We spent today in (on?) The Plane of Water. I say “in”, with a following “(on?)” after it because sometimes we’re underwater (i.e. “in”) and sometimes we seem to be running around on dry land, even though we’re presumably underwater… because if you find a “bouncy sponge” and jump on it, you get bounced high up into the air, which suddenly becomes water, and the next thing you know, you’re swimming, and treading, water in a vast ocean! ( …It’s complicated!) Anyway, we were running around on dry land – we both “dinged” level 63 (only two more levels to go to level 65!) and neither of us died – Julian came close, once, but death is such a fleeting thing in Rift… 🙂 It was a good day – lots and lots of Carnage quests – a few of which we haven’t finished yet, so we’ll just have to go back next Sunday and kill off another 8 Feral Animals, a few Mimes and Art Critics, as well as destroy another four hideous pieces of Art Work. But once again, we got a bit of a late-ish start – I had a phone call from a very old family friend. He actually rang me up last Sunday – we haven’t spoken in years – but he just thought he’d catch up – when I told him we were moving in August, he was very glad that he’d rung – if he’d put it off any longer, we wouldn’t have been here! Anyway, long story short, we chatted a bit last Sunday, and I promised to send him the links to our April Photo Shoot, as well as some Real Estate photos of our new place. He and his wife moved into a Retirement Village quite some time ago, and he remembered that I’d told him I’d be leaving my fire escape stairs behind, and that we were thinking of getting a stair climbing machine of some sort. His phone call today was to tell me that he thought the photos of us were simply stunning, and to let me know that there was a machine in their (retirement) Village that might be the sort of thing we were after. It’s not stairs, or an escalator-type machine, it’s more like a treadmill that’s on an adjustable slope – it sounds interesting, so he’s sending me its name so that we can look it up. As I said, they’re very old friends of the family – his wife’s brother grew up in Carlton with my father – they went to school together, later on they were in the Army together, and they’d always been very close friends. When my father met my mother (at an Army dance in Dromana) and they started going out together, she was eventually taken over to meet this other family – which turned out to be a huge co-incidence because her mother – my grandmother – was also a very close friend of that particular family – in fact they used to play Mahjong together regularly! They’d just had a little girl, so when my mother met her, “W” was little more than a babe in arms. Later on, as this little girl grew up, she and my mother became very close friends – with very straight “poker” faces, they’d tell people that they were “twin sisters”, which was a real joke – not only was “W” so much younger than my mother, but she was Chinese, and my mother was very much an “English rose”! Of course, in due time the “little girl” grew up and got married and she and her husband had three sons – all of whom, I was told last Sunday, were either in their 50’s, or close to it now, which made me feel soooo old! I remember giving them “whizzies” (holding them by both hands, and spinning around with them so that they were whizzing around me with their feet off the ground!) when they were just little boys! Well, I stopped thinking of them as “little boys” many years ago, but they were in their early 20’s last time I saw them and that’s the way I still think of them – so as I said, it made me feel really old to think of them in their 50’s now! “M” used to be very involved with the Uniting Church in the Balwyn area – so when they come over next week to say “hello”, I must ask him if he still is, or if he’s “retired” now (every time I stop typing to read back over what I’ve just written, the screen changes – it sort of half pages down, and then goes back to where it was again, and it can’t be me doing it because my fingers aren’t anywhere near the keyboard, or anything! I thought it might have been the automatic “draft saver” thingy, changing the screen aspect as it updated itself, but it’s not, because I just watched the draft saving itself, and apart from the “Draft saved” time stamp updating, nothing changed! Talk about weird! ) Anyway, we had a fun day today, and no, we didn’t get anywhere close to setting a toe into the spare room – we’ll have to get onto that early tomorrow morning, because Sharron will be over around 5-ish tomorrow afternoon! *gulp*

Weigh-in this morning. Crikey, I hate those [*censored*] pills! More mucking about! I went down one point – from 84.2kg to 84.1kg. At this rate, I’ll still be in the 84kg zone when I go to see Dr. Y. on the 21st! 😦 Now there’s no way known that I’ll get down into the 82kg zone by then, and I did so want to! 😦 *cry*

Actually, I don’t know that I’ll be much help in the spare room tomorrow – maybe it’d be better if I just kept out of the way and stayed quiet… I downloaded a new Windowblind this morning (Windowblinds – a fancy “skin” for Windows, for those who think the Windows look is très boring – which it is!) Julian doesn’t like it, but I do! 🙂 This one is in shades of a soft teal colour – I can change the colour if I want to, but I’ll leave it like this for the moment – and I sort-of started making a new desktop wallpapery thing to go with it – so tomorrow I’ll either work on that, or take the opportunity to do a bit of Rifting (like, what else do I ever do around here, hmm?) Oh, remember that I said that my left foot got terribly cold the night before last? Well, it did it again last night, and I was all prepared for it, too! I wrapped both of my feet up in a nice warm mohair rug… and my right foot stayed comfortable. My left foot, though, froze to the point that I could only flex my toes with the greatest of difficulty! As I said to Julian at the time – I could even feel the cold radiating out from the core of my foot in sort-of waves! The only thing I can think of is that when I do my evening Stair Walk, I’m walking bare footed on cold concrete – and my left foot is the one that does the work, especially coming up the stairs, and maybe my left foot gets thoroughly chilled… then, when I get inside again, I usually go and ensconce myself in front of the television, with my feet up, and without giving my feet a chance to warm up properly. So tonight, I’m going to do something totally unheard of, and totally out of character for me! I’m going to try wearing my hated shoes (I’ll probably end up falling down the stairs though – I just can’t balance in shoes – well, I can’t balance in these clumsy, clod-hopping things  that I call “shoes”, anyway!) and when I get back inside, I’m going to take those horrible things off and go and stand in the bathroom for a bit (the floor’s always nice and warm in there!) and see if I can possibly take some of the chill out of my left foot. I’ll let you know how it works out tomorrow night! Mind you, if there’s no blog tomorrow night, you’ll know that it’s because I wore those ugly and uncomfortable “shoe-things” and fell down the stairs and broke my neck! 😉 So, that’s about it from me for tonight – tune in again tomorrow night though, for all the latest! What did I do whilst Julian was busy slaving over a hot bookcase? Did I Rift, Graphic, or a bit of both? And what about my weight? Has it started going down a bit, or will it still be on the rise? How did I go on the stairs, with my shoes on? And more to the point, did my theoretical plan work, or did my left foot freeze again, for the third night in a row? Find out the answers to all these questions, and more, this time tomorrow night! Until then, though, bee good, don’t forget to strive to be eccentric now – don’t wait for old age to wear purple! (or hot pink, with fluorescent neon green polka dots!) don’t forget to drive carefully, to keep warm, and to look after yourselves… but above all, remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂