(Winter smiles, and takes a big, deep breath…) Ahhh! 🙂 There’s almost nothing better, on an almost-spring Sunday morning in Stillwater, than the smell of fresh, clean snow from the Tarken Glacier! 🙂 We slept in – a bit – this morning, had a leisurely breakfast, and dived into Rift. Although we both reached level 65 the last time we played, we didn’t start off two new characters today, I played my usual girl, Sylversong, but Julian used Mandreth, a Cleric, who’s another one of his favourite characters. She’s only level 64 and he really wants to get her to level 65, so I came along to “ride shotgun” and give Mandreth a hand. Of course, I’d already done all of the quests Mandreth had to do, and because I’ve done them I don’t see all the sparkly things to pick up any more – so all I can do is kill anything that moves to make Mandreth’s run to level 65 as smooth as possible for her. We both died once – a clumsy “pull” on a hostile mob on both our parts brought down just about every hostile creature, as well as just about every neutral creature, on our heads! We didn’t stand a chance! As a Mage, I could have Feigned Death, and the mobs would have left me alone, but that would have left Mandreth on her own to try to fend them off, so I didn’t… and as I said, we both died – but we sure took a lot of them with us! 🙂 It’s really strange, going back and re-doing quests that you only did about three or four weeks ago – you can’t see half of the things that are the object of the quest, you can’t tell how many more “whatevers” have to be killed off or picked up, and at level 65, you don’t even have an experience bar to watch creeping along! I was constantly asking Julian “how many more “XXX’s” do you have to get?”, and “have you got all the “XXX’s” you need?” But, a good day was had by all – Mandreth didn’t quite make it to level 65 today, despite the use of experience enhancing potions, but if we play a couple of hours in the evenings during the week, we should be able to get her there by next week 🙂
Tomorrow we’re off to buy bookcases – well, I think we’re off to buy bookcases! Maybe we should ring Ikea first, to make sure that they’ve got what we want in stock – I don’t want to waste a morning going all the way out to Springvale if they don’t! Been there, done that, with the stair climbing machines – and we came home annoyed and disappointed because the place we went to didn’t have any machines set up because “they were moving to Dandenong”, and we hadn’t rung them first. And here’s a thought! We may not be able to go tomorrow, because Ikea is a very big store and I’m going to need my wheelchair to get myself from point “a” to point “bookcase” without my back totally giving out – and my wheelchair currently doesn’t have a back or a seat! I suppose I could do a “Boudicca” – stand up on the footplate and drive it like an electronic chariot or something… but I think I’d get more than a few startled and curious stares… 😉 So… if not tomorrow for the bookcases, it’ll have to be Wednesday or Thursday – but I’ve got a funny feeling that something’s supposed to be happening on either Wednesday or Thursday – I just can’t remember what it is (must be my oldtimer’s disease!) and of course, my favourite eldest daughter is coming over on Tuesday, and we’ll be over at Doncaster for a while because she has an appointment at the hairdresser (I’m going on Friday instead of Tuesday, so that hopefully my hair will still look alright for the funeral in Adelaide on Saturday afternoon) I just reminded Julian of the wheelchair “problem”, but he says he was thinking of picking the pieces of chair up tomorrow anyway, because he doesn’t like the thought of them being over there all by themselves (wow! my collar bones are starting to get almost sharp, they’re sticking out so far!) So maybe we will get to Ikea, after all! 🙂
I’ve been putting a bit more thought into my bathroom renovation plans… I was thinking of timber vanity units, with timber tops, like the ones that are currently there – but on second thoughts, I think I’ll go with a caesarstone top, so that I can get the sort of corner-fitting vanity unit that I want – I’ll talk to Clarke next time we see him, and see what he thinks. Last time we spoke about it he suggested tiles on the top of the vanity unit, and I couldn’t say “No! No way!” fast enough! When I was a teenager and we lived in East Ivanhoe, the vanity in the bathroom there had a tiled top, and it was one of the most inconvenient vanities I’ve ever used! (apart from this one here, and that’s only because it’s so tiny!) Tiles are simply not nice and flat and level – the grouting between the tiles makes a really nasty little indent, and if you put a small bottle or a small anything down in the wrong place (i.e. half over a grouting line) it falls over, with sometimes disastrous and very expensive results! It used to drive me bonkers!
Weigh-in this morning. It’s doing it again! The typical (and frustrating) shilly-shallying that occurs when I get to between .5kg to .3kg of a kilogram level! This morning I went down the one point I went up yesterday – my graph looks like this: \/\ Down two, up one, down one! Goodness only knows what it’ll do tomorrow! I suppose it’ll either stay the same, or go up one again! Roll on next week, and the arrival of my treadmill!
You know, it’s still hard to get used to thinking of this place as “home”, and not some sort of temporary “holiday place” we’re staying in until we go home. I’m trying to find “work-arounds” for the bathroom, and yesterday, when my favourite youngest daughter and her husband came over, Julian was on the phone so I went to get the front door – and promptly turned the wrong way out of the Den, going towards the back door by mistake! And it’s such a long corridor! It seemed to take ages to get to the front door, and I wasn’t walking slowly, either! (it was like: “walk, walk, walk… am I nearly there yet? No, I’m outside the bedroom… walk, walk, walk… half way there! Keep going, Winter! walk, walk, walk… finally! The front door!”) I reckon I could probably get my exercise simply by walking up and down the corridor half a dozen times! But we’re getting used to the place, and I must say I’m most impressed with Flipper! Maybe it was because we sent her off to board at the Vet’s for two nights, so that she missed out on all the stress and angst of the packers and the removalists bustling around, but she’s settled in here quite quickly and calmly. When Julian brought her home, she was curious, and very wary, and she needed a lot of cuddles and personal contact from both of us, but she’s now shuttling between rooms, spending her time, as she did in Doncaster, sleeping in one or the other of her cat-caves, or on the sofa-bed in here, or lying along the back of the sofa-bed… she’s eating well, making her usual nice big mess with her pussy-biscuits (read: kibble designed to make her chew) so I’d say she’s not going to be going into a nervous decline because of the move any time soon! 🙂 There are still quite a few items still over in the apartment that have to come over here – pictures (at long last we have walls that we can hang pictures on!) wall clocks (apart from the microwave, oven, and my alarm clock, there isn’t a single clock in this place yet!) the books, of course, the brass gargoyle door knocker, and the little brass “cats-in-a-row” key-holder thingy to put on the wall by the front door (or the back door!) but those will probably be a job for next week – this week is going to be just too fraught and hectic to get stuck into too much unpacking and organising where things are going to go. And really, that’s about all I’ve got for you again tonight! 🙂 However, there’ll be lots more for you all tomorrow night, so do look in again and find out if my wheelchair is once more intact, and did we end up going to Ikea and getting lots of bookcases, or are we going to have to order them online? You’re probably all waiting with battered breath to know what my weight got up to – or down to, as the case might be – well, you’ll find all that out tomorrow night, along with all sorts of other interesting news and tidbits! But until then, please bee good, don’t forget that the measure of who we are is what we do with what we have, and always remember to look after yourselves, to keep warm, and to drive carefully – but most importantly, remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂
My Word! 