Oh, this is not good… I was just thinking “I’m soooo tired! I’ll just go up to the lounge room and read for a bit… (and maybe have a snooze as well, seeing that I got up at 4.30am!)” …and then I looked at the time. Alas! Too late for a read or a snooze – it was time to start writing this! All day I’ve been alternating between Rifting, and blog-template searching – as I fell asleep doing one, I’d switch to the other until I started falling asleep doing that, and then I’d switch back again, and so on and so forth… and if anyone had been keeping tabs on this blog, they’d have noticed that I’ve changed the template and the graphics here a total three times… and I’m still not satisfied with the results! However, I have learnt one thing today – how to make a cup of coffee using the Nespresso machine thingy! We’ve had it for over a year (I think!) and I’ve only ever made a cup of coffee with it once, when I had someone telling me what to do, every step of the way, and I’ve never used it since! I’ve never needed to – Julian’s always made the tea and the coffee, whilst I reclined in regal and indolent splendour! So this morning when Julian called from the airport to say they’d be boarding soon, I asked him how to make myself a cup of coffee. Well, he told me, but he used too many technical terms, like “jiggle the bottom bit”, and “press the button at the back of the machine”, and I…. thought “when Lee rings me to tell me she wants to get all her characters into the Guild this morning, I’ll get her to talk me through it!” which was indeed a brilliant idea! It was a lot easier to follow someone’s instructions when I was actually standing in front of the machine, rather than trying to imagine it from my desk in the Den! However, the main reason why I’ve never really learnt how to make a cup of coffee – apart from the fact that as I said, Julian’s always made the teas and the coffees – the main reason I’ve never learnt is not because I’m stupid, or slow, or lazy (though I fear that I do qualify for the latter!) but because my back has never been able to hold me upright long enough for me to walk to the kitchen, make a cup of coffee, and carry it back to the Den again. Actually, that’s not strictly true – I can walk around the house, and I can walk up and down the stairs, and so forth, but usually by the time I get from the Den to the kitchen, I’m pretty much bent over so that I’m staring at the floor. This is not helpful when you’re carrying a full cup of coffee. I’m not too bad on the stairs, because I’m hanging on, and partially leaning on, to the stair rail – and I’m not too bad between two rooms, because it’s not far enough for me to start folding in the middle – ditto if I’m using a stick, because it gives me something to lean on. But lately I’ve been finding that since I’ve lost weight, it is a lot easier for me to get around, and I can stand on my own for a lot longer than I used to be able to. I still tend to start folding in the middle after only a short time, and my back’s still sore enough for me to have to stop and lean on something whenever possible. But I am a lot better than I was – I’ve made two cups of coffee today so far, and I’ll make myself another one when I get back from my evening Stair Walk! I think I’ll probably need it – I won’t get dinner until after eight o’clock – and neither will poor little Flipper, who woke up about half an hour ago and discovered that “Daddy” still wasn’t home! She’s only just stopped caterwauling and gone back to have a bit more sleep, in the hopes that “Daddy” will be back by the time she wakes up again 🙂

I’ve just had a phone call from Julian – he’s at the airport and should be boarding in about ten minutes or so, so he’s on his way home 🙂 I have a feeling that we’ll be having another early night tonight – I’m completely bushed, and I’ve just been lolling around all day doing nothing – but he’s had to be polite and diplomatic to relatives we’re not terribly enthusiastic about, at their son’s funeral (memorial service really – he was buried last Friday) and then he had to deal with his mother, who is beginning to get very frail and debilitated, which is starting to make her a bit crotchety. I think we’ll both be a lot happier when we’ve had a good, full night’s sleep! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. I don’t know whether to discount it as being too early to weigh-in properly, or what! I stayed the same – I suppose I have to count it, because I didn’t go up, however I don’t have to always weigh myself at that time, because I didn’t go down, either! So… continue as I was, at 88.2kg (I know – really boring! )

So I have no idea what’s happening tomorrow – it’s getting close to the weekend, when himself wants to go and “observe” an Auction taking place, so he’ll know what to do when we do turn up at an Auction with a view to buying – or we could get a professional (? is that the right term?) bidder to go in and bid for us (we’d be there of course!) because they know Auction “etiquette”, like exactly when to put a bid in, and how not to get carried away and maybe end up paying more than you intended, in the heat of the moment. And I think the Vermont South “Water Feature House” is Open For Inspection again tomorrow – or is that “The “C” House” that’ll be open? I fergit! Maybe they both will be! We’ll have to scurry if they’re both open – Real Estate Agents play this little game with eachother, you see – the houses they have Open For Inspection are all open …. at the same ruddy time! What’s more, the average length of time that a house remains Open For Inspection on any particular day is 30 minutes (give or take a few loquacious would-be-buyers and/or Real Estate Agents! 😉 ) Anyway, I expect that tomorrow will be largely taken up with preparing for the weekend, and maybe some more house hunting, seeing that the finances appear to have been all sorted out now.

And that’s about all I have for you tonight – but I’ll be back tomorrow to fill you all in on weighty subjects, and whether one or both of the two houses we’re interested in was Open For Inspection, and if having inspected it/them for a second time, are we still just as interested in them? If you’re very lucky (or very unlucky, depending on your viewpoint) I might even have a new blog template with matching graphics to show you! Wouldn’t that be a surprise! 😉 But until tomorrow night, I’ll beg you once again to please bee good; remember that life is not so bad if you have plenty of luck, a good physique and not too much imagination, and also remember to take care, keep warm, and drive carefully – but above all, stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

*There is another short update on the “As Seen On…” page – this time from Goodreads – one of their Quotes of the Day…

I’m starting late again tonight – my favourite eldest daughter was over today, but we didn’t get much time to watch much of anything – just two episodes of Orphan Black! We both had Hairdressing appointments this morning, at 11.45am, so we weren’t finished until almost lunchtime, and then there was a bit of shopping to do – so by the time we got home it was almost two o’clock, and I hastily raced off for my Stair Walk before lunch. Then we sat around and chatted about – oh, lots of things really, and we debated whether to set Lee up on Julian’s machine to play Rift, so that she could bring her characters in, one by one, so that I could bring them into the Guild. We decided against it in the end – it could have become “awkward” if she’d become “Coin Locked”. “Coin Locked” – this is what happens when the Rift server decides that the password of the person logging on doesn’t correspond to their usual IP address (or something) – it allows you go log in and play the game, but it won’t let you access any Banks, whether your own or a Guild Bank, and it won’t let you sell anything, either to a Vendor or on the Auction House. What it does do is send you an email with a randomly generated number code that you have to type in to “unlock” your access. It’s a security precaution, and I think quite a good one – you must have access to your email, proving that you are who you say you are. So anyway, we decided to leave the Guild business until tomorrow – Julian will be off having a wonderful time in Adelaide (not!) so I’ll have plenty of time. She’ll ring me when she’s ready, and we’ll go through the process of getting everyone into the Guild and promoted to the appropriate level. After that, I’m in two minds – should I muck around with Rift? or should I muck around with graphics, and go through a few more templates for this blog. We’ve been so snowed under with everything lately that all our plans for a different blog host have sort of… melted… along with getting the rest of the forms ready for my change of name application – it’s no-one’s fault, we’ve just been busy  We did have a bit of good news today though, regarding finances – it seems that we will have ample funds available to be able to write out a deposit cheque on the spot – if we do bid (and of course, win) on a house Auction. The long and short of my options tomorrow: (1) I can look for a better blog template and fiddle with graphics, (2) I can ignore the world and Rift away to my heart’s content all day (or until I get bored), or (3) I can try to watch as many episodes of “Survivor: Worlds Apart” as I can, and free up a lot of space on the Foxtel box. Decisions, decisions! Of course, I could always say “Bah!! I can’t decide!” and stomp off in a huff – and just sit and read for the rest of the day (actually, you know, that doesn’t sound like a bad idea! Maybe I’ll do just that! 😉 ) What would any of you do, if you were me? But getting back to today, we ended up watching two more episodes of Orphan Black, and the plot is thickening up to the consistency of thick, creamy, custard – with lumps of mud in it! At one point I couldn’t watch the screen – I had to hide behind my scarf, because I thought that a totally gorgeous cat was going to be most cruelly tortured, or killed, by a really nasty and creepy sod – but it was alright, in the end the cat survived unscathed – but its owner caved in and gave the vitally important documents to the really nasty, creepy man. I would have done the same – I don’t care how “vitally important” the documents were, I couldn’t let any cat – let alone my own precious baby – be harmed, if there was any possible way that I could prevent it! I can’t wait for the next episode… 🙂

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

Well, here I am again – that’s what happens when I get a late start at this… Oh well, better late than never, as they say in the classics! Well, I said earlier that my favourite eldest daughter and I went to the Hairdresser this morning – she had a much-needed haircut, and I had my usual wash and blow dry. The last time I went there was last Friday – it should have been Thursday, but events at the time forced me to re-schedule. Anyway, I mentioned that I thought that the red in my hair was fading a bit, and the girl recommended that I use a particular conditioner containing madder root – she said that it would tint my hair a soft “pastel” pink, and bring out the red in the other bits. Now, I don’t generally use conditioner in my hair as it tends to make it even limper and finer than it normally is, but being a trusting sort of soul 😉 I bought some of the shampoo instead (it only comes in 1 litre bottles!) I hadn’t had a chance to use it yet, but they used some of the conditioner in my hair today… and hot damn diggety doggy, did it turn my hair the most beautiful shade of deep rose with dark rose highlights! It’s gorgeous! I think that shampoo will be used quite a bit! 🙂 Lee’s hair looks much better after a good hair cut, too 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. Well, it looks like the “spike” is moving in slow motion at the moment. It’ll probably speed up a bit tomorrow… I went up another point today, from 88.1kg to 88.2kg. But it’ll probably go up to either 88.3kg – or 88.9kg tomorrow… 😦

We’re going to try to have an early night tonight, as we’re going to be getting up so early in the morning. Which will probably play havoc with my weigh-in, so if my weight’s really gone up a lot, I shall blame the 4.30am weigh-in and totally discount it. If it’s gone down, I shall declare that I must always get up at that time to weigh myself, because that’s when I do best on the scales! 😉 So I’m sorta hurrying this along a little, as I still have to process my Minions and do my “nightly humiliation” Crossword Puzzle. I call it my “nightly humiliation” mainly because I have utterly no idea how it works out its scores… Some nights, I make a lot of typos, and/or straight out mistakes, but still get a high score. On other nights, I’m quick, make no mistakes, and get a low score… and every now and then, I’ll make lots of mistakes, but be quick, and get a middle of the road score… so I dunno… but I make a point of doing one every night. I like jigsaw puzzles too, and I should try to get back to doing them online – they’re much less messy online! 🙂 The place is going to feel very empty without Julian tomorrow – Flipper will be quite distraught, with “Daddy” not around to pat her all the time – after wandering around crying for about half an hour, she’ll probably try to sleep through the “Dreadful Daddy Deprivation Debacle” – that’s what she did last time Julian went to Adelaide for the day, anyway! 🙂 So that’s about it from me for tonight, but drop by tomorrow night and I’ll be able to fill you all in on what transpired in Adelaide, what my wretched weight decided to do to me – go up, and be discounted because it was too early for an accurate reading? or whether I’ll be getting up at 4.30am from now on because I seem to weigh less then..hmmm.. interesting concept… And you’ll learn whether I Rifted, found a decent, working template and worked on the graphics for it, watched as much “Survivor: Worlds Apart” as I possibly could in order to clear out the Foxtel Hard Drive, or simply curled up somewhere and read… but until then, please continue to bee good, remember that criticism is prejudice made plausible, and that moral indignation is jealousy with a halo, but above all, remember to take care of yourselves, drive carefully, and most importantly… stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

*There has been yet another update to the “As Seen On…” page today…

I’m starting a little earlier today – it’d been a quiet-ish sort of day today – I started off Rifting, but then we decided that it was high time that the second pull-out drawer we’d bought for my bathroom was installed. Before that, though, I was having a look at Laethys, and I decided that I was going to do some “neatening up” of my names and faces there. I think I may have mentioned some time ago that I like all my characters to have names which start with a different letter? It’s so that when you send them anything in-game, all you have to do is type the first letter of their name and the magickmailbox automatically fills in the rest of the name for you. Not so, when you have multiple names starting with the same letter. The magickmailbox will rotate through all the names starting with that letter, adjusting it as you add letters after after the first one that you entered. Example: say I have two characters whose names start with the same letter – Calypso and Crystal. Another character, Azshara, wants to send Crystal a new shield. She goes to the magickmailbox, and in the “To:” field she types a “C”. The magickmailbox helpfully fills in what it thinks should be the right name, and fills in “Calypso”. You give an annoyed “tsk!”, and type in an “r”. The magickmailbox remembers that you typed a “C” in first, connects the dots, gets the message, and fills in the correct name, “Crystal”. Now, depending on how many characters you have whose names all start with the same letter, it can take a few seconds for the magickmailbox to work out what name you really want, and you’ve been diddled out  of valuable questing time! So that’s why I like all my characters to have names starting with different letters. Prior to this morning, I had two girls whose names started with “C”, two whose names started with a “G”, and two whose names started with an “S”. Three “pairs”. I didn’t want to delete any of them, so I moved one of each pair to another shard, and created three newbies whose names started with different letters… All I have to do now is work on them all, and get the up to speed 🙂

Then Julian decided that we should install the new sliding basket in my bathroom, which required me to go and clean out the cupboard first. It didn’t take long as it was mostly junk. Old bottles of shampoo and hand lotions, that had “accidentally” got themselves shoved further and further to the back of the cupboard as I brought home new ones, in the vain hope that they’d make my hair thick and luxurious, or make me look 30 years younger, overnight. Please tell me that I’m not the only person who does this?  I threw more than half of them out this morning, which was a horrible waste, but… if they weren’t going to make me look thick and luxurious, or make my hair look 30 years younger, then there was no point in keeping them, was there?! 😉 Or… I could say that I was “just practicing” for when we move, because I’ll have to whittle down what will come with us. So, anyway, the sliding drawer was duly installed, and I have a nice, neat, tidy, sparsely populated, bathroom cupboard again!

And then it was lunch time! I trotted off for my lunch time Stair Walk, and when I got back I looked up “low-calorie rice pudding recipes” – not for me, for Julian! After dinner every night, I have a small diet jelly for dessert, and three prunes. Julian used to have a small “Le Rice” tub, and some dried fruit – but for the last week and a half, the “Le Rice” tubs have totally vanished from the supermarket shelves! We have a horrible feeling that it’s been “discontinued”, and poor Julian is quite upset about it. I told him that he might have to start making his own – I was pretty sure that someone would have put up recipes for low-calorie rice pudding, and I was right! I actually found quite a lot, and he printed some of them out this afternoon. They nearly all seem to have a remarkable amount of sugar in them for supposedly “low-calorie” desserts, but when you stop and think about it, three tablespoons of sugar wouldn’t be quite half a cup – and most recipes for “normal” rice pudding specify around about a half a cup of the sinful ingredient. There’s one recipe that he’s printed out which calls for granulated Splenda, so he’s going to try making that one – probably on Thursday, as he’ll be in Adelaide all day on Wednesday, for this Memorial service for Jamie, and tomorrow, Tuesday, my favourite eldest daughter will be here. Julian and I had a bit of a mutual grizzle today about Public Holidays (today) and “disruptions” (Wednesday) to our week, especially with this house hunting business taking up nearly all of our spare time (not to mention getting all the finances in place for when we do find something “special”!) “The “C” House” (Doncaster East) goes to Auction on June 27th, and the “Water Feature House” (Vermont South) goes to Auction the week before, on June 20th. Why am I starting to get nervous?! 😉

After we finished lunch we Rifted again for a couple of hours, and it was rather forcefully brought home to me just why I hate Goboro Reef so much! It’s having to do things underwater that un-nerves me – I am totally hopeless at positioning myself underwater! I’m completely useless at trying to fight underwater! I’m even incapable of following Julian underwater, even when he puts a great big Raid icon over his head! I keep losing him, because I’m swimming along, following him, and all of a sudden I’m caught up on a branch of coral, or under a ledge and I can’t see where I am to be able to get out from under it! Today, we had a quest that we’d done before with other characters, and it had me screaming in fury that time, too – doing it again today was no different – it had me screaming in fury again! We have to kill this big bad Boss, right? And he has hundreds of henchpeople to help him fight you – but there’s this “fish” who can heal you, as long as you follow him and stay close to him. Well, I couldn’t even see where Julian, with his great big Raid icon over his head was, let alone this ruddy fish! So Julian put a big green “X” over the fish’s head. I still couldn’t find either of them. I died. By this time I was starting to get frustrated and angry… For some reason or other, I didn’t get a soul-walk, I had to “re-spawn” – that is, come back as a ghost, outside the special Instance where we’d been fighting – at least, that’s what I thought! (one of these days I’m going to learn not to think so bloody much!) I knew we’d entered through a flickering yellow oval “portal”, but when you’re a ghost, everything’s in shades of grey. However, I could see this sort-of “flickering” oval – “Aha!” thinks me “The portal back in!” …and I swam through it. But it wasn’t the way back in, was it?! I was already in the Instance – swimming back through the portal took me out of the Instance, and I became well and truly lost. That was when I started screaming in fury again at the stupid quest! Eventually Julian had to die to get out of the Instance and find me, then he “swam” me back in again, where I Feigned Death, and waited until it was all over. I swear, I never, ever want to do that wretched quest, ever, ever again! But, we got through it (more by good luck than good management!) and I went up to level 61 – I’m not sure if himself went up too, but if he didn’t, he’ll be close on my heels! 🙂 Then we finished off, so that I could start writing this!

Weigh-in this morning. I’m starting to get very trepidated… I did go up this morning, but not as I’d expected to. I went up by one measly point, from 88.0kg to 88.1kg! Where’s my spike? I’m getting distinctly jittery about it…

And that’s about it from me for tonight 🙂 My favourite eldest daughter and I have the Hairdresser, two more episodes of “Orphan Black”, and a couple more episodes of “The 100” to look forward to tomorrow, and I’ll fill you all in on that tomorrow night, along with any news of my missing “weight-spike”, and various other items of news and interest. So don’t be shy and miss out, call in again tomorrow night to see what’s been happening around here! 🙂 In the meantime, please try to bee good, remember that It’s easier to seek forgiveness than to ask for permission (but ask, anyway!), but above all, remember to take care, drive carefully, and always… stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

*There has been an update to the “As Seen On…” page today…

Well, there was no house viewing today – apparently my comments last night about living in the Caulfield area have been taken to heart 🙂 It’s not that I’m against living there, it’s just that everything, and everyone I know is from over this way. So, anyway, we spent a good part of the day Rifting, drifting, and swimming down the watery avenues of the Goboro Reef, smiting nasty mobs with tentacles for legs, and other ones that look like black and pale green caterpillars. We did have a late start to our gaming, though, as I had a call from my favourite youngest daughter, Kate. She and her husband Terry are going through a pretty rough patch at the moment – his eldest daughter from a previous marriage turned 21 the other day, and it’s hit him very hard that he’s had to miss it. His ex-wife has been bad-mouthing him and telling their two daughters lies about him ever since they separated, telling them that he didn’t love them and that he wanted nothing to do with them. She also made sure that she made it almost impossible for him to have any access to them, by changing times and holiday plans at the last minute, and only making them available to him, again, at the last minute, when she knew he had to work. Anyway, the poor guy hasn’t been able to get in touch with his two daughters for years now, despite all attempts, legal and otherwise. She keeps moving, and not giving out their address; has denied him access to their Facebook pages when they were still young enough to be managed and manipulated by her, and of course, over the years, the lies she’s been feeding them about him not wanting to know them or have anything to do with them seemed to be confirmed, in their eyes. And for years, he’s suffered anxiety and depression because of this. He does love them, very much indeed, and it’s really hurting him badly that he’s missed out on all the milestones in their lives – 16th Birthdays, 18th Birthday, and now his eldest’s 21st Birthday. Not a single, solitary word has he heard from them, nor has he been able to get a single solitary word to them. They think he’s an uncaring and neglectful father, but he’s not – far from it! I don’t think there’s anything that he wouldn’t do for those girls… He’s sought legal advice in the past, but is afraid to do anything that “might make things worse”. So he’s in a terrible state at the moment, and so is my poor, favourite youngest daughter, because she loves him, and she has to live with his pain. It’s a mess. So, if anyone has any advice or solutions to this rotten problem, please feel free to let us know! Things can’t get much worse than they are, right now… Anyway, Kit-Kat and I had a very long talk this morning, and we started Rifting close to lunch time.

Neither of us died during our massacrations (I just made that word up! It’s a good one, isn’t it! OK, well I think it’s a good one! The root word, of course, is “massacre”, and I’ve added the “ions” onto the end because it’s sort-of an action – as in something that one does, like “procrastination”, or “dedication”, etc. 🙂 ) …anyway, neither of us died during our massacrations today, though Julian came close to death a couple of times, and my pet died once – unfortunately we didn’t actually go up a level, but once again, we came close to it – I think I have about two-thirds of a “bubble” to go before I turn 61, and himself has slightly more… but it was a good bash, and hopefully we’ll be able to get another hour or so in tomorrow, seeing as it’s a Public Holiday an’ all. I received an email from my favourite eldest daughter this morning, giving me the names of all her characters on both Laethys and Hailol, which I’ll add to my “Friends” list, so I’ll know when she comes online – then I’ll be able to invite her into the Guild. In return, I sent her a list of all my characters on both Laethys and Hailol, so that she can add them to her “Friends” list and can “whisper” me if I haven’t noticed her (a “whisper”, in both Rift and WoW is sort-of like a private message, in real time) Lee will be over here next Tuesday – we both have a Hairdresser appointment – and I expect that she’ll be very early. Julian has an appointment with the Smoke Detector person at 11 o’clock, so when he started arguing about it the other day I just said “Look! I’ll come with you when you go to pick up Lee, and you can drop us both off at Doncaster Shoppingtown, and then be on your merry way to your appointment. We’ll hang around until it’s time for our appointment, and you can come and pick us up when you’ve finished! What’s so hard about that?! Problem solved! (*Men!*)” As it turns out, he should be well and truly finished with the Smoke Detector person before our Hairdressing appointment, so there won’t be a problem. And that’s what we’re doing on Tuesday 🙂 Which reminds me – I must ask Lee (or perhaps I should be saying that I must remind Lee) to send us that list of episodes she wants downloaded, so that we don’t run out of things to watch on Tuesday afternoon! Julian and I have our last episode of “Elementary” to watch tonight – the last episode of Season 2 – and I’m not sure what we’re going to watch after that – I was thinking I might start him off on “Person of Interest” – I think he’ll like it, and I wouldn’t mind re-watching it! But, we’ll see…

Weigh-in this morning. Not Happy Jan! I went down three points! From “up one” to 88.3kg. yesterday, to down to 88.0kg. today! Oh, I am definitely not looking forward to the spike I’m going to suffer, tomorrow or the next day! 😦

So there it is – “My Sunday”, by Winter. Julian booked his flight to Adelaide this morning. For Wednesday morning. He’ll have to leave here at around 5.00am so that means I’ll have to be up around 4.00am Still, what can one do, but roll with the punches! It won’t be a fun day for me, but it’ll be an even less fun day for him… and Thursday morning will come. It’s almost time for my evening Stair Walk (do you realise that I do a total of 384 stairs a day? 384! This time last year I wouldn’t have been able to even climb six stairs, I was so terribly overweight and unfit!) so it looks like this blog is going to be another “split” one. I really must start writing earlier (though that’s not really possible on a Sunday!) And as for my new blog – I’m starting to have trouble remembering what I called it! (no, not really – but you get my drift, I’m sure!) and I am getting quite anxious about getting on with it… There just aren’t enough hours in the day!

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

 We watched the last episode of Season Two of “Elementary” this evening, followed by last Friday night’s “Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries” – naturally, being the last episode of a Season, “Elementary” ended on a cliff-hanger – I think we might have to try to get hold of Season 3 “by any means necessary”! I had to go and look all that up – I thought we’d been watching Season 3, but it wasn’t, it was Season 2 – what confused me was that the site I was looking at had the episodes listed from last (episode), at the top of the page, to the first (episode) at the bottom of the page! For goodness’ sake, who lists things from last to first like that, anyway! Especially when you’re looking for episode summaries! Grrr! It means you get all the spoil-e-r-s…. (*brightly*) what a good idea! All episode lists should be written with the last episode listed first! 😉 Anyway, drop by again tomorrow night – find out if my weight has spiked yet, and see what we got up to on our long weekend! There’ll be lots of news and gossip, so don’t miss out! But until then, at least try to bee good, never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups, and always – always, take care, drive carefully, and please… stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

I think this is probably the latest I’ve ever started writing this blog – it’s been a pretty hectic day, actually. It all started a couple of days ago when that totally evil SoftMaker Office look-alike program swatted Thunderbird and all my email into the Twilight Zone! We managed to get my email back, thanks to the wonders of nightly backups, but it took time in which I couldn’t get at my computer. Then there was the house hunting. That took even more time when I wasn’t able to access my computer, and then when I could access it, I had to do fiddly little mundane things, like finding and setting up a blog template that actually showed comments... and minding my (ruddy!) Minions, and dealing with all the goodies that they dropped oh-so-humbly at my feet. Then today, after we’d been out all morning looking at two houses, coming home, and then going out again later to have another look at our The “C” House – which we couldn’t have a look at after all, because Julian got the time wrong – the “Open For Inspection” time was 2 o’clock, not 3 o’clock… Julian set up The Bat for me, as an alternative to Thunderbird. And imported all my mail for me – and yes, it’s all there (I think!) But it all had to be sorted, and checked against the mail on Thunderbird, and new filters created and run on each individual email in my Inbox. But it’s ironic, you know… I first started using The Bat years and years ago, but I moved away from it to something “prettier“, like Incredimail, and Outlook Express, and then giving up on them and migrating to several lesser known mailers, and then finally, to Thunderbird – Julian decided that The Bat was pretty good, and he’s been using it ever since. So now I’ve come full circle, and of course, it’s changed over the years, and it’s all foreign to me now, so I’m having to learn how to use this “new and improved” version of The Bat all over again! It’s been a long afternoon…

Julian will be catching the red-eye to Adelaide next Wednesday for Jamie’s memorial service (we think it’s a memorial service – to say that informative details are scarce would be the understatement of the century!) and to catch up briefly with his mother, who is too frail to be able to go to the service. It’s not going to be a fun time for anyone (not that funerals and/or memorial services are supposed to be “fun”!) Jamie and his parents had been estranged for a long time, and apparently there’s quite a lot of bad blood and bitter feelings between them, and Jamie’s fiancée, so the air is bound to be thick enough with family politics to peel back with the blunt side of a knife… I’m sort-a glad I’m not going…

Now, the houses we saw today. The first one was in Vermont South, and would suit us right down to the ground! At the moment, I can’t make up my mind which one I really like better – the “C” House, or the Water Feature House (in Vermont South – it has a lovely big water feature outside – just to the right of the front door. It looks very “cool!” 😉 ) It has 4 bedrooms, to The “C” House’s 3, two of which would make an excellent Den and Office, a really nice kitchen with a good-sized family room, floor plan-wise it’s very well laid out, the bathroom and en-suite are not pokey or cramped (though the main bathroom has a very “stolid” looking bath in it – still, the shower is big enough to put a seat in it) It has a lovely covered deck onto a nice small garden area, a decent shed, and a big double garage with access directly to the house. The laundry is a good size, and there’s heaps of storage space – the one thing that The “C” House lacks

The second house was in Caulfield South and was very nice too – again, 4 bedrooms, to The “C” House’s 3, but much smaller, and – I dunno, slightly “claustrophobic”? The corridors seemed fairly narrow (or maybe it’s just that I’m still too fat? Probably…) and the three single bedrooms were pretty small – one didn’t have any sort of wardrobe or closet in it – and both the bathroom and the en-suite would have had to be re-built. It too had a nice little garden, with a lemon tree in it! but like The “C” House, it didn’t have a lot of storage space. And it was too small. I think I’d feel very cramped living there…

We have at least another one, if not two houses to see tomorrow – both in Caulfield South, but the more I think about it, the edgier I get about moving to that area – it’s so far away from what I realise I’ve come to think of as “my turf” – Doncaster Shoppingtown, The Pines, the fire escape stairs where I do my Stair Walks… (Winter sings, slightly off-key: ” mmm…  mmmm..mm….mmmm, in all the old familiar places, that this heart of mine embraces“) *sigh* Oh well… I do want to move, but maybe not that far away…

Of course, going out again tomorrow to look at more houses will mean we don’t get our traditional Sunday Monster Bashing in, but it’s a long weekend, so we could call Monday “Sunday”, and bash our monsters then… My favourite eldest daughter has informed me that she’s started playing Rift again, and she’s based in Laethys and Hailol – so welcome to Grumpy Old Farts, Lee! 🙂 I’m sure Jademoss will be very happy to make you a couple of Lanzan Bags! 😉 It’ll be fun – while she’s on holiday, we can all team up to bash the baddies! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. Well, I was expecting it. I went up one point, from 88.2kg to 88.3kg. The big spike should come tomorrow… However, “I’m expecting it” does not mean that I have to like it, or not grizzle and grumble and weep and wail about it! 😦

And that’s about it from me for tonight – call back tomorrow night, and I’ll fill you all in on whether we went out looking at houses, or stayed home and pummeled monsters in The Plane of Water, and whether or not my weight spiked alarmingly, compelling me to wring my hands in despair, gnash my teeth, scatter ashes in my hair and rend my clothing (no, I’d better not do that – I have few enough clothes that aren’t too big for me as it is!) So, right – no rending of clothing, then… (Winter peers over her glasses at her checklist: wringing hands… check! gnashing of teeth… check! ashes in the hair… check! Right, it all seems to be in order…) And of course, you can expect to get a detailed description of any and all houses that we go to inspect. It’s a real shame that we missed out on seeing The “C” House again this afternoon – after seeing the Water Feature House in Vermont South this morning, I was hoping we’d be able to compare them while they were both still fresh in our minds… But we will, we will… So until tomorrow night, bee good, remember to respect yourself if you would have others respect you, and also remember to stay warm and dry, and to drive carefully… but above all… stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

I suppose you’ve noticed that I’ve changed the blog template yet again? I really didn’t want to, I thought the old one was much nicer – cleaner, sleeker… but I was given no choice! The old one didn’t show comments – so although I liked the old one better, if I hadn’t received an email notification to tell me that someone had left a comment, I wouldn’t have known it was there! So I hastily scouted around for a semi-decent template that displayed comments, then I used the old header, chopped it down to the right size and re-framed it. Instant blog template change… well, almost instant, anyway… I guess it took me about three minutes to get the header re-sized, and about 10 minutes to find a suitable template to use.

I was going to tell you yesterday, but I guess I got a bit carried away with the house that I want us to get that I forgot to. Remember I told you that I was going to try out that new Windows Office look-alike thingy? Well, I did try it, a bit, but I didn’t have time to put it through its paces… now, I wish I’d never heard of the damn program! Apparently it uses, or has something to do with Thunderbird, the mailer that I use, because I opened Thunderbird to get the download address from an email I’d received from SoftMaker, and when I started installing the program it asked me to close Thunderbird. I just thought it was one of those installers that doesn’t like anything else being open when it’s installing something. So I closed Thunderbird, as one does when requested to by an installation process. However I didn’t have occasion to use Thunderbird again until the next morning, when I went to check my email. Thunderbird was there, installed an’ all, but everything else was gone! Thunderbird had been newly installed, but not set up to send or receive mail… and all my mail, all my settings, my address book, my filters, were gone! I was beside myself with anger, grief, and disbelief! OK, my email might not be terribly important to the fate of the world, but it was important to me! All my registrations! All my book records! All my personal emails, all gone! Blown away because this stupid SoftMaker Office 2016 program thought it would be a good idea to install the latest version of Thunderbird for me, and clean out all the “cobwebs” of my email setup and email at the same time! Thank ghod for nightly backups! While Julian was busy with the rather complicated process of retrieving my email for me, I got him to uninstall SoftMaker Office 2016 – and I can guarantee you all that I’ll never download or use anything from SoftMaker again! What if we hadn’t had backups? Lots of people (who should know better!) don’t… What if this was an important business venture,  or a law firm? What if overnight we’d lost important contracts, or irreplaceable legal documents!? (not that we would have – just about any high profile business or law firm would have been running nightly backups from which to retrieve the lost emails – one would hope, anyway!) So let that we a lesson to you all! If you’re going to try out a new, unknown piece of software, back up everything first!

We called in at the Commonwealth Bank this afternoon after I’d been to the Hairdresser, and you wouldn’t believe how long it took, and how difficult and complicated it was, to retrieve my “unclaimed money”! We needed an account number. A Commonwealth Bank account number. But we haven’t done business with the Commonwealth Bank for about 30 years, so we didn’t have an account number! We didn’t even know, at that stage, where the money was from, before it got handed over to “unclaimed monies”. We were there for about three-quarters of an hour before we were able to contact someone higher up in the Bank hierarchy who knew how to handle cases like this, so I should get my missing money in a week or so (hopefully!) Oh, and we did find out where the account was and how it had been “overlooked”. It had been with Bank West, as an account for e-trading with Andrew West (stockbrokers) both of which had been taken over and gobbled up by Comsec and the good old Commonwealth Bank – so once I gets me money, it’ll be “all’s well that ends well!” 🙂

Tomorrow we’re going to have another look at “our” house (or the “C” House, as I now call it) and on Sunday we have a couple of houses to look at in the Caulfield area. Normally houses aren’t open for inspection on Sundays, but Caulfield is pretty much the heart of Melbourne’s Jewish quarter, and they can’t have houses open for inspection on Saturdays (the Sabbath), because that would be considered “work”, so they have them open for inspection on Sundays instead! 🙂 And speaking about strange practices regarding not working on the Sabbath, did you know – or rather more to the point, would you believe, that in certain places in America (I think New York was one!) lifts (as in ‘elevators’) have a special device attached to them so that the lifts operate automatically, because pressing buttons is considered “work”… and some of the ultra-ultra orthodox even go so far as to believe that the movement of the lift’s counterweight constitutes work, and because you’re operating the lift, you are ultimately responsible for this work, which is a big no-no! (Winter shakes her head in sad disbelief) …But to each his (or her) own…

Did I tell you that I started writing this a little later than usual? 🙂 Time for my evening Stair Walk…

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

Weigh-in this morning. Well, as expected, the spike is on its way – I clocked in at 88.2kg again – the same as yesterday. The timing’s about right – approximately six days into the fluid retaining pills, up I go… Oh well…

So. I got a little bit of Rifting in this morning, then we went out, and by the time we got home I had time to write this up until I went on my evening Stair Walk. It’s now 9.30pm. You know that handy little LAN Messenger thingy that I use to ask Julian things when he’s not around? It works great, when he’s in the Office. It works just as well when he’s in here and I need to pass him a url or file. It doesn’t work when he’s in the kitchen though – not because he doesn’t have a computer in the kitchen, he does – but because at this time of night in the kitchen he’s usually busy cleaning up after dinner and making cups of tea, and not looking at his laptop. I was going to ask him what time our… sorry, it’s not yet, I mean the “C” House is going to be open for inspection. I hope it’s not going to be raining again tomorrow – I’d like to see outside, and I also hope that not too many other people turn up! The less people who know about it, the less competition we’ll have! 😉

I have a horrible confession to make! While we were doing the Supermarket shopping, after I’d been to the Hairdresser, and we’d been to the Commonwealth Bank, I bought… a packet of sugarless, orange flavoured mints (guilt! guilt! guilt!) And I ate two of them… they were only little… (guilt! guilt! guilt!) They were delicious! (guilt! guilt! guilt!) I should never have bought them! I promise I won’t eat any more – Julian can have them – and if I do eat any more, I swear I’ll do an extra Stair Walk to compensate, even though they’re sugarless and have less than a poofteenth of a kilojoule per tiny little round, delicious mint! (I should never have bought them! What was I thinking?!)

And that, gentle readers, brings me to the end of my rambling recounting of today’s adventures! Be sure to call back again tomorrow night to see if my weight did spike up – or boringly stayed the same for the third day in a row. Will we still love The “C” House, or will we start to notice tiny little cracks and flaws in its magnificent façade? Will it rain on our house hunting (well, this is Melbourne! 😉 ) and if you want to know the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything (it’s 42, by the way!) as well as the answers to heaps of other questions you haven’t even thought of yet, then this is definitely the place to hang out! But until then, please endeavour to bee good, remember that a smile is a curve that can set a lot of things straight – but above all, remember to stay warm and dry, to drive carefully, and to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

I’m starting quite early today – himself is just heading out for a second viewing of a house we saw the other day – the one that Carmen had waxed lyrical about. I’m not going with him because it’s raining, and there’s a long path, with rail-less steps that one has to negotiate before getting to the front door – and I don’t walk fast enough in shoes to avoid getting drowned, even with an umbrella. And besides… we went and looked at our new house today!! (says she, bouncing up and down in the chair with excitement) Wel-l-l, it’s not ours yet, but I hope it will be soon! It’s absolutely my dream home! It’s to die for! I want to move in tomorrow! (bounce, bounce, bounce!) We’ve actually seen two houses today – the one this morning wasn’t too bad, really, and had a lot going for it – but once again, it was an “older” house (you could tell by the layout of the rooms, and the *sigh* number of ‘exposed brick feature walls’) it would have needed a lot of work. As I said to Julian as we got back in the car – “there’s no way I’d pay their approximate asking price – it’s not too bad, all things considered, but our place is much, much nicer, and really only needs re-painting, and perhaps re-carpeting, if whoever bought it didn’t want tiles. That place needs loads of work, on top of their almost ridiculous asking price – and we know that at least one Agent has been honest enough to tell us that we wouldn’t get what they’re asking for theirs!” Then we went on to Acuity to get the replacement lenses – which had finally arrived – put in my glasses. They look much more betterer now, without the chipped lens staring you in the face! 🙂 The second house we were going to look at today – the “C” shaped house (and hopefully, our new home!) wasn’t for another hour and a half, so we came home and had our lunch and a cup of coffee before heading out again. It was raining, so I made sure that himself picked up an umbrella before we walked out the front door. It’s a corner block, with about half a dozen steps or so up to the front porch, but they were reasonably shallow steps, and had a nice sturdy hand rail all the way to the porch. Once again, we had to remove our shoes, and we padded through the big double front doors into a small slate tiled foyer with a tastefully small pebbled garden on each side of it. In front of us was a miniature (only about a dozen steps) “Grand Staircase” (that is: wider at the bottom than at the top, with sweeping, curved bannisters on each side) At the top of this mini Grand Staircase, the house curved around to each side – one side, the right hand side, curved away to the bedrooms and bathrooms. The bedrooms were quite large, and so were the bathrooms – which was a change, as most of the bathrooms in the houses we’ve seen so far were grudgingly small and pokey! So, back to the mini G.S. again – the whole of that curved section at the top of the G.S. is glass walled, and looks out onto a beautiful, slate tiled, almost octagonal court-yard, which opened up at its far end into a nicely small and petite garden. Moving on to our left was a so-called third bedroom, but would be used better as a study or office. It has a beautifully large laundry, a spacious kitchen and meals area. a separate dining room or lounge, and another sitting room as well (from memory) It’s quite “split-level”, with a couple of three or four step stairs in a couple of places, but all steps have very nice hand rails, and there was nothing in the way of stairs that I wasn’t easily able to manage. It’s carpeted, which might irritate my feet, depending on the type of carpet it is, but it was OK today, and usually I know as soon as I step onto a piece of carpet if it’s going to cause me grief, and this one didn’t (not yet, anyway!) There’d be a minimum of work in the bathrooms, it needs proper, ducted, refrigerated air conditioning. The kitchen would need a new stove top and a bigger fridge alcove, but other than those little things, the place is absolutely perfect! 🙂 Ah, himself has just come back from his second viewing of “Carmen’s Choice” property – he’s just making us a cup of coffee, then no doubt he’ll come down and tell me all about it. We have another couple of houses to see this weekend, but for some strange reason, I find that I’m not particularly enthusiastic any more! 😉

I finished off my new Desktop-Wallpapery-thingy today – I reckon it doesn’t look too bad – what do you all reckon? 🙂 It took me ages to find just the right font for the header (“Winter Home” – I used a font called Filibuster NF in 75pt ) and even more ages to line everything up properly and get everything spaced correctly – but it’ll do until I get bored with it and want to change it again… 😉

After some lengthy discussions with himself about “Carmen’s Choice”, we’ve decided that it’s …. actually too small! Now, it’s not a small house, by any stretch of the imagination – it’s actually very big, and has oodles of storage space (which, unfortunately, the “C” house doesn’t have 😦 ) but the bulk of the house is “entertainment” area – and we… simply don’t entertain! It’s not even that we don’t entertain enough to justify such a large amount of space, it’s that we don’t entertain, at all! Now, as I pointed out to Julian, I think it’s only the way that they’ve arranged and decorated the area – we’d arrange it differently, and I think we’d find that the area wasn’t, or wouldn’t be, as wasted as he thinks it would (be) Upstairs there’s the Main Bedroom, walk-in-wardrobe and en-suite, a small study, and another bedroom (also with a walk-in-wardrobe and en-suite) Downstairs, there’s a third bedroom, with the same walk-in-wardrobe and en-suite arrangement (plus a small kitchenette!) So, if we used the small study as Julian’s Office, where would we put the computer room/Den? In the second bedroom upstairs? Or the third, “guest” bedroom downstairs? As I spend nearly all day in the Den here, it means that if we used the downstairs “guest” bedroom, I’d be cut off from the rest of the house for most of the day. If we used the second, smaller bedroom upstairs, I don’t think it would be big enough for two desks and all our equipment. Forget about the small study/Office – it’s even smaller than the second upstairs bedroom! So… big as it is, it’s too small, plus if we’re going to be spending the sort of money they’re looking at, I’d rather spend it on the “C” house! 🙂

So that’s where we stand on the Huge House Hunt, at the moment.

Weigh-in this morning. I went down another two points today – from 88.4kg to 88.2kg. Boy, am I going to pay the price for that, tomorrow, or the next day! I’m not looking forward to the massive upward spike that’s on my horizon! 😦

We’ve not been told anything more about Jamie’s very sudden passing – Julian is talking to his mother at the moment, so she might have some more news.. I’ll keep you all posted as to whether he has to fly off for a funeral or not. As you can probably gather, I’ve not had much of a chance to do any more writing today – we’ve been out for most of it, and I’ve also been racing to get my Desktop-Wallpapery-thingy finished. Trying to fit in all the places we had to go and see this afternoon meant that I had to re-schedule my hairdressing appointment – so now I’m going tomorrow afternoon, instead. And there’ll be more houses to look at on the weekend – why do we have to be so busy, just when I decide that I want to do some serious writing? *pout* And I’m not even going to get this finished before dinner, as I have to go off for my evening Stair Walk… in about… five minutes! That is something I’d get in the “C” House though – inside exercise via the mini G.S.! It’d take me a while – I’d have to work out how many times I’d have to go up and down the mini G.S. to get in my 64 stairs down, and 64 stairs up. Twelve? 12×12 is 144, and I do a total of 128, so yeah – twelve times down, plus 12 times up would be good! That is, if there are twelve steps, which unfortunately I didn’t count today. It might be less… Anyway…

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

Back again. I asked Julian if his mother had said anything about funeral plans, but there’s been no news yet. I’m not quite sure what’s happening tomorrow, apart from a visit to the Hairdresser in the afternoon, so, who knows? I might even get a bit of Rifting, or some writing in! On the other hand, maybe I’ll just go down to the lounge room and read… or sleep! I could do with some of that… But that’s about all from me for tonight – call in again tomorrow night and I’ll fill you all in on what happened during the day, whether or not my weight has decided to go ballistic yet, and what our plans for the weekend are (F’rinstance, I can’t see us having our day in The Plane of Water on Sunday, though we might have time to fit an hour or two in, if we’re lucky!) and if we’ve decided to make a move on the “C” House yet (Winter crosses all her fingers… and decides that it’s too hard to type with just the tips of two nails, and uncrosses them again) So until tomorrow night, please bee good, remember that laughter is like a windshield wiper, it doesn’t stop the rain, but it allows us to keep going, but most importantly, remember to drive carefully, and above all, stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

I can’t believe it’s the middle of the week already! Where does the time go?! Just between you, me, and the bedpost, I think the time gets frittered away doing little bits and pieces of things, but never actually doing anything thoroughly and completely! F’rinstance, last night I thought that I wasn’t going to be needed for house hunting duties today – but it turned out that I was. So I shelved my plans for some more “tidying up” of Cersie’s Bank Vaults and bags, and turned to the Realtor site again – back to Domain, this time. I found twelve and “a bit” more-or-less suitable places – the “a bit” part being a totally unsuitable house which had the weirdest kitchen bench* I think I’ve ever seen – I kid you not, it looks like something out of a Sylvester and Tweety cartoon! I’d found it the day before yesterday, but couldn’t find it again to show Julian – but I came across it again today so I saved it for him (and for all of you, too) Sifting through 12 pages of houses took until nearly lunch time, when I hastily re-organised my Minions. I dithered about whether or not to do some more work on my Desktop-Wallpapery-thingy, and in the end decided against it. I was going to set up that new blog (more a journal, really) that I mentioned last night, before I got cold feet and decided not to. So I’ve started it – there’s not much there at the moment – I’m using the same template I’m using here, but with different colours, and obviously, a different header. When I’ve got a bit more posted in it, I’ll make it available to some of you. The reason I’m starting to write it is because over the years, quite a lot of people have said to me “You know, you really should write the story of your life”, to which my standard reply was always “What for? Who’d be interested in my life, anyway?!” and I’d laugh it off. Now, however, I’m beginning to think that maybe I should write these things down – I don’t really care whether the ubiquitous “anyone’s” interested or not, hopefully my family and friends will be, though, and anyway, even if just for myself, I’d like to get my story told before I’m too old to remember most of it! And so, that’s what the journal is about – my memories. I’ve done the “About the Journal” page (which made me more than a little emotional, remembering my early years at school) and the first part of my life that I can’t remember the first 3 years of, but have had to go on what I remember that people have told me about those years. I hope it will end up being a bit like a musical comedy – funny, bitter, sad, despairing, happy again, bored, and judgmental (mostly of myself! I am not really a very nice person…) But we’ll see… the proof of the pudding, and all that… 🙂

I did get quite a bit of Rifting in after I called it a day on the journal – I got Incantessa up to level 15, and have maxed out her Butchering. Unfortunately I’m w-a-y behind in Mining, so I’m going to remain over in Freemarch for the interim because that’s where all the best Mining and Foraging’s at! My Hairdressing appointment isn’t until the afternoon tomorrow, so maybe I’ll get a chance to level those two Skills up tomorrow morning. Before I started here this afternoon, I downloaded and installed a (supposedly) Microsoft Word “look-alike” program called SoftMaker Office 2016 – it’s supposed to be better than Microsoft Word (which certainly wouldn’t be too hard!) but I haven’t really had a chance to have more than a very brief look at it so far. Julian just came down to the Den to tell me that he’d been speaking to his mother in Adelaide, who told him that a cousin (I think? Mother’s brother’s son’s son?) has just died from complications with the medication he was on for his Diabetes. His wife gave birth to their second child only a few months ago, too – and he was only 29… it’s terribly sad – I’d only met him a few times so I didn’t know him terribly well, but from what I saw, he was a really nice young man. I’m not sure if Julian will be going to the funeral, but he probably will. That’s sort-of stuck a bit of a fly in my ointment – my mind just keeps turning to Jamie, and the last time we saw him… This blog might be a little shorter than it normally is, tonight…

Weigh-in this morning. I went down too much! Four points – I really hate dropping so much in one go! It only means that it’ll all pile back on again, tomorrow or the next day! However, this morning I went from 88.8kg to 88.4kg. As I said – it’s good… but it’s bad! Especially at the moment, while I’m taking those wretched pills!

Julian’s been hard at work on the finances for the house hunting and buying project – and we got a letter yesterday saying that I had quite a significant amount in unclaimed monies from one of the banks – I knew nothing about it, and have no idea where it’s from, or what it was for, but if it’s mine, I want it! So Julian investigated, and sure enough, it’s sitting there in unclaimed funds waiting for me to come and give it a good home. We’ve dug up all the necessary papers we’ll need for that, and I can pick it up from the bank tomorrow. We also found that there are some unclaimed funds for my mother’s Estate that we didn’t know about, thanks to the churlish behaviour of the Solicitor who was originally a co-Executor with me, but who stepped down from that role to take charge of Estate matters. The stupid old goat didn’t even have an email address – everything had to be either faxed to him and transcribed by his secretary, or sent by snail-mail and transcribed by his secretary – no simply sending a file, or a spreadsheet! Needless to say, the secretary made quite a lot of typos and mistakes, which is just not on when you’re handling an Estate the size of mother’s! To give her credit, the secretary was very good, and certainly knew her stuff, it’s just that there was far too much transcription which needed complete and scrupulous accuracy, for a single human, no matter how good, to cope with. In the end we had no choice but to sack him, and I suppose he thought that he’d take his “revenge” by not forwarding on important documents. So we have three lots of not insignificant sums of money to collect tomorrow, on our way to the Hairdresser. And that’s about it from me for tonight – drop by again tomorrow night to learn all the latest news and intrigue from chez nous – there’ll be lots to tell you all, I’m sure. However, until then, bee good, remember that cats do not like change without their consent, and that you cannot let a sleeping cat lie – as soon as you sit down, they’ll either want to go out, come in, or sit on your lap! Above all though, please remember to drive carefully, keep warm and dry, and to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

*Don’t click on the video thingy, click underneath that where it says “Photos (10), then right-arrow/sift through the photos until you come to the kitchen bench one – you can’t miss it!

Here I am, fresh back from my evening Stair Walk, and not even puffing! 🙂 Julian left a little later than usual to take my favourite eldest daughter home, because of a last-minute phone call from an Estate Agent, about a house in Caulfield North that we might, or might not, go to see, because it turns out that it’s a two storey place. Julian’s thinking is that while I can manage stairs now, what about in ten year’s time? But if such is one’s thinking, one might as well say “Well, it’s not raining now, but what about next week, hmmm? Perhaps we’d better not make arrangements to go on that picnic next week, just in case it rains then!” – and no-one would ever do anything – “just in case”! The house with the best floor plan will be open for Inspection on Saturday and Sunday, so we’ll go and have a look at it then, but I’m not sure about when we can see the nice, “C” shaped house – Julian was in one of his dithery “I can’t remember now and I’m in a hurry” modes when he left, so I suppose he’ll fill me in on that one when he gets home. My favourite eldest daughter and I had a very nice day – she complained about her Tumblr account/site/blog/whatever, so we went and had a look at that (and it was pretty woeful!) – the long and short of it all is that I ended up signing on for a Tumblr account/site/blog/whatever, so I spent a bit of time setting that up (sort-of) but I don’t really think it’s “me”. Anyway, for what it’s worth, it’s called “The Politbureau” and you can find it at satai-winterborn.tumblr.com (I think! Yeah… it seems to work…) Follow me at your peril! 😉 I’m still working on my new Desktop-Wallpapery-thingy – what with house hunting, Minions needing to be unpacked and re-packed, and hunting through 2000+ fonts for just the right one for the title on my Desktop-Wallpapery-thingy, I haven’t had much time on my hands lately – though I did spend a little time on Laethys this morning, before Lee arrived, trying to bring a small modicum of organisation to poor Cersie’s personal Bank account and overflowing bags full of Dimension items. I’m starting to get it all sorted out, but it’s truly a task of Herculean proportions! And when I’ve finished with her, I have to turn around and do it all over again with Rubyfox, on Hailol! The reason for all this sudden, frenetic sorting and organising is because the Guild Banks on both Laethys and Hailol are starting to overflow with Dimension items, brought in by the every busy Minions – and all these Dimension items need to be stored somewhere! One of my problems is that writing seems to be taking up more and more of my time, lately – there’s this blog, and now the Tumblr one – though I doubt that I’ll do very much with that one – maybe just scribble a cryptic remark every once in a while, perhaps… and of course, The Adventures of Darth Carla story, which has rapidly gone absolutely no-where. There’s the plan I have to transcribe all my Grandfather’s manuscripts (once we find them again, that is!) and one more blog that I’m currently toying with the idea of starting. I’ll let you know if I decide to go ahead with it 🙂

When Julian got back from the Physio this morning, Lee and I abandoned my attempts to sort out my Tumblr thingy – I don’t know – is it a proper blog, or more like a permanently online Twitter account? Not that I’ve ever used Twitter, or even have the slightest desire to do so! (it seems like a complete and utter waste of time, actually!) and we went out to the lounge room to have our lunch, and start watching the last two episodes of “Orphan Black” that we had! 😦 I hope we manage to get some more soon – I’m starting to miss it already… and Paul, a character who’s been in it since the very first episode (and is really rather yummy looking!) got killed off this afternoon! 😦 Very sad! Hopefully he managed to take two of the really, really nasty people out with him, but I very much doubt it – they’ll be back to wreck more havoc, pain and suffering on the remaining clones.. Then we watched the last few episodes of the season of (Marvel’s) “Agent Carter” – another very good series that no-one really thought would rate more than one season, but lo and behold, it’s been so good, and rated so well, that they’ve been offered a second season! Unfortunately, we in Australia won’t get to see it until at least the end of this year – and probably not until sometime next year!

Weigh-in this morning. Miracle of miracles, I went down another two points, to 88.8kg! But… I’m on day two of the fluid retaining pills. which usually take a few days to kick in and skyrocket my weight, so I expect it to shoot up again tomorrow, or the next day…

My hands are so cold I can hardly type – I’m not cold, only my right ear and my hands are cold! Go figure! My stupid right ear gets so cold that it starts to ache – no, I’m not sitting in a draught, and my left ear feels perfectly normal – it’s just my right ear. It’s weird. It’s been like that ever since I can remember; no-one can give me any reason or explanation for it, and I’ve learnt to live with it (but not how to do so without grizzling and complaining about it! 😉 ) I’ve taken to wrapping a hijab-like scarf around my head in winter to keep the stupid thing warm – I just wish I knew how to make it look pretty – I had to laugh last year when I was in hospital – Dr. Y. was on his rounds one day and walked in with me wearing the scarf – in a mock-shocked voice he said “Don’t tell me you’ve changed religions on me!” and when I told him about my ear he seemed to think it was hilariously funny – so the two of us had a good giggle, while the nurse stood there and glared! 🙂

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

I’m back again! 🙂 When I’ve finished here I shall go and have another look for just the right font for my Desktop-Wallpapery-thingy title – I’ve only been looking since yesterday afternoon, and so far, working backwards from “Z” to “A”, I think I’m about up to the “L’s”, so I still have a few more to look at, but at least I have a “short list” of five at the moment. Apparently I’ve been taken off house hunting duties at the moment – we have a couple to look at in the Doncaster/Templestowe area on Saturday, and a couple to look at in the Caulfield area on Sunday – and also because Julian wants to get all the finances sorted out so that if we see anything outstanding that we simply can’t live without, we can put in an offer and have the deposit “to hand”, so to speak, so he’ll be working on that tomorrow – leaving me free to Rift, graphic, or to write, for a change 🙂 And actually, you know, I think that’s about it from me for tonight – if you call in again tomorrow night I’ll be able to tell you all about my graphical mishaps, my Rifting triumphs and woes, and my stuttering attempts at writing something for posterity – if (that’s a great big “if” there!) I decide to actually do it, that is – I’m quite daunted, and may well chicken out of it for another couple of years… and of course, I’ll be able to tell you what my weight decided to do to me, on my third day of fluid retaining (only another seven to go!) But until tomorrow night, gentle readers, please try to bee good, drive carefully in the wet, and keep warm on these lovely cold nights… but above all… please, stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

I’m starting a bit earlier this afternoon – hmm – I just tried changing the font again – more annoyment if I make the font big enough for easy editing, the finished text size is too big (I think, anyway) and the Title definitely is too big. I can change the font while I’m writing the blog so as to make editing easier, and then change it back again when I’ve finished, but honestly, I shouldn’t have to! [*insert naughty words here*] Oh well, I’ll leave it like this, and change it back again when I’ve finished. *sigh* Today I’ve been a “Jill of all Trades” – starting out with house searching on a different site this time – Realestate.com.au – it’s not nearly as comprehensive and user-friendly as Domain, but they do seem to have some different listings, so I spent most of the morning there, while Julian worked in the Office. I sent him all of my finds via our handy little LAN Messenger utility  (I love it – it means that I no longer have to yell for him if something goes wrong, or decides not to work 😉 ) Some of the prices were good, but the house itself needed so much work as to not be acceptable, and honestly, I know I’m always saying that you shouldn’t spit on anyone (else’s) taste (or to quote the old Italian saying “su i gusti non si sputa”) but some of the interiors were shudders to behold! Carmen likes her vendors to clear out all the clutter. In fact, she advises people to actually move out, and let her and her “stylist” move in (not literally!) with a few choice pieces of rented furniture – and I can see her point. A prospective buyer has no real imagination – when they come into a vacant house, it’s hard to imagine where the television will go, or what colour lounge suite would look best in a small lounge room, but if you put a few pieces of furniture into a room, it gives more of a perspective – buyers can say, “Oh, I don’t like the couch over there! I’d put it over here, with some nice side tables… and blah, blah, blah…” Too much furniture makes rooms look small and crowded, too little, and the place looks soul-less. Anyway, some of the interiors we’ve already seen really put me off the place (I don’t know about Julian!) like the first place in the cul-de-sac with the very steep drive – the rooms were absolutely crammed with furniture to the point where it was like running a maze just to get around the room! And I’m afraid that the pile of pictures leaning up against the arm of a chair (and half way across the walk space) didn’t really do it for me… The big place we saw on Saturday was beautifully decked out, with just the right amount of furniture – though I’d put in a recommendation to stylists to only use three-quarter size beds in a small bedroom – it would make the room look much bigger, and “cozy”, rather than “cramped” Anyway, some of the places in the listings this morning… one featured bare brick walls… on just about every wall in the house, except the bathrooms. Now, I don’t mind the occasional bare brick “feature” wall, but that house easily demonstrated that you can indeed have “too much of a good thing”! Some of the places had obviously been done up for sale – but then they’d gone and filled it full of old, tatty furniture – and I’m not talking about “Shabby Chic”, either! Still, as I said to Julian (when he commented on some of the decor) I was mainly deciding which places were worth following up by their floor plan. Rooms can be changed, walls rendered, carpets ripped up and tiles put down, curtains at least “modernised” – that sort of thing, but if the floor plan isn’t suitable, then the house isn’t, no matter how beautiful the rooms might be.

So I looked for houses (four l-o-n-g pages of listings worth) until Julian went off to his Podiatrist, then I Rifted for a bit. The weekend 50% experience bonus was still active (it was still Sunday in the US!) and Incantessa was still in Freemarch, sitting on level 11, so I ran her around there a few times, picking flowers, mining tin, skinning wolves and piggies, and looking for Artifacts, just waiting until the Merchant that you have to kill to get the title “Merchant of Death” arrived.. Then Julian came home, we chatted about his Podiatry visit, and had lunch. The Podiatrist took a plaster cast of both of his feet, and he’s having an “orthotic” made for the injured foot (and ankle) It’s a bit like a slipper that goes inside his shoe and is designed to slightly rotate his heel (but I’m not quite sure why, or what that’s supposed to do) He’s off to see the Physio tomorrow morning, so if my favourite eldest daughter is coming over, she’ll be here nice and early, as his appointment is at 11.30, and he can drop her off here on his way there. After lunch, I hit the graphics trail once again – this time working on (yet another) Desktop Wallpaper thingy. I’m thinking of using the same background as I’ve used here (I quite like it at the moment, but don’t expect that to last for too long 😉 ) Unfortunately, once again the brushes I downloaded have let me down. I don’t have anything that’s suitable, or that I really like – so I’m now starting to think that I may go for a straight graphic instead. I probably won’t get a chance to work on it tomorrow, but I should have something viable to show you all the day after. (Winter looks in her coffee cup. Damn! It’s empty! *cry* )

Weigh-in this morning. Well, I didn’t go up, as I fully expected that I might (that will happen tomorrow – you can count on it, especially seeing that I started back on those ghastly fluid retaining pills this morning! 😦 ) I went down one point (a much more reasonable drop!) to 89.0kg. Let’s see what tomorrow brings…

I’m not sure what’s happening tomorrow, except that my favourite eldest daughter will be here (she just SMS’d us to let us know) so I suppose we’ll be watching a few episodes of this, that, or the other, as we usually do. Tonight, when I get back from our nightly television session, I’ll probably continue with my house hunting – Julian wants to see if he can organise some inspections on Wednesday – there was one I found this morning that we both thought was “intriguing”  (he’s actually having another look at the floor plans as I type! Great minds do think alike! 😉 ) so I hope he can organise something with that one – I’d love to have a look inside! It’s most unusual – it’s on a corner block, and it sort-of curves around the corner of the block – so it’s not so much an “L” shaped house, it’s more of a  “C” shape! I’ll let you know if we can get an appointment to see it. There’s another house in Wheeler’s Hill, fairly close to the Police Academy on top of the hill – and fairly close (but not walking distance!) to where we used to live, and where my favourite eldest daughter and her spouse are now. Unfortunately the Auction’s this Saturday, so we really don’t have time to get things organised. Pity. It had the best floor plan of the lot! Anyway, that’s about all from me for tonight – stay tuned tomorrow though, as there’ll be lots and lots of news on all fronts! 🙂 Will we get to see those two houses? (and will they put off the Auction until we can get ourselves organised? I can tell you that right now, actually! That is not going to happen!) Will I find more, and even betterer houses? Probably! 🙂 Will my weight go up? down? or stay boringly the same? Who knows! Anything is possible! But those, and lots of other interesting pieces of information, will be all yours for the grabbing thereof, right here, this time (or slightly later, depending on what time I start writing!) tomorrow night! However, until then, bee good, remember that you can trust your dog to guard your house, but never trust your dog to guard your sandwich, but above all… please remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂