Right – well, I thought it was time for a change, albeit a temporary one! I really do like the other template I’ve been using, but I just wanted a change from the green and yellow mountains, with all the trees and the sun… “Sun”? “sun”? what’s a “sun”? We haven’t seen a real one of those here in Melbourne for days! 😉 Anyone would think it was winter, or something! 🙂 So, anyway, this is just a “temporary” change – I’ll swing back to my mountaineering trees in a day or so… or when I get tired of this one. Oh! I just realised! I left my little “Winter” icon off this new header! I’ll redo the header after I finish writing this, but I’m settled now, with my cup of coffee, so I’ll keep on writing for the nonce. As it turned out, we didn’t go out shopping for desks, mirrors, and outdoor furniture today, instead we had a nice, quiet, peaceful, rest day at home, for a change. No mad hurry to get ready to do something, no racing off to look at something, or meet someone, or give someone something. We just slopped around the house all day, doing whatever took our fancy! Well, I did, anyway, but I’m lazy like that. Himself did a bare minimum of Body Corporate work (…or so he says! but he has been in the Office for quite a long time!) and he did go across the road to get some bananas and the mail (from the P.O. Box) and some Sushi for his lunch – but that’s not really “work” work, is it? Mind you, he is doing the washing… which is “work” work, isn’t it! The main thing is that neither of us felt under any pressure to be, say, or do something! (except for the washing…) I played Final Fantasy XIV for most of this morning – my favourite eldest daughter is right, you know! The game is fairly obscure and confusing in places… F’rinstance, at one point you have to collect four dinner orders from people in an Inn… but there’s only three of them in there that you can interact with. I had this problem the other day with a different character – I kept wasting heaps of time going back to the Inn to see if someone else had come in while I was gone (just in case it was a timed quest or something) Another quest had you put down a dried fish on a particular spot, and then wait for a Vulture to come along and try to eat it. You’re supposed to then kill the Vulture, but it never arrived! You know why? The one with the orders in the Inn… there was a guy on the ruddy roof whose order you had to take, making the fourth order! And you’re told to look for a “particular spot” on which to drop the dried fish… but you’re not told that you have to go and stand on a different “particular spot” before the damn Vulture will show up! And of course, you’re standing facing the dried fish, waiting for the Vulture to arrive so that you can kill it, like the quest says… so you don’t see the pretty sparkly spot behind you, which is where you’re supposed to stand to make the Vulture appear! I wonder how many people have wasted as much time as I did trying to work those two quests out! Those are just two examples of poor quest information – there are lots more, I can assure you! 
I did get a lot further with the game today than I have before, in spite of the time wasted on obscure and confusing quest information – My latest character is almost level 10! 🙂 And I also found out that you can’t change your character’s Class until you’re level 10 – so I’ve been trying to get one of them up so that I can test it out – the only thing is with the character I’m currently playing, is that I don’t really want to change her Class – I made her the way I wanted her to remain! Perhaps I’d better start working on one of the other characters… I’m still debating whether I should buy the game and create a proper account, or leave it as a “Free Trial” game and stop playing when my free time runs out. I’m not really sure how much longer I want to play it, though. It’s a bit slow, a lot of the quests are confusing, poorly explained, or don’t give enough information, the length and frequency of the ruddy cut scenes are enough to drive you bonkers, and I still want to play Rift! So the jury is still out on that one…
I think we’ll be doing our furniture shopping tomorrow – weather permitting, I suppose, but I think we’ll probably go to Hardly Normal, to have a look at their desks and outdoor furniture. I still haven’t had any luck with glass-topped tables, but I’ll tell you alll what I’m after in the somewhat vain hope that one of you might know where to buy these beasties…. Right, chrome base – preferably with (hollow) square legs – the sort you could run a couple of cables or power cords down the middle of. “Sandwiched” glass top – like some of the kitchen splash-backs you see in kitchens these days – most of the ones I’ve seen are a sort of soft greenish colour. I think they’re made by putting a coat of paint, or enamel powder, or some sort of insulation (I don’t know what they use, but it’s obvious that whatever it is has glass on top of it, and from the looks of it, glass underneath it as well – hence the “sandwiched”, description – OK?) About as deep as a standard desk, and about [<– this –>] long. I have no idea how long a desk should be. I just asked himself, and he says that he “hasn’t determined that yet”, but that we want them to be “large and big” (or perhaps “big and large”, or “large and large”, or even “big and big”, seeing they both mean pretty much the same thing… 😉 ) I have seen tables with those sorts of glass tops – but I can’t for the life of me remember where! It’s most annoying… I have found a few mirrors that might be suitable, but it’s too difficult to tell if they’d be what I’m after or not from seeing their pictures online – I think we’re going to have to buy a “cut to size” piece of mirror, and have it framed, if we’re to get exactly what we (read “I“!) want…
Weigh-in this morning. Well, it just goes to show how much fluid those wretched little pills make me retain! Thank goodness Dr. B. said that from now on, I could take two anti-fluid pills when I have to take the others… I’ve dropped one kilo in three days! That’s how much excess fluid I was retaining! It takes three or four days to get them out of your system, too! On Tuesday, four days after I stopped taking those horrible pills, I was 84.0kg – today, three days later, I weighed in at 83.0kg. All that angst, all those water-logged days of feet, swollen to the point where they stretch my shoes almost to the breaking point (well, they are very old and tatty shoes, and truth be told, I wouldn’t shed any tears if they did break!) But there you go – a kilo in three days! And now, just because I said all that, I’ll probably bounce almost all the way back, and make a liar out of myself…. 😦
Last night the three of us thoroughly enjoyed our comfortable evening watching television; Flipper was in raptures, she had her cave back on the couch, and she had her “Daddy Patting Chair” where she could go and bask in the warmth of his ministrations! I wonder how she’ll take to the new (and very comfortable!) lounge suite we bought the other day! I’ve been thinking that we’ll probably need to get a matching single chair with it… I think we decided against it at the time, but really, there’s nowhere for anyone else to sit – and believe it or not, we do have people over, from time to time! And on top of all the excitement of moving, I have the added butterflies in the tummy from my rapidly approaching appointment to see Dr. Y. next Tuesday! I do so hope my weight continues to go down between now and next Tuesday – I would so love to be able to tell him that I was 82.something kg! It’s what I’ve been hoping all along that I’d be able to get down to before I saw him again… Anyway, on that neurotically anxious note, that’s about all from me for tonight 🙂 Drop back again tomorrow night and learn if we did go furniture shopping – and if we did, where we went, and if we ended up buying anything! I’ll let you know how my weight is going (hopefully, down!) and whether or not I’ve come to a decision regarding whether to buy Final Fantasy XIV 🙂 In the meantime, please bee good, don’t forget that life is what happens while you are busy making other plans! Remember to drive carefully, to keep warm, and to look after yourselves… but most importantly, remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂
My Word! 