*Quote of the Day from Goodreads this morning: “Don’t wait for a light to appear at the end of the tunnel, stride down there and light the bloody thing yourself.” ― Sara Henderson
Blurb: When her husband died in 1985, Australian pastoralist Sara Henderson (born September 15, 1936) took over managing duties at the Bull River cattle station. She was named Businesswoman of the Year for her efforts and wrote about the experience in her autobiography, “From Strength to Strength”.

I liked that quote of the day – I often stride off down the tunnel to get the light going 🙂 Not often, admittedly, but often enough 😉 Anyway, today’s been fairly quiet – Julian took off almost straight after breakfast, to drop the car off to have its headlight fixed, and to pick up the van (one tonne, I think) so that he could deliver rubbish, cardboard, and packing materials to the Waste Refuse Station, and pick up boxes from storage for us to unpack and make a bit more rubbish, cardboard, and packing materials for the Waste Refuse Station (he’s so thoughtful and generous like that! 😉 ) Well, “They” say that while the cat’s away, the mice, or in this case, mouse, will play – and play I did! I Rifted for most of the morning, and managed to accomplish quite a lot on Greybriar, set-up wise. It’s all organised now, and ready for some serious questing and gaming, to try to make us some money. In the past, we’ve brought in one or two high level characters from “richer” shards (high level, because they can carry more money) but this time I don’t want to temporarily “import” characters, I want us to do it ourselves, by gathering, processing, and auctioning herbs, wood, and minerals. We have a 3 Vault Guild Bank, and we have Artisans to process what we gather, and to make things that we can auction off. Anyway, the least we can do is give it a try! Oh, did I tell you that I’d changed the name of the Guild? It’s now “Rift-Raff” 🙂

So far Julian has made three (? or is it four? I fergit!) trips to a from the Waste Refuse Station and the self-storage place in Mitcham – he’s off on another trip at the moment, to do some much-needed shopping and to pick up yet more boxes. Most of the boxes he’s put in the shed for unpacking later, but two of them he’s left out because apparently they contain some of my bathroom things… hmm… I’m not sure that this is such a good idea at the moment! It might be better to wait until my bathroom has been renovated first – because at the moment I don’t have any room for the things I’ve already got, let alone the things in those two boxes! Well, if they won’t fit into the bathroom, I may just have to “spill over” into my Treadmill room! There’s a built-in wardrobe in there, and back in Doncaster we have four wire mesh sets of slide-out drawer thingies in our old wardrobe – we’ll just have to bring them over here sooner than we’d planned (they’ll eventually be put in the Walk In Wardrobe) and put them in the wardrobe in the Treadmill room! Or… we can do what I first suggested, and have a piece of reasonably sturdy Masonite cut roughly to measure and just…. drop it over the wretched bath! I don’t give a damn what it looks like, I just need a place to put things on! Especially after I unpack those two boxes that Julian brought home with him on his last trip to the storage place! However, going from the way that a lot of these boxes seem to have been labelled, it’s far more likely that there’ll be kitchen stuff in them, or linen, or bedroom things! Actually, you know, I quite like unpacking boxes, especially when you’re not sure what’s really inside them – it’s a bit like Christmas time, and unwrapping presents! You have a fair idea of what’s inside, but quite often it turns out to be a complete surprise! 🙂

Tomorrow afternoon I have an appointment at the hairdresser, but the morning should be pretty much a clone of today’s. Julian has the van until about one thirty? so he’ll want to get as much done as possible, which means I’ll probably be able to get some more Rifting in… though I am starting to get a bit bored with my current desktop bookmark wallpapery-thing – so it’s probably about time I made a new one. This one is in shades of mint green and silver – I think I might try the mauve/lilac shades next (seeing as I don’t think I’ll be able to get those colours for my bathroom!) I’ve decided to go with large, square, very pale grey “marbled” tiles, which will go on both the floor and the walls, and should make the room/space look bigger – they’ll be off-set with tiny, square amethyst/deep blue mosaic tiles (little strips of mosaic tiles, no wider than the length of your thumb, around things like the long inbuilt ledge in the shower, maybe around the mirror (undecided about that at the moment!)) The tiles will come up the walls to the height of the window, and it all should look quite nice… Depending on the mosaic tiles, and what sorts of colours are available … Anyway, as soon as we do go tile shopping, I’ll try to post some images up to show you what I mean. And speaking of images, Julian took some photos of Miranda, our resident lamp-holding mermaid, to put up for you – but he took them at night, in very poor light, with his phone, and all you can really see is a dark “blob”! Damn the boxes, before he goes out tomorrow I’m going to get him to open the blinds in here, get his proper camera, and take some decent photos of her! I’ve been dying to show you all what she looks like, but there’s no way I’m going to put up the ones he’s taken so far, where she’s just a dark shape!

Weigh-in this morning. Suspicion and conspiracy theories are swimming around inside my head… this morning, I went down four (4) points, from 75.7kg to 75.3kg! Go figure! I’m now walking for 12 minutes at between 2.4 and 2.6kmph, three times a day, and I think I’m starting to develop a blister underneath the big toe on my right foot – but that’s OK – s’easy enough just to bung a band-aid over it and keep on walking! I don’t expect my weight to stay at 75.3kg, I fully expect it to bounce right back up again, because it really does like to tease me – but at least it moved! It’s only when it just hovers sullenly around the one point, only going down a smidge, and then back up again, over and over, for [*censored*] days on end, that I start getting upset…

Well, Julian is back, and I have a cup of coffee – he says he has about another two trips top make to get the rest of the boxes out – and then all we have to do is… unpack them! I’m expecting an awful lot of breakages amongst the old boxes (the ones packed up in 2007) The packers we used back then weren’t very good, and there were some really heartwrenching breakages amongst the boxes that did get unpacked when we first moved into the Doncaster apartment. It had been a real “horror” year for us – starting with my mother’s death at around half past four on New Year’s morning, then Julian’s father, not that long afterwards. We both got double pneumonia – I got it twice, and then I developed the first of my two bouts of multiple blood clots in both lungs (the second, and hopefully the last now that I’m permanently on Warfarin, was last year!). No, 2007 was definitely not a good year for us, so we weren’t really up for the move – in hindsight, we probably should have waited a few months… but, we’re still here …and still unpacking! 😀 So… once again, that’s about all from me for tonight – it’s almost time for my last Treadmilling for the day – I shall attempt it all at 2.6kmph, but I’ll bung a band-aid on my toe first – I have to walk around tomorrow, so I really don’t want a blister under my toe! Do call in again tomorrow night – find out if my stupid weight did bounce right back up again – or only half way right back up! Find out if there were a lot of breakages in the boxes, and whether they were heartbreaking or not, and have a look to see if Julian has taken some decent photos of Miranda! I’d take them myself, except that I’m a totally hopeless photographer (I don’t take after my famous late favourite cousin at all! Painting? Yes… Drawing? yes… Digital art? yes… Photography? Forget it, Freddie! ) Anyway, I hope to see you all again tomorrow night… until then, though, do try to contain yourselves and bee good, always remember that intolerance betrays a lack of faith in one’s cause, and don’t forget to keep warm at night, to drive carefully, and to look after yourselves… but most importantly, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂