A true Rift day today – for once! 🙂 Zorcha is now level 18 – I could have got her to level 20, but by then my eyes were starting to cross, so I gave it a rest for a while. This morning, before my Stair Walk, I tried on my two new pairs of slacks – the one I got from Autograph was too big. The material they’re made from wasn’t at all “stretchy”, so I decided to get the next size up – just in case I needed the “stretch” that wasn’t there – and I got them in size 22. Big mistake! They’re going to have to go back and get exchanged for size 20, after all. The other ones, from My Size, in deep bottle green with a black swirly design, fit fine… except that they were too long. They went off today to be shortened, and should be ready tomorrow. Good! And both pairs have pockets, for once! Yay!! So I went off for my Stair Walk in my other slacks… After breakfast, I Rifted, and himself started “tidying out” some of the drawers and cupboards in the hall and dining room. Some of the things my mother had secreted in boxes and baskets inside the drawers and cupboards, pre 2006, elicited exclamations of “Good grief! Is that were those got to!”, as well as a lot of “What the hell is that!”, and “Why on earth did she keep those?!” A lot of things were thrown out, and a lot of things were saved for posterity (that is, let the kids throw them out when it’s their turn to go through all this stuff!) And guess what! All of a sudden we have a couple of empty drawers, just waiting and begging to be filled with more junk…er stuff! Oh, and we found out what happened to the Plan A present! Although addressed to our address here in Doncaster, Australia, it was shipped off to…. get this… Toronto, Canada, where it was (thankfully) “returned to sender” Honestly, how can you mistake “Doncaster, Australia” for “Toronto, Canada”? The two places don’t even start with the same ruddy  letter! Personally, I think the shipping company should send it on to us at the correct address, Express Post, and Free! Still, at least we know what happened to it, so I suppose that’s something… At the moment I’m trying to find a nice coffee table that will match our new entertainment unit and side tables. There was a matching one available, but (a) we didn’t like it all that much, (b) it was a bit too long, and (c) it wasn’t wide enough. Why is it though, that when you specifically ask Google to look for “coffee tables”, they send you links to bookcases, dining room tables and chairs, entertainment units, and just about everything else you can think of that isn’t a coffee table?! It annoys me… I’m longing for the day when you can just say to Google (or whatever search engine they’re using in the year 2566) “show me coffee tables, in light Tasmanian Oak, available in Melbourne Australia, and preferably in Doncaster!”, and it’ll show you all the coffee tables made of light Tasmanian Oak, available in Doncaster, Melbourne (Australia) and nothing else! How can it be so hard? The search engine only has to look for four words: coffee, table – hmmm… I can see a snag right there! The word “table”, following the word coffee… I suppose you could fix that problem by running the two words together, making it “coffeetable” – yeah, O.K. it only has to look for three words: “coffeetable” (all one word, no confusion, right?), “Doncaster”, and “Melbourne”… hold on, another snag! There are places called “Melbourne” and “Doncaster” all over the world – it’d probably be more straightforward to simply put in a post code, and a mileage/kilometer limiter… That would make only two words the search engine had  to look for, and a mileage/kilometer limiter, making it “coffeetable”, “3108”, and “25km” Once it coughed up the information on all the coffee tables within a 25km radius of Doncaster, then you could do a text search for the words “Light Tasmanian Oak” – and viola, as the French say – you’d find the right coffee table for you -Light Tasmanian Oak, not too far away, etc., etc. – in no time at all – no hassles, no stress… just… lots of lovely coffee tables to choose from! 🙂 Roll on, 2566! 😉

Weigh-in this morning was… disappointing. I [insert very rude word here, please] stayed the same 😦 100.3kg Despite the third Stair Walk per day. Despite finishing off those ruddy pills. Despite all my best efforts. I stayed the same. *gloom* Well, I suppose, at a pinch, that I can use the excuse (or reason) that it takes a couple of days for the effect of the pills to wear off, or the fact that maybe doing this third Stair Walk per day is swapping “fat cells” for calf and thigh “muscle cells”… but while the former might have an element of truth in it, I don’t really believe the latter… because my legs don’t feel any stronger, and climbing those last eight steps on the way back up still hurts my left thigh muscle, a lot! I hope I go down a bit tomorrow – but I probably won’t… I’ll probably stay the same… or go up again… 😦

Anyway, stay tuned tomorrow night, when I’ll probably have got Zorcha to level 20, and stated on my next “willing volunteer”. I’m also trying to decide what to do about my nails for Sunday (the dual “Big Birthday Bash” for both me, and himself, who missed out on his last month, because the lift was out) By Sunday, they’re really going to need doing again, so I suppose I could do them on Saturday afternoon (or even tomorrow) but then I’ll get myself all out of sync… (but is that so terrible, anyway? Why not just start a new “sync” to attune myself to?) Ah! Decisions, decisions! Be sure to find out what I decide to do, in tomorrow night’s blog, because it’s too soon to make a decision in tonight’s! 😉 There’s also the problem of what colour to use… I could use this one again – it’s a very nice sort of sparkly rust – or I could use the new Willow luscious ripe raspberry red, which would also look good… Well, you’ll find that out tomorrow night, too, I guess. I’ll also be able to fill you in on what tortures my weight will have inflicted on me tomorrow morning – I’ll either be rejoicing, or sobbing uncontrollably… one or the other… So, once more until tomorrow night, gentle readers, bee good, don’t buy any one-owner bridges, and above all, stay safe! ciao, all! 🙂

Today, at long last, I did manage to go shopping! 🙂 I just had time to see to my Auctions and sort out my Minions, and we were off to The Glen. Finally! With my Autograph and My Size Birthday vouchers neatly folded in my handbag, our first stop was the rug shop on the ground floor near the David Jones entrance. They had some interesting rugs, and there was a lovely “Florentine” style rug in gold tones that would have looked lovely, but I wanted something a bit more… contemporary. While Julian chatted up the rug merchant and told him what we were after, I started flipping through those tall rug display frames – the second one in caught my eye straight away for the lounge room… Definitely not a colour we’d normally choose, it was in tones of grays with what can only be described as “off-black” (sort of like an off-white, only black?) Alright, perhaps it was more of a charcoal colour, only maybe a bit darker, here and there. The design is divided into nonsymmetrical and spaced squares, with delicate, almost branch-like squiggles on one side of the square, and a netting or lace-like tracery in the other side, and each square is slightly different from all the other ones. Sounds a bit weird when you’re trying to describe it, but the overall effect is very pleasing. It’s subdued, but not depressive, and although it’s in tones of black (or charcoal) and grays, it comes across more as a true “neutral” colour. Considering the fact that I want the curtains, lounge suite, and wall hangings (once we create the wall upon which to hang them, that is!) to provide the colour in the room, the neutral grays in the rug are the perfect foil. We need the next size up from the one they had in the shop though, so unless they have one in stock elsewhere, we’ll have to wait about a week for it – but that took care of the lounge room rug! Next, still wanting something more colourful and contemporary, we looked for a rug (or rugs) for the hall and spare room.  There was a gorgeous rug, in reds, golds, and darkish, sage greens, in a semi-abstract, semi-patchwork design which I thought would not only look good in the hall, but also in the spare room. The hall is an awkward shape – it’s sort of “L” shaped – and narrower down one end than the other – it would need two rugs, one larger, one smaller. They had one of these red, gold, and darkish sage green rugs in each of the sizes we wanted, so we got those, and have ordered another of the smaller ones for the spare room; it should be here in about a week, too. Julian has already put the two rugs down in the hall, where they look extremely nice. It’s funny, you know – when I was at school, I wanted to go on to uni and study ancient history and do Archaeology. Dad wanted me to do Architecture, but I didn’t have the mathematical skills (I was always totally and utterly hopeless at Maths! The only thing I did well was, would you believe, long division. I thought long division was fun…) So, not being able to do Architecture, I was shunted off to R.M.I.T. to do Interior Design – once again, I didn’t have the Maths, but I would have done reasonably well if I hadn’t become ill, and had to spend the next three years in various hospitals. But I do have a good artistic eye, and a flare for colours, and as Julian describes himself as having “the colour and fashion sense of Stevie Wonder”, I became the family’s Interior Designer – and Dad got at least a part of what he wanted for me (whether or not I was interested in it!) So the rugs are now organised. Then we went on to Autograph and My Size, where I used my Birthday vouchers (and quite a bit of cash) and got a couple of pairs of slacks with pockets in them (honestly, where’s a girl supposed to keep a tissue these days? in her hair?!) a couple of T-shirts, and a long sleeved jumper. Now I have to start looking at coffee tables – we went to Laura Ashley to get their latest catalogue, but (a) they didn’t have any, and (b) they had one of the coffee tables I was interested in there. I liked it in the catalogue, but I didn’t like it “in the flesh” – besides, it was too small… Now the Great Coffee Table Hunt is afoot! We still need to get some scatter cushions for the spare room, too… But that was about the extent of our shopping trip today – quite successful, I thought! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. A little bit better again – down to 100.3kg and… and… we did get back from our shopping spree before 3 o’clock – we got home just before two o’clock, and  I was like into the apartment, shed my feet (shoes), and out of the apartment again at almost exactly five to two, and around to the fire escape stairs for my (admittedly late! Lunch is usually around 1-ish) pre-lunch Stair Walk. I was finally able to sit down and have my lunch and a cup of tea at about a quarter past two, so I did remember to do my SW today! 😛 I wonder if my weight will behave itself again tomorrow?

So not much got done on Rift today – I did get Zorcha up another two levels, to level 14, but call in again tomorrow evening and see what’s been happening with my newest trainee. There’s still no sign of the Plan A present – himself will have to start chasing that up or maybe it’ll turn up tomorrow! My favourite eldest daughter had her first class for the trimester today, something to do with Television Production, I believe, which she seemed very cheerful about – but she’s had to change her day for coming over to either Monday or Tuesday. At the moment we’ve made it Monday, but I’d really rather is was Tuesday… still, it’ll work itself out, I’m sure. I don’t think anything very much is happening tomorrow, but there’ll be news and gossip for you, even if I have to make it up as I go along! 😉 I’m also a little trepidated as to what my weight will do tomorrow – it’s been good for two days in a row – does this mean I’ll go up again tomorrow, or stay the same? I’ll tell you tomorrow night whether the third Stair Walk is having a positive effect or not! So until tomorrow night, bee good, don’t walk in the rain, and… stay safe! ciao, all! 🙂

It was an interesting day today – after breakfast I started Rifting, and himself went off to perform Taxi Duties for my favourite eldest daughter. The water to the block of apartments also went off – we’d had notification that the water would be off today between 9.00am and about 1.00pm, so we had casks of drinking water, buckets of flushable water, and hospital strength hand sanitizer on hand, so that was no problem. I worked really hard with Crystalsong this morning, and by the time himself got back I had her up to level 19. Now, I really feel terribly guilty… and ashamed… I didn’t do my pre-luncheon Stair Walk today, as I had previously stated that I would. You see, my “Plan B” present arrived, just after lunch, and before we’d had our lunch time cup of tea (most important, that cup of tea – can’t possibly do a Stair Walk on a tea-less stomach, no-way, no-how, no sirree! That’s mah story, and I’m-a stickin’ to it! 😉 )  and in all the excitement I simply forgot about my cup of tea, and, unfortunately, my Stair Walk.  The mysterious package contained a cordless, Bluetooth, mechanical keyboard! I really like mechanical keyboards – I know it’s showing my age, but they “feel” real, if you know what I mean. They have a nice, solid feel to the keys, and ye olde fashioned “clunk-clack” sound when you type 🙂 So far there’s still no sign of the “Plan A” present, but this keyboard is really great – it feels almost as good to the touch as the Estée Lauder face creams feel on your face! (I used them again this morning, and this evening my face still feels lovely and soft!) 🙂 Julian says that the keyboard does “sleep itself off” after about half an hour of inactivity, so I thought that it might be something to watch out for when I’m Rifting. But after playing a while this afternoon it turns out not to be the case – I’m forever hitting the space bar to jump over things, or hitting the “Y” key to mount and dismount from my trusty surfboard steed, so the keyboard doesn’t go to sleep while I’m playing, after all! 🙂 If it does (sleep itself off) all I have to do it hit a key and wait about 5 seconds, and it’ll wake up and start working again, like this evening, when I came back to the Den. It’s a really nice keyboard – thank you sweetheart! 🙂 So, as I said, in all the excitement, I completely forgot that I was supposed to do a Stair Walk after (or before) lunch – je suis désolé! 😦 So, anyway, getting back to Rift, I finally managed to sort out and clean up Crystalsong’s mad mix up of quests. The unfortunate side of which is that she’s almost too “old” for the quests she’s still got left (they’re all green now, and on the verge of going grey, which means that she won’t get any experience for doing them – but if she doesn’t do them, she won’t get the “breadcrumb” quests to go on to the next areas. It’s complicated…) I’ve taken her back to Sanctum, cleaned out her bags, and sent her waterbreathing necklace off to Zorcha, the next one in line to be taken to level 20. “Lucky” Zorcha has also had the somewhat dubious honour of being made “Dimension Mistress”, which means that she’ll be responsible for all things to do with Dimensions, from building, furnishing, and maintaining them, to receiving unwanted Dimension good and items from the rest of the Guild. She’s gunna need a whole lot of the biggest bags obtainable – which means, I suppose, that I’ll have to make someone an Outfitter as soon as possible, and train him or her up quickly so that they can start making Empyrean Bags (which have 28 slots, as opposed to the 24 slot Lanzan Bag) The only thing is, to buy the materials to make these bags costs a lot of platinum – unless you’re a high enough level to go out and farm them yourself (about level 65? I have no-one on Hailol anywhere near that level – yet!), it’s really cheaper to buy them ready made… I’ll see how the money goes. What I should have done is get Jademoss, my level 65 Outfitter on Laethys, to make half a dozen or so Empyrean Bags and give them to the “courier”, who could have transferred them over to Hailol… ain’t hindsight wunnerful?!

Weigh-in this morning. A bit better – I didn’t quite lose those three points that I gained yesterday, but I lost two of them. I’m back down to 100.6kg – not quite where I wanted to be at this point in time! And that was after I did my lunchtime Stair Walk yesterday – which I forgot to do today (O.K., I was rather distracted, alright?!) so one wonders what my weight will be tomorrow, seeing as I didn’t get that extra bit of exercise today. *sigh* Maybe I should write it on the back of my hand in biro – or better still, waterproof marker pen: “Don’t forget to have your pre-lunch Stair Walk today!” Come to think of it, I might not even be here around lunch time tomorrow…

Anyway, stay tuned tomorrow night for more interesting and amazing news from chez nous – we didn’t go shopping today because himself had to drive my favourite eldest daughter around, and the doctor was running behind (she always does – she’s a very good, and very popular Doctor!) so by the time he got home, we had lunch, and the parcel arrived, we didn’t have time to go shopping 😦 Well, we could have gone shopping, but it would have been very rushed, because himself had some work to do (read: a lot of work to do!) for the Body Corporate meeting this evening – and I really, really hate being rushed when I’m shopping for things like rugs, and clothes, and scatter cushions – it takes all the fun out of it! So we’ll go tomorrow (casts ominous look at Julian) won’t we, dear! So, if I am here, I’ll do my pre-lunch Stair Walk, if we’re out, I’ll do it as soon as we get home, as long as we get home before three o’clock – after that, it’ll really be too close to my après-midi Stair Walk at 5.00pm… However, I will be able to tell you if we found a rug for the lounge room, and if I managed to find myself a pair of slacks with pockets, for once, and what other adventures we had at The Glen (there’s a Laura Ashley there, too – I want to get one of their latest catalogues, to see if they still have semi-decent coffee tables…) So until this time tomorrow night, bee good, try to contain your impatience for the answers to all of your questions – all will be explained to you in due course, and… stay safe! 😉 ciao, all! 🙂

“Well, Happy Birthday, me!” said my stupid body, and promptly added an extra three points to my weight total! Gaaaa! So I’ve had to do a third Stair Walk today – it should have been before lunch, but I didn’t remember until I was half way through (my lunch) so I went after lunch instead… tomorrow, I’ll remember. But anyway –

Apart from that weight gaining business in the morning (I knew those fluid retaining pills were going to catch up with me sooner or later! Thank heavens that tomorrow’s the last day of them for a while!) today was a very nice day – Josh, my hairdressing friend came over and did my hair for me, even though he had heaps of work to do at home; Julian’s “Plan A” Birthday present didn’t arrive in time (even though it was ordered over a month ago), so he went and organised a “Plan B” Birthday present – which also didn’t arrive in time, so he had to fall back to “Plan C” Birthday present, which was most gratefully received! It was a box of Estée Lauder products – moisturisers, eye creams, etc. I used them tonight – they feel absolutely delicious on your skin! Mind you, I don’t really think they’ll make me look any younger, but they do make you feel good using them 🙂 I have no idea whatsoever as to what the “Plan A” and “Plan B” presents are, or where they’re coming/had to come from, but no doubt I’ll find out soon enough (maybe even tomorrow! I hope so!) Ah, yes! Tomorrow! Himself has to play Taxi for my favourite eldest daughter again tomorrow – she has an appointment to see her GP – and he has a Body Corporate meeting tomorrow night – but I received a Birthday present voucher from Autograph, and one from My Size – and one from Zierra shoes (even though I haven’t bought anything from them for about ten years! I hate shoes!) As you can imagine though, the ones from Autograph and My Size are burning holes in the pockets I never seem to be able to get in slacks, and although I’m not the teeniest bit interested in Zierra’s shoes (shudder!), they do sell quite nice handbags as well! 😉 So that’s what I’m hoping to do tomorrow, when Julian gets back from his Taxi driver role – go shopping! Maybe at The Glen – there’s a largish rug shop there, as well as the other three shops mentioned above, and I want to start looking for a new rug for the lounge room, now that the new furniture is in place. We could also go to Target for scatter cushions for the sofa bed, too, while we’re there… Hmmm… I don’t know if the reason that I like shopping so much is because it gets me out of the apartment, or if it’s because I just like spending money! 😉 I think it’s the former…

I did Rift for a bit this morning – I organised the Guild Bank Vaults, now that we’ve got a third one, there’s lots more room (something tells me that it won’t be long before it’s chock-a-block too, though! A fourth Guild Bank Vault will cost 3000 platinum, so I think it’s probably a good idea to start saving for it now!) and I’d just finished doing that when I remembered that I was going to do my nails this afternoon, so I’m afraid poor old Crystalsong didn’t get much of a run around today. I didn’t use the new Willow Byron Bay luscious raspberry red nail polish today, I used the Inglot “breathable” red nail polish instead – dunno why, I just wanted to, is all… I’ll use the Willow Byron Bay one next week (it is a really glorious red!) Before I went and did my nails, however, I went and created the new Pisces emblem/icon/symbol (I can never remember what it’s called!) in the blog header – I didn’t really like the other one – it just looked “half baked” to me, somehow, so I made this one instead. It’s actually a combination of two fonts, a “buton” dingbat font for the background, with the same Pisces font as I used for the old one that I didn’t like, only smaller, for the top bit. I think this one turned out not too badly – I’ll probably let it stay for the week 🙂

Weigh-in this morning – well, the surprise is spoilt – I’ve already told you what a disaster it was! You’d think, wouldn’t you, that on an important day, like my 39th Birthday, that for once my body could do something nice for me, like losing a few points, or even staying the same – but no, it put on three points, taking me from yesterday’s slim and svelte 100.5kg, back to fat and slobby 100.8kg! 😦 Well, only one more day on those wretched pills, then maybe I’ll be able to shed some of this fluid that I’ve been jealously and greedily hoarding for the past nine and three quarter days! So, it’s finally arrived! The “Three Stair Walks A Day” era has dawned! Actually, it’s a lot easier and quicker than trying to organise myself to do exercise exercises (if you know what I mean!) According to himself, it takes me approximately 8 to 9 minutes, from the time I exit the apartment, to the time I re-enter it (“we probably should time it,” says himself – what a good idea! We’ll do that tomorrow morning, ‘K? 🙂 ) so it’s really no hassle to get up before lunch to do a third SW – I don’t really mind it at all (in fact I quite like it, as long as the lobby doesn’t reek of sour, acrid burnt garlic, or whatever else is causing the foul stench in there sometimes!) – it’s just the fact that it’s been more or less forced on me that rankles!

So anyway, call back tomorrow night and hear all the latest from moi-même – did I go shopping? Did we find a new rug for the lounge room? (or the spare room, or the hallway) Did I manage to find a pair of slacks with pockets in them? Why don’t I look in Target for clothes, now that I’ve dropped a bit of weight – they do have a Big Girls section… (good point! I might look there, if we go in to look for scatter cushions – kill two birds with the one stone, so to speak! 😉 ) and also – how are the new Estée Lauder products working out? Do I look any younger yet? (well, I can tell you the answer to that, right now, tonight! The answer is “No! But they sure do feel nice! 😉 ) and what about my weight? Will my body decide to apologize, and go down five points, to make up for it? All these questions will be answered for you, right here, this time tomorrow night – you won’t want to miss out on the exclusive exposé! So until tomorrow night, bee good, don’t eat too much, and please, stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

What a (Telaran) day! Well, we didn’t just scoot off to Ember Isle, though having finished the quests in Moonshade Highlands, we were sent off to the Droughtlands… where it seemed to be a matter of: we’d glare hard at the mobs, and they’d fall over dead! Just too easy! So after about five minutes of this glaring at mobs, them dying, and us collecting the loot, we weren’t sure what to do. We debated about Ember Isle, but we really didn’t have any way of getting there (yet) so we tried Shimmersand, the area you go to when you’ve finished in the Droughtlands. We didn’t have a “breadcrumb” quest to go there, either, but I know where the Shimmersand starting quests are, and we managed to pick them up, no problemo! Unfortunately, it was Invasion Day in Shimmersand, and they were level 50+ invaders! Why the goodness they want to put level 50+ invasions in a level 43 – 49 area, I have no idea – maybe it’s supposed to be what we’ve just been grizzling about – as a “challenge”, for uppity little Mages who think they’re really hot! Well, it was a challenge, alright! 😦 I died… I got charged at by a level 56 mountain, and sustained more than flesh wounds. I was not amused! Anyway, these gruesome little “challenges” don’t last all that long (thank heavens!) and we made sure we did all the quests that stayed out of the invasion paths first! Once the invasion segment was over, it was quite good, actually – we’re level 42 now – we were level 41 when we started, so we did go up a level – and although the mobs were between level 50 and 56 – some of them Elite (that is, extra rough, tough, and hard to kill) we managed to hold our own against them with relative ease! Sure, it took a little longer to knock them down when we were fighting solo, or more than one mob at a time, but all in all, I can see us getting bored with this fairly soon. Mind you, we are coming up to a very complicated and reasonably hard set of quests (which are all Orange, by the way – one step away from the supposedly impossible to finish and still live “Red” quests) They’re the lead-up to the Flatyard quests – personally, I think these lead-up quests are harder than the Flatyard ones, but that’s just me (I actually have a lovely Dimension set in the Flatyard “area” of Castle Fortune – it’s called “Palazzo del Destino” – go have a look at it sometime – it’s on the Laethys shard) We’ve got the initial quest to go there, so we’ll be having fun with that next week. Himself died once today, too – when we first got to the area just prior to the Flatyard beginnings – but it’s better than being bored! 🙂

Now that the lift is back in action, the new entertainment unit is in, and the spare room only needs a rug and some scatter cushions, the time has come for me to start making…. (dramatic music, please!)  …A List! Yes! This is the year of the new me… and the new apartment! Well, not a “new” apartment – we’ve decided not to move – but if we’re staying here, then I want this apartment to get a face lift. Or a paint and curtain lift – but definitely changed for the better. We want to do a lot of things that will require some structural changes – f’rinstance, we’re horribly short on wall space for picture hanging , etc. yet in the lounge room, we have one whole, entire wall that’s curtained off all the time. Why? Because the window behind the curtain looks directly into the apartments across the pocket-handkerchief garden, and the balcony outside that window has some rather unattractive air conditioning compressors glaring through the window at you if you open the curtains. I want to wall off that window, inside and out, leaving only one small section of window on that side of the room. It’s such a waste! All that expanse of curtain, all that wasted wall space – I want it back! And I want to change the curtains in the lounge room – but – we don’t know what we want to replace them with! Drapes? Been there, done that, didn’t look as good as we thought they would. Roman Blinds are an option, especially now that we can have them remote-controlled, so as not to have to cut the sides of our hands hauling on those thin “strings” to lower and raise the curtains. Venetians wouldn’t work… and over the years we’ve used different Curtain Manufacturers (Victory, Luxaflex, Kresta, Laura Ashley, to name a few) and they’ve all made very bad and totally inexcusable blunders – two curtains for the same window (pull across drapes) one side with the pattern upside down? Two windows the same size – one set of blinds several – not inches, but feet – too small? That sort of thing. And because I want a new coffee table for the lounge room, tonight, my darling husband asked me “what was I looking for in a coffee table!” I just looked at him, tight-lipped. That was when I told him I was going to make “A List” (he always whimpers when I threaten to make “A List” 😉 ) Actually, we do need a list, in order to organise everything, but more importantly, so we can tell the builder exactly what we want, without dithering and saying “I thought you said”, and “No, you misunderstood! I don’t like fluorescent lime green!”

You may have noticed the little Pisces symbol on the header… that’s because it’s my Birthday week – I knocked it up just before I started writing this blog tonight. No, I will not tell you how old I am – all you need to know is that I’m “Old Enough” 😉 And amongst my family and friends, whoever is having a Birthday will have their Zodiac sign posted in the header for their Birthday week too – I can’t remember who’s next, I’ll have to look it up…

Weigh-in this morning. Well, still no pre-prandial Stair Walks on the horizon for me – yet! I weighed in at 100.5kg, only one point down on yesterday, but at least it was down. And, only two more days of those horrible fluid loving and retaining pills to go… Unfortunately, unless a miracle occurs, I won’t make “double figures” by my Birthday, but hopefully I won’t be too far off it!

So call back tomorrow night and see what we’ve all been up to – will I have made my List? Probably not, but I’ll certainly be thinking about it. My gold nail polish is still hanging on – and who said that you can’t file and shape painted nails? I think it must be an urban myth, because one of my nails had a snag in it this morning, and it was catching on everything – so I sighed, and filed it down anyway, without removing the polish first, as I’ve always been taught to do – it worked perfectly well, and didn’t damage the polish (well, not too much, anyway!) Oh, next Sunday, we won’t be “Tripping the Light Fantastic in Telara” – because we’ll be having a double BBB! Julian missed out on his Big Birthday Bash because the lift was out, so we’ve decided that we can both have our Big Birthday Bash in the one foul swoop! As usual, I’ll have mineral water and an Optifast bar for lunch. Everyone else will have champagne, Nando’s chicken tenders, chips, a nice leafy green salad (home made), and Birthday Cake (of one sort or another) – but that’ll be next week’s news! Tomorrow night you’ll get all the latest about everything going on chez nous, almost as it happens! 🙂 So until then, bee good, have a glass of champagne for me, and above all, stay safe! ciao, all! 🙂

Well, I worked my poor fingers to the bone this morning – I’ve almost sorted out Crystalsong’s weird conglomeration of quests, but not quite. I still have two “green” quests to finish off before I can move on to the three “yellow” ones – which will probably have to wait until next week now, as I won’t have time to do anything more tonight (by the time I finish this, and then attend to my Auctions and Minion Offerings, it’ll be almost midnight!) and tomorrow is our “Pillaging and Burning In Telara, For Fun and Profit” day… Still, Crystalsong is now level 16, so that’s not bad going, considering that I’ve been working through the “greenies” which don’t award quite as many experience points as the yellow quests do. The gentleman who was coming to help move and re-set up the giant TV arrived early this morning – most annoying, as we were just about to have our breakfast! We ended up having quite a late breakfast because it took a while to get everything set up and working properly (and I must say that it did look a right mess until later this afternoon when we finally had a chance to clean it all up!) After breakfast, Julian shot off to do the shopping as quickly as possible because the other gentleman caller we were expecting today, the guy who was going to give our old entertainment unit a good home, was coming at 2.00pm – thank goodness he wasn’t early! He was on time though, and once again, it seemed to take forever for the two of them to wrestle the unit downstairs and tie it securely into his… ute? van? I dunno, “vehicle”! Once himself came back from that we had a cup of coffee, then, with me “supervising” 😉 he started putting everything from the old entertainment unit away in the new one. By dinner time, it was all put away, the floor was swept clear of all the little bits of cat fluff from underneath the old unit, and all the little polystyrene crumbs from the packing that had been around the new one. It all looks very nice now! The lounge room rug is going back into the lounge room until we get a chance to go out looking for a new one, after which it will (probably) go into the spare room (or the hall!) and the new one (or two!) will go into the lounge room (and/or the spare room) We must go to Target and get two or three scatter cushions…

I also messed around with graphics a bit while the guys were busy wrestling with unwieldly cabinets – I’m now into my fourth day of messing around with recalcitrant graphics. I’m starting to get annoyed. I have to say, though, that even after all this time, I haven’t lost my touch with removing unwanted watermarks from “Free” and “Royalty Free” images! *smirk* I’ll get there one day (with this project) – there’s no hurry for it or anything – it’s for myself, anyway, so I can take as long as I like over it… I just find it… a needless annoyance that I can’t find anything that I really like enough to want to use in this project. F’rinstance, why can’t the symbol for Pisces be twin cats, running in different directions? I’m sure I could find cats that I could use… fish are so… so… I dunno, fishy! (Winter has a sudden idea: what… about… catfish! Yeah! I could use catfish in a Pisces design! *quickly starts googling images of cat fish*)

Weigh-in this morning. I was most gratified! I went down to 100.6kg – that’s three whole points! I wish I could do that every day…but I’ll probably stay the same for a fortnight, now! Or go up… Well, there’s always the third Stair Walk if I do! I went on my Stair Walk this evening – around 5.00pm, as usual, and Julian came with me, also as usual. But while we were watching TV before I had this weird feeling that I hadn’t done it, so I said to Julian “Did I do my Stair Walk this evening? I just have the strangest feeling that I didn’t” He confirmed that indeed, I had done my S.W., and that he was with me and saw me doing it. Unfortunately, while I know that I did do it, even now, I have this strange compulsion to go out and do it again, because I didn’t do it before! Does any of that make any sense to you all? I know – it doesn’t to me, either. *gasp!* Could it be Alzheimer’s?! Already?! 😦 Nooooooo! (actually, this is rather good! I shall (hopefully) worry another three or four points off my weight, now that I’m all concerned that I might be developing Alzheimer’s. There’s only one thing wrong with that premise though – I’m so darn lazy that I know it would be too much effort to be bothered worrying about! ) *sigh*

Anyway, drop by this time tomorrow night and see what we’ve been up to – how did we go in Telara? Will we decide to toss these wimpy quests in and head for Ember Isle (where we’ll probably die a number of times – I remember one place there where they’re all Elites, there’s an awful lot of them, and they’re very, very tough (well, they were, once upon a time – but will they still be? That is the question!))? Or will we continue our long, slow slog through Mathosia (the section of Telara we’re currently in) even if only to gain Achievements, Titles, and Notoriety with various factions? (the higher your Notoriety, the more discounts, freebies, money and goodies you get from that faction!) And who knows? 😉 You will, this time tomorrow night! 🙂 My gold nail polish is slowly chipping away – will it last until my Birthday on Monday? Or will I be forced to change it before that? You’ll find that out tomorrow night, too! Ah yes, but what about my weight? Will you find out whether or not I went up, stayed the same, or went down? Of course you will! You know by now that I’ll grizzle and cry a lot if it goes up (or stays the same!) and be all happy and cheerful if it goes down…  So until this time tomorrow, bee good, have a fun long weekend (but not too fun, y’hear me?! 😉 ) and above all, stay safe! ciao, all! 🙂

Another day of mixed variables… This morning, after breakfast, I was called to the lounge room. As the people who are going to assist with the moving and re-setting up of our giant TV are going to be here tomorrow morning (bright and early – around 9.00am) the drawers and the cupboards of the old entertainment unit and side tables had to be cleaned out. And by “cleaned out“, Julian usually means “thrown out”, and so to prevent any tears when I find out that my favourite scrap of paper in all the universe (the one with the scribbled drawing by one of the kids when they were four) has been thrown out, I have to be there to “supervise” the culling of the treasures. Five drawers, plus only the top shelf of the old entertainment unit later, our cleaning lady arrived – early (for once! and just when we wanted her to be late so that we could get all the sorting out finished!) After sitting around and chatting for a bit, I came back down here to the Den and caught up with my Auctions and Minion Offerings on Rift. I did get Nuha up to level 20, and started on my next victim character. A Guardian, this time – the ill-named Copperfire, who has now been re-named to Crystalsong, received the waterbreathing necklace from Nuha, and off we went. My goodness, what a mish-mash I’d left her in! A completely jumbled mix of “baby and teen” quests (so to speak) She was level 12 – a  little bit old for the starting “baby” quests, but not quite old enough for the next quest chains along. Apparently I’d taken her across to Freemarch to close Rifts and get some planarite (which is simply not possible in Silverwood, as I’ve said in an earlier blog) but I’d totally neglected to get her started in any of the three “Basic” skills – Foraging, Mining, and Butchering. Normally with Guardian characters, as soon as we get to Silverwood, I grab the Porticulum there, train up in those three basic skills, run down the hill and grab the “Close the Rifts and get planarite” quests, then swim over to Freemarch and do the planarite and Rift-closing quests – before I pick up the first available quests in Silverwood. Then I run around Freemarch killing and skinning wolves, mining, and picking whatever herbage there is to pick, leveling up my basic skills, looking for Artifacts, dodging Defiant Guards, and grabbing the only Porticulum over there (apart from Meridian, and that Porticulum is in the very centre of the Defiant capital!) So I scratched my head a bit at where Crystalsong’s questing and skills were at (or perhaps that should be “weren’t at”!)  Long story short, I sorted her out as best I could in Silverwood, got her basic training done, didn’t have to swim over – apparently I’d already done that because I had the Denegar’s Stand Porticulum – so that’s where I went. However! There was a fly in my ointment, because the Carnival of the Ascended has entered its second stage. The Parades have started, and all the roads are thronged with Defiant guards, bearing “red name plates” (that means that they are extremely hostile to anything not Defiant – and as a Guardian, they will attack you on sight – so it’s a good idea to stay off the roads!) This is problematical, as there are hostile mobs off the road which will attack you, no matter what faction you belong to. Usually that wouldn’t bother me, but as a level 12, it’s not really a terribly good idea to try to fight off level 16 wolves and wild boars! Six of one, half a dozen of the other – level 45 hostile guards, or level 16 hostile wolves and wild boars – either of them will kill you just as dead! I did a lot of zigging and a lot of zagging… I found a lot of Artifacts, I butchered, foraged, and mined, and I got my “Merchant of Death” title! Then I came back to Silverwood, where I’m gradually getting my quests sorted out and back into order, but it’s been like trying to comb out a plate of soggy, tangled spaghetti!

After lunch I did a bit more graphic work – I’m beginning to see a dim and distant light at the end of the tunnel, at last, but I’m still not satisfied… I’ll do a bit more tomorrow… I also received a new url on pigeon genetics from Josh – it’s extremely interesting and I’m going through it. It’s just a tad more complicated than Siamese cats because there are more variations on a theme, but the basic principles are the same – it’s really just a matter of learning what those variations are, and how they present in the Phenotype (that is, how the characteristics display on the bird) Genetics really is a fascinating subject! Thanks Josh! 🙂

Julian went off to have his scan this afternoon, in Coburg! It was the only place that could do it today, so he got home very late this afternoon, and I did my afternoon Stair Walk on my own. We use a book to prop open the Fire Escape door as you can’t enter the building from the Fire Escape, only leave it; we had a close call the other day – someone saw the book and was about to make off with it, before Julian stopped them. It’s not the end of the world if the door does close on us, it just means that you have to walk all the way down to the ground floor, exit the building by the Williamson’s Road exit, walk around the building to the other entrance, come in through there (if you’ve remembered to bring your keys!) take the lift up to the floor you want the door open on, and let whoever’s stuck in there, out. Well, I had my keys… I also had bare feet, and I don’t think walking around outside in bare feet would have done them, or me, any good. Luckily no-one removed the book this afternoon! I’m going to make up signs to put on both sides of the 5th floor Fire Escape door! “Please do NOT remove this book! Someone is exercising on the stairs and needs to be able to get back in!” – or words to that effect. I’m a little perturbed though – several times in the afternoons we’ve noticed a terrible smell – it’s more of a stench, really – of terribly, terribly strong, acrid garlic. We’re not sure where it’s coming from – it seems to be coming from one of the two apartments on the other side of this floor, and it really is terrible! This afternoon it was so bad I nearly threw up – truly! I had to cover my mouth and nose and try to hold my breath as I almost ran from the Fire Escape door to our front door! (can you imagine? Me? Running?! The mind positively boggles, and I don’t think it would do the foundations of this building much good, either!) I’m wondering if it can be brought up, diplomatically, at the next Body Corporate committee meeting. If it can’t be fixed, I’ll have to get some sort of gas mask (no, I’m not kidding Julian!) to be able to continue my afternoon Stair Walks – or we’re going to have to go somewhere else with stairs for me to do them – but this afternoon was beyond a joke!

Weigh-in this morning. Well, still no lunchtime Stair Walks for me – not yet, anyway. I weighed in at 100.9kg – not as low as I would have liked, but at least I went down (even if only one point) and didn’t stay the same again. Let’s see what tomorrow brings! I’m more than half way through this lot of fluid retaining pills… the end is in sight…

So tune in again this time tomorrow night – find out what the new and improved entertainment unit looks like “in situ”! See if I can eke my gold nail polish out for another day (it’s beginning to chip – just a bit!) and if my weight bucked the trend and went up… annoyed me by staying the same, or gladdened my heart by going down by more than one point! All these questions, and more, will be given to you on a silver platter, this time tomorrow night! So until then, bee good, stop doing that!, and… stay safe! ciao, all! 🙂

Boy-o-boy! What a day – we were woken somewhere between 3.30am and 4.00am when Neale, my favourite eldest daughter’s husband, rang us to say that she was back in hospital with more chest pains. He’d give us updates as they became available. So then it was lie awake and worry, worry, worry… time passed… eventually we heard that no, she wasn’t having another heart attack (she’d had one small one some time ago) This time, however, they didn’t let her come home, they kept her there for the rest of the “night”, and for most of today, doing tests and x-rays and what-not. The long and short of it is, they don’t have a clue what the problem was. According to the hospital, it could have been anything from bad indigestion, to a panic/anxiety attack, but as far as they could tell, her heart was fine. Some small comfort in that, I suppose… I’ve only had a panic attack twice in my life – both totally unexpected and out of the blue (and both times while I was driving, would you believe?!) I’d read about panic attacks, of course, but the first time it happened to me it took me completely by surprise. I was driving along, minding my own business – I think I was going to pick the kids up from school, or something terribly mundane and boring. I came up to a “controlled” (traffic lights) T-intersection at the top of the street, started a right hand turn when the lights said I could, and all of a sudden! Woosh! The adrenaline started pumping, my hands got sweaty and clammy, I got  a very bad case of butterflies in my tummy, and I thought “??!! AArrgggh!”, and then I thought, almost with a sense of wonderment “I think I’m having a panic attack! Oh, I wonder why?!”, and it went away. I don’t think it liked being recognised So, anyway, I know what a panic attack feels like, but I would never have thought that maybe I was having a heart attack… This isn’t the first time that Lee has had these sorts of episodes, however if after testing for certain enzymes, and scans and x-rays to show any sort of heart damage, the medics can’t find anything wrong, well, maybe anxiety attacks are different from panic attacks, or different people experience them in different ways, and that’s what it was. Anyway, she’s home again now, and hopefully it’ll be the last “mystery” attack for at least a couple of months (so as to let my hair grow back in again!)

Neale had to go to work, so that left Julian to fend for Lee when she was told she could come home (fairly late this afternoon, as it turned out) – in the meantime, we had the fun arrival of our new furniture, which was all terribly exciting because the entertainment unit almost proved to be too big for the lift (but they managed to squeeze it in in the end), and the delivery guys had to take the legs off the sofa bed because the corridor it had to fit down to get to the spare room was too cramped and tight – according to Julian, we nearly ended up with no entertainment unit, and no sofa bed! But they’re in now, and the two new side tables in the lounge room look much more betterer than the old ones (which now look much more betterer in the spare room, on each side of the sofa bed) We’re getting there! 🙂 Admittedly, fairly slowly, but then we’ve been without a lift for most of that “slowly”!

I Rifted for most of the morning, and spent most of my time turning Persha into an Apothecary. I went through everyone I had, looking to see who could do what. We need an Apothecary badly – they make potions and stuff. I also woke up to the fact that they can also make Augments, that any Crafter can use with the goods that they make, so I guess once I designate an Outfitter (they make clothes and some forms of Armor) and start making gear for everyone, Persha will be kept pretty busy making Augments to boost everyone’s clothing stats. But the main reason I needed an Apothecary today, was because we don’t have very many healing potions in the Guild Bank, and what’s more, no-one seems to be making them and putting them up on the Auction house! So I thought “Damn it! I’ll make my own! Who can I turn into an Apothecary?”, and Persha drew the short straw. Still, I got her up to Grand Master Apothecary today – but it was just too expensive to get her up to Savant status – that’ll have to wait – and it’s not as though we’re in dire need of level 60 Healing Potions – yet! 😉 However, I now have a list of all my boys and girls, and what skills they have, so now I can decide who’s going to do what. At the moment, Winterthyme is a Runecrafter (Runes are sort of like Augments, in that they give items boosts (read: better stats)), and Rubyfox is a Dreamweaver (she makes Dimension stuff – not that we need any, the Minions are brining in enough to sink a couple of aircraft carriers!) – and that’s about it, at the moment. We must move the extra platinum and goods from Laethys to Hailol toot sweet – we’re starting to get desperate for funds and Guild Bank Vaults – I’m afraid that Persha’s little Training spree cost nearly 300 platinum 😦

And after luncheon I did a bit more graphic work. Can anyone tell me why, when you go looking for “Free” and “Royalty Free” images, you keep being given so-called “freebies”, covered in watermarks and logos?  Of course, the site will happily remove these unsightly marks – if you pay them a fairly hefty fee for their pains. I tell you what, it makes my blood-sweat-and-tears boil, when they try to pull that one on me! Luckily, I know a couple of techniques to remove most of those watermarks. But it’s a pain – lots of tedious, close up work, but then again – why not? The images are being offered to you as “Free”, and “Royalty Free”. I’m still not happy with what I’ve achieved with zodiac signs, though…  I’ll keep working on it…

Weigh-in this morning. Hmmm.. Maybe I did mozz myself last night – I was the same weight again this morning! 101.0kg If I don’t go down tomorrow, it’ll be the (*gasp*, *shock*, *horror*) Pre-Lunch Third Stair Walk pour moi! 😦 Let’s hope I go down again tomorrow, so that it doesn’t have to come to that…

So anyway, look in on us again tomorrow night – find out how my (seemingly fruitless) search for really-truly free, and royalty free garphics is coming along – will I have managed to remove part, or all, of the watermarks on the supposedly Free (and Royalty Free) images?! My gold leaf nail polish has been taking a bit of a pounding, writing this blog an’ all; I’m hoping that it will last until next week, but we’ll just have to wait and see if it’ll remain intact enough for that. Most importantly, will my weight have gone down, or will I be trudging off before lunch every day for a third daily Stair Walk? These questions, “and many, many more”, will be answered, right here, this time tomorrow night! Don’t be the only one to miss out on all the new news! 😉 So until this time tomorrow night, bee good, don’t stand around out in the rain, and… stay safe! ciao, all! 🙂

Today was a bit of a mixed bag again – I spent most of the morning unzipping and installing the nine new zodiac fonts I downloaded last night, and then trying them out. I’m still not completely satisfied with them – they’ll definitely need more work – and if I can’t get the effect I want with the fonts, then I’ll just have to find royalty free graphics, and try to use them instead *sigh* Why doesn’t anybody ever have what I want?! Himself went off for his scan today… when he rang up to book it, they told him is was a “fasting” test, and to “go to the bathroom” before he arrived for the scan. So he did. He didn’t have tea or coffee this morning, and he didn’t have any breakfast. He drove off with an empty bladder, arrived for his scan, and was told “Oh no dear, it’s not a fasting test, and we need you to have a full bladder!” The scan is to be “re-scheduled”! It can’t be tomorrow, because we’re expecting all that furniture to arrive, we just don’t know what time it’ll be arriving, so he can’t re-schedule for any time tomorrow – and Friday was also fully booked – however it turns out that the people we were getting in on Friday to re-locate the enormous TV (Julian can’t move it on his own – it’s too big and heavy) who were supposed to be coming  are short handed at the moment, so they’re coming on Saturday morning instead – which leaves Friday free, after all. So he’ll try to re-schedule the scan for sometime on Friday. Our cleaning lady will be (should be) here on Friday, and I can cope with her on my own (mostly she just sits and smokes and talks, anyway! Then she gives the place a (very) quick lick and vacuum, and she’s off…) Depending on what time he can get an appointment, he’ll probably be back before she’s finished (maybe even before she arrives!) Anyway, after I’d spent a largely fruitless morning slaving over hot zodiac fonts, I got into a bit of relaxing mayhem on Rift – Nuha is now level 17. I thought I might have got him to level 20 today, but himself, greatly disgruntled with his wasted and hungry morning, suggested a bit of Rifting together. It sounded like a good idea, so after lunch we embarked on an hour’s worth of fun and killing in Telara. Again, we noticed how quickly and easily we were knocking off mobs that we both remember as being fiendishly difficult, not all that long ago – now, they’re barely annoyances – small nuisances holding us up on our way to completing a quest, because they’re in our way and we have to stop and waste time killing them. I wonder if it’s worth mentioning our concerns in the Rift Forums? It would be interesting to see if anyone else has noticed the same lack of difficulty and challenge… I’ll suggest that to himself later tonight…  Honestly, the way things are going at the moment, I reckon that even though we’re both only level 41, we could probably move on to Ember Isle (level 50 quests and mobs) any time we wanted to. It’ll probably be best if as soon as we know when the furniture is arriving, that I ensconce myself in here (the Den) and immerse myself in all things Telaran for the duration – in other words, keep out of everyone’s way until it’s all over! 🙂 Which should give me a chance to get Nuha a little further along in his quest to level 20.

I’m starting to get interested in genetics all over again – I studied it quite a bit, back when I was breeding Siamese (any legitimate licensed breeder has to know – or at least have a fair idea – of what they’re likely to get in a litter, depending on the parent’s pedigrees) I found it quite fascinating – f’rinstance Chocolate Point + Chocolate Point doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll get Chocolate Point kittens – you’re more likely to get a mixture of Blue Points (x 3), Lilac Points (x 1), and Chocolate Points(x 2), a ratio of 3:1:2 because (from memory, and it was a l-o-n-g time ago!) Chocolate Points are an off-shoot of Blue Points. Anyway, a friend sent me the url of a pigeon breeding site (he’s into pigeons, you see) with pictures of all the different colour combinations and their genetic makeup – unfortunately the site isn’t complete yet, so I couldn’t glean terribly much information from it (yet!) I may have to research further afield – but it’s managed to get me interested in genetics, all over again (ahhh… nostalgia!) and no Julian, I don’t intend to start breeding pigeons! And even though I still miss the patter of little paws, and kittens romping and playing on the bed every morning, I don’t intend to start breeding cats again, either! I’m just interested in genetics, alright?! 😉

Weigh-in this morning. Will wonders never cease? (I fervently hope not!!) I went down 2 points this morning, to 101.0kg! You do know what this means though, don’t you! It means that I’ll go up tomorrow, or worse, stay the same! So as yet, the third Stair Walk hasn’t had to be implemented – but I’ll be so chuffed if I’m down in the 100kg zone for my Birthday! I wish I hadn’t said that now 😦 It’s like washing the car to make it rain – because by having said that I’d be really chuffed if I made it to the 100kg zone by Monday, I’ve now doomed myself to going up, or staying the same, for about a week! *sob* Me and my big mouth – or should I say “me and my stupid, careless fingers! typing targets for the Gremlins to home in on!” Oh dear… I’m not looking forward to getting on the scales tomorrow!

Anyway, look in again tomorrow night – find out if the furniture arrived, and how it looks (probably a bit silly, because the new entertainment unit will sit empty, in front of the old unit, until Saturday, when the TV will get moved onto the new one, and that afternoon the old unit will be picked up by its new owner – so roll on Saturday afternoon!) The new side tables will be in place though, and the old ones will be dragged into the spare room to sit at either end of the new sofa bed – the lounge room rug might (or might not) go into the spare room too, which means that we’ll either have to look for a new rug for the lounge room, or a new rug for the spare room. So, 1 rug, 3 scatter cushions, and 1 throw rug, are all that stand between us, and a pleasant and welcoming spare room! 🙂 It’ll be so nice to have that room habitable again! 🙂 I’ll also let you know if I mozzed myself or not when I said I hoped I’d be down in the 100kg zone by Monday – you’ll be able to tell straight away, if I start the blog off with something like “I trod the stairs three times today…” Let’s all just hope and pray that I don’t! I’m sure there’ll be lots of other things to tell you, too, so until this time tomorrow night, bee good, drive carefully, and… stay safe! ciao, all! 🙂

I actually managed to get a fair bit done on Rift today – for a while, anyway, and then things went a bit “wonky” on line –  f’rinstance, after killing a mob in order to get a quest item from it, that quest item was taking up to 6 seconds or more to start sparkling, leaving you to think that the “whatever it was” wasn’t carrying that quest item (it does seem to happen a lot – have you any idea how many animals are running around Telara with no brain? or only one eye?) and I wasn’t able to send mail – it was as though there were massive lag spikes, but it wasn’t lag… Apparently I wasn’t the only person having problems with these lag-like symptoms… Julian did too, when he logged on to see if he had the same problems (which he did) so he suspected a newly installed patch gone wrong. I tend to disagree – there’s been no patch or update – yet, anyway. Let’s see what tomorrow brings! I’d just managed to get Persha up to level 20 and was busy “tidying out her backpack” and trying to send bits and pieces off to Hialeah (the Auctionator and GB Overflow Mistress), and it kept telling me “Mail Delivery failed”. So rather than continue banging my head against a brick wall, I logged off and did some graphic work for about an hour – and when I got back on again, all was fixed! So I finished tidying up Persha, mailed her water breathing necklace off to the next lucky character to be dragged, kicking and screaming, all the way up to level 20. This time it’s one of my two male characters, Nuha (pronounced “Noo-Har”) – he’s a great big blue-skinned Bahmi who looks like a cross between Genghis Khan and a Genie. I managed to get him up two levels in the time I had left this afternoon, and with any luck, I might even get him up to level 20 tomorrow – if the Rift “engine” doesn’t chuck another wobbly, that is!

On the graphical side of things, I’ve been doing a bit more experimenting with zodiac signs, but I’m not happy with the fonts (dingbats?) I’ve got for them – there’s a few others I want to get, but I have to see if the download site is “safe” *sigh* Oh! I just found out that one of them is, anyway – oh, and so is the other one – ‘scuse me while I go download… Right! Got ’em! 🙂 I’ll have fun with those tomorrow! 🙂 Where was I? Oh yes, I remember… so I’ve been, and will continue to be, splitting my time between Rift, and a zodiacal (is there such a word? Never mind, there is now! 😉 ) project I’m working on. No, not just for this blog, it’s for “something else”, which I may, or may not tell you about when it’s ready (it depends on how well it turns out!) I’ve also been toying with the idea of picking up my paintbrush again – it’s been many, many, many years since I did any actual painting with oils and brushes – part of me would like to, but the other part of me says “stick to what you do best! stay with the digital painting! It’s a lot less messy, too!” so once again… it’s not so much a matter of “will I? or won’t I?”, it’s more a matter of “should I? or shouldn’t I?” Besides, we don’t really have the room here for a “studio”… We’d really need to move to a bigger place… I’d be able to draw/paint a lot more animate things (faces, horses, cats, trees, plants…) which are a lot harder to do digitally. Decisions, decisions…

And on the writing side, the next Episode of “The Adventures of Darth Carla” will be up by the end of the week, if anyone’s interested…

Weigh-in this morning. Still no third Stair Walk – yet! I’m going down in one point increments – I was down to 101.2kg this morning – I dread to think what it’s going to do tomorrow! Still, as long as it’s going down, even in only one point steps, it’ll stave off the third Stair Walk for the nonce. Poor Julian, I feel for him tomorrow morning – he’s having a scan done – fasting! – so no cup of tea, and no breakfast for him… and the scan’s not being done until midday!

My favourite eldest daughter went to see her Cardiologist today – she has to have another ECG next week, and she has to do a “Stress Test” (to see how the heart behaves “under load”) I had one done a couple of years ago, but as I couldn’t do it on the treadmill, mine was done chemically (so I wasn’t allowed to have caffeine for more than 12 hours! That in itself nearly killed me!) Lee has done a Stress Test too –  on a treadmill – about a year or so ago, and she was really on the point of collapse after that (actually I was scared silly at the state she was in after the test, and she’s put on more weight since then – I think her Cardiologist is bloody stupid extremely unwise to make her use the damn treadmill again!) So we’ll just have to wait and see what the results of his scan, and her Stress Test are, next week… *sigh* No wonder I’m going grey!

So drop by again this time tomorrow night to find out all the latest – my gold-leaf-like nail polish is still looking good – after the dark inky blackness of the other one, this one looks almost anaemic! I can’t wait to see what the red one looks like, next week! 🙂 I’m hoping that my favourite eldest daughter will be able to come over this Friday, as she won’t be able to get here on Thursday (the new entertainment unit is being delivered on Thursday, but because we don’t know what time it’s arriving, Julian won’t be free to go and pick her up until after it’s been delivered – and that might not be until the afternoon!) so if she’s coming over, it’ll have to be Friday… I’ll let you know if my weight behaves itself or not, and whether I’ve had to resort to the third Stair Walk or not – so, until this time tomorrow night – bee good, stop being naughty (at once!) and stay safe! ciao, all! 🙂