“Spring is sprung, the grass is riz – I wonder where the flowers is? The little birdie’s on the wing – why how absurd! Because the wing is on the bird!” – a friend of mine reminded me last night that it was time for me to change my “Winter” icon in the header to the “Spring” one (which I’d forgotten I was supposed to do! *blush*) – so here it is – “The violets of Spring, tra-la, tra-lay!” – by me! 🙂

Well, once again, it’s been a fairly productive day all around – I designed this new header, Julian unpacked more boxes, we finally heard from the mirror delivery man, and it will be delivered on Saturday! Not hung, though – Julian wants to get Clarke to hang is because (1) The mirror is very heavy, and (2) it’s going on the wall where Clarke and Paul installed that extra large sliding door, and we don’t want anyone hanging a very heavy mirror… right on top of the newly painted door! It took me most of the morning setting up the header (it’s a new [free] template, too, in case none of you noticed! 🙂 ) Sometimes I think I spend more time “setting up” than I do playing, or writing, or whatever… but, innit always the way?! Anyway – where was I? Oh, right… being productive. After I’d finished the header, silly little me thought that I’d be able to get a good few hours of Rifting in after lunch… so I did my Treadmilling, had my lunch, and logged on to Rift. Hmm… I have a new semi-favourite character  on Greybriar – was on Greybriar, I moved her this afternoon – (isn’t coffee wonderful! 🙂 ) She was one of the races that I very seldom use because, well, I just don’t like them all that much. But I’d created her ages ago, and she had a full ten Transcendent Troves (those nice experience booster potions that can be so very helpful if you want to level up in a hurry, remember?) and I really didn’t want to throw them away, so to speak – but it was her wretched “war cry” that she let out with every time her character portrait came up that was driving me mad! It sounded like a cross between a sick rooster, and a dying duck! (Not that I’ve ever heard a sick rooster or a dying duck, but I do have a very vivid imagination! 😉 ) About the only way to stop her yodeling this death-knell was to either delete her (free!) or change her race (Credits-expensive!) …so I changed her race. What’s more, I changed it to another race that I very seldom use, for exactly the same reasons as I gave above (i.e., I just don’t like them all that much) Why I did that, I have no idea – I think I was just so desperate to get away from the rooster-duck combination that I chose the first thing that came along – sort of like a drowning person clutching a straw! She’s a Mage (naturally!), and she’s a Dwarf. Her name is Dawnfyre, and she’s as pretty as all get up! For once, I’ve managed to get her hair colour exactly right, with the right highlights and all – and I’ve ended up liking her enough to want to keep her as a usable character. I didn’t want to leave her on Greybriar, because for the nonce, Greybriar is probably going to be a “Sunday Best” shard, because that’s where our two new Sunday characters are, and I couldn’t move her onto Laethys or Hailol without moving one of their denizens off, because they were both full (twelve characters is the maximum you’re allowed per shard, and I had twelve on each!) In the end, I transferred Zorsha from Hailol to Greybriar (where I only had ten characters) and then transported Dawnfyre from Greybriar to Hailol. Now, this is all well and good – I had Dawnfyre where I wanted her to be, on Hailol, which is now my primary shard – but I didn’t know/had forgotten/never set anything up (take your pick! They probably all apply!) who did what, Skill-wise. Oh, I knew that Winterthyme was a Runecrafter (Runecrafters can disassemble just about anything, to create materials needed for making runes which can in turn make your clothing more robust, your weapons more powerful, etc., etc.) and that Satai was the Guildmistress, and Hialeah was the Guild Bank keeper and Auctioneer – but as far as other proper skills were concerned, we didn’t have any! I worked out that we needed an Apothecary (to make health potions mostly, as they can get expensive and aren’t always available) an Outfitter (to make cloth and leather armour – and none of us are ever likely to need plate armour!) an Artificer (to make magical weapons, like staves and wands) and last but not least, a Weaponsmith, to make maces and shields for Julian’s Clerics 🙂 This all involved a fair amount of work, writing down what everyone could or couldn’t do, what we needed in the way of Skills, etc – and then transferring all of that into an “Easy Reference Table”, which, because I’m me, had to be prettied up and the table cells all coloured in nicely! And the next time I looked at the clock, it was twenty past four, and I hastily left all my pretty table making and started writing! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. I expect to go up again tomorrow – my body got a day ahead of itself, I think, and thought that I’d taken the last of my terribly fluid loving pills yesterday, when it was today that I took the last one! I went down four points, to 75.8kg. Yes folks, I’ve made it to what will eventually be my “goal weight” zone – 75kg! This does not mean that I’m there yet! I have to get down to 70kg first, then reassess how I look. If I think that I could pass for “not obese anymore”, I’ll stay on 70kg and try to stabilise myself between 70 and 75kg (for ever and ever, amen!) If I think that I still look a little “chunky”, I’ll attempt to whittle myself down to 65kg, and stabilise myself between that and 70kg. However I am quite chuffed, you know – to have gone from 134kg down to 75.8kg in a year and 23 days is quite a good effort, I think! …But as I said, I will probably bounce back up again tomorrow – four points is quite a lot to lose in one chunk! But at least I can say that I did get down to the 75kg zone! 🙂

Flipper has a short visit to the Vet this afternoon – to have her cartrophen injection (for her arthritis) and to have the nimble-fingered nurses there snip off about half a dozen small mats around her chin area, and under her tail area – two of the places where we’re a little reluctant to use sharp scissors, just in case we nick her skin in the process! The poor girl was most upset – probably worried that we’d leave here there again! She was most vocal on her way out of the house, and she certainly gave us both a real earful when she came home again! 🙂 She’s now sleeping off the experience in her “cat cave” on the sofa-bed in here 🙂

Tomorrow is going to be a pretty full day – I have my hairdressing appointment at 11.30am, and then we’re going off to Ikea again, this time to look for a replacement credenza, or sideboard, seeing as we cancelled the Harvey Norman order due to far too many delivery delays! Julian will have to drop me off home afterwards, and then go back and pick the flat pack(s) up, as my wheelchair will be in the back of the car (there’s no way known that I’d be able to get around a place the size of Ikea without the chair!) and there’d be no room for a credenza/sideboard flat-pack as well. I’m not very happy about it – it’s a hell of a long way to go out to – twice, but Mr. “I’ll do it myself!” doesn’t want to wait for a delivery! And that, folks, is about all I have for you tonight! 🙂 Pop back again tomorrow night though, and find out how we went at Ikea, and if my weight did go and bounce back up again or not! There’s sure to be heaps more interesting and amusing things to tell you about too, so hopefully I’ll see you all again tomorrow night. Until then, however, do bee good, don’t forget that it’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see, remember to look after yourselves, to drive carefully, and to keep warm – but most importantly, remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂