Naturally I’m starting late today – we’ve been on (in?) the Plain of Water most of the day, and I’ve only just finished wrapping my end of things up (you know, tanning hides, selling junk, sending “stuff” on to some of my other girls (and then going and collecting it for them) putting platinum in the Guild Bank – that sort of “wrapping up”! 🙂 ) All in all, it was good day – my new shot rotation that Julian and I worked out on our experimental run with Mandreth and Sylversong worked a treat! I We were even able to handle separate mobs on our own, which made finishing off quests a lot quicker! Unfortunately we didn’t go up a level, but I reckon we went up more that a half a one, if not a bit more (leveling up is s-o-o s-l-o-w after you hit level 60!) And we both died – I died once, Julian died twice – the first time Julian died was when we’d just started out on our first quest for the day – we ran blithely out of Draumheim, right into a Death Invasion Foothold! A short explanation. “Invasions” occur when creatures from one of the “Planar” realms (i.e. a very bad place) decide to invade the world of Telara. They usually enter through a “Foothold”, then run around killing anything that gets in their way until they come to a suitable place to set up another “Foothold” – rinse, and repeat. These invaders come in quite a few different “flavours” – you can have “Fire” Invasions and Footholds, “Water” ones, “Life” ones, but the worst two are probably the “Death” ones and the (relatively new) “Nightmare” ones. At the centre of these “Footholds” is a malevolent idol, which keeps spawning nasty creatures from whatever plane they originated on. Once enough of these creatures spawn, a group will run off to attempt to create a new “Foothold”, while the rest of the creatures gather around the idol to defend it from mean and nasty people who want to destroy it – like our two Mages today. Well, as I said, we ran right into this nasty Death Foothold, which was surrounded by Giant Spiders, and what looked like a cross between a flea and a shrimp – giant-sized, of course! Julian actually died – I “Feigned Death” and survived. Handled the right way (i.e. not running blithely into their gaping maws!) they’re not all that hard to defeat and obliterate, so once Julian had stopped being dead, and I’d cautiously scrambled up from pretending to be dead, we attacked the Foothold in a more appropriate manner, and took our Revenge on them 🙂 The second time we died, we had a quest where we had to – how did the quest put it? “Flirt with a Haughty Nightmare in order to reveal the impostor” – or something like that, anyway. Anyway, we did that, the nasty impostor was revealed, and of course, we had to kill it. It was a pretty tough beastie, and we were happily battling with it, when Julian yelled at me “Look out!” just as I keeled over stone motherless dead. A second or so later, and he was dead, too! We had failed to notice that this particular beastie had an attack which displayed as purple and blue concentric rings on the ground, and if you didn’t notice in time, they drained the life right out of you! I guess that’ll teach us not to be so overconfident! 
The old saying “Live and Learn” would probably be more appropriate to Rift if it was “Die and Learn”! So we failed that quest, and had to do it over – this time watching out for blue and purple rings on the ground! So by the end of the day we’d completed all the quests in the Draumheim area, and we’d obtained the “breadcrumb” quest to the next, which we shall pursue next week.
Have any of you ever heard of “Biorhythms”? Cycles in your life which are supposed to predict how you’ll feel, behave, etc., etc. – they were made popular in the ’70’s, and today most people dismiss the theory as “pseudo science”, which it probably is… but I dunno – maybe all this business of turning our apartment and our lives upside down is taking its toll on me, or throwing my biorhythms out of whack (well, it is a good theory, even if it isn’t real! and I mean – why waste a good theory, when you have nothing else to go on, eh? 😉 ) For over a month now, I’ve been thinking of extending my Stair Walk – either do them twice, or walk up to the 6th floor, then down to the 1st floor, and then back up to the fifth floor – because once again, it was getting too easy, and I haven’t felt that I’ve had to work hard enough. But this morning, it was all I could do to get down to the first floor and then back up again to the fifth, and I was a bit puffed, too – something that hasn’t happened for months and months! My lunchtime Stair Walk was even worse! I really felt exhausted by the time I staggered back into the Den! What’s more, my feet have been icy cold, but I’ve been absolutely sweltering (I even had to take off the cardigan I’d put on because it was so cold this morning!) I hope I’m not coming down with something… Or, like I said – maybe all this moving upheaval is throwing my biorhythms out of whack. It’s not helping matters that the lounge suite that we’ve been given for the duration is about as comfortable as sitting on a toilet seat all night, and I can’t put my feet up and relax – the only time I can put my feet up now is when I go to bed at night, and my feet are getting really swollen 😦 Oh well, only another 44 days to go….
Tomorrow the photographers are coming. Julian intends to put each room “together”, the way the Scintillating Sharron had arranged them, one by one – arrange a room, the photographer takes his (or her) photos, Julian sets up the next room, they take those shots, etc., etc. I told him “Sweetheart, Carmen wants them to do a video, as well as the photos!” – he said “Then she can want, but she won’t get!” – well, that’s the polite version of what he said, anyway. Maybe I’m worrying too much about it all, and fretting that it won’t be good enough for the Capricious Carmen… though why I’m worried, I have no idea! (actually I do have a very good idea, but it’s a personal demon that I have to live with) *sigh* So, tomorrow will come, and go, and if I’m extra lucky, the world will still be turning on its axis on Tuesday morning – when the painters come. Then on Wednesday we can finally have a bit of fun – and go furniture shopping! 🙂 I’ve picked out the bedroom furniture that we (read: “I“) want – desks are a bit more of a problem – none of the “ordinary” furniture stores seems to have decent desks – and even the ones I’ve seen in places that specifically cater to office furniture are pretty woeful! Maybe Hardly Normal’s might be worth a look… We’ll see…
Weigh-in this morning. Well, there were tears before breakfast today. I’m still putting “teeth on the saw” (/\/\/\/\) 84.3kg again.
I’m going to ring up the hairdresser tomorrow – I have an appointment this Thursday – and the appointment after that is on the 20th (the day before I see Dr. Y.) But I was looking at my hair this morning and feeling totally out of sorts and disgruntled with myself and my appearance, and I’ve decided that my hair really needs re-colouring – it’s looking terribly faded and “blah”. I don’t want to have it done on the 20th – I want it to have about a week to “settle in” (or whatever the technical term is!) so I want to see if Brooks can fit a re-colour in this week… probably not, but there’s no harm in asking! However, it’s now this time again:
+————————–+ * Dinner & Television Break * +————————–+
Here I am, back again… Julian and I have been having a long discussion about the sale of the apartment. I’d like to get it over and done with, he’d like to put it off until after we’ve moved – mainly, I think, because of the stress it’s causing me (grizzle grizzle) I’ll tell you, I’d cope a damn sight better if I had something comfortable to sit on at night, rather than what feels (to me, anyway) like a ruddy toilet seat! The thing is, the charismatic Carmen is going overseas sometime in early September, and I have no idea how long she’ll be gone. The odds are, though, that by the time she comes back it’ll be the middle of the Real Estate “quiet” period – between early December and late-ish February, when a lot of people go away for their Christmas break, and house sales are down – so naturally she wants to get the apartment sold before she goes away. However, I believe she’ll be here tomorrow with the photographer(s), so we can thrash it out then. I think my final word on the matter was “I really don’t care when the place is sold, as long as I have something comfortable to sit on while it’s being sold!” So, after all that, I’ve finally filled you all in on today’s doin’s 🙂 Drop by again tomorrow night and find out if the photos of the apartment were taken, or whether they were shelved until after we’ve moved, and find out what the charismatically conversational Carmen had to say about the idea of “postponing” the sale until she returns from her holiday. By tomorrow night I should also know if and when I’ll be able to have my hair re-coloured (and more importantly, perhaps, what colours I’ll choose! 😉 ) But until tomorrow night, please try to bee good, remember that the greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do, and don’t forget to keep warm, to drive carefully, and to look after yourselves – but most importantly, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂
My Word! 