Well, I sat down to start writing this about three-quarters of an hour ago – but I got distracted. As usual. All those ruddy items of furniture that I’d found the other day, where they were, plus my comments about them, and which I’d oh so foolishly saved onto Speed Dial, all had to be transferred across to a format that Julian could access, too. Notepad is a very handy tool for things like that, as is being able to have two windows open on the same screen at the same time. So I set about copying and pasting, copying and pasting, ad infinitum. All those bits and pieces of furniture are now accessible by Julian in an easy to read file stored on Drive Z of the File Server (why I didn’t just do that in the first place, I’ll never know!) And now we have three things! We have…. the house. We have…. the measurements. And… we have…  the “List of Furniture Needed“! Nothing can stop us now, muhahahahahahaha! Well, theoretically, anyway! But that’s not what distracted me this afternoon – I did all of that copying and pasting this morning! No, this afternoon I was distracted because I couldn’t find my handy-dandy “Blog Short-cuts and Other Handy References” file on my desktop. This was because I had so many wretched programs and files saved on my desktop that you could hardly see the desktop wallpaper! There was too much “stuff” in the way. Now, I really need that “Blog Short-cuts and Other Handy References” file – it has things like the “Winter’s log” phrase that I just copy and paste, and change the last one or two digits, and it has various words that I always get confused as to how they’re actually spelt, words with foreign accents, the “break for dinner and television” thingy, and the one I use when I’ve just added something to the “As Seen On…” page. It’s quite necessary to the well-being of this blog! So I resolved to “tidy up” my desktop. I made a new folder, and called it, very imaginatively, “Absolutely Everything”, and I did put everything on my desktop into it. Except for a few things. I made a separate folder called “Blog Notes” – guess what I put in there! There are only seven items on my desktop now – well, for the moment, anyway. So that distracted me a bit… but then I looked at the wallpaper I’d been using, and decided that I liked my bookmarks wallpapery-thingy so much that I should make another for the “back” desktop, so I did. You can see it here. It’s just like the bookmarks wallpapery-thingy, only a bit different 🙂 And that’s how I got distracted this afternoon 🙂

The cleaners were in this morning… there were four of them, and it took them four and a half hours. I think they did everything except this room (the Den) because Flipper and I were cowering away from all the noise and chaos in here. As soon as Julian and I have finished our coffee, I’m afraid I’m going to have to be distracted again – we have to go and move some of the furniture that the scintillating and sparkling Sharron had placed “on artistic angles” in the hall. I’ll allow the chair to stay on its “watch out or I’ll trip you up” angle, but the small cabinet has to be moved! The umbrella stand can go in the corner newly vacated by the small empty wine rack and the round, glass “wot-not” stand, the “Roman Camp” chair can move into the corner by the front door, and the little cabinet can go next to the front door. If the colourful and carefree Carmen doesn’t like it, well… I guess we’ll move it all back again? 😉 Right, well, third and (hopefully final!) distraction of the night has been dealt with – the umbrella stand is back where it originally stood when my mother lived here, the “shoe rack” basket is where the empty wine rack and round glass “wot-not” stand used to be, the “Roman Camp” chair is angled in the corner near the front door, and the little cabinet is in a much more salubrious and practical position, next to the front door. If the two Lusciously Lovely Ladies don’t like my changes, they can lump it! (so there!)

To say that today was a sh*t of a day would be a gross understatement – I’m getting just so sick of people coming in, not only disrupting our lives, but making them damned-well uncomfortable as well, I’m almost ready to scream at the next person who rings the front door bell! The lounge suite we were allocated for this campaign has to be one of the most uncomfortable pieces of furniture that I’ve ever had the displeasure to sit on. For starters, it’s not leather, it’s not vinyl, and it’s not fabric. It’s some sort of plasticky covered fabric which feels most unpleasant to the touch. The colour? Imagine… one teaspoon of ready mixed mustard, blended into a good half-liter of plain Greek yogurt, and you’ll come close to the colour of the couch. You can’t put your feet up, and you can’t lean back – but even so, I have no doubt whatsoever that last night I was a lot more comfortable than poor Julian was in one of those “horseshoe” chairs! Honestly though, are the extra dollars we might get for this place by making ourselves thoroughly uncomfortable for another 45 days really worth it?! I wouldn’t have minded so much if we could have at least be comfortable while we watched television in the evenings, but it’s about on a par with the first night without our furniture, when we had to use our computer chairs in the lounge room!

Weigh-in this morning. I know it’s only the first day off those unspeakable tablets, and far too soon to expect good results, but (I don’t even know if I can bear to write this!) I went up a point. For nine days I have see-sawed upwards and downwards between 84.3kg and 84.4kg. Nine days! Yesterday I’d been sitting on 84.3kg for three days. Today I went up to 84.4kg. again! Well, I don’t care if “it’s only fluid, and once you’re off the pills it’ll go”, I don’t care if it’s wind, and I don’t care if it’s feathers from the bloody doona that I must have swallowed in my sleep! I’m so depressed I don’t know whether to slit my own throat, or throw myself down the bloody fire escape stairs! But if my weight doesn’t start to go down again soon, I’ll pick the one that’ll be fastest! I’m done with this bloody weight-loss idiocy!

Tomorrow’s Sunday, and we’ll be Rifting for most of it, trying to pretend that life’s still muddling along as usual, then there’ll only be two more days of people encroaching on our territory – Monday, when the photographers will be here, probably with the charismatic Carmen and possibly the scintillating Sharron as well, telling the photographers what to do (they’re both very good at telling people what to do!) and Tuesday, when the painters will be here. After that, I would really like to slam the bloody front door closed and only open it again when we want to go out, and on the “Open For Inspection” days. And that, dear readers, is about it from me for tonight – do call in again tomorrow night, to learn how the two of us fared in (and on!) The Plain of Water – we’ll be playing our usual two girls – both Mages – and as usual, it’ll be a lot of fun. I’ve also been playing quite a bit more Final Fantasy XIV – it’s a lot slower game play-wise, than Rift and World of Warcraft – but I still haven’t been able to work out if that’s because I’m currently in the “starting out” area, and if it’ll get faster as I level up (I have three characters – my current one is sitting on level 5) I know I nearly gave up on Rift when I first started playing it because I thought it was too fast for me to cope with – but I’ll let you know more about it after I’ve played it for a bit longer – maybe when I’ve reached level 10. Whatever happens though, there’ll be heaps to tell you about tomorrow, so don’t miss out on all the hot goss! 🙂 Until then, though, please continue to bee good, remember that the smallest act of kindness is worth more than the grandest intention, don’t forget to keep warm, to look after yourselves, and to drive carefully… but most importantly, remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂