Here I am again – the day after the day before – having been merrily prancing and dancing through The Plane of Water, where neither him nor me died, not even once! 🙂 But let me start at the beginning…
Naturally, a lot has been said and discussed about the Auction (or the seeming lack thereof!) yesterday – but who cares?! We got the house and the lemon tree, and that’s the main thing! 🙂 The penthouse upstairs is up for Auction on July 8th, and we don’t want to “cramp Carmen’s style” by putting this apartment on the market before then – well, it’s up to her, really – but we do know that she’s already lining up people for our place – sort-of hinting to them that she “knows that a beautiful apartment just one floor down from the Penthouse will be available soon!” sort-of thing. We also know that within a week or two she’s going to start pressuring us to clear out the clutter, and allow her “stylist” in to re-arrange and re-decorate the place. If anyone reading this is familiar with our place here, they’ll know that there’s a very large, awkward pillar that blocks the view off from the dining area. We always wondered why that pillar was put there (apart from the fact that it has wires and electricals running up the middle of it!) as it’s in a really awkward position and quite spoils the view and appearance of the entire lounge room area. Well, we found out that it was originally the corner of the kitchen, and that a kitchen bench and cupboards used to run from the pillar to the other side of the kitchen, in a very sensible layout which created an open kitchen, meals, and lounge area, all overlooking Melbourne. There was a door between the kitchen and Julian’s office – which was originally supposed to be the “formal” dining room. Unfortunately, the first owners decided to change things, leaving any following owners with the problem of what to do with the pillar! Oh well. Not our problem for much longer! 😉 Actually, I’d really love to hate Carmen! She had an absolutely brilliant idea of how to disguise, or make the pillar semi-disappear! I do so wish that I’d thought of it first! *pout* The idea? Cover the pillar, floor to ceiling, with cut to measure mirrors! It’ll increase the amount of light coming into the dining area – which is inclined to be a bit dark as the pillar blocks off a lot of the light coming from the lounge room windows – it’ll make the place look bigger, and it’ll draw people’s eyes away from the fact that there’s a whopping great, ugly pillar where there oughtn’t to be one! Anyway, as I said – not our problem for much longer. Did you see the pictures I put up last night on the “As Seen On…” page? What do you think?! Nice?! 🙂 I want to see if we can get the floor plans blown up – er, I mean made bigger – so that we can start to plan furniture placement and stuff (ahhh… coffeeeee!) The last picture in the series of photos is the room where we signed all the papers – It’s right off the kitchen, and it’s a big room – bigger than our current “Den”/computer room, anyway. Well, that’s the room that I have earmarked to be our new “Den”/computer room. The room next to it, and overlooking the entertainment deck outside, will probably be stuffed full of bookcases and become the library. The photo shown on the right of the floor plan is on the right hand side as you walk in through the front door – this will probably become Julian’s office, and will also be stuffed full of bookcases. In fact, just about all of the “family-type” rooms will have bookcases (we have a lot of books! You think you’ve seen a lot of books here? there are boxes of books still in storage from when we moved in here, in 2007! Finally we’re getting a house that can hold them all (I think!)) Yeah, so there’s lots of plans afoot, and an extraordinary amount of things to do and get done by August 20th (settlement date)
So this morning, being Sunday morning, we slept in… until about 8.15am. After breakfast we got into Rift, and apart from a lunch break and my midday Stair Walk, we’ve been playing all day, finally finishing off around 4.45pm, when I finished off this new header, and got it online. As I said, we were frolicking around the Plane of Water – really fairly easy quests today, so neither of us died, or even came close to dying – even though we did have to (a) find a “tear”, and (b) open a Fire Rift with it, and (c) then close said Fire Rift – just the two of us 
I’ve always hated Fire Rifts – it’s not that they’re harder to close than other types of Rifts (Nightmare Rifts are just that! Nightmares! And the Hell Bug Rifts aren’t much better!) No, the reason I hate Fire Rifts is because I can’t see anything properly! There’s always a lot of action in Rifts, but when the principal colours are black and orange, with occasional flashes of red and yellow… *shakes head* I can’t find the wretched cursor, or see what I’m doing, or whom I’m fighting! Targetting is next to impossible – how in hell do you see a red circle on the ground around an enemy, when the ground is black and red and orange, with occasional streaks of yellow?! Arrggghh! I hate Fire Rifts! Anyway, we got it done, and thank goodness we didn’t have to open up and close any more! And that was about the most strenuous quest we had all day! We both went up a level, to level 62, but honestly, leveling past level 60 is so horribly slow… we’re thinking that we might both take an experience boosting potion before we start playing, next Sunday!
Weigh-in this morning. Strangely enough, I didn’t bounce back up again this morning – although at one point I thought I had! I hopped on the scales. 85.8kg “hmm…” says me. So I hopped off the scales, and back on, as I do every morning. 86.0kg *frown* Off the scales, and back on the scales, for the third time. 85.8kg. Two weigh-ins at 85.8kg, and one at 86.0kg. I’m calling “correct weight” in at 85.8kg! I stayed the same. I guess I’ll probably do a massive bounce-back tomorrow… We’ll see…
I’d just like to leave a quick message for Josh, if you all don’t mind – Josh, if you’re reading this, please check your email! 🙂 Sorry about that little diversion… we now return you to the normal state of confusion and chaos that you’ve all grown to love and appreciate! 🙂 Where was I? Oh yes… I hate to have to say it, but… it’s that time again! I started writing late, because we didn’t finish playing Rift until quarter to five, and then I had to finish off the header, and now it’s time for my evening Stair Walk and a short break for dinner…
+————————–+ * Dinner & Television Break * +————————–+
My goodness, wasn’t that quick! 🙂 But, here I am back again! Tomorrow the work of moving from one house to another starts in earnest. First though, we have to notify all the nice little Estate Agents who’ve been sending us snail mail and email, SMS’s and phone calls, that as we’ve just purchased a property, we no longer need their services. Julian has some more financial things to tinker with, and when all that’s done, we can start looking at furniture and packing things that we’re not likely to need or use between now and settlement date. I feel like doing what I used to do when I was younger, and computers didn’t exist. That is, rule up a calendar so that I can colour in the days, and/or cross off the days between now and moving day. Of course, I don’t have to do that now, but I feel like doing it, anyway! I don’t know if we’ll be actually moving into the new place on settlement day – it’s a Thursday, I believe, so we might leave it until the following Monday – it depends on too many things, really… Anyway, that’s about all from me for tonight. Do drop in again tomorrow night though, as there’ll be lots more to tell you, like whether my weight has bounced back up, or whether it’s still maintaining its downwards trend – and there’ll be lots of interesting bits and pieces to tell you all as the effort to start sifting, sorting, packing, throwing, and donating gets underway. Until tomorrow night, then, please continue beeing good, remember that you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, don’t forget to drive carefully, keep warm, and take care of yourselves, but above all… stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂
My Word! 