Well, today was our day for “Traipsing Through Telara Thoroughly Trouncing Trolls” – quite literally today, because we did have to “do away with” a certain number of Ridge Trolls. A highly successful day was had by all (except for the Ridge Trolls, of course) – we went up a level, almost two, actually, and although I died once (it wasn’t fair! I was mobbed!) we ended up knocking over the nasties like ninepins! We started off this morning at level 44, and we were facing mobs of between levels 48 and 50 – a lot of them Elite, too (Elites are supposedly really hard to kill – meh! They were a little tougher, but not by that much!) Julian thinks it’s because we’re both Mages, and we both pack a pretty lethal wallop. In the past, we’ve usually played a Healer + Mage DPS team (DPS = Damage Per Second). In other words, I zapped nasties, and he healed me when I was getting too severely bashed by the nasties I was trying to kill. Clerics are basically healers, and are a definite must in a large-ish group, but they don’t have much killing power. It’s usually worked out quite well for us, working in that sort of team, but this time around we’re both Mages, and we both specialise in doing maximum damage. And as a matter of fact, as the Mage who usually received the healing when I got wounded, I’m not missing it all that much – mind you, I’ve had to take a lot more healing potions than I used to – just as well we have a Guild Apothecary who can make all the healing potions we could possibly need! 😉 Another thing we’ve noticed, too – when we used to play World of Warcraft, Mages, though very good at DPS, were also notoriously fragile – extremely likely to die just when they were needed the most! It was supposedly because they could only wear Cloth Armor (don’t ask me why, because I have no idea!) In Rift, Mages wear Cloth Armor too – but I’d say we’re tougher than the Hunter/Rogues who wear Leather Armor. It could also be because we don’t fight up close and personal, like Warriors, and a lot of Clerics and Hunter-Rogues. No! We stand back and zap spells and DOTs at our foes! (DOT’s = Damage Over Time spells) We can also send out Pets in to Tank for us (Tank = up close and personal fighters who take the brunt of the damage, leaving the spellcasters (Mages) free to work their (ahem!) “Magic” from afar) – so all in all, Mages are very formidable opponents, and as I said, we’re knocking these mobs, 4 to 5 levels higher than ourselves, over like ninepins! It does not compute! The Orange, and especially the Red mobs, should be really, really hard to knock over, and they’re just pussy-cats! It’s amusing, in a way – when I’m starting out a new character, I generally try to level them up a little higher than necessary, on the (now obviously false) premise that as I go for the higher quest levels, I’ll be better able to handle the mobs if my own level is a little higher than it should be. Well, I think I’ve pretty much knocked that particular premise on its head! No more shall I tarry in Silverwood and Freemarch, boosting myself up in order to be able to handle the mobs in Stonefield and Gloamwood more easily! Unfortunately I have no more young ‘uns left on Laethys and Hailol to test this theory out on, and I don’t (at this stage, anyway) really want to start up a new character elsewhere. But I might. Later.

Weigh-in this morning. I feel the faint stirrings of a bump (or lump) beginning under my feet… I stayed the same this morning, at 98.4kg 😦 *sigh* Well, I suppose it was better than going up (that’ll happen tomorrow – you mark my words!) And I have a sort-of confession to make, too… I say “sort of”, because I made up for it this evening! *blows raspberry at screen* At lunch time today…. I forgot to go and do my Stair Walk…. BUT! I went and did it this evening, on my way back to the Den after watching two episodes of Star Trek: Enterprise! So, although I did forget to do it at lunch time, I still got my three Stair Walks per day in, by doing it this evening! I don’t know how it would have worked out if I’d been doing what I’d been thinking of doing, and having a fourth Stair Walk every evening, on my way back down to the Den… Let’s see what the scales tell me tomorrow… it might even turn out to be more beneficial for me to have my third Stair Walk later in the evening…

So tune in again this time tomorrow night, and find out all the latest news! I’m (hopefully) having my hair coloured tomorrow morning – a bright emerald green! No, not really 🙂 It’ll be pretty much the same as what I had done last time – streaks (stripes?) of a rusty sort of red (with just a hint of violet in it to cool the red down a bit, I think?!) I’m really looking forward to not looking like a faded red panda any more! 🙂 I’ll let you all know how it goes, and what it looks like! *sigh* I never got the chance to re-do my nails this afternoon – I just ran out of time. By the time we finished our Rift day, and I’d had my 5 o’clock Stair Walk, it was almost dinner time (Vegetable soup tonight, with semi-dried chili flakes sprinkled over it, followed by cherry flavoured diet jelly and three prunes!) So my nails are looking very sad and sorry this evening, I fear… Never mind, I shall do all of that tomorrow afternoon – er… I think. My favourite eldest daughter will be coming over tomorrow after her visit to the Dentist (I hope himself hasn’t forgotten!) Maybe my nails will have to wait until Wednesday! Oh well, I’ll let you know how it all pans out. Hopefully my weight will start behaving properly tomorrow morning and start going down again – I really hate it when it stays the same… So anyway, until this time tomorrow night , once more I shall beg you to bee good, always remember your manners, and above all… stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

It was a reasonably hum-drum sort of a day today – I was positively itching to get Ozariah to level 20, but I had to wash my hair – it’s (hopefully) being coloured on Monday, and Josh (friend and hairdresser – aren’t I lucky! 🙂 ) wanted me to wash it ahead of time so that the natural oil from my scalp can help protect it during the colouring process – something like that, anyway. Surprisingly, it’s actually not looking too bad – I’m usually hopeless at doing my own hair – I’m short sighted, so I can’t see what I’m doing unless I get about two and a half inches from the mirror – which means that I can’t maneuver the hairdryer and/or brush properly… and if I wear my glasses, they get in the way too. So today I just combed it, and left it, using just a teeny smidge of a sort of a “conditioning serum” from Scruples to make it sit down flat. It worked very well, too, for about the first quarter of an hour, and then my hair decided that gravity was proving too strong to resist, and it fell in my eyes. As I’ve more or less been banned from using hair spray normally, I squirted a little on my fingers (as I’d been told to do), and smeared that on as well (don’t worry, it was only a teeny bit, and it didn’t get on my scalp! (it makes my head itch!)) It seems to have worked – I did that this morning, and it’s now ten o’clock, and it hasn’t fallen in my eyes again, yet (just wait until tomorrow morning when I’ll have slept on it! It’ll be all over the place by then! 😉 ) All in all, I didn’t get a chance to get on to Ozariah until after lunch. At first, I was determined that I wasn’t going to use an experience boosting potion on her, I was just going to drag her up the five levels to level 20 in the couple of hours I had left to play – I could do it, of course I could… but… I got distracted, as usual, filling in blanks, doing a bit of “farming” (Butchering, Foraging and Mining) along the way, instead of concentrating on questing, questing, and yet a bit more questing – the quickest and surest way to get experience points and go up levels. After an hour and a bit of basically wasting time and not really moving upwards, I decided to bite the bullet and buy one of the experience boosters after all… and to stick to straight questing, as much as possible. Well, in the end I got her up the last two and a half levels in about twenty five minutes – Yayyy! Level 20 at last! I took her back to Meridian, dusted her down, emptied her bags, and decided who’d be the first off the rank to be taken to level 40. I was going to take them, one by one, up to level 30, and then take them , one by one, to level 40, and so on, but I’ve changed my mind – I’m taking them all (one by one) up to level 40 first, then I’ll take them to 50, and finally 60 and 65 (hopefully with a little bit of help from some of Julian’s characters) Persha’s the first on the list, so I had Ozariah mail her her water breathing necklace, and I’ll start working her some time on Monday – because tomorrow is Sunday, and as you all should know by now, Sunday is our “Trouncing Terrible Trolls in Telara for Fun and Profit” day! 🙂 It’s about time that Persha was leveled up, anyway, as she’s our Apothecary (she makes potions and dyes, and things – very handy! Every Guild should have an Apothecary! 😉 ) and she needs to start learning a few new recipes… Anyway, by the time I’d done all that, it was time for my late afternoon/early evening Stair Walk, and after that I went and sat in the lounge with my feet up and read until dinner time.

I received the April My Size online catalogue this morning (which is a wonder, really, as I’m only getting between 26 and 46 pieces of mail a day – Julian explained it all to you in a comment, a few blog posts back!) and I sat and went through it (the catalogue, that is) and made a note of … well, a few… pieces I was interested in. When himself went out to do the shopping this afternoon, he went to The Glen, where there’s a My Size shop. I told him they probably wouldn’t have much in yet, because the things I’d marked were from the April catalogue – and it’s not April yet… but they were, so he got them all! Bang goes my classic excuse of “But I don’t have a thing to wear!” 🙂 Perhaps I should start eating a bit more – I don’t want to fall out of them too quickly!  Which brings me to…

Weigh-in this morning. I’m dreading tomorrow! Why? Because I went down another two points this morning, to 98.4kg. This, of course, is good! I really wish I could do it every morning, but the piper is going to have to be paid, somewhere along the line. Dieting and weight loss are not a smooth and steady downward course, unfortunately – there’s bumps and lumps as well, and I greatly fear that another such bump (or lump) is about due. Probably tomorrow. Or the day after… or soon, anyway. I think (I hope!) I’m deep enough into the 98kg zone to not go back up into the 99kg zone again, but one never knows, especially with this exasperating body of mine (not to mention the scales, which, I’m quite convinced, hate me!)

So come and look in on us again, this time tomorrow night – and be regaled with tall tales and true from the legendary land of Telara – the monsters we fought, the princesses we rescued, the phat lewt we won, and the number of times we died – or should have died, but didn’t! 🙂 Find out if I had time to re-do my nails, which are looking a tad ragged. And I’ve worked out why I keep snagging the nails on my right hand! It’s not from typing, it’s from Stair Walking! You see, when I’m coming back up the stairs, I hang onto the stair rail with my left hand, and run my right hand along the (very heavily textured) wall, for extra balance. The wall is so heavily textured that I have to wear a fingerless glove on my right hand because the wall literally “sandpapers” holes in my palm. And it appears that it also snags fingernails that aren’t pared or chewed down to the quick! Hmmm… I may have to get a full leather gauntlet for my right hand… We shall see… I expect that I’ll also be able to fill you in about my weight, and whether the ominously looming bump (or lump) has risen menacingly up beneath my feet, to trip me up on my weight’s erratic downward course. So until tomorrow night, gentle readers, I shall once more bid you to bee good, don’t be cheeky, and above all… to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

Today I worked pretty solidly on getting my new girl, Ozariah, as far along the road to level 20 as I could. When I started this morning she wasn’t even properly set up – by the time I finished this afternoon, she was level 15. I might even have been able to get her to level 20 – without an experience boosting potion, too – except for the fact that our cleaning lady was here today. Did I ever mention that she likes to sit, have a smoke, and chatter on a bit? Well, she does, and she did. She also wanted to have a bit of a girl-to-girl, heart-to-heart session (she’s trying to get back together with her ex-boyfriend, but her children hate him now) *sigh* So I listened, exclaimed, and offered my thoughts, and nodded a lot. So, five more levels to go tomorrow! 🙂 I should be able to get that done, easy-peasy. I’m also trying (“trying” being the operative keyword there!) not to get her quests too far out of sync, the way I did with the last two. I think I’m managing a bit better this time around… the trouble is, I know what has to be done, and where, and I know what I’m capable of doing in the different areas; it’s very hard not to think: “while I’m here, I might as well…” ramp up her Butchering… look for Artifacts around here because I know there are always some – oh look! There’s that quest that I usually do when I’m two levels higher, but I think I can manage it – I might as well do that now, and get it out of the way…. Things like that. My mind runs away from my sense of correct sequencing – yes, I’m perfectly capable of doing certain things, but I ought not to do them because if I do, I get things out of order, and end up with a real quest mess. Sometimes I really, really wish that I could erase everything I know and have learnt about Rift, and start all over again as a rank newbie. Alas, that which has been seen cannot be un-seen, and that which has been learnt cannot be un-learnt (actually, it can, but that’s a subject for another time! 😉 ) I will say that bringing up a Defiant is vastly different from bringing up a Guardian. According to the latest bunch of statistics, 46% of players play Defiant characters, 54% play Guardians, so you’d think that the Guardians would have the advantage, wouldn’t you… Well, they might have the numbers, but the Defiants get all the perks! In the primary Defiant area, Freemarch (where you start out from) there are about 85% more artifacts than there are in Silverwood, the equivalent Guardian area. There are more Rifts to participate in and close, more skinnable animals, more mineable nodes… and this trend continues in all but shared areas, such as Moonshade Highlands, Scarwood Reach, and Iron Pine Peaks. I’ve often wondered why this is – and it’s also the reason that the first thing I do with my Guardian characters is take them over to Freemarch and do the bulk of their early leveling up over there – bother the early Guardian quests, they can catch up on them when they’ve closed three or four baby Rifts, leveled up their Mining, Butchering and Foraging, and picked up a heap of artifacts that they’d never find over in Silverwood!  And it’s extremely easy to avoid the odd Defiant guard or two, to boot!

I suppose I really ought to say a word or three about the passing of Malcolm Fraser today (seeing that just about everyone else is) What can I say? I liked and admired him when he came to power in 1975, and rid us from the profligate Gough Whitlam… but have been somewhat… disenchanted? with him and some of his political views, over the past few years. I just read in what passes for a “newspaper” these days, The Age, that he was considering starting up a new political party advocated scaling back, if not severing, our military ties with the US. Say, what?! You know, I really, really don’t like the Yanks Americans – I don’t like their policies or their politics, I don’t like their gun laws and their lack of control over those laws, and I don’t like their (almost blanket and universal) hypocrisy – other than those few, minor things, they’d probably be fairly decent people, if it wasn’t for their atrocious accents and their totally woeful spelling! But cut our military ties with them? Uh-huh! I don’t think that would be a terribly good idea right now… However, tonight is not the night for a Winter Rant – a great leader has passed, and I’m sure the world is a poorer place for his passing.

Weigh-in this morning. A lot much more betterer this morning! 🙂 98.6kg! Down four points. Right, well of course this means that tomorrow I’ll probably be back up again, but hopefully it’ll still be within the 98kg zone! Oh, and I’ve been wondering where I can find the time to fit in a fourth Stair Walk, and I think I might have found it! I walk before breakfast, (mostly) before lunch (but sometimes it’s after lunch), and at around 5 o’clock… We usually watch television until 9.30pm, and then we come down here to the Den to fiddle with our beloved computers. But I was thinking tonight that on my way back down to the Den, I could make a slight detour via the fire escape and quickly fit in another Stair Walk before bed… Good idea? Yes? No? Indifferent?

So anyway, That Was My Day That Was – look in again tomorrow night to see what’s been happening around here – will I have managed to get Ozariah up to level 20? Will my nail polish still be intact? I’m still quite curious as to where I got the idea that you shouldn’t file your nails before removing your nail polish! I had to file them once before without removing my nail polish, and the sky didn’t fall in, nor did my nails burst into flames, or anything… I had to file them again this morning when I snagged a nail – and again, nothing dire has happened… maybe it is just an Urban Myth that I was told way back when?! Anyway, there’ll be lots to fill you in on tomorrow – especially about what my weight decides to do… so until this time tomorrow night, bee good, sleep tight tonight, and …. stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

My goodness! What a busy day! It started off quite normally – I knew I had to go and have my Warfarin blood test at some stage of the day, but I didn’t know when…  After breakfast we muddled around here until nearly lunchtime, and by then I’d finished sorting out my Auctions and Minions, so we got ready to go over the road for the blood test – we did have various other shopping bits to do, too – I needed a new candle for the bedroom, because the last one had “run out”, and I wanted to see if Inglot had any new nail polishes (they didn’t) We decided to have lunch at The Shingle Inn – well, Julian did, I took one of my bars with me, but I did have a long black with a small jug of skinny milk to keep the Shingle Inn people happy 🙂 Before we left home, I’d had the idea that perhaps when we got back, instead of taking the lift upstairs from the garage, shedding my shoes, and then doing my Stair Walk, I could catch the lift to the ground floor, let myself into the fire escape, and walk all the way up to the fifth floor – instead of just walking down two flights, and back up two flights. I thought I’d work harder (that is my legs would have to work harder) climbing up all those levels, instead of wasting the energy walking down two flights, and only up two flights back – if that makes any sense to you… But alas, that was not to be. While I was in Priceline, and Julian was dropping off some dry cleaning elsewhere, impatient me decided I wanted something from an upper shelf. I looked around, but there was no-one around that I could ask to get the items for me, so I flipped up the footrest of the wheelchair, and got up to get them myself. That worked just fine – but then I stepped backwards, didn’t I, and cut the back of my heel on the excruciatingly sharp edge of the base of the chair. Ouch! I figured I’d probably managed to break the skin this time (it wasn’t the first time I’ve done this – caught my heel on the ruddy sharp edge of the chair base) This time I’d done a really good job of it, and I was bleeding quite a bit by the time we got up to Dorevitch for the blood tests. The girl doing the blood taking was quite insistent that it had to be bandaged, which she proceeded to do after taking the blood samples. As my heel was (and still is! As I said – I did a really good job of it this time!) quite sore, and the bandage goes right around my heel and under my foot, I decided that perhaps I’d better not try to climb up five flights of stairs – that it might be more prudent to just do my two flights down, two flights back up… which I did, as soon as I’d shed my shoes upstairs.

We got home around 3-ish, I suppose, and I sat down to get Embercat to level 20, something I’d been trying to do for the last three days, but kept getting interrupted or distracted. This time I got myself an experience enhancing potion, just in case I didn’t manage to make two levels in the hour and a half I had left to play before my afternoon Stair Walk… and with the help of the potion I made the two levels in about 30 minutes! So, one girl left to go to get to level 20, then I plan on taking them all to level 30. Ondine was next in line, but for some inexplicable reason I didn’t really like her much… maybe it was the name… She was only level 8, so I decided to er… re-roll her, so to speak. I forwarded all her money on to Hialeah, and deleted her, then created another Defiant girl called Ozariah (the name had to start with an “O” because it makes it easier when sending and receiving stuff from other characters) I’ll have to get himself to pull her into the Guild later tonight… anyway, she’s still in the very, very beginning stages – I’ve only just set her up, so now I have the delightful task of pulling a level 1 all the way up to level 20 in as short a time as possible – I’ll get onto that tomorrow 🙂

While we were getting ready to go over the road this morning, the downstairs doorbell rang. Parcel delivery! Yay!! Maybe it was the Plan A present, at long last! Sure enough, it was the extremely well travelled item, from Arizona, to Toronto Canada, to Arizona again, then another city in the US, finally to Sydney, and then here. It took just over a month! Do you want to know what it was? 🙂 It was a bracelet – one of those “gap in the middle like a torc” ones, in silver! It has a rolled edge on each side, then two flat curb chains just inside the rolled edges, and a thick, rounded filigree scroll down the middle. It’s quite lovely, and I’m absolutely thrilled with it! 🙂 (and very relieved that it finally turned up!)

Later this afternoon we received the results of my Warfarin test – not quite so good this time! I’ve been taking iron supplements since just after my last blood test because Dr. Y. told me I had to, and maybe they’re making my blood slightly thicker, which is not at all good for me, so my rat poison dosage has been increased, and instead of going back for another test in a month, they want me back next week! Well, along with the Warfarin test, I also had a blood test for iron levels today, so maybe I won’t have to take the iron supplement much longer.

Weigh-in this morning. I’m completely convinced! The scales hate me! They did it again – down to 98.9kg. (actually it wavered down to 98.6kg…98.9kg… 98.9kg! Yayy!) Hop off… hop back on… 99.0kg 😦 What’s with these scales? I hate it when they do that to me! Still, it was down another one point – if this “one point down” business is going to be the pattern, then tomorrow I should, to all intents and purposes, be down to 98.9kg – unless I stay the same… or go up… and with my stupid body, either and/or all of those possibilities is likely to occur! Grrr!

So tune in again tomorrow night – find out if my cut heel has become infected, or if it’s all better… and find out how I go with Ozariah – will she have been inducted into the Guild? Will she be well on her way to level 20, or will I have been distracted from the task, yet again? What will my weight do? Which way will it surprise us all – by going upwards? downwards? or will it really cheese me off by staying the same? These questions and many, many more will be answered right here, this time tomorrow night! So until then, once more I shall bid you all to bee good, have fun, and above all…. stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

Yes, tonight is tonight, not tomorrow morning 🙂 I did manage to spend a bit of time with Rift today – got Embercat up another couple of levels – she’s level 18 now – only two more levels to 20 (it’s almost like counting down my weight losses!) I did get a bit caught up this morning though – first with writing last night’s blog, and also with making a few minor adjustments to the text size on that wallpaper thingy I made yesterday. Kompozer, the “free” WYSIWYG* editor I’m using for editing the HTML for the wallpaper’s page, is truly abysmal – it makes the excruciating HTML that Front Page (the previous WYSIWYG editor I used to use) look like sophisticated coding! At least with Front Page I could actually follow it enough to go in and correct its clumsy mistakes – trying to make head nor tail of Kompozer’s HTML is like trying to make sense of jigsaw pieces with no identifying colours or pictures! Well, OK, it’s not quite as bad as that, and one day, when I’ve got a lot of time on my hands and I’m feeling bored enough, I might (“might” being the keyword!) have another look in and try to sort it all out. The problem this morning was the text size – it was a bit too small. Now when you’re entering text size you can generally put in a number, like – very simplistically, “text size = 4”, and when you’ve finished with that size you just put in “/text”. With Kompozer, all you have is a small capital “A”, meaning make the text smaller, followed by a bigger capital “A”, meaning make the text larger, but instead of the sizes going up in increments of one size, it goes up in increments of two and a half sizes, so you either have text that’s too small, or text that’s too big. Now I know I can change that – I can put in the “text size =” value and make the text exactly the size I want – but it’s almost impossible to know where to put it because there’s so much – pardon the French – “merde” (look it up, if you must!) – in the way that it’s very difficult to know where the real HTML is, and what’s just leftover junk from where you changed something that the program didn’t overwrite, but just added on to the end of the line. In fact, there aren’t any lines, per se, just a lot of what appear to be truncated bits of HTML. If you do try to organise it into coherent lines,  as soon as you enter the preview pane to see if what you’ve done looks alright, the edit window where you were working reverts back to the crazy and disorganised truncated lines.  The point being that it can certainly be tamed and edited correctly – but who’s got the time and the enthusiasm to wade through all that mess! It works the way it is (even if the text is a little larger than I wanted) so that’s the way it’ll stay… for now…

We tried a new tea after lunch today – we get our tea from Tea Leaves in Sassafras – we used to drive all the way up there, but it’s easier to shop online now. They have some really great flavoured black teas – have a look at the teas they stock from the link above – we’ve tried most of them at one time or another, but we usually get our favourites, plus one or two small ones just to try. We tried one of the “little” ones at lunch time – we’ve had it before, many years ago, but decided to see if it had improved any. It hadn’t. It was the Chilly Chocolate tea – the chocolate was still too bland, and you still couldn’t really taste any chili. I don’t think we’ll try it again… The one I’m drinking tonight is Granny’s Apple Pie, and although they have another Black Apple tea, this one is quite nice. We might get it again, but I don’t think it will become one of our “staples”, like the Ginger Berry, Honey Ginger, Cranberry, and Almond (Almond is my absolute favourite! But then, I love anything with almonds in it, and I especially love almond essence!) So if you’re into flavoured black teas, Tea Leaves is the place to get them from – oh, and they also sell coffee, too! If you’re into flavoured coffees, they have some really really nice ones (including Almond, and Amaretto!)

I stopped Rifting about 3.25pm because I had to go and do my nails – I was sorry to take off that lovely, luscious, ripe, red raspberry one, but it was getting very tatty around the edges (it was only the one coat…) and now they’re a beautiful, glistening, scintillating kingfisher-peacock blue! I hope all this typing doesn’t wreck them…. Remember that Photoshoot thing wot we got from the Vets? Julian rang up and booked yesterday – we’re still not sure if we’ll go through with it though… I hate being photographed because I always look horrible in photos – I only know of three photos that I actually look quite nice in – one has gone for good, one is hidden away in a box here somewhere, and one has been lost (thank goodness!) So I dunno… we may go through with it, we may not – it’s in April, anyway.

Weigh-in this morning. Was quite exciting, at first! I got on the scales, and they went down to 98.9kg! Then as I always do, I hopped off, and hopped back on again, just to see if it was “correct weight”… You know what? The wretched scales went back up to 99.1kg! Only one point down from yesterday 😦 I tried it a third time – to see if it would relent and go back to the 98.9kg that it came up with first. Nope, it was firmly set on 99.1kg. *sigh* Well, there’s always tomorrow… well, at least I didn’t stay the same, and I went down, and not up… 🙂

So that’s about it for tonight – stay tuned for the next installment of “Life Chez Nous” 🙂 I’m not too sure what’s happening tomorrow, apart from my Warfarin blood test first thing in the morning. I suppose that once again, it’ll be up, weighed, dress, sprint for the stairs, back, change, over the road, have my blood taken, come home, breakfast, resume life as normal… other than that… I dunno… However! The mysterious Plan A present still hasn’t arrived, so it might come tomorrow! And I’ll certainly be getting some Rifting in – and… who knows? I may shed 24kg in one foul swoop! Highly unlikely, unfortunately – but never fear, there’ll be lots of news waiting for you this time tomorrow! So until then, bee good, stop doing that! and above all… stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

*WYSIWYG = What You See Is What You Get

Well, this is a first! I’m writing last night’s blog this morning! Normally in the evenings, I finish up in here around 4 – 4.30pm, gather my bits and pieces, deposit them in the lounge room, and by 4.45 – 5.00pm, I’m on my way for my last Stair Walk of the day. When I get back, I go back to the lounge room, put my feet up, have a cup of coffee (if one’s in the offering, and it usually is! 🙂 ) and read, either until the ABC1 news service at 7.00pm, or, during the week, until 6.00pm when I usually watch The Antiques Roadshow – it’s often very interesting, and you can see some amazingly beautiful and curious objects. It’s also on ABC1, and worth a look-in if you’ve nothing better to do around 6.00pm during the week. We have dinner and watch what passes for news these days (most of which I wouldn’t bother to call newsworthy!) which brings us to 7.30pm. We record a lot of shows, especially if they’re on any channel that has ads, and watch them later, but we only sit in front of the TV until 9.30pm – then we’re off back down here to the Den, and our beloved computers. That’s when I usually write my blog. However last night I was chatting to a close friend who needed to talk, and I felt that they were a bit more important than a blog, so I left this until this morning.

Yesterday, I thought I’d have a whole day of Rifting, almost to myself, as Julian had to play Taxi driver for my favourite eldest daughter, who was going off to have that horrible stress test on the treadmill. I started Rifting, but… what with worrying about Lee and her stress test, and my silly wallpaper-desktop-thingy niggling at my brain, I just couldn’t settle in Rift. Instead, I went and worked on the desktop thingy, and it’s finally finished and up! I gave up on the green and cream with pink flowers theme, and found yet another Chrome theme – this one’s from Diablo III, which we’ve played (well, himself has played it – I sit and watch – it’s just a trifle too fast paced for me, with my inability to touch type!) In fact, we’ve played all the Diablo games, and they are very well done, and the music, by a guy called Matt Uelmen, is some of the most beautiful and poignant music I’ve ever heard – I’d play the game just to listen to the soundtrack (which you can buy, and which we’ve got) Anyway, this Chrome theme is based on Diablo III (from memory) and it’s basically a textured, yellow-brown, sandy, ancient parchment-y sort of colour, which I think I’ve managed to match quite successfully in my wallpaper background, and the decorations I’ve used are from an Art Deco font I have, called Augsburger Ornamente Regular (no, I don’t know how to pronounce it!) It all looked quite good, I’d even worked out the text colours, so I saved the file (as a .jpg image) and put it into the HTML file. When I had a look at on screen, it looked terrible! Everything looked far, far too big, the graphics, the title… awful! The trouble is, I couldn’t switch back to the old one until I’d fixed all these “anomalies” – I’d been in a bit of a hurry to get everything finished, you see, and I thought that I’d copied and renamed the original to “old_name of file.htm”, but I hadn’t copied it first. I’d only renamed the ruddy thing – easy enough to rename it back again, but I’d changed it and saved it, so there was no going back from there – well, Julian could have restored the original from the nightly backup, but quite frankly, it wasn’t worth the effort. My mistake, my responsibility to fix it. It wasn’t hard to re-work the graphics and text – just time-consuming. I’d made the mistake in the first place because I’d hurried things – karma caught up with me and made me spend the saved time fixing the problem – divine retribution! 😉 All fixed now, and looking quite nice… but I tell you what, I’d better not change my mind about that Chrome theme in a hurry! 😉

In the meantime, my favourite eldest daughter had finished her stress test on the treadmill, and although so breathless that she could hardly stand, and trying to cough her lungs out as well, the Cardiologist pronounced her heart present… no, he said there was absolutely nothing wrong with her heart, it’s fine, and very healthy, and that he doesn’t have to see her again – which is absolutely wonderful news! So the two episodes where she went to hospital with chest pains weren’t heart attacks, or anything else to do with her heart, and probably more stress related… But she still has to lose weight!

Weigh-in yesterday morning. I went down another two points to 99.2kg… which was good! Ahhh… if only I could do that every day! Dieting would be so much more fun if you could go down two – or even one – point every day! But alas, that’s not how it works, more’s the pity! I was pretty sure I’d go up this morning, or stay the same… (Sorry, but you’ll have to wait for tonight’s blog to find out if I did or not! 😉 )

So, here it is, this morning, and I’ve almost finished last night’s blog 🙂 I didn’t even check my Auctions or Minions last night, so I’ll have plenty to keep me busy today, and lots to tell you all tonight! I have to do my nails at some stage today – this lovely red is starting to look decidedly ragged around the edges. I thought I’d use the kingfisher-peacock blue Inglot nail polish this time – it should go nicely with both pairs of new slacks (with pockets!) Size 20… I still can’t believe it… I’ve lost 35kg since August 2014 – which is quite good, but I still have another 24kg to go… *sigh* the light at the end of the tunnel just receded a few kilometers…  I will get there though – it’ll just take me a few more months, that’s all 🙂 The “Plan A” present was tracked at having left Sydney on Monday – so maybe it’ll arrive today – that would be exciting! I’ll let you know tonight – whatever, it’ll be a very well-traveled present by the time it gets here – from Arizona to Toronto, back to Arizona, then to some other place in the USA, on to Sydney Australia, and now, hopefully, on to Doncaster Melbourne! It will have been “en route” for over a month! I’m dying to find out what it is, and I’ll bet all of you are, too – but don’t worry, I’ll let you all know as soon as it arrives 🙂 Anyway, that’s about all that happened yesterday, but as I said, there’s heaps to do today and I shall tell you all about it tonight! So until then, bee good, don’t forget to pat the cat, and above all… stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

Would you believe that all I did with Rift today was check my Auctions and organise my Minions this morning (at least I think I did! Everything was so rushed this morning that I can’t really remember – oh well, I’ll find out as soon as I’ve finished writing this I suppose…) I was having my hair done today, so it was like scramble out of bed, get weighed, sprint for the fire escape stairs to do my morning Stair Walk, race back, shower, dress, and gulp down a hasty breakfast, before himself went off to pick up my favourite eldest daughter who was coming over for the day. I had my hair done, and as usual, it looks very nice – if a little faded. Hopefully I’ll be getting the colour re-done next week. Lee weighed herself here yesterday, and while I won’t tell you what she did weigh, suffice to say that it really alarmed all of us, including her! She’s a lot heavier than I was before I started this diet, a lot! She must lose weight, and I think she now realises this herself. What I mean is, she knew that she needed to lose weight, but I think – hope! that she now realises how imperative this has become. Unfortunately she can be rather negative at times, and in the past it’s been a long face, and the unwillingness to going without favourite foods – plus the fact that without “live-in” support and encouragement it’s terribly hard to persevere. Julian has been a major factor in my weight loss – he does all the cooking (and other housework) because I can’t stand up straight enough or for long enough to get my own meals. He still has his normal meals, which he cooks (I taught him to cook years ago!) and he makes my evening meal (Optifast soup –  eitherTomato, Vegetable, or Chicken) at the same time. He also makes my diet jellies. For breakfast we have pretty much the same, and my lunch is an Optifast Bar (which Lee has never wanted to even try, claiming that a little bar like that wouldn’t be enough for her) He supports, cajoles, and encourages me all the way to the scales, and I doubt that I could have come this far, and this fast, without him. Unfortunately, her husband is… shall we say… not quite as encouraging and supportive as mine. He was diagnosed the year before last as having Type 2 Diabetes (acquired insulin intolerance) and was forced to go on a diet. He lost just enough weight to keep his blood sugar levels in check, and that’s as far as it went. I’m afraid that Lee is going to have to pretty much go it alone to lose weight. We, of course, will do everything we can to support, help, and encourage her, but she’s in Glen Waverley and we’re in Doncaster… but we’ll do the best we can…

After lunch I suddenly realised that I hadn’t done my midday Stair Walk, so once again I raced off (after lunch, but before coffee) and trundled up and down the two flights of stairs. When I got back, we started watching “Person of Interest”, and it’s really getting to the scary parts! Samaritan, the “bad” machine, is manipulating the Stock Market, which could cause a global economic collapse – our heroes have to stop it; Control, who oversees the handling of relevant numbers for the government, begins to question the methods and intentions of the Samaritan program, with somewhat disastrous results – and then there are the little sub-plots, like the crime boss who wants to assassinate the head of a rival group, Elias, who is well-known to, and an occasional ally of Reese and Finch… so many plots are thickening, all at the same time! I can’t wait for next week to find out what happens next!

After my favourite eldest daughter left, I toyed with starting to write this early, but decided instead to go and work on my new desktop wallpaper thingy – or what will become my new desktop wallpaper thingy. I was using a Chrome theme that was green and cream, with little pinkish flowers, but it really wasn’t “me”, so I did the second easiest thing and went looking for something else. (what’s the easiest thing to do? I hear you ask – why, just to leave things as they are, with the current (old, gray) desktop wallpaper thingy! That’s the easiest! 🙂 ) The one I’m working on at the moment also happens to be green and cream – only without the flowers, but I’m not really thrilled with it. I’m doing my damnedest to steer clear of grays, blues, and mauves, for a change – because that’s usually what I end up with, and for once, I want something different! I think I’ll keep looking… *sigh*

Weigh-in this morning – was highly gratifying! I even had to start a new graph page – I ran out of weight before I ran out of days (the weight is listed down the left hand side of the graph paper, the days are numbered along the bottom) I started the new page on… 99.4kg, down another three points! 🙂 Now, I might see-saw up and down a bit from 99.4kg, but if I doubt that I’ll drift back over the 100kg mark, if I  do, I think there’ll be something seriously amiss! I really hope I go down again tomorrow, I’d hate to have to go back to the previous graph page again – and having said that, I probably will go up, or stay the same – but please, dear, kind, Great Galactic Kitten, please let me stay in my newly acquired double figures!

So tune in again tomorrow night – find out if I couldn’t wait until next week to find out what happens in “Person of Interest”, and had a quick peek at the next episode… The pair of slacks (with pockets) that I got from Autograph, and which are too big, are getting swapped over tomorrow, and I wanted to get another of the jumpers with the long sleeves that I got last week, only in a size 18, because the one I got – last week – is a size 20, and it’s already too big for me. S’funny though, I’m wearing one of their T-shirts in a size 20, and it fits fairly snugly… different fabrics, I suppose – the jumper is a sort of a loose knit. Oh well, that’s about all that happened today, but I’m sure there’ll be heaps of news that you won’t want to miss out on tomorrow night, especially about my weight! For now though, I’m off to check Auctions and Minions, then continue my search for “the perfect Chrome theme”! So until tomorrow night, bee good, don’t get caught 😉 , and… stay safe! ciao, all! 🙂

The ides of March… Julius Caesar was warned about the date, and it’s funny that I should remember now, today, that it was in late February 2006 that my mother went to have some chest x-rays taken because although she didn’t have a cold, or any sort of infection, she couldn’t seem to stop coughing. She had an appointment to see the specialist on March 15th – she told me this on the phone, and with an uneasy feeling, I told her jokingly, “Oh dear! The ides of March! That doesn’t bode well!”, and we both laughed. She found out, on the ides of March, that she had inoperable lung cancer. She passed away at 4.00am on January 1st, 2007. So, the ides of March wasn’t kind to Julius Caesar, and it wasn’t kind to my mother… but it was a lot nicer to himself and me, today, as we shared a (somewhat belated for himself) Big Birthday Bash… and although I might not have reached “double figures” (weight-wise) for my actual Birthday last Monday, I did achieve them within my Birthday week! And so, my Birthday week ending at midnight tonight, my Pisces icon has been replaced with the Autumn icon, until the next Birthday, Terry’s – my favourite youngest daughter’s husband – in early May. Lisa and Neale gave himself the full 8 Series of “Foyle’s War” – a really excellent British detective drama television series set during and shortly after the Second World War. Highly recommended! 🙂 They gave me an indoor (table or desktop-type) fountain – my old one, which I’d had for a decade or more, had finally turned up its toes and died, and I missed the gentle sound of water splashing. Kate and Terry gave both of us Amazon gift vouchers – one of our most favourite presents to get, because we’re always buying books, ebooks, and music, through Amazon… A good day was had by all – lots of happy chatter, good food, good champagne (and good mineral water for me!) The Nandos chicken tenders looked yummy, as did the chips… even the salad looked good (I’m not really terribly big on salads) – and the Birthday cake! It looked absolutely deliciously divine! It appeared to be (*sob* unfortunately I couldn’t have any this year 😦 ) a sort of hazelnut and chocolate torte with whipped cream and toasted almond slivers coating the sides. My flavourite! Oh well, this time next year will come, and I’ll be able to have my cake, and eat it, too! 🙂 I shamefully neglected my guests and I did do my before luncheon Stair Walk – with pockets in my slacks it’s a lot easier to carry the keys with which to let myself back into the apartment – and I went on my own because himself was busy dividing up the chicken and chips and making the salad. After lunch we repaired to the lounge room for coffee, and more chatter and gossip, and the kids finally left at about quarter to four.

I didn’t get much of a chance to do anything on Rift this morning – just my Auctions and my Minions – hopefully I’ll get a chance to catch up with things tomorrow. I did download some more flower brushes – I found a Chrome theme that I thought was quite nice, and it’s sort of green and cream with – er – pink flowers on it. No, I know that green and cream with pink flowers doesn’t sound much like me, but I thought it was worth giving it a go… I’m going to have to change my desktop wallpaper though – at the moment it’s in shades of gray with silver-blue snowflakes, which doesn’t really go with green, and cream, and little pink flowers… Kate said that maybe I could just change the background colour, and make the snowflakes pink (working in layers makes things soooo much easier! 😉 ) which is an idea, I suppose – I might try it (or I might just try looking for an easier to match Chrome theme! But that’s taking the easy way out, isn’t it! 😉 ) And anyway – the last lot of flower brushes I tried out this morning did look promising… sort of… (himself is setting up my new little fountain, even as I type! This one has a light in it, too! 🙂 )

Weigh-in this morning. Well, my Birthday week ended on a happy note, with me back into double figures! Back down to 99.7kg – a drop of three points. Hopefully I won’t bounce back into the 100kg zone again – with a lot of luck, and lots of crossed fingers, I might even go down another point or two, establishing me more firmly in the double figure zone. Perhaps the third Stair Walk per day is paying off at last! Hmm maybe I should try to fit in a fourth Stair Walk somewhere… but I only have three meals a day, so when else could I go? Morning tea time? Perhaps afternoon tea time… but I don’t have morning and afternoon tea any more – I haven’t for a long while, in my attempt to whittle down as much food intake as I possibly could, without dying of malnutrition in the process… So anyway, let’s see what tomorrow brings! (hopefully not another bounce back up – even staying the same would be preferable! (the novelty of being in double figures hasn’t worn off yet!))

So drop in again tomorrow night! I’m sure you’ll want to know how my new little fountain worked, and whether or not it leaked water all over the dressing table! 😉 My single coat of lusciously ripe red raspberry nail polish is holding up quite well – it’s just a teeny titch worn on the very tippy-tip-tips of the nails of my right hand (but not the left! weird!) I’m wondering if I should add a second coat tomorrow, or just re-do them altogether in a day or two… more decisions! I hate having to make decisions sometimes… I’ll have to remind himself that we only have until the 18th of March to book for the photography “gift voucher” wot we got from the Vet – I’m still in two minds about it – I hate being photographed, and I do not photograph well (in fact I won’t allow anyone to take a photo of me, full stop!) but it’s like promises made by makeup companies about their face creams – you know damn well that the product isn’t going to make you look younger, or more radiant, or less wrinkled, even if you use them religiously for the next ten years – but a secret little part of you hopes that this time it’ll be different, that this time, it will make you look younger, more radiant, and less wrinkled – and that’s why we women keep buying these wretched (and very expensive) products, while the manufacturers laugh all the way to the bank. We know they won’t, but we hope they will. And so it is with this photography gift voucher. I know I won’t look any better this time around than I did the last time I had a “professional” photo done (I looked ghastly! Mum loved it, but I thought I looked awful!) but part of me keeps hoping that this time they’ll be able to make me look… human? So I dunno, but we’ve only got a few more days to make up our minds… I’ll be able to tell you tomorrow if, like Cinderella at midnight, my double figure weight will turn back into an ugly, fat, 100kg pumpkin! So until tomorrow night, please try to contain your impatience, and bee good, don’t eat anymore Birthday cake, no matter how chocolaty it is, and… above all… stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

“Beware the ides of March” – that’s tomorrow… it’s the day of our Big Double Birthday Bash – should I be wary of girls (not Greeks) bearing gifts? 🙂 I hope not… Himself has decided not to BBQ tomorrow, we’ll do the usual Nandos chicken tenders, chips, and a nice home-made semi-Greek salad, with some sort of fancy cake standing in for a Birthday Cake… (?? what? Oh! No, I meant that he’s not going to have a BBQ tomorrow, not that he was going to BBQ the day! (honestly, some people! ruddy pedants!)) Everyone’s going to have to excuse me around 1.30pm while I go for my midday Stair Walk, but I’m sure they’ll be able to get along without me for about eight to nine minutes… As usual, I’ll have mineral water, while they have champagne, and I’ll have my usual Optifast bar (Berry Crunch tomorrow! 🙂 ) for lunch and dessert combined. This time next year, however, I expect to be hoeing in with the rest of them! It sort of brings a new facet to the nostalgic Jewish saying “Next year, in Jerusalem!”, doesn’t it! 🙂 “Next year, when I’ve finished my diet!” hmmm… Actually, I expect to finish my diet this year – maybe around August? September? Whenever I hit 75kg, and stabilize myself on that, anyway. Dr. Y. wants 75kg, so he’s going to get 75kg! 🙂 (ain’t I a good little patient! 😉 ) So because we’re not going to be able to have our usual Telara Bounty Hunting Day tomorrow, we had a bit of a play there today instead. Before we started though, I noticed that my favourite eldest daughter had linked to an article on Fiona Patten and The Sex Party on my Facebook Timeline. It seems that Ms. Patten has decided that her party has come of age, and should maybe discard the “Look At Me!” name, and opt for something a little more… credible? Or maybe a little less “smutty joke sniggerable”? (what’s wrong with “sniggerable”?! If the word doesn’t exist, it should, it says what it means – and besides, it does exist now, I just made it up and added it to the dictionary! *blows raspberry at screen*) I think a lot of people have been telling Ms. Patten the same thing – “Change the name of your Party to something a little less sniggerable, and more people will vote for you!” Have any of you readers ever visited The Sex Party site, and had a look at their policies? If you haven’t, you should. I don’t agree with everything they advocate, but for the most part they’re sensible, thoughtful, and what’s more, achievable! They’re for all sorts of things from gender equality to the right of the (genuinely) suffering, and who have no possibility of a cure, to Euthanasia. You wouldn’t allow your dog, or cat, or rabbit (or bird) to suffer needlessly, with no possible hope of recovery, would you! So why would you let your parent, or child, or relative? (but that’s another subject – please don’t get me started on it!) Ms. Patten says that she’s neither a Libertarian, nor a Civil Libertarian, but she’d like her Party to be the Liberals – the Actual Liberals – unfortunately, that name has already been taken – by the good ol’ Liberal Party – but I do have a suggestion for a name that might suit her Party… “The Progressive Liberal Party” – or, if they want to be a little more grandiose, “The Progressive Liberal Party of Australia”. I shall inform my favourite eldest daughter tomorrow of my Party name suggestion, and she can pass it on to Ms. Patten at their next Party meeting… (Please Note: This was not my official March Rant – in fact, it wasn’t even a rant – I just wanted you all to bear that in mind for when something arouses my ire enough for me to  publicly Rant about it, O.K? Thanks… 🙂 )

Back to Rifting. Well, we are still mowing the mobs down like grass before the scythe – knocking down mobs four levels (and often higher!) above our puny level 43 – it just takes a little longer, that’s all. Himself died once – I didn’t – and we did face some pretty hairy moments, especially around the base of the Flatyard where it was pretty much “stacks on the mill” when we ran into concealed, or “stealthed” fighters – once they jumped out at us, all their friends and relations seemed to come pouring out of the woodwork at us! That was pretty tough going, some of the time – but we survived 🙂 We even went up a level, and had we been playing the full day, we probably would have gone up a second level as well. Oh well, there’s always next week… After we finished off for the day – I had to do my nails, remember? – I did just that… I did use the new Willow deep, luscious, ripe, raspberry red nail polish, and I must say that it does look pretty! It’s a gorgeous red, and I didn’t even have to put on a second coat! (though I may have to after I finish typing this – typing is sheer murder on nail polish! I do hope it lasts! Maybe I should have used a second coat (worry,worry,worry)) I’ll see how it looks tomorrow morning…

Weigh-in this morning. Well, it was a big drop, and I was expecting it… I went back up to 100.0kg, so it wasn’t as bad as it could have been (that’ll be tomorrow, I suppose… back to 100.5kg or something 😦 ) Still, I did make it down to 99,9kg, so it is possible… I shall try terribly hard to be brave, and not worry about it too much… (worry,worry,worry)

So, call in again tomorrow night – find out how the BDBB went, and did my nail polish last the night? What sort of Birthday Cake did we have, and what did we get for Birthday presents from the kids? I expect to get back to Embercat tomorrow, if only briefly, so hopefully I can take her run to level 20 a little further. And, of course, I’ll let you know what happens with my weight – I was terribly tempted last night  to not tell you that I’d gone down to 99.9kg – I felt it was almost like tempting fate, and, well, apparently it was… but four points is a lot to drop in one foul swoop, so I just have to grin and bear it (why do I have to grin?! I don’t feel like grinning, I don’t even feel like smiling! What I feel like doing is flinging myself down and screaming “It isn’t fair!”, and banging my fists and heels on the floor! That’s what I feel like doing. All this “grinning” and “bearing” things has got whiskers on it!) But you’ll find out all about it tomorrow night 🙂 So, until this time tomorrow, bee good, have some Birthday Cake, and… stay safe! ciao, all! 🙂

Yet another Rifting day 🙂 As I said I would, I got Zorcha up to level 20, tidied her all up, posted off the waterbreathing necklace to Embercat, and off we took. Oh, and I think I might have said several posts ago that it was Carnival time in Telara? Well, during Carnival time, they have all sorts of rides and competitions – you can race toy horses on a miniature track, bounce on balls, have your fortune told – all the fun of the fair! Prizes consist mainly of gold tokens, which you can save up, year after year, until you get enough to claim a reasonably good prize. But apart from that, when you’re out doing your normal gathering things – Foraging, Mining and Butchering, you not only get the normal gains from all your hard work, but you also get extra stuff – Pumice, with your ore, Helium Blossoms with your herbage, Ultra Thin Hide with your… well, ordinary hides – and, if you follow the Parades around, whenever they pass crowds of cheering people, crystals are dropped which you can pick up. The Defiant’s are red, and are called “Resolve Cores”, the Guardian’s are blue, and are called “Might Cores”. Defiants can’t pick up Guardian’s crystals, and vice versa (so it’s no good going behind enemy lines to try to get some – you’ll get yourself killed by the Parade Guards!) However, they can be passed on to your other characters, whether they belong to the same faction or not – I just made the mistake of sending all of Zorcha’s “Resolve Cores” on to Embercat, who’s a Guardian. Never mind, I’ll just send them back – I did it more as an experiment to see if I could send the Pumice, Blossoms, and Ultra Thin Hides across – which works just fine.  You can take these items to a caravan just outside the capital cities and exchange 40 of any of them for glass beads, which in turn you can exchange for things like costumes, mounts, Dimension items, etc. from the World Event Shop (it’s not really as complicated as it sounds!) So I spend most of the day doing that, and, would you believe it? Embercat’s quest log was in almost the same sort of bad shape as Zorcha’s was!  Green “baby” quests mixed up with higher level Yellow quests – so I’m busy untangling that, at the moment, too! I only have another two girls to level up to level 20 after I finish with Embercat – Ondine, a level 8 Defiant, and Hialeah, a level 15 Guardian, who’s currently Auctionator, and Mistress of the Guild Bank Overflow. I’m not sure whether to level Hialeah up or not though – all her bag space is rapidly being eaten up with the GB overflow stuff… I suppose I could palm it off to someone else to “mind” for her while she levels up (it’d only take me a day from level 15) Yeah, I might do that, after I finish with Ondine. Then I have to take them all up to level 30 🙂 Himself and I have decided that because we won’t be able to have our usual Sunday fling in Telara because of the BDBB (Big Double Birthday Bash), we’ll try to get some gaming in tomorrow, instead. We won’t be able to play all day, but we should get a bit done 🙂 (and I have to do my nails tomorrow, too! I’ve decided that I will try out the luscious, ripe, red, raspberry Willow nail polish)

Aside from all of the above, it’s been a pretty quiet, boring day – my slacks have come home, an inch and a half shorter (I hope I guessed the amount to be shortened right!) but I’ll save them up for Sunday – and maybe Monday – but I think they’re “dry-cleanables” only (that is, I wouldn’t dare wash them at home, in case they shrank!) and I wouldn’t want to spill tea on them or anything! 😉 so tonight’s blog is going to be kind of short… (Oh, stop cheering! *annoyed look*)

Weigh-in this morning. Drum roll, please! I weighed in at…. 99.9kg! Double figures! It is possible, after all! Miracles do still happen! Mind you, it was a drop of four points, which is a lot, so I do expect it to be back up again tomorrow (says she, secretly hoping that it’ll go down a bit more… 🙂 ) So… there really is light at the end of the tunnel – and just maybe it’s not an oncoming train… So as I said, I expect to be up in the 100kg zone again tomorrow, but it’s only a matter of time until I’m firmly entrenched in the 90kgs (or 99kgs, anyway)

So tune in again tomorrow night – see if we Rifted, and if we were silly enough to try another Nightmare Rift, or if we continued to mow ’em down like dry grass before a scythe in beautiful Downtown Fortune’s Shore (Shimmersand)  – and I’ll also let you know what the L.R.R.R Willow looks like on, as opposed to in the bottle. I suppose you’ll probably want me to tell you how my weight went, too – and how much I went back up into the 100kg zone (at 99.9kg it really can’t go up without going back into the 100kg zone, can it?! Hmmm Unfortunately, I don’t think my scales can measure weight to two decimal points… Shame….) Well, there it is – or rather, there it was – My Exciting Day in a nutshell!  by Winter Thyme 🙂 (sounds like a good title for a book, or a movie, or maybe a play… poetry, anyone?) So until this time tomorrow night, bee good, take care, and… always stay safe! ciao, all! 🙂