Pieces of good news that I can give you this evening! 🙂 The first being that I’ve gone down two (2) sizes in clothes! Before I started this diet, all my tops were XL (and don’t even bother to ask about slacks!) Late last year I had to throw out all my old clothes because they were swimming on me, and I moved down into a size L, but they’re also too big for me now. On Saturday when I went to Autograph and My Size, I was just a teeny bit dubious about trying the next size down, M (for Medium) so I compromised, and got two tops in size M, and two tops in size L. Julian will be taking the two size L’s back tomorrow, and exchanging them for size M. Since August last year, I’ve gone from size XL to size M – I’m tempted to say (in my best fake American accent) “Howz thet fer sahze!”, but it’d make me sound a bit too much like my son-in-law, so I won’t! 😉

The second piece of good news being that I didn’t have to lose as much of my torn thumbnail as I feared I would – but I have cut/filed all my nails down a lot! I haven’t painted them yet – I’m still hanging out for my new pretty purple Willow Byron Bay nail polish to arrive – they sent me an email in about the middle of last week saying that it had been dispatched, so hopefully it’ll arrive tomorrow… I’ll let you know if it does!

The third and last piece of good news is that when I was doing my Stair Walk this afternoon, I did my one level, and I did the half level, and I thought “bugger this!” and walked down to the second landing – so I am now officially walking two landings, and back – 32 stairs altogether! I think I’m finally getting the hang of this “walking” business! 😉 Next week? Another landing? or another two landings? Being very religious (I’m a devout Coward) I’ll probably opt for a single extra landing (making my Stair Walk a total of three landings) for the first couple of days, and then stretch it down to the extra one… We’re on the fifth floor, so doing those four levels would take me down to the first floor, which is street level on the Williamson Road side… See? I’m not trapped here at all! 🙂 I know I walk the stairs in my running socks because the rough concrete stairs hurt my feet, but if I carried my torture devices shoes with me, and I put them on 😦 at the bottom of the stairs, I could escape!!  We’ve left the wheelchair in the back of the car, “just in case”, so if Julian picked me up just around the corner (cos you can’t really stop outside the front door) I could go shopping! Wheeeeeee! 😀 *sigh* and by the time I was able to walk the four levels, the lift would be fixed and back in operation again and I wouldn’t have to go to all that trouble! However, I will still continue my Stair Walking, whether the lift is working or not, because it’s all a part of doing what I have to (to lose weight)

I didn’t get a lot of Rifting in today – I had my hair done this morning, and I’m trying out a new “product” because – for the first time in my life – my hair has been getting very, very dry, so it’ll be interesting to see how this new goo works out (and I’m not supposed to use hairspray, either! I can feel withdrawal symptoms starting!) After Josh left I pretty much started planning a new header for this blog theme – it’s quite small! Only 937 x 300 pixels… which doesn’t really give me much room to work with, but I think I’ve found the right components. I’m going through all my (2000+) fonts, looking for something decorative for the borders, and I haven’t decided on a colour scheme yet – but I didn’t really get much time to work on that, either, as I had to work on my nails (and I tell you what, typing is a damn sight easier with short nails! How do those Receptionists manage to type letters and appointments and stuff?! *shakes head in amazement*) So I’m not quite sure about what I’m doing tomorrow – Rifting? I’d like to… Work on a new header? I have to… Watch all those back episodes of Survivor? I must… Do my daily Stair Walk? You can take that as a given… Paint my nails, if my new nail polish arrives? YES! Ah me… spoiled for choice! So many things to do, so little time in which to do them all… 🙂

Weigh-in this morning… Just … don’t talk to me about my weigh-in this morning! I’ll only get seething mad again! I was so… so… SO angry!  I. Went. Up! Only one point, but (see? I’m starting to froth at the mouth again!) it was UP! 105.1kg How dare my body do this to me?!! I decided this morning that I don’t want to be cremated when I die, after all! I think I’ll let this useless carcass rot, for doing this to me, time and time again! I’ve been in this wretched 105kg zone since the end of January – this is the longest I’ve ever spent in the one weight zone – remember? I went right back to the beginning, to see how many days I spent at each weight level – it turned out that it was between about 5 days, and ten days. It’s now been just over twelve days, and I’m starting to get really angry – what do I have to do? Stop eating altogether? I will if I have to, but I’d really rather not… I’m at my wit’s end! And please don’t keep on at me about how I shouldn’t weigh myself every morning, but only once a week – I’d be even angrier and unhappier (if that were possible, which I doubt!) if I’d weighed myself last Monday, and then again today – and found that I was almost exactly the same!

So anyway, tune in again tomorrow night – see if I’ve got to the stage of grabbing the carving knife and slicing pieces of body off (I’m not allowed to – I’d get blood in the grouting!) Did my nail polish arrive? Have I finished the blog header? (I’m sure you’ll notice if I have 😉 ) Did I watch any Survivor? All these questions! 😉 Never mind, you’ll find out tomorrow night, if you behave yourselves… 😉 So there it is – my day in a nutshell (or blog post, anyway) How does a body go down a dress size, but go up (even by one!) in weight? Until tomorrow night then, bee good, and stay safe! ciao, all! 🙂

Much more betterer, once I make a custom Header for it… (I hope!) 😉 If not, I’ll just… revert back to the old one, or something. Besides, I have to have something to do for the almost three weeks that I’m going to be cooped up in here… Apart from watch all my saved episodes of “Survivor: Blood versus Water” in a massive, one-day Survivor-thon (because Season 30, “Survivor: Worlds Apart” will be airing soon (so they say) and I have to make room for it – so it’s either watch the old one, or ditch it (I’m tempted, I’m tempted – I was never all that keen on family members being pitted against each other )) So my list of “Things To Do While The Lift Is Being Fixed” is growing a lot longer. I’ve the new Header to do… I’ve Survivor to watch… I have Hailol to pull up by its bootstraps and make it financially independent from Laethys… himself wants to get in a lot more group Rifting with me… and then there’s my Stair Walking, and my Home Walking… Doesn’t leave much room for sleeping, does it! 😉 I did get myself a timer when we went out on Saturday, and I’ve set it to 90 minutes (93 minutes, actually, because I overshot the mark a bit and can’t be bothered re-doing it) so between the hours of 10.am and 4.pm, every 90 minutes the alarm will sound and I’ll be clambering out of my seat and walking around the house – Den to Hall, Hall to Bedroom, Bedroom to Den – five times. Then I’ll sit down and start the timer off again. Rinse and Repeat until 4.pm. I generally do my Stair Walk around 5.pm-ish, and today – hallelujah! – I went that extra half a level for the first time! Yeah, I get a little bit puffed by the time I finish, but crikey! I’m (too many) years old and, despite trying terribly hard to lose weight, still terribly overweight – my lungs are probably not at their best – I smoked since I was about 14, very heavily for a few years before I quit (on January 26th, 2000), and I’ve had two very serious bouts of multiple blood clots in both lungs, twice, one in 2007 and the other last year, 2014 – so I reckon I’m entitled to get a bit puffed, walking down 24 stairs, and then back up them again! (there are 8 stairs (steps, or whatever you call them) to half a level) So I’ll be doing quite a bit of walking… but as I keep saying… “Whatever it takes…” 🙂

Today, being Sunday, we ran gaily around Telara, killing things left right an centre. Seeing that this is about our fourth, or fifth time around, we’re getting a lot more blaze about jumping into Rifts, and participating in Rift Raids, albeit baby ones at the moment – so today, after successfully closing two Rifts on our own, we – perhaps somewhat foolishly – decided to join the Raid group  that was attempting to close down a Nightmare Rift. They’re not pleasant beasties, and it takes a Raid group of 20 or more players to shut them down. Now this was a fairly baby one (because we were still in the “kindergarten” area of Freemarch) and we got slaughtered! Killed deader than a fly hit with Mortein, and about as quickly! Still, we got our experience points for our very first death and Soul Healing, so all was not in vain, and the rest of the Raid group polished off the last of the Nightmare Rift while we were still resurrecting ourselves… so I think we’ve decided not to participate in anymore Nightmare Rifts until we’re a few more levels older… 😉 But it was a good day – we finished off Freemarch, leveled up our Mining, Butchering, and Foraging, and have made our way to the next area, Stonefield, where we’ll have Giants and Trolls and Troglodytes to kill, oh my! 🙂

I’m just looking down at my nails – they’re a real mess! All chipped and raggedy looking… 😦 I didn’t get a chance to do them today – now they’ll have to wait until tomorrow afternoon… I’m quite put out, too, because the slightly torn thumbnail that I’ve been nursing along for weeks now, has decided to tear quite a bit further, and I fear that I shall not be able to save it by bunging more nail polish on it this time… I’ll have to trim it right back, and that’ll mean that the others will have to be trimmed back too, which won’t look as good with nail polish on *pout* (Vanity, they name is Winter! 😉 )

Weigh-in this morning was promising… I lost another 2 points and am now sitting on 105.0kg – wrrretched scales! I got on them, and first they skittered down to 104.9kg… then they slipped down to 104.8kg… (by then I was nearly jumping up and down on the scales with joy!) then they wavered a little bit more, and…  then they went back up to 105.0kg! Now, is that a tease, or is that a tease? I’d call that a tease, wouldn’t you?! They’re cruel and unusual scales! Sometimes I hate them so much I have to force myself to get on them every morning – and other times I feel quite… fond… of them. Sort of…. 😉

So call back again tomorrow night – find out if those ‘orrible scales are still teasing me, or if they’re behaving themselves… I hope I go down again tomorrow – it would be a big relief to get away from this interminable 105kg zone. *sigh* I’ll do my best to save my thumbnail tomorrow, but I really think it’s too far gone this time – and the rest of my nails really do need filing back a bit (alright then, a lot! When I’m typing I keep missing keys because the length of my nails doesn’t make proper contact with them – I think I’ve typed something correctly, and then find that I’ve missed the first letter of a word, or something! grrr!) I’m really hoping that my new Willow Byron Bay pretty purple nail polish will arrive tomorrow morning – I can’t wait to try it out… I’ll let you know if it arrives, and what it’s like. There’s sure to be lots of news tomorrow night, so don’t be shy, don’t miss out, call in and find out all the latest from chez nous! And do, please, let me know what you think of this different blog theme – should I go back to the old one? Or do you want to wait and see what this one is like when I add a customised header? Anyway, until this time tomorrow night, bee good, and please stay safe! ciao, all! 🙂

On Hailol, though not in the order that I’d like them… unfortunately, we players have no control over the order in which characters are displayed. Anyway, here they are, in all their glory! 🙂
Winterthyme – Guardian Mage, Guildmistress, Minion Handler, and Runecrafter. Hialeah – Guardian Hunter/Rogue, Guild Bank Overflow, and Auctionator. Persha – Guardian Mage, NSAAY*. Asima – Guardian Mage, NSAAY*. Copperfire – Guardian Mage, NSAAY*. Embercat – Guardian Mage, Dimension Architect and Builder. Satai – Defiant Mage, and the whole darn reason why all of this was set up in the first place, NSAAY*. Rubyfox – Defiant Mage, NSAAY*. Nuha – Male Defiant Mage, NSAAY*. Zorcha – Defiant Mage, NSAAY*. Ondine – Defiant Mage, NSAAY*. Jadenfyre – Male Defiant Mage, NSAAY*. If anyone reading would like to perhaps team up with one of these fine Mages, you’ll need to create a character on the shard Hailol, add any or all of the names above to your Friends List, and send Winterthyme an in-game email requesting Guild Membership, and/or a team-up to play with one of my Guildies. So… it’s all starting to take shape! Now all I have to do is decide who’s going to do which skill, out of Outfitting (creates cloth and leather items, bags, and capes.) Armorsmithing (creates chain and plate armor, as well as shields) Weaponsmithing (creates melee and ranged weapons) Apothecary (creates Flasks, Potions, Philters, Tonics, and Vials) Artificing (creates jewelry and caster weaponry) and Runecrafting (creates runes, used to augment weapons and gear – Winterthyme already does this one) Once those positions are assigned, the rest of the mob will concentrate on the so-called minor skills – the Gathering professions, like Foraging, Mining, and Butchering, because we’re going to need a lot of raw materials! But that’s a problem to work on next week, when I’m going to be very firmly incarcerated in this apartment.  So I spent the morning leveling up some of the younger people (I can’t just say “girls” any more – there are two men there now!) and it’ll be very interesting to see how everything shakes down and sorts itself into routines…

Our cleaning lady did turn up, and we’re no longer using periscopes to see over the top of the Flipper Fluff that was starting to take over the apartment. Tomorrow we’re off for my final outing for just over a fortnight – I’m hoping to go to Office Works – I need some more magazine binders, and who knows what pretty little boxes and stationery items I’ll see while I’m there! 😉 I was also hoping to go to Autograph and/or My Size – but I’ve decided that I’m not going to get new slacks until I hit double figures (probably in ten years, the way I’m going at the moment!) but I really do need more tops – I’m constantly waiting for things to come back from the Dry Cleaners (or to even go there in the first place!) so we might still go up to The Pines, after Office Works (or before – depends on how hot it gets!) Basically, I just want to go somewhere that’s not here! I should probably get some more running socks, too, though Julian can pick them up from Athlete’s Foot any time – they’re only across the road… Yes, I did go for my Stair Walk this afternoon – wearing the running socks instead of my torture devices shoes, it’s actually not that hard – and in another couple of days I might try stretching it to a level and a half! Do you know, I haven’t walked up or down a series of steps (that is, stairs) for… what?? four or five years? At least… I just asked himself and he can’t remember either – his reply was “several years?” I just wish I could stand up straight… Julian thinks I should do my Stair Walk in the morning instead of the afternoon – what does everyone else think? I suppose I could weigh myself, get dressed, and head for the stairs before breakfast, but I’m not convinced that it would make all that much difference… so I’ll just use my classic response when the kids used to ask me if they, or we, could do something/go somewhere that I wasn’t really all that enthused about, and say… “We’ll see…” 🙂 (and somehow… we very seldom did go, or do, whatever it was that they were so insistent about at the time, but promptly forgot about the next time a different ad came on the television, and they wanted to do that, instead! 😉 ) So…. “We’ll see….” 😉

Weigh-in this morning was pathetic! I’f I wasn’t so annoyed about it, you’d be looking at a tear soaked screen right now! I [please insert very long string of very rude words here] stayed the same. 105.5kg This is getting very tired! I’m sick to death of being in the 105kg zone! And I’m only on day 6 of these wretched tablets! Maybe if I get myself a timer, and set it to 90 minutes…then when the alarm goes off, I get up and walk the House Circuit (den to passage, passage to hall, hall to bedroom, bedroom to den) 5 times, then re-set the timer, rinse and repeat – as well as the Stair walk, perhaps that would help break this… this… dead-end hole my weight has sunk into? I’ll get a timer tomorrow, while we’re out (we do have several timers in the house, but timers are like biros and wire coathangers; they tend to gravitate to the dim, dark corners of an overcrowded wardrobe, or to the very back of a seldom used drawer, under a pile of dried up old markers, bits of paper that you’ve kept because they have “important” notes on them, and bent and misshapen paper clips!) As I’ve said… “I’ll do anything to get thinner!” (“but I won’t do that!” – with apologies to Meatloaf! 😉 )

So tune in again tomorrow night, folks – did I brave the heat and go to Office Works, and The Pines? Did I get my Magazine Holders? or some new tops? And did I cave in and get some new slacks, after all? Will I still go for my Stair Walk if it’s very hot? I could feel the lobby and the stairwell heating up already today, and in High Summer it can get extremely unpleasant out there… Will my weight have dropped any, or will I still be the same or higher? Experience leads me to place my bet on the latter…  So until tomorrow night, bee good, and above all, stay safe! ciao, all! 🙂

*NSAAY = No Skill Assigned As Yet

Today… Himself left earlier than usual to pick up my favourite eldest daughter, because he had a Dental appointment at 11.30 – so it was pretty much Up! Bathroom! Tea! Breakfast! Coffee! Out the door! No time for pleasantries, no time to stop and pat the cat, just rush, rush, rush… I did manage to get about three quarters of an hour of Rifting in this morning whilst himself was off picking up Lee, so at least my Minions got relieved of their loot and sent off on new Adventures, but that was about the size of it… until tomorrow (though our cleaning lady is supposed to be coming tomorrow, and things tend to get just a trifle noisy when she’s around 😉 Julian duly picked up Lee and dropped her off here, then raced off to his Dental appointment, and I’m happy to report that the Dentist didn’t do anything drastically nasty to him – in fact the Dentist is quite nonplussed. Last year Julian had a cracked back tooth which was giving him problems because it had become infected. They cleaned up the infection, and he had a root canal filling done on the suspect tooth. He was supposed to be getting it Crowned around about now, but the darned tooth hasn’t settled down properly and is still giving him problems. The Dentist is mystified. The Dental X-rays simply don’t give enough information – it could be that there’s a fourth root on that tooth that missed the root canal work, although the Dentist says that this is highly unlikely… or it could be the tooth with the large amalgam filling in it that’s next to the suspect tooth, that could be causing the problem. Another problem is that the pain and discomfort are intermittent, and tends to die down again just as quickly as it flared up. So he’s got another appointment in six months, and if or when the pain flares up again he’s to ring the Dentist immediately and he’ll see him as an emergency patient – hopefully before the pain subsides again. When he got back from the Dentist, we didn’t even have a cup of coffee, just raced off again to pick up Lee’s shoes – which did fit, thank heavens, and which finally became her (somewhat belated) Birthday present from us. They had lunch at the Coffee Club, and I sat at the table with them and had a glass of mineral water and ate my Optifast Bar which we’d brought with us. While we were in the shopping centre, I picked up the iron supplements that Dr. Y. wants me to have (why was I never told before that I was very low on iron? Apparently this has been the case for some time – my blood, my iron levels, and nobody thought to breath a word of it to me?!… Talk about feeling like a mushroom!) and three new silver rings from Magnolia – they have a special on at the moment, buy two items and get a third one free – though I didn’t know that when I was looking at the rings (mine are all getting too big for me!) Then we came home, and by that time we only had time to watch one episode of “Person of Interest” before Lee had to leave again 😦 I’m not sure when I’ll see my favourite eldest daughter again – the lift goes out on Monday, and I honestly think the stairs will be too much for her. She’s bigger than I was when I started this diet, and she’s already had one minor heart attack… By the time the lift is back in operation again, she’ll probably be back at uni, and it’ll depend on her time table as to when she’ll be able to come over. Oh, and I might add that I’m not at all pleased with Melbourne’s weather! It’s going to be 35C on Saturday, my last day of freedom and being able to go shopping, and ummm… I dunno, just… go somewhere other than here! On Saturday night the doors to my prison will clang shut, locking me away from the world and all its shops until February 25th (or thereabouts) when hopefully the lift will be restored to us in all its refurbished glory 🙂

Remember I said I was going to think about how I could do my stair walk without having to wear my shoes? Well, I had a brilliant thought this morning. Last week while Lee was trying on hundreds of pairs of shoes in Athlete’s Foot, I was idly looking around the shop, and spotted lots of different types of socks. Some were called “Walking Socks”, and some were called “Running Socks”, and I wondered what the difference was… so I asked the nice lady pulling out all their shoes for Lee “why was it so?”, and she explained that they both had different types and amounts of padding in them to protect the soles of the feet of idiots people running, or walking. I remembered them this morning and thought “Hmmm! I wonder if they would help protect feet walking up and down…. on stairs!” So we got a pair this afternoon – I got the “Running” socks because their padding felt the thickest, and I used them on my stair walk later this afternoon – yes, I did go again, I told you I would! 🙂 And the socks worked a real treat! Not only was I able to keep my balance in them, but I also got a trifle puffed this time – I was rushing down and up the stairs so quickly! And I didn’t feel so precariously perched on top of a chasm this time, either! Success! I think we’ll get some more of those socks. There’s only one slight problem with the socks… our apartment is all tiled, and socks + tiles = slippery. If I put the socks on in the lounge room, then I have to slippy-slide my way to the front door. Mind you, it would be very easy to bring one of the dining room chairs into the hall and put my socks on there, instead. So we will, next time, and that’s that problem out of the way too! 🙂 See? I’m quite a genius when it comes to “inventing” ways to add to my own comfort! 😛 Today, one small landing on the 4th floor – tomorrow, the world! 😉

Weigh-in this morning. Not good. Not good at all! I stayed the same. 105.5kg. This stair walking had better work! If I had enough hair, I’d be tearing it out in handfuls! My weight had better be down tomorrow (but I know it won’t be) or I’ll cry! 😦

So tune in again tomorrow night – find out if our cleaning lady turned up or not, and if things got very noisy with the vacuum cleaner an’ all… I’ll be able to let you know if Blueiris can finally migrate to another shard (I checked on Jadenfyre this morning, and he can be transferred tomorrow!) so now it all rests on Blueiris. I don’t want to do it, but I will delete her if I absolutely have to – I’m not going to wait around much longer. All will be made clear tomorrow night! And you’ll hear all about tomorrow’s Sock Stair Walk – or should that be Stair Sock Walk, or even Stair Walk Sock? Whatever! You’ll hear about it here tomorrow… and if all you see is a tear soaked screen, you’ll know that my weight either went up, or stayed the same… So until tomorrow night – bee good, and stay safe! ciao, all! 🙂

Starting to suffer from Alzheimer’s disease or something! Playing Rift this morning, tweaking here, adjusting there, I finally got the “New and Improved Blueiris Cloned as a Mage” ready to solo! Time, I thought, to transfer the original Blueiris to a new home, and rename her stand-in, Lilacrose. I made sure that Blueiris had no mail in her letterbox, no auctions, and not too much cash left on her – and I started the transfer… Then I get told that I can’t transfer her because she was moved recently and still has another two days before she can be transferred again!! (you can only transfer a character once every seven days) To the very best of my knowledge, Blueiris was moved to Hailol about a year ago, and hasn’t been played with, or touched at all since, until… about a week ago, when I “played” her character for about half an hour just to see what she had on her, and what she had in her bank! But I certainly didn’t transfer her – she was already here, and had been for ages! I’m quite puzzled though – I can’t think how they could think that I’d recently moved her, unless I did it in my sleep (or I’m developing Alzheimer’s!) I could, I suppose, raise a ticket (talk to a Moderator), but by the time they got around to my problem the two days could well be up anyway (the Moderators do do a good job, and they are very busy – sometimes it takes a while for them to get to you, especially so soon after a major patch, so I’m not bitching about it) So I’ll just wait… I can’t move Jadenfyre in until I move her out, and I still have to wait a couple more days before I can move him again, anyway… Oh well, so much for the plans of mice and men…

This morning was himself’s Birthday – he got a pair of very pretty fine bone china cups with fluffy cats on them from his sister, and the entire “George Gently” series from me and Flipper (it was on his “What to get me for Christmas” list!) His mother’s present is still in transit, and he’ll get the rest of his presents after the lift is fixed and we can have everyone over for his Big Birthday Bash. I did go for my stair walk this afternoon – I was going to do the Fire Escape stairs, barefooted, because I can’t balance properly in shoes, but the light in the stairwell was broken, so I had to use the front stairs. Julian’s thongs are a little big on me, so, I gritted my teeth and put my shoes on (and promptly staggered around as though I was drunk – it happens every time I put shoes on. I HATE shoes…) and tottered over to the door to the stair well. Ah tells you, them thar stairs air jest plain nasty! Not only are they rough and knobbly with lumps of stone poking out of them, they’re narrow, to boot! Anyway, I clutched the stair rail with my right hand, the way a drowning man clutches a straw, and I jammed my left hand against the wall on the other side. I felt most precarious, teetering there on the top step… It was almost surreal – my glasses are multi-focal, with the main part of them designed for “straight ahead” vision. Unfortunately, my back condition forces me to walk semi-doubled over, so instead of looking “straight ahead”, I end up looking “down”. This is fine on flat ground, and I can cope reasonably well and go at a respectable speed, but on a staircase? Suffice it to say that everything was a bit “wavy”, like looking through water, or something! I went s-l-o-w-l-y, one step at a time, feeling as though I was going to topple over and go head first down to the first half-landing any minute. I made that half-landing safely, and continued on down to the proper landing, where the next door to the inside (and the lift) is. Phew! I’d made the first landing, and I wasn’t tired, or even puffed – just terrified! I turned around to go back up. Seeing as the coming down had been easy enough (except for me feeling as though I was going to fall – probably because I hate heights, and I was looking down…) I thought that going back up would be a lot easier (because I’d be looking up at the steps, instead of vertiginously down) and in a way, it was. I still had a death grip on the stair rail, and the other hand on the wall, and I still went up, one baby step at a time. However, remember that I mentioned that the steps were narrow? And not just narrow, they’re murderously narrow! I have very big feet – about a size 11 – and even though they stick out in a perfect ballet “first position”, I had to be extra, extra careful not to catch my toe under the edge of the next step, as I moved slowly upwards. If I’d caught my toe under one and tripped, it would have been “all over, red rover” – at best, I would have smashed my face into the unforgivably hard concrete and broken my nose and my teeth, and at worst, I would have broken my neck and you wouldn’t be reading this blog, you’d be reading my epitaph! Still, I did it, and I survived, and I will do it again tomorrow, and the next day, and the next. I really meant it when I said “I’ll do whatever it takes!” 🙂 Now all I have to do is work out a way to do it without having to wear shoes… I’ll have a lot better balance! Gimme a few days, I’ll come up with a solution – I always do! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning… I did it again. And this is the reason that I have to persevere with the stairs! Oh, I went down alright… 1 measly point again, to 105.5kg This is not good enough! At this rate it’ll take me until 2085 to get to 82kg! Well, maybe not quite that long, but far too long, anyway! So the stairs it’ll have to be, and that means that I have to get cracking, concocting a way of navigating the front stairs sans shoes… (or until the light in the Fire Escape is fixed!) Seeing my weight go down one drip at a time is like water torture! One.. slow.. drop.. at.. a.. time.. I can’t stand it!! Perhaps if I strap a new bag of Kitty Litter to my back for my stair walk, it’ll be more effective? Or even two bags… Today Julian showed me, using two 15 liter casks of water, just how much weight I’ve dropped since I started this diet, so if I carried that much extra around before, I should be able to cope with two little bags of Kitty Litter while doing my stair walk, shouldn’t I?

Anyway, drop by again tomorrow night – Julian has another Dental appointment tomorrow morning, and you’ll be able to hear all the gory details of what ensued. You’ll also get to find out how I managed my Stair Stroll, and if I’ve thought of a clever way to get up and down the hard and painful stairs without my shoes yet. My favourite eldest daughter will be over tomorrow, too – the shoes she ordered from Athlete’s Foot have come in and she has to collect them, and after that, no doubt we’ll watch an episode or three of something interesting… I’m getting the “urge” to make another header for the blog (read: “to look for a new theme template, for which I will have to design and make another header” 😉 ) And I think that the status of my weight will probably figure somewhere in the interesting mix of tidbits that you’ll pick up around here tomorrow night… So, until then, bee good, and stay safe! ciao, all! 🙂

And then left, with a whole bunch of Bank Statements and other bits and pieces… but that was later this afternoon. This morning, I managed to get a bit of Rifting in before we had to start sifting through all the papers. But I don’t know if I’ve done the right thing or not… the girl that I was going to use as the Auctionator is a Rogue – or for those more familiar with World of Warcraft, you’d say she was Hunter Class, that is, she fights with a bow or a gun, has a pet to “Tank” for her and do all the close contact fighting, while she stands back and goes “plink, plink” with her arrows, or “pew-pew-pew” with her bullets. While this was my Class of choice in World of Warcraft, I’ve now switched almost exclusively to using Mages. Depending on the type of Mage you decide to play, a Mage can also have a pet to act as a “Tank” (Tanks are exactly what they sound like! Tanks rumble in, grabbing the mob’s attention away from you, so that you can stand back and cast your spells in peace and quiet) So because I virtually never use Rogues any more, it niggled me that I have two of them, cluttering up my otherwise all-Mage lineup. I still had one spot free, and decided to recreate Blueiris as a Mage instead of a Rogue, and that’s mostly what I did this morning, before the paper sorting… but I’m still not sure that I should have. I mean, Blueiris is still there, waiting to transfer her 390-odd pieces of Dimension gear over to the “new and improved Mage Class Blueiris” (I’ll have to change her name – I can’t have two with the same name at the same time, so at the moment she’s Lilacrose) It’s come to the point where I’m constantly procrastinating – “Will I? or won’t I? I Dunno… Should I? or shouldn’t I?” I think I’ll sleep on it… for a couple of years… Maybe delete both of them and create something “different” (different? Different?? There is no “Different”, they’re all Mages, aren’t they? And because I don’t like playing without a pet, I’m stuck with either an Elemantalist, or a Gravelord (read: Necromancer) either of which are what I always end up with!) *sigh* Oh, and good news on the addon that I’ve been pining for! The one that allows you to see what all of your characters have in the backpacks, and in their Banks… I think I’ve found one for Rift! I told Julian about it this morning, so he’s been having a test drive of it and says that it “looks promising”! It’s called “Imhothar’s Bags” – hopefully I’ll be able to talk him into loading it up for me this evening so that I can have a play with it, too! It would be wonderful if it does work the way that I hope it does… it’ll save me heaps of time and legwork! I also found time to traipse Winterthyme around Scarlet Gorge (why do I always get lost, or go the wrong way in Scarlet Gorge? I put an “x” on the map, and try to steer towards it… but always, always! end up running in the opposite direction!) I leveled up her mining a bit more (but she’s still not up to where she should be, though!)

As I suspected, it didn’t take long to sort through the paperwork, and then it was back to… yes, you guessed it! Rift, and more of the above. Mr. Tax Man arrived at 3.00pm, we chatted a bit, he took his papers, and was gone by 4.00pm… all terribly anticlimactic! Oh well… back to Rift… 😉 I’m not quite sure what’s happening tomorrow – it’s himself’s Birthday, but with me not eating normal human-type food at the moment, we won’t be going anywhere special for luncheon or dinner (just wait until next year though! 🙂 ) We could, I suppose, make it another “Sunday in Telara”, or he might prefer to tinker with his Commodore 64’s… Oh, I almost forgot to mention! I had a phone call from Dr. Y. last night, about my blood test results! They prove beyond reasonable doubt that I’m a strange being from another world… No, no – that’s not right! Silly me, I was reading from the wrong script! My blood tests were normal, but I’m still (???) very low on iron, so I have to get iron supplements, as well as the vitamin D that we both have to take (why hasn’t anyone ever told me that I was low on iron before??! *shakes head in confusion*) He also told me to behave myself 😉 So that was good – all I have to worry about now getting myself down to at least 82kg by July. I found Julian’s old thongs (they were exactly where I thought they would be – at the bottom of the shoe basket in the hall) and tomorrow, I start walking the front stairs! Just down to the first landing and back up again, to start off with, but by next week (or the one after) I expect to be getting down to, and back from, the second landing. With the lift being out for a couple of weeks and all, the Body Corporate is going to put a chair on every landing so that people can stop and have a bit of a rest (there are a lot of elderly people in this apartment block – not counting myself, of course! I’m only old, I’m not elderly yet!) and the week after that, I might be able to get down to the third landing… By the end of March, hopefully I’ll be doing the whole five floors! (but don’t hold your breath! I’m really, really lazy, remember! 😉 ) However, I’m hoping that if it shows that I’m losing weight faster by trundling up and down the stairs, I just might be more persuaded to keep it up!

Weigh-in this morning. More of the same. Down one more notch, to 105.6kg Could this be going any slower? Honestly, if I were going any slower, I’d be going backwards, and putting on weight! Good grief, this is why I was ferreting around in the shoe basket, looking for Julian’s old thongs! I have to find a way to speed up my weight loss! I know I shouldn’t, but I’m starting to feel the beginnings of a panic attack, because I’m starting to think that I won’t be able to get down to 90kg by July, let alone the 82kg that I should be able to get down to by then! I feel like I’m running all around, waving both arms in the air together simultaneously, screaming “The sky is falling! The sky is falling!” No, I haven’t completely lost it (yet!), I’m just not losing weight fast enough!

So call in again tomorrow night – find out what himself got for his Birthday, and what we did to celebrate the day. See if I really did go for my first “Stair Walk”, or whether or not I chickened out, again, and what my excuse was this time… Learn all the latest about our adventures on Rift (and is the correct term “in Rift”, or “on Rift”? Good question… I must ask my favourite eldest daughter… or Julian…) And of course, the most important question of them all – what did my weight do today! Did it go up? (I’m expecting it to!) Did it stay the same? (please ghod, no!) Did it go down? (I don’t believe that it will!) or Did it go significantly down ? (hysterical laughter – Oh, don’t be silly!) So until then, take care of yourselves, bee good, and stay safe! ciao, all! 🙂

It’s quite a long, drawn out process, getting Hailol ready for “the big time”, but it’s getting there 🙂 Yes, I worked on that before and after Josh’s visit, and I don’t think I really realised just how randomly and badly set up most of the characters were – you know, just when you think you’ve got everything set to go, you find that the person you thought had the fish, didn’t… in fact, nobody did! This is what I meant the other night when I said that I really miss a lot of the addons that were available on World of Warcraft, but are sadly lacking on Rift. Like Altoholic. If Altoholic had been available on Rift, it would have taken me literally seconds to find out that no-one was carrying Fish in their inventory – instead, I had to go through all eight characters, twice, to find this one, simple fact out. Anyone out there reading this blog play Rift? If so, pass the word around! Winter wants an Altoholic addon written for Rift, please! Toot sweet! (like, preferably last week!) But it’s all looking very promising – I created the last of the extras today; unfortunately Jadenfyre still has another four days before he can be moved in, and then the team will finally be complete. You might also note that this is the first time, in living history, that I’ve included two men on the shard team! Will wonders never cease!? 😉 Writing this blog is tough going tonight, I’m having to type very carefully, and a lot slower than usual, because I finally got a chance to do my nails this afternoon – they’re now that glorious, deep and luscious irridescent-y Kingfisher-peacock-blue colour (actually, they sort of match the lounge suite! 😉 ) They’re dry, but still not hardened properly… Julian went out to do a “small shop”, and came back with about three quarters of the supermarket (plus the fact that Flipper’s favourite dinner was on special today so he bought quite a lot of it!) I took the opportunity while he was out to take a quick break from Rifting and wrap something up for Wednesday, then quickly scuttled back to sifting and sorting characters and abilities… I don’t hold out much hope of getting anything sensible done tomorrow, for The Tax Man Cometh tomorrow apres midi, and we didn’t get all the papers he’ll be wanting ready today – Julian was still out shopping, and I wanted to get my nails done… So it looks like we’ll be rather busy tomorrow morning And, of course, it’s himself’s Birthday on Wednesday; my favourite eldest daughter will be over on Thursday, and our cleaning lady has promised that she’ll be here this Friday (hopefully before we suffocate under all the shed Flipper fur!) Saturday will be my last chance to get out of the house to do some shopping before the lift ceases to operate for a couple of weeks, and Sunday, of course, we’ll be busy saving Telara again… Roll on next week! 😉 But I’ll get what I can get done, whenever I can – and besides, by the time I get a chance to do any heavy work on Hailol, Jadenfyre will have finished with his quarantine and I’ll be able to move him over. Which reminds me – I have about another three characters – the ones I created today – to be inducted into the Guild tonight… I must remember to tell himself that I’ll need him online to invite them in….

Weigh-in this morning was… frustrating! I went down… another one point… to 105.7kg… I know it was down, and that’s good, but it’s so agonizingly s-l-o-w! And there was silly me, confidently thinking that I should be down to about 82kg by the time in See Dr. Y. again in July! At this rate, I’ll probably still be sitting on 104.0kg then! *grouch*, *growl* And of course I’m just waiting for the sudden upswing of weight, when my body finally remembers that I’m supposed to be storing as much excess fluid as possible while I’m on this medication. If only I could go down another half a kilo (or more.. More would be good, around about now!), then when my weight shot up, it wouldn’t look like so much, and I’d be able to say “Well, I did lose a lot, all in one go, so it’s not surprising that I’ve gone up a little…” with the emphasis on “a little“! Tomorrow, I look for Julian’s thongs… I think they’re at the bottom of the shoe basket that we keep by the front door – shoes look terribly messy, littered around the front door like cast off snail shells, so I decided that we’d get a big, decorative, lidded basket for the hall, so that when we shed our footwear as we came in, we could toss the horrid things into the basket, cram the lid down, and forget that such abominations existed – until we had to go out again. So – if I do find the thongs, I’ll walk down the front stairs to the first landing and back again, once (or maybe even twice) a day (the concrete steps are rough, so I need something to shield my delicate little feet) – and if I can’t find the thongs, I’ll use the fire escape stairs, which are made of nice, smooth concrete, and walk down to the first landing, etc., etc. – I gotta do something to get this weight moving more quickly – and as I said to Dr. Y. last week, “I’ll do whatever it takes!”

So tune in again tomorrow night (stops typing and examines finger nails – yeah, they seem to be holding up alright… resumes typing) did the Tax Man arrive? More to the point, did we have the papers that he wanted, ready to go? And did I find the thongs? Have I been for my first Stair Walk yet? (Hmmm… sounds like a good title for a sci-fi movie! “Stair Walk”, with Winter Thyme, and Julian’s Old Thongs!) and did I use the front stairs, or the fire escape? Or, did I “lazy out” and not bother, because we were “so busy with the Tax Man”? (yes, I do know myself, very well indeed! 😉 ) Did I get a chance to do any more preparation regarding the characters on Hailol? And, most importantly, did my weight go up, down, or stay the same? Find out the answers to these vitally important questions, right here on this blog, this time tomorrow night! So until then, bee good, and stay safe! ciao, all! 🙂

As you all know, Sunday is traditionally our day for “Saving Telara Better Than Those Guardians Can, Anyway!” (now that we’re Defiants – before, it was known as our day for “Saving Telara Better Than Those Defiants Can, Anyway!”) and we did! However, I’m getting ahead of myself. We slept in later than we usually do on a Sunday, so it was a bit of a scramble to have our cup of tea, and breakfast, and shower, and not necessarily in that order, so that we could get back to fighting our way through the baby areas and into the somewhat more earnest side of questing in Freemarch. While I was having my breakfast, and sorting through what laughingly passes as email these days, I came upon a very interesting site (courtesy of my hard to find subscription email) called “Willow Byron Bay“, and some nail polish that looked absolutely yummy! I think I might get one… or two… maybe three? of them: Genie – an orchid purple with a hot blue shimmer, Torakina –  a lush red raspberry shimmer, and Bonsoir – a deep, dark navy blue with a bright (but subtle) cerulean blue shimmer. Its the night sky on your nails. I’d love to have all of them (there are others, but these three (and a gorgeous gold!) looked to be the best!), but perhaps I’d better just get one to start off with (they are $24.95 each) just to make sure that the quality is good enough to last through a week of heavy Rifting and blog typing 😉 So once himself brought me my after breakfast coffee, and got me to stop staring at the picture of that beautiful, mesmerising orchid purple with the hot blue shimmer, we finally managed to get into Rift… and (gasp, shock, horror!) it turned out that I was wrong last night! I said that I’d worked out that the level of the Minions returns was based on the level of the person sending them out… but they’re not! They’re based on the level of the person collecting them! A level 36 character sent the Minions off last night, but a level 65 character collected the returns this morning – and they were all suitable for a level 65 character, with an appropriate skill level to work the ores and stuff coming in. Anyway, I have decreed that Winterthyme (level 36, current home, Sanctum) shall officially take over the role of Minion Mistress, and (maybe!) Patron Package Collector. For now, anyway, and poor old Jademoss can have a well earned rest. Back to the doings of the day, I’d say we’re probably about half way through Freemarch, the first of the Defiant areas, and neither of us has died yet! 🙂 Of course, it’s all terribly “ho-hum” for me, and it’s very hard not to just go charging ahead doing what needs to be done (according to me, anyway) in the order in which I think they ought to be done, so that we can get as much done as we can in the shortest possible time, while still managing to level up our Foraging, Mining, and Butchering. Next Sunday I expect to finish off Freemarch and move on to Stonefield, with its Giants and Trolls, ghouls and lizard men, and the impossible to find leap off the waterfall for an Achievement.  It was getting towards four o’clock when we got a phone call from an old friend, who wanted to know if it was alright for him to drop over. We hadn’t seen Gill for a couple of years, and as he’s always been a sort of a defacto son to us (or rather, me) we said of course he could – we’d love to see him… And so that was the end our day of “Saving Telara Better Than Those Guardians Can, Anyway!” 😉

I first met Gill when I was running my BBS (Bulletin Board System) – he was very much into Star Wars, and for a very short time was trying to run his own BBS called Ice Station Hoth – we became friends, and he used to come over regularly. Like a lot of the young people on my board, he was having problems at home, and we sort of sat in as pseudo parents whenever he wanted to talk about “things”. He even took my favourite youngest daughter out a couple of times, and we even discussed the dowry! 😉 (three chooks, no rooster! two sheep, and a goat) but alas – although they got on very well together, there was just no spark, and I never got my chooks, sheep, and the goat 🙂 When he finished school, he did a film (?) course at RMIT, and at one stage had to make a short, 12 minute film – for which I offered my services in the makeup department, and made up the entire cast for the shoot. It was a science fiction/cyber punk story, where a young girl has an “adventure” – there’s a car chase scene (sort of), and a segment in an underground car park (the garage of the place where Julian used to work – yes, he did get permission!), fog machines, menacing figures… and the whole point to the story? Cut to an old woman, slumped in a chair, hooked up to a fancy super-dooper computer – she’s living the life of the young girl in her mind… The “Old Woman”? Me! 🙂 I’m not too bad at stage makeup… 😉 So, Gill has been here, there, and everywhere since. He worked on movies in the States, been to Israel several times, almost settled in Canada, and now he’s back in Melbourne – at least for the time being. It was extra good to see him again – hopefully now that he’s got a regular job, we’ll get to see him more often!

Weigh-in this morning – well, it just goes to show that even people as (usually) infallible as myself can be wrong more than once in the same day! I was wrong about the Minion returns, and I was wrong about my weight this morning. I didn’t stay the same, after all (that’ll happen tomorrow, just wait and see!) I went down one point. One! To 105.8kg Big [mutter] Deal! Still, it was better than staying the same. Nothing makes me crankier than my weight staying the same for several days in a row! I hope I’ll go down again tomorrow, but I highly doubt it – I started on those wretched pills this morning, so I’ll start looking, and weighing, like a walking water tank soon

So tune in again tomorrow night – find out how many of those yummy looking nail polishes I ordered – or if I ordered any! I never got to change my nail polish this afternoon because Gill was here, but I must say that for week old polish, it’s looking darn good! No major chips, just a little bit of “wear” right on the tips! Excellent nail polish, this “breathable” stuff! 🙂 I hope I get a chance to re-do my nails tomorrow afternoon, but we have papers to prepare, for the Tax Man Cometh on Tuesday… and he will want lots and lots of papers, and bank statements, and all that sort of stuff that Tax Men love (I think that it’s their equivalent of Catnip…) So find out if my nails are going to look a trifle ragged on Tuesday, or if they’ll be in “Glorious Technicolour Sound” – I mean, “Glorious Technicolour Kingfisher-Peacock-Blue”! 🙂 And if you’re extra lucky, I’ll even tell you what my weight did overnight! Well, until this time tomorrow night, bee good, and stay safe! (that’s an order! 😉 ) ciao, all! 🙂