Quite an exciting day all round, today! 🙂 Last night as I was starting to finish off with Rift, sorting out and re-setting my Minions, a small and polite message flashed up in the middle of my screen, informing me that the server was coming down for an upgrade, in 10 minutes, and to please get somewhere safe – the server was expected to be down for three hours. WoW! Shades of, anyway… 🙂 When we were part of the World of Warcraft stable, a player who went by the name of “Oxhorn” used to write many humorous songs about the lives of different characters in the game, all sung to well known tunes. One of our favourites was set to the tune of “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas”, and told of the miseries of being in the middle of a miss-matched group, trying (unsuccessfully) to run a Raid. The end of the chorus stated “And the thing that makes us frown, is that the server’s coming down…. in just fifteen” – well, I guess you just had to have been there, but it was the sort of catchcry that every WoW player knew, dreaded, and sighed glumly over (mainly because nothing worked properly for a few days after a big upgrade, until all the “bugs” were ironed out!) Well, it appears that Rift is no different! No mere “patch” this! This was a gigantic upgrade – 5 Gb worth! And yes, there were a few hiccups today (and no doubt there’ll be some tomorrow too – it was a very big upgrade!) As far as I can see, so far, they’re mainly cosmetic changes – the other, more mechanical game “tweeks” are not likely to affect Julian and me. There are new, larger bags both for sale from the Rift Shop, and as “recepies” from the Outfitter Trainer, to the point where I can see a lot more people paying to add another Skill to their list, in order to pick up Outfitting – just so that they can make these (much!) bigger bags! *gloom* More bad news for the Auction House… The most interesting changes were made to the Wardrobe. Sometimes the “really great armor” that you’re wearing looks pretty crappy, and of course, everyone likes to look as pretty, as decorative, as imposing, or as strong – as possible, so we were given “Wardrobes”, where we could hide our pretty crappy looking but strong, durable and magical armor under a costume. Anything from fancy-schmantzy voluminous robes, right down to fairy costumes. And we could change the colour of both proper gear, and costumes, by buying various colour dyes! Now, they’ve added weapons to the Wardrobe, so that you can disguise your weapons to look more bad-ass, or more dainty – whichever floats your boat! All good stuff! Mind you, the new “cache” of “special” dyes costs a Pope and an Emperor’s ransom, at 16200 Credits – but – it’s a once off, they’re Account Bound (everyone on your account gets them), and you can use them as much as you like and they never run out! Of course, there was more to the upgrade than just the Wardrobe stuff, but I simply haven’t had the time to look into them today. I didn’t even get a chance to work on any of my graphics! 😦

The other exciting thing that happened today was that our new coffee table arrived this morning! 🙂 It’s not as big as I thought it was going to be (I was expecting it to be “squarer” for some reason) but it’s really nice, and I like it – it looks a better size in the room (especially without a rug – the floor looks big and bare without one!) than the old one. Speaking of which, Julian was going to start removing the tiles from the old table – we had intended having the tiles made into three wall plaques, or hangings, while the rest of the old table was destined for the tip. Instead of the tiles being loose under the glass table top, as we had thought, we found that… someone (probably my father, actually) had glued them onto the wood. Two of them are already broken, one rather badly (and equally as badly “repaired“! Probably not by my father, in this case!) I do want to have the two broken tiles properly “restored”, and we do have to have them taken off the wood so that they can be properly framed in three lots of six – Julian thinks we could take the whole table top to a picture framer, but picture framers don’t do tile restorations, and I think the tiles would look… not good… in a coffee table sized frame hanging on the wall! No, they have to go to a restorer, if I can find one – and how do you know if they’re any good anyway? My mother once sent an antique ceramic seagull off to a “restorer” because it had a crack down its back. They had it for months, and when we got it back, it looked worse than it had when we sent it off! It’s a shame I don’t remember the name of that restorer, so I could be sure not to take the tiles there! (actually, they’re probably not in business anymore – if the work they did on the seagull was an example of their “expertise”! Good! So that means I don’t have to worry about “accidentally” taking the tiles there! 😉 ) Now, the only things left to do in the lounge room are… get a rug for the floor, get the curtains changed, clean the black marks off the wall where one of the paintings fell down years ago, and double wall off the section of window opposite the television, so that we have some hanging space! Nearrrly finito! 😉 Poor Flipper nearly had a fit when the delivery men man-handled the new coffee table into the lounge room this morning – she’d been sound asleep in her cat cave on the couch, and all of a sudden there was a lot of loud noise, clomping feet, strange men, and an extremely large box! Julian had to scoop up a terrified, horrified, squirming cat, convinced that Armageddon had come – and bundle her off down to the safety of the Den 🙂 Poor little girl! She’s deliberately ignoring the new coffee table now! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. Not nice. I wish my body would decide whether it was supposed to be losing weight, or gaining weight! I went up a point to 95.0kg! Not! Happy! Jan! Who knows what it’ll decide to do tomorrow morning – probably go back up to 99kg! 😦

Tomorrow I’m off for my Warfarin test again – I was supposed to go today, but I was feeling distinctly off-colour last night – everything ached horribly, my head felt stuffy, and my nose couldn’t decide whether to run, or remain blocked up. We decided that perhaps I shouldn’t go out today, so I didn’t. I’ll have the blood test tomorrow… and I’ll be able to tell you tomorrow night if they’ve decided to increase my dose of rat poison or not 🙂 (I call it “rat poison”, because that’s basically what it is! True!) Our cleaning lady will be here tomorrow, which will be good – the place is looking decidedly “unkempt”, but it’ll also mean that I won’t get as much of a chance to do anything meaningful tomorrow, as she’ll want to talk (at least while she talks, I don’t have to! 😉 ) Anyway, that’s about it from me for tonight – drop by again tomorrow night and find out if my rat poison dose has been changed, whether or not Flipper has decided to acknowledge the new coffee table, and whether my body has finally managed to work out that it’s supposed to be losing weight, not gaining it! So, gentle readers, until this time tomorrow night, bee good, please pass the mustard, and above all…. stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂