Today was quite a full day! When I was going through my spam email this morning, there was a missive from Rift… they’re introducing new builds for all Classes! (You’re all looking a bit blank – let me explain…) “Class” is what… profession? or calling… that you are – for example you could be a Warrior, a Cleric, a Rogue, or a Mage. Each Class has several different “Builds”, or ways in which you can utilise various abilities within your Class. For instance, a Mage could “build” a Necromancer, and use the undead to fight for them, so all their experience points would go into spells that would further them along that path. Or they might “build” a Warlock, and use their Pet (see previous post!) to Tank for them, while they stand back and hurls D.O.T’s. A Warrior may “build” a Beastmaster, and have their Pet fighting alongside him (or her), and a Cleric may “build” a Druid, and have a Pet acting as a Tank, while they hurl Righteous spells at the enemy, or, have a Pet which heals the Cleric and his (or her) group. Lots of different Builds, but up until now, Classes have generally not been allowed to “mix and match” too far outside of their designated palette of abilities. A Mage, for example, was not able to properly heal others or themselves. A Rogue wasn’t really cut out to be a Tank, and do a lot of up close and personal fighting – and so forth. Today, however, all that changed. Now you can “mix and match” – if you can imagine the build, no matter how unlikely, you can build it, and use it. Naturally, I couldn’t wait to try to build a Healer Mage! I started out by creating a new character on another shard (yes, another one, but this one is purely experimental – if the build works out, I’ll use it on some of my higher level characters on Laethys, or Hailol) Unfortunately, it’s still too soon to see how it’s going to turn out – I’m using a Chloromancer (healer), Necromancer (uses the undead), and Warlock (D.O.Ts, lots and lots of D.O.Ts!) build – so as I said, it’s still too soon to see how this Healer-Mage business is going to work out, or if I’m only going to be able to heal others, but not myself (in which case I won’t be very impressed! The whole point of this exercise is to see whether a Healer-Mage is going to be more successful as a solo player than a straight Mage!) Besides, my favourite eldest daughter was over today, so I only had very limited time to create, set up and play with this new Build…

Yes, Lee was over this afternoon, after her dental appointment this morning. I think she’s trying to fight the siren call of the “Diets Never Work” temptation – “Give up!”, it’s saying to her “You know it’s not going to work!” (it said it to me, for many years, until I eventually ended up not caring, one way or the other…) So she needs to get a good pair of scales, and someone to organise her and start her off (her husband’s a nice enough person, but quite frankly, he’s not the most supportive of husbands…) After lunch (sushi for her and Julian, a Cappuccino bar for me 🙂 ) we went and watched two episodes of “Person of Interest” – only two episodes this time, because we’re starting to catch up on the pre-recoded ones, and we only have a few more to watch before we run out 😦 So we watched the first episode of another show, called “The 100” (pronounced “The Hundred”) The series is set 97 years after a devastating nuclear war wiped out almost all life on Earth. The only known survivors are the residents of twelve space stations in Earth’s orbit prior to the war. The space stations banded together to form a single massive station named “The Ark”, but now their resources are dwindling, and within months they expect the life support systems to start failing. So they send a group of a hundred (hence the name of the show) young juvenile delinquents back down to Earth to see if it’s habitable again or not – only it’s not a hundred any more, because one of them has just been killed… And that’s as far as we got in it, so I can’t really tell you any more about it. Lee describes it as a sort of “Lord of the Flies meets (the CBS show) Survivor” – hmmm… sounds interesting! I totally and completely detested the story of “Lord of the Flies”, but I do like Survivor… 😉

Weigh-in this morning. Well, I did a little better today – I went down two points to 98.3kg, but who knows what tomorrow will bring? Place yer bets, ladies and gentlemen, place yer bets! Will Winter’s weight go up? down? or stay the same!? Your guess is as good as mine… I just want to get down to the 97kg zone!

So call in again tomorrow night, and find out if you’ve won, or lost, a fortune! 😉 Though I’m sure you all know better than to bet on something as mercurial as what my weight might, or might not, do – besides, don’t you know that the House always wins in the end? 🙂 I did manage to find the time today to at least remove my raggedy nail polish – and I even found time to give them a nourishing wipe with cuticle oil – my poor nails are so dry and flaky, I think they’re actually enjoying a day without nail polish! I’ll give them another dose of cuticle oil again tonight, before I go to bed, but tomorrow, it’s back under the nail polish they go! And poor old Flipper has to go off to the V.E.T. tomorrow morning, to have her next Cartrophen injection for her arthritis… she’s going to hate us for a while tomorrow afternoon… I’ll continue “experimenting” with the new Healer-Mage Build – I’m sure I’ll have lots to tell you about it tomorrow night, and how it’s working out. So that’s about it from me – all that remains now is for me to once more admonish you all  to bee good, don’t eat that second slice of chocolate mud cake, you know you don’t really want it, and, above all, stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂