Do you ever have days when you’re dissatisfied with yourself, with what you’ve done during the day? Well, today I don’t feel as though I’ve accomplished much – I suppose I have, really, but I just don’t feel as though I have… I Rifted this morning, and managed to acquire another Guild Bank Vault on Hailol – this is our fourth Vault, and it was going to cost us 3000 platinum! As we barely even had 500 platinum, I got Julian to use one of his high level characters to “courier” over 3000 platinum from Laethys (high level characters don’t have any restrictions on how much wealth they can carry between shards!) and we were able to get our new, and much-needed, Guild Bank Vault. I also decided that I’d swap one of my (many) level 20 characters for not only a younger one, but one who had a full set of Transcendent Trove “experience boosters”, too! Why? So that I can level her up more quickly! And what was wrong with leveling up the “older” character? Wel-l-l – I just didn’t like her much, is about the only answer that springs to mind… The girl I’m swapping her for isn’t “old” enough to migrate yet – I have to level her up to level 15 first, and that’s what I was doing for most of the morning (she’s now sitting on level 14) If my favourite eldest daughter doesn’t come over tomorrow, I should have Evensong (that’s the character’s name) over in Hailol by lunchtime tomorrow 🙂
After lunch, I started working on some new graphics, but first I went and played around with/tested a couple of templates. WHY do they all have to be so badly designed?! Alright, I can sort-of understand why there are so many limitations on the fonts you can use (however I know they could give us another two or three script fonts, if they wanted to! (but they don’t!)) But why are the templates themselves so… boringly designed? Why can’t the header be the same colour as the rest of the background? And why can’t it be any colour you want (more to the point, why do they say “or chose your own colour”, and then not let you!) I wish I knew how to make templates… (*nostalgic smile*) I remember back when the world wide web was in its infancy. I think we’d just closed down the Bulletin Board, after eleven long years, and I wanted to have a “web presence” (read: website!) There were various “free” places where you could “create your own web site” that they gave you, but I wanted something better. We “got hold of” (don’t ask!) a copy of a fairly primitive WYSIWYG editor, and I started building my site. There were plenty of free web graphics and site templates that you could download and use – but I didn’t like them much – I didn’t like the frames, I didn’t like the horribly coloured graphics, I grizzled, in true Winter fashion, about everything. I decided that I was going to learn to make my own*. I had Jasc (now under the auspices of Corel) Paint Shop Pro, and I set out to learn how to make graphics fit for a web site. It was a long, slow, haul – I printed out tutorials and slaved over their instructions. I assiduously copied the work of other web artists, and where I couldn’t figure out how they’d achieved a particular effect, I muddled around until I found my own way of achieving it. I joined graphic groups and kept on learning. By the time I left these groups, many years ago now, I think I was a pretty competent web graphic artist 🙂 You can find some examples of my work under “Graphics” in the Site Map here. I don’t think anyone uses these sorts of “web sets” anymore, but they were sure fun to make! 🙂 So if I could learn to make graphics from scratch, I’m sure I can learn how to make blog templates from scratch, too! All I need is for someone to point me in the right direction! 🙂 Surely, with a little imagination and a willingness to try, it can’t be that hard to make a decent, reliable, and versatile blog template, can it?!
Apropos of our decision to move (apparently we’re not just “thinking” about it any more, we’re actually going to move into a house! Good! I might finally get that veggie garden that I’ve always been promised! 😉 ) we had a talk with our accountant this morning – just to check that the way we’re planning to do things isn’t too financially harebrained and isn’t likely to leave us knocking on the door of the Poorhouse… he seemed to think that what we were planning will be fine, so I guess that now means that we’re going to be in for an exciting ride for the duration! 🙂 I’m going to miss being so close and handy to the shopping centre though… 
Weigh-in this morning. Just as well I left a bit of leeway in my new graph page! I went up a point, from 89.8kg to 89.9kg. Not a terribly big bounce back – that’ll come tomorrow – I have a nasty feeling that today was just the “practice jump”! I guess we’ll find out in the morning…
My favourite eldest daughter is supposed to be coming over tomorrow – Julian SMS’d her this afternoon, but we haven’t heard back from her. Last week she did say that she had an assignment due this week, and that whether or not we see her will depend on how she’s going with that. The Podiatrist will be here tomorrow, too – so if Lee isn’t here, Julian might have to “stand in” for her (pardon the pun!) This morning, when I went on my Stair Walk, I did count the steps, and took special note of where I stop and turn back! There are 64 steps down, and 64 steps back up again, and the sign on the door where I stop and turn around to come back reads: “Ground Level (1)” (the next door up has a sticky note on it, reading “2”, etc., I know, because I was the one who put the sticky notes on the doors, and the floor we’re on doesn’t have a sticky note on it! I know it’s the fifth floor because there’s a book wedging the door open!) There’s not really much more news today – As I started to tell you at the beginning of the blog (but as usual, I got sidetracked by my complaints!) I’ve started on quite a pretty new header, that I may even turn into a Bookmark Wallpaper as well – but I’m having problems with the background colours. It really looks best against plain white, but I sort-of feel that that’s cheating, or being lazy, or something. So I’ll work on it a bit more tomorrow (if Lee isn’t over, that is!) and with a bit of luck, you might all be able to see it tomorrow night! 🙂 So, to catch up on all the latest, graphic-wise, Rift-wise, news-wise and weight-wise, call in again tomorrow night! Until then, though, please bee good, remember – you can always teach a cat anything that it wants to do, but above all… please stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂
*As people who know me well can tell you – once I completely determine to do – or not do – something; once I get that particular bee in my bonnet, almost literally nothing will stop me. I’ll do it, come what may, or die trying! I did it when I was breeding and showing Siamese cats. I did it with graphics. I did it with smoking (from 50+ a day to none, with the help of a caring Pharmacist, nicotine patches, and my own “fake cigarette from a drinking straw” invention) and now I’m doing it – fairly successfully – with my weight!
My Word! 