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! 🙂
My Word! 