It’s not been a very good day all round… I’ve not been able to settle on anything, though I did manage to get poor old Addain up to level 20 this morning… and I did make some progress about finding out about blog hosting – this particular place I contacted said that yes, they did do blog hosting, and did I want them to design one for me! I have yet to write back and tell them no, I didn’t want them to design it, I wanted me to design it, and how did I go about setting one up on their system, please? But that’s work for tomorrow. As you can see, I’ve not only fiddled around with headers and graphics, I’ve also fiddled around with yet another template (herein after referred to as YAT! It’s quicker and easier to write, and as I seem to do a lot of it (switching templates) I thought it’d be a good idea) This template is on the edge of being: quote [spoken in a drawn-out reluctant tone] “alright…” end quote. But it’s not what I want – I’ve spent quite literally hours today trying template after template, and you really don’t need, or want to know what some of them did to my graphics! So I’m tired, dispirited, and depressed today – please bear with me.

My favourite eldest daughter was Julian Taxied off to the doctor today to see what was wrong with her sore leg – doctor promptly sent her off for scans, just in case it might have been a blood clot. It wasn’t, thank heavens, as that’s where most pulmonary and cardiac embolisms come from (they’re often found to have come from blood clots forming in the lower leg due to lack of movement and exercise – and commonly called DVTs (deep-vein thrombosis) It’s been theorized that that’s where my two bouts of multiple pulmonary embolisms came from) So thank heavens they didn’t find any blood clots – and apart from the horrendous health risk they’d pose for my favourite eldest daughter, at least it’s not something else that I have to feel guilty about!

You know how sometimes you feel as though your whole life has come to a muddled sort of stand still? Well, you might not – this is me we’re talking about, and I do tend to muddle a lot, and at the moment I’ve muddled myself into a stand still. Nothing’s happening. Nothing’s moving along as it should. I’m at an impasse, with no idea of where to go or what to do next. I feel as though I have no direction – I don’t even know what I want to do! Oh, I’ll get sick of this mood soon enough, I suppose, but at the moment I’m in a brown study, with a big fat black dog lying across my feet and making them far too hot. I’ll have to kick him off soon…

Weigh-in this morning… Was depressing. I went up another point to 92.3kg. I’m getting thoroughly sick and tired of this – I walk up and down the stairs, even though it’s killing my knees, I eat virtually nothing – all for what?! I was losing an average of a kilo a week – now it’s more like a kilo every week and a half to two weeks. As I said above – everything seems to be dragging to a stand-still. But I’ll keep going, because I said I would, and because everyone expects me to, but really and truly? I really can’t be bothered anymore.

My favourite eldest daughter will be over tomorrow – we’ll probably watch some episodes of either “Person of Interest”, or “Agents of Shield”, or both, and if I’m very lucky (or unlucky, depending on your viewpoint) I might even get an hour or two of Rifting in – or stuffing around with graphics.

This is a very short blog tonight, and not a very nice one. I’m sorry for that, but it’s the way I feel at the moment. Don’t worry, I’ll get over it – you’re just getting a small glimpse of the real, “not very nice” me. Luckily she doesn’t surface very often. No doubt there’ll be lots of interesting things to tell you about tomorrow – “Person of Interest”, “Agents of Shield”, and perhaps a paragraph or so about the new series Julian and I are watching at the moment – “Elementary” – the one I told you a bit about some time ago – Sherlock Holmes set in America, with a female Dr. Watson. It’s quite good, but it takes a bit of getting “into” because it’s so far removed from just about anything you’ve become accustomed to with Sherlock Holmes. I’m not sure at all if I’ll mention my weight tomorrow – at the moment, we’re not talking to each other. As for the rest of…. “everything”…. I’m sure I’ll be back to normal tomorrow… or the day after… or something. So do drop around again tomorrow night for the next installment of “What Ails Winter and Is She Better Yet” – but until then, bee good, don’t hide your light under a bushel, and above all… stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

I’d like to with a very Happy Mother’s Day (or what’s left of it now) to all mothers out there! 🙂 I didn’t see my two favourite daughters today, but I did speak to them both this morning, which was lovely 🙂 As is rapidly becoming a new “Family Tradition” with us, we’ll be having our Mother’s Day celebration next Sunday – for an “afternoon tea”, instead of a “luncheon” – I mean, it was all very well having big family meals with all the trimmings when it was only me that was sitting there eating an Optifast bar and sipping mineral water, but there’ll be two of us sitting there eating Optifast bars and sipping mineral water now, and I know that my favourite eldest daughter is still finding it hard to “think positive thoughts and smile” while others around her are eating things that she would rather be eating too… and then apologising to her for eating those things in front of her! It’d be much more betterer if they’d just shut up, enjoyed their dinner, and talked about other things. In time she’ll get used to it, however the road is more boring than hard, and it’s just a matter of shrugging off the boredom, and doing, or thinking, of other things. However I did get a Mother’s Day Card and present this morning – from Julian 🙂 (well, I am old enough to be his mother! 😉 ) it’s a Salt Crystal Lamp with a USB plug on the end of the cord, so you can plug it into your computer, or whatever. It is made of salt (well, the outside of it is – if it were a solid ball of salt you wouldn’t be able to see the led light inside it!) and the leds cycle through pretty rainbow colours. It’s one of those “Negative ion generators” that were so popular from late 1960 to the mid ’70’s – approximate dates only, I fear – I can’t g/find much about them, other than that they’re “really wonderful!”, and are still (apparently) very popular! Anyway, it’s sitting on my desk in front of me, cycling through it’s pretty colours and looking very fetching indeed! 🙂

Before I forget again – I’ve been meaning to put this up for the last two days, but I keep on forgetting… so without further ado:

Seen on Bored Panda today (and yes, it’s still there – I just checked! 😉 )
Extraordinarily beautiful double exposure animal portraits

As you know, today was our “Sunday In Dusken”, where we run around killing the wildlife, pulling up the wildflowers – I mean “weeds” 😉  and digging up the minerals. The last two Sundays we played, we went up two levels each time – this week, we only went up one. As we’re progressing through Seratos (the area we’re currently questing in) the quests are getting harder, taking longer to complete, and the “rewards” not worth as much in terms of resale value. However, most of the “gear” rewards (read: armor and weapons) that we’re given are reasonably big upgrades for us – though some (like the fancy gloves that we got as one quest “reward”) aren’t worth the cost of carting them around until we can locate a Vendor to sell them to! Luckily, that’s the exception, rather than the rule! Still, a good time was had by all (except for all the nasty critters we killed) and neither of us died, or even came close to dying, once! 🙂

Last night I went searching for “third-party” Word Press templates – and I found quite a lot! But a lot of them seem to be the same ones that Word Press already makes available to you, and none of the sites with the (and I’m not sure if they even are third-party themes or not, now!) so-called “free” Word Press templates give you any idea of how to go about using them! In fact, they all claim that they’re “free” templates/themes, but then go on to talk about you having to sign up and pay for the privilege of doing so?! I think (but I’m really not sure, so don’t take this as gospel!) that you sign up with them, (i.e. not with Word Press) they provide the blog template, but you have to run your blog on their terms, and on one of their servers. In other words, you’re tied to their apron strings – like Apple users are to Apple products! and what’s more, you may lose control of your own content. But I’m only guessing. What I don’t like is the fact that I was not able to easily find any information about these concerns on their website(s) – such a complete lack of really important information always makes me very wary indeed! However, there may yet be another solution to my theme and/or template graphical problems available 😉 but I’ll tell you more when I find out more myself 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. You know? I think I’ll blame the cold, and the fact that I was shivering so much – it must have made me weigh more, or something! Thank goodness today is the 10th of the month! I can stop taking those [*heavily censored*] fluid retaining tablets at last! I was not a happy little Vegemite this morning, no sirree! 😦 I went up one point to 92.2kg! I’m sooo cross about it! And I did extra walking around yesterday, too! *pout* What’s a girl gotta do to lose weight these days, anyway! 😦 S’not fair! (reprise *pout*)

Because I knew I’d be busy with this blog tonight, I set Foxtel up to record “Compass” tonight – it sounds quite interesting. Compass is a faith and religion half hour program on Sunday nights (ABC1) presented by Geraldine Doogue – sometimes we watch it, sometimes we don’t – it depends on what they’re discussing. Some of the shows are very good indeed, and offer a lot of information on religious and/or ethical subjects that you might be curious about, but not curious enough to go and do the research and digging off your own bat. Sometimes we might need a little push in the right direction… There’s a new set of half hour documentaries starting tonight, based on “Whatever happened to….” (various things) F’rinstance, tonight’s show is called “Whatever happened to Sunday School” – it sounds intriguing, and I’m quite interested – I was occasionally packed off to Sunday School, sometimes by my well-meaning parents, and occasionally at my own insistence – as were Lisa and Kate, by me 🙂

+————————–+ * Dinner & Television Break * +————————–+

I think I went once or twice to just about all the Sunday Schools – Church of England, Methodist, Presbyterian – even Roman Catholic, especially when I was living in Italy. I even went to the local Hebrew Shul with a Jewish girlfriend a few times – although I was not allowed to attend the part where the kids were taught Hebrew. But I was always interested in what all of these “early religious training” places had to say, and teach (as you can probably gather, I was a somewhat “different” child!) Whatever – I’m interested to see what Compass has to say on the subject, and knowing our viewing habits, it’s always a good idea to have a few half hour shows tucked away for when we want to finish up the evening a bit earlier than usual (like tonight, when I haven’t finished writing my blog!) If tonight’s Compass is any good, I’ll tell you about it later – if you’re lucky. And if you’re even luckier, I’ll watch it, form an opinion, fully intend to mention it, but forget all about it when something else grabs my attention! 😉 So there it is! Another day, another exciting episode of “Life Chez Nous”! Never doubt that yet another equally exciting, thrilling, and nail-biting episode will be waiting here for you, tomorrow night! 🙂 Did my weight go up more, or did it go down a bit – and we won’t even mention the possibility of it staying the same, will we! I’m really sorry to disappoint you all, but I won’t be able to do my nails tomorrow – the ruddy “textured” wall in the stair well tore off another nail this morning – right down at the quick! Through my glove, even!! But there’ll be lots of other things for me to tell you all about! (isn’t there always? 😉 ) So until then, bee good, change out of those wet clothes immediately! and above all… stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

Well-l-l… do you want the good news first, or the bad news? 🙂 The good news is that Julian and I picked up our new glasses today – he still has one more pair to come – and I don’t know about his, but mine are much more betterer! 🙂 I can actually see the screen without squinting! (squinting causes wrinkles, don’t you know! So we don’t want to be squinting, do we?! 😉 ) Unfortunately, now I have to squint to see the keyboard! (Ahem! the previous statement about squinting causing wrinkles has never been proven beyond reasonable doubt, thank heavens!) The bad news is that I tried out a paneled background and header, and they looked really good! Until I tried them out on the blog. Once again, Word Press’s strange way of rendering graphics has reared its ugly head. For some completely unknown reason, the header part of the equation gets shrunk to about 3/4 of its original (“what you see is what you should expect to get”) size… while the background portion of the graphic – the second of the two pieces – both cut from the same original graphic – and each having exactly the same dimensions as the other… gets magically enlarged (magnified?) to the same proportions that the header was shrunk! How?! Why?! It’s stupid! It doesn’t make sense! The theme obviously didn’t do it with the current background and header, if it had, you’d see “join” lines where the header sits above the top of the background. The background doesn’t tile all the way to the top of the page – it ends – comes to a full stop – just below the bottom edge of the header! The background underneath this header is just plain “pink”, which I can only suppose the system chose after “sampling” the header pattern colours and coming up with a “reasonable match” (which it still managed to get wrong anyway – it’s far too dark!) So it looks like there will be no paneled backgrounds – at least with this theme – some themes seem to behave differently just because they feel like it! I’d move this blog away from Word Press, but apparently it’s the best of a bad bunch I saw some sort of article somewhere – or it might even have been a piece of spam in my email – I can’t remember now – all I can remember is looking at it and thinking “Oh!? Maybe there are “third-party” Word Press themes available?! I wonder how you install them… I must…” – and then I forgot about it because something else grabbed my attention… Say la Vee, as the French say! So, perhaps I will go hunting for “third-party” Word Press blog themes, now that I’ve finished all the mind numbingly boring Rift re-setting ups.

Anyway, graphics and Word Press aside, we went off early this morning to pick up our glasses (minus one pair of Julian’s because they weren’t ready yet) and from there we went on to The Pines shopping centre, because there’s an Autograph and a My Size there. I’d seen a rather nice cardigan/jacket in my bit of My Size email this morning, and I was desirous of having a quick squint at it before declaring it (as I should have!) “too expensive” for what it was. Autograph had their “40% off everything” sale on, and of course, since I was going to My Size first, I left my nice $50.00 gift voucher wot they’d given me for being such a good customer…. at home, on my desk. So, just to prove to them what a good little customer I really was, I bought the (rather too expensive, I’m afraid) cardigan/jacket. It’s a size “Small”, and if anything, it’s really a teeny bit too big for me – even though I was wearing a fairly bulky jumper this morning – but it’s warm, and snug, and has a nice collar that I can turn up to keep my stupid right ear warm (no, that wasn’t the main reason I bought it – though I’ll admit it did float through my mind while I was trying to think of reasons not to buy it… 🙂 ) Have any of you ever been to The Pines? It’s quite a nice shopping centre – and has just about everything you could want – Woolworths, Coles… an Aldi (all quite large ones, too!) there’s a well-appointed Chemist shop (which also sells Optifast products) a Pet Shop that seems to sell mainly dog beds, gift shops, hairdressers, The Bank of Melbourne, Priceline… a reasonably sized food hall, lots of half way decent looking food stalls… and pigeons, well, one pigeon, anyway, strutting around and pecking at crumbs scattered around one of the food stalls – he certainly looked well fed and happy – then he fluttered off somewhere else. It’s odd, seeing a largish bird like a pigeon in the food hall – sparrows, yeah, I’d expect to see them in a fairly well closed shopping centre (but I didn’t) – they’re little, and I suspect that if the health authorities did a spot check on all the supermarkets in Melbourne they’d find whole colonies of sparrows inhabiting most of them – but pigeons? I’ve never seen birds that big hanging around in closed off food halls in the middle of a shopping centre… Oh, I also bought a pair of full fingered gloves from one of the little kiosk thingies there – I usually wear one of my fingerless gloves when I’m doing my Stair Walk because the over-textured and razor sharp rendering on the wall of the stair well absolutely slices my hand to ribbons! Not to mention chipping off all my nails, one by one – even the ones on the hand that’s nowhere near the wall! That’s how lethal those walls are! So I tried them out when I got home – they worked very well – what a shame the gloves will probably get ruined – they’re a lovely shade of purple… 🙂 Anyway, after lunch I did a bit of Rifting, then I got onto those graphics, wot I’ve already told you about 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. Was a big relief! Yesterday I went up two points, to 92.4kg. This morning I came down three points, to 92.1kg 🙂 Perhaps the Big Bounce Back figured it had the wrong address, after all, when I didn’t scream and cry, rend my clothes, shave off my eyebrows, and scatter dirt and ashes though my hair… Now let’s wait and see what happens tomorrow morning – my last morning on those wretched tablets! Maybe then I’ll be able to shed a bit more fluid… (but it’ll take a couple of days for my body to wake up to the fact that it doesn’t have to hoard fluids anymore, like they were going out of style or something!)

So tonight we’ve got another ABC1 night – another in the new Father Brown series, about a bumbling priest who solves murder mysteries (Father Brown is played by the actor who played Ron Weasley’s father in the Harry Potter movies – I fergit ‘is name, but!) followed by part two of another “detective”-type show, DCI Banks. It’s quite good – worth a watch, if you’ve nothing better to do (Hmm… coming in half way through a two-parter might be a bit confusing – you could catch up with iView, though 😉 ) So that’ll be largely our night! Tomorrow, of course, is Sunday, and once again, we’ll be happily sashaying around Dusken. I remember the first time we ended up in Dusken – I was scared… it was too hard… it was an ugly place! (and everyone knows how I always go for “pretty”! 🙂 ) No, I didn’t like it at all! This time around though, I think I’m almost blasé about it… even the “Pus Swamp” doesn’t fill me with dread, simply by the sound of its name! (shudder!) So you can be sure there’ll be lots to tell you about all our adventures in Dusken – maybe we’ll die multiple times – maybe we’ll go up several levels – maybe we won’t die, or even go up a level! But we will have fun! 🙂 I’ll be able to give a much better report on our new glasses, after our eyes get accustomed to the new prescriptions in the lenses, and weight-wise I’ll tell you whether I went up, or down… or whether I stayed frustratingly the same! So tune in again tomorrow, for a night of fun, frivolity and… other interesting stuff! 😉 Until then, bee good, keep warm tonight, and above all… stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

I’ve finished! I’ve finished! I’ve finally finished all that Rift messing about! Six shards! It seems like it’s taken for ever and ever! I was getting so tired (not to mention bored!) that my eyes kept crossing, and then closing… and I’d wake myself up with a shake and a startle, heave a great sigh, and keep on working. Those Guild Bank Vaults are a real must have, though! I was nearly going bonkers trying to find places to put items – no-one had any money with which to buy bags, I’d really hit my limit buying Credits to finance more personal bank vaults… oh, it was a damn long hard slog! But it’s over! Finished! 🙂 (Winter does a little virtual dance around the room) Yay me! 🙂 And you know what? In all that messy work this morning, I still found time to go and look for my Guild Wars 2 receipt, the game’s serial number, and my account – so it does exist, and I’ll look into it properly after I’ve calmed down after that massive Rift sorting out/culling/re-setting up, and spent a couple of days fiddling around with my graphics 🙂 I think I remember why both Lisa and I left Guild Wars 2 – although it can be played solo, it’s not really designed to be played that way – it’s much more of a social, interactive type of game. Unfortunately, my favourite eldest daughter takes after me in that regard – she’s almost as anti-social as I am! (and I’m better than Julian is, so you can see why we’re not terribly socially active!) We don’t have many friends, but those we do have, we count as dear as family. I might ask – er – Daniel? next week if Guild Wars 2 is still like that or not… Sometimes I wish “they’d” (you know, the ubiquitous “They” that seem to be in charge of, and at the root of, just about everything?! “They say”, “They think”, “They don’t” etc. etc.) come up with a new MMO – like Rift, only easier to follow, understand, and play, and with far better character creation abilities (which was one thing that GW2 did have over Rift – and WoW, for that matter!)

You remember I said we’d had a Real Estate person here the other day? Well, he sent us, snail mail (! “Yes, Virginia, Snail Mail does still exist at the bottom of your garden!” 😉 ) some printed matter of places we might be interested in having a look at – just to see what’s available these days – we haven’t been involved in the property market for over 12 years – I guess it’ll be much the same – only the prices will be different, I suspect! 🙂 Five sheets with both descriptions, photos, and a floor plan, and a separate sheet with 13 other new listings. None of the ones with the floor plans attached were what I would call “comparable” to this place – all of them would turn into massive “Warland Road” jobs (Warland Road was the place I inherited from a family friend, and which we gutted and re-furbished for Kate and Terry to live in) In the past, we’ve found that you start off saying “Yes, well I want all the carpet out, and tiles put down, and the bathrooms will have to be re-done with no bath, a but a much larger shower with a bench seat in it, and….” But the “and…. and…. and’s” grow into a list about a block long… and once you start pulling things apart to do them differently, you start finding… little problems, like “Good grief! Look at that! That pane of glass in the window is actually holding up the roof! We’re going to have to get a supporting beam in there, somehow!” (which was exactly what happened in Warland Road!) Renovations and refurbishments are never easy, straight-forward, or quick, no matter what you see on “The Block”, “Grand Designs”, or any other “Home Improvement” shows! It’s a headache, an enormous pain in the hip pocket nerve, and they drag on for ages. Quite frankly, it’d probably be better to build from scratch – that way there are no nasty little surprises, you know exactly what you’re going to get from the word “go”, and you know (if you’re project managing it yourself!) that it’s been done properly, from the ground up. No more roofs resting on a window pane for us, thank you very much! Of course, building from scratch brings its own problems, including the “where do you want to build” one. Where indeed! I can’t even decide which suburb we should be looking in for an existing house! Ringwood? Glen Iris? Balwyn North? Mitcham? Basically, we’re looking for a three (or four) bedroom place, with two bathrooms. Why three or four bedrooms, when there’s only the two of us? Well, we need a “spare room”, just in case someone decides to come and stay, and we need a “computer room” or “den”, and we need an office/library/somewhere where Julian can work in peace and quiet – that’s already three bedroom-sized rooms, let alone the “master bedroom” with an ensuite… Oh, and we have to have loads and loads of storage space, for all our junk (some of which is still in storage from our last move in 2007!) So, if any of you know of a suitable property, please let us know, OK? 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. It found me. Tracked me down, and pounced, scratching and clawing at me with all its claws and teeth! The Big Bounce Back attacked just after dawn, while I was clambering onto the scales, still half muzzy with sleep. Well, I wasn’t surprised – I’d been expecting it – and to tell you the truth, it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. I went up two points, from 92.2kg to 92.4kg But as I said, it could have been worse. In September last year I went up four points (and came down three the next day) October last year I went up three points (and came down more than half a kilo the next day!) Three points in December (and down two the next day) Four points up in February this year (but only one point down the next day! That was an abysmally slow month!) Seven points up in April – last month – and only two down the next day (I think I cried a lot over that one!) Of course, we don’t know how much I’ll go up again (or, hopefully, down!) tomorrow… I suppose we can only weight and see… 🙂

So, there is was – “moi day”, by Winter Thyme 😉 We’re looking forward to tonight  – “Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries” is starting again on ABC1 – it’s a fun little show – full of froth and bubble, nothing too deep and meaningful – an enjoyable and entertaining hour – if you haven’t watched it before, I can highly recommend it! 🙂 Tomorrow I should be able to get back to normal (or what passes laughingly for “normal” around here) activities. Autograph is having a 40% off sale – and I do need some sort of cardigan, or jacket… but perhaps I’d better wait and see if the BBB is going to stack a few more points onto my rapidly shrinking frame? Dunno… I’ll see how I feel after I weigh myself tomorrow morning 😉 I should be able to get a preliminary paneled tile ready for experimentation tomorrow – if it’s any good, I might even put it up tomorrow night for you approval – we’ll see what happens – I might not get a round tuit, especially if I do decide to go jacket hunting (after all, 40% off is not to be sneezed at!) and I got a $50.00 voucher from My Size in the mail today, too! ….for having spent so much money there! Ya gotta laugh! I spend the money there, and they give me some fiscal “encouragement” to continue spending more! So whatever happens, gentle readers, you can be very sure that there’ll be lots of news, happenings, visitations, and other things for me to tell you about tomorrow night! But until then, please remember to bee good, don’t forget to brush your teeth, but above all…. stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

As Seen on Bored Panda today:
Beautiful Owls (I love owls!)
and
25+ Pets That Need To Go Inside RIGHT NOW

Would you believe it’s a quarter to six, in the evening, and we’ve just got back from my 3.15 hairdressing appointment? Well-l-l… we did stop off on the way home so that Julian could get himself a “casual jacket” that he can bum around the house in, and Big W is a bit labyrinthine, the way they have things laid out (and it’s definitely not designed in any way shape of form for use by disabled people!) However! No screenies of my hair tonight – in this lighting you wouldn’t really be able to tell the difference – it’s subtle, designed more for toning my hair towards blending in with the rest of the colours (you got yet another complement, Josh – Brooke, their best colourist, said that whoever had done the foils had done an “expert” job! And no, I didn’t tell them) But wow! What an experience! I arrived… and was, as usual, offered a cup of tea or coffee (standard procedure) but then I was given – if you can you believe it – a very enjoyable and relaxing massage! Neck, shoulders and base of the skull. A little later on, the guy – Daniel, I think his name was, came back to give me a hand massage as well! Then, when the colour was finally rinsed off, Brooke used some sort of a “treatment” on my hair and scalp, then covered it all with a hot towel, and put a warm eye pad over my eyes, and left me to “relax” for about ten minutes. Then the hot towel (which was by then a “cool” towel) and eye pad were removed, my hair was given one last light rise, and I was ready to be dried. I don’t think I’ve ever had a hair colouring treatment quite like it! If that’s their standard hair colouring procedure,  maybe I should have my hair coloured every week! Young Daniel is quite interested in the sound of Rift – he plays Guild Wars 2, and says that it’s quite confusing until you get up to about level 30, but that it’s worth persevering with. I have actually played it, a fair while ago, but I think I only ever got up to about level 11 or something – so perhaps I’ll give it another go…

And speaking of Rift, I started my work on Greybriar last night. I’d managed to get two characters re-set up properly, and all of a sudden there was a sort of a doorbell chime (“ding-dong”, Avon crawling!) and a notice appears on the screen saying that the server’s coming down in 30 minutes for maintenance, and would we all please get ourselves to somewhere safe. The system was expected to be down for five hours, and a “Sorry for the inconvenience!” was tacked on at the end. Grrr! I was just getting into my stride, too! Oh well, so I started again this morning, right after breakfast, but only managed to get another four characters done before it was time to get ready to go out. That leaves me with another four to do tomorrow – unless I decide to go and have another look at Guild Wars 2 – which may be easier said than done! I know I had an account, and I know I played it. I’m also pretty sure I bought it – mainly because it doesn’t say anything about “Free to Play” on it’s home screen – and because I have a vague recollection of Julian saying that it was cheap enough, I might as well get it (because my favourite eldest daughter was not only playing it, but very enthusiastic about it too) And of course, this all means that I’m going to have to open up my email in order to check back through ancient messages for receipt type emails, and confirmatory messages… and I object, very strongly, to opening up my email more than once a day in the morning! So it’ll just have to wait until tomorrow! Why do I object to opening up my email except once a day, in the morning? In all honesty, I don’t know! I think it stems back to the time when checking your email meant being deluged in more than a hundred pieces of spam that you had to wade through to get to the “good bits”. This should give you all a clue as to how long ago that was – I think email filtering might have progressed just a teeny bit since then – but old habits die hard. On the other hand, I have been known to check my email repeatedly, at all times of the day or night, when I thought that a particular piece of email might have been coming in. Anyway, this business with Guild Wars 2 isn’t really all that important – it’s just that I’m curious, now…. And I’m sure you’ve all met people similar to a “curious Winter” before – they prowl around like a demented tiger, snapping people’s heads off, fretting, fidgeting, sulky, waspish… need I go on? 🙂 (Why is my right hand sore? It feels like a toothache in all of the bones in my palm – on top of my palm? duh! In the palm region of my hand!) Ooops! Look at the time! Five minutes to the news, and dinner! Back again later! 🙂

+————————–+ * Dinner & Television Break * +————————–+

Right – back again! 🙂 Yes, I’m curious about Guild Wars 2 – but even more curious to know what happened to my account, and what my password was! I guess I’ll find out tomorrow… 🙂 And besides, I have too much work to do on Rift at the moment. Not to mention my graphics, which I haven’t really touched for two whole days! You know, there’s only one thing wrong with having really, really short hair, like me! My right ear gets freezing cold, to the point where it aches! Only my right ear – my left ear’s perfectly fine… so here I am, typing away, wearing that lovely new red and black paisley shawl… with part of the shawl wrapped around my right ear. I know I look stupid, but at least my ear’s warm!

Weigh-in this morning. Was quite mystifying! I keep expecting the “Big Bounce Back”, but it obviously hasn’t located my address yet…I went down another point, to 92.2kg! I’m thinking that by the time the “BBB” locates me, and it will, I might well be in the 91kg zone! But I hope it doesn’t locate me until I get down to at least 91.0kg 😉 So now I’m getting worried about weighing myself tomorrow morning! What if I go up eight points? Even if you live in Mildura, I think you’d probably hear me scream!

So… as far as I know, we’re not doing anything vitally important tomorrow, which will give me ample time to finish off Greybriar, (hopefully) locate my missing Guild Wars 2 account and password, do a bit of work on my “paneled” background tile, and paint my nails! [fx: hysterical laughter /fx] And if you believe all of that, well I have this wonderful bridge to sell you…. 😉 Seriously though, I should not only get Greybriar finished off, but I should also have had a chance to look at Laethys, and see if I can do anything sensible with my higher level girls there. The thing is, I can solo my girls up to around level 50, with only minimum help from himself for some of the harder zone-ending Rift quests – but past level 50, soloing gets fairly hard core… that’s why a lot of my characters end up sitting on level 50 for (sometimes!) years… however, whatever I do end up doing tomorrow, you can bet your sweet bippy* that there’ll be plenty of news, interesting (and boring) anecdotes, gossip, and obscure phrases like the sweet bippy one above 🙂 – so don’t miss out! call in again this time tomorrow night! 😉 But until then, remember to bee good, don’t hide your (collective) lights under a bushel, and above all…. stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

* “you can bet your sweet bippy” (see “Catchphrases”, just past half way down the page…)

Five past four in the afternoon, and I’ve just finished (re)setting up Wolfsbane. I started before breakfast, worked until lunch time, and had a bit of a break while I did my Stair Walk and ate my bar. Julian was out – we’d had a phone call from my favourite eldest daughter – she’s done something to her leg and she didn’t think she was fit enough to catch the bus home from uni – could Julian go and pick her up, please? She’ll make an appointment to see the doctor, and I suppose we’ll be providing the taxi service for that, too. Goodness knows what’s she’s done to her leg – but I suspect it’s her weight more than anything else. She is being a good girl, sticking to her weight loss program and losing kilos steadily on her version of my Optifast diet, but quite frankly, I think she might have reached the tipping point for joint damage some time ago – I guess we can only hope it’s not permanent joint damage…  More news on her leg as it comes to hand…  Anyway, I ate my lunch and got straight back to work on Wolfsbane – that was the shard with the four level 50 girls, and another six of them under level 40… What a job! Only one shard – Greybriar – left to go…. I’ve decided that after I’ve done that one, I’m going to have to set up a Guild on each shard, mainly because we desperately need the extra storage room that a Guild Bank Vault will give us. And that’s going to be fun! fun! fun! too – these days it seems to have become “customary” to offer bribes to get people to sign your Guild form (in other words, if you don’t offer the bribe, you don’t get the signatures, and from memory, you need nine of them!) Another inducement is to tell them that they don’t have to stay in the Guild – it’s just until you get it set up. Sometimes they take the gold and skip before the Guild is created, and sometimes they don’t want to leave this nice, cosy little Guild that you paid them to join, in which case, you have to kick them out. Personally, to avoid any unpleasantness, I always wait until they’re off-line before I kick them out 😉 So, I guess that’s more work to look forward to. Back when our “Gaming Religion” was World of Warcraft, Julian and I both had two accounts – two accounts? 🙂 double the number of characters you could have! Paradise, for an altoholic like me 😉 and in those days, Julian wasn’t all that much better 🙂 We were talking about that this morning, actually, and after a long-ish sort of pause, Julian said, a trifle hesitantly, “You can have a second account (on Rift) if you want to…” Well! My little heart started to go pitter-patter, pitter-patter – Oh joy! A chance to have more characters? What bliss! 🙂 However, I demurred – saying that I thought I had enough on my plate at the moment… (but just wait until I’ve cleared the backlog, tee hee hee! 😉 ) So, to sum up, I have one last shard to (re)set up, and four Guilds to create (what a shame that Guilds can’t be multi-sharded!) before I can get back to any serious questing – that is, if I don’t go on a wild rampage creating another fifty or sixty characters on a second account! Just kidding… 🙂 (at the moment! 😉 ) So I’ve not had a chance to do any graphic-type work at all today – I didn’t want to have a bit of a fiddle at lunch time – I knew I’d only get involved with it and not want to get back to Wolfsbane… but at least it’s done, now… 🙂

By the way, did any of you read the somewhat startling and extraordinary news that Texans (that’s the one in the USA where all the oil is/was) actually believed that their own Government was about to…. *gasp*! *shock!* *horror!* invade them?! and take them over?! I kid you not! Julian told me this morning, and I could hardly believe my ears! Why would the American Government want to invade Texas, one of their own states, anyway?! But here it is, in The Age (*sigh* I knew that that once respected and much admired newspaper was turning into a Tabloid! I just knew it!) Honestly, was it even worth publishing? Or maybe it was an attempt to make Australians (and maybe the rest of the world?) realise just how totally and incredibly crazy [loony, stupid, away with the fairies] a lot of Americans are! And they’re supposed to be one of the great leaders of the modern world? One of the world’s “policemen”? May heaven help us all if that’s the case, because apparently quite a few Americans can’t seem to be able to tell the difference between fantasy and reality, on a good day, with a fair wind behind them!

Weigh-in this morning. Well, I was dreading getting on the scales. I shivered my way into the Den (where the scales are) and dithered, putting things away. I really didn’t want to get on the scales… I just knew it would be horrible…. I hopped on… the scales wavered around between 92.4kg and 92.5kg…. then settled down on… 92.3kg! Amazement! One point less than yesterday! Just think – if I wasn’t taking those ruddy pills, I might even be into the 91kg zone by now! However, I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth – I’m thankful for small mercies (some of the time, anyway! 😉 ) Hopefully my Big Bounce Back has lost my address…

I have another Oscar Oscar appointment tomorrow afternoon – they want me to go in a bit earlier, so that they’ll “have more time” (more time? I wonder what for? I don’t have all that much hair, anyway!) However, I believe I’m having some colour done, and I know that takes for evah, so that’s prolly why. Well, you lucky readers, you! 🙂 You’re getting a somewhat shorter blog than usual, because I’ve been too busy, nose down, tail up, to do anything interesting enough to want to tell you about (apart from those amazingly idiotic Americans, that is! My mind is still boggling!) So what about all you lot out there? Anyone been doing anything novel? Exciting? Interesting? Read any good books lately? Ah yes, talking of books, I don’t know if any of you know that my maternal Grandfather used to write short stories for magazines, a long time ago. We have some of his old manuscripts here somewhere, and when we manage to find the “safe place” we put them in, I’m thinking of starting up another blog, or perhaps I should say “anti-blog”, because I intend to transcribe his stories into this “anti-blog” so that other people can enjoy them too. Some of them are hilariously funny, and some of them are a teeny bit off-putting (from what I can remember of them, anyway) but he could certainly spin a good “yarn”, and I think it’s high time that they saw the light of day again! 🙂 I’ll let you know when we find them… hmmmm…. I’m just looking at the word count on the bottom of the screen – maybe this blog won’t be quite as short as I thought it would be, after all! Sorry about that one, chiefs! 😉 Anyway, that really is about it from me to all of you out there tonight in Readerland – but do drop back in tomorrow night – find out in my Big Bounce Back has managed to find out where I live after all, and paid me a visit, or if I’ve managed to give it the slip again! And learn what happened when I finally finished Greybriar – will I have created my Guilds? Have I even got enough gold for the bribes? Will I have created a second Rift account for myself? Lots of questions – lots of answers, and lots of news! If it turns out alright, I might even put up some photos of my hair colour… so as you can see, there’ll be lots stories and hot goss! So, from now until tomorrow night, remember to bee good, don’t forget to eat your greens, and above all…. stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

Do you know, it’s about 3 minutes to six – I’ve just come back from my evening Stair Walk, which I was going to take a break for at about half past five… but I hadn’t quite finished the re-setting up of Faeblight, and I wanted to get that done first! It’s taken me all day, even after I’d deleted those two Dwarven Mages! Nine characters… all had to have their Dimensions checked (to make sure there were no super-duper-cool ones there that I might have deleted by mistake – as I have done once before!) their settings changed, their banks re-sorted, their spells re-set out, and finally, they had to be dressed appropriately! (I had to re-do their “wardrobes” – all their old stuff had been returned to them, so it all had to be done again) What a job! I hope I never have to go through all my shards deleting extraneous characters again for a long, long, time! And I still have Greybriar and Wolfsbane to do, not to mention having a look at Laethys to see if there’s anyone from there that I can move across to the “needier” shards… however I did have a short break of about three-quarters of an hour where I experimented with some graphic stuff – no, not the plain central panel one I was talking about last night, I was actually working on a new idea I had for my Bookmarks Wallpaper… I’m not sure how it’ll work out yet – I think the side graphics are just a tad too big for it at the moment – I think I’ll be able to shrink them a bit, but it might not be enough (the graphics are branches of fluffy blossoms, and if I make them too small, they’ll look too fiddly) in which case it’ll be back to square one and I’ll have to start all over again. Tomorrow though I think will be mostly taken up with clawing my way through Wolfsbane and Greybriar – though I’ll probably only be able to manage to get through one of them – they’re both nine characters strong, and looking at their lists, I see that Wolfsbane has four level 50’s, which means extra work pour moi (level 50 and above are being given an extra Action Bar because they have more junk that has to be easily and quickly accessible) Greybriar only has two level 40’s… I think I’ll work on Wolfsbane and get it over and done with, and out of the way! I hope we’re not supposed to be going anywhere tomorrow…

Oh, I saw two things on Bored Panda yesterday that might be of interest to some of you – but the first one comes with a warning! Do not look at these photos if you’re not into clowns, and Stephen King horror stories, OK?!! 🙂 They’re really horrid! Remember! You have been warned! The second one though, is amazing, and fantastic, and absolutely beautiful! I want them all! Especially the Owl ones…she is one very talented lady! 🙂

I’m so tired after all that work on Faeblight today – I’m quite sure I’ll dream of ruddy Action Bars and macros all night! I hope I don’t though… It’s not so much that it’s hard work, because it’s not hard at all – it’s just tedious and boringly repetitious work. Hard work is good for you (in moderation, of course! Everything and anything, in moderation, right?! 😉 ) Boring and repetitious work tends to make you go to sleep… well, it makes me go to sleep, anyway! I have promised myself that I will not get myself into a position where I have to do another major cull like this, for at least twenty years – well, at the very least, six months, anyway! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. Was both annoyingly frustrating, and humblingly pleasing. I stayed the same, at 92.4kg Frustrating, because I really hate being left in “the middle of the see-saw”, and humblingly pleasing, because I didn’t sky-rocket back up again, after my two satisfyingly large drops (that’ll happen tomorrow – you mark my words! Because I will go up again (but hopefully not by too much!)) *sigh* Dinner’s ready… back soon…

+————————–+ * Dinner & Television Break * +————————–+

And, here I am again. Well, we did have a visitor for a while this afternoon – an Real Estate Agent. We’re not moving – not yet, anyway, but we did want to get some idea of how much this place was worth – the answer to which was not as much as I thought it would be! Oh well. However, this place is getting a trifle old, there are new apartments going up all over Doncaster Hill, and there’s always the worry that our local Council – bless their stony little hearts – might be “persuaded” by self-interest to alter their by-laws concerning building heights (that is, what’s the likelihood of some developer buying up the apartments below and opposite us, and building a massive high-rise there, blocking our city views?) Not much chance of that, said our friendly little Estate Agent, reminding us that the apartments opposite are all owned separately, and it’s not very likely that all the owners would sell, en mass, making the prospect of a huge high-rise being built there less than a mere twinkle in a developer’s eye. However, we do have a decision to make. Do we stay here, or do we move on? On the one hand, whatever we do here, we’re beholden to the Body Corporate. For example, we can’t put in double glazing, without their permission. Nor can we build in that window wall, inside and out, without the approval of the Body Corporate – even if Julian is the B.C. secretary! Stuff like that. If we do stay here, we want to make a lot of renovations, which will require a lot of re-wiring, and the moving (or should I say re-moving!) of ceilings. It’s not easy to renovate here – we did it once before, in 2007, so we know what’s involved. On the other hand, we have a fabulous view, we’re a short walk across the road from a really nice shopping centre, we have three car  parking spaces, a lift, reasonably good security, and (at the moment) we can’t be “built out”, even if they re-built the Pub next door. If we move, we want to move into a house, not another apartment (which would be a case of “from the frying pan into the fire” situation) so we either have to find something that’s at least on a par with this place, standards and space-wise, but preferably a lot better – or we have to build (which we have considered) Our main problem has been…. “but where?” I have no real problem with location, and I don’t think Julian does either (if he does, he’s never mentioned it!) – of course, there are areas I would prefer not to move to – but I’ve never thought (or been known to say) “Oh, I’d love to live…[please insert name of favourite suburb here]” – actually, that’s a lie – I’d love to have a fabulous “Addams Family” type mansion, right at the top of Oliver’s Hill – only problem is, it’s in Frankston (so there you go – that’s one of the suburbs I’d prefer not to move to!) Decisions, decisions… whatever the outcome, whatever we decide, you’ll all be amongst the first to know 🙂

And that’s really about all my news for tonight – I’ve been so busy, head down, tail up, slaving away and wearing my fingers to the bone over a hot shard – to do anything else exciting! But tomorrow’s another day – and now that I’ve got my routine down pat for ploughing through the characters, I’m sure to get Wolfsbane finished in, oh… about eight or nine hours? 😉 But news there’ll be aplenty, so drop by and catch up on all the latest at chez nous! So until then, once more may I remind you all to bee good, don’t let the bed bugs bite tonight, and above all…. stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

*sigh* Well, the culling and “refining” process drags on… Have you any idea just how boring it is, re-setting each and every character so that they all have the same key locks and macros? I spent most of this morning working on Deepwood – first, I “exported” the latest settings I’d created for Satai (my main character on Hailol) Then I went back to Deepwood and “imported” that setting to the first character on the character select screen. Then it was a long and boring process of going through each character, importing everything from that first one, and then adjusting all the Action Bars accordingly. By the time you’ve done two of them, you feel as though you’ve been working on them for ever! Your eyes start wanting to close, you lose concentration and focus… it’s a right drag, I can tell you! Anyway, Deepwood is now all done (thank all the powers that be!) and I’ve started on Faeblight – the shard with the second highest number of characters. Now, there are two Dwarven Mages there, that I’ve very reluctantly kept, because they both have full Troves of enhancement potions. I can’t make up my mind whether to get rid of, or keep, these two Mages. They’re both very low-level characters, and in actual fact, I’ll probably never play either of them – it’s just that the thought of throwing away all those lovely enhancement potions is agonising! My favourite eldest daughter was over today, and she put it very succinctly… “Look, Mum,” she said “if you’re not going to be playing those two Mages, then to all intents and purposes, those potions don’t really exist, do they! I mean, no-one else can use them, can they?!” and she’s perfectly right… if I don’t play them, the potions are useless and might as well not be there… it’s just that…. to… just… throw… them away! No, not even “throw them away”! to…to… just delete them?Arrrggghhh! What as waste!! *sob* Still, it would whittle Faeblight down from eleven characters to nine… which would be a big blessing… Yes, I could spend the Credits and change their Race, but it wouldn’t be the same… *sigh* Oh well, I shall delete the potions… I mean characters…. tomorrow… *sniffle*

So, as I mentioned, my favourite eldest daughter was over today – I explained to her why I couldn’t get rid of Miaprima – the one with the extra good Dimension that I’d built for her? She looked skeptical (she does that sooo well!) so I showed it to her. She was no longer skeptical 🙂 Said she was going to re-open her Rift account so that she could log on and vote for it, and create as many characters as she could, so that she could get them to vote for it too! Well, she won’t, of course, but it’s nice to know that she thought so highly of my Dimension. I showed her around a few other Dimensions that I’d thought were good (not mine – other people’s) – and as fate would have it they didn’t look as good as they had in the past – in “upgrading” and changing things too much, the ones we did look at had been spoilt – their creators should have left well enough alone! It’s really a shame… Last time I looked at them, about seven or eight months ago, they were good enough for “perfectionist” me to vote for, so I did (vote for them) but I’m afraid that even if I could have voted for them a second time (which you can’t) I wouldn’t have wasted my vote. So after that, I went on my Stair Walk, and then we watched three episodes of “Person of Interest” – oh! It’s really getting scary and exciting! The “gang wars” sub-plot is escalating, and henchmen are getting bumped off left, right, and centre – “Samaritan”, the “bad” machine, is hunting for our “good” machine, which may have just revealed its secret location to Samaritan in order to save two of our favourite characters – Finch, the “good” machine’s creator, and Root, its “voice”…. and we suspect that there’s only one more episode this Season! 😦 We also watched another episode of “Agents of Shield” – another really excellent series! 🙂 Himself is now dropping Lee off in Glen Waverley, and I’ve had my evening Stair Walk, so I can concentrate on getting this finished before Julian gets back and starts getting dinner ready. I’ve got chicken soup tonight – I usually have the semi-dried basil flakes on it, but himself bought some (semi-dried) ginger flakes, and they’re just sooo delicious sprinkled on the chicken soup – I had them last time (it’s a three night cycle – Tomato, Vegetable, Chicken – rinse, and repeat) and I’ve been hanging out for the chicken soup to come around again ever since! (I love ginger!) Oh, he’s back… and making some coffee… 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. Another trepidatious surprise awaited me on the scales! I didn’t bounce back up again this morning, after all! I bounced a bit further down! Three points, to 92.4kg! How much do any of you want to bet me that I will bounce back up again tomorrow morning, probably to something like 92.9kg, or even 93.3kg, because I’ve gone down so much, and so quickly! *gulp* I do not want to get on those scales tomorrow morning, I really do not!

Well, I’m not quite sure what’s happening tomorrow – but I think it’s probably a fair bet to say that I’ll be getting stuck into Faeblight, and getting all of that lot sorted out and ready to go… ready to go – where?! I have no idea, but if they do have to go anywhere, they’ll be ready for it! 😉 and if I get too bored with that, I’ll fiddle around with some more graphics. I had an idea last night on how to make a background tile with a pattern-less “panel” down the middle, so that text would be extra clear and easy to read – the header at the top would make the screen look like a plain, pattern-less panel, sitting bang-smack in the middle of a patterned page. Mind you, it might take a fair bit of fiddling (oh, alright then, a lot of fiddling, OK?!) to get the plain panel in the centre – but I should be able to do it (I are clever, I are! 😉 ) But whatever happens, you can be quite sure of one thing! There’ll be lots of news and gossip waiting for you here tomorrow night! So call in again tomorrow – find out which way my weight bounced! Up? or down? Or will it sit in the middle of the see-saw and tease me, as it so loves to do! 🙂 Will I finish “tidying up” Faeblight tomorrow? And, will I have the stamina and fortitude to start “tidying up” another shard as well? Will I really delete those two Dwarven Mages, and their full Troves of enhancing potions? *sob* Or will I ditch all that Rift stuff in order to work on my idea for a “Plain Panel Down The Middle” background tile? Tonight, even I don’t know the answer to those questions – but all of you will – this time tomorrow night! So until then, bee good, don’t stay up too late watching television, but above all… stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

I’m starting awfully late this evening – I probably won’t get even half way through writing before I have to dash off for my evening Stair Walk and dinner… Never mind – ’twas all in a good cause! 🙂 I wanted to see how the blog would look on a non-textured, but sort-of “softly busy” (if it’s possible to have something soft, and busy, at the same time!) background. If it doesn’t work out, no harm done, I’ll just… do something else, and see how that works instead!

Well, we played “Mob Chasey” in Dusken today, and once again, we went up two levels! Amazing! Up two whole levels, for two consecutive weeks! That’s practically unheard of, once you get to about level 30 or so, even when you’re soloing with an experience enhancing potion! Dunno how we did it, but we did – actually, Julian had to take one of those potions to catch up to me – I level faster because I spend more real-time $$ on store-bought Credits than he does – this accrues “loyalty” points, and extra loyalty points earn you extra “perks” – like leveling faster, and (unfortunately) riding faster. Why is riding faster “unfortunate”? Because I have to keep stopping and waiting for him, that’s why! It’s also a nuisance because you tend to ride over cliffs, and the edges of tall buildings a lot, because you get to the edge before you have time to stop… and …over you go! Luckily they’ve done away with “falling damage”! 🙂 I took a couple of screenies of us today – they’re not really all that crash hot – it’s terribly “gloomy” in Dusken – I had to add quite a lot of brightness to the image before I saved it – but for what it’s worth… Sylversong (me) and Saudades (Julian) 🙂 Julian’s the one wearing the hat 🙂 *sigh* I thought as much – sorry, back later….

+—————–+ *Stair Walk Break*  *Dinner Break*  *Television Break* +—————–+

Back again… Last night and this morning, before we started in Dusken, I started my “culling” of the other shards.  I wasn’t able to get rid of as many extraneous characters as I would have liked – some, I couldn’t possibly get rid of, like Miaprima, on Greybriar. She “owns” one of the best Dimensions I’ve ever built. It’s a smallish “bowl” shaped area, with a small pond, or pool in the bottom of it. You can really only go up in terraces, like rice paddies up a hill, so because it’s a semi desert oasis setting, I built upwards and turned it into a “jungle-esque” type place by putting in lots and lots of trees and bushes and vines. The house itself is one of the best I’ve built, with a very detailed hall, kitchen, lounge, dining, and living room downstairs, and 3 bedrooms, a study, and a bathroom, complete with toilet (and toilet paper on a toilet roll holder) upstairs. Down near the central pool there are sort-of “Roman Ruins”, with columns, and rocky steps surrounding the pool. There’s also a meeting room or chapel (the entire Dimension is supposed to be a retreat for the devout) and an outside alter. I could have dismantled it all and sent the items on to whoever I put in charge of Dimension building on Greybriar, but I put an awful lot of time, effort, and care into it – I just couldn’t bear to demolish it – far better to keep Miaprima, even though she’s a level 40 Rogue/Hunter that I’ll never play with again (I just don’t play Rogue/Hunters anymore – I prefer playing with Mages) If I ever get a round tuit, I might post some screenies of my better Dimensions – some of which are very elaborate and took hours and hours and weeks to build… you might get a surprise at how detailed and intricate some of the Dimensions are, and mine are by no means the best on the shards! So, bearing in mind that I started out with 12 characters on each shard, I have whittled them down to Greybriar: 9, Wolfsbane: 10, Faeblight: 11, and Deep wood: 8. Where possible, I got rid of characters I’d probably never play again, or who weren’t Mages. Mostly I kept the ones who had full, or nearly full, Troves of enhancement potions, and I made a list of deleted names that I would still like to use, if I can get them again. I’m still trying to decide if I should pull Laethys into the sorting bin as well – nearly all of my Laethys characters are high level (level 50 and higher), and it would probably be a good move to move (Ha! a pun!) them to other shards where they would make damn fine “farmers”, if nothing else. But I haven’t decided yet. Hailol, of course, is still too “young” to cull 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. Was a Big Surprise! Maybe I should go shopping for clothes more often – I’ve noticed that when I’ve been out shopping the way I was yesterday, I always seem to go down a bit… Only this time, it was a lot! Down 4 points, to 92.7kg! Oh boy, is that bounce-back, when it comes, going to smart! Oh well, hopefully I’ll only bounce back to 92.8kg, or 92.9kg (but once again – I’m not going to hold my breath!) But I can hope… 🙂

Apparently my favourite eldest daughter is coming over tomorrow, which will be good. I’ve been exceptionally lucky with my two girls – they’ve always been good girls – sleeping right through the night the week after they came home from hospital, when they were babies – never any teething problems… as they got older, I had less teenage angst and upsets with them than any parent has a right to expect. While not consistently the top of their class at school, they held their own with the best of them, and often outclassed most of them. They’re polite, kind, generous, and sincere, though they have, at times, been known to be outspoken about some issues (I guess they take after their mother in that regard 😉 ) As I said, I’m very lucky, and very proud, and I love them to pieces 🙂

So that’s about all my news for this evening – I do hope the new background I put in works properly, and isn’t too “busy” (but if it is, it’s easy to fix) If you call around again tomorrow night, you’ll find out what Lee and I watched, and what else I got up to before she arrived. I think I’ll “review” the characters on Laethys (says she very seriously, looking over the tops of her glasses at the screen, à la strict schoolmarm) before deciding what to do with all those characters. I don’t want to delete any of them, but they’re being wasted where they are… and you know, “waste not, want not”, an’ all that 🙂 Whatever happens, there’ll be heaps of news and other goodies for you here tomorrow night, so don’t be shy, and don’t miss out! However, until then, bee good, rug up warm when you go outside, and above all…. stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

So we did go shopping this morning, after all – well, we went to the Doctor’s first, as I had to pick up a new script, but then we went on to The Glen… first to Autograph, to get some much needed underclothing, and then on to My Size to see what they had in the way of slacks, with pockets in them. And miracle of miracles, they did have some – finally! Perhaps all the grizzling I always did whenever I went into a My Size store finally got through to the buyers – the fact that people actually wanted to buy slacks which had pockets in them! Oh, like wow! What a novel idea! Pockets? in a pair of pants?! Outrageous! – but where else is a girl to put her tissue, either used, or unused, hmmm? I bought two pairs – so that now, when I do my Stair Walks, I won’t have to carry a ruddy bag around with me, just to carry my keys… and a tissue (because I have hay fever at the moment and my nose refuses to leave the apartment unless I’m carrying a tissue for it!) I had two moments of déjà vu today, too… can you guess where? 🙂 One in Autograph, and after that, one in My Size – the two ladies in both stores oooh’d and ahhh’d over my hair colour, and wasn’t it gorgeous! (*rolls eyes*) I mean, I love my hair being this colour – I think it’s fantastic, and all… but hasn’t anyone ever seen bright red streaks in someone’s hair before, or something?! It’s extremely gratifying, and all that, and I’m really, really grateful that my friend did such a fantastic colouring job – but just between you, me, and the gatepost, it’s starting to get just a teeny bit embarrassing, especially when they ask me “Where did you have it done?” I just mumble that a friend did it, and quickly change the subject before they can ask me who, and could I get them to colour their hair too (which someone did ask me, once!) I wonder if it’s because I’m, er…. “not young”… and people are just taken aback to see someone… my age… with such a bright colour in their hair, which actually suits them, and looks good! I dunno… anyway, I also got another two tops at My Size, and a wrap (read: “long shawl”) in a deep red and black paisley design. I shall make use of that tonight 🙂 It does get a bit chilly, sitting and watching television in the evenings! 😉

After all that, we came home – it was starting to get late-ish, so once again, I came up in the lift first, ditched my detested shoes, grabbed my door propping book, the keys, and my fingerless glove, and headed off for my before lunchtime Stair Walk. Then I played a bit of Rift, experimented with some more designs and patterns for blog backgrounds and headers, and generally stuffed around. By the time I bethought myself to go and start culling some of the other shards, it was almost time for my evening Stair Walk, so I thought I’d better make a start on this evening’s entry here, and which, as you can see, I’m now doing. Oh, and I had a nice, long chat with my favourite youngest daughter, Kate, this afternoon – all is well over at their place – the dog, and the three cats, and the rabbits (which I’ve lost count of!) are all well. She’s started going to Pilates classes, which she’s been enjoying. She was in a swimming accident when she was in Primary School, and her back has never been right since – she’s been to chiropractors, physiotherapists, and orthopaedic specialists, all to no avail. Sometimes her back gets so sore that all she can do is lie flat on the floor, poor kid! 😦 Anyway, she says that these exercise classes seem to be helping, but she’s signed up for the classes, rather than just do the exercises at home, because (and she takes after me in this regard!) left to her own devices, she’ll never “get around to” doing the exercises if she doesn’t have someone standing over her, supervising her work. (That’s why I stopped going to Bounce – going there once a fortnight wasn’t doing me any good because I never followed up on the exercises at home! I’m just too bone lazy… )

Tomorrow, of course, is Sunday, so I expect that we’ll be galloping around Dusken, killing this, that, and the other, plus skinning whatever’s skinnable, mining ores, walking on the grass, and picking the wildflowers, for most of the day 🙂 so I probably won’t be able to get back to my “culling” project until Monday… (all my rings are falling off! Back to the jewellers, I suppose – to get them all made smaller… again…) Speaking of jewellers, and getting rings made smaller, my mother was very fond of gold – she preferred it to silver. Personally, I like the look of silver more than gold, but as it happens, nearly all of my “serious” jewellery is gold. Mum used to have all sorts of silver jewellery gold dipped, because she thought it “looked nicer” – one piece in particular, a large silver medallion that I wore almost constantly, she had gold dipped while I was away somewhere – when I came back I was furious! Well, it was her medallion, and I suppose (says she, very grudgingly) Mum had the right to have it gold dipped if she wanted to – but she never wore it, and I did, and I was really not happy! (bear with me, I am getting to the point of this story, truly!) so I spent literally hours, polishing off all the gold dipping. It never looked quite the same, but at least I could wear it in comfortable silver again. Now the thing is, as I said, most of my “serious” jewellery these days is gold – so I’ve been wondering if I should have at least some of my better silver pieces, that I usually wear with my gold rings …. gold dipped. I can’t make up my mind… any (polite) suggestions?

Weigh-in this morning. Another surprise awaited me on the scales this morning! A nice one, for a change, this time! 93.1kg – three points down on yesterday’s 93.4kg! I was very pleased, and very surprised… and very suspicious! Sizable drops like that are usually followed by correspondingly large bounce-backs! We shall see what we shall see, tomorrow morning….

+——————————–+ Dinner Break +——————————–+

Back again 🙂 I had to dart off for my evening Stair Walk (I’m getting quite good at “darting” these days – I can even almost out-walk Julian as far as the lift well! (in bare feet, that is – put shoes on me and I can only stagger! 😉 )) and when I got back dinner was almost ready, so… Anyway, I’m back now 🙂 Where was I? Oh yes… seeing what we shall see tomorrow, weight-wise. I think I’ve found a new pattern that might possibly turn out to be seamless – I shall do more experimenting… er…. maybe Monday? or if my favourite eldest daughter is coming over, then it’ll have to wait until Tuesday. But that’s about all the news I have for you at the moment – please tell me if backgrounds aren’t working out, and I’ll do my best to correct things – no point in reading a blog if you can’t read the text on the background, and no point in writing a blog if people can’t read it (I seem to get a fair amount of key bounce with this keyboard – you know, when you get two of the letter you just typed, even though you only typed it the once? Weird…) So call in again tomorrow night, and find out what we got up to in Dusken – how many times we managed to get ourselves killed, and how many levels we went up – you’ll probably also be all agog to see what happened with my weight, and whether or not it went back up again (let’s fervently hope not!) I’m wearing my nice new black and red paisley wrap/shawl/thingy, and as I hoped, it is lovely and warm 🙂 I’ll try out my new slacks tomorrow, but I’m not going to ask Julian “does my bum look big in this”, because he’d probably just say “Yes!” (even if it didn’t, though it probably will!) so I won’t bother 😉 So until tomorrow night, please try to bee good, don’t trip over the hamster, and above all…. stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂