2015… Scary! 🙂 Well, it’s here now, and there’s nothing we can do about it except make the most of it – or do the best we can with it – whichever comes first. So, here we go! 🙂
We had quite a good day today – puddling around in the morning… [guilty look at the screen] I, ummm… I… I had a weighed out piece of Panettone for breakfast this morning. I don’t know why I feel guilty about it, I just do. It was weighed out so that I had only the amount I was allowed to have, under my reasonably strict guidelines, but I still feel guilty about it anyway. I’ll be back to my usual breakfast again tomorrow morning, but I’ll probably have Panettone again on Sunday (and feel guilty about it again too, no doubt!) But I have decided that this year is going to be the year of the “me“. I’m going to re-invent myself, change things around (like my hair colour *gulp* – do I really dare?!), change my name – it’s Winter now, please, and generally make a better and (obviously) slimmer version of myself. 🙂 That’s a promise, not a threat! 😉
Anyway, back to this morning. I Rifted, he “tinkered”, but we decided that we’d get a bit of joint Rifting in after lunch. We had quite a good bash – once again we started off in the middle of a blinding blizzard – himself died once, but I managed to survive intact throughout. We found two new Porticulums, which will make the rest of this sector a lot easier to access on Sunday. Looking at the map of the Tarken Glacier, it looks like we’ve cut a swathe almost diagonally through the middle of it, and we’re currently mapping and questing in the lower south eastern half – we still have the upper north western half to complete (that’s where the Monk we’re looking for is, Julian!) we should get to that area sometime Sunday, I think… I don’t know what we’re going to do when we finish this area and we hit level 65 – we may have to start off with a couple more new characters and do the whole thing all over again – or run Dungeons and Instances, the thought of which makes my blood run cold… You’ll find a far better explanation of what a “Dungeon” is than I could give you here – and to explain what an “Instance” is, look here. The reason I’m so terrified of running Dungeons and Instances is because I really don’t play very well with strangers – or rather, that’s what other players kept telling me on World of Warcraft (a very different game, though similar in many respects) Anyway, thanks to those people (and some of them were Guild mates, and people I knew!), I now have a phobia about playing in large groups. I’m fine with only another one or two people that I know, but I get severe fluster-lock playing with strangers. As Dungeons and Instances nearly always need a large group of players (called a “Raid Group”), I generally steer clear of them, because unless you have a large Guild that can field the diverse number of players* that you’ll need for a Raid, it means having to “Look for (a) Group” of players who need extra players to do the same Dungeon or Instance that you want to do. This means strangers, and I don’t play well with strangers – and we’ve come the full loop! 🙂 So it’s either grit my teeth and bear it, or start off from scratch with new characters… we’ve got about half a level before we ding 65, and we have about a third of the section left to work through… Interesting times beckon… 😉
So there you have it – our afternoon. Tomorrow promises to be extremely hot, so I shall, wisely, stay home and cower in front of the air conditioner – himself, unfortunately, has to go out shopping, as we’re running out of “stuff”. It’s annoying, really, ‘coz I wanted to go too – but I think I shall leave it for next week, when the forecast says it’ll be a bit cooler (but they’ll probably change that prediction half a dozen times before next Monday!)
Oh, in keeping with my “new me” program, and because it’s the 1st of January today, I had new calendars to put up – one of them is long and skinny and wouldn’t fit where last year’s not quite so long one went, so I’ve had to re-organise my entire desk top – it doesn’t look too bad, actually – now I just have to find something “ornamental” to hang where last year’s one went to fill up the hole… something small-ish and flat-ish… I’m sure I’ll find something, even if I have to go out and buy it! 😉
Weigh-in this morning was not too bad – starting off the year the way we mean to go on with, huh, body? Down to 109.9kg. I would have preferred it to have been a bit lower, as in a day or two I’ll start retaining fluid as though I were a camel, and my weight will try to make a break for outer space, and I only have 27 days left to lose as much weight as I possibly can (before my next appointment with Dr. Y.) 
So tune in again tomorrow night – find out if I’ve found something to fill up the hole on the wall, or if I’ve decided that it’s probably easier to go out and buy something… Oh! I just remembered! I was going to tell you what the fireworks last night looked like from our Den window, wasn’t I? Well, they were fabulous! They went on for quite a long time, too – 15? 20 minutes? We had a great view – there were not only the fireworks in the city, but all along the horizon, and a lot closer to home, too – far more than there have been in past years. We think some were from the Golf Club nearby, and they were pretty spectacular, too! This place is really excellent for watching things like the fireworks in the city! 🙂 Of course, I’ll also fill you in on whether the Panettone I ate this morning has played havoc with my weight or not, and whether or not my body is still behaving itself (my guess would be “probably not!”) 🙂 Seeyas then! 🙂
* for instance, you’d need a Healer (self explanatory!), a Tank (does damage with heavy close combat), a Rogue of some sort (sneaky-sneaky-stab-stab), a Hunter-type player capable of inflicting heavy dps (damage per second) from afar, and if possible, a Mage (usually Necromancer) who inflicts damage with DOTs (Damage Over Time spells)
My Word! 