Well, better late than never, as they say in the classics! Sorry this is so late, but by the time we got back from Doncaster I j-u-s-t had time to squeeze in my evening tilt at the treadmill before dinner! As you know, my hairdressing appointment was at 3 o’clock, and, well, hair colouring takes a l-o-n-g time, plus there’s the washing and the blow drying, and all that, so as I said, I only just had time to do my treadmilling before dinner. Then we watched yesterday’s pre-recorded episode of Channel 2’s Agatha Christie-based show, “Partners in Crime“, starring Little Britain’s David Walliams, and Call the Midwife’s Jessica Raine – quite a good show 🙂 Not side-splittingly funny, but with enough awkward “bumbling” by our two protagonists to keep you happily amused 🙂 We also watched last Wednesday’s “Gruen” show, and then I came in here…. What??!! Oh, you want to know how my hair turned out! 🙂 Very nicely, thank you, but… more on that later!

This morning being Saturday, the day before Sunday, we did our sleeping in, so as not to take up too much of our Rifting time tomorrow (last Sunday we got such a late start at Rift that we’d determined that from then on, we would do our sleeping in on a Saturday, rather than the Sunday – for the reasons mentioned above!) Actually, I was woken up at around 5.30am by the thunder-storm! Did anyone else get woken by it? One of the girls at Oscar Oscar said it woke her, too – what a shame we’re no longer living in our old apartment in Doncaster! We had the most fantastic view of the city, and some of the sunsets and thunderstorms during our time there were most spectacular! In fact, we’d often turn off all the lights and open the curtains, and just sit on the couch watching the lightning! We also got to see all the Moomba and New Years fireworks for free, too – now we’ll just have to watch it all on the television instead (*sigh*) The things one gives up for a veggie garden! 😉 Anyway, after being so rudely awoken by the thunder-storm, I drifted off to sleep again but had weird dreams about a friend and his wife coming to stay with us in Doncaster, so I was quite happy to be woken at 8.30 for my morning mole-hill climbing. You know what? I tilted the treadmill incline up another notch the other day (it’s now sitting on setting seven of ten) and lengthened the time of my walk from 15 minutes (about 800 steps) to 17.something minutes (about 950 steps) – but still only at 3.2kmph, and still only three times a day – finally my top thigh muscles are actually starting to feel it (that is, they’re starting to get sore!) so the increase in incline and extra length of time must be doing some good, after all! 🙂 But getting back to this morning… I didn’t get to do much in Rift today – I did get rid of the last of my “Bind on Equip” junk on my three main shards, and started “neatening up” some of the shards that as yet have no Guild or Guild Bank – I’m starting to think that I’d like all the shards to have Guilds, so I’m going to have to “import” (read: temporarily transfer) characters carrying “bribe money” across – once upon a time, people would sign your Guild Charter because they wanted to belong to a Guild – it didn’t matter what Guild, just a Guild – these days you have to bribe Guild-less newbies to sign your Guild Charter (you need nine signatures on your Charter to form a Guild!) and by telling them that they don’t have to actually stay in the Guild, but just stay there until it’s formed! (some naughty people take the bribe money and then skip before the Guild is created! Very poor form! (*shakes head sadly*)) Then, if they don’t leave once you have your Guild, you can kick them out if you want your Guild to remain “private” 🙂 As you can imagine – all of this can be quite time consuming and expensive, so at this stage I’m only thinking that I’d like to set up a Guild on each shard… Back to reality: I did my lunchtime treadmilling early, and we had an early lunch in order to get over to Doncaster by three o’clock – we nearly didn’t make it on time, either, because Julian decided to take Springvale Road because it was more direct than the Tollway – this would have worked out well, but for the fact that there were holdups due to roadworks on Springvale Road – so the Tollway probably would have been faster, but we did manage to make it on time… As usual I had a nice relaxing time at the hairdresser, and I have to say that Elliott did a fantastic job on my hair colour! The blue foils didn’t turn out quite as blue as we would have liked, but actually, I think I like it better the way it did turn out! My hair is now a very dark, vibrant red, and what should have been blue streaks have in fact turned out to be a sort-of translucent lavender, giving the red a shimmer of almost opalescent mauve all over it – it’s very pretty, and I love it! 🙂 Thanks Elliott, you did a fantastic job! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. You’ll never guess what happened! I went down four points! Yes, I went from 69.2kg to 68.8kg! fantastic! I’m going to have to start a new graph page for that, because although I was almost at the bottom of the page yesterday, there was still room for another two kilo drops, but not four of them! 🙂 Ah, yes, BUT! (well, you did all realise that there had to be a “but” in there, didn’t you?!) Because I knew I was going to be so long at the hairdresser, I didn’t take my second anti-fluid tablet at lunchtime. Julian said “That’s alright, take it when you get home!”, and that’s what I would have done, but we got home so late I thought that if I took it then, I’d probably be up and down all night – so I didn’t take it. Well, you all know what that means – I’ll retain excess fluid, which will push my weight back up again tomorrow morning 😦 Plus the fact that I start those horrible fluid-loving and retaining pills again tomorrow – s’not fair! 😦 Perhaps being up and down all night would have been worth it, but… sleep versus weight? Nah… I think I’d rather sleep… maybe… too late now, anyway! The die is cast… the pill was not taken… But whatever happens tomorrow morning, I’ll know… that for one, brief, shining moment, I got under 69kg! 🙂

And so to tomorrow! Alas, no sleeping in for us – we did that today! It does mean that we should get a good run at Rift, though 🙂 I really should have looked up the little blurb that I saw a couple of weeks ago about Acts 1 & 2 of “Into the Wilds” – I’m sure it said that for those of us who’d finished the first part, we could get into the second part by…. and that’s the part that I can’t remember and should have looked up! (I’ll do that after I finish this!) Of course we have our two new Primalists to play with, but it’s a long hard slog from level 14 to level 65! 🙂 Whatever we do though will be fun, and as I said, getting a slightly earlier start will give us more time. I’m looking forward to Monday, too – we spoke to my favourite youngest daughter this morning, and because the place where she works is only going to have a skeleton staff there on Monday, they’ve given her the day off, so she’ll be coming over with her husband Terry when he comes over to take us shopping for sleepers and veggie-garden “stuffz” 🙂  I don’t get to see as much of Kate as I’d like, because she works… so every opportunity that she gets to come over is very welcome! 🙂 Anyway, it’s late, I still have Minions to de-brief, and besides, that’s about it from me for tonight! 🙂 Drop in again tomorrow night though, and find out if my weight did sky-rocket back up again, how our day in Telara (or The Wilds!) went, whether if we died or not, and if we did die, how many times, and what was it that killed us? I’m sure there’ll be heaps more to tell you all, too – so until tomorrow night, please bee good, remember – it’s not what you know, it’s what you do with what you know that counts, and don’t forget to keep cool – or warm, depending on the weather, to drive carefully, and to look after yourselves… but most of all, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

It’s been a fairly quiet day – Mr. Cable man rang late, to say that he’d been held up on another job, and that he’d be arriving around 11.30am. It must have been a very big job he was on, because he didn’t arrive at 11.30am, either – he did ring a bit later on to say that he was on his way – and he finally arrived at 12.30pm! Julian sent him packing with a flea in his ear, and has arranged for someone else to come to give us a quote next Tuesday. Yes. Melbourne Cup Day. A Public Holiday. He’s supposed to be turning up at 9.00am – so… why am I suddenly getting this strange feeling of déjà vu?! So, first of all, I downloaded and had a quick peek at Devilian, the new game I was telling you about the other day that I was lucky enough to get into the Closed Beta? It looks a lot like Aion, and another Trion game, Archeage – very pretty Korean-type graphics and facial styles and hair-do’s (I didn’t look at the male characters though – I forgot!) But I didn’t get much past the intro – it might be an MMO, but I find the “point and click” style of playing terribly tedious… “Point and click” means that you point your mouse to where you want to move, and click – the character then runs to that spot and stops. Then you point to where you want to move, click, etc., etc. Not for me, alas, so that’s another itch of mine that’s been scratched and left to slowly bleed to death unnoticed in the kingdom of lost program files So then I returned to Rift – which was much more betterer! 🙂 I did a bit more of a tidy-up, then worked with Brightleaf and managed to get her up to level 18. While questing, you often pick up armor and weapons dropped by dying mobs – some of it useful to you, but mostly not… It’s usually “Bind on equip”, meaning that the item can be put on the Auction House where you can ask whatever you want for it – and occasionally people will even pay that price just to own that fine piece of equipment! If you do equip it though, it becomes “Soulbound” to you, and all you can do is Vendor it (sell it to a merchant for a few coins) or if you have the Skill to do so, destroy it for the raw materials it contains. Needless to say, these drops are all fairly common, so selling them on the Auction House is time-consuming, expensive (you have to pay a fairly stiff deposit!) and nearly always futile. Naturally, being the altoholic that I am, I usually have quite a stack of these “Bind on equip” items building up in my poor “Guild Bank Overflow & Auction House” (GBO’s) Mistress’s bags, and I finally made the decision this morning that I wasn’t going to waste my time trying to Auction any of these things off anymore, I was henceforth going to pass them straight on to my resident Runecrafter to deconstruct! (I have a Runecrafter on every shard – they make magical Runes which can be used to enhance armor and weapons – they can also break things down into raw materials that they, and other Crafters, can use to make magical items) I have also created the Crafters who can use those raw materials to make stuff that I can sell on the Auction House – a win-win situation all round! 🙂 Now my GBO’s (see above!) can concentrate on Auctioning off stacks of herbs, metal, hides, and “home-made” magical items! 🙂

We were planning on going off to Bunnys tomorrow morning to look at sleepers for the veggie garden, but we had a phone call last night from Terry, my favourite youngest daughter’s husband, to say that he’s not working on Monday, and how about if he borrows a Ute (I gather Julian didn’t ask him “Where from?” though) and comes over, and we all go down to the nursery, or Bunnys, and pick up all the wherewithal for the veggie garden. This is what Julian’s been wanting him to suggest all along, so he jumped at the offer – therefore, Julian and I will not be sauntering off to inspect various sorts of sleepers for our little project tomorrow morning! And if I know anything about us – which I do – my bet would be that we’ll spend a relatively lazy morning twiddling around on the computers before a mad scramble to get me to the hairdresser at Doncaster by 3.00pm! We finally heard from Clarke this afternoon – we’ll have next week free, and he’ll be commencing work on my bathroom on November 9th… which is good, we now have a firm starting date! Unfortunately he thinks it could take up to five weeks to complete, which is not so good! However, as he explained to Julian, he has to give us the worst-case estimate in case there are any hold-ups, as there’s an awful lot of work to be done (i.e. virtually gutting the bathroom and toilet and re-building from the concrete up!) Poor Julian! 🙂 He’s going to have to put up with me sharing his bathroom for up to five weeks! 😉

My Podiatrist arrived at three o’clock this afternoon, as scheduled, and I was a bit taken aback when she informed me that she’d brought her electric drill! I had sudden chaotic visions of her grinding my toenails off with some sort of fancy ankle grinder, rather than just clipping them off as she usually does! Actually although she did use the grinder a bit, it was to sand a couple of rough bits off the callouses on my heel, so my ankles and toenails remain un-grinded… ground… grounded? (thank goodness!) She also knows of someone who makes shoes – I had some shoes made years ago, but they’re almost falling to pieces now, and I desperately need new ones, because even though I hate, loath, and detest shoes, sadly I do need to wear them when I leave the house. She’s going to get her receptionist to call me with his details on Monday.

I’m afraid it’s “that” time again – sorry! Back soon…

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

‘Ere I am again – it was the Optifast chicken soup tonight, with semi-dried ginger flakes – my flavourite! 🙂 Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, the Podiatrist. Well, my feet certainly look and feel a lot better tonight, though I think Jo (the Podiatrist) was a bit put out about the blood-blister on my right foot, from when I was walking on the treadmill in bare feet – but it’s not sore, so I’m not terribly worried about it. She’ll be back again in a month – hopefully that blister will be long gone by then, and I’ve learnt my lesson about paddling around on the treadmill in bare feet…

Weigh-in this morning. I am totally and utterly cross, disappointed, fed up and furious – I’m starting to wonder if there’s ever going to be an end to this! Yes, I bloody-well went up a point! From 69.1kg back to 69.2kg, where I was (for two days) the day before yesterday! If there was ever the slimmest possibility of me getting vaguely close to my Maintenance goal before November 10th, it’s now flown right out through the closed window, leaving behind only the shards of shattered dreams lying forlornly on the scales! The day after tomorrow I start back on those wretched fluid-retaining pills again… I am so not happy! 😦

Tomorrow is the weekend – as I said, I don’t really think we’ll be doing much in the morning, and then I have a very l-o-n-g session at the hairdresser, getting my hair re-coloured… I’m not sure what colour at the moment – Elliott seems to think I should stick with the reds, and I have to say that the red does suit me, but I think I’d like to try something different for a change… Maybe stay with the red, but have some violet or purple mixed in with it, or maybe even a dark auburn or something – I just wish the blue colours didn’t wash out so quickly. I wonder if they still make that “Magic Silver White” or whatever it was called – many, many years ago when I went blonde for a long while, I used to use that to tone the yellow down (I have a lot of natural red in my hair – bleaching it used to make it go bright marigold!) Anyway, I’d fill the hand basin with water, add the “Magic Silver White” (or whatever it was called) plus a bit extra, and dunk my head in it and swish my hair around. Once, I must have added a little bit too much extra, and I ended up with a broad purplish-blue patch, right down the middle of the back of my head! Do you think that would wash out?! Not on your Nellie! I washed it, over and over… no change! I tried all sorts of things on it – ditto – no change! Weeks went by, and I still had that great purplish-blue splotch down the middle of my hair! Someone told me to try Selsun – not the milder, gentler one that you get these days – remember, this was years ago – it was probably one of the strongest and nastiest anti-dandruff shampoos ever made… so I got some. Guess what. It worked! So I’m thinking, if they still make that “Magic Silver White” stuff, and if I used too much of that again, I might end up with the un-washout-able blue that I’d love to have this time! I’ll tell Elliott tomorrow, and see what he thinks (he’ll probably just look at me as though I’d gone stark, staring mad! And anyway – he’s probably too young to have ever heard of that “Magic Silver White” thingy… Oh well, I’ll mention it anyway…) And this is where I shall leave you all, as that’s about it from me for tonight 🙂 Do call in again tomorrow night, to find out what colour I did end up with, and whether I’m still at a standstill as far as my recalcitrant weight is concerned. I’m sure there’ll be lots more news and tidbits as well, so until tomorrow night, please bee good, don’t ever be afraid to take risks: If you win, you will be happy; if you lose, you will be wise; and remember to drive carefully, to look after yourselves, and to keep cool – or warm, depending on the weather… but most importantly, remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

I’ve had a lovely, peaceful day playing Rift! We were going to go out looking at and hopefully getting, the sleepers for our soon-to-be veggie garden this afternoon – after lunch I went on my usual midday mole-hill climb, then Julian called me to the front door, took me outside, and said “I think it might be a bit hot for you out in the sun – what do you think?” (I don’t cope terribly well with anything much over 25C, you see) Stepping out onto the front porch, I started to say “Wel-l-l… it’s not too… ” and was going to continue with “bad out here”, but instead I yelped “yeow!!” rather loudly, as I burnt my bare feet on the wooden decking, and scuttled back inside as quickly as I could. I guess that answered his question though, as we’re now going to go sleeper shopping on Saturday morning – weather permitting, that is! I’m also allergic to standing around unprotected in the pouring rain – my glasses fog up so I can’t see where I’m going, or what I’m looking at, and I feel wet and uncomfortable. So I ended up Rifting for the rest of the afternoon, instead! 🙂 I’d started yet-another-new-character on Greybriar this morning – I was short a Guardian there, so I decided to cure that with another Primalist. I already have a Guardian Primalist, Winterwight, but she’s the one I play with Julian on a Sunday, and if I play her on my own during the week I’ll get too far ahead of him, so… “Brightleaf” was born! 🙂 So once again I set out to level up a Guardian over on Defiant territory, and I did really well, especially in the Skills area. The three basic Skills as you already know are Foraging, Mining, and Butchering. Mining is the hardest to level up because there are far more pretty plants to pick and nice animals to skin, once you’ve killed them – but there aren’t quite so many lumps of ore sticking up out of the rocks by the side of the road! It’s most annoying because usually by the time you’re ready to move on to the next area, you’re all skilled up in everything… except for mining! It used to be that if your mining wasn’t up to scratch, you wouldn’t be able to mine in the new area – the game would have you believe that you weren’t “skilled” enough to be able to mine the new ore… but Trion have finally fixed that little problem because you can now pick, skin, or mine anything, anywhere, regardless of its level – the only thing you can’t do is process the higher level plants, cure the higher level hides, smelt the higher level ores, or generally use any of these higher level materials for anything until you’ve skilled up to the right level – which I think is fair enough! So I went all around Freemarch, picking up all the Carnage quests, leveling up my Skills, hunting Artifacts – I had a ball! 🙂 Having got myself to level 11 (almost level 12) I’d almost finished up over in Freemarch (the Defiant home turf) and was getting ready to return to Silverwood and the baby quests over there that I hadn’t done yet – but I had one more place to search for Artifacts before I went. It’s right up against the walls of Meridian, the Defiant Capital, and if you get too close, you get automatically flagged as being “PVP” (Player versus Player) and you stay that way until you’ve moved out of the area and been “peaceful” for six minutes… Well, I knew this, but I was prepared to accept the consequences – there usually aren’t all that many people running around in that area, anyway… I was lucky! I found three Artifacts there, so I thought it well worth the (minimal!) risk! But, I snuck down to see if the infamous “Reed Bellows” was around – he’s the one you have to kill to get the coveted “Merchant of Death” title – and sure enough, he was! There was also someone else there, obviously waiting for Reed Bellows, and I wasn’t, and couldn’t, be grouped with him because he was Defiant and I was Guardian. Well, I was damned if I was going to let him grab Reed Bellows on his own – all I could do was try to get the first shot in! Well, I think I’ve told you how ruddy powerful Primalists are – but Reed Bellows is a very tough level 15, to my level 11, and I wasn’t overly optimistic about being able to take him down! However, I did get my shot in first, and it must have been a really good Critical Hit because I almost one-shotted him! I think the other guy got a shot off too, but I was the one who got the “sparkly loot” and the title! 😀 Then I turned around, jumped up on the nearby pile of rocks where occasionally you’ll find an Artifact, and sure enough, there it was. I’d just picked it up and jumped down again when – BAM! – I was lying dead in the middle of the road, with this rather annoyed looking individual standing over me! Well, what could I expect! I was a lower level than he was, flagged “PVP”, or “please come and shoot me”, I’d more-or-less just nicked his Title, picked up his Artifact (I presume he would have looked for one there) and there he is standing over me, waiting for me to resurrect so that he could kill me again! (that’s called “corpse camping”, by the way!) I had to smile though – to resurrect I had to go to my “nearest Graveyard”, and because I was a Guardian, my “nearest Graveyard” was over in Silverwood! So there I was over in Freemarch being dead, and all of a sudden there I am at a Graveyard in Silverwood! What’s more, I got enough experience points for “learning how to use the Healer”, because it was the first time I’d died, to take me up to level 12! 🙂 So yeah, it was a pretty good session today… I rather think I like Brightleaf! 😉

The Tee-shirt I ordered the other day arrived this afternoon – it’s a size 14, and you know, I think it’s a bit big! It has long sleeves, which are very “roomy”, shall we say – well, it might shrink a bit in the wash, but I seriously doubt it – however I shall order another one in a different colour (this one is black) in a size (*gasp*! *shock*! *horror*!) twelve! I’m pretty sure that I haven’t worn a size 12 since I was in Junior School! I’ve been thinking and wondering what to take to hospital with me as a nightgown or pyjamas, when I eventually go in for my pending surgery – well, I have a very nice pair of comfortable black slacks that are a titch too big for me now, and now I have this very nice, quite loose, black long-sleeved tee-shirt! Behold my brand new, “home-made” pyjamas! 🙂 …Now all I have to do is work out a way to make myself a pair of slippers…

Weigh-in this morning. Was frustrating, to say the least! I went down… one point! I went from 69.2kg to 69.1kg – could s-l-o-w weight loss be any more painful?! “Slow”… If my weight was going down any slower, it’d be going backwards! As it is, I’ll either be back at 69.2kg (or higher!) tomorrow, or I’ll stay the same for a couple of days! It is soooooo frustrating!

Tomorrow morning we have to be up early, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, because the Cable man cometh! I don’t think he’ll interrupt my computerly activities too much, because he’s only putting the cables inside walls and so forth – then the electrician has to come and connect them all up to whatever they’re supposed to be connected up to – I think! We still haven’t heard a peep out of Clarke – I sure hope he is going to be able to start my bathroom next week! I shall be most put out if he’s not! (*grrr!*) Then the Podiatrist is coming over around 3 o’clock, so once again it looks like I have another full and busy day ahead of me! Anyway, that’s about all I have for you this evening, but do drop by again tomorrow night – find out if my weight did go back up again, or stayed the same (I’m pretty sure it won’t be going down!) whether the Cable man disrupted my Rifting, and what my feet look like after the Podiatrist’s visit! I’m sure there’ll be lots more – I’ve signed on for the closed Beta of “Devilian“, another Trion game, and I received the invitation to download it this afternoon – as far as I can see, it’s very Rift-like, but possibly more PVP orientated – which I won’t like – but I want to at least have a look at it. I’ll let you all know how it goes… However, until tomorrow night, please try to continue to bee good, don’t forget – no one is remembered for being “normal”, and remember to look after yourselves, to keep warm – or cool, depending on the weather, and to drive carefully – but most importantly, remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

Well, it’s just after nine o’clock, and here I am, as promised, with tonight’s episode… What a l-o-n-g day it’s been! We were up at 5.30 this morning for Julian to perform his taxi-driving duties – I suppose I could have stayed in bed, but I chose to get up too – while he was off driving, I did my morning treadmilling extra, extra early! Then I Rifted for the rest of the morning, this time picking up my level 32 Primalist, Tallissia – I thought it was about time that I worked with her for a bit, and I’m happy to be able to tell you that she’s now level 34! 🙂 Julian eventually finished with his taxi-driving chores and came home, and by then it was almost lunchtime! After lunch he took off again – this time to Doncaster, where we had someone coming to buy our old King-Size bed frame. It was our first venture into selling off the old furniture and was largely by way of an experiment, to see how we’d go selling things on Gum Tree (I think! I know it wasn’t eBay!) The woman who bought it had offered to buy it last week, but on the day she was supposed to turn up to pay for it and take it home, she rang at the last-minute (Julian had already gone over to Doncaster to wait for her!) to say that her cat had been taken ill and she had to race him off to the Vet. I’m afraid that Julian was slightly unpleasant to her about that… but… she obviously must have wanted it, because she swallowed all that, and still drove all the way in from the other side of the Black Stump to buy it today! Apparently she already had the Queen Size version of it (she even had photos of it too!) and had been desperately trying to upsize to the King Size version of it for years, but hadn’t been able to find one anywhere! …Or so she said. Now that the bed has been successfully sold via Gum Tree (?) Julian wants to list a few more things that are still in storage… if anyone’s interested I’ll post links to the photos when they’re available. There’s quite a lot to go – cabinets, two dining room tables, a coffee table – and I’m not sure what else. Anyway, I’ll let you know when they’re available…

Then there was the Farewell “do” this afternoon that I really didn’t want to go to. Oh well, it was what it was – a replication of the annual Christmas parties they hold in the front foyer. I think the whole building turned up for it, as well as a few who’d also moved out recently! As I expected, all the ladies brought a well-filled and piled-high “plate” of edibles – some of them very fancy indeed! Squares of while bread with the crusts cut off rolled diagonally around an asparagus spear and tied with a long chive, the ubiquitous cucumber sandwiches, little savouries, brownie slices, pecan slices, and hedgehog squares – all home-made! There were also one of my absolute favourites *sniffle* not home-made, but really the most delicious cookies I’ve ever eaten – my very favourite Subway Chocolate-chip cookies! I absolutely love the taste, the texture, and their “bendiness” – they’re soft, but a little bit crunchy on the outside, they literally melt in your mouth… I saw Julian pick up this cookie, and I recognised it straight away… I watched him bite into it, and saw the way it bent under the impact of his teeth – all in a sort of cinematic slow-motion! I don’t know if I was horrified that I knew instantly what it was, or devastated that they were there and I couldn’t have one, or what! Julian saw the look on my face and immediately tried to eat the rest of it behind his plastic plate… In fact, there were an awful lot of things there this afternoon that I wished I could have eaten – but… I’ll get there, only four more kilos to go, and then I can at least have a bite of each of them and give the rest to Julian – because it’s not that I want to go gobble, gobble, gobble, and have some of that, and some of that, and a bit more of those – I really just want to have a taste, say “Gee, that was nice! Pass the mineral water please!” and leave the rest… I know from experience that things like that usually look nicer than they taste, anyway! Having said that, I can also tell you that I’m starting to collect recipes that we can have once I reach Maintenance – I found a very interesting one yesterday for a “three ingredient fruit cake”, which should actually work! If it is any good, I’ll post the recipe, or a link to it, here… Anyway, we left the “do” around seven o’clock – I was starting to get a bit hungry, having watched everyone eating fairly steadily since 5.30pm, including Julian who only had a half serve of his dinner when we got home. The people at The Ridge, where we used to live, are all lovely people – there was lots of food (too much!), lots of wine, champagne, and mineral water, speeches were made, a toast to my mother, who lived in the apartment before we did, was held, and, I hate to say it, promises were extracted from us to turn up for their Christmas party this year… but that’s a long way off yet! 😉 I did notice something odd tonight though… people either don’t notice, or they forget quickly – I’m not really sure which, but it seems odd to me, anyway. I’ve had the same colour hair for years! It hasn’t really changed for about two years, anyway, and yet… everyone there tonight told me how nice my hair colour was, and didn’t it suite me! Well, when you live with people I suppose you often don’t notice things like hair colour, and when you haven’t seen a person for like, oh, a month? Well, I guess it might just jump out and bite you – a bit. But.. the last time I saw Dr. Y., he said more or less the same thing – he remarked on my hair colour and my glasses! I sort of just looked at him in puzzlement – my hair and my glasses hadn’t changed – they were both exactly the same as the last time I’d been there! Maybe me being thinner makes it look different… I dunno! And speaking of “thinner”….

Weigh-in this morning. Was horrible! I stayed the same again – I’m getting very tired of this! I went from 69.2kg to 69.2kg. I think it’s about time for a bit of downward movement, body! I don’t care if I have to deny you a bite of Subway cookie or not! I’m staying on this diet until I die of old age if I have to, but it’s 65kg or bust! 😦

Tomorrow should be a good day – we’re going off armed with the dimensions of the dining room table to look for appropriate sleepers with which to build our veggie garden beds! Actually, I think we should sleep in a little bit tomorrow morning, to make up for this morning! But we’ll definitely go sleeper-shopping as well! 🙂 On Friday morning the cable man is coming back to install all the network cables, and I have the Podiatrist coming in the afternoon, so hopefully my feet will start to look human again. On Saturday, of course, I’m having my hair coloured, and that’s about as much as I know about our movements for the next couple of days – and that’s about all I have for you tonight, too! 🙂 But there you go – I told you all last night that the blog would be late, but that it would be up before midnight, and here it is – better late than never, eh?! 🙂 Please do drop by again tomorrow night – I’m sure you’ll all want to know if we found just the right sleepers for our veggie garden, and what else the nice nurseryman or Bunnies man told us we’d need for it, as well as how my weight is behaving. I’m sure there’ll be heaps more to tell you all, so don’t be shy and miss out! 🙂 But until then, do try to bee good, don’t forget that the only thing worse than making a mistake is making a mistake and not learning from it, and remember to keep warm – or cool depending on the weather, to look after yourselves, and to drive carefully – but most importantly, remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

Well, it’s been a pretty quiet day today – I Rifted for most of it, while Julian went out to organise all the mail-forwarding thingies, and finally, a brush for Flipper… He got it from the pet shop upstairs at Doncaster, the one that used to be a Pet’s Paradise shop, but is now something else wot we can’t remember. It’s a silicone “Zoom Groom” brush made by Kong; it’s a roughly rounded diamond shape, and has the big, fat, conical “teeth” that Flipper likes so much – it’s supposedly for a dog (well, it’s got a dopey doggie image embossed on it) but it can be used for cats too. I’m glad I was sitting down when he told me how much it cost though! It was thirty dollars! ($30!) Shoot! There wouldn’t even be one dollar’s worth of silicone in it! They used to be so cheap – a regular dime a dozen – and they were everywhere! Supermarkets, mixed businesses – even some enterprising newsagents sold them! From memory they used to cost a couple of dollars… back in the days of the cave-men! Anyway, Flipper has her brush, and Julian had very fluffy, woolly, trousers on, by the time he’d finished brushing her – but Flipper loved every second of it! I also started working on a new desktop wallpapery thingie this morning – I like the one I’ve got, but I’m getting a little tired of it, and it’s hard to make new Windowblinds skins match it because it’s a soft mint green… but this one will be in soft winter greys – I’ve done most of it, now I just have to find a nice font, and that’s proving to be a bit of a problem. I periodically go around checking all my font sources, to see if there’s anything new, or worthwhile getting if it isn’t too expensive. Last night I went on one of my font checkups, and I saw that one of my favourite font makers is back from a bit of a break – so of course, I just had to go and look, didn’t I! 🙂 He specialises mainly in Art Deco style fonts, which I love, and he only charges $10 per font. He sells them through MyFonts, and truth be told, I spent a lot of last night, and a great deal of this morning, drooling all over my keyboard, wondering which one(s) to get! I just can’t decide! I’ve already got quite a few of them, but I’d like a new one for the text on the desktop wallpapery thingie wot I started making this morning *sigh* Decisions, decisions, decisions! At the moment I’m torn between Cleveland Litho NF, Babes in Toyland NF, Boxcar Willie NF, and Chiselle. Which one should I get? They’d all be great…

On the Rift side of things this morning, I didn’t really do all that much actual “playing” – I’m still basically “tidying up” the shards and the Guild Banks. Once upon a time in Rift, you’d pick up garments and other types of gear as you went about, happily slaying left right and centre – either as quest rewards, or mob “drops” (what the mob drops as it dies!) Some of them looked pretty cool, so you’d jealously hoard them in your bank to wear as a “wardrobe costume” – you were still equipping your ordinary armor, but the wardrobe function gave you the ability to “disguise” it with the much cooler looking gear that you weren’t able to use normally. This used to really clutter up your bags and your bank – once you used it, it became “bound” to you, and you couldn’t even pass it on to any of your other characters – so if you wanted that particular look for any of them you had to go out and find, or buy, another version of that piece of equipment through the Auction House, often at truly horrendous prices, because the item was either a rare “drop”, or cost a lot to make… and of course it was very popular! Supply and demand, folks! 😉 Then Trion went and changed the wardrobe “rules”. Once you’d “collected” a piece of equipment, it went into the “memory banks” (for want of a better term!) of your wardrobe, and became available for anyone on your account to use. What’s more, you could dye it any colour you liked, and you didn’t even have to buy the dyes! Your wardrobe remembered those too, plus a lot of new colours as well! So you no longer needed to keep these precious and desirable items in your vastly overcrowded bank vaults, you could now sell them, throw them away, destroy them… Anyway, such is the ingrained habit of hoarding, and not throwing “useful items” away, that I had (and in fact still have!) an awful lot of these once expensive and desirable garments and weapons floating around my banks… and that’s mostly what I did this morning – selling them off for a pittance, destroying them – and just generally making spaces. I have a feeling that tomorrow morning is going to be similar, as Julian will be busy ferrying my favourite eldest daughter and her husband around for this “Day Procedure”, and I’ll probably be left “minding the store”… (it’s a tough job, but somebody’s got to do it! 😉 ) Still no word from Clarke – if we don’t hear anything by tonight we might have to give him a call… He was supposed to be emailing me the dimensions of the glass brick window in my new bathroom, so that I could “map out”, or design, where I wanted the wavy lavender glass bricks amongst the wavy clear ones, but I don’t think it really matters – they’re just supposed to be “scattered carelessly”, no rhyme nor reason, amongst the plain ones. “Cazule-like” 😉  Tomorrow night, of course, is the dreaded “Going Away” party for us at our old apartment. I don’t really know why I’m dreading it as much as I am… It’s not that I don’t like the people – I do like them, they’re all really, really nice, and it’s not as though I’m going to be standing around for hours making small-talk while my back starts screeching at me to “sit down!”, because I’ll be sitting very comfortably in my wheelchair, sipping mineral water and smiling a “No thank-you” to the elderly ladies passing around plates of beautifully home-made cucumber sandwiches and little savouries. The “do” starts at around 5.30pm, so hopefully we’ll be home around seven-ish. It’s really and truly not a great big deal… it’s just that… I don’ wanna go! 😦

Weigh-in this morning. Hmm… should I call for a drum roll? A trumpet fanfare? I went down…. one whole damn cotton-pickin’ point! Hallelujah, an’ all that! From 69.3kg to 69.2kg! Big Deal! This is the time where I want my weight to be going down in those great big four-point clumps, for crying out loud, and what does my wretched body give me? One measly, lousy little point! Goodness knows what it’ll do tomorrow – probably go up four ruddy points, or something! I am not happy…. 😦 Only two weeks to go…

Oh well, at least I hope my hair will look nice… I’m having it coloured on Saturday morning. I told Elliott that I didn’t want more pale or pastel colours, I want “in your face!” colour! He looked vaguely surprised… but I’m not a subtle person – I don’t think I know how to be subtle – I even used to have somewhat of a reputation on some of the forums for  being “a little harsh” for some unknown reason… I mean, I can be blunt sometimes, but harsh? Nevah! 😉 Anyway, Elliott seems to think that I should stick with the red colours, but I’m going to try to persuade him to maybe try a couple of foils of blue, or purple… I know they’ll fade quickly – those colours always do – but if the red is vibrant enough it should offset the rapidly fading blue or purple – or if the blue looks really nice, maybe I could have it touched up a bit more often? I dunno – in the end, I have to leave it up to him… And here I am at this point in the evening again! The time when I say “and that’s about all I have for you tonight” Don’t worry though, I’ll be back with more news, stories, “tall tales and true of the legendary past” tomorrow night 🙂 (anyone out there remember the old black and white “Disneyland” on Sunday nights, or am I dating myself?) Find out if my stupid body did what it was told for once and lost a few pounds – or gained them, if it was feeling particularly wicked – how my favourite eldest daughter’s husband fared, and how our Farewell “do” in Doncaster went (please don’t expect photos!) Oh, I should at this point mention that tomorrow night’s episode will be late – probably very late, and possibly short, too – but it will be here before midnight tomorrow, I promise! K? 🙂 Until then though, please try very hard to bee good, remember that if you can’t amaze people with your intelligence, confuse them with your wisdom 😉 and don’t forget to drive carefully, to keep warm – or cool, depending on the weather, and to look after yourselves – but above all, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

So today our new cleaning lady came… a few minutes early, too! 🙂 I guess she didn’t do too bad a job – the house does look nice and clean, though it’s only a matter of time before we start getting drifts of Flipper fur banking up in the hallway, and creeping over the floor of the Den! And I just remembered something we were going to do today while we were out! We were going to see if we could buy a brush for Flipper, and we both forgot! *grrr* We actually have two Flipper brushes, a sort of a dirty blue one, and a purple one – they’re the plastic ones with the fat conical “teeth” – she likes them because they don’t pull, or get tangled in her very fine long hair, but we can’t find either of them! I know I saw the purple one just the other day, but I’m beginning to think I imagined it, coz we can’t find it! Bother! Maybe if I put it on the shopping list… You used to be able to get them in the supermarkets, but last time Julian went shopping he looked all over the pet aisle and couldn’t see any, so I thought that maybe a pet shop might have them, and we were going to have a look today – but we both forgot Anyway, back to the cleaning lady, whose name is Kelly – I think she did a reasonably good job – she didn’t empty the waste paper bins – we’ll have to ask her to add that to her “to do” cleaning list next time she’s over – and although she mopped all the floors, I think she could have done a slightly better job in the corners of my toilet (no, I’m not kidding, one of the corners is still a bit grotty… the rest of it is nice and clean though, but it’s the ever-so slight lack of attention to detail that I’m looking at here!) And it seems that she’ll also do ironing! I used to do all the ironing, including the shirts, before my back died on me, and alas, I never managed to master the art of ironing whilst sitting down – the angles were always all wrong… so we started sending things off to the Dry Cleaners. Since then, I’m pretty sure we’ve paid the Dry Cleaners enough to buy them two Mercedes, a Cadillac, and I think they’re probably well on their way to their first Rolls Royce by now! Kelly the Kleener will be back in a fortnight, so I think we may invest in a new iron and ironing board before then, and see how she goes with the ironing… if she’s any good, then the Dry Cleaners might have to put off buying that Rolls Royce for a while! 😉 Kelly was here for three hours, and while she was busy vacuuming the Den, I thought that it would be a good opportunity to get my lunchtime treadmilling over and done with, so as to save time after lunch. That worked out so well that as soon as we got back from our shopping expedition, I raced in and did my evening walk early as well, so now I don’t have to keep watching the clock so as to leave enough time for my evening walk before dinner! 🙂 When Kelly had gone, we had lunch, and then went up to Knox City. I had a script to be filled, and I needed to get a packet of the Optifast Cappuccino bars because I ate my last one for lunch yesterday – and we know that the big Apothecary opposite Coles sells Optifast products… I also wanted to get another pair of jeans from Autograph – there’s an Autograph at Knox City – and we still hadn’t picked up the slide-out shelving that we’d ordered from Howards Storage World at Knox quite a while ago. We went to the Apothecary first, then we went upstairs to the rest of the places we wanted to go to… I couldn’t believe it when I got to Autograph! They had no more jeans in the shop! None! They’d all been carted off to storage because… they’re considered to be “Winter Fashion”! According to Autograph, no-one wears jeans in summer any more, unless they’re those stupid and ugly “crop” pants that make you look as though you’re wearing your little brother’s “three sizes too short for you” jeans, or that your clothes have all shrunk in the wash! No jeans! I’m still mind-boggling over that! Anyway, the nice girl there said that Millers, their “sister store”, might still have some left. We also went to Riot – I wanted to get some Prismacolor Colored Pencils, for use with one of those terribly trendy Adult colouring books that I’ve been itching to buy. Riot had sold out of just about all their coloured pencils – they only had small, 12 pencil sets, and no “blender” pencils at all, and what’s more, they had no idea when they would be getting in any more! I got the distinct impression of an “I don’t give a damn” attitude there, so I gave it a miss – I’ll see if I can buy the pencils online instead (and bricks and mortar shops are wondering why the public are deserting them in droves! Hello Autograph! Hello Riot!) We went into Dusk, too – I wanted to get a replacement candle for the bedroom as the one I’m currently burning is almost all used up – we did end up getting a big, three-wick candle that smelt nice, but had no descriptive name. In fact, very few of the candles in Dusk had a descriptive name, like “chocolate and orange blossom”, or whatever (as far as I know, they don’t actually have a “chocolate and orange blossom” scented candle – those were just the first two scents that came to mind!) … (but wouldn’t a chocolate and orange blossom candle smell just divine! 🙂 ) And I have to say, both of us were rather taken aback by how few candles Dusk actually had in the shop, too! Oh well… We went on to Myer, because Knox City doesn’t have a DJ’s, and I got some smaller undergarments. On our way back to the car, we did call in at Millers – and oh joy and rapture unforeseen – they actually did have some jeans left, including a size 16, which I grabbed somewhat anxiously, before they too were carted off to storage – because jeans, after all, are only winter fashion! (they’re now sitting on the bed, awaiting a visit to the washing machine! 🙂 ) Then we came home, and as I said earlier, I raced straight off to do my evening treadmilling! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. What did I say last night? That I’d probably stay the same and prove myself to be a liar, or some such? Well… I did stay the same – whether that makes me a liar or not, I don’t know, but I went from 69.3kg to 69.3kg. I’m disgusted with myself. I’ll probably either stay the same, or go up tomorrow, just because it is important to me to lose as much as possible before November 10th… 😦

I’m not sure what’s happening tomorrow, or whether I’ll be seeing my favourite eldest daughter or not – I know we’ll be seeing her a bit on Wednesday, because Julian has to take her and her equal but more technical half off to have what’s commonly called in medical terms, a “Day Procedure” – her husband is having it, not her – she’s just going along to hold his hand and say “There, there!” at the appropriate times 🙂 We haven’t heard anything from Clarke, but then – it’s only Monday, isn’t it! 🙂 I’m dreading Wednesday – that’s the 28th, and all the denizens of our old apartment block are insisting on having a farewell “do” for us. I hate those sorts of things! 😦 Oh well, I guess this time next week will come – eventually… Anyway, once again, that’s about all I have for you this evening, but call in again tomorrow night and find out whether or not I got to see my favourite eldest daughter or not, and if we watched anything on TV, and what my weight did, or didn’t do to me – as well as lots of other interesting little tidbits that I’m sure to have for you all 🙂 Until then, though, do bee good, don’t forget that other people’s opinion of you does not have to become your reality, and remember to keep warm – or cool, depending on the weather, to look after yourselves, and to drive carefully – but most of all, remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

It’s been a very interesting Sunday! I thought that we’d probably spend the majority of it in The Wilds, with Mandreth and Sylversong, but I’d forgotten that when we finished up last Sunday, after finishing the last quest on our list, all we were given was the message “To Be Continued”! Apparently we’ve finished up this part of The Wilds, and there won’t be any more until the next patch – hopefully, the next Hotfix Patch (which are uploaded about once a month) I have the vaguest feeling that there was some sort of Community Message about ‘finishing Act 1 in The Wilds’ a while back, and what to do to get to Act 2, but I really didn’t take much notice at the time, and I can’t remember exactly what it said now – I guess we’ll have to go and see if we can follow it up on the Rift site… So anyway, we were left adrift and rudderless this morning – what to do? Perhaps I subconsciously remembered that we’d finished the first part of The Wilds when I was writing my blog last night, and I suggested that we might start off two new Primalist characters, and see what we could do with them, and that’s exactly what we did! We created two Primalists – mine is called Winterwight, and she’s a Vulcanist (i.e. she hurls flame and earth damage from afar!) Julian’s girl is called Warum, and she’s a Warrior – a Primalist Warrior has a really lethal ranged attack (gun or bow and arrow) and when they fight as a Tank (up close and personal-like) they speed up not only their own movement and attack speed, but that of the rest of their party too! To give you just some idea of how powerful Primalists are, it normally takes me, a reasonably experienced gamer, about a day to get from level 1 to level 10 or 11, playing solo. Today, we took our two new girls from level 1 to level 14 – not bad going, when you consider the fact that we had quite a late start (we sleep in until 8.30am on Sundays!) then we sat around and twiddled our thumbs for a bit while we decided what to do, now that all we could do in The Wilds was chase a few Carnage quests (most of which we’d already done anyway) And of course, creating and setting up a new character always takes a fair bit of time! So I suppose, that by the time we “woke up” in the baby area, it would have been close to 11.00am or later… we played until lunchtime, I went on my lunchtime treadmilling saunter, and by the time we got ourselves organised and back to Telara it was about quarter past two! Anyway, to go up fourteen levels in such a short time was nothing short of amazing! We’re still coming to grips with our two different attributes and abilities – quite often I’ll “one-shot” a mob before Julian can send off an arrow (or a bullet – I’m not sure whether he uses a bow or a gun (though it sounds more like a “twang” than a “bang”!)) and just as equally often, he’ll fire off a volley of arrows (or bullets!) before my main weapon even finishes charging up! It’s quite different from playing two Mages, or a Mage and a Cleric, but we’ll get used to it, and I think it might turn out to be our best combination yet! Time will tell, I suppose… I didn’t die today, but Julian did – it was his own silly fault, too! We were both hacking away at a couple of nasties – one was pretty weak and of not much consequence, the other was a couple of levels higher than we were, and Julian…. hadn’t put his healing potions where he could get at them! They were still somewhere in his over-full back-pack! So, he died. If he’d had them to hand he would have survived, because even though this mob was a couple of levels higher than we were, we did have the upper hand! Anyway, I finished the mob off while he resurrected… and put his healing potions where he could get at them! So we had an excellent day, all told, and I’m looking forward to next Sunday to see how we go! 🙂 We have decided, after our somewhat late start today, that from now on we’re going to sleep in on Saturdays, instead of Sundays, as by the time we get organised, I do my morning “Walkies”, and we have breakfast, it feels like half the day’s gone! This walking three times a day is a problem, too – fifteen minutes is fifteen minutes – you can’t make it go any faster… I may have to get up a bit earlier in the mornings to try not to eat into the day so much  – though never fear, I’ll still be doing my three fifteen minutes walk per day, every day! The only things that might stop me for a while is if I’m laid up in hospital (*rolls eyes*) or if I ever have to have my legs amputated – and even that would only stop me until I learnt how to use the prosthetics that would replace them! 😉 My morning walks are the hardest, for some reason, it just seems a lot harder to get my legs churning around in the mornings… my evening walks are tiresome and a [*insert expletive here*] bore – the lunchtime ones the best and easiest – but they seem to take up so much of my lunch break and early afternoon! I don’t know how I can get around that except just be philosophical about the wasted time… except of course it’s not wasted time, is it! I’m keeping myself fit, for a change – it’s just not being spent on things that I’d much rather be doing…

Weigh-in this morning. Yes indeedy, the game is afoot in earnest! This morning I lost that one point that I put on yesterday – from 69.4kg back to 69.3kg again – a real See Saw, Margery Daw act! Up and down, up and down… It really is terribly tiresome… I suppose my ruddy weight will stay the same tomorrow, just to be different and prove me wrong! …may I scream now, please?

Tomorrow our new cleaning lady will start here… She’s supposedly arriving at 9.30am – it’ll be interesting to see how prompt she is! Flipper, of course, will take one look, and flee to the safety of the very back of her “cave” – until said cleaning lady attaches the in-house vacuum cleaner. Flipper will then flee from room to room as though she fears that the vacuum cleaner is pursuing her around the house! Poor Flipper! Some cats don’t seem to mind the vacuum cleaner – one of our old cats, Boo, used to follow our cleaning lady around, from room to room, when she was vacuuming! Another one, Gingee, used to follow the cleaning lady around when she was mopping – he used to like rolling around in all the wet patches! 🙂 Anyway, I hope this cleaning lady dusts things, and does a good job… If she finishes early enough we might be able to get out for a bit. I’m hoping that we’ll hear from Clarke sometime later this week – he’s due to start on my Bathroom early next week! (I can’t wait!) But anyway, that’s about all from me again for tonight – but drop in again tomorrow night to find out how the cleaning lady went, and if I’ve managed to work out how to give myself a bit of time during the day when I’m not either walking, or writing! Of course you’re probably all dying to know what dubious antics my weight will have been getting up to (or perhaps more hopefully, “down” to!) and what else has been happening around here! Well, it’ll all be here waiting for you all tomorrow night, but until then, continue to bee good, remember – never equate education with intelligence; nor intelligence with wisdom, and don’t forget to drive carefully, to keep warm – or cool, depending on the weather, and to look after yourselves, but most importantly, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

It’s been a very pleasant Saturday so far today 🙂 I Rifted this morning, while Julian went off to get some more Flipper food (they don’t sell her favourite Dine stuff here at Vermont South! The slack sods! 😉 ) and various other bits and pieces. He had to be back early(ish) because the cable bloke was supposed to be coming over around one o’clock… They actually arrived together! I heard the back door opening, but I could hear voices, too, which was a bit strange… if Julian’d been on his mobile, I would only have heard one voice – his, but I could hear two voices… The cable bloke had arrived as Julian was driving into the garage, and they were chattering away as they came in. It turned out that Julian had been right – there was too much work to do in just one Saturday afternoon, so Mr. Cable Man is coming back next Friday to do the work – I guess we’ll have to put up with the wireless network for another week 🙂 After lunch and my lunchtime mole-hill scramble, I got back to Rifting, and Julian went surfing, looking for information on how to build a veggie garden with leggo bricks…. no! I meant sleepers! A veggie garden made with sleepers! Then he hopped back into the car and went down to Bunnies, just down the road, to have a look at some weird-looking “Birdies” (why on earth do they call raised garden beds “Birdies”?! for crying out loud! Why not just call them… ummm… oh, I dunno – how about “Raised Garden Beds” – or perhaps they think that people wouldn’t know what they meant!) This veggie garden business is starting to get overly complicated! (1) We can’t seem to make up our minds what size we want them (I can, I’ve told Julian and Terry, “I want them about the same size as the kitchen table!” – we know what size the kitchen table is, so where’s the problem?!) (2) We don’t know what length the sleepers come in – say, what?! So we go down and look at them (and measure them, OK?)! I said “about the same size as the kitchen table”, not “exactly the same size as the kitchen table”! If they’re a few inches shorter, or longer, or wider – I don’t give a damn! “About the same size” is what I want! (3) We don’t know what sort of sleepers to get – treated, untreated, pine, cedar, whatever! But hey! Wouldn’t it be a great idea to go down to the nursery (which is not much further down the road than Bunnies) and ask someone which sort of sleepers would be the best to get for our purposes? Then ask the nursery man what else we’re likely to need for this veggie garden project, buy the ruddy things, and have them delivered! I don’t understand the need to get Kate and Terry over here to “discuss” these things – we need Terry to build it for us, with help from Julian (he’s offered to build it, we’ve accepted his offer – but he’s a Carpenter, for goodness sake, not a gardening expert!) As for whether we should have two or three garden beds, or whether they should be parallel to, or perpendicular to the fence, I think that’s something we’ll have to decide when we see the size of sleepers available! I think that next week (if we have any spare time next week, that is!) Julian and I should just go down to either Bunnies or the nursery, armed with the dimensions of the kitchen table, and ask someone to show us the sleepers and recommend the best sort to get. If they’re roughly the right size, we buy them, along with whatever else the nice Bunnies or Nursery person suggests we might need, and have the whole lot delivered. I was talking to Kate today, and she keeps asking us about what’s happening with the veggie garden, and to let them know as soon as we’re ready to start – well, if someone doesn’t make a start soon, we’ll be too late for spring sowing, and the whole thing will slide off our radar – again! I won’t let that happen – it’s all so simple, really… we just have to… follow our noses, don’tcha all reckon?

Weigh-in this morning. Was typical, for this end of the kilogram zone. I went up a point. Up! From 69.3kg to 69.4kg… Anyone would think that time wasn’t of the essence! I now have only seventeen more days to lose as much as possible! Yes, I know that four points was a lot to go down in one fell swoop, and I suppose (says she very grudgingly!) that under the circumstances, a small “bounce back” is not only acceptable, but to be expected… But I’d better go down again tomorrow, body! I go back onto those wretched fluid-retaining pills in a week, too… *sigh* 😦

Tomorrow, of course, we’ll be bopping around in The Wilds – which is, sort-of, in Telara. I looked at the map… It’s actually in a previously blank, greyed-out area to the north-east of the Droughtlands, which kind of begs the question “What are Trion going to do with all the other blank, greyed-out areas on the map”?! There are quite a few of them, too! Room for more expansions? Maybe… I hope so… 🙂 But tomorrow we’ll be busy exploring and questing in there – and when we’ve finished that, I wouldn’t mind pressing a couple of Primalists into service, getting them up to level 65, and taking them out into The Wilds – after all, it is their home territory! 🙂 As a two Mage team, Julian and I make quite a formidable pair – as we do with a Mage and Cleric team… but at the moment, Primalists are almost as powerful on their own as the two combinations of Mage/Mage, Mage/Cleric are together! Imagine what two Primalists could do as a team! The mind fairly boggles! 🙂 It would be an interesting experiment to try – before Trion decides to severely nerf the Primalists (as I think they’re going to have to do!) On Monday, we have a cleaner coming at 9.30am – Julian’s been doing the brunt of the cleaning, but everything needs dusting, desks need wiping – cleaning a house involves a lot more than just vacuuming the floor, and Julian has enough to do without having to do that as well. If she finishes early enough, we might go up to Knox City – because once again, I need to get smaller undergarments, and I wouldn’t mind an extra pair of jeans, either… The trouble with losing so much weight is that you go through so many clothes! It’s like the reverse of having a small child who grows out of his or her clothes every month! But there’s not much further to go – only another 4 kilos, and I don’t really think that 4 kilos will make much difference to my clothing size… well, I hope not, anyway! Anyway, as I don’t intend to ever let myself get heavier than 70kg again, I shouldn’t have to go through so many new clothes – so what I’m buying now should be with me until they either wear out, or become so unfashionable that I can’t wear them in public any more. Well, that’s the theory, anyway! 🙂 And that, gentle readers, is about all I have for you again this evening! 🙂 Do drop by again tomorrow night though – find out the latest miseries my weight has dropped upon me – or, conversely, what joys my weight may have graciously decided to bestow upon me, as well as how Julian and I fared in The Wilds, and whether we died or not (and if we did die, how many times did we die? each? And what was it that killed us?) I’m sure that there’ll be lots more to tell you all, so don’t miss out! So until tomorrow night, please do try to bee good, remember that the most important thing in communication is to hear what isn’t being said, don’t forget to drive carefully, to look after yourselves, and to keep warm – or cool, depending on the weather, but above all, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

You know, I really do have to try to organise my life better! I was going to Rift this morning, and then after lunch, get right into this – but as usual, things got a bit mucked around 😦  I went off to do my usual morning “climbing up the mole hills” (let’s face it – the treadmill doesn’t give me that much of a hill to “climb” – it really is more like climbing itty-bitty mole-hills!) and walked for fifteen minutes instead of 13, but still at 3kmph (I was told to “build up slowly”, which is [insert expletive of your choice here] boring! *glower* *sigh*) and came back to breakfast… Julian had a bit of Office work to do, and I had a bit of Rifting… I took care of my Minions, and as I’d got Tallissia up to level 32 on Laethys last night, I decided to do a bit of an audit of who I had, where they were, and most importantly, what they were. I have Primalists on my three “main” shards (that is, the shards which have Guilds and Guild Banks) I think I have a “test” Primalist on a fourth shard, and the rest are all Mages. Now you all know how neurotic I am about certain things, and shard “population” happens to be one of them. I like everything to be “in balance” on a shard, f’rinstance, if I have six Defiants on a shard, it means that I must have  – have to have, six Guardians to balance them out (did I ever tell you I was quite neurotic? 😉 ) so that I ended up with six neat Guardians down one side of the screen, and six neat Defiants down the other side of the screen. But with the introduction of this new Class, the Primalist, and the generous extra character slot that we’ve been given, Trion have gone and mucked me up completely, turning my neat and tidy little shards into chaotic wastelands! For reasons best known to Trion, Guardians are on the left, Defiants are on the right, so if I add an extra Defiant, she goes on the bottom of the right hand side, which would be totally fine with me, except… Trion have decreed that the left hand column of characters must be filled up first. This means that the character that had been at the top of the right hand Defiant column gets shunted across to the bottom of the left hand Guardian column, creating seven characters going down the left hand side of the screen… but only six down the left hand side. It also means that I have a Defiant – and usually my main Defiant character because I try to keep them at the top of the column – underneath six Guardians, which believe me, is not a good look! Such was the case on Hailol this morning, and I sat and looked at the mess, and wondered how I could get around it… If I created another Guardian, she could “push” my Defiant back onto her own right hand column… I didn’t really want another Guardian, I wanted to have a Defiant Primalist, so with a dint of transferring characters between shards here and there, I was able to (a) bring my Defiant character back to her own column, and (b) create my Defiant Primalist. This all took a while, so I didn’t really get much actual playing in! Julian also had to do a small bit of shopping, so I continued on my merry way, thinking that I’d play on until lunchtime, do my lunchtime mole-hill climbing, have lunch, and then get on with the blog… Julian was later back than I was anticipating, so I got on with my walking bits anyway. After lunch, I thought I’d play a little longer, as by the time I’d finished all my “re-organisation” of the shard and set up my new Defiant Primalist, I’d barely got her to level 8! Oh, her name’s “Jadepearl”, by the way 🙂 So I played until 3.30, and then started writing… I’d barely started to write when Julian called me into the Office – he wanted my advice! He wasn’t happy with the layout of the room.  He had his desk along one wall, and his matching filing cabinet and bookcase along the wall to his right – but allowing for the opening of drawers and cupboards on both the desk and the filing cabinet meant that there was a huge, ugly, and messy gap in the corner between the desk and the filing cupboard. What to do? In the end we decided to put the desk and the filing cabinet next to eachother along the desk wall, and to leave the bookcase pretty much where it was. This has eliminated the huge, ugly, and messy gap, and it now remains to be seen whether or not the desk, which is currently on the left hand side of the filing cabinet, is better there, or if it would be better on the right hand side of the filing cabinet ! (Julian is a southpaw!) I’ll go up and have a look in a little while, to see how it’s getting on – the Office is a rather strange room, directly to your right as you walk in the front door. The Office itself doesn’t have a door – it’s almost completely open to the corridor, but there are two flush pillars – just less than a meter wide? on each side; each pillar has a long “slot”, about 24 centimeters wide, cut through it, starting about 30 centimeters up from the floor and going right up to about 30 centimeters down from the ceiling – so you can see, it’s a very “open” room – he might find that  he feels too “exposed” to anyone or anything coming in through the front door, which is now practically directly behind him. Anyway, if he does, it’s easy enough just to swap the desk with the filing cabinet, but time will tell… 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. Much more betterer! I went down four points, from 69.7kg to 69.3kg – and now the real game begins in earnest! How much can I get down to by November 10th!? That’s when I see Dr. Y. next… I’ll try to get a lot further, and my stupid body will taunt and tease me by being recalcitrant and not cooperating! I have 18 days… It would be really wonderful if I could get down to Maintenance weight – 65kg – by then, and I will try, but I don’t think I have enough time left, unfortunately! Maybe if I spent all day, every day, on the treadmill? Nah… it’d probably only aggravate the arthritis in my feet, and make me miserable… imagine trying to slurp down a bowl of tomato and chili soup whilst walking uphill – even if it is only a mole-hill – at 3kmph!? Oh well, it was a thought… 😉

I’m not quite sure what’s happening tomorrow, but we’ve got to make sure that we leave Saturday completely free! Julian has a guy coming in to throw? drop? a heap of computer networking cables (CAT 5E cables, so I’m told…) around the place – our wireless network is running OK, though it does drop out from time to time, but it could be a lot better – and Julian’s been trying to get this done since before we moved in! If the computers have to be down for the duration I think I might just find a comfy spot somewhere and sit and read (note to self: remember to get Julian to charge up my kindle before Saturday!) I was browsing through the latest Innovations magazine yesterday, and in the past I’ve always just skipped the clothing section because they didn’t go up to my size – but I did look at the clothing last night because quite frankly, My Size and Autograph are starting to get a bit big for me! Because of all the excess skin on my arms, I’m too embarrassed to wear short sleeves, so I need to get either three-quarter sleeved, or long-sleeved, tee-shirts. Remember I tried on a couple of size 14’s in Target the other day? Well, there were some really nice tee-shirts in the Innovations magazine, in really pretty colours, so I’ve ordered one in (just in case it isn’t the same sort of size 14!) to see how it goes… They’re a damn sight cheaper than Autograph and My Size, too, so I hope it does fit! If it does (fit) I’ll get one in lavender, and one in navy blue… 🙂 Anyway, once again that’s about all I have for you tonight! Drop by again tomorrow night to see if I’ve persuaded my weight to be nice to me, for once, and how far I’ve managed to get Jadepearl along – Primalists really are a powerful Class! I was zapping monsters three levels higher than I was this morning with no problems (i.e. I haven’t died yet! 😉 ) Until tomorrow night then, please bee good, don’t forget that the quieter you become, the more you can hear, and remember to look after yourselves, to keep warm – or cool, depending on the weather, and to drive carefully – but above all, remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

Isn’t it terrible, how quickly old habits can take root again, just when you think you’ve eliminated them! This morning, I went for my hill climb on the treadmill, and that was OK – the socks that I got the other day aren’t as good as my old running socks, so I guess Julian has inherited four pairs of semi-thick soled socks! But this afternoon – after lunch – I almost forgot about my lunchtime walk! We’ve been here almost two months, and we got the treadmill a week after we’d moved in… since then I’ve been doing three walks a day, every day, and what’s more, enjoying them – except for last week, when I hurt my foot. I was well and truly primed to stop what I was doing and head off for my walk without needing any sort of reminder – it had become automatic, or so I thought! In those few short days when I wasn’t walking because my foot was too sore, all my old, lazy habits poked their noses out of the closet and giggled maliciously! “Let’s make her lazy again!”, they chortled to eachother “Let’s make her forget to do her nasty, energetic walks! Hehehehe!” And they almost succeeded today! I should have remembered and gone for my walk before lunch – but I only belatedly remembered it after lunch, when I was drinking my tea and just about to get back into Rift! Still, at least I did remember! I’m still plodding along at only 3kmph, but I’m doing 700 steps (about 13 and a half minutes worth) instead of 600. Tomorrow I’ll be back to fifteen minutes (about 800+ steps) and 3.2kmph, so those nasty little habits can just put themselves back in the closet where they belong, and if I can find the key, I’ll lock them in there and throw the key away!

We did go off to have my blood tests done early – after breakfast we didn’t wait for Julian to have his shower, and we decided to have our coffee when we got back – actually I think it’s probably the earliest we’ve gone off to have blood tests done! Anyway, we got there and went in – and the place was jam-packed, just as the x-ray place had been the other day. We took a number, rang the bell (even though there were three girls in the office!) and sat down to wait. I didn’t even get a chance to get my kindle out of my bag before I was called in! Julian told me later that there was also a dental clinic there – which I had failed to notice, and I guess one had to ring the bell to let the blood taker knew that she had another victim waiting outside. So in I went – the nice lady took three (3!) test-tubes of blood from me, wrapped up the leaking hole in my arm for me, and we came home and had our much needed cup of coffee… then I Rifted! 🙂 Tallissia is now level 31 (almost level 32!) and finished off Scarlet Gorge in absolute record time! One day! Less than a day, really – I could have finished off Scarlet Gorge yesterday afternoon, but it was night time, and I hate playing in the dark, so I logged out. Anyway, she’s just got to Scarwood Reach, which is quite a long quest chain – I’m wondering how long it’ll take her to get through it all? So far, so good, playing a Primalist. In a lot of ways it’s like playing a very powerful Mage, without a Pet. You have to “balance” between two different… strategies, I suppose you could call them? As a Primalist you can either use your “Rage” abilities, one of which is a very powerful and effective spell ability that can take on five enemies at once. It’s very impressive! I used it in the last Boss fight in Scarlet Gorge, and you can use it as many times as you have enough “Rage” for – but! Using “Rage” abilities pushes your abilities towards your “Cunning” spells and abilities, so unless you alternate “Cunning” and “Rage” abilities, you can allow yourself to be pushed too far into one or the other, losing your advantages, if you get pushed too far towards the types of spells you don’t need. Anyway, I’m finding that I do like this new Class a lot – even if I do think that they’re w-a-y too powerful at the moment! 🙂

In the middle of lunch, Dorevitch, who monitor my Warfarin dosage, called to speak to me! The Doctors are quite puzzled as to why my blood is continuing to get thicker, instead of thinner! The girl asked me a lot of questions, like ‘were the Warfarin pills I was taking old?’ ‘had I had any medical or dental procedures lately?’ ‘what did I have for breakfast on July 23rd in 1965?’ – stuff like that – the answers to most of which were “No!” She thanked me, told me that the Doctors were a little concerned, and that they’d SMS my INR and dosage through later – which they just have. Remember, the lower the INR, the more easily your blood clots. Normal INR is 1 (one), but we don’t want my blood to clot too easily, so my INR is supposed to be high – anywhere between 2 and 2.6. Last test, it was 2.1, which was good. Today, it was 1.9 – which is not good, because it’s getting a bit too low. So they have changed my Warfarin dose – I’m taking the same dose, 3.5mg, from Monday to Friday, but I have to take 4mg on Saturday and Sunday 😦 Next test is due on November 5th – Guy Fawkes Day – which is a Saturday this year. I think I’ll probably go for my test on the Friday though, because I don’t think the Vermont South Collection Centre is open on Saturdays…

I’ve had Julian move my treadmill around again 🙂 It originally started out facing the inside wall, where about all I could see (apart from the wall!) was the door. As there was a nice big window right behind me I thought it might be nice if I could look out the window, at the side fence, half a tree next door, and a bit of sky, while I was mindlessly walking… So Julian turned it around for me, and I had a lovely view out the window, which was great… until Julian walked in – the door was now behind me – so I didn’t see him, and as he was in bare feet, I didn’t hear him, either, until he came up from behind me, touched my arm, and spoke. I got such a fright that I yelled, and almost fell of the treadmill – which wouldn’t have been a very good look, seeing as it was going along at 3.2kmph! Since then I’ve been so nervous about someone coming in behind me and giving me a fright again that I found I was constantly looking over my shoulder to see if there was anyone in the doorway – so I’ve had him move it again. I now have the window on my left, and the doorway on my right, and if I look straight ahead I have a lovely view of two wardrobe doors! But that’s OK because I still get my glimpse of blue (or grey) sky, a bare fence, and a bit of the tree next door, a good view of anyone creeping up on me through the doorway, and best of all, no monsters can leap unexpectedly out at me from the wardrobe! 😉

Weigh-in this morning. Was boring. I went from 69.7kg to 69.7kg – that is, I stayed the same… but at least I didn’t go up! So I’m not sure if you could say that my weight was behaving itself… The scales did to a merry little flutter up and down between 71.something kg and 65.something kg before finally settling on 69.7kg – again!

I’ve decided, seeing that this is the Year of the New Me, that I’m going to change the time when I write this blog. I normally try to start writing at around 3.30pm (Sundays and days when my favourite eldest daughter are over are the exceptions to the rule!) and I seldom finish before dinner time, especially as I also have to fit in a fifteen minute walk – so I’m going to start writing straight after my lunchtime walk. Not today – because having almost forgotten my walk, I started that late, and so this was late too – but tomorrow I won’t forget my walk, so except for Sundays and days when my favourite eldest daughter is over, the blog should be finished and up between 4.30 and 5.30pm. Hopefully! No guarantees, though! 🙂 Tomorrow I should be able to get a good bit of Rifting in – I wonder how far into Scarwood Reach I’ll get? Well, I’ll be able to tell you that tomorrow, because that’s about all I have for you this evening! 🙂 Don’t forget to drop by again tomorrow to see what my weight has inflicted on me, and how far into Scarwood Reach I managed to get, and whatever else I’ve been up to! 🙂 But until then, continue to bee good, remember that you can tell whether a man is clever by his answers, but you can tell whether a man is wise by his questions… don’t forget to drive carefully, to keep warm – or cool, depending on the weather, and to look after yourselves – but most of all, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂