Well, I sat down to start writing this about three-quarters of an hour ago – but I got distracted. As usual. All those ruddy items of furniture that I’d found the other day, where they were, plus my comments about them, and which I’d oh so foolishly saved onto Speed Dial, all had to be transferred across to a format that Julian could access, too. Notepad is a very handy tool for things like that, as is being able to have two windows open on the same screen at the same time. So I set about copying and pasting, copying and pasting, ad infinitum. All those bits and pieces of furniture are now accessible by Julian in an easy to read file stored on Drive Z of the File Server (why I didn’t just do that in the first place, I’ll never know!) And now we have three things! We have…. the house. We have…. the measurements. And… we have…  the “List of Furniture Needed“! Nothing can stop us now, muhahahahahahaha! Well, theoretically, anyway! But that’s not what distracted me this afternoon – I did all of that copying and pasting this morning! No, this afternoon I was distracted because I couldn’t find my handy-dandy “Blog Short-cuts and Other Handy References” file on my desktop. This was because I had so many wretched programs and files saved on my desktop that you could hardly see the desktop wallpaper! There was too much “stuff” in the way. Now, I really need that “Blog Short-cuts and Other Handy References” file – it has things like the “Winter’s log” phrase that I just copy and paste, and change the last one or two digits, and it has various words that I always get confused as to how they’re actually spelt, words with foreign accents, the “break for dinner and television” thingy, and the one I use when I’ve just added something to the “As Seen On…” page. It’s quite necessary to the well-being of this blog! So I resolved to “tidy up” my desktop. I made a new folder, and called it, very imaginatively, “Absolutely Everything”, and I did put everything on my desktop into it. Except for a few things. I made a separate folder called “Blog Notes” – guess what I put in there! There are only seven items on my desktop now – well, for the moment, anyway. So that distracted me a bit… but then I looked at the wallpaper I’d been using, and decided that I liked my bookmarks wallpapery-thingy so much that I should make another for the “back” desktop, so I did. You can see it here. It’s just like the bookmarks wallpapery-thingy, only a bit different 🙂 And that’s how I got distracted this afternoon 🙂

The cleaners were in this morning… there were four of them, and it took them four and a half hours. I think they did everything except this room (the Den) because Flipper and I were cowering away from all the noise and chaos in here. As soon as Julian and I have finished our coffee, I’m afraid I’m going to have to be distracted again – we have to go and move some of the furniture that the scintillating and sparkling Sharron had placed “on artistic angles” in the hall. I’ll allow the chair to stay on its “watch out or I’ll trip you up” angle, but the small cabinet has to be moved! The umbrella stand can go in the corner newly vacated by the small empty wine rack and the round, glass “wot-not” stand, the “Roman Camp” chair can move into the corner by the front door, and the little cabinet can go next to the front door. If the colourful and carefree Carmen doesn’t like it, well… I guess we’ll move it all back again? 😉 Right, well, third and (hopefully final!) distraction of the night has been dealt with – the umbrella stand is back where it originally stood when my mother lived here, the “shoe rack” basket is where the empty wine rack and round glass “wot-not” stand used to be, the “Roman Camp” chair is angled in the corner near the front door, and the little cabinet is in a much more salubrious and practical position, next to the front door. If the two Lusciously Lovely Ladies don’t like my changes, they can lump it! (so there!)

To say that today was a sh*t of a day would be a gross understatement – I’m getting just so sick of people coming in, not only disrupting our lives, but making them damned-well uncomfortable as well, I’m almost ready to scream at the next person who rings the front door bell! The lounge suite we were allocated for this campaign has to be one of the most uncomfortable pieces of furniture that I’ve ever had the displeasure to sit on. For starters, it’s not leather, it’s not vinyl, and it’s not fabric. It’s some sort of plasticky covered fabric which feels most unpleasant to the touch. The colour? Imagine… one teaspoon of ready mixed mustard, blended into a good half-liter of plain Greek yogurt, and you’ll come close to the colour of the couch. You can’t put your feet up, and you can’t lean back – but even so, I have no doubt whatsoever that last night I was a lot more comfortable than poor Julian was in one of those “horseshoe” chairs! Honestly though, are the extra dollars we might get for this place by making ourselves thoroughly uncomfortable for another 45 days really worth it?! I wouldn’t have minded so much if we could have at least be comfortable while we watched television in the evenings, but it’s about on a par with the first night without our furniture, when we had to use our computer chairs in the lounge room!

Weigh-in this morning. I know it’s only the first day off those unspeakable tablets, and far too soon to expect good results, but (I don’t even know if I can bear to write this!) I went up a point. For nine days I have see-sawed upwards and downwards between 84.3kg and 84.4kg. Nine days! Yesterday I’d been sitting on 84.3kg for three days. Today I went up to 84.4kg. again! Well, I don’t care if “it’s only fluid, and once you’re off the pills it’ll go”, I don’t care if it’s wind, and I don’t care if it’s feathers from the bloody doona that I must have swallowed in my sleep! I’m so depressed I don’t know whether to slit my own throat, or throw myself down the bloody fire escape stairs! But if my weight doesn’t start to go down again soon, I’ll pick the one that’ll be fastest! I’m done with this bloody weight-loss idiocy!

Tomorrow’s Sunday, and we’ll be Rifting for most of it, trying to pretend that life’s still muddling along as usual, then there’ll only be two more days of people encroaching on our territory – Monday, when the photographers will be here, probably with the charismatic Carmen and possibly the scintillating Sharron as well, telling the photographers what to do (they’re both very good at telling people what to do!) and Tuesday, when the painters will be here. After that, I would really like to slam the bloody front door closed and only open it again when we want to go out, and on the “Open For Inspection” days. And that, dear readers, is about it from me for tonight – do call in again tomorrow night, to learn how the two of us fared in (and on!) The Plain of Water – we’ll be playing our usual two girls – both Mages – and as usual, it’ll be a lot of fun. I’ve also been playing quite a bit more Final Fantasy XIV – it’s a lot slower game play-wise, than Rift and World of Warcraft – but I still haven’t been able to work out if that’s because I’m currently in the “starting out” area, and if it’ll get faster as I level up (I have three characters – my current one is sitting on level 5) I know I nearly gave up on Rift when I first started playing it because I thought it was too fast for me to cope with – but I’ll let you know more about it after I’ve played it for a bit longer – maybe when I’ve reached level 10. Whatever happens though, there’ll be heaps to tell you about tomorrow, so don’t miss out on all the hot goss! 🙂 Until then, though, please continue to bee good, remember that the smallest act of kindness is worth more than the grandest intention, don’t forget to keep warm, to look after yourselves, and to drive carefully… but most importantly, remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

Here I am again – almost exhausted, even though I haven’t really done anything much. We got up at the usual time (7.30am) but I really wish that we’d got up a bit earlier. I hate having to rush, and I had to be at the Hairdresser by 9.45am… so I rushed. Julian seems to think that simply keeping me informed of the time is somehow going to automagically make me do things quicker – but alas, it doesn’t work that way! It has always, and will always, take me “x” minutes to finish in the bathroom – and no amount of telling me “we leave in eight minutes” is going to change that! I keep trying to explain to him that If we’re leaving in eight minutes, but it’s going to take me more than eight minutes to finish in the bathroom, then we’re going to be late – it’s as simple as that! Now, you’d think that after 29 years he would have learned this! The only way around this “time management” problem is… to allow more time – perhaps by getting up a little earlier? Anyway, I rushed, and I hate rushing. It makes me grumpy and recalcitrant! I didn’t get a chance to finish my cup of tea, which makes me really bad tempered, and I had to bolt my breakfast, which makes me even more bad tempered and snarly to boot, so if I wasn’t a very pleasant passenger in the car, well, it wasn’t my fault, OK?! After I’d finished at the Hairdresser we went off to have my Warfarin blood test done – the results of which have just come in. I’m to stay on the same dosage (3mg) my INR has crept up to 2.0, which is really excellent, and my next test is on July 24th, so that’s all good! 🙂 We called in at Inglot, my favourite cosmetic store, on the way home, and I got two new eyeshadows – I’m always concerned that I’m going to end up looking like “mutton dressed up as lamb” – well, I am old, you know, and while I do like the smoky greys a lot (love them, in fact!) I’m starting to think that just maybe they’re a bit too “heavy” for someone my age – so this time I got something a teeny-weeny bit lighter… I’ll try them out tomorrow, after I’ve cleaned my eyeshadow brushes… (*woebegone look at screen* I don’t have any coffee left! 😦 ) By the time we got home, I was freezing, and we were both frazzled and suffering from a lack of caffeine. I couldn’t come straight upstairs as I normally do, I had to wait until himself had collected all the bits of shopping and the dry cleaning, so I froze a bit more… I didn’t have my keys with me because last night when I went for my Stair Walk (Julian was off supervising the Removalists) I couldn’t find the spare set of keys that I normally use when I go on my Stair Walk, and which usually live in a little dish by the front door, right next to my Door Propping Open Book and my leather gauntlets (to protect my hand from the vastly over-textured wall!) The cabinet that they’d always been on had been emptied, the contents packed, and the cabinet whisked off to storage – I did search around a bit, but at that stage everything was in so much of a mess that I thought “bugger it! I’ll just take my own keys!”, which I did. But when I got back, I forgot to put my keys back in my handbag, didn’t I! (I have since returned them to their normal home!) So we got home this morning, we straggled upstairs, and collapsed into our computer chairs (there weren’t any other chairs left to sit on!) with some much-needed coffee. It seemed that no sooner had we started to relax than the door buzzer went. It was Sharron and her side-kick (whose name escapes me at this particular point) with the new furniture. I’m quite at a loss as to exactly what they were trying to do – we were told that the place was going to be “modernised”, made to look a bit more like a Display Home, etc., etc. As usual, I secreted myself down here in the Den and left them to it. At one stage Julian came down and I said “How’s it looking?” He hesitated for a second… “Well,” he said “it’s not the sort of house that I’d want to live in….” which I thought sounded a bit ominous… but I saw what he meant when they’d finished, and I came timidly out to see what I had left to live in until August 24th or 25th. Modern? They’ve put smart, very nicely upholstered furniture that would have looked good in a Dowager Duchess’s living room. There’s a nice square glass-topped table and matching chairs out on the balcony (complete with potted plant in the middle of the table, which will have to be removed except for Open For Inspection days, because if there’s even a breath of wind, it’ll blow off!) The lounge room looks, if anything, more crowded! There’s a cream coloured two-seater sofa, and two horribly uncomfortable looking, “horseshoe” arm chairs – the sort you see in some of the more “up-market” hotel lounges, in a matching cream-ish fabric. There are scatter cushions from here to eternity, and the top of the entertainment unit is carpeted with little “knickknacks”; the two side tables are only a little less sparsely populated (but then, they have containers of flowers on them…) and there’s a ginormous vase of flowers in the middle of the coffee table (which will have to be moved, if we want to watch anything on television!) The dining room chairs she’s provided do look very nice, as do the flowers in the middle of the dining room table (all of the flowers are fake, by the way, but you’d never know it, even by feeling them! Somehow or other they’ve been made so that they actually feel real!) However, both the charismatic Carmen and the superlative Sharron kept going on about how one of the display cabinets in the hall had to go, because it would make the room seem bigger? Well, the display case, which sat flat against the wall and didn’t take up much room, has gone… and in its place they’ve put another one of those “horseshoe” armchairs, at an angle, poking into the hall, right where the passage down to the bathroom and Den is! It’s smothered in scatter cushions, too… The bed looks silly, quite frankly – they’ve placed a narrow, ruffled, or ruched “runner” about six inches up from the bottom edge of the bed, and again – thousands of pillows! Ditto with the small(ish) bed they’ve put in the spare room. Sharron said to take lots of pictures (so that we’ll know how to put things back if we have to disturb anything!) which we haven’t done yet, but will do, as soon as we get a chance – and I’ll make them available for you all to see. As Julian said – it’s not the sort of house we’d want to live in for very long, but… we’ll just have to put up with it for the duration

Weigh-in this morning. Not happy. I stayed the same – 84.3kg again. Thank heavens that today was the last day of those wretched pills! Now all I have to do is wait until they work their evil way out of my system! Only 11 more days until I see Dr. Y…..

So we’re almost at the end of the “set-up for the sale” ordeal! Tomorrow, the cleaners come. They have orders to scour (and I do mean “scour”!) the place, from top to bottom, including power-hosing the balcony! Cupboard doors, light switches, skirting boards, doors – the works! They were going to bring in a special machine for cleaning grouting, but it would have been far too expensive, so they’re not going to do that – but the rest will be properly cleaned! Sunday is our day in The Plane of Water… The other night, Julian wanted to try an experiment with my Mage “Silversong”, and his Cleric, “Mandreth”, instead of the Mage that Silversong usually plays with on Sundays. I’m not quite sure why – we have teamed up a Mage (me) and a Cleric (him) many times before – in fact, that’s the combination we’ve usually played with – mainly because the Mage provided the dps (damage per second), and the Cleric provided the healing to keep the Mage alive. But anyway, we gave it a go, and if we got nothing else from the experiment, Silversong did find a much more betterer “shot rotation” than she’d been using (“shot rotation” – the order  and sequences in which you use your weapons) and she can now bring down mobs in less than half the time it had taken her before! 🙂 On Monday, the photographers are coming to take their extremely clever photos (which make all the rooms look twice the size they really are!) for the advertising campaign. The last day of the “ordeal” will be Tuesday, when the painter comes in to do any last minute little “touch-ups” that might be needed. Then, we should be able to heave a sigh, keep a stiff upper lip, and “endure” the two days a week of the “Open For Inspections”, until either the 19th August (Auction day), or until someone makes a fantastic offer that’s too good to refuse – whichever comes first! 🙂 Only forty days to go… The day after the Auction (if it goes to Auction!) is settlement date for our new place – which is a Thursday – and we should be moving in around about the 25th, the following Tuesday. So… roll on August! 🙂 Flipper seems to have taken a liking to one of the horribly uncomfortable “horseshoe” chairs, and has claimed it for her own – until she changes her mind, anyway, so she seems to have accepted the new layout reasonably well – but I’d still prefer that she not be living in paint fumes next Tuesday – she has boarded overnight at the Vets before, without undue histrionics… But anyway, that’s about it from me again for tonight – but do call back again tomorrow – by then I should have pictures of the “new-look apartment” for you all to gawk at and exclaim over – hopefully I’ll have better news about my weight, but I doubt it – it’s probably too soon for any real downward progress. But, as usual, I’m sure there’ll be lots to tell you, so make sure you don’t miss out! 😉 However, until then, please remember to bee good, don’t forget to always be kinder than you feel, and remember to keep warm, to look after yourselves, and to drive carefully, but above all… remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

Well, today’s “The Day” – the first of the “preparation days” before the Transformation of our comfortable and familiar abode, into a cold and soul-less Display Home for the hoi poloi to traipse through, opening cupboards best left closed, and drawers that are really none of their business, because the drawers will be coming with us (for the most part, anyway) Flipper, poor little girl, has been locked in the bathroom whilst the people are moving the furniture out, though she was out this morning while the packing lady was packing up everything from all the cupboards in the hall, the “lesser” display cabinet, the chest at the end of our bed, everything movable from the Spare Room (except for the floor rug – Sharron wants that to stay). Flipper decided that the best thing she could do was to sleep in her “cave” and pretend that nothing out of the ordinary was happening – but she won’t be able to turn a blind eye this evening when we let her out of the bathroom – her couch will be gone, as will her “Daddy Patting Chair” – and all of her familiar surroundings will be gone for ever and ever. Tomorrow the new rented furniture will arrive for the duration – I have absolutely no idea what it’ll be like, whether it’ll be comfortable enough, what colour it’ll be (let’s just hope it doesn’t involve puce and “Kelly” green!) and whether Flipper will accept it (which she probably will, eventually – though with very bad grace!) While all the packing was going on this morning, and Flipper was pretending very hard that it wasn’t, I was in here nervously drifting from one thing to another. I tried playing Rift for a bit, but I just couldn’t concentrate, and I ended up leaving Chaviv back in Argent Glade (again!) cooling his heels in the Pub there. When you finish playing for a while, nearly everyone tries to get to a place where you can get “rest” time while you’re offline. You get “rest” time in places like Inns, Major Camps, and of course, your home City. Why bother? Well, because “rest” time doubles your experience for the same amount of time that you spent “resting”, and anything which increases your experience gains is worth having, or doing! So, poor old Chaviv got to finish off about two quests before I took him back to Argent Glade. Then I tried some graphic-ing. That didn’t even last as long as Chaviv did, and I gave that up as a bad joke, too. In the end, I went searching for furniture. I don’t know if it’s just that I was holding my mouth the wrong way, or something, but I found it almost impossible to find decent furniture places in which to look for what we wanted. It was probably my own fault for not having the syntax right, but Googling for things like “retail furniture melbourne au”, or “lounge suites melbourne au” brought me everything from bird baths to second-hand bikes, with very little “new” furniture, or large furniture stores. In the end, I had to dredge the bottom of the barrel which is my mind, looking for the actual names of furniture places – did you know that the place where they’re supposed to treat you like a Guest (Guest’s) is now only for rental furniture? Or so Google would have me believe, anyway. So I looked up a few other names I knew, off the top of my head (why does everything have to be so complicated these days? All I wanted to do was Google a simple list of furniture stores in Melbourne that I could go and look at – why did I get just about everything under the sun except what I was asking Google to find for me?! Yeah, I know… syntax. Grrr!) In the end I managed to compile quite a nice, long list of leather modular lounge suites, 9 piece tables settings, desks, and bedroom suites. I haven’t been able to locate a suitable mirror for the bedroom yet, and I haven’t finished looking at desks yet – but as I saved all the websites for these pieces of furniture, with my notes on each of them, to Speed Dial, I now have the delightful task of copying them all into LAN Messenger, so that I can send them on to Julian! Arrggghhh! It would have been a lot quicker and easier if I’d simply saved everything directly to a Notepad file that I could then “scrape and copy” into LAN Messenger for him! *sigh* Oh well, I suppose that no-one’s perfect, least of all me!

Weigh-in this morning. My weight graph is beginning to look like this: /\/\/\ ! Monday: 84.4kg. Tuesday 84.3kg. Wednesday 84.4kg. Today 84.3kg! Treading water… running on the spot… wasting time! Thank all the powers that be that I only have one more wretched day of these rotten, horrible, fluid retaining bloody pills! Even then, it’s going to take about three or four days until I get them out of my system again – and by then it’ll be too late! I won’t be well on my way under 84.Xkg before I see Dr. Y. on the 21st! It’s not fair!

Tomorrow morning I’m off early to have my next Warfarin blood test (which reminds me – I should get my script out now – I need to get some more of the 1mg tablets) then it’s on to the Hairdresser, and with any luck we should just make it home in time for the arrival of the rental furniture. I’m not quite sure what we’re getting, but there’ll be a new, smaller lounge suite in “neutral colours”, to make the room look bigger, and Sharron’s going to bring some tall stools for the island bench, to make a “breakfast bar” out of it, “new” chairs for the round dining room table, a proper (smallish) proper bed for the spare room, other bits and pieces for the spare room, a pale and neutral colour doona cover for our bed *rolls eyes*, various cushions, vases, flowers, mirrors, and other falderal. In short, they’re going to try (“try” being the operative word!) to turn this place into a Display Home! And that part’s the easy part! We then have to try to keep it like that until August 19th *sigh*

Oh dear, the last of the spare computer chairs is being wheeled out, even as I type! They were all going to go, apart from Julian’s Den chair, his Office chair, and this one of mine, but I said “Hang on, leave a spare one for visitors! What’s my favourite eldest daughter going to sit on next week!” So we’re keeping one spare computer chair – too bad if she brings Neale with her next week 😉 And that, gentle readers, it pretty much it from me for tonight! Needless to say, I didn’t even remember to have a second look at Final Fantasy XIV – maybe tomorrow, if there’s time… But do call back again tomorrow night, and I’ll tell you what the new furniture looks like, and if it did turn out to be in shades of puce and “Kelly” green! (oh, I do so hope not!!) I’ll be able to fill you all in on how well Flipper is coping with this tsunami-like upheaval in her life, and what my weight’s doing. I’m really starting to despair this time – if I don’t start going down properly soon I may have to decide on more drastic measures, like doing all my Stair Walks twice each (down, up, down, up, for each Stair Walk) – and if that doesn’t start the weight moving again, nothing will! Julian has just brought me (yet another) cup of coffee – I won’t be getting dinner until after 8 o’clock, cos he has to go off to the Storage place with the Removalists so that he can let them in, and lock up again after them. I’ve persuaded him to feed Flipper before he goes – I can wait until after 8 o’clock for my dinner, because I understand the reasons for the wait, but it’s not fair to leave Flipper locked up in the bathroom (where she normally has her dinner anyway) until he gets home. Oh! What a fun day it’s been! …NOT! And now I shall once again behoove you all to try to bee good, don’t forget that if you try, you risk failure, but if you don’t try, you ensure it! Remember to drive carefully, to keep warm, and to look after yourselves…. but most importantly, remember to… stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

Well, I’m starting late again – as usual – my favourite eldest daughter was over today, and we had a great time watching the “Orphan Black” Season 3 final episode, and then a few episodes of Season 2 of “The 100”. They’re all very exciting, and I can’t wait for Season 4 of “Orphan Black”! It’s an amazing series, and Tatiana Masleny does a truly fantastic job of playing five different characters (the clones), all with completely different personalities, and sometimes all on screen together! Well, watching all those episodes alone would have given me a very late start, but when Lee arrived this morning, she told me that she and Neale had started playing a new MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online game – like Rift, and World of Warcraft) The one they’ve just started playing is “Final Fantasy XIV“, and so of course I had to go and have a look at it, and then I see that there’s a “Free Trial” that you can look at to see if you like it enough to buy it, and so once again, of course I had to download it and try it out. It took forever and a wet week to download, so we left the machine to deal with that while we went off to watch our shows… When we packed it in for the day and we came back down to the Den, the game had finally finished downloading, so Lee very kindly stayed a bit longer to help me through the setting up process, which is not only complicated, but in places, actually downright “user unfriendly”. Once that was done (with only a few snappy, annoyed words between the three of us) Julian took Lee home, and I…. was supposed to start writing this… but… Character creation is a subject very dear to my heart. I just had to see what the character creation tools were like on this new game (seriously, I think I enjoy creating the characters more than I like playing the actual game!) (hey! maybe that’s why I’m always creating new characters! Hmm….) So I started off the game… which went through the usual (well, usually!) short intro about the world, what’s happened to it, and why you have to be The Hero to put everything to rights again… only, this wasn’t a short intro. This one would have been quite suitable as the pilot episode for a new mini-series on TV! It went on, and on, and on… Finally that ended, and I got to my favourite bit, the character creation set-up. First, a name. On a mad whim, I tried “Satai Winterborn” (the name “Winter” was already gone, as was “Winterthyme”, but I thought “surely no-one would have “Satai Winterborn”!”, and they didn’t, so I got it! 🙂 Yay me!) Then I had to set up the features – height, *rolls eyes* “bust size”, because I’d chosen to roll a female character, and lots and lots of other things. However, out of a score of 10, I’d give their character creation set-up a 4.7. There were lots of options, none of them were explained, and none of them were intuitive. Unless you’d set up new characters before on other games, you wouldn’t have had a clue what you were doing! The same with choosing your “patron deity” – there’s nothing to tell you what skills are favoured by which deity, or deities! So what are you supposed to do? Choose the deity who wears your favourite colour, or something? What utter piffle! 😦 So anyway, I created a really cute little “elfin” type girl, and thought “Now! I can start playing” – not so! Remember how I said that there was an awfully l-o-n-g game intro that nearly drove me mad, it was so long? Well, once I’d created the character, it went into another, even longer (if that’s humanly, or even inhumanly possible!) cut scene sequence of your character sitting in the back of a cart, with a nosy peddler talking to you, on and on, and on! Then some bandits ride up to ambush your cart and they attempt to rob you, but your character (as a magic user – I don’t know what the other classes do) casts a spell which brings down another group of bandit “enemies”. This distracts the bandits, and your cart (plus the nosy peddler, unfortunately) get away… more talk from the peddler, and you finally arrive in town. Still you don’t get to play! You go through an “how to move around” tutorial (which you can, and I did, skip – for goodness sake, I know how to move around with a ruddy mouse! *sheesh!*) All this time I’m muttering to myself “c’mon, c’mon, get on with it!” – I wanted to have a bit of a play before Julian got home from dropping my favourite eldest daughter back home, and before I had to start writing this! But it was not to be. I’d wasted too much time being blathered about by long-winded intros – probably suitable for the total newbies who’ve never played an MMO before, but really… it was far too long, even for them – most new players would likely die of boredom before they even got to their first quest! (I didn’t even get that far – I didn’t have time to!) Unfortunately, this does not bode well for my rapidly wilting interest in Final Fantasy XIV… I doubt that I’ll have time tomorrow – the packing lady will be arriving at 8.00am, and the furniture will be walking out the front door between 2 and 3 o’clock. I think my best bet will be to keep my head down, and myself out of everyone’s way tomorrow. Poor Flipper – we really feel terrible for her! Her bedroom “floor” (the couch), and the “Daddy Patting Chair” are going, and just to round off her week of torture, we received two letters from the Vet about her today – one was to remind us that it’s time for her next Cartrophen injection (for her arthritis), and the other was to remind us that she’s due for her regular six monthly examination and her inoculations. We’ll take her up on Tuesday morning for all of those “nice” things, and “board” her there overnight – we’ll pick her up on Wednesday afternoon. The painters will be in on Tuesday, doing last minute “touch-ups”, and the paint fumes will only exacerbate the poor little girl’s confusion and distress. Hopefully, when the new “rented” furniture is put in on Friday afternoon, it might help her feel a bit better, but… I doubt it. Mummy and Daddy will just have to jolly her and comfort her through it.

Weigh-in this morning. You remember that one point I lost yesterday? I got it back this morning. I’m back to 84.4kg again. I hate those pills! Only another two days…

Anyway, once again, that’s about all from me for tonight – do drop back again tomorrow night and find out how the packing went (I never realised just how much still had to be packed before all the cupboards could be moved out – I totally forgot that they’re all full of crockery and crystal “stuffs” – not to mention all the books on the bookcase in the spare room!) and what the place looks like, bereft of all its major pieces of furniture! I have no idea what my weight will decide to do tomorrow morning – at the moment I’m thinking that it could sky-rocket to 86.9kg, or stay the same as today, at 84.4kg. If you hear a long drawn out scream tomorrow morning, it’ll probably be me screaming in frustration because I’ve gone down one point… again. Better check back tomorrow night to find out what it really did, though – I might not scream, I might just sob quietly to myself. But once again, there’ll be heapses and heapses to tell you all, so don’t miss out on all the latest! 😉 Until then, though, please try to bee good, remember to laugh when you can, apologize when you should, and let go of what you can’t change – life’s too short to be anything but happy! Don’t forget to drive carefully, to look after yourselves, and to keep warm… but above all, remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

Boy! What a day! And today was only the beginning…. *sigh* This morning started off normally enough, but as I told you last night, the lovely Sharron the Stylist was coming over this morning to see what progress, if any, we’d made with our “de-cluttering” efforts. She was actually very pleased with what we’ve done so far, and has organised a “packer” for us for Thursday morning (bright and early!) She confirmed a few things that we weren’t sure were going to be moved out, and she gave us a few tips for how to get ready for “Open For Inspection” days – f’rinstance, get small plastic baskets, and before we leave the house, go through from room to room, picking up all of “our” items that the public doesn’t want to, and shouldn’t see, like the mink lined handcuffs, the red suspender belt, the nine-inch stiletto heeled, thigh-high boots, and the personalised riding crop… and putting them all in a cupboard for the half hour that the apartment will be open. Because Julian is the Body Corporate Secretary, we have access to a couple of utility rooms that we can make use of for temporary storage, so we won’t have to clutter our own wardrobes with plastic baskets full of “thingz”. Julian reminded Sharron that the more we could get packed up, the more furniture could be moved out – which is when we all decided that we could do with the services of a professional “packer”. We’ll have her for five hours on Thursday, and she’ll be arriving at…. 8.00am! Eight o’bloody-clock! We’re hardly even out of bed before eight o’clock, let alone showered, dressed, and breakfasted! The alarm goes off at 7.30, and it takes a few minutes of mumbling and grumbling before we can prise ourselves out from under the nice, warm doona… But, exceptions can be made under certain circumstances, and I guess this is one of them – we’ll be up, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, by 8 o’clock on Thursday morning – just don’t expect us to say anything too sensible until after our third cup of coffee! Tomorrow, though, we have a “lay” day – my favourite eldest daughter is coming over – she has a Hairdresser appointment – and no doubt we’ll take advantage of the increasingly rare – quiet afternoon by watching episodes of whatever we haven’t seen yet. Thursday and Friday are going to be the killers! Not only is the packing lady coming bright and early on Thursday morning, but “our” furniture is being moved out – not all of it of course, just most of it. Poor Flipper will be quite distraught! Her couch is going! And her “Daddy Patting Chair”! The hall and the lounge room are going to look quite strange! The only things left in the lounge room will be the entertainment unit, with the television on it, and the coffee table! Three cabinets are going from the hall, leaving the big glass display case and the long dresser with the marble top. The sofa bed, the side tables, chest of drawers (I think they’re called “tallboys” or something) the lamps, and the big bookcase – in fact, everything in the spare room is going, except for the rug (I think!) There are a few things in the Den here which still have to be thrown out or packed, but there’s nothing much in the bedroom or “office” to go… thank goodness some rooms will still look familiar! The rental furniture doesn’t arrive until Friday, so I think we’re in for a rather “uncomfortable” night on Thursday! I hope Flipper will find it in her heart to forgive us…. all the cat stands are going too… (not that she uses them much these days – she’s a bit too old and creaky to leap gracefully and gazelle-like from ledge to ledge anymore!) The cleaners will be in on Saturday, the photographers next Tuesday… and then we’ll maybe get a bit of peace and quiet for the duration – except for the “Open For Inspection” days – Wednesdays and Saturdays (not sure of the times though – sorry!)

Today, as most of you know, we went over to Stillwater to measure things (and yes, we do still love the place and can’t wait to move in! 🙂 ) The current owners were there too – the mother, two boys, a little girl, and a very little dog. We wandered around from room to room, trying to be as quick as possible, and got all our measurements. I was surprised – we’d expected that maybe quite a bit of the furniture we’d seen there had been “rental”, like most of ours will be, and that most of it wouldn’t be there this time, but the only thing that was missing was the piece that I had most wanted to buy from them – the lounge suite in the Rumpus room! Only the coffee table, entertainment unit and television were still in there! (and a lot of washing, drying on clothes horses!) After we’d finished our measuring and were about to say “Thank you” and get moving, the mother decided to get really chatty, so we stopped and gossiped on for a bit – I think the only two people who were getting a bit “antsy” about standing around talking, were me, because my back was starting to give out big time, and “Julian-The-Agent”, because he probably had another appointment booked this afternoon (or maybe his back was killing him, too!) We get another inspection, seven days before settlement…  We’re going to need all the instruction booklets for things like the air conditioner, the heater, the ducted vacuum (and where it ends up) and the hot water thingy – it’s gas, but it has solar boosting (or whatever!) I presume there’s a remote control for the garage door… no doubt we’ll find out… “My-Julian” won himself some “Brownie points” with the current owners, too – as we were leaving (I was already in the car) he noticed that the very little dog had managed to get out, and was running around on the road! As it had been barking furiously at us when we first arrived, and we’re not really “dog” people (don’t misunderstand me – we do like dogs… as long as they belong to someone else, OK?!) “My-Julian” decided to “herd” it back to the front door – which he did – but he noticed that the children were playing in the garage, so he herded the very little dog over there instead. Apparently the children were (a) horrified that the dog had managed to get out, and (b) very grateful to “My-Julian” for getting him back into their custody again.

Weigh-in this morning. I’m still grumpy, and I’m starting to get the feeling that I’m never going to leave the 84kg zone! One point! I went down one, measly little point! from 84.4kg to 84.3kg… I’m so annoyed and frustrated! The last time I was on these bloody pills (‘scuse the French!) I still lost weight – albeit a bit more slowly. This time, because I’m trying so bloody desperately to get down as far as I can before I see Dr. Y. again, I’m actually going backwards! Putting weight on! Yes, I know it’s just fluid! yes, I know that when I stop taking the damn pills I’ll lose the excess fluid (and the weight) again, but that’s not the point, is it!! (ahhh… at last we are re-coffied!) I shall have words with Dr. Y. about these pills…. (Winter stares ominously at the screen)

Next week, once the photos are taken, the painters have been in to do the odd touch-up here and there, and now that we have all the measurements we need, we’ll be able to go furniture shopping in earnest! This time, I shall also “let my fingers do the walking” and look online! If not for specific items of furniture themselves, then at least for the shops which might have them! I’m quite looking forward to that… 🙂 At least today I had a chance to not only get the kitchen table’s measurements, but I also had the chance to have a good look at it! Last time we were looking at furniture, we didn’t have a clue as to how big the table was, and neither of us could really remember what it looked like, or what sort of legs it had! Well, we now know! It was quite plain, darkish wood, and plain, straight, fairly large, square legs (the word “choonky” springs to mind!). We did see a couple of tables with legs like that, but we didn’t think they “looked right” – probably because the tables we looked at were all in a much lighter shade of wood – we’re not all that keen on dark furniture, so we tend to go for the lighter woods… now, having been back to the house again, I’m not so sure. The furniture there is all dark, and it somehow seems to suit the place… Anyway, we shall see…

And that’s pretty much it from me for tonight – stay tuned tomorrow night for all the latest at chez nous – find out what episodes of which show(s) my favourite eldest daughter and I watched, and learn if day 8 out of 10 has made any difference to the utter havoc those fluid-loving pills are unleashing on my poor ancient and decrepit old body… and whether or not I’ve been able to locate any promising-looking furniture stores! Oh, I’ve decided to make a small adjustment to my Stair Walking times! First one is always before breakfast. The second is usually just before, or just after lunch – depending on what’s happening. And the last one used to be anywhere between 5.15pm and 6.45pm. That’s the one I’m changing. It disrupts my writing and makes me late for dinner, so I’m now going to do my last Stair Walk for the day later – on my way back to the Den, after dinner and Television – around 9.30pm. I’ll be later dealing with my Minions, and later getting on Facebook, but only by about five minutes, which is really no big deal… But anyway, I’ll leave you all to digest tonight’s ramblings, and I hope I see you all here tomorrow night – but until then, bee good, remember that our prime purpose in life is to help others – and if you can’t help them, at least don’t hurt them. Don’t forget to look after yourselves, to keep warm, and to drive carefully – but most importantly, remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

*There’s another update on the “As Seen On…” page tonight – from Flickr…My new desktop Bookmarks Wallpapery-thingy…

Well, I was going to start early today, but by the time I got everything organised, captured the new Bookmarks Wallpapery-thingy screenshot, re-sized it, got it uploaded onto Flickr, and updated the “As Seen On…” page to my satisfaction, it wasn’t quite so early, after all! Ah well… Anyway, I’m quite pleased with the way it turned out. So I didn’t really get any Rifting in this morning, I was too busy counting pixels in order to find out the exact centre of the area where the side columns were going. It only looks like a very short distance across when you’re viewing the actual pixel size, but when you zoom right in, all of a sudden it turns into 239 almost 1/4 inch size squares that you’re trying to count! And of course there’s a quicker and easier way to count the ruddy things, but I just thought “Oh, it’s not very big – I’ll just count ’em by hand” – stupid of me, really… all I had to do was save the column as a new file, which would have given me the pixel count in one fell swoop, so to speak, then I could have divided that, created a fixed size selection grid, and bob’s your Uncle! So… silly me did it the long, boringly tedious way, but it’s the end result that matters, and I was finally able to place the side columns correctly. And as I said – I’m quite pleased with the way it’s turned out – I think I must be entering my “soft green stage” or something, as I seem to be using those colours quite a bit… and at least it’s a change from my usual blues, greys and mauves…

I’ve been doing a bit of “updating” on my Facebook site – someone asked me last night why I hadn’t updated my profile picture and that he had no idea who he was talking to 🙂 I updated it this morning… and seeing as just about everyone (well, alright, a few people) have used pictures of birds for their profile pictures… I used a picture of a very pretty Egyptian Mau cat, and a cut down version of one of my favourite desktop wallpapers as my profile photo. I also updated my music, books, etc. profile, and various other bits and pieces (like putting in my correct birth date – much as I hated doing it 😦 ) So… what you see there is exactly what I am – una vecchia contadina (an old peasant woman) complete with black clothes, and a black scarf tied around my head to keep my blasted right ear warm! Oh, and speaking of “warm”, I actually did wear my shoes last night when I did my evening Stair Walk! And no, I didn’t fall down the stairs – but I did have to go a lot slower – there doesn’t seem to be as much room on the step as there is when I’m bare footed… I was also very grateful for the stair rail! I felt terribly precarious… and it was so noisy! Now, I know they’re ugly, clumsy-looking, un-graceful, clod hopping “shoes” (a Clydesdale’s shoes look smaller and prettier!) but I never thought that they’d be as noisy as they were! Clatter! Clunk! Clomp! Clink! – all the way down, and up, the stairs. The echo in the fire escape is very loud, too, so for every “Clatter! Clunk! Clomp! Clink!”, there was a corresponding echoed “clatter! clunk! clomp! clink!” a couple of seconds later. If I wear my shoes to do my Stair Walk in the evenings, I’m going to need ear plugs as well (I’m actually surprised that no-one complained about the noise!) However, it worked – or else my left foot has given up trying to turn me into a human icicle – at least for the time being, anyway. I shall probably try to wear my shoes for my Stair Walk again tonight, though I think the secret to not freezing my foot off is to go earlier, rather than later, as that gives me more time to sit with my feet on the tiled floor – nicely warmed by the ceiling lights downstairs! No such luxuries at Vermont South, though! It’s a concrete slab house, so the floor will be fairly cold anyway – it has central gas heating for the winter, and refrigerated central air conditioning for the summer, but there’ll be no warm floor tiles in the winter 😦 I don’t want to move, now! *pout* (yes I do! I was only kidding! 🙂 ) The shoes I have at the moment were made by a guy who was intent on making shoes that would be good for my feet… which was not what I wanted at all! What I wanted was something comfortable, that I could actually walk in, not clump in! They’re almost worn out now, and I’m going to need new shoes before summer… and this time (we’ll probably be going to someone else) I’m going to insist that they’re made my way, to my specifications! No “built-in” orthotics, to give my feet “extra support”, no heavy, clunky soles that don’t bend or flex – I want something that’s going to feel like my bare skin, only tougher and less sensitive. I want a pair of shoes that I’m not even going to know I’m wearing! Is that too much to ask for?! (to which the answer is most likely a resounding “YES!” )

Weigh-in this morning. “Too much to ask for” seems to be appropriate here… You remember how I’ve been losing weight rapidly, and I’ve been grizzling that I was going to get a “Big Bounce Back”? Well, all those “Big Bounce Backs” have hit me at once, like a sharp punch to the stomach! I was absolutely shattered this morning… I went up three points! Three! From 84.1kg to 84.4kg! This is not the right time to be doing this to me, body! I feel like a female “Jabba the Hutt”, from Star Wars 😦

Sharron the Stylist was supposed to come over this evening, to see how we’re going with the de-cluttering – but she rang and took a rain check – apparently she’s suffering from one of the many “dreaded lurgies” going around at the moment. She’ll be coming around tomorrow morning, about 10-ish. I hope  she doesn’t bring her “dreaded lurgie” with her tomorrow, and I hope she’s not going to be late, or stay too long – we have an appointment to do our measuring over at Vermont South (drat it! I really have to think of a single word name for the place – writing “Vermont South” all the time is just too laborious!) (I still like the name “Stillwater” – I’m going to call it that, from now on – it’ll be easier on all of us!) so… we have an appointment to do our measuring at Stillwater at 1.00pm, and I do not want to be late for that! However, it’s given Julian a bit of leeway with the spare room (he’s in there now, I think!) Hopefully he’ll get it finished before 10.00am tomorrow! 🙂 Apart from the arrival of Sharron the Stylist, and our measuring appointment, I don’t think I have anything “important” on tomorrow, so now that I’ve finished my desktop wallpapery-thingy, I should be able to get a bit of Rifting in… (of course, I could always make a new header for the blog…. only kidding! (a bit…) 😉 )

So anyway, once again, that’s about it from me for tonight. Do drop back again tomorrow night though – there’ll be lots to tell you all – about Sharron the Stylist and her “dreaded lurgie”, and what she had to say about our de-cluttering efforts (or lack thereof!), how our measuring went over at Stillwater (and if we still like the place!) what my wretched weight decided to torment me with in the morning and whether I wore my shoes for my evening Stair Walk or not, and did they again save my left foot from freezing solid (or semi-solid) and apart from all of the above, whether I had a nice, quiet day Rifting (or graphic-ing?) Whatever happens, there’ll be lots to talk about – so don’t miss out! 🙂 Until then, however, do try to continue beeing good, remember that If you don’t do wild things while you’re young, you’ll have nothing to smile about when you’re old! 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! 🙂

We spent today in (on?) The Plane of Water. I say “in”, with a following “(on?)” after it because sometimes we’re underwater (i.e. “in”) and sometimes we seem to be running around on dry land, even though we’re presumably underwater… because if you find a “bouncy sponge” and jump on it, you get bounced high up into the air, which suddenly becomes water, and the next thing you know, you’re swimming, and treading, water in a vast ocean! ( …It’s complicated!) Anyway, we were running around on dry land – we both “dinged” level 63 (only two more levels to go to level 65!) and neither of us died – Julian came close, once, but death is such a fleeting thing in Rift… 🙂 It was a good day – lots and lots of Carnage quests – a few of which we haven’t finished yet, so we’ll just have to go back next Sunday and kill off another 8 Feral Animals, a few Mimes and Art Critics, as well as destroy another four hideous pieces of Art Work. But once again, we got a bit of a late-ish start – I had a phone call from a very old family friend. He actually rang me up last Sunday – we haven’t spoken in years – but he just thought he’d catch up – when I told him we were moving in August, he was very glad that he’d rung – if he’d put it off any longer, we wouldn’t have been here! Anyway, long story short, we chatted a bit last Sunday, and I promised to send him the links to our April Photo Shoot, as well as some Real Estate photos of our new place. He and his wife moved into a Retirement Village quite some time ago, and he remembered that I’d told him I’d be leaving my fire escape stairs behind, and that we were thinking of getting a stair climbing machine of some sort. His phone call today was to tell me that he thought the photos of us were simply stunning, and to let me know that there was a machine in their (retirement) Village that might be the sort of thing we were after. It’s not stairs, or an escalator-type machine, it’s more like a treadmill that’s on an adjustable slope – it sounds interesting, so he’s sending me its name so that we can look it up. As I said, they’re very old friends of the family – his wife’s brother grew up in Carlton with my father – they went to school together, later on they were in the Army together, and they’d always been very close friends. When my father met my mother (at an Army dance in Dromana) and they started going out together, she was eventually taken over to meet this other family – which turned out to be a huge co-incidence because her mother – my grandmother – was also a very close friend of that particular family – in fact they used to play Mahjong together regularly! They’d just had a little girl, so when my mother met her, “W” was little more than a babe in arms. Later on, as this little girl grew up, she and my mother became very close friends – with very straight “poker” faces, they’d tell people that they were “twin sisters”, which was a real joke – not only was “W” so much younger than my mother, but she was Chinese, and my mother was very much an “English rose”! Of course, in due time the “little girl” grew up and got married and she and her husband had three sons – all of whom, I was told last Sunday, were either in their 50’s, or close to it now, which made me feel soooo old! I remember giving them “whizzies” (holding them by both hands, and spinning around with them so that they were whizzing around me with their feet off the ground!) when they were just little boys! Well, I stopped thinking of them as “little boys” many years ago, but they were in their early 20’s last time I saw them and that’s the way I still think of them – so as I said, it made me feel really old to think of them in their 50’s now! “M” used to be very involved with the Uniting Church in the Balwyn area – so when they come over next week to say “hello”, I must ask him if he still is, or if he’s “retired” now (every time I stop typing to read back over what I’ve just written, the screen changes – it sort of half pages down, and then goes back to where it was again, and it can’t be me doing it because my fingers aren’t anywhere near the keyboard, or anything! I thought it might have been the automatic “draft saver” thingy, changing the screen aspect as it updated itself, but it’s not, because I just watched the draft saving itself, and apart from the “Draft saved” time stamp updating, nothing changed! Talk about weird! ) Anyway, we had a fun day today, and no, we didn’t get anywhere close to setting a toe into the spare room – we’ll have to get onto that early tomorrow morning, because Sharron will be over around 5-ish tomorrow afternoon! *gulp*

Weigh-in this morning. Crikey, I hate those [*censored*] pills! More mucking about! I went down one point – from 84.2kg to 84.1kg. At this rate, I’ll still be in the 84kg zone when I go to see Dr. Y. on the 21st! 😦 Now there’s no way known that I’ll get down into the 82kg zone by then, and I did so want to! 😦 *cry*

Actually, I don’t know that I’ll be much help in the spare room tomorrow – maybe it’d be better if I just kept out of the way and stayed quiet… I downloaded a new Windowblind this morning (Windowblinds – a fancy “skin” for Windows, for those who think the Windows look is très boring – which it is!) Julian doesn’t like it, but I do! 🙂 This one is in shades of a soft teal colour – I can change the colour if I want to, but I’ll leave it like this for the moment – and I sort-of started making a new desktop wallpapery thing to go with it – so tomorrow I’ll either work on that, or take the opportunity to do a bit of Rifting (like, what else do I ever do around here, hmm?) Oh, remember that I said that my left foot got terribly cold the night before last? Well, it did it again last night, and I was all prepared for it, too! I wrapped both of my feet up in a nice warm mohair rug… and my right foot stayed comfortable. My left foot, though, froze to the point that I could only flex my toes with the greatest of difficulty! As I said to Julian at the time – I could even feel the cold radiating out from the core of my foot in sort-of waves! The only thing I can think of is that when I do my evening Stair Walk, I’m walking bare footed on cold concrete – and my left foot is the one that does the work, especially coming up the stairs, and maybe my left foot gets thoroughly chilled… then, when I get inside again, I usually go and ensconce myself in front of the television, with my feet up, and without giving my feet a chance to warm up properly. So tonight, I’m going to do something totally unheard of, and totally out of character for me! I’m going to try wearing my hated shoes (I’ll probably end up falling down the stairs though – I just can’t balance in shoes – well, I can’t balance in these clumsy, clod-hopping things  that I call “shoes”, anyway!) and when I get back inside, I’m going to take those horrible things off and go and stand in the bathroom for a bit (the floor’s always nice and warm in there!) and see if I can possibly take some of the chill out of my left foot. I’ll let you know how it works out tomorrow night! Mind you, if there’s no blog tomorrow night, you’ll know that it’s because I wore those ugly and uncomfortable “shoe-things” and fell down the stairs and broke my neck! 😉 So, that’s about it from me for tonight – tune in again tomorrow night though, for all the latest! What did I do whilst Julian was busy slaving over a hot bookcase? Did I Rift, Graphic, or a bit of both? And what about my weight? Has it started going down a bit, or will it still be on the rise? How did I go on the stairs, with my shoes on? And more to the point, did my theoretical plan work, or did my left foot freeze again, for the third night in a row? Find out the answers to all these questions, and more, this time tomorrow night! Until then, though, bee good, don’t forget to strive to be eccentric now – don’t wait for old age to wear purple! (or hot pink, with fluorescent neon green polka dots!) don’t forget to drive carefully, to keep warm, and to look after yourselves… but above all, remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

So where are the fireworks? The marching bands! The high-breasted and long-legged Drum Majorettes marching down the middle of the street in their natty uniforms? It is July 4th, isn’t it?! …What’s that you say? “…not America“? Isn’t it?! For real? But… we spell words like Americans (i.e. incorrectly!) …we pronounce words like Americans (i.e. incorrectly!) …we worship the Mighty Dollar like Americans (but doesn’t everyone, these days?) …and we’re even starting to enact laws that deny us civil liberties; curtail our personal privacy and freedoms, just like the Americans! (but that’s only because of the nasty terrorists!) Isn’t it a shame, though, that we don’t have a Federal Court to declare that it’s illegal for states to enforce laws that don’t allow same-sex marriage! If not for that, well, we’ve often been referred to as the 51st state of The United States – maybe we should all apply for United States citizenship! I’m only partially kidding, you know – we’ve “adopted” so many aspects of American life – their holidays, for instance – when I was growing up, “Halloween” was a quaint American custom that would never get a toe hold over here! As a child, I was resentful – it wasn’t fair that American kids could go out and get buckets full of lollies on Halloween (we called them “lollies”  back then, not “candy”) But what happens on October 31st these days in Australia? The kids, and quite often the Mums and Dads, all go out “Trick or Treating”! Some families, with no visible ties to America, even celebrate Thanksgiving! Yes, it’s lovely to celebrate – anything! But do we have to call it “Thanksgiving”?! It’s so close to Christmas, too – this year it’s on November 26th, just one month before Christmas! Shouldn’t we all be far too busy worshiping the Mighty Dollar by buying Christmas gifts that we really can’t afford, around November 26th? Or pulling out and dusting off the nativity set that used to belong to Grandma? Actually, I was just quietly musing to myself about what Public Holidays (apart from Christmas and Easter) our family “celebrate” – Australia Day (the day I stopped smoking, back in 2000! Also Julian’s siblings’ Birthday), Labour Day (spelt with a “u” in it, please! Also my Birthday!), ANZAC Day, the Queen’s Birthday, and Melbourne Cup Day. There used to be “Show Day”, too! A Public Holiday so that the plebs could go to the Royal Melbourne Agricultural Show and buy lots and lots of very expensive Show Bags full of …mostly advertising junk. It was abolished as a Public Holiday back in the 1990’s, but there are strong calls for it to be reinstated (I think that most people “take a sickie” on or around the second Thursday of the Show, anyway, so they might as well make it a legitimate holiday again!) And how do we celebrate these days? Why, the best and only way to celebrate a Public Holiday, of course! By sleeping in, eating far too much, and slopping lazily around all day! 😉

Well, it might have been the 4th of July today, but we didn’t celebrate it as a holiday, no siree! I Rifted, and got Chaviv up another couple of levels, and himself was going to clean out the cage down in the garage, but it was too cold! So he went shopping instead and got a proper pair of lace-up shoes in which to wear his orthotics, and a couple of pairs of jeans. He hasn’t had any jeans since before he started losing weight – when those started falling off him, he decided not to get anymore until he reached his goal weight, which he has, so he’s now got a couple of pairs of jeans. I don’t dare try jeans just yet – I’m still too fat, and will be for some time to come. I’ve started looking at myself critically lately, knowing that I only have about another 10 kilos to lose, and quite frankly, I don’t think that getting down to 75kg is going to be enough. I’m still going to be fat! I think I might have to go down to 60kg or lower (probably lower!) …anyway, we’ll see, if and when I ever get down to 75kg. (well, 70kg, actually, cos I’m giving myself 5kg to “play with” when I start my maintenance diet)

Weigh-in this morning. Well, it was more of a “weigh-up” this morning, thanks to those wretched, unmentionable, fluid retaining pills! I went up another point, from 84.1kg to 84.2kg! The air was a trifle blue around here this morning, and not just from the cold! I hope I do better tomorrow, but unfortunately, I don’t feel very hopeful

Oh, and talking about cold, I know that as I’m getting older, I’m feeling the cold more and more – but I’m the sort of person who flings the doona back off her feet because I don’t like having warm, or hot feet. Usually, the colder it is, the better I like it – but last night, we were sitting in the lounge room watching TV, and I moved my left foot and flexed my toes. Or rather, I tried to flex my toes…I almost couldn’t do it! My foot was almost frozen solid – I kid you not! My foot was numb with cold – it felt like I’d just had a massive injection of Novocaine in it or something! I could feel pressure on it, and I could feel my hands rubbing it, but other than that, it was totally numb, and I had a lot of trouble trying to wriggle my toes. My right foot was cold, yes, but not as cold as my left foot. In the end, walking around on the tiled floor helped – although it’s all tiled, our floor is always quite warm – whenever the people downstairs turn their lights on, the heat from their lights makes our floor warm! I feel it in my bathroom the most… I hope my foot doesn’t get that cold again tonight… it wasn’t very pleasant, even for someone who actually likes having cold feet!

Anyway, not much packing or de-cluttering “work” was done today, and as sure as eggs aren’t bananas, there won’t be any done tomorrow, either, because it’s out day in The Plain of Water, where we shall frolic with the mermaids and ride on footed sharks. It’s Monday that I’m dreading! Sharron is going to come over and see how very little work has been done as far as packing up is concerned – she’s not going to be a happy little Vegemite! Still, she’s not coming until 5pm-ish, we’ll have a bit of time to clean out the bookcases in the spare room – I think! Oh dear, I’m beginning to get anxious now – maybe we should only play a half day in The Plain of Water, and work on those bookcases instead… This room’s almost done, my bathroom is sort-of done (well, everything’s been hidden in the cupboards, anyway!) There’s the bedroom (nothing done yet!) and the hallway – one of the ornament cupboards has to be emptied out – and at this stage, I’m not sure if we’re keeping the cabinet or not – it’s fairly old fashioned… By the way, if any of you who have been here and know what we’ve got in the way of furniture, would like to take any of it off our hands, can provide a good home for it, or knows of someone else who would like it, please let us know! At the moment the only thing I’m pretty sure we’re keeping is the long sideboard with the marble top… and maybe the sofa bed. Julian will be putting things up for sale on Overclockers, and I’ll get him to give me all the gory details. I might create a special (temporary, just for the furniture) Page on the blog of “Furniture for Sale, or free to a good home” – we don’t want stuff left languishing in storage this time around!

And that’s about it from me for today – I shan’t apologise for my mini-rant at the beginning of the blog, I haven’t done a full-on rant for ages, and I was feeling a bit “harsh” (well, I do have a reputation to maintain! 😉 ) And sometimes, I just get a bit sick and tired of the amount of influence that those damn Yankees have on us Australians. Anyway, drop by again tomorrow night, and find out how much more my weight went up, and whether we frolicked with mermaids, or sorted out the bookcases in the spare room instead, rather than risk Sharron’s wrath on Monday evening. There’ll be lots more to tell you, anyway, so don’t miss out! In the meantime, please try to bee good, remember to learn constantly while you live; don’t wait in the hope that old age by itself will bring wisdom, and don’t forget to keep warm, look after yourselves, and to drive carefully… but please… above all, remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

So, I made a new header, with a second new font I got today – it’s called (of all things!) “Elefantasia NF” – once again, because I liked the “W” shape and design – the rest of the font isn’t bad, either! 😉 I just wish I could use some of my pretty fonts in the body of the blog, too – and I probably could, if I knew how to write a CSS file, or whatever it’s called. Hmm – I just Googled it… it’s a Cascading Style Sheet, and I have no idea whatsoever how to write one… and right at this particular point in time, I have no great desire to learn how to, either! There’s just too much going on at the moment, what with packing everything up, and the move in general, and debating how to deal with Flipper when our lounge suite goes, because it’s going to be a couple of days before the rental one arrives… It’s going to be bad enough for us, sitting and watching television from our computer chairs, where we can’t sit comfortably with our feet up – but poor Flipper is going to be totally devastated! She’s old (20 human years old!) senile, cranky, arthriticky, set in her ways, and is prone to fits of the vapours if her set routines are disrupted, even slightly, for any reason. I said to Julian last night that until the rental lounge suite arrives, we’ll push the coffee table over to where the couch is currently… cover it over with a nice, thick, comfy blanket, and put her “cat cave” on it, so that it’s as much like her present set-up as we can possibly make it. I think she’ll be alright, as long as she gets a lot of attention and “Daddy pats” from Julian (she’s definitely a “Daddy’s girl”, and barely tolerates me!) It’s going to be a tough time for all of us chez nous, so learning how to write CSS files is fairly low down on my “Bucket” list! My name change – or should I say, name addition – has also been put on hold for now, but has definitely not been forgotten or abandoned. (Grrr! I’ve had to put on my fluffy earmuffs because my right ear has become so cold that it’s starting to ache, and I can’t be bothered getting up to find my scarf! I wonder… if I had my right ear amputated, would I be likely to get phantom cold ear problems?) Anyway, I made the new header this afternoon – what do you all think of it? Do you like the font? This morning, seeing as I had the day off from dusting, polishing, wrapping and packing, I did some Rifting. I took Chaviv up three levels to level 18, simply on quest experience rewards – because I’d spent so much time over in Freemarch (the Defiant area) leveling up my “Skills”, that I didn’t get back to Silverwood (the Guardian area, where I should have been) until I was level 15, when all the mobs were six or seven levels lower than I was, and the starting quests weren’t just grey, they were white, so I got no experience at all from killing things, and just had to rely on the meager quest experience to advance my levels. Still, three levels on such poor rewards wasn’t too bad. Hopefully I’ll be able to take him a little further tomorrow, depending on what we’re doing. I’m just looking around my desk, wondering what else has to be “tidied away” Not much, really, as far as I can see – just the silk poppies in the crystal vase, along with two glass mugs full of pens, scissors, nail files, letter openers and a pair of tweezers, plus my two desktop calendars (one Non Sequitur, and one itty-bitty cat calendar) Everything looks so stark and bare… This whole moving business is not fun, I can assure you!

I hope we do get a chance to relax a bit this weekend – it might be the last chance we’ll have for a few weeks – because starting on Monday, the real fun and games begin in earnest! On Monday, Sharron will be over to tell us what still needs to be moved out. On Tuesday, we’re off to Vermont South to measure everything (which reminds me – we must make a list of all the things that we need to measure- if we don’t, we will absolutely forget half a dozen things that we really needed to measure – until we arrive back here!) Wednesday, the furniture is being moved out – so please spare a sympathetic thought for poor little Flipper 😦 Thursday looks like being a rest day, thank heavens! On Friday, the rental furniture arrives, along with Sharron, to tell the furniture people where she wants it put. Saturday (tomorrow week) it’ll be the Cleaners turning the place upside down. On Sunday, we can bury ourselves in (or on) The Plane of Water, and pretend that life is just carrying on as usual. On Monday, the photographer is coming to take photos of the place (and I think, a Video, too?) And finally, on Tuesday, the painters turn up for any touch-ups that need doing. Then, as far as we know, the Campaign begins, with “Open For Inspections” on Wednesdays and Saturdays, until either the day of the Auction on August 19th, or until someone makes us a good enough offer that we sell before the Auction.

Weigh-in this morning. As usual, whenever I get this [<- ->] close to the next kilo zone down, everything stalls! My weight dithers! Prevaricates! Can’t make up its mind! And let me tell you, it drives me stark, staring, crazy, because it always does this to me whenever I get to the “X.2kg” mark, or thereabouts! Always! And, it’s done it to me again! Damn it to the five hells! Wednesday…84.3kg. Thursday… 84.0kg. Friday (today!) 84.1kg! Why?! Why doesn’t it do this to me in the middle of a weight “zone”? Why doesn’t it do this to me at the beginning of a weight “zone”?! Why does it always weight wait until I’m happy, and pleased with myself that I’m almost another kilo lighter, to stuff me around like this?! It’s not fair! Grrr!

What a shame that stress doesn’t make me lose weight – I’d probably weigh less than a gram by now if it did… Anyway, that was my day – a rivetingly Rifting morning, followed by a gratuitously graphic afternoon – a pleasing day all round (except for my weigh-in this morning, that is! Still, at least I have the fluid retaining pills to blame this time…) Anyway, tomorrow is another day – we’ll see what transpires… No doubt himself will potter around packing and tidying things, and no doubt I shall try and stay out of the way so that he can get on and do what he does best – organising things 🙂 But do call back again tomorrow night – find out if my weight continues to surprise me, as it usually does, and whether or not we got any more de-cluttering and packing up done. Himself has decided that the next thing to be cleaned out is “the cage” – our storage space down in the garage. He says we’re going to need it for “interim storage”, and at the moment it’s full of… well, “stuff” – some of which is undeniably rubbish and needs to go to the tip, and some of which we’re probably going to argue about for the next five years, as we have done for the last seven, about this very subject. It goes something like this: “It’s rubbish!”, “No, it’s not – it’s an old family heirloom!”, “I’m taking it down to the tip!”, “Over my dead body!”, “That can be arranged!” and so on, and so on, ad infinitum. I have to confess, this blog would have been finished before dinner tonight, but my favourite youngest daughter rang me, and we had a nice little chat, which we don’t have nearly often enough – so we chattered on regardless of the time. Once we’d finished, the news had already started, and I hadn’t done my evening Stair Walk – so I saved what I’d already written here, Julian stalled the news (put it on “Pause”) and I raced for the fire escape. It’s now 9.15pm, and I’m sorry this is late, but I’m afraid my favourite youngest daughter is a little more important to me (and of course, so is my favourite eldest daughter!) So that’s about it from me for tonight, but there’ll be lots more news and interesting bits and pieces tomorrow night, so don’t miss out! 🙂 In the meantime, please continue to bee good, remember, never be afraid to be yourself, because an original is worth more than a copy, and don’t forget to drive carefully, to keep warm, and to look after yourselves… but most importantly, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

Well, here I am – feeling a tad more human now, with my hair done properly 🙂 As soon as I got in the front door, I shed my feet and took off for the fire escape, so that’s my evening Stair Walk done and out of the way – now I can concentrate on getting this done! 🙂 Let’s see… I spent most of this morning dusting, polishing, wrapping, and packing all my little Shelf Treasures – and I have a broken fingernail and two very nice paper cuts to prove it! I even packed up 3/4 of my desk bits and pieces, too – all that’s left is my photo of my precious boy, Gingee, my prescription box, my Serenity stone, my clock, my working amethyst, and my little pink pussycat pen. The prescription box and the clock can’t be packed until the last minute, and Gingee’s photo, the stone, the amethyst, and the little pink pussycat pen won’t be packed at all. They’ll all travel with me in my handbag on moving day, but I utterly refuse to sit at my desk without those four very special items. But boy, was my back killing me! I couldn’t sit down to wrap, because it put me on the wrong angle to see what I was doing, and while I did try sitting down to dust, clean, and polish things, I was up and down constantly, which was even more tiring than just standing up, so I ended up shoving the chair away and just… leaning on the bench a lot Julian made me sit down and take a break at about 11 o’clock when he brought me some (much-needed and greatly appreciated) coffee, and again, at lunch time, I sat down to have my Berry Crunch bar, then I went off for my lunch time Stair Walk, had a cup of tea, and got back to my wrapping! We finally heard back from Julian-the-Agent this afternoon about getting measurements from Vermont South – I didn’t know this, but apparently we’re allowed two visits before settlement – one “whenever”, and another one, usually a day or two before settlement – probably just to make sure that the Vendors are leaving the place in a fit state, or something. Anyway, we’ll go and get our measurements next week, on the 7th – then we might be in a better position to go looking for furniture! That is, if we can take the time off from packing… though apart from the items that we have to get out of the apartment and into storage before all the rental furniture arrives and the whole place transformed into a “Display Home”, I was under the impression that the Removalists would be doing the packing and unpacking for us. But even packing only the things that Sharron doesn’t want on display will take a while… *sigh* I wish it was September…

On the way back from the Hairdresser we called into DJ’s – I’d only bought one pair of undergarments the other day – just in case they didn’t fit (size 16? You’ve got to be joking! I don’t fit into size 16 again surely?! But I did, and what’s more, they were comfortable!) So I went back and bought a few more… I also got myself a new handbag – as most of you know, I nearly always wear black (I like it, and it suits me!), and I have black shoes (or what’s supposed to pass for shoes, anyway) but… I have a brown handbag. A bit like a guy going to a formal “black tie” function, wearing a tuxedo with a dazzling white shirt, a black bow tie… and wearing brown shoes! Actually, I do have two black handbags, but one is too small, and the other, a very good Oroton one, is too heavy! The silver clasp on it weighs at least half a ton, I’m sure! So both of them are going – free to a good home, if anyone wants one or both of them – otherwise they’ll be donated to the local Op-Shop, or similar. Anyway I always feel more than slightly uncomfortable, especially when I’m dressing to impress, wearing all black (or all very dark colours, anyway) and carrying a light-ish brown handbag. Today I remedied that – I got myself a nice black handbag 🙂 Now I shall feel “proper” when I go out, and not feel like cringing 🙂

I’m not sure what’s happening tomorrow – probably more packing – I know the two bookcases in the spare room have to be emptied out and the books packed away – Sharron wants the bookshelves emptied, and the bookcases themselves preferable gone, so we’ve told both her and the luscious Carmen that whatever they want us to do with, or to, the apartment, we’ll go along with – and even if it does make life a little less comfortable for us, it’s not forever, and we can stand a little (but not too much! 😉 ) discomfort, if it’ll get us a better price for the place. The cleaners – Sharron’s mob – came around today to case the joint, and according to Julian, they were quite pleased with the state of the apartment – one can only wonder at what sort of a state of some of the places they have to go into to clean up for sale must be like! We’ve told them that all the doors and light switches need cleaning up, and probably the skirting boards, as well ( another three areas where our cleaning lady never goes, even when we ask her to!) I think a touch of remedial painting will need to be done, too – apparently there’s a bit of rust showing on the balcony “fence” (whatever it’s called – “balustrade”?) Whoever would have thought that there’d be so much ruddy work involved in selling a property?!

Weigh-in this morning. It was a three-scale weigh-in today – the first time it went down to 84.2kg – only one point lower than yesterday, which was bit (alright, a lot!) disappointing! So I hopped off the scales, and then back on them, for confirmation… This time it went down to 84.0kg. Hmm! better weigh myself a third time, just to be sure… Hop off, hop on… down to 84.0kg again. So Correct Weight was called at 84.0kg – down three points! Hopefully I’ll hit the 83kg zone tomorrow, though it’ll be day 3 of my nasty fluid retaining pills, so who knows which way the scales will tip! 😉

Well, with a little bit of luck, I might even be able to get a bit of Rifting in tomorrow – or some graphic-ing – I bought another font today, and I experimented with it on a new proto-header while I was having my lunch. It’s another Art Deco font, and it’s quite plain, but I love the “W” in it! If I get the time to work on it, you might even get to see it in a new header tomorrow – but that all depends on how much packing away I still have to do. Arrggghhh! It’s that time again!…. Back later…

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

Well, here I am, back again – there was nothing on TV tonight, so we watched another episode of “Person of Interest” (episode 1, Season 2), where we’be been introduced to “Bear”, learned a bit more about “Tha Machine”, and found out that Root doesn’t want to control “Tha Machine”, she wants to liberate it! Then we watched “The Checkout” – quite an informative little segment – though I wish they’d do another season of “The Gruen Report” (or Transfer, or whatever they call it next time around!) that was a really good, and very interesting little show! It looks like himself will be dealing with the spare room tomorrow, so as I said before – I might get a chance to get a bit of Rifting in, as well as a bit of graphic-ing! We’ll see what transpires! 🙂 For now, however, that’s about it from me for tonight. Drop in again tomorrow night to see if there’s a new header up, and if those horrible fluid retaining pills have kicked in yet and pushed my weight up to new heights! Oh, and I moved one of the my new characters from Laethys to Hailol last night – I wanted Chaviv and Satai on the same shard, but as yet I haven’t had a chance to do more than minister unto my Minions, let alone work on leveling Chaviv up! I’ll let you all know tomorrow night if I’ve been able to make any progress in that regard! Until then, however, please try to contain yourselves in patience – tomorrow night will come! In the meantime, please try to bee good, remember never to equate education with intelligence; nor intelligence with wisdom, and don’t forget to keep warm, to drive carefully, and to look after yourselves…. but most importantly….remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂