Winter’s log, earthdate 201504.25

Happy ANZAC Day, everyone! 🙂 I’m not sure that that’s an appropriate expression to use or not – in fact, I’m pretty sure it’s not – but it’s a holiday we’re not supposed to forget, so would “Happy Don’t Forget It Day” be more appropriate? Again, the answer has to be “No!” And what exactly is it that we’re supposed to remember? The fact that thousands of our young men and women went off to fight and die in Europe and the Middle East? Not for “us“, as we’re constantly being told, but for good old Mother England, and because each of the Crowned Heads of Europe decided that they were right, and everyone else was wrong! If you don’t believe me, the first paragraph here puts it in a nutshell. And so, peoples, remember our Australian fallen, and what they sacrificed for Mother England – but remember, too, the fallen from all the other countries participating in the nightmare that was Europe and the Middle East between 1914 and 1918 – they also fought and died in that ghastly and largely unnecessary war… because they were asked, or told to. I’m asking you all to remember all those who went… all those who remained behind… all those who returned, and all those who did not return. And those who returned, broken. Sometimes war is a necessary evil – that one wasn’t.

And now for a little light relief 🙂 As seen on Bored Panda today:

30+ Crazy Photographers Who Will Do ANYTHING For The Perfect Shot

The mind fairly boggles!

and

Rainbow Pastel Hair Is A New Trend Among Women

Oh, how I wish that I was [mumble] years younger! And how I wish that I’d never cut my hair! I would give both my right arm, and my left arm, to be able to wear my hair like that! Old Age just isn’t fair! *sob*

Anyway, moving right along – we had a fairly quiet-ish morning – I Rifted quite intensely, until I finally – and without the benefit of any experience enhancing potions (which I can’t afford the Credits for at the moment) managed to get Chryzanthemum  to level 40! I feel as though it’s taken me an absolute age to get her there, and I have to keep reminding myself that I wasn’t taking her to level 40 from level 30, I was taking her from level 20 (I usually go up in increments of 10, you see, only this time, I got greedy! 😉 ) So it’ll probably be back to Asima on Tuesday – tomorrow, of course, is our “Team Telara”, or should I say “Team Dusken” day, when Julian and I run around like hairy goats smiting anything with a Red (i.e. hostile) name plate (and sometimes anything with a Yellow (i.e. neutral) name plate, too!) A lot of the so-called “Carnage” quest mobs have the neutral “Yellow” name tags over their heads – they won’t attack you on sight, like the mobs with the hostile “Red” name tags will. And they’re called “Carnage” quests because if you kill one of them (for whatever reason), you’re then supposed to go and kill a specific number of them – for which you’re given a nice lot of experience points, and, next to questing, it’s the quickest way to earn experience points and go up levels. So we’ll be belting around Dusken for most of tomorrow – we did have an hour’s bash this afternoon, too – but you really can’t accomplish much in an hour 😉 We left both our girls with “to be continued” nameplates around their necks 😉

I picked up a new Windowblind this morning. What’s a Windowblind? A Windowblind is a pretty “skin” which makes your ordinary and totally boring old Windows screen look nicer. Julian hates them – he says that they break all the programs and stuff – I disagree, and besides, I’d rather have a pretty looking screen that I can make equally pretty wallpapers for, and if anything breaks, I just go “Joooolian! This program won’t work any more! *pout*” and he fixes it! Sometimes… Of course, sometimes the breakage is caused by Windowblinds, in which case it’s usually just a matter of choosing a different Windowblind that’s known not to have that effect on whatever program it was. If you’re interested in having a look at Windowblinds, you can find out about them here…. and if you want to know how they’ll make your screen look, click on the thumbnails here to see a preview 🙂  If you’re interested in getting a different look for your boring old Windows screen, you’re going to have to get and install the WindowBlinds utility, which I think comes with several free skins that you can play with – and you can always download more skins from WinCustomize – nearly all of them are free – a few, every now and then, are not (free) and will cost you about $5AUD

Sorry, I got side-tracked! As I was saying, I downloaded a new Windowblind this morning – but it’s blue – a slightly lighter shade than a “Junior Navy” blue – it’s a beautiful blue, actually – one of my favourite shades of blue – and it looks really nice, and works well too… but… it didn’t quite go with the cyan-ish/green-ish marbling of my new Desktop Bookmarks wallpaper. Hmmm. It just looked wrong… so I did this. What do you think? Better? 🙂 You can see the lovely blue of the Windowblind on the Task Bar – I think it’s one of the nicer blues they’ve had in Windowblinds for a while – they’re usually too Cyan-ish, and/or too “harsh”. Anyway, I like it, and that’s the main thing! 🙂 It’s still a little greenish on the top, but that’s not the skin – that’s the Chrome (my browser) theme, which I’ll change later this evening.

Weigh-in this morning. All I can say is: *sigh*! Why!? Why me?! It stayed the same… 93.8kg… again! It’s not fair! It’s a conspiracy! It’s all an evil plot to keep me fat! Sometimes I think I’d rather go up, than stay the same! “Up” implies that you’re going to come down! Staying the same implies that you’ve come to an end. That’s it. You’re not going any further, you’re going to stay there for ever and ever! (or go up!) I am not pleased!

So, here it is again – almost evening “Walkies” time… I ran into some of our neighbours when I was coming back from my lunch time Stair Walk – almost literally! 🙂 I was barreling around the corner of the lift well, just as the lift doors opened and they stepped out! Almost right into the path of an incoming Winter barrel! 🙂 *sigh* So what could I do? I had to stand there and make dutiful and charming small talk – my back was killing me (I’m not too bad if I keep moving, but standing still for more than about two minutes is excruciatingly painful!) in the end I was (unobtrusively) leaning my back against the wall and wishing that I could go and sit down, when I was saved by the opening of a door! 🙂 Our door! Julian was wondering what was taking me so long – had I fallen down the stairs, or something? So we said our goodbyes, we came back inside and I had a nice cup of tea to celebrate with! 😉 Next week I think I’m going to have to stretch my Stair Walk from three floors, to four floors – I’m just not having to work hard enough only doing the three floors… I get more puffed coming back from the fire escape than I do climbing up and down the stairs! I also noticed that I can now get my thumb, and two of my other fingers (one at a time!) to completely encircle my wrist! Many years ago now, there was a time when I could get my thumb and all of my other fingers (one at a time!) to completely encircle my wrist! 🙂 I’m gettin’ there! 🙂 And there you have it – once again, there’s not much more news that I can fill you all in on this evening – but rest assured, there’ll be lots more to astound, astonish, and amaze you with tomorrow night! Don’t miss out! Drop by again this time tomorrow night to find out all the latest – how we went in Dusken, what my weight did, or didn’t do, and whether I managed to really knock down innocent neighbours exiting the lift! But until then, bee good, remember to always exit the lift carefully, and… above all…. stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂