Well, ladies and gentlepeople, nothing happened this morning – no one came, and we received no irate phone calls demanding to know where we were, or why we hadn’t turned up…. or whatever. Julian and I are seriously starting to think that it must have been a shared delusion, because we both distinctly remember the phone call, the discussion, and the fact that we had agreed, along with the mysterious caller, that whatever it was would be “Monday morning”… meaning this Monday morning – only it didn’t… wasn’t… *sigh* Now I guess we’ll never know who it was, and what it was about. I hate things like that – it’s like reading a terrific book, and it’s such a good book that you can hardly bear to put it down… and then you find that the last chapter is missing, and the book’s out of print so you can’t buy another copy! I hate not knowing!
So this morning, before we knew that “the last chapter was missing”, Julian busied himself in his office with “Administrative-ie” tasks, and I busied myself with setting up “Skilled” people on Greybriar – people to make potions, outfits and bags, weapons… you know, I told you all about it a couple of days ago! S’all done now – now all I have to do is train them up, once we get enough money in the Guild Bank to buy them all the materials they’re going to need! Luckily I checked all the characters before I doubled up on Skills – er… sorry, that was a lie! I actually checked all the characters after I’d realised I’d made two Apothecaries by mistake… “Lucky”, because having to go and check them all out, I found that I already had a totally max’d out (Savant level – 450/450, the highest you can go in a Skill level!) Weaponsmith! As I hardly ever used Greybriar (until now) I can only surmise that I must have transferred her there from another shard – so because I already have a max’d out Weaponsmith (she’s only level 25, too!) I no longer need to create and level one up! Just think of the platinum I’ve saved! 🙂 (cupboard number 3 of 4 is currently being maneuvered into the Den!) So that’s what the two of us did this morning… We had two phone calls today (apart from ones pertaining to Julian’s “Administrative-ie” work) one was from our cleaning lady… and the other was from one of the denizens of The Ridge, our erstwhile apartment building in Doncaster… with the worst possible news! 😦 They all want… to give us a send off “do”! a “Bon Voyagey” party! a “let’s all bring a plate of something and a bottle of booze to the foyer and have a Goodbye Party for Julian and Carla!” NO! No-no-no-no-no! Do! Not! Want! I dread things like that… smiling and being polite to people you barely know, when you’d rather be anywhere but there! (Oh lord! I hope none of them read this blog!) It’s not that they’re not very nice people – they are – they’re a really nice group of people – but I don’t really know them, and I’m just not a party animal! Gimme a dark, dank cave, a computer, and a comfy chair, and I’m happy – stick me under bright lights with lots of happy company, and I just want to go home! 😦
Anyway, we now have three of the four cupboards destined for the Den in here – and a great pile of boxes full of “Den” stuff (or at least that’s what’s written on most of them!) where the fourth cupboard is supposed to go, so I suppose that means that we have to start unpacking boxes so that cupboard number four doesn’t have to live out there in the hallway. There are still another two cupboards to be built, too, and Julian is all but exhausted… he’s going to make himself ill if he doesn’t slow down soon… 
I’m not sure when we’re going to go out to look at tiles and caesarstone – my favourite eldest daughter will be over tomorrow, and Julian plans on hiring a van on Wednesday to take rubbish down to the tip – sorry, “Waste Recycling Depot”, down the road, and bringing boxes back from storage to be stored in our shed here – where they’ll be close and handy, easier to get to, and more likely to finally get unpacked and dealt with than they were in the hired storage bin over in Mitcham! Some of them have been there since 2007, but it’s either been too hot, too cold, or we’ve been too caught up with other things to go and sort them all out. Julian brought some of them back to the apartment for unpacking, but it was too exhausting and time consuming for him to manhandle the heavy boxes into the car, out of the car, into the lift, out of the lift, and into the apartment on the fifth floor. The irony of it all is, most of the things still in the boxes will be sent off to auction! Or thrown away – the packers we had back then took their job very, very seriously! They packed everything! They even carefully and tenderly wrapped up an overflowing ashtray, full of cigarette ash and butts, in layers and layers of paper – how’s that for serious “attention to detail”, hmm?! (or maybe they were trying to tell me something? 😉 ) But going back to the subject of looking at tiles and caesarstone – I’ve been doing a lot of looking online – and I have come to the conclusion that either tile colour fashions and pattern trends have changed very drastically since I went looking for tiles when we were re-decorating Doncaster, or that none of the tiling outlets are showing their full range online. You know why? Because they’re almost all in shades of brown! tan! light brown/dark cream! grey (lots of shades of grey! hundreds of shades of grey!) a few black tiles, and even (gasp, shock, horror!) white! But blues? lavenders? lilacs? even (heaven help me!) pinks? They have a very few (and not all tile places have them, either!) garish Pantone blues, greens, and other really harsh colours that I wouldn’t have in my home if they were presented to me on a solid gold platter! I think (hope!) that they’re supposed to be used as “highlight” tiles here and there – I certainly can’t imagine a whole wall full of them! As for patterned tiles – back in 2007 they had some really beautiful “trim” tiles – narrow, decorative tiles generally used to break up a monotonous monochrome wall or floor – today, they’re the pattern equivalent of Pantone! Horrible stuff that I wouldn’t contemplate giving away to my worst enemy! Even I’m not that cruel! So I think we’re just going to have to bite the bullet and go to the tile places and just walk around – they must have something that isn’t brown, brown, or brown, surely! The caesarstone places were only slightly better – they actually had something other than brown! Unfortunately it resembled dirty concrete with large lumps of stone in it. We shall go looking!
Weigh-in this morning. Well, it was another big disappointment! I went up one point – from the breathtaking depths of 75.6kg, to the dizzying heights of 75.7kg! Oh, the shame of it all! I think it’s just the warmer weather, but my feet have been swelling alarmingly over the past two days – I’m wondering if I should go back onto the two anti-fluid tablets for a bit longer… I’m still doing my twelve minutes, three times a day, on the treadmill, but I have upped the speed – yet again – to 2kmph, with no problems… I asked Julian about “ordering in” a treadmill that has an adjustable incline, but he doesn’t seem to think that it’d make much difference – what do you all reckon? Would it? Anyway, we’ll see what transpires tomorrow when I brave the scales again…
Well, I mentioned before that my favourite eldest daughter will be over tomorrow, which’ll be good – I don’t think we have to go out anywhere so we can probably spend most of the day watching “Arrow”, or anything else worth watching… Oh, one amusing thing happened today on my Treadmilling exercise – my sock came off! Since I’ve been upping the speed, the soles of my feet have been getting steadily “warmer” – the faster I walk, the warmer they get, and I remember the delivery man telling us to be careful because some people can overdo things a bit and burn their feet. So as my feet have been getting warmer while walking, I’ve taken to wearing socks – the same ones that I used to wear on the stairs at Doncaster because the concrete was so damn cold! Unfortunately these socks are fairly firm around the top, so that they won’t keep falling down, presumably, so I never pull them very far up because they always make an itchy indent in my ankle. Anyway, I’m walking along doing my lunchtime walk-a-thon, when I noticed a small lump under my right foot. The more I walked, the bigger the lump grew, and then my sock simply… “walked” itself right off my foot! I wasn’t going to stop the treadmill just to accommodate a sock, so I just kept on walking! Anyway, I shall pull them up a little higher tonight! 🙂 And that’s about it from me again for tonight! Do call back again tomorrow night – find out what Lee and I watched on television, whether I’ve managed to locate a tile place online that has something other than *** brown tiles, if I’ve been forced back onto two anti-fluid pills, and if my weight went down, or up, or stayed the same (I’m actually starting to get a bit annoyed about it – I don’t know what to do next to get it going again!) However, until tomorrow night, please bee good, realise that with the possible exception of the equator, everything begins somewhere, and remember to drive carefully, to start thinking about keeping cool instead of warm, and to look after yourselves – but above all, remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂
My Word! 