’m both annoyed that I’m going to have to go off and find someone who can make me some shoes, and exhilarated and excited that once these shoes die, I’ll have an excuse to go barefooted, all the time! 🙂 So anyway, find out if my weight has been good to me and gone down, or whether it’s still teasing me by staying the same, or going up. Until then, bee good, and stay safe! ciao, all!

For my daily bread, so to speak – or more like for my daily Artisan Marks, really, but I think you know what I mean. I only had time to do all of Jademoss’s Daily manufacturing runs, and had just started assembling the items I was going to need to complete Wyntercat’s tasks, when my favourite eldest daughter arrived. We discussed a couple of stories she’d uploaded to a fan fiction site, and no, I’ll not give you the url for them because they’re, umm… shall we just say, “not family friendly”, and while I’m sure 99.5% of my readers are adults, who knows who else may stumble across the links? Better to be safe than sorry 🙂 It’s a shame really, because she writes very well, and tells a good story – but these were maybe just a little too risqué… I think writing runs in the family – my grandfather (my mother’s father), E. P. Marshell, wrote short stories for magazines, and his sister Agnes also wrote under the pseudonym of “Philip Marshell”. I’ve written an article or two, and a children’s bedtime story called “The White Cat” – many years ago. I think I stall have the magazine that they appeared in, though it’s probably still in storage. Anyway, then we had lunch, and repaired to the lounge room where we watched two episodes of “Person of Interest”, and three episodes of “Lost Girl”, which we’d started watching before I got all immersed in “Person of Interest”. We’re well into season 4 of “Person of Interest”, and things are starting to get really tense and exciting. We’re also starting to run out of episodes – they’re still on hiatus (whatever that’s supposed to mean!) and as we won’t be getting more episodes any time soon, we decided to watch a bit of something else as well, and ration our “Person of Interest” viewing so that we’re not left waiting too long for the next episodes. As we’d only seen the Pilot, and one other episode of “Lost Girl”, we decided to watch it from the beginning again. It’s more of the vampires, and werewolves, and witches, oh my! type of fantasy show, and is about this young woman who, when the story starts, doesn’t know what she is – all she knows is that sometimes she wakes up next to a dead boyfriend (it turns out later on that she’s a Succubus) While working behind the bar of an hotel, she accidentally rescues a young pick-pocket from the clutches of a man who tried to drug her in order to have his wicked way with her – of course the nasty man ends up dead, with a big smile on his face, but the investigating police officers sense something different about this death! Well, of course they would! Because one is a Werewolf, and the other is a Siren (as in the “singing sailors to their doom on the rocks” type of siren? I did mention that this was a real fantasy type of show, didn’t I? 🙂 ) Anyway, the scatty girl that Bo rescued thinks that all this supernatural stuff is w-a-y cool, and insists on joining the party. And that’s about as much as I can tell you about “Lost Girl” as we’ve only watched the first three episodes (including the Pilot) You probably think that I’m really weird, enjoying those types of shows, but hey! I have a reputation to maintain! People have thought I was weird since before I started going to kindergarten, and I never really fitted in at school…

Back to the mundane! 🙂 We have to be out tomorrow morning, but I hope to be getting a bit of shopping done in the afternoon – I need some more supplies from Jurlique (hand wash and hand cream), and I fear that we’re going to have to lash out for new slacks for me! I got three pairs of slacks about a month or so ago? and I was totally amazed that I fitted into a size 24 – I can’t even remember when I last fitted into a size 24! Well, the size 24 slacks are now falling off me, and it’s only the fact that my thighs aren’t yet quite as slim as they could be, that’s stopping them from falling down around my ankles. Look out size 22, here I come! I’m stunned that I’ve come down three whole dress/slacks sizes! Ha! And everyone said I wouldn’t be able to do it without weight loss surgery! Mind you, I still have another 17 kilos to go (and maybe a bit more after that too – we’ll see how I feel about it when I get down to 90kg, in about four – four and a half months) I do think that the rate at which I’m losing weight is slowing down though – which is most disappointing, but I’m quite happy on this diet, and quite prepared to stay on it for as long as it takes me to get to my goal weight.

Weigh-in this morning wasn’t too bad, I suppose, I went down one point… one measly point! to 107.3kg. NOT good enough! I’m sure I was going down faster a month ago – I must go back and look at my graphs… Hmmm… I’ve just been back to August 18th 2014, when I started the diet. Since then, I’ve dropped one kilo approximately every… 6 to 10 days? A lot in less than six days, but none took more than 10 days, and that’s not counting this time. So I guess I’m still losing weight at an “average” (don’t you just hate that word?!) rate – it just seems so much slower this time, for some reason… maybe it’s because I spent 4 days on the same weight – I dunno… I hit the 107kg zone on January 15th – it’s now January 22nd, a week ago… so I suppose I shouldn’t be complaining – yet! (but I’m going to… because I can! 😉 )

So anyway, call back in again tomorrow night, and find out all the latest… Did I go clothes shopping, or am I going to be typically lazy, and leave it for another couple of days? 🙂 Will I have sold any more of the left-over weapons on the Auction House, or will they all be shipped off to Crystalcat and Wyntercat for “disassemblage”? And what about my weight? Will I be pleased with tomorrow’s weigh-in for once, or will I still be ranting and raving about not losing weight quickly enough, and how it’s not fair! Find out the answers to these questions, and more, right here, at the same time, on the same bat(ty) blog! 🙂 Until then, bee good, and stay safe! ciao, all! 🙂