Yes, it’s Sunday, and yes, I’m starting late – after all, it’s a long swim back from the Plane of Water, and I only dog-paddle! However, we did have a very good day – so much so that towards the end of the day I was beginning to think that we might even get away with neither of us kicking the bucket this week, but alas, it was not to be! Julian died, once, right near the end. We’d had quite a complicated quest chain to complete, and we’d done everything almost effortlessly. Maybe we should have pricked up our ears when we found a “glitched” mob, right near the end of the chain… We had to kill 8 “Mechanised Technicians” (don’t ask! We don’t know either!) These people normally just walk around with yellow nameplates over their head – yellow nameplates means that they’re true neutral – they won’t attack you unless you attack them first., right? Well, we had to zap them with a rod-like contraption, and usually they just stand there saying “Oh no!” (pretty lame exclamation, eh, when you’re being disintegrated!) and 7 of them behaved as they should have – but one was already in a fighting stance – still yellow, but in a fighting stance? Hmm! Odd… Well, he fought back, but even so, he didn’t turn red, as creatures that are attacking you normally do. In the end, we did manage to get him zapped, but there was obviously something not quite right about this end of the quest chain – we should have quit while we were ahead! After we’d zapped our 8 Mechanised Technicians, and blown up our 4? 5? Relay Stations, we were supposed to go and disable the Main Tower – which we did – no problemo! Easy-peasy! Then we were told to “Confront the Extinction of Tyranny” (you tell me, and we’ll both know!) Well, we didn’t know what they meant by that, but Crucia, an evil Dragon-slash-ghod-thingy that can appear as a weird looking insectoid dragon, or as a very attractive young human female, had been asleep in her insectoid-slash-dragon form, behind the final Tower that we had to destroy. Naturally, she woke up when the Tower fell, and was pretty annoyed with us for having (once again) thwarted her evil plans. At this stage, there was only the weird, insectoid dragon present,and as I mentioned, she was pretty annoyed with us and started attacking us. Crucia, being an evil dragon-slash-ghod, is an extremely high level “Boss” mob. Usually, when you see the little red death’s-head with horns instead of an experience level number, you know that this creature is more than ten levels higher than you are, that you don’t stand a ghost’s chance in hell against it, and you’d better bloody well run for your life! We didn’t. We attacked back… and naturally, we didn’t manage to inflict even the tiniest scratch on her. This is where a lot of things started happening all at once: insectoid Crucia’s stomping towards us, roaring and swiping at us with her front paws, when a second Crucia, the good looking human female version, suddenly appears, backed by two Elite fish creatures. This trio just stands there and does nothing – the insectoid Crucia is still stomping around, swiping at us with her front paws. We weren’t able to target the good looking Crucia, so we tried targeting the Fish creatures – and again, we weren’t even scratching them, and we should have inflicting some pretty heavy damage – they were only Elites, and we know from experience that they’re reasonably easy to kill if you go about it the right way, which we were – or were trying to, anyway. Then a lot of “movie fight-scene extras” suddenly appear around us. insectoid Crucia is still swiping at us – how she managed to miss me most of the time, I don’t know, but she kept knocking Julian into these “movie extras”, and although we’d been knocking these mobs over with the greatest of ease, the combination of swipe damage from insectoid Crucia, plus the damage inflicted by these extras, was what polished off Julian in the end. All we can do is presume that the end of the quest chain was glitched – and as it was about time to finish off for the day, we left it there, resolving to give it a couple of days for that sequence to re-set itself, and try again (and it might not be such a bad idea to research the quest and find out exactly how we’re supposed to “Confront the Extinction of Tyranny”!) We did both reach level 64, which was really good, and we both had a great day running hither, thither, and yon, smiting evil creatures and getting lots of experience and platinum, even if Julian did die once… Hopefully next Sunday we’ll be able to get to the bottom of this “small confrontational problem” and finish off the quest chain! 🙂
Weigh-in this morning. Did you hear me sobbing? You didn’t? I’m surprised! I was quite distressed… I stayed the same again – for the third day in a row – 83.0kg. 😦 “Why?!” I wailed to poor long-suffering Julian “WHY!?” He muttered something about my weight preferring to go down in big jumps, and then staying the same until I nearly tear all my hair out in despair… Well, I’ve been forced into the step I took today, out of sheer desperation to get under 83.0kg by Tuesday! I’m now Stair Walking the entire building! Seven floors… I go up as far as I can, to the sixth floor, then back down to our (5th) floor, then continue down as per normal. When I get down to the 1st floor, where I normally turn around and come back up, I keep going down as far as the building goes, to the outside letter boxes… then I turn around and come back up again to this floor. I’m not sure how many steps that makes it – the stairs to the sixth floor are a lot longer than the stairs between the rest of the landings, and so are the stairs down to the letter boxes… I’ll count them tonight and let you know later. And if climbing up and down all these extra stairs doesn’t make any difference… well, I don’t know what else I can do! 😦 I’m trying so hard, and it’s just not working! 😦
Ah well, ’tis that time again, I fear… 
+————————–+ * Dinner & Television Break * +————————–+
Here I am, back again… I counted the steps tonight, 230. One hundred and fifteen steps down (altogether), and one hundred and fifteen steps up. If I thought that doing the usual fifth floor to the first floor was maybe getting a little bit too easy, I reckon that these two new floors I’ve started doing will keep me working hard until we move, and I get myself some sort of stair climbing machine, where it’ll all be “up” and no easy slog down. I am certainly a lot fitter than I have been for ?? years – even as much as three months ago, I wouldn’t have been capable of doing seven floors, so I guess it must be doing me some good, even if it doesn’t seem to be doing much to help my weight loss
I’m not sure what’s happening tomorrow morning – I think we’re going to look at some outdoor furniture, but don’t quote me on that! I have the hairdresser in the afternoon, and I fear I may have to blackmail them! 🙂 I really want them to cut my hair – just a bit, and just on one side. I know what they’re going to say, and I know that every hairdresser I’ve ever been too has this “thing” about symmetry – and that might be fine for some heads of hair, but it doesn’t work with mine! At the moment, it’s been cut “symmetrically” (sort-of “this piece is the same length as that piece which is exactly the same length as the other piece”) and although it might be exactly the same length as the corresponding piece of hair on the other side of my head, it is too long and sticks out like Dagwood Bumstead’s! It’s got to go! I can’t turn up at Dr. Y’s on Tuesday with one side of my head sticking out like that! And the blackmail? I’ll tell them that if they don’t cut that side shorter, I’ll cut it myself, and if anyone asks me which hairdresser I go to, I’ll simply tell them the truth – I just won’t say who did the (bad) cutting! 😉 Well, I probably won’t do that, but it does look silly… and what’s wrong with asymmetrical, anyway?! I’m asymmetrical all over – my right leg is a lot bigger than my left leg, my left foot is half a size bigger than my right foot, and various other parts of my anatomy are different from their opposite side – so what’s wrong with having the hair on one side of my head shorter than the other side, for goodness sake! Anyway, that’s finally about it from me for tonight. Do drop in again tomorrow night to see what transpired during the day… did we go outdoor furniture hunting? Did the hairdresser finally cut my hair so that it can’t stick out like a cartoon character’s? Am I going to be able to look my best for Tuesday, and did the extra stairs I’m now walking make any difference to my weight? All these questions, and more, will be answered here tomorrow night – but until then, please bee good, don’t forget that creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes… and art is knowing which ones to keep! Do remember to drive carefully, to keep warm, and to look after yourselves, but… most importantly of all… remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂
My Word! 