Mondays are always interesting days – the beginning of the week, the beginning of – who knows what may follow? 🙂 Unfortunately, this particular Monday wasn’t one of those “who knows what lies in store?” days, it was another one of those dull, boring, “ho-hum, what’ll I do today” sort of days. I wasn’t having my hair done, and nothing else exciting was happening, so, guess what I did do? Yup, you got it in one! I Rifted! What else does a bored housewife do on a dull day? I also mucked around a bit with my new Bookmarks wallpaper – a lovely, wintry, grey, marbled background – in keeping with my favourite season, and my current mood. It’s quite interesting, creating styles (used in Photoshop, a “style” is a preset comprised of several different effects to “cover” and change the appearance of your text or image(s) with a single mouse click) in pewters, steel, and silver. These days, gold styles are fairly easy to create, but well do I remember my early years in graphics, striving to create a “real” gold colour and texture, before the days of layers and styles! Talk about the ‘Agony and the Ecstasy’! These days, a passable gold colour is pretty easy to replicate – it’s not quite so easy to create a decent silver or pewter colour from scratch, and get the highlights “just right”! Still, I think I did passably well… I’ll let you know when I finish the project, and, if it’s good enough, I might even (attempt to) introduce the pewter theme on the blog. The thing is, you create a style to work the way you want, and look the way you want, on a particular element (either text or image) that is a certain size, and a certain shape, or in the case of text, a certain font. In other words, you “tailor fit” that style to that element. When you translate that style to something else – a different size or shape image, or a different font, it quite often looks completely different – nothing at all like the original – so you have to tinker with it, and adjust it here, there, and somewhere else. Sometimes you succeed in getting it to look like the “original” on the new element (that’s called a “fluke” 😉 ) sometimes you don’t, and all you can do is fling up your hands in despair and start again from scratch. And sometimes, very occasionally, you’ll create something a lot better than the original (and that’s called “serendipity”! 🙂 ) And you can bet your bottom dollar that the “better than the original” one won’t work properly on any other element than the one you created it for! My style folder is overflowing with different versions of the same style, created by yours truly, with each one only working properly on one particular element that I’ve never needed to use since! But it’s fun 🙂
After lunch today himself and I hit the Dusken road again, and made it to level 50! This used to be a Really Big Deal, back in the days when levels were capped at 50, but even today it’s a worthy Milestone to reach – it’s a Rite of Passage from “childhood” (spotty faced adolescent quester) to “adult” (big, strong, mature, wise and confident quester) There’s even a special “Ceremony”, called a “Chronicle” to mark the Grand Occasion, where you go back to your home city, everyone jumps up and down, clapping and cheering you, they’ve got a great big party laid out for you in the town square, and you have bestowed upon you some spiffy new abilities, etc., etc… And then (da-dada-daaaa!) the light dims, and just like in Sleeping Beauty, the Wicked Witch that you forgot to invite to the party appears with her evil pet dragons (no, the Witch’s name is not Daenerys!) – she gives an evil cackle, and sets them loose! “Eat them, my pretties!”, she screams (she doesn’t really – that was just a theatrical effect I put in) You have to defeat them all, and you have to do it solo – no groups or teams allowed! But you don’t have to do that part, and that’s where we usually leave the “Chronicle”. We went back to Dusken, did another couple of quests, and called it a day! 🙂 Good fun, especially not having to do the Chronicle end bit! 😉 (yes, I’m a devout coward!)
Weigh-in this morning. I knew that going down so far in one foul swoop yesterday wasn’t a good idea, but would my body listen to me? Well, it never has before, so why should it have started yesterday? I did go up – only one point, to 95.3kg – but it was up, and not down, so I’m not pleased… The thing is though, the really big bounce up will probably come tomorrow morning. So again, I’m not looking forward to getting on the scales! 
I should be seeing my favourite eldest daughter tomorrow, but she’s not coming because their cleaners will be there 😦 so I won’t see her until next week. I’ve spent an awful lot of time today writing – not this blog, but letters… I was still writing this afternoon before we started Rifting, and I looked up to say something to himself, and only a little squeak came out! My throat has been feeling sort of thick and phlegmy for the past few days, and my nose has been very runny – I just put it down to a bit of Hay Fever, but when only a squeak came out this afternoon, I realised I’d lost my voice. Flipper likes to parade around meowing from time to time, and I always meow right back at her – she seems to both like, and expect it. This morning she was meowling, as usual, and I tried to echo her – but I couldn’t quite get the right pitch. Do you know, she then “ran me through” a series of differently pitched meows, none of which I could match, and she gave an annoyed little “meeouw”, as if to say “I give up!” and stalked off, disgruntled. Well, that’s what I felt this afternoon – speaking “normally”, I kept fading in and out – with more “outs” than “ins”! And the louder I tried to talk, the squeakier I got. I’ve only lost my voice once before, when the kids were little more than toddlers – they thought it was hilarious! Mummy couldn’t yell at them! 🙂 Trying to tell them “Be quiet! It’s not funny!” came out more as a squeaky whisper Julian thought it was funny too, this afternoon! *pout* Luckily, my voice seems to be fairly much back to normal tonight – I hope it stays like that, too! 🙂 I don’t like not being able to complain! 😉 So, anyway, that was my day that was – not much more to tell you, except to tell you to call in again tomorrow night, and I’ll tell you how the graphics are going, what’s happening in the wonderful land of Telara, and if my weight has bounced up over the 95kg mark (it had better not have!) So until then, bee good, don’t have that second slice of chocolate cake. and above all…. stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂
My Word! 