Winter’s log, earthdate 201507.30

Twenty one days to go…

Here I am, starting nice and early for a change! I’ve been a busy girl today… well, maybe not busy busy, but running from pillar to post busy. My hairdressing appointment was at 11.30am this morning, so it was up, get myself ready, Stair Walk, breakfast, coffee, and off – just like that! (although I did manage to squeeze in my Minion Management while I was eating my breakfast! 😉 ) They did a good job of my hair, as they always do there at Oscar Oscar, and I really do like the nice neck massage they give you – and their coffee’s not bad, either! I wonder if they use one of those Nespresso machines? We use one, and their coffee tastes similar to ours (we use a different type of pod though) plus the fact that the Nespresso shop is right opposite them, so it’s possible, and even very probable! 🙂 I must ask them next week… So after that we went to Priceline. I use a moisturising gloop on my feet by a crowd called “Walkers”, or something, and I used to keep its squirty bottle on the floor, next to my lounge chair in the lounge room. I say “used to keep”, because when the lady came to pack stuff up because that truly awful rental furniture was about to be delivered – back when we thought we’d be selling the apartment before the charismatic Carmen went on holidays – and we had to “spruce up” the place for the prospective buyers coming in twice a week on the Open For Inspection days… Anyway, when I went looking for my foot gloop, I couldn’t find it – so either the packing lady took a fancy to it and has run off with it (highly unlikely!), or she’s gone and packed it (a virtual certainty!) so I’ve had nothing with which to moisturise my feet since then, and they’re getting…. “very unsightly”, to put it mildly – not that they ever were “sightly” in the first place! So let’s just say that they’re now even more unsightly than they were before, and leave it at that. I looked in Priceline to see if they had any of this “Walker’s” or whatever it’s called stuff, but they didn’t, so I bought another sort I’d never heard of in the hope that it’ll be “better than nothing”. I’ll let you all know how it works out, anyway 🙂

I was going to race upstairs, shed my feet, and dash off for my lunchtime Stair Walk as soon as we got home, but it was so damned cold that I didn’t shed my feet after all, I left my shoes on for my Stair Walk! Shoes really slow me down, and I have to be terribly careful going up and down stairs in them because my balance is all “off” in shoes – and sure enough, this time I did have one rather wobbly moment when the back of my right heel slipped off the next step down and I teetered on the brink for a few seconds until I got my balance back again. After that, I slowed down a bit instead of going at my usual barefooted pace, and, well, here I am typing at you, so I obviously made it back again in one piece 🙂 Did I ever mention the fact that I hate shoes? I do, you know… terrible inventions! They should really be banned…

After lunch I started working on my new header – I think I’m going through another “Egyptian phase” – I seem to have them periodically, and have done since I was a little girl. I still remember the first picture book I ever picked up when I was about three… it was on “everyday life in ancient Egypt”, and I was hooked! (I still remember, and still have, the first “proper” book that I read many, many times, from cover to cover when I was about six – it was “Bulfinch’s Mythology” – a really fascinating book if you’re into mythology, which I was, and still am 🙂 ) Anyway, the header is called “Theban Lotus” and is very loosely based on a web set I made a long time ago (in a galaxy far, far away) back in 2001 or 2002 – I fergit which now, it was so long ago… I hope you like it 🙂 If not, a new one is sure to appear in the very near future… The actual background of the header, the sort-of papyrus textured one, was “copied” from another graphics site. I was fascinated by how web artists created textures like this one, so I used to download some of them from here and there (they were all free in those early days) and I’d study them, attempt to copy them, and downloaded tutorials by the dozen… and I’d work on them until I got them right – so that header background is the result of days and days of work, of trial and error, and a determination not to be beaten by a mere texture 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. Well, another amazing morning! I was quite sure that I wouldn’t have shed any weight (I could have said that I’d had a “gut feeling”, but it wouldn’t really have been very punny…) but… I hopped on the scales this morning, expecting to have stayed the same, or to have gone up a point or two, but… I’d gone down three points – from 81.1kg to 80.8kg! So now I have less than 10 more kilos to go! That is, if I don’t decide that I’m still too fat at 70kg and decide to go lower… I wonder if I can get down to 70kg before we move? I doubt it, but it would be great if I could… 🙂

And that brings me to tomorrow. Well, our cleaning lady came last Friday, and Julian said yesterday that that was about all the packing up that we had to do, so I have no idea what’s happening. I suppose we could go clothes dryer shopping, or mirror shopping – or floor lamp shopping (I wasn’t really very impressed with our local Beacon Lighting store’s range of floor lamps!) I’ve just had a very quick look online at a few – they’re all really unimaginative – it’s very disappointing! Think what you could design with just a little imagination! I think some of those firms should hire me! Well, I could certainly do better than their silly, rickety-trickety stick tripod bases, or their tall broomstick columns with a vertical row of three small hollow disks attached to it, half way up! And the lamp shades! They’re either obviously fake studio spotlight types, clumsy cylindrical tubes, or cappuccino froth tinfoil! Bah! No imagination there! *sigh* No doubt we’ll find something… somewhere… Anyway, until I know what’s happening tomorrow, I shall just have to leave you all in suspense! 🙂 It’s getting close to “Evening Stair Walk” time again, and I think I’ve given you a fairly accurate summary of my adventures today – so once again I shall wave you all a fond adieu, beseeching you all to return again tomorrow night, to find out if my weight has suddenly decided that I was getting a bit too much of a good thing, and that perhaps I’d better spend a couple of days either going up, or staying the same… Julian just wandered in with a cup of coffee for me, and talking to someone (probably his mother) on the phone, and he was telling (whoever was on the other end of the phone) that he’d put the locksmith off for today and that he’ll be coming tomorrow morning instead – so now I know one thing that’s happening tomorrow, and so do you! 🙂 Anyway, I’m sure that, as usual, there’s going to be heaps of news, interesting tidbits, and other astonishing adventures to regale you with tomorrow, so make sure you don’t miss out! 🙂 Until then though, please bee good, remember that to be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else, will probably be your greatest accomplishment. Don’t forget to drive carefully, to look after yourselves, and to keep warm… but above all, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂