Today was The Big Day! I frittered away the morning, after I’d done my Stair Walk, getting more and more jittery with every passing minute. For once, I was ready to walk out the door before Julian – an almost unheard of phenomenon! (I think I’ve learned the secret of how to get ready in time! Instead of asking him to tell me about fifteen to twenty minutes before we have to leave, I ask him instead “What time do we have to leave?” Then I can judge when I have to go off and powder my nose and re-do my lipstick, and all that, and so far, it seems to have been working!) So we walked out the door, and trundled down to the car park… where one of the “neighbours” (who wouldn’t know Julian from the man in the moon!) decided to be “rahght naybourley”, and have a little chat – he even insisted on shaking Julian’s hand! (when I don’t think he’s ever spoken to Julian before in his life!) …and I sat in the car and stewed, muttering dire imprecations, fretting and fuming at the delay (well, I was very nervous and agitated!) Julian finally made his escape, and we were on our way. We got to the surgery with about five minutes to spare (why do they call Doctor’s rooms “surgeries”, when they don’t operate in them? They should really be called “Consultanties”, because that’s what occurs there, not “surgical procedures”!) and this time I went in under my own steam (I walked, and didn’t use my chair! …Not that I wanted to impress anyone, of course!) The receptionist thought I looked terrific… and finally we were shown into a different consulting room to the one where we normally see Dr. Y. Then in he walked 🙂 I think he was pleased with me – we filled him in on my condition, and told him that we’d be moving next month. He thinks that discussions about surgery should wait until we’ve moved and settled in, and he’s changed my prescription to one that hopefully won’t cause me to retain so much fluid while I’m taking them… and he mentioned about maybe taking them only every second month, but I wasn’t all that keen on that idea – saying that at this stage it would probably be better to stick to what we know works! I’m supposed to be seeing him again in three months, but it’ll have to be four months, instead of three, because he’s going to Europe for conferences. I offered to go with him, to carry his bags, and he smiled, and said that I’d be very welcome to go with him, and that I wouldn’t have to carry any bags *swoon!* 🙂 He’s ordered some more tests for me to have the week before I see him again, and that was about it. Oh, I had to try to keep a straight face – he (finally!) noticed my hair, and commented on my red hair, red glasses, and (er…very red!) lipstick. With a hint of a smile, I looked at him and said “Dr. Y., I looked exactly like this the last time you saw me!” and to give him credit, he did look a little taken aback 🙂 (Men! We women go to all the trouble to make ourselves look nice for them, and 99.9% of the time, they don’t even notice! Grr!) (and you know what?! They notice quickly enough if you let yourself go, so that you don’t look nice for them! *pout* S’not fair! 😦 )

Well, we left there armed with a new prescription, a form for more tests, and an appointment for November 10th (already written in my diary, with appropriate sirens and alarms set to go off two days beforehand, so that I don’t forget about it (as if I could!)) By then, if I’m not down to my goal weight, it’ll probably mean that I’ve been run over by a bus, sometime between now, and reaching 70kg! Dr. Y. seems to think that 70kg is far too low a weight for me, and what did Dr. B. have to say about it? I told him I’d discussed it with her, and she seemed to think 70kg was alright, and besides, I’d still be classified as overweight, and probably even obese, at 70kg. So then I got stern looks and a bit of a lecture from both him and Julian about the dangers of listening to the BMI pundits – however, as I told them – I’ll be going on what I think, not on BMI recommendations, or anything else! Anyway, from there we went looking for outdoor furniture. We drove past Harvey Norman, but their front windows were still bare – obviously the new shipment of outdoor furniture still hasn’t arrived! So we cruised on down Whitehorse Road, and went to several places, because we’re still (fruitlessly!) looking for a desk for Julian’s office! We did pop into Beacon Lighting to look for bedside lamps and Standard Lamps, and we did buy a couple of bedside lamps – that isn’t a very good picture – it’s too bright/over-exposed – but you might get an idea of what we ended up with 🙂 Standard Lamps – which are called “floor lamps” these days, were a bit of a lost cause there – there were one or two that we didn’t mind, but I think we’ll keep looking… Then we went into The Outdoor Furniture Specialists (no wheelchair access – I had to walk – up a long flight of stairs, too! But more on that later! 🙂 ) and we did get an outdoor dining setting there! I’d link you to a picture of it, only (a) I can’t find a picture of it, and (b) the site is s-o-o-o s-l-o-w that I’d probably be sitting here at Christmas time trying to find it! Beg pardon? Christmas? Oh no, not this Christmas, I meant Christmas 2025! yes, their site really is that slow! (well, it was that slow twenty minutes ago, anyway!) However. It’s rectangular and seats eight… it’s made of creamy, mottled Travertine Marble tiles, and has a black, fancy, lacy, wrought iron insert in the middle that has a “doughnut hole” in it (which you can leave open for a beach umbrella to stand in, or close it off so that it just looks like a black, fancy, lacy, wrought iron tile – which is, after all, what it is) The chairs are quite roomy and comfortable, and we like it, which is the main thing 🙂

And after that, we came home, had lunch, and I did my Stair Walk. After I’ve completed my evening full-building Stair Walk, I’ll have walked three lots of 7 floors, up and down… as usual, plus an extra floor, up and down! The Outdoor Furniture Specialists did have sort-of wheelchair access, only we couldn’t use it. From their underground car park, there’s a small door leading into the showroom, but it was so surrounded by furniture that there was no way I could bring the chair in – and even if I had, I wouldn’t have been able to move around in there – it was a case of “you’re on your own! Walk, or miss out!” And there was also an upper level, which we wanted to have a look at, and that was up 16 steps (I counted them!) – exactly equal to one floor here – eight steps up, small landing and then another eight steps up (and of course, back down again too) So by the time I finish my Stair Walk this evening, I will have covered 22 floors altogether, up and down, today! (7 floors x 3 times + 1 extra floor = 22 floors…. I think. Maths is not my strongest subject, so don’t blame me if I got it wrong, OK?!)

And now it’s that time again – sorry! 🙂

+————————–+ * Dinner & Television Break * +————————–+

Weigh-in this morning. For once, I wasn’t disappointed! 82.4kg, for the “special occasion” – I was able to say that I was less than 82.5kg – Dr. Y. said that he wished he was doing so well losing weight (personally, I don’t think he needs to lose any weight!) but if I work on my previous estimations (and by some miracle of miracles, my estimation was, for once, correct – I did manage to get down to 82.Xkg by today – well, I only just managed to squeak it in, but I got there in the end!) So, working on a possible 10kg per month, if I’m 82.4kg now… by November 10th (this year) theoretically, I should be down to… 42,4kg???!! Ooo-er! I think that’s a teeny bit too low! No, I shall re-assess myself when I get down to 70kg – if I think I could do with a bit more off, I shall continue dieting until I think I look about “right”. And if I reckon that I look alright at that weight, I shall put myself onto a “maintenance” diet and try to stabilize myself somewhere between 72kg and 75kg  …and then watch out KFC! 🙂 And you know what? I’ll be disappointed, but I don’t really care if I do bounce back a little bit tomorrow, I achieved what I wanted to for today, and that’s the main thing! 🙂

Well, my favourite eldest daughter will be over tomorrow – and Julian and I both totally forgot that we have a meeting with the Capable and Charismatic Carmen tomorrow afternoon! Oh well, Lee will just have to come along and meet Carmen, won’t she?! 😉 Julian has a Physio appointment on Thursday morning, and our cleaning lady will be here on Friday… Most of our furniture has now been purchased and is due to be delivered on August 21st! (my ghod! That’s only a month away! And tomorrow, it’ll be less than a month! However we’re not moving in until the 25th… 😦 ) We’ve both run out of ideas as to where to find a nice desk for the front Office, but that’s about the only thing left to get now, apart from “incidentals”, like “floor lamps” and plants, both indoor and outdoor ones… And so once again, that’s about it from me for tonight! Do call in again tomorrow night though, and I’ll be able to fill you all in on whether my weight did bounce back or not (and this time, I don’t particularly care if it does, so there! 😛 ) and what the Carefully Considering Carmen had to say to us regarding the sale of this apartment and her overseas holiday. I’m sure there’ll be heaps more news and gossip, so don’t miss out! Until then, though, please continue to bee good, don’t forget that to live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong; and remember to keep warm, to drive carefully, and to look after yourselves… but above all, remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

We ended up not doing anything much at all today, apart from a bit of grocery shopping (and coffee – is coffee a grocery item? I thought it was a staple…) and my visit to the hairdresser. They did chop that annoying piece of hair off, and for once, I had my hair done the way I wanted it done! Flat. Sleek. No bits hanging, poking, or sticking out. No voluminous waves that I have to flatten out when I get home… Mind you, I have no idea what it’s going to look like tomorrow morning, when it has to look like something out of Vogue magazine! I know, I can get Julian to take a photo, and print it out, life-sized… then I can attach that to a stick of some sort (maybe a wooden spoon? 😉 ) and if my hair gets messed overnight, I can just hold the photo on the stick  in front of my face like Jane Jetson’s “morning mask” in the old cartoon show “The Jetsons”! 🙂 Do you think anyone would notice? 🙂 No, what I’ll probably do tonight is glue it all down with hairspray and just hope that it doesn’t get folded, spindled, or mutilated overnight… Fingers crossed for me, everyone, please! 🙂 So this morning I dithered… and played a bit of Rift. I think I’ve decided to give up on Final fantasy XIV – it’s a fun game, and I like it a lot, but it’s too slow, and there are far too many of the tediously over-long cut scenes nearly every time you get, or hand in a quest, which absolutely drive me nuts! So I can’t see me spending the sort of time I generally spend on Rift, or that one needs to spend on that type of game to get to the higher, more worthwhile levels. It’s probably best not to buy it and get too involved… It’s a shame though, because with a bit of paring back in places, and a little tweaking in others, it could be a very good game, and a worthy alternative to World of Warcraft and Rift! Rift. I managed to get Chaviv up to level 20 today, before I realised that I hadn’t had a look at Facebook for a day and a half, so I went and did that. I’m also feeling very guilty that I’ve been neglecting my graphics – I’ve had some ideas for new backgrounds – maybe something a little “bolder” that pastel mauve swirly thingies… and because the text is on a plain, white background that can’t be changed, I can just about use any sort of background I like – either repeating pattern, or a solid piece of “abstract” art (but don’t look for abstract art from me – I’ve never been any good at it! Probably because it doesn’t make any sense to me… after all, even a kindergarten kid can paint different coloured squares on a canvas! What’s the Big Deal?! ) When I painted with real paint (oils, not acrylics) I used to paint faces (female faces – I couldn’t, and still can’t, for some unknown reason, manage to draw or paint male faces) flowers… horses… cats… street scenes… and now that I play around with computer graphics, I rely very heavily on elements like fonts and patterns, which I then adapt to whatever it is I’m trying to create. Sometimes I feel as though I’m cheating – using someone else’s fonts or brushes or shapes to create my images. In other words, I feel as though I’m cheating, because I didn’t create every element in my composition from scratch… but I don’t sell any of my work (if anyone ever wants any of my work, it’s theirs for free) I’ve never pretended that I created everything from scratch, and the initial idea, or the concept for the piece, is mine, and mine alone. Maybe after we move I might even get back into real painting again – dunno… but I’ll certainly have the room for it! 🙂

Tomorrow, of course is THE Big Day! Dr. Y. said last time that he’d be happy with 90kg, and if I could get down to 90kg we’d start conferencing with Dr. D. about how to manage my blood clotting problems during surgery… so now I’m scared as well as excited! 🙂 I guess I’ll know more by tomorrow night, but right at this particular moment, I don’t want anything to get in the way of my weight loss – I have to get down to 70kg, and then get myself stabilised between 70 and 75kg, before I can even contemplate surgery of any sort, let alone something very major! I realise that this “70kg” is an arbitrary number that I have chosen to aim for, and it may well turn out that I’ll look at myself at 70kg and decide that I still need to lose more weight. Yes, I do know that BMI weight recommendations are mostly rubbish and definitely not to be believed, and I can assure you all that I have no intention whatsoever of even attempting to get myself down to the 45kg that all the BMI’s I’ve looked at insist that I should be, but… I’m sick and tired of being obese. It’s time to be “average slim” for a change, so the arbitrary “70kg” may well become adjusted to a lower weight. I will promise, however, that I will call myself “average slim” and go onto a maintenance diet and start eating proper food again when Dr. B. (or Dr. Y.) says I am!

Weigh-in this morning. I finally made it past the 83kg barrier! I lost two points – going from yesterday’s 83.0kg (where I languished for three depressing and angst-ridden bloody days! Grr!) to 82.8kg. Who knows? I might go up again tomorrow morning (oh Lord! please no! Not tomorrow, of all days!) but I did break the 83kg barrier today! The new “seven-floors” Stair Walk is quite debilitating at the moment, and it’s cold! Oh so cold! in the fire escape stair-well! The closer to the ground you get, the icier the handrail becomes! By the time I get right down to where the letterboxes are, it’s like I’m holding onto an ice-cube straight out of the freezer – and that’s through two thick gloves! I’m not looking forward to my walk tonight, I can tell you! I don’t expect it to take me more than a couple of days to get used to the extra floors I’m clambering up and down, but I don’t really think I’m going to get used to the coldness of it any time soon! The entire building has “chilled down” now, and the cold has seeped in everywhere. Even a couple of weeks ago, entering the fire escape was almost “pleasant” – it was quite a bit warmer in there than it was outside our front door! Now, just walking out the front door is like walking into a refrigerator, and entering the fire escape is like going from the refrigerator into the freezer! Brrr!

My favourite eldest daughter will be over on Wednesday, which will be good, and we might go outdoor furniture hunting on Thursday or Friday – or both! (which will largely depend on what Dr. Y. says tomorrow – I might be too depressed to want to go furniture shopping! (but I don’t think so! 🙂 )) Anyway, that’s about all from me for tonight – do call back again tomorrow night, and find out if my hair stayed put overnight (it’d better, or I’ll shave it off!) and what happened with Dr. Y.! Will he be pleased with me, or will he think I’ve been slacking and be disappointed in me? Will my weight let me down yet again, and go back up, or will it behave itself for the good doctor, as I devoutly hope it will? What other adventures will we get up to tomorrow, I wonder! Find out tomorrow night (ohh… I can smell frying onions! Mmm! I love the smell of frying onions! Yum!) Until then though, please try to bee good, remember that you can be cautious, or you can be creative — but there’s no such thing as a cautious creative! 🙂 Don’t forget to look after yourselves, to keep warm, and to drive carefully, but most importantly, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

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! 🙂

*There’s another update on the “As Seen On…” page tonight – from Bored Panda…

Well, here I am, late again (or as usual – take your pick! 😉 ) Not because we were back late from our shopping, and not because I was busy doing something graphicky, or because I was playing Rift… No, I’m late because I was playing Final Fantasy XIV! It was a case of “I’ll just finish off this quest and hand it in…” – handing in a quest usually leads to being given another quest which you’ll “just finish this last one…” – and so it goes. So I probably won’t get this finished before dinner tonight – sorry about that one, Chief(s)!

We did go shopping for more furniture this morning, and as I’d indicated we would, we went to Hardly Normal first, expecting to see a wide range of outdoor furniture and some really nice desks… *sigh* Didn’t I say something the other night along the lines of “The best laid plans of mice and men”? Well, our best laid plans did indeed “gang (aft) agley”! We walked into a Harvey Norman store with an almost completely empty top section. All their outdoor furniture was …gone. Disappeared. Vanished. Not there. Oh, there was plenty of other furniture in the store – just not of the outdoor species! There were even quite a lot of desks – not that I could get in to see them of course – they were jam-packed together so tightly that I think even a flea would have screamed in agony trying to squeeze in between them! Well, Julian was able to weave his way in and out of the desks, but he’s quite a lot thinner, and definitely a lot more agile, than my wheelchair. In the end I sat in what was laughingly called an “aisle”, and Julian took photos of some of the more interesting desks, and so that I could look at them on his phone. Hardly the ideal way to shop for desks! None of the desks were really what we were after – either too “minimal” (a wide plank or piece of board on top of four posts), or too “fussy” (cheap embossed fake leather in the middle of the desk top) There were a couple of half-decent glass topped desks, but they were too small. In the end, I asked the salesgirl if they had any glass topped tables. Well, of course Hardly Normal had glass topped tables! After all, they had just about everything else! (except outdoor furniture – they’d cleared out all the old outdoor furniture because they were expecting a new shipment in – but unfortunately it hadn’t arrived!) The girl showed us a couple of glass topped tables, neither of which were suitable to use as desks – actually she seemed to be having a bit of trouble with the concept of using a table as a desk… When I asked her if there were any other glass topped tables, she said no – so of course I immediately spotted several of them ‘just over there, see?’ “What about those?”, I asked – “can we have a look at those please?” She and Julian walked straight to them – I took the long way round… (I really must drop Harvey N. an email about the fact that disabled people’s money is just as good as that of able-bodied customers, so why was he denying disabled customers adequate access to his stores, hmm?) There were four fairly nice glass topped tables there, and in the end I had to get up and walk over to get a proper look at them (so I limped very heavily, just to make the salesgirl feel bad – though it really wasn’t her fault that everything was packed in so tightly, so I feel a bit guilty about it now… but only a bit! 😛 ) Anyway, we looked at those tables, and discussed those tables, and measured them, and looked at them again… In the end, we bought three of the glossy white ones. The table’s made from glossy white wood, with a clear greenish glass top – you can see it here – and looks eminently suitable to be used as a desk. Unfortunately the photo’s a bit on the dark side and it’s a bit hard to tell that the glass in the middle is in fact clear… but because it’s sitting on top of the glossy white wood it looks opaque. So, why did we buy three of them? Well, one for me, one for himself… and one for printers and other “accessories”. They come as a flat-pack, and I would have liked to have had them installed for us – but no… Mr. Independence, Julian, wants to assemble them himself (*rolls eyes in exasperation*) Now all we have to do is get a nice “official” looking desk for Julian’s Office, and… the ruddy outdoor furniture, which I had optimistically thought we’d be able to get today. Still, on our way home, we did drive past at least three shops that specialise in Outdoor Furniture, so we may go and have a look at them on Monday… or Wednesday…

Weigh-in this morning. Didn’t I say that it was too good to be true? Well, maybe not in those exact words, but that’s what I was implying… and as I was half expecting, I didn’t go down again today 😦 However I didn’t go up, either (I think that’s happening tomorrow…) I ruddy-well stayed the same! 83.0kg! Grr! That means I now only have two days left to get under 83.0kg! I’m getting so nervous! I wish it was Wednesday! Perhaps I should take two anti-fluid tablets tomorrow! Arrrggghhh!

Well, tomorrow’s Sunday, and Julian and I have our special “Wallowing Wantonly in the Plane of Water” day. I must tell you that after the last Update, when things went somewhat awry, Trion, the makers of Rift, decided to give us all a little present to make up for the shards being down for so long. Actually, the term “present” is incorrect – one doesn’t usually pay for one’s presents, unless it’s something that you’re going to give someone else. And we had to pay for this (these?) presents. Twenty Dollars – the cost of half my usual monthly Rift “allowance”. The one “present” counts for all characters on your account, so it was cheap at half the price! We got a new mount – pretty much the same as our amphibious, round “surf board”, except that this one is made out of hot lava! Another 32 slot bag, two “troves” of boosts, and a new attribute-boosting cape (i.e. adds quite a bit extra to your intelligence, dexterity, strength, wisdom, or whatever) The “present” was well worth the twenty dollars – Julian bought one too – but I have yet to run around all the shards that I have characters on, picking everyone’s goodies up! Goodness knows when I’ll get a chance to do that!

*sigh* I thought so….

+————————–+ * Dinner & Television Break * +————————–+

Sorry about that, I had to go and get my Stair Walk done so that I could have dinner… and then we watched “Father Brown”, and an episode of “Person of Interest” (and Julian’s just met the character “Shaw” for the first time! 🙂 ) – now, where was I? (reads back….) right! So tomorrow we’ll be back in (or on?) The Plane of Water, where hopefully we’ll manage to get up to level 64 – I have three “bubbles” to go, and I suspect that Julian has about another four… but It should be a good day all round! 🙂 On Monday morning I think we’ll be heading off to one of those outdoor furniture places, and in the afternoon I’m getting my hair done for Tuesday morning. By Wednesday, I hope I’ll be able to breathe again… And that, I think, is about all from me again tonight. Don’t forget to drop in again tomorrow night to see how we went on the Plane of Water – did we die? and if we did, how? More importantly though, did we both make it up to level 64?! If we did, it means that we only have one more level to go… then I guess we’ll just… start all over again! 🙂 I’m hoping against hope that my weight will be down a bit more tomorrow, but as we all know by now, my weight is as mercurial as Melbourne weather – who knows what it’ll do from one day to the next! So come and read my tale of woe if it doesn’t drop a bit more, or my joyous cries of delight if it does! In the meantime, please continue to bee good, always remember that kindness is more important than wisdom, and that the recognition of this is the beginning of wisdom! Don’t forget to take care of yourselves, to keep warm, and to drive carefully, but most importantly, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

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! 🙂

We had a really early morning today – we got up at seven o’clock, not half past seven! It was quite a shock to the system, too! Julian had to deliver me to Shoppingtown by about a quarter to nine because Sharron’s crew were coming to take away the horrible rented furniture at nine o’clock. So basically, Julian drove me over (it was so early the Valet Parking wasn’t even open!) threw me into my wheelchair, and took off on foot, to get back home to let the crew in to collect the furniture. My Hairdressing appointment wasn’t until 10, so I had time and enough to go scooting around the shopping centre looking for things to buy! 😉 Unfortunately, nothing was open until nine o’clock, so mostly I just tootled aimlessly… Target and Big W were open though, so I thought I’d go in and look for an el-cheapo pair of gloves, because my hands were absolutely freezing! Imagine my shock, and my horror when I found that, once the winter bastions of cheap knitted beanies, gloves and scarves (usually sold as a matching set in totally atrocious colours) both stores boasted, between the two of them, a motley selection of:  three pairs of gloves, four or five utterly useless, flimsy pieces of scrap material that they laughingly called “scarves”, and maybe four (I’d stopped counting by this stage) misshapen pieces of ratty felt that were labeled “hats” – notice! Hats, not beanies! I’m at a loss to understand how this could have happened! One could hardly describe Target and Big W as being “avant-garde” fashion stores – “adequate” and “affordable” fashion stores? Yes – “avant-garde” fashion stores? No. I have to admit that it’s been many, many years since I went out to buy myself a cheap pair of knitted gloves, with a matching scarf and beanie, but I did expect to find at least some in those two stores. Where are they? Where can I buy some? The simple fact that neither Target nor Big W had these items has made me almost obsessed with the desire – no, the need to buy some – preferably in any colour that’s not green, though I’ll even buy green ones, as long as they’re not “Kelly” green, which is forbidden in our family (it’s a long and tragic story!) Please let me know if you can think of anywhere that I can buy a pair of knitted gloves, a knitted scarf, and a ruddy knitted beanie, locally! I ended up buying a pair of black and white “mottled” fabric gloves, with black leather vinyl palms and underside of the fingers, and black “faux fur” cuffs… They don’t fit as well as knitted gloves would have, they’re not very comfortable, and when I’m wearing them I lose all dexterity – it’s all I can do to even push the movement toggle on the wheelchair so that I can move around, they make my fingers so stiff and clumsy! So I trundled around until nine o’clock, and noticed, with some dismay, that the lovely silver jewellery shop called “Magnolia” has left Doncaster Shopping Centre – I’m sure I saw them there just a few days ago, but now their name’s not even on the Directory, so it doesn’t look like they’re “re-locating” to another position in the Centre… it’s a shame, too – they had some quite nice silver jewellery, at reasonable prices. All that’s left over there now in the “reasonably priced silver jewellery” department is Butterfly Silver… Anyway, I went into Inglot at nine o’clock, and bought the lipstick that I saw the other day, and then I made my way up to Oscar Oscar where I was welcome to go in, sit down, have a coffee, and read my kindle until it was time for my appointment. Brooks has done a good job with the colour, and it does look very nice – but with all due respect, Josh, I think the way that you did my hair colour was a lot better. Seriously! It was brighter, and a much richer and deeper colour. As I said, this is nice, and I’m pleased with it, but it’s still a bit too “pastel”, and there isn’t enough “oomph” to the red. Never mind 🙂 Next time I’ll ask her to make the “streaks” wider, a deeper colour, and not so thin and “thread-like”. They certainly look after you there at Oscar Oscar, and they’re all lovely people – I’ll definitely continue going there after we move *sigh* I s’pose I’ll just have to “train them up” to do things my way! 😉

When I got home I went straight off and did my lunch time Stair Walk – I wanted to get it out of the way so that I could get onto Rift to process my Minions – I didn’t even get a chance to collect their loot this morning, we left so early… Well, I logged on, and there was quite a big update! There are some nifty new things in there too – mostly “cosmetic”, like additions to the Wardrobe functions, and new achievements for “designing” your own “sets” of clothing out of what’s available, and the new ability for all characters on your account to be able to access the same bank vaults, which will be a real boon when you’re out questing and need a weapon or a piece of gear that’s happily sitting in one of your Alt’s (Alt = “alternate character. I have about 50 of them!) personal bank vaults. So I twiddled my thumbs while the update was downloading, and when it was finished, I clicked on “Play” – and guess what! All of the Shards were down! Some glitch in the update (it happens quite a lot with big updates, in both WoW and Rift – so often, in fact, that if the shards don’t go down, we’re immediately suspicious – what’s gone wrong? Why aren’t the shards down because of a glitch?) Julian monitored the forums to see how soon the shards would be back up, and I played a bit more Final Fantasy XIV, and then went on my evening Stair Walk before starting this. I think the shards are back up again now, but I won’t get a chance to go and check things out until after dinner tonight, now…

Weigh-in this morning. Well, this morning I only went down two points, from 83.7kg to 83.5kg, which is better than going up, or staying the same, I suppose. But all the same, I’ll cross my fingers and toes for tomorrow morning’s weigh-in, anyway! 🙂

Our own furniture arrived home again just after about half past three – only five pieces, but the most needed! When Julian let Flipper out of the Den and she mooched off to the lounge room, she was so happy to see “her” furniture that she immediately started meowing loudly, and jumped straight up onto Julian’s chair – her “Daddy Patting Chair” and demanded that Julian sit down and make a fuss of her – which of course he did! 🙂 I’ll tell you what – I’ll be extremely happy to be able to sit with my feet up tonight, and be able to watch television without getting a crick in my neck or a sore backside! Flipper’s cat cave is back on the couch where she’ll be nice and cosy tonight, the chest is back at the foot of the bed so we’ll have somewhere to put our clothes on besides the dressing table, and my little wheelie table is back in the “dressing room” for me to put stuff on when I have to open the door into the Den when both my hands are full! 🙂 And God’s in His heaven, and all’s right with the world! 🙂 Tomorrow will be our first “free” day, with no-one coming over, no furniture hassles, and no deadlines to meet…. so we’re going to Hardly Normal’s to look at desks, small glass tables, and outdoor furniture! 🙂 Do any of you know where the best place to look for mirror’s is? I have no idea, and Google only gives me obscure, inappropriate, and/or unhelpful lists. Probably because I’m so unimaginative as to try to look for “framed bedroom mirrors melbourne au”, or simply “framed mirrors melbourne au” *sigh* Oh well, I shall try again tonight… And once again, that’s about it from me for tonight! Do look in again tomorrow night – and see if my weight is still behaving itself (it probably won’t though!) or whether we found our desks and our outdoor furniture, and if I had any luck finding a mirror… There’ll be heapses to tell you all, so make sure you don’t miss out on all the hot goss! 🙂 Until then, though, please continue to bee good, don’t forget that opportunity is often missed by a lot of people, because it’s dressed in overalls and looks like work, and remember to keep warm, to look after yourselves, and to drive carefully… but most importantly, please remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

Here I am at long last… I was playing a bit of Final Fantasy XIV and I got a bit carried away and didn’t notice the time! (well, that’s my excuse, anyway, and I’m sticking to it! 😉 ) Although we had a relatively early morning (we had to be at the Doctor’s by 11am to pick up our prescriptions) I still would have had time to do quite a lot of things, like finish looking at my mail, have a quick look at Facebook, and maybe play a bit of Rift, or Final Fantasy XIV, except that my computer decided to do stupid things, like not work, so Julian had to drop everything and come and fix it. Which took time, because it needed three or four re-boots before the (still unknown!) problem was taken care of. As usual, he blames Windowblinds, and as usual, I insist on using it! It works fine, until it decides, for no apparent reason, not to – but it’s pretty – well, prettier that boring old vanilla-flavoured Windows anyway (but that wouldn’t be hard, would it! 😉 ) So by the time I got my computer back, I barely had time to set up my Minions (in Rift – I don’t have any “Minions” in real life, unfortunately!) before we had to leave – in fact, I was lucky to even finish my breakfast! Anyway, off we went – Dr. B. was very pleased with both of us, weight-wise, and was extra pleased with my blood pressure. She also said that I can take two anti-fluid tablets instead of just the one that I’m currently taking while I’m on those wretched fluid retaining pills! So maybe next time I won’t sit at the same stupid weight, or close to it, for ten whole days straight! That really upset me, and while the setting up of the apartment for the sale campaign was upsetting and stressful, that business with my weight refusing to budge more than one point either way really pushed me to my limits! Still, the sale campaign has been postponed until after we’ve moved out of here and into Stillwater, which is a real blessing – and hopefully my weight has re-started its migration downwards – though I’m still expecting a few nasty surprises from the scales (but that’s me I guess – ever the pessimist!) After we’d picked up our prescriptions we went and picked up my favourite eldest daughter – she’s lost 22kg, you know! I think that’s fantastic! She’s back at uni now, but luckily all her classes are on the same day – Monday – so she has an early start and a very late finish on Mondays, but at least she has the rest of the week to recover from it 🙂 Anyway, she hasn’t been over this week – everything’s just been a bit too chaotic. Monday she was at uni – yesterday we were out furniture shopping, tomorrow I’m having my hair re-coloured, and on Friday, her husband has the day off so she’ll want to be at home with him. Which left today, but if we’d picked her up and come back here after being at the Doctor’s, we wouldn’t have had time to do anything sensible, so we picked her up and went on to The Glen, where we went to The Shingle Inn for “brunch” instead. Now, “brunch” usually stands for a cross between “breakfast” and “lunch“, only in this instance it stands for a cross between “(Optifast) bar” and “lunch“! She and I ate our Optifast bars (she had a chocolate one, and I had a cappuccino one) and Julian had a Caesar Salad 🙂 Then they made the mistake of leaving me alone in Priceline, where I kept finding things that I’d forgotten that I really needed…  while they went off to fill the prescriptions. When they came back for me, Lee was aghast at my handfuls of “stuff”, and Julian scowled at my innocent expression as I explained how I’d “forgotten” to get them “last time” (besides, I’ve told him before – “never leave me alone in a Chemist, or a Priceline shop! I’ll just buy stuff! ” Is it my fault if he forgets? (*innocent look at screen*))

Then we dropped Lee home, and went on to our soon-to-be new local shopping centre at Vermont South, where Julian was able to procure a Post Office Box, after which we came home. I immediately shed my shoes, grabbed by gear, and raced off to do my – extremely late – lunch-time Stair Walk. Then I decided to have a bit of a play with Final Fantasy XIV… until I suddenly realised how late it was getting, and I hastily logged out to start writing this. Tomorrow, I’m going to have to be dropped off very early over at Doncaster Shoppingtown – the stupendous Sharron and her crew are coming to collect the… rental furniture… at 9.30am. My hair appointment is at 10, so I’m going to have nearly an hour to kill before I’m due at Oscar Oscar. Oh dear – whatever shall I do for an hour? Left all alone in a shopping centre, with nothing to do but look in the shops… 😉 The other day when we were over there I saw a lovely lipstick in Inglot… I might go and have another look at it… then again, I might not – I can’t get the wheelchair into the shop without having help to steer it. *sigh* Oh well, ’twas but an idle thought… 😉 Then sometime after two o’clock our furniture – or some of it, anyway – will be returned. I can’t wait! At long last! Something comfortable to sit on in the evening! Not much will be coming home – the couch and the two recliner chairs, the chest that goes at the foot of the bed, and my little “wheelie-table” that’s so handy for putting things on as you walk between the bedroom, the bathroom, and the Den. Friday is clear, so we may go looking for desks and/or glass-topped tables… and mirrors! When I said last night that we had everything except the desks, some sort of comfortable chairs for the Den, the bedroom mirror, and the bookcases, I’d forgotten about the outdoor furniture for the huge entertainment deck! So we’ll probably go to Hardly Normal, to look at their outdoor furniture and their desks (and small, glass-topped tables, if they have any!) It would be fantastic if we could get those on Friday, but I fear that the desks and/or glass-topped tables will not be an easy find!

Weigh-in this morning. Another blooming miracle! I lost another three points, dropping me from 84.0kg to 83.7kg! Please cross all your fingers, toes and eyes that I don’t bounce back because I really need to lose as much weight as I possibly can between now and July 21st…

Another note on Final Fantasy XIV – Lee says that at level 7, I’m still pretty much in the starting “tutorial” area (but I had already guessed as much) I think I’m still trying to decide on what “Class” I want to play – which is one of the reasons I keep creating new characters, but Lee says that unlike WoW and Rift, it’s ridiculously easy to change “Class” – that it’s mainly a matter of changing your weapon (or wand, or staff, or sword… or whatever) so I might give that a try tonight, as I rather like my latest “creation”, called Azsharah, who is currently an Arcanist Mage. I’d like her to become a Thaumaturgist, who does more damage (I think!) than the Arcanist or Conjurer Mages. I’ll let you know how I go with trying to change Class. If I have to buy a new or different type of weapon, I might be a bit stuck – at only level 7, I don’t think I have enough money to buy a new weapon…. yet! 🙂 Anyway, I think that’s probably about it from me for tonight – but do drop in again tomorrow night – find out if our much-loved and sorely missed furniture has come home again, and whether my weight has continued to behave itself… as well as whether or not I managed to change Classes in Final Fantasy XIV or not. And if you’re really lucky I might even have some photos of how my new hair colour turned out… 😉 However, you’ll have to wait until tomorrow night to find all those things out – I know I’m good, but I’m not that good! Even I can’t see into the future! 🙂 So until then, bee good, don’t forget that if you do what you need, you’re surviving, but if you do what you want, you’re living… and please remember to drive carefully, to look after yourselves, and to keep warm – but most importantly, remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

*There’s an update on the “As Seen On…” page – from the “Goodreads Quote of the Day“

Guess what! We have nearly all of our new furniture! Well, we don’t have it yet, it won’t be delivered until August 21st, the day after settlement, because we don’t have anywhere to put it all at the moment!  As you know, we were supposed to be having the painters in to do any necessary touch-ups, but of course, they were told that they weren’t needed – yet. Flipper still had to go up to the Vet early – she had to be there at eight o’clock this morning, so it was a rudely early start for all of us! She was most displeased to have been dragged from a cosy, warm cave and thrust unceremoniously into a horrid, hard, cold plastic “crate”, so she insisted on telling the entire building “help, help! I’m being kidnapped! save me! save me!” at the top of her voice! However, it was for her own good, and off to the kindly Vet she was taken, despite her strident protestations that “she’d never had a sick day in her life! She didn’t need to go to the Vet, she was purrfectly well! Unhand me, you brute!” Once within the surgery, she was weighed (she hasn’t lost any weight, but she’s drinking a lot more than she usually does – not good news, as far as her kidneys are concerned!) was given her inoculations, and her Cartrophen injection (for her arthritis) They kept her there all day to test her blood pressure at timed intervals, and it’s still w-a-y too high, so we have to continue giving her a quarter (or is it 1/8th?) of a Norvasc pill every day, plus a potassium pill. Julian grinds them up together and sprinkles them on top of her dinner, together with her Loxicom, and unlike any other cat we’ve ever had, she actually doesn’t seem to notice this strange mixture on top of her food, because she usually eats the lot without complaint!  She’s also had some “mats” removed from around her tummy area, and her claws clipped. Julian’s off picking her up now…

So, anyway, when he got back from dropping her off at the Vet, we had breakfast, and decided how we were going to handle today. Julian thought that we might as well go furniture shopping, so off we went, all bundled up against the cold – thank goodness it wasn’t raining then! I was going to take an Optifast bar with me for lunch, and we were supposed to have taken a tape measure and the list of places to go, taken from that ever-so-handy list of furniture that I’d made the other day. We’re in the car, heading towards Whitehorse Road and about to enter the freeway…

Julian: “Have you got your bar with you?”
Me: “No 😦 I forgot! …*sigh* Where are we going first?”
Julian: “Damn! I left the list at home! – we can stop off at a Chemist and see if we can get a box of your bars, and I’ll have one too”
Me: “O.K…. did you bring the tape measure?”
Julian: [pregnant pause] …We’ll stop off at Bunnings, and I’ll buy one!”

Don’t worry, this sort of forgetfulness is quite typical of us… we’re just absent-minded! (some very rude people have been heard to mutter that our minds are just plain “absent”, but if that were the case, we’d forget to breathe, wouldn’t we!? 😉 ) So we decided to do a circuit, and suss out the lay of the land. We did have the original list of items we wanted to see, and where they were – we just didn’t have Julian’s list of which places to go to first, etc., so all was not lost. Cruising up Whitehorse Road towards Ringwood, we passed Forty Winks, where the bedroom suite we wanted to see was, then a very short distance away was Adriatic, where the kitchen table I’d thought looked nice was.. We swung back and went to Forty Winks first, where after a somewhat shaky start (there didn’t appear to be any floor staff, and we couldn’t find the bedroom suite we wanted to look at) we got someone to show us the “Laronde Bedroom Suite” – which we bought! 🙂 Bed: “tick” 🙂 We didn’t bother getting in the car and driving up to Adriatic – we just trundled along the footpath, shivering in the cold! We were originally going to look at the dining room/kitchen table that I’d seen online – a nine piece table and chairs called the Koco – which we also bought. Kitchen Table & Chairs: “tick!” 🙂 There was a matching “side table” which looked as though it would be suitable for the hall, called a “Bravo Console Havana“, which we got, too. Hall Table: “tick!” 🙂 So, seeing we were right there an’ all, we decided to have a look at one of the lounge suites that I’d seen online, called The Dora – 3 Seater with Chaise, which we both sat on, and found it extremely comfortable – all of the seats slid/pull out, so that any of the individual, or all of the individual, “seats” can be turned into semi-recliners. It certainly ticked all our boxes, so we got that too! 🙂 Lounge Suite: “tick!” 🙂

Then we came home! All we have to look for now are desks for the Den and Julian’s Office, a longish, slightly “decorative” (but not too decorative! I don’t “do” “tizzy”) mirror for the main bedroom – I’d like to get one the same as the one that’s currently there, but I don’t know where I’d find one (mind you, I haven’t really been looking for mirrors – yet!) If there’s room in the Den after we get the desks in there, we may, or may not get, a couple of smallish recliners, maybe a bookcase or two, and maybe a smallish coffee table. It’s a big room, but we don’t want to run the risk of it looking “cluttered”, so we’ll wait and see how much room we have left before buying anything else… We need bookcases for the Library, but once again I think we’ll wait until we’ve moved in to see (a) how much room we’re going to need for the books, and (b) how much room is available for the bookcases to hold them all! So we’re almost home and hosed! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. Miracles still do happen – I went down three points, from 84.3kg to 84.0kg – but, knowing my run of (bad)  luck with my weight lately, I’ll probably go back up to 84.9kg tomorrow morning 😦 We’ll see…

If I can find any likely looking desks online tonight, we might go and have a look at them on the way home from the Doctors (we both need to renew some scripts) I also want to look in at Hardly Normal (Harvey Norman) because I can dimly remember them having some semi-decent looking desks on display, once upon a time. There’s only one real problem with the desks… I don’t know how Julian feels about his desk, but I would really like to have a “return” on mine, and the only thing wrong with having a permanent curve, or a “return” on your desk is that it can be very difficult to move around without having the “return” sticking out where you don’t want a piece of furniture sticking out (I’m sure I could have said all that a lot more gracefully, but I’m in a hurry, so it’ll have to do – sorry! 🙂 ) So, hopefully we’ll get to see some of these desks tomorrow – though we’ve also been thinking of using glass-topped tables as desks! (smallish glass-topped tables – not kitchen or dining room sized ones!) Anyway, on that happy note, that’s about all from me for tonight! Do drop by again tomorrow night – find out if we did find our desks, and where, or did we opt for smallish glass-topped tables instead? And did my weight go back up again, or has it gone down a bit more… there’ll be lots more to tell you all tomorrow night, so don’t miss out on all the fabulous adventures that happen routinely around here 😉 Until tomorrow night, then, please bee good, remember to always live as if you were going to die tomorrow, and learn as if you were going to live forever! Don’t forget to look after yourselves, to keep warm, and to drive carefully, but above all, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

 

 

We had a reprieve today! We’ve not been happy, having to live in a “pretend” home – sorry, “Display Home” – but we’ve more-or-less gone along with it because it seemed to be what the cultured Carmen wanted, because as I told you last night, she was going away in early September. This morning they were supposed to be coming to take the photos… Carmen arrived first, and was very disconcerted by the state of the kitchen. Actually, the kitchen was very clean and tidy – but she’d wanted almost everything removed from the kitchen bench, apart from the coffee machine and a bowl of fruit, and items removed from cupboards that had frosted glass doors (because the colours and shapes of the things behind them were partly visible, you see) etc., etc. This prompted a rather long discussion about getting things ready for “OFI” days*, where it was up to poor Julian to spend a couple of hours each way, turning the place from something we could live in, into something that Carmen wanted it to look like, and then back again afterwards. In the end it was actually Carmen herself who proposed that we put the sale campaign off until after August 25th – that is, after we’d moved out. Oh, we were sooo disappointed! – NOT! 🙂 That’s the way we’d wanted to do it from the start – we don’t need to sell the apartment in a hurry to pay for the new house, so there’s absolutely no reason to hurry, apart from the fact that Carmen possibly might not be here. By postponing the sale, we can get our old, comfy lounge suite back, and Flipper won’t have to be upset by being shoved into her much-detested carry cage and taken into the strange and unfamiliar apartment next door for 30 minutes twice a week. The charismatic Carmen and the scintillating Sharron get the whole place to themselves, to dress up and play doll’s house with to their heart’s content – when they have their “OFI” days, no-one has to run around neatening things up and moving personal effects out – Carmen can just turn up, open the door, turn on the lights and the heater, show people through a pristine doll’s palace, and just turn everything off, close and lock the door when they’ve gone – and be all ready and neat and tidy for the next “OFI” day! Much more betterer all round! 🙂 Of course, we’ll have to pay for the extra rental of the furniture that’s here, but that’s OK, we can live with that – it’s a very small price to pay for being comfortable and stress free! Actually as far as we’re concerned, all the rental stuff can pretty much stay where it is – apart from those truly horrible and unspeakably uncomfortable pieces of lounge room furniture  – they have to go, while I’m living in the apartment – if we can, we’ll just swap those unmentionables for our old couch and chairs, currently languishing in storage – they’re really the only things we want back at the moment, and hopefully, everyone will be happy! (I know we will be!) 🙂 Oh, and the painter who was coming tomorrow has also been postponed until “later”. Flipper, of course, will still be furious with both of us for carting her off to the Vet for her six monthly check-up, her inoculations, and her Cartrophen injection (for her arthritis – it’s a shame they can’t give me one as well! 😉 ) but at least she won’t have to stay the night there, as we’d previously arranged, because of the paint fumes… but of course, now there won’t be any paint fumes! 🙂

So now we can start looking for new furniture in earnest – Julian has had a look at most of the stuff that I saved for him the other day, and agrees with me on most of it (especially the bedroom suite, which is really, really nice!) We plan (HA!) to get most of the things delivered to our storage facility well before we move in to Stillwater, but you know what the ubiquitous “they” say – “The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men… gang aft agley”, so we won’t hold our collective breaths over it! 🙂 About all we really have to seriously look for now is a bedroom mirror (long – for seeing hems in!) and desks. We’ll want three desks, I believe – one for Julian’s official “Office”, up by the front door, and one for each of us in the “Den”. We do have an extremely nice antique walnut desk, which will either go in the Library (if there’s room for it) or in one of the three as-yet indeterminate bedrooms, because even though it’s a beautiful old desk, it’s not really big enough (or even really suitable, for that matter) to be used as a computer desk. But you know the best part about going off to look at new furniture? 🙂 We’ll be able to come home, and put our feet up and relax during dinner, and while we’re watching “Person of Interest”! Speaking of which (“Person of Interest”, that is) it’s been officially confirmed that there’s to be another, shorter, Season made, and it’s also been confirmed that the character known to us as “Shaw”, who was “maybe killed off” (she was pregnant in real life and couldn’t continue with her extremely physical hand-to-hand combat scenes) is not dead, after all, and will be returning to the show – the number of episodes she’ll appear in is currently being “negotiated” 🙂 My favourite eldest daughter and I are absolutely delighted with this news – she’s a fantastic character – and we  can hardly wait to see her in action again! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. I stayed the same again. 84.3kg. I’m still retaining fluid, if my weight and my swollen feet are anything to go by – but we’re seeing the doctor on Wednesday so I’ll mention it to her then.

Well, it looks like we have the whole day to ourselves tomorrow! (yayyy!) If the weather isn’t too “Ice Age” cold and wet, we might start our Furniture Foraging. Problems only occur if it’s raining, because very few of those furniture stores boast underground parking, and extracting a wheelchair from the back of a car and re-assembling it in the rain, then me doing my best imitation of a scuttle to get into it is not really…. “pleasant”, shall we say. On the other hand, if we wait for it to stop raining, we may find ourselves moving into Stillwater on August 25th sans furniture! (which would not be a good look!) I’ve made my appointment to have my hair coloured this Thursday… so, palpitations and trepidations! What colour should I go?! 🙂 But first….

+————————–+ * Dinner & Television Break * +————————–+

Back again! 🙂 I’ve been playing Final Fantasy XIV quite a bit today – I’m getting the hang of it, but it’s very slow! There are so many cut-scene quest details – you can skip them, but then you end up not knowing exactly what you’re supposed to be doing. In Rift, and in WoW, the quest giver gives you “the abridged” version, and the rest is given in text format, if you want to, or can be bothered reading about it. So a lot of your time in FFXIV is spent watching and listening to various quest givers telling you in minute detail what it is you have to do. To people used to playing these sorts of games it’s a bore, and you tend to sort-of “tune out” after the first couple of quests and you end up not listening properly to the rest, so it can be a little obscure, despite all the details they insist on giving you. I strongly suspect that neither my favourite eldest daughter, who started playing it first and then told me about it, nor myself – now that I’ve given it a bit of a run for its moneyFree Trail, will play it for very long – but it’s fun, as a temporary diversion… 🙂 So, once again, that’s about it from me for tonight! Call in again tomorrow night and find out how Flipper went on her visit to the Vet, and if she’s forgiven us yet, for being so mean and unkind to her as to make her go in the car to that horrible place where they stick things in her, and cut her claws. I’m pretty sure there won’t be much change in my weight – unless it goes up, which it may well do – however there will be news about furniture in general, and (hopefully) desks in particular. I’ve been most put out by the lack of room on our bedside tables with the advent of the totally unnecessary lamps that the superlative Sharron insisted we have – but I suddenly remembered that the main bedroom at Stillwater doesn’t have “built-in” (so to speak) reading lamps, so unfortunately we will have to get some for over there – and thinking about those made me realise that we’ll also need some “standard lamps” (tall lamps) – at least two, anyway! We already have one which will probably go in the Library, but we’ll need another for the living room, and a third one for the “sitting area” in the Den… and maybe a fourth one for Julian’s office? Though a desk lamp might be all he’ll need. Anyway, so now we’re going to have to look at lighting, as well as furniture! Anyway, I’ll fill you all in on everything tomorrow night – but until then, do try to bee good, always remember that the highest reward for a person’s toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it; don’t forget to drive carefully, to keep warm, and to look after yourselves… but most importantly, remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

* “OFI” days = “Open For Inspection” days – it’s far too long to keep writing all the time, so from now on, “OFI” days stands for “Open For Inspection” days, OK? 🙂

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! 🙂