Daily Treadmill, of manufacturing assorted items for delivery to various areas, in order to “earn” Artisan Marks, so that I can buy much needed crafting recipes. I also managed to get two Achievements – the first was for crafting an Epic item*, and the second one was for crafting 10 Epic items. You see, after I’d done Wyntercat’s Daily Treadmill, I fiddled around a bit with her costume… I didn’t really like what she’d been wearing, so I got her a new outfit… and then decided to change its colour. I’d bought a few special dyes before – they were a once off special to do with some sort of World Event. They were very expensive, so I couldn’t buy many… however you can buy the recipes to make them, and I’d bought three of four before I ran out of Artisan Marks. I needed extra Dark Olive and Olive dyes – both of which are Epic items – but I couldn’t find the recipes, so now that I’d earned myself a few more Artisan Marks, I settled for Dark Sepia and Sepia, which I immediately read and learnt. Looking in my recipe list for the new Sepia ones, lo and behold, I find that the reason I couldn’t find the Olive recipes was because I’d already bought and learnt them – I’d just never used them – so all was well that ended well, and I made my dyes. The first bottle produced earned me the “Creating an Epic item” Achievement, but each dye you make produces nine bottles of the stuff, so by the time I started on the second batch, I earned the second Achievement! I believe I’ll get the full Achievement “Now You’re Just Showing Off!” when I’ve created 50 Epic items, whether they’re the special dyes, clothes, bags, weapons, runes, or whatever – as long as they’re Epic quality. This morning himself worked on Body Corporate stuff for a bit, then got back into the spare room, which has been vacuumed, but not mopped. We’ve sorted out what furniture we’re keeping, and what’s going to good homes, and we’re about ready to go sofa bed, and the rest, shopping. We can’t go tomorrow, because my favourite eldest daughter is coming over, and we can’t go on Friday because we’re already committed to something else. Saturday we’ll be Rifting instead of Sunday, because Sunday will be said favourite eldest daughter’s BBB (Big Birthday Bash), and Monday is a Public Holiday – does anyone else get the feeling that the Powers That Be are trying to prevent us from completing the spare room?! Yeah? Thought so… Tuesday’s a possibility, but not a probability – I have my appointment with Dr. Y. on Wednesday, so on Tuesday I’ll probably be lying down in a darkened room taking laudanum, in an attempt to prevent me from having fits of the vapours! No, not really, but I will be quite jittery and nervy, none the less… Crikey, I’m nervous now, just thinking about it! However this time next week will come… eventually…

This afternoon we had a short Rift session – we missed last Sunday’s because of the spare room project, and as I said before, we won’t get a look in this weekend – however, next Monday is a distinct possibility, and it’s to be hoped that Josh will be able to join us in Telara, as well. It should be a lot of fun. We finished mapping the last little bit of the Tarken Glacier this afternoon, but we didn’t find anything spectacular, just a lot of Elites (extra hard to kill!), and ice… and snow flurries, which confuse the heck out of my poor little cursor – it gets itself lost amongst all the snowflakes, you see, and it gets very upset when it can’t find me. We’ve finished off the great, long jumping quest that got us so confused last time, and quite a few other quests besides, but I think we’ve almost reached the denouement – the final Big Boss rift. We’ll probably die, several times, at least – but death is fleeting in Telara, after all, and it’s really only the Guild Bank funds that will suffer from our demise, as we raid them to pay for our resurrections 🙂 ….And then? Well, we’ll probably start all over again… whether with older, more mature level 60 characters, who know the lie of the land and the terrible creatures that they’ll be facing, or fresh-faced, wide eyed little girls and boys, eager to go out adventuring in the great wide land that is Telara! On the other hand, we can take our cynical, hard-bitten, battle scarred current characters out Bounty hunting, or running Dungeons and Instances… Ahhh… decisions, decisions! Could we have some think music with that, please? 🙂

Weigh-in this morning went a little better than it has for the past four days (glares at scales under the desk) I went down four points, from 107.8 to 107.4kg, thank heavens! I was beginning to think I was never going to start going down again! So, at least this is a start! Remember, body, I have only six days left to get into, or below, the 106kg zone, so, get on with it, or else! I just might be tempted to get a knife and start carving slabs off!

Tune in again tomorrow night – what gems will we have watched on the television tomorrow – will my favourite eldest daughter have brought any more episodes of Person of Interest?, or Agents of Shield? I wish there’d been more episodes of Fringe, and I do wish that the Orphan Black crew would come back from their holidays – but whatever we watch, it’ll be good! 🙂 I’m sure you’re all as interested as I am to see if I’ve managed to sell any of the “practice” weapons that Crystalcat made during her great Crafting attempt – I managed to get all of them on the Auction House today (it took ages! There were so many of them!) and every ounce of gold and platinum that I make from the sale of those weapons will be going back into the Guild Bank coffers… Oh, and if I remember, I might even tell you what my weight did, too – whether it went up (bad), down (good!), or stayed the same (no! no! please!! not that!! *sob*) So until tomorrow night – bee good, and stay safe! ciao, all! 🙂

*Epic items are sort of like gold plated Rolls Royce items – you can tell they’re special by their beautiful neon magenta names, and by the neon magenta border around their little square icons. Only one other class of item is higher, and that’s Relic, which has a neon burnt orange name and icon border. Both Epic and Relic items are much sought after, and usually fetch better than very good prices on the Auction House!)

Day, today! Poor old Flipper had her visit to the Vet – she was “most put out!”, and yelled blue murder when Julian put her in her carry cage… She had her regular examination, including having her temperature taken. I don’t know, I think if anyone tried to shove a thermometer up my, ummm… well, you know where they take a cat’s temperature – surely I don’t have to spell it out! Yeah, if anyone tried to do that to me, I reckon they’d be bleeding out on the floor, and I’d be on my way to hide in Peru, or somewhere else, far, far, away! The she had her Cartrophen injection, which she doesn’t seem to mind too much – probably because she knows that she doesn’t feel so stiff and sore after she’s had it – and she had a couple of mats cut out of her fur. She’s a Norwegian Forest Cat with long fur, and as she’s become older and stiffer, it isn’t as easy for her to groom herself as well as she used to, and unfortunately, that means that she gets little mats here and there in her fur. Normally we snip them out ourselves, but when they’re in places that are hard to get to, or around the front of her neck where we might cut her if she struggled the wrong way (she hates being picked up and held!) we take her up to the Vet and get them to cut those ones out. Anyway, she had one on the inside of her thigh, and one on her backside, and it’s just as well that we got the Vet to do those ones, because she objected very strongly, and struggled a lot. As much as she hated the whole procedure, apart from a lot of indignant squawks, she settled down the minute she got home and out of her carry cage. Then we went off for my Warfarin blood test, and apparently I’m stable and still on the same dosage (2.5mg per night), and my INR (rate at which the blood clots – for someone like me, high is good, low is bad!) has gone up to 2.1, which is good, and about where it’s supposed to be if I don’t want to get another couple of lungfuls of blood clots! Next test is due on February 17th (I’d better write that in my diary before I forget! – Done!) After that, I went off to Inglot, as I said I would, and had a look at the colours they had in the “breathable” nail polishes. I came home with two of them. Unfortunately they don’t have names, only numbers, but one is a sort of pearlescent, slightly sparkly, red-ish colour which goes extremely well with the red streaks in my hair, and the other is the most gorgeous, fantabulous pearlescent, deep kingfisher/peacock blue! If they turn out as well, and wear as well, as the pretty purple one I’m currently wearing, I shall be very well pleased indeed! 🙂

Remember how I said yesterday that I needed to create a Weaponsmith in Rift, so that I’d be able to make shields and maces for Julian (and anyone else who wanted them, for that matter)? Well, I made a bit of a mistake this morning, and wasted the credits I spent for an extra Skill slot on the wrong girl! 😦 She could have done it, but I would have had to keep buying skill boosters to get her to level up quickly… so I sighed, forked out some more $$$, and bought another Skill slot, and this time gave it to someone who had a Trove of Experience Boosters – Crystalcat. I started this morning; by the time Flipper had come back from the Vet and we’d had a cup of coffee, I had her almost up to Grandmaster (second highest crafting skill level) – I gave her a short break while we were over the road, doing our bits and pieces, and continued again when we got home. She’s now a Savant – 450/450 Weaponsmith. So now, between Wyntercat and Crystalcat, there’s no weapon that I can’t make! If only the Augments weren’t so…so… insipid! Of course, I can buy other recipes, and some of them even look reasonably useful, but the two girls will have to do a lot of manufacturing runs (which I’m not really looking forward to!) to earn the Artisan Marks they’re going to need to purchase said recipes! Oh well, say la vee, as the French say 🙂 Now, having done all that work in Rift today, I’m left with all the junk weapons she had to make to earn her brownie points! I’ve disassembled half of them, but now the other half have to be Auctioned off. It’ll take forever to put them all up, and there are so many of them (grizzle, grizzle) 😦 But it has to be done, if we’re to refill the coffers of the Guild Bank – and we were starting to, too – but we’d just barely managed to get our noses over the 1000 platinum mark, and I had to “borrow” 400 platinum to finish that training today… However, I can happily say that I’ve now got girls up to the level of “Savant” in every single Artisan Skill! The Fishing and Survival skill set I’m not interested in – they’re mainly for people who like to run large (read: 20 person) raids, and need someone to provide booster food and “rest time” without having to go back to base camp, for the party. The Gathering skills, Foraging, Mining and Butchering, all get leveled up with the girls, as they go questing – you can’t go into higher level areas to pick herbs, mine ore, and collect animal hides, because even if you did manage not to get killed, you wouldn’t be able to pick them up. So, no more raids on the Guild Bank, I hope – not even to gear people up, because I can make all those sorts of things now!

So that was my day – as I said, it was quite an interesting one! 🙂 Except for…

Weigh-in this morning. That was not “interesting”, it was horrible! I stayed the same… 107.8kg… for the fourth day in a row!! I swear, if I stay the same again tomorrow, I won’t weigh myself for a whole month! (Well, I will, but I won’t want to! 😦 ) Why is this happening to me? Have I plateau’d out? Should I eat something fattening, just to break this wretched cycle? I’m really most distressed about it all 😦 Honestly, if I don’t move up or down (preferably down!) tomorrow, I’ll cry…

So tune in again tomorrow night and find out all the latest! Have Rift decided to introduce another Crafting skill? Will I need to raid the Guild Bank one more time in order to create another Savant Crafter? And what about my beautiful new nail polishes? Will I be able to resist the temptation to remove this pretty purple early, and try out one of the new ones? And if so, which one will it be? The luscious, fiery red, to match my hair? Or the sumptuous, opulent peacock blue, just because it looks so fabulous (in the bottle, anyway!)? What about my weight? Well, if you happen to hear a Banshee-like mournful wailing and sobbing noise, around 8.00am-ish, you’ll know that the weigh-in hasn’t gone well, and I’ve gone up… If, on the other hand, you hear an earth shattering “kaboom”, you’ll know that I stayed the same and have blown myself, and the stupid scales, to kingdom come… and If, on the third hand, you don’t hear anything at all, well… you’ll just have to wait for me to tell you, tomorrow night! 🙂 Until then, stay well – ciao, all! 🙂

My wonderful new Chrome Violet nail polish, by Estee Lauder… It didn’t even last the night! Last night when I went to bed, it was perfect! Smooth, shiny, absolutely gorgeous colour… When I got up this morning most of the polish was chipped and ragged – anyone would think I’d spent the night digging to China with my bare hands, or something! Which, I hasten to assure you, I wasn’t! Didn’t… er… I wasn’t there, nobody saw me do it, I was asleep! So it was with great sadness that I sat down this afternoon with the bottle of nail polish remover, and twice the number of cotton wool balls than I normally use when I’m removing nail polish. The damn stuff didn’t want to come off! Oh, it was perfectly happy to chip and flake off, but it stubbornly refused to budge from around the sides of my nails and my cuticles – what’s more, what did soak off into the cotton wool balls, also got underneath the tips of my nails, and decided that it liked its new home so much that I actually had to pour a little of the remover between the tip of my nail and my finger to get rid of it! Eventually I managed to get it mostly off, then I just scrubbed hard with the warm water, soap, and the nail brush. Once my hands were clean, dry, and somewhat recovered from this harsh treatment, I re-did my nails using the pretty purple Inglot “breathable” polish – it’s the only one, out of six different nail polishes that I’ve bought over the past few months, that’s lasted the full week, and still looked as good as the day I applied it, after a week! (blows raspberry at screen) So there, Mr. Revlon, and Mme. Lauder! I’m going back to Inglot! Apart from my disappointment with the extremely pretty Chrome Violet nail polish, I spent a very enjoyable morning getting my hair done and chatting with Josh – then it was back to my work on that “Gear Stats Comparison Chart” wot I was talking about last night (it’s so that I can scribble in values that I can check against possible replacement gear that I can make) I think I got all the values listed that I need – I’m just checking with himself – yes, he says I have all the values listed, but he’d also like to see Maces and Shields added to the weapons list. He quite often plays a Cleric, and they wear Chain Mail (which Jademoss can make!) and can use Shields and Maces. Well, I can make the Shields alright, but I’ll have to train someone else up in Weaponsmithing to get the Mace-making capabilities (or buy Jademoss an extra Skill slot… hmmmm… decisions, decisions… Then there really won’t be anything my girls can’t make! 🙂 ) However, I do foresee a great disturbance in the Guild Bank! As though a thousand pieces of platinum all cried out at once, and were silenced… (with apologies to George Lucas!) Well, so much for getting back into Dimensioning! It’ll have to wait until I become a Savant Weaponsmith (which isn’t that hard to do, really – you can do it in a day, with the skill enhancers… and enough platinum!)

I have my Warfarin blood test tomorrow morning – no big deal – I might even be able to pop into Inglot and Priceline, if I’m quick about it, because then Flipper (the fluffy cat) has an appointment with the Vet for her next cartrophen injection (which she has about every six weeks or so for her arthritis) and a full check up (she’s 20 years old, so she gets checked very regularly) She’s going to hate us 😦 She hates going to the Vet, and her language, when she sees the cat carry box, could just about turn the air blue! Still, she forgives us quickly enough once she gets home again, and she’ll be bringing home a nice, new bag of her favourite pussy biscuits (special “large” pieces of kibble, designed to make cats chew hard, to get the tartar off their teeth and exercise their gums – she loves them!) Hopefully, when we get home from all of that himself will be able to finally finish off his cleaning out of the spare room – he’s actually managed to get into the last corner! Then it’ll all have to be cleaned. All the books will have to come out of the bookcase, the bookcase will need to be dusted and polished, the books will all need to be dusted and put back, the floor and skirting boards dusted, vacuumed and mopped, and the picture frames and glass dusted and cleaned… Then, and only then, can we go shopping for the elusive comfy sofa bed and all the trappings of a nicely decorated and pleasant spare room 🙂

Weigh-in this morning… No, I don’t want to talk about it! Oh, I have to, don’t I. That’s the whole point of this blog, to track my weight loss progress. Unfortunately, this morning, there was no progress! I stayed the same – again! 107.8kg I’ve probably plateau’d out 😦 I’ve almost forgotten what going down is like…Woe is me (have I laid it on thickly enough yet? Could I please have a bucket of lime jelly and a trowel? Ta…) Oh well, let’s see what tomorrow brings…

Anyway, call back tomorrow night – maybe I’ll have bought some new nail polish from Inglot – that’ll be sure to cheer me up – and I can tell you if the spare room is habitable again or not, and if not, why not, and a progress report and estimated time of habitability! There’ll also be a report on Flipper’s health and well being, and also, if there is anything to report, my weight status – and this time, it had better be good, or I may have to resort to taking the sledge hammer to the scales – either that, or get them a new battery! (I’m sure the scales must be wrong! Three days at the same weight? Can’t possibly be right…the scales did waver down to 96.something kg before wafting back up to 107.8kg – yes, I’m sure they’re wrong…) I guess we’ll find out tomorrow, eh? Until then, bee good, and stay safe – ciao, all! 🙂

This turned out to be. We slept in, as we usually do on a Sunday (ahhh… typing is much more easier now that I’ve filed my nails down!) We slept in until 8.00am, as we usually do on a Sunday, and that was where the usual parted company from the reality. After breakfast, himself repaired to the spare room, and I… entered Telara, on my own. It felt quite eerie! Nah, not really, it was more like just an ordinary week day. Checked the auctions, checked my Minions, smelted the ore, cured the hides, did the banking – all the usual mundane housekeeping chores – you know, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Then it was a toss up as to whether I’d take one of my girls questing, or whether I’d start doing some serious Dimension building. The questing won, but next time I’ll be getting back in to Dimensions again – I’ve been far too long away from it, and I can’t remember when the next Dimension competition is due. There are some fairly cool prizes – special mounts, gear… new and unique Dimension keys and items. The first time I entered, two years ago, I got quite a few votes, but I was pretty much a Dimension novice back then – I’ve learned a lot since, and I think I might even stand a chance this year, depending on the specified theme (I didn’t bother entering last year – the theme was “Best Pool Party Venue”, and I’m not really big on parties, or party venues!) So I’d best get started, just in case. If I do enter, I hope you’ll all come along, have a look at my Dimension, and vote for me! But as I said – it depends on the competition theme… So anyway, I took Waterblaze up to Stonefield, and got her up to level 23… but I had other chores to do after lunch, so I left her there. I also decided to make up an “equipment sheet”. I was thinking of upgrading Waterblaze’s armor and gear, and really, why spend more Guild Bank money on stuff that Jademoss and Wyntercat can make for her, gratis? The trouble is, at the moment I have no way to compare her current clothing with what I could make – that is, would it be better than what she already has, or not? Usually, when you go to the Auction house looking for a weapon or gear, all you have to do is hover your mouse over the item for sale, and you’ll immediately get two comparison boxes, one showing the currently equipped item, and the other showing the item being considered. The box showing the item being considered will show you all the stats for that item – Armor (where applicable), Intelligence, Wisdom, etc. The box showing your equipped item will show you any improvements (in green) or deteriorations (in red) that will occur if you were to equip that item instead of the one you’re currently using. So, I thought, I could mock up a printable list showing all of the needed attributes, but leaving the actual values blank. That way, when I wanted to see what I could make, I’d just have to scribble in the current values, log into my Outfitter (Jademoss) and compare what my “needy” characted already had, with what Jademoss could make, and what I’d need to add to it in Augments and/or Runes to make it even better. Ditto with Wyntercat and the weapons she could provide. Once I got the list looking nice and neat (read: “in pretty text and colours”) I could print out half a dozen or so, and I’d have an instant guide to what I needed to make – all I’d have to do would be to scribble in (and believe me, my hand writing has deteriorated to an almost illegible scrawl these days!) the current stat values.

I had other “duties” after lunch – I folded and put away the washing. Then I started work on my nails… removing the old nail polish, filing and shaping, washing and scrubbing them… (note to self: see if I can find out why my nails are so dry that they’re actually on the point of splitting vertically, and what I can do to correct this problem) Then, in a state of great excitement, I settled myself down to try out my new Chrome Violet nail polish. I have to say, I’ve never used a nail polish quite like it! It’s not thick, exactly, it’s reasonably runny… but it dries terribly quickly. When you’re painting your nails, you usually dip the brush in the polish, drag off the excess against the inside of the neck of the bottle, apply one stroke down the middle of the nail, apply a second stroke down one side of your nail, next to, and just slightly overlapping the central one, and then repeat the process on the other side of the central one, re-dipping and dragging off the excess as needed. With this nail polish, I found that the first, central stroke was almost completely dry before I made the second stroke – what’s more, I found that the brush “ran out” of polish and really needed to be re-dipped half way through a stroke, and where the new full brush of polish joined up with where it had run out, well, it made a sort of a lumpy mess, and brush stroke marks, a lot like that lumpy old fashioned house paint around windows, that’s so thick that you can still see the brush streaks? I was quite trepidated, and was thinking that I might have to start over… But no! It dried almost instantly, and it smoothed out as it dried, so apart from where I managed to get it all over my cuticles (*rolls eyes* I’m getting very clumsy in my old age!) it looks great! Kudos to Estee Lauder for making a nail polish that dries before you get a chance to smudge it! 🙂 I was really pleased with it! And thank you too, to my favourite eldest daughter and her husband for giving it to me for Christmas, even though I had to buy it myself from Estee Lauder, and buy our new towels with the David Jones voucher that you game me for the nail polish! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning was boring (“stay the same = boring”, remember?) I stayed the same, at 107.8kg. Very tiresome! And annoying. Every time I stay the same, especially for more than just a day, I start to panic that I’ve plateau’d out, and that that’s it – I won’t lose any more weight (hey! It’s happened to me before, many, many years ago – I lost a lot of weight, and plateau’d out for about three months!)  Hopefully I’ll re-start my downwards march tomorrow… *sigh* Sometimes I think I’d rather go up a point or two (but no more than that!) rather than stay the same…

So there it is – my non-Sunday Sunday… Tune in again tomorrow night and find out if… my new nail polish lasted the night… if the spare room got finished so that we can go looking for comfy sofa beds and other assorted furniture for the “new spare room” – will my weight have gone up? down? or plateau’d out (heaven forbid!) These questions and more will be answered, right here, this time tomorrow night. I look forward to seeing you all back here then – ciao, all! 🙂

Turn out, quite as expected today! We’d planned – or rather, I’d planned on trotting around looking at entertainment units, and nice (read: “pretty”) storage boxes in which to store things under the bed… However, going through the wardrobe in here yesterday had a very strange effect on himself’s brain! He decided to start reclaiming the spare room, and to do that he first had to empty out, and clean, the rest of the computer cupboard (read: the wardrobe we cleared the clothes out of yesterday) That endeavour took most of the morning, and did I say yesterday that I’d never realised we had so many clothes? I did, didn’t I… and I also didn’t realise – and neither did he – just how many spare keyboards… monitors… computers and computer cases… that we had! Not to mention all the spare routers and other computerie bits and pieces, languishing there at the back of the top shelf. We could almost have opened up a second hand computer shop! He cleaned them up, took photos, and offered them, free to a good home, on his favourite forum, Overclockers. If anyone reading this blog is looking to adopt various computer bits and pieces, stick your hand up by leaving a comment, telling us what you’re looking to adopt, and your contact details, and we’ll get back to you. Anyway, by the time all of that had been done it was after lunch, and himself started getting stuck into the spare room. Things that we were going to keep got stored in big plastic bins with lids, and stacked into the newly cleaned and emptied computer cupboard; the things we weren’t going to keep got stored in big plastic rubbish bags and stacked by the front door. These will be carted off to the tip tomorrow. Tomorrow. Traditionally our day for romping gaily through Telara… This time, we’ve decided to have our Sunday on Tuesday instead, so that himself can keep on with the cleanup and not lose momentum. You know, I can see the spare room as in a vision… look! There’s actually a floor in there! Tiled, too, like the rest of the house. A chest of drawers stands against the wall to your left as you enter the room, and a large bookshelf full of those quaint old fashioned cardboard, leather, and paper objects called “books” stands against the window wall. Two beautiful Michael Parkes prints decorate the wall facing the door, and under the prints is a comfortable looking sofa bed with a fluffy throw rug and colourful scatter cushions. There are side tables at each end of the sofa, with Tiffany lamps, which make the room glow with a warm golden light in the evenings. A woven oval rug lies on the floor in the middle of the room, and a round, carved, Chinese coffee table completes the room…. As I said… a vision! A vision of what the room could look like, if we ever get a round tuit. Well, at least it’s almost half emptied out now, so hopefully the rest can be done tomorrow… then, as well as going out and looking for a new entertainment unit, and nice (read: “pretty”) storage boxes, we can also look for a comfy looking sofa bed, a fluffy throw rug, and some colourful scatter cushions! 🙂 Then all we’ll have to get is the oval rug, the side tables, and the Tiffany lamps. *sigh* I suppose it’ll get finished one day…

Whilst all of that was going on, I was blissfully unaware, leveling up Wyntercat’s Runecrafting and Artificing skills. I managed to get her Alchemy crafting up to maximum yesterday, and today I also got her Runecrafting (magical gems which can be added to your gear and armor to boost up your attributes, like Intelligence, Wisdom, Endurance, Strength, etc., sometimes by as much as +110!) up to maximum (450/450) I did her Artificing last – I’ve found it a bit disappointing, actually, because Artificing is the art of making magical weapons – Staves, bows, wands, totems, etc. You can also make “Augments” for those items, they’re a little bit like Runes (see above), but are incorporated into the actual fabric of the item you’re making… what I found so disappointing was that there are virtually no Augments that are of terribly much use to Mages. There are a few that would suite a Cleric, or a Rogue, but not much for Mages, and just about all my girls are Mages. As I said. Disappointing. So anyway, by the time I’d taken care of my Merry Minions, and then upped Wyntercat’s last two crafts, it was late(ish) afternoon, and too late to start any serious questing. Unfortunately, the poor old Guild bank isn’t looking too healthy. There was almost 5000 platinum in its coffers before Jademoss and Dramiel turned 65 and we upgraded all their gear, and then I maxed out Jademoss’s two crafts, and Wyntercat’s three… and now there’s only about 887 platinum left! It’s not as easy as it once was to make money on Rift – before Minions came on the scene, if you needed a lot of money fast, you went out and farmed whatever was doing well on the Auction House. Skins, herbs, metal – it all sold well, especially the higher level gatherables… Now, your Minions bring in most of the high level stuff that once you had to go out and farm to make money, and they bring in a lot of it! What’s more, everyone of a certain level has Minions, and all the Minions go on the same Adventures, and they all bring in the same items – more or less – and so what happens when there’s a glut?! The prices go down! and it’s not good for the Telaran economy! Oh, we’ll eventually make the money back – if we farm hard, and Jademoss and Wyntercat turn the fruits of our farming labours into sellable items – gear, weapons, whatever – maybe we can sell the finished product for a profit (except that everyone else will be doing the same thing – catch 22!)

Weigh-in this morning was “bad” (as in “up = bad”, “down = good”, “stay the same = boring”) I knew it had to happen – soon – and it did, this morning. I went up 1 point, from 107.7kg to 107.8kg. I’m not going to grizzle too much about it, I’ve been expecting it, and it was only one point, but if it does it again, let me just say that I’ll not be best pleased… Let’s see what happens tomorrow morning, before deciding on severe reactions… 😉

So call in again tomorrow night, and find out how I amused myself in Telara on my own, whilst himself amused himself cleaning out the spare room 😉 Hopefully by Wednesday we’ll be ready to go sofa bed shopping (I noticed that they has some quite nice ones in Hardly Normal when we were getting my new computer chair!) as well as all the other items on my nice, long shopping list! 🙂 I’ll let you know what my new Chrome Violet nail polish looks like on actual nails, and not just in the bottle, and fill you in on what my weight is doing… which will be going down again, hopefully! Anyway, bee good, and bee-have yourselves until tomorrow – ciao, all! 🙂

Nail polish from Estee Lauder arrived this morning! I’m soooo pleased! (blows raspberry, and thumbs nose at David Jones!) I can’t wait to try it out on Sunday (my day for re-doing my nails) I wonder if it’ll be any bluer, or purple-ish than the one I have on at the moment? That’s the one I grizzled about the other day, because the colour it appears to be in the bottle bears absolutely no resemblance to the colour that’s on my nails! Really weird! And speaking of weird, it’s been a bit of a weird day all round – Julian was in one of his “clean everything up and throw the lot out” moods, and I already knew that I was going to have to “supervise” the cleaning out of the hanging side of the wardrobe/computer cupboard in here, lest the lot did get thrown out, willy-nilly… As we’d already been through our respective wardrobes in the walk-through Dressing Area a couple of months ago, I had a reasonable idea of what to expect with the hanging space in this cupboard. I also knew that we’d transferred “a few” seldom worn garments from the overcrowded main wardrobe to this one, but – ye ghods and little fishes! I never realised we had so many clothes! * aghast * There were so many items that the portable clothes rack we were using to sort them on started collapsing under all the weight, and that was only half of the cupboard contents! The only things salvaged from the Charity Bins were my wedding skirt and my wedding top (what I wore when Julian and I got married) The elastic around the waist of the skirt is all perished, but apart from that, they’re both in good repair – and although I’ll never wear either of them again, we’re too sentimental to  throw them out. So those, with a couple of dozen assorted coathangers, are all that’s left in that once stuffed to the gunnels wardrobe! 🙂 (I have no idea what himself intends to use all that nice empty space for! More clothes, maybe? 😉 ) So then I asked him, explicitly, if I was going to be needed for anything else… He replied that no, I was now free to pursue my own interests… Bang! Straight on to Rift. Half an hour of happy and peaceful Rifting passed… and I was called to witness the towel “cull” in the linen cupboard off the hall. After a minor fit of very bad temper, and a few not-very-nice words, I logged out and stomped up to the hall to witness the culling of the towels and to preserve half a dozen for “minor domestic accidents”, like cleaning up cat messes, milk spills, and other small household dramas. The linen cupboard now has a lot more room in it, too! (what a surprise!) Deciding that discretion was probably the better part of valor, himself decided to take off and dispose of the old towels toot sweet (as the French say), allowing me to settle my somewhat ruffled feathers and get back to my Rifting… where I finally managed to get Waterblaze through the last of her Freemarch adventures and into Stonefield (the Defiant’s answer to Gloamwood) I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to do tomorrow, as I’d like to go looking for a new entertainment unit (and maybe some nice (read: “pretty”) storage boxes to in which to store things under the bed without looking sloppy and untidy) I’m not sure where we’ll go yet – there’s a long strip of Furniture shops along Whitehorse Road, near the corner of Springvale Road, and there are a few more further up towards Mitcham. It all depends on the weather though… Sunday, of course, is Telara Day, and we’ll be exploring the last vestiges of the Tarken Glacier – I reckon we have about another two to three weeks there, finishing the quests off and looking to see if we can find any “hooks” which may hold hints of what to expect in the next expansion. There are several closed off/magically walled areas that we can’t get into, and from the maps, they look quite large… Maybe they’re planning something for those areas? Oh, and there’s good news afoot for Dimensioners (like me) and Minion owners! Apparently the next big things coming are ‘invisible wings’, allowing people working on their Dimensions to “fly” up to a second story, rather than having to put in, or build, a temporary staircase! Now this, people IS very big news! And it could also herald the beginnings of flying mounts! Very exciting! Minions use up “stamina” on their adventures and usually have to rest up for about 24 hours to regenerate it – however, we’re told that we’re going to be able to buy (naturally!!) potions, to give them their stamina back more quickly… and we’re also going to be able to “shuffle” adventures. At the moment, a Minion adventure comes up, and you have to take it, whether you have a Minion with the required capabilities or not.. Obviously a few people have grizzled about this to the writers, and this “feature” is being… “modified”.

Weigh-in this morning was with a small amount of trepidation… I was sure I’d “rebound” from the almost half a kilo drop yesterday, back into the 108kg zone, but no, I went down another couple of points, to 107.7kg, which was excellent news! Music to my ears, you might say…And which only makes me chew my nails down to my first knuckles, cuz it means, fer sure, that I’m gunna go up again… Now, if I can get down to, say… 107.3kg? when I do go up (as I surely will!), I’ll (hopefully) only go up to, say, 107.8kg, or something. i.e. the lower I go down, the less high I’ll go when I do go up again… if that makes any sense…

Anyway, tune in again tomorrow night – find out if we managed to get a suitable entertainment unit, or if I found some nice (read: “pretty”) storage boxes for under the bed, and what colour they were, etc. There’s no more Panettone for breakfast, and as we still haven’t worked out approximately how many kilojoules there are in half a hot buttered Hot Cross Bun, breakfasts have of necessity gone back to Uncle Toby’s Vita Brits and half a banana (with 200ml of skin milk) It’s nice, but it does tend to get boring. I’ll fill you in on all the latest comings and goings chez nous, and whether my weight went up (bad!), down (good!), or stayed the same (boring!) – so seeyas tomorrow night – ciao all! 🙂

Purple and blue potpourri… ummm why candle holders full of purple and blue potpourri? Because the candles never sat straight in them, and because purple and blue are my favourite colours, and I couldn’t think of a suitable title for tonight’s blog! I have one of the candle holders in here, and there’s another in my bathroom. They’re a bit like giant, short stemmed wine glasses, and they do look lovely when the fat white candles you’re supposed to put in them sit flat against the bottom of the bowl part – but they look kinda weird, when the candles sit at a somewhat jaunty angle… I’ve been very busy with Rift all today – I only got things all finished and ready to roll tonight at about 5 o’clock. You see, I’ve been helping a friend learn how to play Rift. He’s never played an MMO before, so everything is very new and a bit strange – especially the jargon, short-cut expressions (for want of a better term!), and the acronyms, which one tends to take for granted when one has been playing these sorts of games for over ten years. I’ve come to realise that it’s almost as hard trying to explain them as it is to learn them – so it’s been a bit tough for both of us – and also for my poor, long suffering husband who has to put up with my – sometimes stupid, sometimes obscure, and often vaguely technical – questions, which I then have to turn around and translate into lay terms for our friend (and often failing rather badly, I fear!) when he’d much rather be watching a couple of Star Trek Enterprise episodes with me 🙂 Ah well, I was helping out last night, and using the “youngest” of my girls, Gingerlilly, and I kept thinking that I just didn’t like her. Dunno why – *shrug* – I just didn’t…This morning I resolved to do something about it, so I re-created her – slightly differently – on another shard, and began the task of getting her up to level 15 so that I could transfer her to Laethys, our “main” shard. This took a while, and I died twice attempting to get my (almost mandatory for me!) “Merchant of Death” title (well, I was only Level 11, and Reed Bellows, the person you have to kill to get the title, was Level 15, so it’s not really surprising that I got killed… twice…) But as I said, I re-created her somewhat differently, with a Warlock, Necromancer, Dominator build, and by the time I died the second time I must have hit Mr. Bellows with enough DoTs (Damage over Time spells) to knock him off, too, because when I resurrected I was told that I now had the right to the title “Merchant of Death”, so I must have killed him! (unless the game just felt sorry for me and decided to let me use it, for all the trouble dying that I’d had… but I doubt it…) Anyway, to level 15 I managed to get, the Shard Shuffle was performed, and the new and improved Gingerlilly arrived on Laethys, all ready to go this evening. The other Gingerlilly ended up on a very minor shard, reserved for characters that I don’t really want to kill off, but don’t really want to use, either, so… “No Gingerlillys were harmed in the making of the new and improved Gingerlilly!” Tonight’s training session went a lot better than last night’s, and while there is still a lot of ground to be covered (like learning how to open our inventory), I do think our friend is coming along very nicely – it’s only about the fourth or fifth time he’s played, and we’re not playing long sessions (yet, anyway! 😉 ) Oh, I almost forgot – remember I told you how Jademoss, my level 65 girl, maxed out in both Outfitting and Armorsmithing? Well today I got Wyntercat, my level 60 Alchemist, Runecrafter and Artificer up to 450/450 (i.e. maxed out!) in Alchemy. There is now no Potion, Tonic, or Explosive that she cannot make! (takes deep breath) Now comes Runecrafting, and then Artificing. I’ll probably do those tomorrow! 😉

Weigh-in this morning was a bit of a surprise! Well, alright then, a lot of a surprise! I went down, from 108.4kg to 107.9kg (it did say 107.8kg the first time – I rather think I preferred that, but…) I weighed myself twice more, and both times it said (wobble, wobble) 107.8…(for a split second, then, wobble, wobble again) 107.9kg!, so… I guess it was… borderline. Still, I’ll rebound tomorrow, I bet! Back to the 108kg zone. I hope not, but I probably will… Still, it’s obvious that the 107kg zone is within reach… 🙂

And that’s about all that’s happened here today – but something exciting is bound to happen tomorrow, so tune in again tomorrow night and find out what sort of adventures I’ve been up to, sitting here, tappity, tap-tapping away on my keyboard… Will my weight have gone up? Or like an old cracked LP record, become stuck in the 107.9kg track? Perhaps I might even have gone down! That would be wonderful (if a little over optimistic!) news… So G’night, seeyall here tomorrow night – ciao, all! 🙂

Of the desks here in the Den (read: computer room) was made this afternoon… Well, we can’t actually rearrange the desks themselves, as they were constructed as a “U” shaped piece of furniture, what I meant was that a lot of the items on top of the desks was rearranged (get it right, Winter!) And it was only a slight rearrangement because the only thing that was actually moved was the printer (and strictly speaking, it only went back to where it used to live before we moved it into the middle of the “U”) – but I moved a couple of things around on my corner/side of the desk, and added a few extra bits, so I guess the desk was, sort of, “rearranged”. (and besides, I needed a title for tonight’s blog!) 🙂

My favourite eldest daughter came over today to have her hair cut before she goes back to uni – in fact the three of us had our hair snipped today, so we’re all looking very well turned out indeed! 🙂 As usual, I Rifted a bit this morning, and after all the cutting and shaping, general chatter, and lunch, Lee and I retired to the lounge room to watch the first four episodes of Season 4 of “Person of Interest” Things are looking grim for our four “saviours” (heroes? heros?) – whatevers! “Samaritan”, the “bad” machine, is trying to track them down to kill them. “The Machine” (the good one) has arranged new identities and careers for them, and found them an old abandoned railway repair tunnel under the streets of New York as their new base of operations. But alas, they’ve lost nearly all their resources and assets, including Finch’s access to his somewhat “well endowed” bank accounts… and that’s as much as I’m going to tell you, in case you decide to watch it for yourselves… “Spoilers!” 😉 Actually, the show, which basically is about a machine which was built to watch everyone, all the time, in order to root out acts of terrorism, cuts a little close to the bone, considering the state that the world is in today; society is slowly but very surely drifting closer and closer to paranoia and the deprivation of civil liberties and individual freedoms. I hate to be a prophet of doom, but I don’t like seeing – not just our Government, but governments world wide – increasing personal restrictions in the name of “security against terrorism”. Ladies and Gentlemen, terrorism has been around since the year “dot” – increasing (so-called) “security” measures, which are only decreasing our personal freedoms, allowing torture in the hopes that they’ll discover some terrible plan, when it’s already been established that torture has never elicited any useful evidence or information pertaining to such activities – none of these measures will do anything at all to increase our safety or prevent a terrorist attack. None! The only thing they are doing is giving whichever Government is in power more control over our freedoms and liberties! We saw the first glimmerings of it way back in 1986, when “they” wanted to introduce the “Australia Card” – a card which would not only give the same information which our Passports and Driver’s Licences do, but also: our medical history. Our bank details. Our criminal record(s), if any. Our educational records… in short, things that should not be available to any one without our express consent. Australians back then, before the Bali Bombings and other world wide atrocities, were much more doughty (look it up!) than they are now. We fought tooth and nail against it, and we won. However, it seems we’ve been ear bashed, cajoled, and subtly threatened out of our courage by not only our own Government, but other world leaders as well. Threatened with vile acts of terrorism, threatened with cyber attacks which could undermine the world’s economy (and here was silly me, thinking that the greed of the big banking corporations was doing a pretty damn good job of that anyway!) Yes folks, we’ve let them bend our ears, and we’ve meekly bowed our necks and allowed these things to happen. Pull your collective heads out of the sand, people! These things are going to happen, with or without these so-called “safety”  and “security” measures! The only way to stop them is to stop pussy-footing around, stop allowing extremists of any and all sorts (don’t forget what the Christians did to the Muslims during the Crusades!) to hold you to ransom! Don’t let them get away with murder! Stop them, by “any means necessary” (and I most certainly do mean “any means necessary”!) Don’t accept excuses, don’t try appeasement measures, don’t rely on sanctions (all you do is hurt the innocent) – for heaven’s sake, if we have to, we should empty out all our gaols, world wide, and stuff them full of the extremists (of all religions), who can’t accept the words “I don’t believe”, and keep them there for life!

OK, nightly rant over 🙂

Weigh-in this morning was… acceptable 😉 I went down to 108.4kg – 2 points down, which is good, so keep it up, body! (or else!) 🙂 I had my last piece of Panettone for breakfast this morning – no more now until next Christmas (*sniffle*) I was telling my favourite eldest daughter this, and with a big happy smile, she said “Guess what we had for breakfast this morning!” “Hot Cross Buns!” I replied promptly… and sadly, I was right. Hmmm… I wonder if it’s possible to work out how many kilojoules are in your average Hot Cross Bun, plus butter, so that I can have a “breakfast’s worth” (1001kj) this Easter?! When is Easter this year, anyway? I might have reached my goal weight by then… (but at this rate, I doubt it!) 🙂

Tune in again this time tomorrow night for more interesting little snippets from moi – I promise, no more ranting and dire predictions for at least another month! (says she, typing with her fingers crossed… 😉 ) Find out if we managed to work out the kilojoules in half a buttered piece of Hot Cross Bun, and if eating the last piece of Panettone made any difference to my weight. Hopefully I’ll go down again tomorrow, but you’ll never, never know, if you don’t make a show – right here, tomorrow night! Seeyas on the flip side! ciao, all! 🙂

Savant Armorsmith! In Rift, that is, not in real life! 🙂 Yes, I went and further raided the Guild Bank, and leveled my Armorsmithing up to its maximum – 450/450! I also got all the Artisan and Craftsman marks I needed to buy the Empyrean bag recipe, which I have learnt, so now I can make 24 slot Lanzan bags, and the 28 slot Empyrean bags! 🙂 And now the serious farming work begins, unfortunately! We’ll have to do a fair bit of it too – to buy the mats to make the bigger bags would cost an Emperor and a Pope’s ransom 😦 (that’s probably why they sell for so much on the Auction House! And here was me thinking that the people selling them were just plain greedy! *rolls eyes*) Luckily, himself doesn’t seem to mind farming… I go out (as I did this afternoon, to mine Karthite ore – I would have bought it in the Auction House, but… I bought the last 17 pieces, and that was all there was, so much against my will and my inclination, I had to go out farming, or not complete my Armorsmithing, which I really wanted to do) I go out, and I’m galloping along, trying to locate the whatever-it-is that I’m after, and fighting off mobs that seek to hinder my progress, find about half a dozen of the whatever-it-is, and feel as if I’ve been out there for at least a week. I get tired, I’m bored stupid, and I seem to spend more time fighting mobs than finding the whatever-it-is’s. Anyway, I didn’t really need too much more Karthite, and all ended happily ever after. All that took until well after lunch, because the powers that be at Rift were having terrible lag problems (they seem to have been having a few problems in that area lately – I wonder why?) Today they were a lot worse than usual – I got turfed out (of the game) three times, and got lagged out another few times (“Lagged out”: a highly technical term meaning that the game seems to freeze to the point where you can’t do anything at all – can’t pick up loot, and can’t interact with anything. If it gets really, really bad, you get “turfed out” – thrown out of the game with an error message. You can usually log straight back in again, but if it’s really, really, really bad, you might get thrown right back to your desktop! (but that hardly ever happens! 😉 )) So I spent a fair bit of time this morning playing Solitaire, and waiting for the people at Rift to get their act back together…

Our new television was delivered this morning, and I do have to say that it looks a little… weird? sitting on our old entertainment unit… it’s too small for it (the unit is too small, not the television!), but it’ll have to do until we can get a new one. It’s a bit too high for the new television, too… and there’s practically no room to put anything else on it at all – there’s only about six or seven inches of room on each side of the television Oh well, as I keep saying about this diet of mine, it’s not forever, it’s only until we get ourselves a longer, lower entertainment unit! 🙂 But it is a very nice television – very smart, too! It does everything except do the dishes – well, almost, anyway! It can natively play iView and YouTube, it’s a DLNA renderer and client (whatever that is – Julian is dictating this, so blame him if you don’t understand any of it!) so it can play video and music directly from our file server, and can also act as a “sink” or renderer via UPNP/DLNA and play video and music from Tablets (not the medicinal sort!) It’s also a PVR using any USB hard drive (and memory stick) – as I said, it’s a clever little 65 inch television! 🙂 Hey! Don’t look at me like that! All I did was ask himself what it did, and I just wrote down what he said – it’s not my fault if you don’t understand 99% of that! (I don’t either! 😉 )

This afternoon I did my nails… They do look quite nice, but I can’t for the life of me work out how a nail polish that looks like a mauv-ish blue in the bottle can end up looking like a pale, pearly, pink-ish colour, with barely the teeniest hint of a “perhaps it could be blue-ish?” tint in it, when it’s on your nails! ‘Nuff said – I’ll wait and see how well it lasts before I pronounce the final verdict…

Weigh-in this morning was again no surprise – this is my stupid body we’re talking about here, after all 🙂 I actually went down again, to 108.6kg, or where I was on Sunday, the day before yesterday. See-sawing again. I’ll probably stay the same weight for a couple of days, or something, then if I’m really lucky, I might go down a bit more…and so it will cycle… down, up, down, same, same, down, up, down, same, same… rinse and repeat until I go stark, staring, bonkers, or die from boredom – whichever comes first

And so another evening draws to a close – I have my last remaining weighed slice of Panettone tomorrow morning for breakfast, and then that’s it until next Christmas (when hopefully I’ll be able to eat a proper sized slice!) Oh, I forgot to mention! Julian went to the Dentist yesterday because his root canalled tooth was sore… but after prodding and probing it from all angles, and x-raying it, the Dentist pronounced it to be sound, and suggested that it might have been the nasty bout of sinusitis that himself had been suffering from for the past few days that had niggled the nerves there, so the tooth is still in situ, and will probably be capped some time in February. All’s well that ends well! 🙂

Don’t forget to tune in again tomorrow night to find out all the latest happenings here at chez nous! My favourite eldest daughter is coming over tomorrow to have her hair cut, and will be bringing further episodes of “Person of Interest” with her, and possibly a new episode of “Glee” (yes, we watch that too! 🙂 ) I’ll even fill you in on whether my weight is still in its see-sawing phase, or whether it has evolved into something a little more sensible… like steadily going down, for a change! Seeyas all then – ciao, all! 🙂

Purple! Well, it is one of my most favourite colours (after blue, which is my most favourite colour)… and I thought it was time for a change. If you’re wondering where the utilities are – the calender, the archives and the admin thingies? – they are still there, they’re just… hidden, a little bit. See those little bars right at the top of the page? Click on the little bars, and the utilities will s-l-i-d-e out over the top of the blog. Click on the little “X marks the spot” in the top right hand corner of the utilities, and they’ll s-l-i-d-e back into the side, revealing the blog again! 🙂 Nifty, huh? 🙂 Much more neater, and hopefully I’ll get a slightly wider text area (though probably not – it wasn’t any wider in the preview, anyway…) I made the header this morning, with my fingers crossed that it would work on this theme, this time… unlike the tooth grinding experience of last night! (Grrr!) This is yet another different theme (I can’t remember what it’s called – sorry!), and so far it’s been behaving itself. All that remains to be seen now is, will it update my post?! (the first two themes I ever tried looked pretty enough, but totally refused to display anything that I tried to post! Not terribly useful in a daily diary blog!) Although it was really hard trying to design a blog header with my fingers crossed, I persevered, and I had this one finished and uploaded before lunchtime. In the past, people have asked my why I don’t take commissions to do art work (a long, long time ago – when I painted with oils instead of pixels!) the answer was simple. I never know what I’m going to paint (draw/sketch/create) before I start – I don’t know quite what I’m going to produce until I’m reasonably well into it. Give me a subject and say “paint this”, and I’ll sit all day staring blankly at the canvas, totally devoid of inspiration (however, hint subtly around the subject matter and allow me to become interested – and who knows? Inspiration might strike, if you’re lucky! 😉 ) It’s the same with digital art – ask me to make a wallpaper or a theme on a particular subject, and you’ll probably never see the finished product. Let me get myself interested in someone, or something, and the ideas almost never stop… It’s not that I won’t do something specific when asked, it’s simply that I can’t seem to get any (workable) ideas for whatever it is/was… when asked! Mind you, you can get lucky – once in a pink and purple polka dotted moon! 🙂 Anyway, once I got the header online, I drifted onto Rift. I did my Crafting Daily and delivered the shoes wot I had to make, and got a measly 30 Artisan Marks for them! And, of course, a “Daily” quest is just that – once daily! So now I have to wait until tomorrow (or late tonight) to do another one. Pity me! I have to earn 200 Artisan Marks to be able to buy the Empyrean bag recipe! At 30 Artisan Marks per day, that should buy me the recipe, in, oh…. a week? By which time I’ll probably be bored with the idea of making Empyrean bags and not want to do it any more… Actually, it’s probably closer to the mark to say that by then I’ll have found out how much the mats to make a bag will cost me, and I’ll be too scared to continue, or the Guild Bank won’t have enough money left in it to pay for a cup of coffee – not that they have coffee in Telara, but I’m sure you get my drift! 🙂 After carting the shoes all the way to Iron Pine Peak, I let Watersong have a turn. She’s my newest girl… and mostly she’s just been doing the Artifact circuit around Meridian, as by the time I log on at night there’s not enough time left before bed to get involved in questing… and, of course, the Minions pick up Artifacts too, so now I’m not only overflowing with Dimension items, I’m also overflowing with Artifacts. Julian says to pass the Artifacts along to our two Dreamweavers (Dreamweavers make Dimension items; they disassemble Artifacts to make “Dream Ribbons” and make Dimension items from those) We have two Dreamweavers, my girl Elizandra, and himself’s girl Mandreth, and they both need all the Artifacts they can get their hot little paws on. What I’ll do is take all my girls, one at a time, through the Artifacts. Once there’s nothing left that they haven’t already got, I’ll divide the remainder up between the two Dreamweavers. That’s fair, I reckon… 🙂

So that’s what I’ve been doing today. Our cleaning lady finally arrived (late! very late!) she’s still here, and it’s 4:45pm! She’s still not well, and is sporting a black eye as well… she says she wasn’t watching where she was cleaning at her local school, was bending over cleaning the stairs, and ran her eye straight into the rounded bottom of the stair rail! It’s a right beauty of a shiner! (and I thought that Julian was a klutz!) Oh well, at least the place isn’t awash with Flipper fur any more! 🙂 and poor old Julian has gone off to the Dentist with what appears to be a cracked tooth. It’ll probably have to come out, so he might be joining me with soup for dinner tonight!

Weigh-in this morning was, once again, to be expected… Yes, I went up! Two points, up to 108.8kg 😦 Why??!!!! It’s not fair! Sometimes I feel like getting the carving knife and just… slicing it all off, in slabs! (but that would probably get blood in the grouting, and Julian would get cross, so perhaps I won’t do that today, after all) Oh dear, I’m starting to get all depressed again… Think of something happy, quick! Oh yes, it’s my favourite eldest daughter’s Birthday today! I won’t tell you how old she is, she might not want me to – suffice to say that she’s within one year of my friend and hairdresser 😉

So anyway, tune in again tomorrow night to find out if himself had to lose a tooth or not, and if not, what the Dentist can do for it (he’s already had a root canal filling in that tooth – the Dentist was going to Cap it, and was just waiting to see how it settled down… but, it hasn’t settled down, so…) *gulp* Thank heavens I’ll never, ever have to go through those sorts of procedures again! I’d also like some feedback on the new theme, and header wot I made for it, so don’t be shy! Add a comment or two occasionally, y’know? I don’t bite, honestly! only when I’m asked, nicely, anyway… And I suppose I’ll tell you whether or not my weight went up, down, or stayed the same (I’m betting on it staying the same tomorrow, because I know that that will irk me even more than going up would!) So once again, seeyas all then! Ciao, all! 🙂