We finally dinged 65! (waits for applause… not a sausage!) At long last! That last level, from 64 to 65 just crawled! We didn’t cheat, but we did use one of our Transcendent experience potions each when it was starting to get a bit late, and we still had just over a bubble to go – I was worried that himself would say “Well, time to dust down – we’ll have to leave leveling until next week, I’m afraid!” – or words to that effect! Of course, the first thing we did was Hearth back to Draumheim to raid the Guild Bank so that we could upgrade all our gear – after all, nothing but the very best for us brave 65-ers! 😉 We did leave some money in the Guild Bank, but we ain’t nearly so well off as we once were – especially after I already raided it the other day to make all those Lanzan bags… I wish I could find a recipe for Empyrean bags… they’re much bigger (and much more expensive!) Ah, my clever husband has just found where to buy the recipe! But alas, I don’t have sufficient Crafting and Artisan marks with which to buy it… You know what this means, don’t you!? (well, of course you don’t! That’s why I’m about to tell you that!) This means that I’m going to be slaving my fingers off doing Daily manufacturing runs – making odds and sods, and delivering them all over Telara – *sigh* the things we Artisans do, to make money for our poor, now financially denuded Guild Bank! 🙂 Oh well, it’ll keep me out of mischief for about five minutes! (Why do you think I waited until I was level 65 to do this? It’ll be a pushover… until I get up to the new areas, anyway…) We did have a pretty good run today, though we both bit off more than we could chew a couple of times – I died once, he bought the farm twice, from memory… we finished off this afternoon mid-way through a very long and extremely complicated quest chain which saw us “bouncing” off what look like mottled bladders on short, thick stems. Run into them, and they bounce you w-a-y up in the sky, and onto ledges, where you have to fight nasties and destroy thingies (yes! “thingies”, coz I can’t remember what they’re called!) Then you use another of those bladder things to either bounce back down, or on to the next ledge. We got muddled a bit because we forgot which bladder we’d arrived on and bounced the wrong way – so we ended up doing some of it in the wrong order and we had to go back and re-do part of it. There’s still a fairly large area left to explore and cover, quest-wise, so although we dinged 65, we’re not finished yet! 🙂 I’d say we’ve probably got another couple of Sundays, at least, before we’ve completed the area… and we’ll have to think what we’re going to do next – start off new characters, or run dungeons and instances…

I’ve been thinking of changing my blog theme for a while, and browsing through the templates to see if there was anything decent… I found quite a nice one – or so I thought – which I found I kept coming back to as being the best of a poor bunch (unless you want to spend $$$ on a commerical one!) So today when we finished Rifting, I went and had another look at it, found out what size header to create for it, opened up Photoshop, and created a very nice little one. Went back to the chosen theme, found the right colours (again! It had “lost” them when I went to look at something else to do with the theme) I uploaded the header… which promptly refused to display. No matter what I did, I couldn’t get the header to display – no way, no how! Arrggghhh! It was almost news time! In the end, and muttering rude words darkly under my breath, I thought “Shove it! $%#$!”, and closed everything down. Having lost all my gruntles , and still muttering imprecations, I stomped off to the lounge room to watch the news and have my dinner. We watched a bit of television, then I came back down here, logged back on to Rift, sorted out my Minions for the night, and logged off. Back to the recalcitrant blog theme I went, hoping that by now it would have had time to reconsider, and behave itself… but nooooo! Not this little rotten theme! So I’m back with this one – I might change this one – I have the only colour I need (#CFCBA9), and after all, they do say that a change is as good as a holiday, don’t they? 😉 🙂

Weigh-in this morning was like a breath of fresh air! I went down to…. (drum roll, please!) 108.6kg! Half a kilo! 🙂 It’s because I’m not taking those wretched fluid-hoarding tablets at the moment, you see – I’ll be very glad when I never have to take them again (they’re not good for people who tend to get blood clots, either!), but that won’t be until I’ve lost enough weight to have the surgery I need done – so, still a few more months yet! Ive lost 26kg, but I still have another 18kg to go – but in the end, I’ll have lost 44kg… If I keep going the way I am at the moment, I should get there by late April – early May? – cross fingers, touch wood…

So tune in again tomorrow night – I did have Panettone for breakfast this morning (but I didn’t drink the threatened cordial 😉 ) so we’ll see if that makes any difference – I hope it won’t, but you never know, with my body – still, there’s only one more Panettone breakfast left to have – on Wednesday morning, and then it’ll be all gone (until next Christmas! 🙂 ) I’ll let you know (or perhaps you’ll see! 😉 ) how I go at changing blog themes – never a dull moment around this house! So catchyas on the flip side, as we used to say in ye Olde Days – ciao, all! 🙂

Shopping spree today! 🙂 Julian had seen Dyson vacuums advertised at JB Hi Fi quite cheaply, and there’s a JB Hi Fi right over the road at Shoppingtown. So we were going to go over there and have a look at their vacuums, nice and close and handy, but it turned out that it wasn’t the right sort of JB Hi Fi – oooh no, we needed a JB Hi Fi Home store (or something) We drove out to Chirnside Park – but once again that turned out to have been yet another misconception on our part. As we were about to sail past a small group of shops on the right as we neared Chirnside shopping centre, I noticed that one of those shops was a…. JB Hi Fi! “Oh look!” says me “There’s a JB Hi Fi over there, too!” 🙂 Thinking remarkably quickly, we worked out that there weren’t likely to be two JB Hi Fi’s that close together, and that the one we’d just passed was probably the one we were looking for. We did a U Turn. And yes, it was the one we wanted, and yes they did have the vacuum cleaner we were after… and which we duly bought. Because we’d decided that we’d get ourselves a new TV as a wedding anniversary present – I might have mentioned, once before, that we don’t buy each other a gift on our anniversary, we go out and get something nice together, giving us more money to spend on something nice that we both want. This sort of anniversary “gifting” is all well and good, and terribly romantic an’ all, IF you make the time to (a) discuss it, and (b) actually go out and get something together. However for the past two years, we’ve either been too busy, or too distracted, or we’ve just plain forgotten about it, and we’ve missed out on our anniversary present. This year we decided to make up for it by getting ourselves something fairly biggish… like a nice, new, 65 inch Panasonic 4K television (and a new entertainment cabinet for it to sit on) So we had a look at what JB Hi Fi had in the way of televisions, and the Panasonic was really by far the best; clear and sharp (did I mention that it’s also 3D? though we’ll probably never use that) We brought the vacuum cleaner home with us, for our cleaning lady to use on Monday, but the television will be delivered some time next week – for starters, it wouldn’t fit in the car, and himself is getting a tad too old to be wrestling giant televisions into position. We did have a look at a few entertainment units, and some were…. O.K. (but only just!) The old one will have to do until we can find something we really like, and that will fit in the available wall space properly. It’ll look a trifle small, and it’s really too high for such a large TV unit, but I think we can do a lot better than the ones we saw today. By this stage we were in Hardly Normal Harvey Norman, looking at their entertainment units, so we took a bit of a rest from that and looked at computer chairs instead. I think I must have sat in every computer and office chair that they had! Some were very nice, and very comfortable, but just felt a little too short in the seat depth (from your tail bone to the back of your knees?) I did find Baby Bear’s chair though – one that was “just right!” – Unlike Goldilocks, I didn’t break it, in fact I’m sitting in it right now, and it’s very nice and comfortable (and my shoulder hasn’t been hurting, either!) After we’d got the chair I was surprised to find that it was after 2 o’clock! We were both hungry for our lunch, and almost willing to kill for a decent cup of coffee, so we came home… And guess what I did! Yup! That’s right! Straight into Rift! 😀 I worked a bit on the new girl, who desperately needed some larger bags… so rather than raid the Guild Bank for platinum with which to buy Lanzan bags (approximately 11 platinum per bag), I raided the Guild Bank for platinum with which to buy the mats (materials) for Jademoss to make them, instead. Why buy the mats when you can “farm” them (go out and kill the mobs that drop the particular item(s) you need)? Because that takes too long, and then you have to process the raw materials into usable ingredients for the “recipe”, and then you have to make the bags) Long story short, I bought 141 bolts of Lanzan (2 x pieces of Lanzan cloth = 1 x bolt of Lanzan. The bags take 14 bolts of Lanzan each!) 100 Dense Hides, and 60 reels of strong thread – for a total of (about) 185 platinum… saving well over that amount in time saved by not having to go out and farm and process the raw materials. So I made 10 bags – I gave 2 to the new girl, and there are now 8 Lanzan bags sitting in the Guild Bank for whoever needs them. I was quite surprised to find that it was almost 6.30pm! I logged out and went and read until it was time for the news… And that was our big Spending Spree day! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning… I’d be in tears of depression, if it wasn’t so laughable! Oh I went down again… 1 [insert very rude word here] point! One measly little point! From 109.2kg, to 109.1kg! I reckon that if those scales were calibrated to weigh in micro grams, it would have been 109.1.899kg! If I were losing weight any slower, I’d be gaining it! I’m fed up…. I’m having Panettone for breakfast tomorrow morning, and I’m going to drink a glass of (very weak!) cordial throughout the day! So there, body! Shove that in your big fat pipe and smoke it! Grrrr!

Anyway, look in on all the goings one here again tomorrow night – tomorrow is Sunday, our traditional “Tra-la-la-ing in Telara” day – find out if we finally managed to ding 65, and how many times we each died! Did I really have Panettone for breakfast, and a glass of (very weak!) cordial to sip throughout the day – or was that just a threat? 😉 And what will my lousy body do, weight-wise, now that I’ve finished that course of tablets? Lose weight, like a good little body, or will it again thwart me, and either stay the same, or go up? All these questions, and more, will be answered tomorrow night! Sleep tight, keep well, and seeyas all tamarra! ciao, all! 🙂

Still very “grubby”, I’m afraid… Our cleaning lady did come, but she wasn’t at all well, and besides, she didn’t have a vacuum cleaner, so she’s coming on Monday instead. It’s a long story – she used to work for a crowd who cleaned the three blocks of apartment buildings in this street (Court!), and then the crowd she worked for said they didn’t want to do it anymore, but as she had several private clients in the area, and she still had access to the (communal?) vacuum cleaner, there wasn’t a problem… but now she only has us and (I think?) one other client here, and for some reason that I have probably been told and promptly forgotten about, she’s also lost access to the vacuum cleaner… See! I told you it was a long story! Anyway, the long and short of it is that we need a vacuum cleaner, whether she has access to one or not, and so we’re (hopefully) going to get it a little sooner than we normally would have, because if this floor isn’t vacuumed next Monday, we’ll need gumboots to wade through all the cat fur, dust, and general detritus that’s been gathering on our floors since (*gasp* has it really been that long?!) before Christmas! I had to sit at home and wait for said cleaning lady to turn up, whilst himself went to pick up my favourite eldest daughter, and then taxi her to the Vic Roads place on Burwood Highway – she needs to get herself a Learner’s Permit, because she doesn’t have a Passport, and she doesn’t have a Driver’s Licence – the Learner’s Permit she did have had gone well beyond its “Use By” date, and apparently she had just a teeny bit of trouble buying a new phone, with no photo ID… And no, she wasn’t able to get one today – apparently there’s some other form or other that she needs… Talk about red tape! I still have my Driver’s Licence, primarily for ID – I haven’t driven a car for almost 26 years… though I could, if I wanted to… but I don’t! Once Julian learnt to drive (I taught him! 🙂 ) I thought “Fantastic! I don’t have to drive ever again, if I don’t want to! Yay!” – I was a good driver, in fact, I was a very good driver, and I was everyone’s taxi, from Lisa and Kate, to “friends and visitors” to my Bulletin Board. I drove people from Burwood to Caulfield, to Hawthorn, to Richmond, to Mooroolbark, to Ringwood, and to St. Albans – and just about everywhere else in between – sometimes as late (or as early, take your pick!) as three o’clock in the morning – I did it all cheerfully, and with a smile, but…  I hated it! I hated driving, full stop. I only did it because I had to – there was no-one else to do it for me – until I taught himself how to drive and he got his licence *smug look* 🙂 Enough!

As I mentioned, my favourite eldest daughter was over today – after lunch we watched two episodes of a new show – some sort of a run-on from Captain America, from what I can gather – called Marvel’s Agent Carter – it was quite good, set in the mid to late 40’s? early 50’s? and follows on from the end of the 2011 movie Captain America: The First Avenger. I’m looking forward to seeing more of it! 🙂 After that we watched the last two episodes of Season 3 of Person of Interest – gosh, it’s a good show! Lee has about 11 episodes of Season 4, which she’ll bring with her next week – I can’t wait to see what happens – everything seems to be falling apart at the seams – “Samaritan”, the “bad” machine has come online, and it’s turning into a sort of “Machine versus Machine” war, with lots of collateral damage taken by both (human) sides… I tell you, that show has you bouncing up and down in your seat – it’s extremely well done! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning… well, what can I say? Just as well I didn’t hold my breath! Yes, I went up again, two points, to 109.2kg – so not quite back to where I was the day before yesterday, but still, very disappointing! I’ll probably stay the same tomorrow – thank heavens it’s the last day of this wretched medication! And it’ll probably take another two to three days before my damn body gets back to what is laughingly called “normal”, and I start going down regularly and properly again. This see-saw business is getting terribly tiresome and boring…

So tune in again tomorrow night – we’re going vacuum shopping tomorrow, so maybe I’ll have good news on that front, at least! 😉 I ordered my Estee Lauder nail polish tonight – they can’t send it express post, so I hope it doesn’t have to come all the way from the UK, or the USA… I’ll get an email about it tomorrow, so I can fill you in then… and of course, there’s my weight… Who’s willing to bet me $5 that I either stay the same, or go up? Any takers? Anyone??? No? I guess you probably think the result will be a forgone conclusion, eh?  Ahhh… but I’ve surprised you before, haven’t I?? Let’s just hope I surprise myself tomorrow morning! Find out tomorrow night! ‘Till then, ciao all! 🙂

I logged on to Rift first, to do some “re-ordering” of Key Bindings, and to set up my Minions for ‘ron, and I sort of got a bit carried away with it all (and I still haven’t finished all the changes! I’ll do that tomorrow…) So, I’ve actually had quite a riveting Rifting day today! I managed to get Watersong to level fifteen, found someone she could swap with, and duly brought her over to Laethys… where I found, much to my annoyance, that the name “Watersong” was already in use, so I had to think of something else (why can’t they tell you these things before you go and move them! You know, an “Oh, by the way, you will have to change her name you know, that name is already in use over there…” sort of thing…) So I tried this name… and I tried that name… and I even tried a few names that I was really hoping she wouldn’t be able to get (Russian Name Roulette?? 😉 ) and none of them were available… In the end I settled for “Waterblaze”. I don’t really like it, which means that I probably won’t keep liking her, and she’ll be the first to move out if I take a fancy to a new name and face (Fickle? Who, me? Never!) Nah, ackshally I’ll probably think of another name for her, and change it later… So I spent most of the day doing that, and then I thought that the Key Bindings I was using – Key Bindings? Oh… well, to make playing easier you can assign a particular key (on your keyboard) to a particular function, or Macro. For instance, I have assigned the key “W” to a macro which causes you to wave to someone, and the key “D” to the slot where I keep my Healing Potions, so instead of clicking on the Healing Potion icon, I can just hit the letter “D”, and I’ll automatically Drink my healing potion. Much easier! 🙂 Most people (like Julian!) highlight someone and simply type in “/wave”, and hey presto, they wave at that person – I like to use the macro to do it because I find that by the time I’ve typed in “/wave”, the person has gone off somewhere else and never sees my friendly wave. It’s also faster – for me – to hit the “D” key rather than click on the healing potion icon – otherwise I’d be dead before I got my cursor anywhere near it! So I have created an army of macros to do all sorts of things for me, like targeting an animal and casting a killing spell on it, waving, thanking, making a rude gesture 😉 sitting down – and all with single click of the macro, or a letter assigned to that macro. Well, this afternoon I thought that the way I had my Key Bindings set up left quite a lot to be desired, so I re-assigned some, and created a few new ones, which made better sense (like the “W” for wave, and “F” for Fred (my pet), etc…) I finally left it all at about 4.30 this afternoon, when my eyes were starting to go fuzzy and my brain felt like mush – and I went up to the lounge to read for a bit. Then, after dinner, stupid me decided that I only had “a little bit” left to do (famous last words!) and dived into that instead of getting straight on with my blog, as I usually do. As it started to get later and later, I thought “I’ll only do this until 10 o’clock, then I’ll do my blog”, and then it was “until quarter past 10”, and then it was after half past 10 and I still hadn’t finished, so I really had to put the rest of it off until tomorrow, or not get this done at all. See how dedicated I am? 😉

Weigh-in was a lot more better this morning! I actually went down a bit, to 109.0kg! Hopefully I’ll be below that and into the 108kg zone tomorrow morning… but once again, this is my body we’re talking about, so I won’t hold my breath… Perhaps it wasn’t the cordial or the Panettone that caused the… ummm… hiccup… in my downward path, but just my stupid body misbehaving itself as usual… 🙂

Anyway, call back at the same time tomorrow night, and find out if I’ve finally finished all the Key Binding changes and got all of my girls settled and comfortable with the new set-up, or if I got too distracted by our cleaning lady, who was supposed to have been here last week but didn’t turn up (so I hope she comes tomorrow – the place is filthy!) My favourite eldest daughter will also be over tomorrow, so I guess we’ll spend most of the day watching “Person of Interest”, and hopefully, “Agents of Shield” – I’ll let you know what happens (but no spoilers! 🙂 ) And I suppose I’ll probably fill you in on whether I cracked the 109kg barrier and made it into the 108kg zone! 🙂 Till tomorrow then, ciao all! 🙂

Get just about everything that I had down on my “shopping list” wot I wrote about last night, and I didn’t melt into an Olympic sized swimming pool in the process ! 🙂 First stop was the doctor’s, to get the repeat scripts I needed. We didn’t see our usual doctor, she was away on holidays and won’t be back until the 12th (which just so happens to also be my favourite eldest daughter’s Birthday! 😉 ) The doctor we saw was very nice – I must remember to ask for her if our regular doctor is ever away again – and according to the medical notes, just about all of my scripts were due, so I got the whole lot in one fell swoop. She also took my blood pressure which was extra good, and she says (looking at the notes) that because my weight is going down so much I might even have to have some of the medication reduced further, or even come off some of it altogether, if I start feeling faint, or dizzy! Anyhow, then we went off to The Glen and went first to David Jones (since we were parked down that end – it was so crowded and busy that I think half of Glen Waverley was there today in some sort of an attempt to get out of the heat!) I looked for, and found, the nail polish, but naturally the girl hanging around the area knew absolutely nothing about Estee Lauder or their nail polishes, but she said that a girl was coming in who would, and she’d get her to ring us. We were actually called back, which greatly surprised the cynic in me, but where Optus are supposed to say “Yes” to everything, she was obviously prepped to say “No!” to everything – apologetically, of course. No, they wouldn’t be getting any more in because it was a Limited Edition, and No, they wouldn’t sell me the tester for “Legal Reasons” – which covers a multitude of platitudes, doesn’t it! So… I shall just have to buy it online from Estee Lauder themselves, where apparently it’s not such a “Limited Edition”, after all. We also picked up my Jurlique Jasmine Body Lotion at the Jurlique booth? station? which was just around the corner from Estee Lauder. Next stop, still in David Jones, was the towel department. We got six new towels (2 fuchsia, 2 lavender, and 2 olive stone), six new hand towels, in the same colours, and six new face washers, ditto. Very nice. I’m looking forward to turfing out some of the old stock to make room for them! 🙂 There is no Inglot at The Glen, so that will have to wait until next week, I suppose… I picked up 3 T-shirts from My Size, a black, a purple – and a lilac (which, surprisingly they did have in er… my size…. I’m wearing it now! 🙂 ) and I got my eyeshadow in mauve/lilac tones from Priceline. We were starting to flag just a little by then, so we went to pick up our scripts from the Chemist next to Coles… It’s quite a nice Chemist shop, and quite big. They have a great range of just about everything from band-aids to perfume, BUT! They are lousy listeners, and terrible dispensers of medications. While I’ll happily shop there again, for non medical items, I shall never, ever again, hand them a script to fill! We told them, clearly, and in words of very few syllables, that we did not want generics, would not accept generics, and that if they didn’t have the original manufacturer brand name, then they were not to fill the script!   They gave us generics – which held us up, and made a lot more work for themselves when they were told to take them all back and either give us the non-generic, correct brand name, or leave the script blank (i.e. with no dispensing note!) Chemists (in general) keep trying to tell you that “generics are cheaper, and that they’re just the same!” If they are “just the same”, how come every time I’ve been stupid enough to accept generic medication I get an allergic reaction! I get a rash that starts on the palm of my hands, spreads rapidly around the rest of my body, and I need to take antihistamines and use cortisone creams to calm it down! Grrr! Anyway, by the time we left The Glen it was getting close to 2 o’clock, and it was very hot and muggy outside – and it was looking very much as though we were going to be in for a bit of a storm… so we decided to give looking at the computer chairs a miss for today and just came straight home. Just as well we did! We were still on the freeway between Middleborough Road and Tram Road when the rain started… and by the time we got to the Pub next door, lightning was flashing and thunder was rumbling… It’s much more fun looking at, and enjoying, a nice thunder storm from inside a safe, comfortable room! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning was yet another “ho-hum” disappointment – I stayed the same, at 109.3kg. I wonder if it was the nice cordial that I had last night that did it, or the Panettone I had for breakfast? (and it was an even smaller piece than I’ve been having, too!) Or maybe it was because I had both, in the same day? I won’t make that mistake again… Hopefully tomorrow will bring a bit of a weight drop, for a change… So, not particularly happy today, Jan!

So call in tomorrow night and find out if my new eyeshadow matches my new lilac T-shirt, and whether I’ve been able to persuade himself to run the new towels through the wash so that I can see what they look like in the bathroom… but most importantly, to find out if it can’t have been the cordial and the Panettone after all, because I’ve gone up again, or if I’ve boringly stayed the same, on 109.3kg, for a third day, or whether I’ve actually performed a major miracle and gone down a bit… Seeyas all then – ciao! 🙂

A teacher. I did try, but I’m not very good at it. Never mind, I think that between the two of us, Julian and I managed to get at least a few of the main principles and strategies of playing Rift instilled into our friend. He certainly worked hard at it and improved immensely by the time we finished. We had a few networking problems at first, which held us up a bit, but we got there in the end, which I suppose is the main thing. I also learnt a few interesting things about Rift! For instance, I found out that characters under level 10 can’t participate in World Events! In this case it was the Yule Celebrations… Seems a bit weird, and a lot silly, to me, but there it is. You have to have dinged 10 to be able to get the Daily Quests (read: “chores”!) I got my new girl Watersong (you remember her – I told you all about her last night!) up to level 10 this evening, but I doubt that I’ll get much of a chance to do much tomorrow as we’re off on a great spending spree 🙂 I want to look for my nail polish at David Jones, and if they haven’t got it, and won’t be getting it in, I’ll want to know what the [* * *] they need with a sample bottle, or “Tester”?! and that they should sell that to me – at half price, because it’ll be “used”! Well, I think that sounds perfectly logical, don’t you? What do you need with a “tester” product, if you’re not going to be selling the very product that you’re allowing people to “test“? (Old (somewhat mangled) computer proverb: “Never test for a product that you’re never going to handle” 😉 )

I also need to get some more Jurlique Jasmine Body Lotion (I’m all but out!), and I want to go back to Inglot – I’ve looked at their nail polish colour chart(s) and have written down all the numbers that look “nice” on screen – it remains to be seen if they look “nice” in the real world. I’d like to stop off at OfficeWorks to look at their computer chairs, too – I was “given” a new computer chair the Christmas before last, but it didn’t (*blush*) “fit” me, so I’m still using the old one – so I sort of feel that I’m “owed” a new computer chair. I’d like to go and see what fits me now that I’ve lost a reasonable amount of weight (25kg) After all, I can now fit into one of those ghastly chairs that they make you sit in when you’re having blood tests done, without getting bruises on the sides of my thighs… so I figure I should be able to sit, reasonably comfortably, in a standard computer chair… And… I want to go shopping for new towels – I’d like to throw out all our old ones (most of which belonged to my mother, and she passed away in 2007!) and get some nice new ones… I also want to get some *whispers* new eyeshadow – I have blues, and I have greens, but I think I’d like to try a sort of “heather”/lavender/mauve set *stops whispering* What on earth am I whispering for! This is the year of the new me! If I want to wear lavender eyeshadow, I jolly well will! (*nods firmly at screen*) Oh, and I almost forgot – I have to pick up another couple of T-shirts from My Size – black ones, because I wear a lot of black… and guess what? They have them in *lavender*, too now! Wanna bet they’ll either have none of the lavender ones in stock, or they won’t have them in my size! (despite the name of the shop! 😉 ) Of course, most of those things will depend on the weather – I’m totally allergic to hot weather, even when I’m indoors, reclining in air conditioned splendour, so we’ll travel slowly… some – one or two, maybe – of those things may have to wait until next week, when it’s cooler… I guess it just depends on how desperate I am to get some more of that Body Lotion 😉

Weigh-in this morning was a bit better – I went down a smidge, to 109.3kg Only one point, but a lot better than going up! I am having, even as I write, a glass of that diet cordial I’ve been talking about – Bickfords Lemon, Lime & Bitters, and it’s very nice! If it doesn’t make me put on any weight I shall be most pleased to recommend it to you all! However, let’s just wait and see what my weight does first, hmm? 🙂

So that’s it from me tonight – drop in again tomorrow night and see what goodies I’ve managed to come home with, if any, depending on the weather – and whether or not I managed to get my favourite Body Lotion, a lavender T-shirt, and mauve toned eyeshadow… and a chair… 😉 And if you’re lucky, you might even find out if I lost any more weight, or whether the cordial is fattening, after all! 😉 Until then, ciao all! 🙂

Looks great! It does make you blink a little bit, because it’s so different – well, different to what I’ve had for… ummm… about 10 years now? It’s now more the way it looked when I was running the Bulletin Board – only very short instead of long, and with pretty pale streaks in it. It’s back to the good old days of “Ave, Ginger” and “death… by chocolate… (but what a way to go!)”, for anyone else who can remember that far back 😉 So Bravo, Josh, you did a great job, and I love it! 🙂 Thank you! 🙂

So after that exhausting and nerve wracking experience 😉 I went off to do a bit of Rifting, and to celebrate, I…. er… created a new character. INTERMISSION I just had to be rescued from a spider – oh, the horror of it! It ran down the side of my shelves, across my tissue box, and underneath my notebook wot I keep next to me for writing important things down in, like RGB colours (e.g. 224, 239, 251 – that’s very pale blue to you non graphical peoples), and names for new characters, and appointment dates and times, and things like that. Naturally I squawked loudly in terror – Julian has become so good at interpreting my “it’s a spider!” squawks that he knows it’s a matter of life and death (his death, if he doesn’t rescue me quickly enough!) and he came to rescue me. Greatly daring, and very bravely, he grabbed a tissue and squished it, saving me from its ghastly, poisonously murderous .5 millimeter long fangs! Hurrah! I survive another night! Thank you, Sir Julian, oh knight in shining armor! 🙂 END INTERMISSION Now… where was I, when I was so viciously attacked by the evil spider lord? Oh yes, creating a new character… Her name is Watersong, and she’s a Kelari (one of the Defiant races). She’s an Elementalist/Necromancer (so I’ll still get “Feign Death”!), and Pyromentalist. Most points will go into Elemantalist and Necromancer, but hopefully she should prove to be quite a strong build. So I played with her for a while, then went on to experiment with blue “gems” which didn’t really go so well, and at about 4.30 this afternoon I went off to read.

Tomorrow should be a fun day – we’re helping a friend learn the in’s and out’s of Rift – I’m not quite sure how we’re going to set things up – I’ll probably use one of my “younger” girls, and Mentor down, and Julian will either do the same, or ride shotgun for us. I think I said once before that Rift is completely different from World of Warcraft, but still very similar in some respects? Especially in regards to covering vast distances quickly. In World of Warcraft they were called “Way Points”, in Rift they’re called “Porticulums”, and basically they transport you from one “Way Point”, or “Porticulum” to another, instantly. It used to be one of my self appointed missions in Warcraft to set out at a very early level (like about level 4!) and run around the entire map, collecting Way Points. The only trouble was, there were all sorts of nasties that had an uncanny knack of homing in on innocent young runners, and you’d barely run a yard from your starting point, and you’d be unmercifully killed, and end up back in the closest Graveyard to where you started running from. So, your ghost would run back to where your body was, jump back into it (ah! the wonders of Fantasy! 🙂 ) you’d hope to goodness that the nasties had gone away, and keep on running – until you got killed again. Rinse and repeat until you reached the next Way Point, etc. There was always an Angel of Death in the Graveyard who could resurrect you if you wanted, but you had to pay in temporary health points… on one of my shelves I have a wonderful photo-printout of the Graveyard Angel saying “Oh, it’s you again…” – that was just soooo me! 🙂 Anyway, when the going got really tough, in high level areas, like when I wanted to tame a particular type of pet, Julian would ride shotgun for me and mow down the nasties before they could kill me. I got a few good pets that way – foxes, in particular. So, while that sort of thing isn’t necessary in Rift, it is sometimes a good idea to have a high(er) level character “escort” you from place to place. I suspect a bit of that will be going on tomorrow, but I’m really looking forward to it. With luck we might even be able to group up of an evening and have a bit of a bash – soloing can be a fairly boring way of playing, sometimes… Then the day after tomorrow, just when it’ll be getting horribly hot again, I have to go and pick up a repeat script, so we’ll be calling in at The Glen to do some shopping on the way home. I hope I don’t melt…

Weigh-in this morning was sadly predictable – I stayed the same, at 109.4kg Well, at least I didn’t go up (though I probably will tomorrow!) Ah well, I’m half way through my “fluid retaining” medication (it’s not really, but unfortunately that is one of its side effects!), so only another 5 days before I’ll hopefully start losing weight a bit more seriously again. Once again, I’m running to a Time Table! Only 23 days left to lose as much as I possibly can…

So look in again tomorrow night to see how our “Telara 101” day went, and if we’re going to have more such days… I’ll probably be very daring and try the diet cordial tomorrow, too, so I’ll be able to tell you if it tastes any good or not… and, of course, whether my weight went up, stayed the same, or went down… See y’all then! ciao! 🙂

Didn’t come down, after all. We sort of ran out of time, by the time we’d dusted down from our day in Telara, and I’d done my nails again – pretty colour, but dreadful polish this time, horrible! I fear that Revlon have proven, once again, that they’re just riding on their name, and their past reputation… I remember way back when, Revlon was probably one of the very best names in cosmetics – now, well… they sell the brand in Priceline, don’t they! Enough said! And no, I’m not a snob (well, I am a bit, maybe), but I do expect value for money. In this case, I didn’t get what I thought I’d paid for. The polish was thick and gluggy, and didn’t go on at all evenly. I had to blob it on in places, and carefully brush excess off in others. I put two coats on (believe me, it needed two coats!), and finished around a quarter to six. It’s now quarter to eleven, and I don’t think it’s dried properly yet (though it’s starting to feel a bit harder – thank heavens!) It is a pretty colour though, it’s another “darker than I’m used to” pearl-ish blue, but the biggest giggle is that the Inglot pearl-ish purple I used last week matched my T-shirt, and this pearl-ish blue matches the lounge suite! 😀 Out of all the nail polishes I’ve used in the last month or so, the Inglot “breathable” nail polish (the pearl-ish purple one) is by far the best quality and the longest wearing. Usually after a week my nail polish is starting to chip off at the edges and looks decidedly ragged and patchy. I took the Inglot one off today, and it still looked as good as when I first applied it! I’ll definitely be going back there to see what other colours they’ve got…

So the Christmas Tree will have to come down tomorrow afternoon. Anyway, today was Sunday, so off we traipsed to our most favourite spot in all of Telara (NOT!), the Tarken Glacier. At least this time we didn’t have to go anywhere that had serious blizzards – just serious swirling snow mini tornadoes, which kept knocking us off our mounts. Not good, when you’re being pursued by a pack of ravening wolf-type creatures! We do have an unusual problem though. On foot, himself runs a lot faster than I do, and I keep getting left behind. Mounted, we have the opposite problem. I have certain “buffs” (enhancements) that make my riding speed a lot faster than his. As he (usually) leads the way, I have to keep stopping every couple of yards, so that he can get ahead again. It also means that I can’t stop quickly enough to prevent myself from plummeting gaily over the edge of a cliff – which I did several times today, and we had to go all the way back to where we started climbing up the mountain, and do it all over again to get back to where we had to be – and there’s not a thing I can do about it. I also don’t jump out of water very well – I keep getting stuck under ice floes and/or ramps… he usually has to rescue me, and jump me out, whilst I sit and glower from the sidelines. Anyway, he died a couple of times – I didn’t! 😛 (aside: some horrible little insect has bitten me on the face, and it’s as itchy as all get out! If I ever catch the little [naughty word], I’ll… I’ll… boil it in oil, and then jump up and down on it!) We both figure that we’ll ding 65 next Sunday – I have two and a quarter bubbles to go, he has two and a half… so we should get there next week. Mind you, we still have a fair amount of territory to cover before we exhaust the area – not that that has anything to do with leveling up – it just means that we’ll be doing it at the highest level, instead of as puny little level 64’s! 🙂 We still haven’t decided what we’re going to do when we’ve reached level 65 and completed all the areas – personally, I favour starting off a couple of newbies – maybe different races? Different builds? I shall miss having “Feign Death”, if we do that – it’s basically “Playing Possum” – you make a sort of strangled screaming sound, and fall over, apparently dead. The mobs attacking you think “Oh, she’d dead! No threat detected” and go away. You then get up and start shooting at them again… Rinse and repeat until all hostile mobs are deceased 🙂 Unfortunately, only Necromancers have that ability, so if I use a different build I might have to learn to live without it! 😉

Weigh-in this morning was good again (all these “good” weigh-ins are starting to make me a little nervous…) I went down two points, from 109.6kg yesterday to 109.4kg today. However, I did have my Panettone for breakfast this morning (but I haven’t had any of the diet cordial yet!), so we shall see what we shall see tomorrow morning. It would be really, really nice, if it went down again, but I’m not going to hold my breath! 😉

So tune in again tomorrow night! Find out if the Panettone for breakfast caused a catastrophe, or whether I went down or stayed the same… See if my gluggy nail polish has lasted the night, and if I’ve had any of the cordial yet (and if so, what it’s like, and whether or not I like it!) Oh, and I’m having my hair colour done again tomorrow, and it’s going to be slightly more “radical” than usual, so I’ll let you know if himself takes one horrified look and faints, or not 😉 Until then, ciao all! 🙂

Trying out this new Logitech keyboard I’ve been “loaned”… will it do what the other one did, and be one key “out” for my hand span? Tonight’s blog (umm.. “Page Down” was where I was expecting to find “End” – woops! Guess I’m not used to this keyboard layout yet!) Tonight’s blog will be the acid test! So far, no typos due to peculiar alphabetical key layout, anyway (lots of other mistakes though – look at the keyboard, Winter, don’t just go from memory!)

Well, it sure was hot today – but not in here (*smug smile*)! (Damn! I did it again! Hit “Page Down” instead of “End” – they’re right next to each other – most confusing to a bear(er) of very little brain!) It was just a pleasantly cool day in here, so I made the most of it by Rifting fairly solidly from breakfast until lunchtime. I was working on a new girl on the shard Greybriar, and fully intended on shuffling her over once I got her to level 15, so I went looking to see who I could transfer to make room for her. Arrgggh! I’ve managed to get to the stage where I can’t transfer anyone! They either have too much Dimensional territory to be moved easily, or I like them too much to want them to go… In the end I had to grit my teeth, abandon the new girl on Greybriar (don’t worry, I will go back to her later on, she’s not totally abandoned!), purchase some more Credits, and re-name the girl I had planned to transfer – until I realised that she had one of the largest Dimensions, completely stuffed to the gunnels with spare Dimension items that I want to keep on Laethys Oh well. She’s now called “Zorcha”. Later on, when I can afford it, I might change her race to Mathosian, or something… I also decided to use some of those handy-dandy Transcendent experience boosters that I found in all the mail boxes a week or so ago, and boy, are they worth using! I was levelling up reasonably quickly, or so I thought – about a level and a half a day – but this afternoon I went up three levels in about an hour and a half! The pity is, I only have seven of them left! 😦 I don’t know whether to save them up for ‘ron, when the going gets slower, or use ’em now… Hmmm… if I use them now, and go up as quickly as I can, it means that the higher I go, the slower I’ll go up levels – boring! On the other hand, if I go up quickly now, I’ll be high enough when I get to the harder areas that the mobs there won’t be too hard to kill! Points on both sides, I guess… Ah, decisions, decisions… it’s a tough life, playing Rift, but I guess somebody’s got to do it! 😉

After lunch I did have a bit of a bash at those new graphics I’m working on, and I did save as I worked, but the same filter crashed Photoshop again, so I thought naughty words and went back to Rift. However, I did get the ruby gems sized properly (50%, 45%, 35% and 25% of the original) and saved, so that’s something. I even managed to save it in a sort of an aquamarine colour too – I think! It’s a funny thing, you know – as I said before, it was lovely and cool in here all day today, but the atmospheric/barometric (??) pressure still affects you – well, it still affects me, anyway, but that might just be because I’m a bit weird like that. Anyway, despite being quite cool and comfortable, the hotter it got outside, the slower and more lethargic I got in the coolth! Very strange! Has anyone else reading this ever experienced that sort of thing, or is it just me? Do tell, I’d love to know! 🙂

I had a great idea for a science fiction story/movie/series whatever this morning… We watched a couple of “Star Trek Enterprise” episodes last night, and at one stage the ship’s doctor was able to tell, with his little tri-corder or whatever it was, that a woman was the mother of [one of the other people there] Now I thought, that if (in my story idea) we now started recording the DNA sequence of every single child born from now on, in a couple of centuries we’d probably have a big enough data base to be able to identify any human we came across, anywhere – you with me so far? And then… (gasp, shock, horror!) we came across a human that we couldn’t identify! They have the same sort of genetic makeup as humans, but their genetic makeup doesn’t match anything at all in the centuries old data base, and this is simply not possible – we all link to our parent’s DNA in some way. So, who, or what, is this person? Is this person even human? And if they’re not, but all their organs are human, and psychologically and emotionally they behave like humans, what then have we got? I think there’s probably enough material in that short premise for at least several seasons of good science fiction mystery! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning was interesting… I went down one more point, to 109.6kg And tomorrow morning I’m having Panettone for breakfast again. So far (so far!) it doesn’t seem to be affecting the way my weight is behaving, so maybe if I have that every third morning (until it’s all eaten, anyway) I’ll be OK… I hope so… (ahhh! some more of that nice, yummy tea is asking me to drink it – I shall comply! It really is very nice!) We bought some low calorie/diet cordial the other day, but so far I haven’t been game to try it – it has about 5 calories per glass – that’s 21 kilojoules… maybe if I just have a small glass it’ll be alright… But I won’t try it tomorrow, as I’ll be having the Panettone…

Anyway, look in again tomorrow night to find out if I ate the Panettone… and did I try the cordial as well, or did I chicken out… and have those tablets made me retain enough fluid to make my weight go up?! These questions, and lots more that you haven’t even thought to ask yet, will be answered – right here, this time tomorrow night! ciao all! 🙂

The weather, that is… but that’s what I used to say to my grandmother – my mother’s mother – when we were staying at their place and she’d dish up a delicious, home made rhubarb pie, hot from the oven. As a small child, of course I couldn’t wait to start shovelling it into my mouth, which, and although warned by all the adults present, I promptly burnt on the hot filling (now you know why the McDonald’s Hot Apple Pies have the words “Warning! Filling may be hot!” printed on the packet!) With a mouth full of scalding hot pie, I’d yowl “Hot, Nonnie!”, and there’d be a few tears until some cold milk or cream was poured onto the pie to cool it down a bit. As for the “Nonnie” bit, well, there were several reasons for that, the first being that I also had an Italian grandmother, my father’s mother, whom I called “grandmother” – in Italian – “Nonna”, but it was deemed that I couldn’t have two Nonna’s because that might confuse me (*rolls eyes* – I wish there was a WordPress emoticon to express this! I think I’d use it a lot ) Besides, my “Nonnie” considered herself far too young to be a grandmother, and wouldn’t have a bar of “Gran”, or “Nan”, or anything else that smacked of grandmothers, so the word “Nonnie”, a corruption of the word “Nonna”, was adopted as a “workable compromise”. So… the wretched hot weather has started 😦 Not nice… not nice at all! You know, we were watching the news tonight, and they had a reporter talking to people down at the beach, and almost without exception they all said how blistering hot it was… if they were so damned hot (two of them were red faced and sweating, huddled under what looked like a two man pup tent in the blazing sun, for goodness sake!), why were they down at the beach at all? Why weren’t they sitting in comparative comfort at home with the air conditioner on full blast, or if they didn’t have an air conditioner, at least a fan going full pelt with a bowl full of ice cubes in front of it? Mad, I tell you, mad! The lot of them!

Well, I stayed home, cowering under the air conditioner and happily playing Rift (again… still….) Himself had to go out though, as we hadn’t been out to get any supplies in since before Christmas, and the larder was looking alarmingly empty and devoid of food stuffs. Still, he was going from air conditioned car to air conditioned buildings, so he didn’t fare too badly. (this is an exceptionally nice cup of tea that himself has just brought me – I must ask him what it is – it’s not the same as we had this afternoon… yummm!) He also picked up some Resident’s Parking permits from our local Council – there’s a new building going up just across the street and the workmen who’re constructing it park in our “Visitors” spots, and stay there all day. Apparently someone alerts them when a Parking Inspector is due to make his (or her) rounds, and they all scramble to swap spots and move their cars before they can get booked. So each of the Bodies Corporate (there are three buildings involved, so three Bodies Corporate) sent a rep to the local Council and managed to talk them into issuing Resident’s Parking permits, for residents to give to their guests. Any car not displaying one of these permits will get booked. We also have a spare parking spot in the underground garage, so anyone coming to see us and wanting to keep their car out of the sun can make use of that – when both Lisa and Kate are coming over it’s usually a race to see who gets here first, Lisa and Neale, or Kate and Terry, ‘coz if we can’t “borrow” another car spot from one of the other residents, the first couple here get our spare parking place, and the loser parks outside 🙂

Weigh-in this morning was… encouraging… down to 109.7kg. Two points down. I don’t think it’s down quite enough to keep me out of the 110kg zone when my body gets the message “Quick! Store all possible fluids! You’re a camel!” from these wretched pills I have to take – still, let’s see what happens tomorrow… Hopefully I’ll go down another one or two points, before the upwards surge…

Do try to stay cool, and tune in again tomorrow night to find out if the “differently laid out” Logitech keyboard that is sitting currently uninstalled next to me fits my hand span better than this one doesn’t (this is a Logitech too) …and whether I’ve started growing a hump on my back or not… ciao, all! 🙂