Goodness me – the end of November! Already! Almost time to start posting out the Christmas Cards, doing the Christmas Shopping, and getting things organised for Christmas Day! I wonder if we’re having both of my favourite daughters and their spouses over for Christmas Dinner this year, or if it’s one of the years where my favourite eldest daughter and her husband go over to his parents? (we take it in turns!) Also, a “certain person” sitting in the room with me, told me that he’d have a list of what he wanted for Christmas for me “by the end of the evening” – last night! Alright, just this once, I’ll pretend that he meant “this evening” – and hopefully I’ll get the list before Christmas Eve! 😉 Actually, I have absolutely no idea what to get anyone for Christmas this year! I think I know what I’m getting for a couple of friends, but for the family? Nope, no ideas… I keep asking people “What do you want for Christmas”, or “What does Terry (or Neale) want for Christmas this year?” and I’m rewarded with either blank looks, a muttered excuse, or a sudden change of subject: “Oh goodness! look at that weird looking bird out there on the lawn – hmm? Oh, sorry, it just flew away – you missed it!”, and what somebody wanted for Christmas this year is suddenly forgotten, and I’m back to square one I may have to issue an ultimatum, if they want to find something with their name on it under the Christmas Tree this year! (that is, if we can even find a suitable spot for the Christmas Tree over here!) Enough about Christmas! All of the “How”, “Why”, “What”, “Where”, and “When’s” are starting to make me anxious!

Paul arrived late this morning as he’d been to pick up the tiles. I went in there about an hour ago to see how things were progressing – I never knew that laying tiles was such a complicated business! You know I said in my blog last night “What layout?” or words to that effect? – well! To do the tiling properly, you want room corners lining up with tile edges, but because rooms aren’t always “tile friendly” in their dimensions, and you don’t want everything looking lined up and perfect – except for an unsightly 2cm strip of tile along one side of the door and/or window frames because the room turned out to be 2cm wider (or longer) than the sum of the number of tiles that would fit along that wall! Then there’s the “fall” of the shower floor – that almost imperceptible slope that allows the water to flow down to the drain in the middle of the shower. Those bits of tile have to slope every which-way, otherwise you end up with unsightly and uncomfortable ridges under your feet! So everything has to be laid out and lined up and measured, then fitted together like a jigsaw puzzle, and only then can they be cut to size. This has now been done – for the floor, anyway – and will be laid properly tomorrow, then, as Paul put it, they can start putting my bathroom back together again. Oh, and they really are beautiful tiles! The room is going to look so nice and light and “airy”, even if the glass brick window can’t be opened (except maybe with a sledge-hammer! 😉 ) Paul should be here early tomorrow because there’s nothing to be picked up, but by the time he gets here, Julian should just about be taking off for Adelaide, so it’s just me to make sure Paul keeps his nose to the grindstone!

I’ve probably complained to you about how dry my mouth gets when I’m on the treadmill (after all, I’ve complained to everyone else about it!) so this morning when Julian went off to do some shopping for dinner tonight, I asked him to get me some sugarless chewing gum. He got me some “Lemon Lime” (which actually isn’t too bad!) and some “Spearmint” to try. However, I hate chewing gum! I detest chewing gum! I think people who sit around chewing gum with vacant expressions on their faces look just like cows, methodically chewing away on their cud – but… if it stops my mouth from getting so dry that I can’t even talk, I’ll use it. But only while I’m on the treadmill – then I’ll wrap it up in a tissue and get rid of it as fast as possible! I tried it on my lunch time treadmilling, and it helped – a bit – but I’m still trying to decide which is worse – chewing the gum, or getting a blotting-paper dry mouth!

This morning, guess what! I couldn’t be bothered playing Rift! After a bit of discussion with Julian, we decided (!) that I’d re-activate my old World of Warcraft account! So now I have World of Warcraft up and running as well as Rift, and I shall play both for a bit, to see which is better – or should I say which one I like better! It’ll be an interesting experiment, if nothing else, anyway! Rift is definitely a lot “prettier” and more “human” – WoW still tends to lean towards the “cartoon-ish” – so I still have all my old characters that I left behind when I stopped playing WoW, but because there has been a major expansion since I stopped playing, I decided to create a couple of new ones, so that I could play them from “go to whoa”, so to speak – and would you believe?! They’ve done exactly what I’ve grizzled about Trion doing! Dumbed the baby quests down to the point of irrelevance! Oh, how are the mighty fallen! Blizzard! What have you done! 😮 Tomorrow (or tonight) I might try one of my higher level characters, and see if I can worm my way into the latest expansion – to see what else they’ve wrecked changed… I’ll let you all know what transpires! 😉

On the subject of Food for Maintenance! Last night I had a darling, tiny little piece of eye fillet, done “rare” (almost “blue”, really – just how I like it!) a spoonful of french beans, half a tomato, and four chips, followed by my diet jelly and three prunes for dessert. Today for lunch I had a boiled egg (not quite hard-boiled) sliced, on a slice of wholemeal bread with a titch of butter… and plenty of salt and pepper! It was delicious too! Yum! 🙂 Tonight I’m having a very small piece of pork steak, lightly pan-fried, with some broccoli, half a tomato, and a few small pieces of plain boiled kipfler potatoes (with no butter or dressing – just a bit of salt!) followed by my usual dessert (diet jelly and three prunes) I’ve actually spent some of this afternoon going through a couple of my “delicious” magazines, looking for suitable recipes for my new eating regimen – I’ve printed out about three of them for Julian to have a look at, and if they’re successful, and taste nice, I might either reproduce them here, or at the very least, throw in a link to them 🙂 But at the moment, everything seems to be going quite well…

Weigh-in this morning. I couldn’t believe my eyes! After two days of eating “solid” food, including chips, I dropped another four points! I’m now down to 64.6kg! I think that’s amazing! Of course, I don’t really mind if my weight doesn’t go up – in fact, I’ll be extremely pleased! But I sort-of have a feeling that this is merely the classic “calm before the storm”, and that any moment now, bang! My weight will shoot up through the ceiling! We’ll just have to weight and see, I suppose… 😉

Tomorrow should be very quiet, with Julian in Adelaide for the day – I think I’d better revert to an Optifast soup for dinner tomorrow night – Julian will be home around about 8 o’clock, and to have to turn around and cook dinner at that time – well, I think I’d like to have something quick and easy! When Paul left this evening he said that all the floor tiles had been cut and a grid of what went where had been drawn up (and he’s numbered all the pieces of tile) so with any luck, all the floor tiles should be laid by tomorrow evening, and the wall tiles shouldn’t be too difficult – they’re pretty straight-forward – so hopefully all the tiles should be laid by the end of this week! I’ll have a bit more of a play around with World of Warcraft again tomorrow, as I said before – this time taking some of my high-level characters for a bit of a spin, once I dust all the cobwebs off them 🙂 But for now, I think that’s about it from me for tonight! Do call in again tomorrow night, to find out how the tiling is going, what my feelings about World of Warcraft are after a day of playing, and how my Maintenance is going (though with Julian away, I’ll be “Optifasting” tomorrow) and what the scales had to say about my weight in the morning. But until then, continue to bee good (!!!) remember that time is more valuable than money – you can always get more money, but you can never get more time, and don’t forget to drive carefully, to look after yourselves, and to keep warm – or cool – depending on the weather… but most importantly, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

“Sunday – sweet Sunday, with nothing to do”… That quote was taken from a song in an old Musical, “The Flower Drum Song” – delightfully 60’s concepts, beautifully choreographed by Hermes Pan, and enormously popular at the time – so if you’re bored, and have nothing better to do with your time, why not see if you can get hold of it and have a look 🙂 However today, although it was indeed a Sunday, there was plenty to do – in beautiful, downtown Telara! Once again we picked up our young Primalists, and took them back to Scarlet Gorge. I’m still terribly taken aback at just how quickly we’re knocking all these quests over! Alright, Scarlet Gorge isn’t an enormous area, and the quests aren’t all that hard, but really? We polished off the rest of Scarlet Gorge, and are now well and truly ensconced in Scarwood Reach (which is a rather large area, with quite a lot of ground to cover, so hopefully it’ll take us a little more than the scant two days it took us to finish off Scarlet Gorge!) We both went up four levels, even without the aid of experience enhancing potions, and neither of us died, or even came close to it! Sorry, I’m a trifle distracted at the moment – I’ve been nibbling on a couple of celery sticks, and some of the celery “string” has got wedged between two of my teeth… and it’s very annoying! Even coffee isn’t washing it out! (*annoyed frown*) Back to our adventures today – I thought we both did fairly well, all told – both of us complaining almost non-stop to the other that “You killed him too quickly! I didn’t even get a shot in!” In a way this is funny – fancy complaining that the fight didn’t last long enough for both of us to do any damage, and was really too easy! But it’s not really funny – it’s quite serious, from a gamer’s point of view. If games become too easy, a serious gamer – or even a semi-serious gamer like Julian and myself – will lose interest very quickly; we tend to like a bit of “meat” on our “bones”, so to speak. When you finish off a quest chain, you like to feel that you’ve accomplished something, not shrug and say “Is that all I get as a quest reward?!” – which is yet another complaint of mine. If a quest is going to be worth completing, it should offer a worthwhile incentive. When I first started playing Rift, I nearly didn’t stick with it because it was so much harder than World of Warcraft, which was what I was used to – it took quite a bit of persuasion to get me to stick with Rift, and quite a long time for me to get used to the somewhat more difficult game-play. Now, I find I’m keeping my ear to the grapevine and my eye on the ads coming through – Trion have accomplished their goal of making Rift leaner and easier, in order to attract more and younger players – but what you gain on the roundabouts, you usually lose on the swings, and I don’t think that I’m the only player who is disappointed in the way the game seems to be heading. Example – the Primalist is a great new Class, and has great potential, but when a level 10 Primalist has absolutely no difficulty whatsoever in knocking over a fairly difficult level 15 mob – five levels higher than themselves, which should be almost impossible, and definitely terribly difficult – with hardly even a scratch to show for it – then in my opinion, the game starts to look a little bit silly and juvenile. So, yeah… I’m looking for something else to play…

So, how am I going on Maintenance, I suppose you all want to know? Well, so far, so good! Breakfast, of course, hasn’t changed – it’s always been the one “normal food” meal of the day. At the moment it’s WeetBix, but come winter I dare say that I might try something a little more warming for breakfast, like oatmeal… I always liked oatmeal, but that was when I had copious amounts of golden syrup on it – who knows? I may end up liking oatmeal without any sweetener on it even more (but I fear I must remain dubious on that score! 😉 ) Yesterday I had two RyVita crispbreads with low-fat cottage cheese and two and a half slices of tomato on each for lunch – and it was sooooo yummy that that’s what I had again today! No doubt I’ll tire of that after a month or so 😉 but until then – or until I can think of something else to have instead it’ll do… (hmm maybe a boiled egg with a slice of toast with a scraping of butter?) last night I had a piece of the chicken in boats, three brussels sprouts, half a tomato and four oven baked chips, which was extremely nice, and tonight I’m having a small piece of steak, beans, half a tomato, and four oven baked chips. Oh, and I’ve been nibbling on a couple of sticks of celery (the string of one of them is still wedged between my teeth, drat it!) Anyway, as I said – so far, so good…

Weigh-in this morning. I think I told you yesterday that I didn’t really think that 64.9kg was really very believable – six points is an awful lot to go down overnight, and I’d be expecting a fairly hefty bounce back after a drop like that anyway – but this morning, I’d only bounced back one point – from 64.9kg to 65.0kg – however… I do expect my weight to be going back up from now on – the trick is going to be controlling it, and in adjusting my eating habits and my diet so as not to allow it to get out of hand… This is still a work in progress! 🙂

Tomorrow the tiling should begin in my bathroom – Clarke (and presumably Paul) will be picking up the tiles tomorrow morning and carting them over – this will probably take the better part of the morning – then the other day Paul was saying that they had to plan out the laying pattern (?? What “laying pattern”?! just… stick ’em on the floor and glue them in, or whatever! 😉 ) So hopefully the first few floor tiles will be laid tomorrow – however our plans for tomorrow are still in limbo – we can’t really plan our day until we know what time Clarke and Paul are going to arrive, or what they’re planning to get done – so it looks like another “restful” day at home – at least for me But who knows? I would like to get to Medicare at some stage tomorrow, and get the next part of the “Great Name and Address Change” underway, and I’m starting to get a bit “antsy” about unpacking some more boxes… it’s December the day after tomorrow, so time is starting to whizz by for getting our books, which are still over at the Doncaster apartment, packed up and moved over here, and the main reason (as I understood it, anyway!) that they’re not here yet is because we wanted the Library cleared (of all the boxes) so that we could get bookcases organised for them! Oh well, I guess it’ll be alright on the night, as they say in the classics… Anyway, tomorrow is another day, and that’s really about it from me for tonight! Sorry this is a bit late, but… that’s Sundays for you! 😉 Do drop in again tomorrow night though and see what we’ve been up to! Will there be tiles on the floor? What will they look like? Have I walked on them yet? 🙂 (I don’t think so – the grouting probably won’t be dry!) How’s my Maintenance going? Have I packed on a ton of weight overnight? – I mean,  crikey, I’ve eaten eight chips in 24 hours! 😉 But until then, please try to bee good (you know why!) don’t forget that you cannot change your destination overnight, but you can change your direction, and remember to look after yourselves, to drive carefully, and to keep warm – or cool – depending on Melbourne’s erratic weather – but above all, please remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. Today is a Red Letter Day! I got on the scales this morning, not expecting to see very much change in my weight, despite having walked the length and breadth of Doncaster Shoppingtown yesterday – twice – so imagine my utter astonishment when I saw the scales registering at 64.9kg! 64.9kg?! It can’t be! So I got off the scales, and I got back on the scales. This time they registered at 65.0kg. So… once more onto and off the scales, and may the “best out of three” weigh-ins win! I got off the scales, and back on the scales. Third time lucky, and the scales sat there staring at me from… 64.9kg!

Ye ghods and little fishes! 😮 Maintenance! I’ve reached Maintenance!!! (Winter looks more over-awed than happy!) So I’ve done it? Really? You mean that I no longer have any more excuses to hide behind the Optifast products, but that I have to start eating again? Properly, and sensibly? Oh crikey! And Julian’s first question? “What do you want for dinner tonight?” (can I have some “think” music with that, please?) I thought long and hard about that question, for all of three seconds – I said “Chicken in boats*, about two or three brussels sprouts (which I really shouldn’t eat, because they interfere with the Warfarin I’m taking, but having them every now and then doesn’t matter too much) three or four (oven baked) chips, and half a tomato!” And I had the most delicious lunch I think I’ve ever eaten in my life! Two Ryvita crispbreads with low-fat cottage cheese, and a slice and a half of tomato on each, with salt and pepper! It was to die for! Oh, I’d forgotten just how good salt tastes! Optifast bars and soups are nice, and I like them a lot, but they’re pretty bland…

Now… I’m quite aware that this 64.9kg is not a completely “accurate” measurement of my weight – my body does things like this to me, I’ll lose five or six points in a go, and then sit there on that weight for days – and maybe go up and down a few times until I’m virtually tearing my hair out in frustration, and then – suddenly drop another five or six points. Believe me! I was very tempted to say “Let’s just see what it says tomorrow!” But how long can I keep doing that? Until I’m 60kg or less? No… one has to say “enough is enough” at some stage, and the scales said “64.9kg” twice – that’s got to be good enough for me! Besides, I looked at myself last night, and while it’s good to see that I do have cheekbones after all, I was also starting to see the outline of the hinge of my top jawbone next to my ear, and that’s not so good… Thin, I do want to be (and I think I could probably qualify as that now) but skeletal, I definitely do not want to be! I shall continue to weigh myself every morning, and I shall also continue to track my progress on my weight graph – so I’ll be able to see if my weight seems to be going up too much, or too rapidly, and immediately “take steps” to correct it! I’ll still do my three daily walks on the treadmill, for nineteen to twenty minutes – though I’m considering changing that to 2 X 30 minute sessions – first thing in the morning, and before dinner at night – that would give me a total of an hour’s exercise broken into two segments, as opposed to 55 minutes (about 55 minutes, give or take a few minutes more or less) broken into three segments – which really does muck up my day a fair bit – I’m constantly watching the clock – “I have to stop now – I have to do my walk!” – and it’s awkward and rude when people come over (not that they do very often!) and you have to excuse yourself to go treadmilling! One early morning walk, and one later evening walk would at least give me the afternoon free to be sociable! 😉

Paul turned up around lunch time to finish off sealing up the cracks and painting the last remaining bits of my bathroom with the waterproof membrane. The tiles were supposed to have been delivered this afternoon, but almost as soon as Julian had moved the car so that they’d have room to take them through the garage, they rang to say that they were having trouble with their forklift and that they’d have to be delivered on Monday! The long and short of it is that Clarke will pick them up himself on Monday morning and bring them over, so it looks like everything’s on track for the tiling to start next week 🙂 So Julian put the car back in the garage, and much to Flipper’s disapproval, started vacuuming and cleaning up the house, which has been quite thickly coated with concrete dust and debris – and I must say, it looks a hell of a lot better now! 🙂

Most of today I’ve spent in Telara – I got the gang on Faeblight all sorted out and ready for their Guild and Guild Bank – and because it’s the way that I work – this involved some deletions, some transfers, and some re-creations, but… the Guild “Winter’s Tribe” is formed, and the Guild Bank boasts two Bank Vaults, which should be enough to last us until at least next week! 😉 So, the six working shards, Laethys, Hailol, Greybriar, Wolfsbane, Deepwood, and Faeblight, now all have a Guild and a Guild Bank with at least two Vaults each – I don’t see any point in setting up a Guild on the PvP shard Seastone, as I have no intention of ever actually playing on it – it’s really just a way-station for extraneous characters that I don’t know what to do with! The two girls who ferried the platinum across from Laethys to make this all of this Guilding possible will be moved back from whence they came in seven days, when I’ll be able to transfer them again.

Tomorrow, of course, is Sunday, and the day when Julian and I go rampaging across Telara, slaying monsters and nasty mobs – and occasionally being killed by them in return! There’s still no sign of any changes being made to that totally impossible Dinosaur-slash-Dragon Boss Fight that has our two level 65 characters pinned down in The Wilds, so we’ll just continue along with our two young Primalists, who really do seem to be doing very well for themselves! (in my opinion, they’re both far too powerful for their own good! Trion, please take note! 😉 ) I’m wondering when we’ll be able to get out and do a bit more work on the veggie garden – Monday, the tiling is starting, and I know we’ve got heaps of things to do, name-change and address-change wise – Medicare, for starters! On Tuesday, Julian is off to Adelaide for the day to supervise the packing of some items, and to organise the packing of several of the antique clocks that are coming across to Sydney and Melbourne… As far as I know, our friend Steve is coming down on Wednesday, and I suppose my favourite eldest daughter will be over on Thursday! And at some time during all of that, I have to find time to make an appointment to go and get the blood test results that I should have got the other day, but had to cancel because I had to be here instead! Anyway, that’s about all I have for you this evening, and it’s just about time to go for my final treadmilling of the day! Do call in again tomorrow night though – find out how we went in Telara, and if we got killed by anything, and to see how my Maintenance is progressing and if I’ve suddenly gone up five kilos or something (shoot! I hope not!) Until then, do bee good – Father Christmas is starting to make his final lists of who’s been good, and who’s been naughty – remember to learn how to be happy with what you have, while you pursue all that you want, 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! 🙂

*Chicken in boats – either chicken tenders, or slices of chicken breast, dusted with seasoning, loosely sealed in alfoil, and oven baked. The chicken semi-steams in the alfoil and is served with vegetables and the left over chicken juices from the foil wrapping drizeled over everything. More or less, anyway. I invented chicken in boats years ago, as a good, healthy, and very tasty way to cook chicken sans fat or oil – and now Julian cooks them to perfection! 🙂

Well, here I am – a lot later than usual, as the Podiatrist has only just left – and it’s almost five thirty! (I never realised that it took a whole hour to humanise my feet! Still, considering what my feet are like, I can’t say that I’m terribly surprised…) so, I have almost human-looking feet again 🙂 Today’s been a bit chaotic – we didn’t leave as early as perhaps we should have this morning, but we did manage to get the three major objectives for the day completed – my Warfarin blood test (which should have been done on Wednesday!) my appointment at the hairdresser, and my name change registered at Vic Roads – I should receive my new driver’s licence in about a week (I presume!) I had to have a new photo taken for it too, and I’m dreading what this one is going to look like – why is it that all licence, passport and ID photos have to look horrible? I wish they could use one of the photos from the professional session that we had done earlier this year! Oh well, the new licence with its undoubtedly awful photo will vanish into the back of my card wallet, where it will hopefully not see the light of day again for a long time! At least my hair will have looked good, coming as it was almost straight from the excellent ministrations of Elliott! 🙂 We arrived at Doncaster with about half an hour to spare before I was due at the hairdresser so I went up to have my blood test done. Although we took my wheelchair in the car (just in case!) once again I chose to walk around the shopping centre with only my stick for support, and – I had an adventure! 🙂 I went down an escalator! I know it doesn’t sound like much, but I haven’t been able to get on an escalator for…. oh, nearly ten years? For years before I got the wheelchair, I used to either use one of the shopping centre’s free ride-on scooter things, or else used a shopping trolley to lean (very heavily!) on – so it would have to be at least ten years since I went up or down on an escalator! (shopping centre trolleys, scooters and wheelchairs don’t really fit on them, you see) Now that Doncaster Shoppingtown has installed ticket-less parking – the parking area boom gates having been trained to recognise a car’s number plates – Julian had to sort-of re-register our Disabled Sticker with the new system, so while he was busy doing that, and I knew we were in a bit of a hurry, I went up to Dorevitch in the Tower on my own – I’d meet Julian up there when he’d finished. Rather than take the long way round from the car park to the Tower, I took the elevator up to the first floor, in order to walk down to the corridor next to Taft’s that leads to the Tower lift – it’s in that weird part of Shoppingtown where you walk down a long ramp to get to the ground floor – hmm… just drawing diagrams in my head – I think I must have taken the longest possible route to the Tower – it probably would have been a lot quicker just to stay on the ground floor, after all! Never mind, I went up, then had to come back to the ground floor (see what I mean!?) to get to the walk-through to the Tower. I was going to take the long ramp which reaches the ground floor opposite this walk-through I was heading for when I spotted the escalator: “I can do that!”, I thought to myself, and made a bee-line for the escalator, which took me to the ground floor, where I still had exactly the same distance to walk to get to the ruddy walk-through! Ask Julian – I have a totally abysmal sense of direction! When I finally got to Dorevitch, Julian was already there! So much for saving time! Still, I did see a lovely handbag on the way up (drat! I forgot to see how much it was! I hope it’s still there next time…) and I certainly got a bit of exercise to compensate for not doing my lunchtime treadmilling, so all was not lost, and I even managed to get to the hairdresser on time! 🙂 After I’d had my hair done we went and had some lunch at Jamaica Blue – he had some sort of pumpkin wrap, a mini lemon-meringue tart, and a cappuccino – and as usual, I had an Optifast bar and a long black with some skinny-milk – not for much longer, though! 😉

Oh, ye ghods! look at the time! (*aghast*) Sorry…. it’s “that time” again! Back later…

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

And… here I am, back again! 🙂 Our old Nespresso coffee machine has been playing up and leaking for a while and Julian was thinking of replacing it – and as they had the latest incarnation of the same machine at JB Hi-Fi for a very reasonable price, we bought a new one there on the way to picking up the Dry Cleaning. The Dry Cleaning collected, I was most delighted to see one of my very favourite tops amongst the clean clothes! I thought I had lost it somehow, because I haven’t seen it for so long – so it just goes to show you how often we take stuff to the Dry Cleaners! It’s a size “S” (small) and is unfortunately starting to get a little big on me, and I don’t think they make them in “XS” (extra small! Who would have thought! in August last year I was a size “XXL”! 🙂 ) and then we went on to Vic Roads from there… We were given a ticket, and a “Change of Name” form to fill in, and that there’d be about a twenty-minute wait, so we went and sat down and I filled in the form. I’d pretty much just finished filling in the form when our ticket was called. I handed in the form, which I’d forgotten to sign (silly me!) and we waltzed on over to have my photo taken, and that was that! I shall soon receive a brand new drivers licence with a new photo and the name “Winter C. Pxxxx” on it 🙂 No, I won’t tell you what the “C” stands for, except to say that it’s a name I shared with a fairly well-known fashion designer, as well as being a name which I’ve always disliked! 😛

When we got home, Paul was busy painting my bathroom with the waterproof membrane – unfortunately he didn’t get it finished, but he’s coming back tomorrow afternoon to do the rest – then it’ll have until Monday to dry and “cure” properly before he starts laying the tiles. The waterproof membrane is a sort-of light greyish-blue, and every “seam” (join between walls and floor) have a rubbery, and slightly stretchy “ribbon” strip about 11cm wide joining them, so that if the house moves at all it will stop the membrane from tearing. Roll on Monday – I can hardly wait to see what the tiles are going to look like on the floor! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. Well, what can I say, except “*sigh!*” My body appears to be determined to drag this weight-loss battle out to the “nth” degree! I went from 65.5kg… to… 65.5kg! I stayed the same! May I scream now, please? Let’s hope I do better tomorrow morning – but then, although I did walk from one end of Doncaster Shoppingtown to the other (twice! and went on an escalator, twice, too!) I did miss out on my lunchtime treadmilling, so…. who knows?

So that was my day – busy, slightly chaotic, but satisfying – we got our yummy coffee (10 tubes of it! Should last me at least half a day… 😉 ) a new and betterer coffee machine, I had my hair done, my feet done, my driver’s licence name changed, and my bathroom is almost all waterproofed! 🙂 What more could a girl want? (a new, straight backbone would be good, and new feet… and a face lift… never mind – next year, maybe!) 😉 And having got to the end of my day (well, almost the end of it, anyway) it seems that I’ve also managed to get to the end of things to tell you for tonight, but do call in again tomorrow night – I promise I won’t be so late again tomorrow – and find out if the bathroom is all waterproofed and happily “curing” away for the start of the tiling on Monday, if my body has relented and grudgingly allowed me to go down another couple of points (even one point would be good!) and what other adventures may have befallen us since this evening! Until then though, do try to bee good 😉 don’t forget that whether you think you can, or think you can’t, you are right, and always remember to look after yourselves, to drive carefully, and to keep warm – or cool – depending on the weather… but above all, remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

It was a very quiet day here today, even though it was quite noisy! We had the cable guys back again to finish off all the terminations, which for some reason involved a lot of noisy electrical drills, or screwdrivers or both, and then there was Paul, fitting in the last sheet of plaster board which involved turning off the power for a few minutes because he had to cut into places where there was electrical wiring (I think! It’s where the power-points will be going, anyway) and because I couldn’t use my computer for about five minutes or less, I sat here dejectedly, and opened up all the snail-mail that had arrived in our P.O. Box yesterday. Once the power was back on, I went in and did a bit more “tidying up” on Deepwood (read: I deleted another two characters that I’d created yesterday, and re-created them with better names!) I checked them all out and even started a couple of them off, to see if I really did like playing with them, otherwise I’d have been doing a bit more re-rolling – and then logged off to go and look for suitable Guild names. I think I’ve found one, but I won’t tell you what it is until I can get on and see if it’s available 🙂

What else? Well, we had grand ideas of going to Medicare tomorrow, to get on with my name change things, and Vic Roads, to change the name on my driver’s licence – and a few other places wot I fergit now (Electoral Roll? Maybe…)  I also have a hairdressing appointment at a quarter past twelve, as well as having to go up and have my Warfarin blood test done – and I was hoping to get “a little shopping” in as well! Then, early this afternoon I got a call from the Podiatrist’s secretary (receptionist? hand-maiden!) to remind me that she’d be coming around at 4.30pm tomorrow! Julian and I had both thought that she was coming next week! Arrgghh! Fly in Ointment time! Well, we’ll just have to start all our bits and pieces tomorrow morning, instead of doing them after I’d been to the hairdresser, and just cross our fingers and toes that we manage to get back here by about four-ish! Paul probably won’t be overly pleased at being left to fend for himself, and I know that Clarke definitely won’t be – if he’s coming tomorrow, that is. The strange thing about this Podiatrist appointment is that it’s not written down anywhere in my calendar! Uno momento! Oh… I remember now! I looked back through my trusty notebook wot I keep on the desk next to me to see if I could find any reference to this annoyingly unexpected appointment. Sure enough, four pages back, I’ve scribbled “Podiatrist on Fri 27th November @ 4:30” (only not nearly as neatly as that) and I remember why I scribbled it down there and didn’t write it directly into my diary… Joanne, the Podiatrist, doesn’t make the appointments, she gets back to her office, tells her secretary/hand-maiden/whatever that she wants to see “so-and-so” in “x” weeks, and to make the appointment and to let “so-and-so” know – which she does! I must have taken the call when I was in the middle of something (probably writing my blog, if truth be told!) so I just jotted it down in my notebook, and – as is my want when I’m busy – promptly forgot about it, turned the page in my notebook over (I’d written the appointment details on the bottom two lines) and never gave it another thought! Oh dear – anyway, mystery solved, but I guess I’ll make up for all the boredom of today with a lot of extra busyness tomorrow! Hopefully this will have taught me a lesson, and next time I’ll stop what I’m doing, and instead of relying on a hastily scribbled note, I’ll actually go and put it straight into my diary! (…but I bet I don’t! )

If we have time, I want to get another couple of candles – probably from the Aurora kiosk/stall at Doncaster – because I’ve been vastly under-impressed with the big, fat, three wick candle that we bought from Dusk a while back. It smelt nice (and still does – if you get your nose right inside the container!) and the size was right, and the three wicks impressed – but – now I don’t know if this is because it’s a soy candle or not – the wicks lean over to one side, even when you keep them neatly trimmed, which we do – this means that not only does the creamy coloured soy begin to get unsightly black speckles and streaks though it, but the wicks lean over so much that they go out, drowned in the melted soy… this makes the candle burn unevenly, and you end up having to carve little channels into the soy so that the melted candle can drain away from the (by now almost circular!) wick! Anyway, I’m not impressed, and it’s not the first time that soy candles from Dusk have disappointed! We’ve bought candles from Côte Noire there at Doncaster, too – and they look lovely, they smell nice in the shop – but bring them home and light them, and the scent vanishes almost completely! Their candles are mostly soy, too…  Aurora has both soy and “ordinary” candles, though they seem to be stocking more and more of the soy variety, and less and less of the “ordinary” ones – strangely enough, it’s the “ordinary” candles that sell out the fastest! Now, I wonder why that is! (although I could hazard a guess!) I hope I get a little bit of time to look at candles, though that might have to wait until next week… But no matter what happens tomorrow, we must get some of those delicious chocolate and ginger coffee pods from Nespresso! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. Was extra good! I went down another four points – from 65.9kg to 65.5kg! Only half a kilo to Maintenance! I’m pleased, of course… excited too, naturally! Real food is shimmering on the horizon like a mirage! But I’m also very trepidated and unsure – can I maintain this weight-loss!? (oh me of little faith in myself!) I think I probably will, because it would just be too, too, humiliating and disgraceful to put all that weight back on again – I think I’d figuratively die of shame… besides, I’ll still be weighing myself every day, and keeping a graph chart, and if I start going over 70kg, I’ll just get back onto the Optifast again! And this is exactly why I really want to get down to 65kg – not because that’s my “end” goal weight, because it isn’t! My “end” goal weight is 70kg – I just want to make sure that I have a good “head start” – a comfortable “cushion” of several hundred grams between the beginning of maintenance, and 70kg! 🙂

So… an extra quiet day today, followed by an extra busy one tomorrow! Hopefully we’ll be able to get a very early start, because I think that’s about the only way we’ll be able to get through everything we want to do! I think Paul’s intending to finish the bathroom floor tomorrow – he’s just been down to tell us that he’s finished for the day and is on his way home, and we had a bit of a chat with him – he says that he’ll be painting on the waterproof membrane tomorrow, which dries quickly anyway, but it’ll have the weekend to dry properly, so the floor tiling will be starting on Monday! Hallelujah! 🙂 (Winter, sitting in her chair, does a virtual dance of happiness around the room) Oooo! It’s so exciting! 🙂 And on that ecstatic note, I’m think once again that’s about it from me for tonight! Drop in again tomorrow night though, and see if my weight is trying to prolong the agony by going back up again, how the bathroom looks with its waterproof membrane painted on (it’s a pretty blue, I think!) and whether we managed to get everything done that we wanted to (I bet we don’t! 😉 ) However, until then, please try very hard to bee good (you never know who’s watching, and it’s getting awfully close to Christmas! 🙂 ) do remember that it is only possible to live happily ever after on a day-to-day basis, and don’t forget to keep warm – or cool – depending on the weather, to drive carefully, and to look after yourselves… but above all, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

 

OK, it’s a late start today because my favourite eldest daughter was over – we had a bit of a dithered start – the’s been itching to try out the new Primalist on Rift before re-activating her account, so I said she could create one on my account (strictly a No-No, but it’s not as though she was someone I didn’t know or trust, and as I logged in for her, she didn’t even get my password! 😛 ) Anyway, as I think I might have mentioned, the Cable guys were here stringing up cables from one side of the house to the other, and so she had to abandon her Primalist shortly after she’d created her because the cables were being installed next to my computer and we had to abandon the Den. We went and chatted in the lounge room for a bit while we had lunch and decided what to watch this afternoon. Lee’s been absolutely dying to watch the new DC television series, “Supergirl“, because it stars Melissa Benoist, one of the leads from “Glee” (wot we used to watch last year) only as a blonde this time. We only had time to watch four episodes this afternoon, and it’s not bad, as super-hero series go 🙂 Unfortunately we only have one episode left, so we’ll have to download a few more if we want to keep watching it – I’d also like to see more of “The Librarians”, “Orphan Black”, and Marvel’s “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.”, when it returns from its “holidays” Oh, and Lee also brought with her two pods of a new Nespresso coffee – a special for Christmas, I think – but I hope it proves so popular that they decide to include it in their range permanently! Chocolate and Ginger! It’s delicious! 🙂 I normally drink the “Mocha” one (or whatever it’s called – I can’t find it on the chart – but I reckon would be even more fantastic if they put a bit of cinnamon in it!) but this chocolate and ginger one was lovely – on Friday we’re going to be at the hairdresser’s again, right across the walkway from the Nespresso shop, where I intend to snaffle up quite a few tubes of those chocolate and ginger pods while they still have them! However, it was a good day all round, and I even managed to find a work-around for my Rift problem of yesterday, with the Guardian Mage in the wrong part of the list. It’s called a “Deletion”! Yup, that’s right – I looked at her this morning and thought: “Am I ever going to play this character again?” and found myself nodding sagely and saying “probably not – even though she does have a full Trove of experience enhancing potions!” – so I systematically stripped her of anything worth selling, sold it, and sent the money along with anything usable by another character on to the character who will eventually become the Guild Mistress… and deleted the problematic Mage. Problem solved! 😀

Clark and Paul arrived today armed with lots of plaster board which they proceeded to nail and screw onto the wall studs, so no more bare, unsightly walls! 🙂 Even the ceiling is now covered in, so I now have more than a good idea of what the finished room will look like! Tomorrow they’ll put in the last half-wall to be plastered, then plugging up and filling in all the little itty-bitty cracks between the sheets of plaster and between the walls and the ceiling. The floor’s still pretty icky and rough, so what they do is mix up this “stuff” (er… some sort of acrylic or epoxy or something! I fergit exactly what he said!) which they then pour all over the concrete floor – it fills in any cracks, hollows and/or rough spots, and then settles and dries completely flat! After that they’ll apply the waterproof membrane, and once that has “cured” – I’m not sure how long that takes – I’m trying to think back to when I had my bathroom in the apartment done, but that was over seven years ago so I’m a bit hazy – hopefully it won’t be long, but I’m (probably wrongly!) estimating “a few days” – after that “cures” the tiling can start! Clarke also wanted to know what sort of power-points I wanted – I hadn’t even known that I had a choice! But apparently Clipsal make a glass (?I don’t think it’s really glass – maybe just a glass-like finish?) power-point in their Saturn range – it’s a pretty abysmal website (which is why I’m not bothering to put a link in!) and you can’t really get a good idea of the colours they have, but they look a little classier than your average white plastic power outlet. Clarke wants to know by next week – luckily there’s a place called “Habitat” in Vermont that stocks them, so we’ll go and have a look at a few – apparently they not only come in a few different colours, but they have a push-button one too!

And because of the late start, I’m afraid it’s “that time” again! Sorry!

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

Back again! 🙂 Where was I? Oh yes, the power-points. Tomorrow the cable guys are coming back to terminate all the cables (whatever that means!) Julian has to take my favourite eldest daughter to an appointment so I’ll be left at home to supervise the cable work, plus Clarke and Paul. I was supposed to be heading off to get the results of a blood test I had done about a month ago, but I’d forgotten to make an appointment to find out the results – and when I did remember, about two weeks later, I thought “never mind, if there’d been anything wrong they would have let me know pretty quickly” – and as I hadn’t heard anything nearly a month later, I promptly forgot about it again. However I got a snail-mail letter last Friday, reproving me for not having gone in for the results – so I’ll have to re-schedule things tomorrow Oh well… And talking about blood tests, I have my next Warfarin blood test on Friday – hopefully I won’t have to have my dosage changed again this time! (not that I mind them changing the dosage, it’s just a hassle when they stagger the dosages and I have to write them all down so as not to forget how much to take, and when!)

Weigh-in this morning. I see that it’s the “see-saw” end of the month again! This morning I went down one point, taking me from 66.0kg back down to 65.9kg – or what I was the day before yesterday! How much does anyone want to bet me that I go back up again tomorrow morning?! I hope not – I’m quite looking forward to having “normal” food again! I’m still perplexed though as to exactly when I start Maintenance! Do I wait until I actually hit 65kg (or less!) exactly? Does simply being in the 65kg zone count? My favourite eldest daughter thinks that being under 66kg, and into the 65kg zone is enough, and that I could start Maintenance any time now that I’m under 66kg, but I don’t really think that’s enough… I sort-of feel that I really should hit 65kg (or less!) before saying “I’ve done it! I can start eating again!”

So tomorrow I’ll take advantage of my “supervisory” role and advance a few of my Deepwood characters, maybe start off the Guild on there, once I can think of a good name for it. I not only got rid of my problematic Mage, I also transferred (not deleted!) everyone else on that shard except for my brand new Primalists, so now I only have six characters there – plus the Primalist that Lee created this morning (which apart from getting her into the Guild I shall leave strictly alone!) …hmm But do only six (seven) characters really need a Guild? Decisions! decisions! 🙂 I shall sleep on it… in the meantime, that’s about it from me for tonight! Drop by again tomorrow night to find out if all the cable terminations were completed, the progress on my bathroom, and how long the waterproof membrane has to “cure” for, and whether or not my weight is playing the old “see-saw” trick on me again! Until then, please bee good 😉 don’t forget that simple pleasures are the last healthy refuge in a complex world, 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! 🙂

Well, it’s still sort-of “early-ish” so once again, perhaps I can get this done before dinner (I’ve been doing quite well for a couple of days!) It’s been a fairly quiet day – we were going to go off and do some name change thingies, but I changed my mind at the last minute (as I so often do!) and decided to organise my last two shards for the big Guild Invasion. The two left to do are Faeblight, where I have 8 characters, and Deepwood, where I have 12. Deepwood is being a little problematic at the moment, and I have no idea why! It’s no big deal really, but by now you all know of my penchant (some people may think that “fetish” would be closer to the mark! 😉 ) for balance and symmetry, well for once I have an even number of characters on Deepwood – six Guardians, and six Defiants – so far, so good. I also like to have my Primalists at the end of the character list – I don’t know why, there’s no reason, valid or otherwise, I just do. On all the other shards I have Mage, Mage, Mage, Mage, Primalist, Primalist, Primalist – like that – except for Deepwood. Now, characters are moved to the end of their Faction list as they’re created, or transferred over – so if I have 3 Mages and then I create, or transfer over, a Primalist, the Primalist will go at the end of the list of Mages… and then if I create or transfer another Mage, the new, or transferred Mage will be listed after the Primalist.  Perfectly clear and straightforward, the newest creation, or the newest to the shard, goes to the end of the list. It’s the way it’s always worked, and still does work on all the other shards. Today I needed to create a couple of Guardian Primalists, which I did – then I realised that I’d made a mistake – I needed another Guardian Mage listed before I created the Primalists. Well, I didn’t want to start a new Mage from scratch, so I thought “I know, I’ll just transfer one back from Seastone!” And knowing that she would be added to the end of the list, and after the three Primalists, I went and deleted my three newly created Primalists (all I’d done was create them – I hadn’t even set them up, so it was no problem with that) And there I was… three Mages, including the one I’d just transferred across, one after the other, marching down the list. Exactly as they should have! Anything else I created now would get tacked onto the end of that list… should have got tacked onto the end of the list! I re-created my first Guardian Primalist… and actually went to the trouble of setting her up properly! I went back to the list screen to create my next Primalist… and there was the new Primalist I’d just created and set up, right at the end of… no she wasn’t!…. she was back behind the Mage I’d just transferred! How? Why? What? Where?! I have done this sort of thing so many times before you wouldn’t believe! This has never, ever happened before! Ever! New creations don’t, and can’t go anywhere except to the bottom of the list! I’ve been playing this game for four years now, and I’m an alt-o-holic to boot –  so I do know what I’m talking about! I don’t quite know what to do now – I can’t transfer that Mage again for another seven days, so she’ll have to stay there – for now! I’m now wondering – if (and it’s a mighty big “if“, with no way now of checking it!) IF my transferee had been created as a Defiant, but I’d changed her Faction (made her into a Guardian instead) could the game be attempting to place her in a position where she would automatically get bumped up to the top of the Defiance list, once I’d created enough new Guardians? Remember a while back when I said that the Guardian list was on the left of the screen, and the Defiant list was on the right of the screen? But that the left hand list had to be filled with six characters, Guardian or not, before starting to fill the right hand list, and how that irked me because I liked to keep things equal and even? I’m going to test that theory this evening – I can create one more character on Deepwood, and I’ll make it a Guardian! Well, I just did that… Created a new Guardian, who was added underneath the three new Primalists, but before the transferred Mage, pushing the transferred Mage onto the Defiant list. I dunno – but the test Guardian will be deleted, and in a week, the transferred Mage can go back to Seastone – and then, perhaps, balance and tranquility can be restored to Deepwood once again!

My apologies for that very long and rambling discourse on the mechanics of Rift, but when something so… so… untoward and unexpected happens, I need to understand what happened and why, so I keep worrying at it like a dog with a bone – or a sore tooth, that your tongue just has to keep poking!

Anyway, that’s what I did this morning! Deepwood is still a mess, but Faeblight is looking good and will probably have their new Guild and Guild Bank by this time tomorrow night – or not, because I just remembered that my favourite eldest daughter is coming over tomorrow! We didn’t see her at all last week – her husband had the week off for their wedding anniversary and they went away  for a bit of a break – but she’ll be here tomorrow, which will be good 🙂 No doubt we’ll watch some more of the television series we’re into at the moment – The Librarians, Arrow, and whatever else sounds good 🙂 I’ll let you know all about it tomorrow night! The Cable Man is coming tomorrow too, so Julian will finally get all the wherewithals to set up a proper network here – once he gets the electrician in to connect all the “dots”, that is 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. Not good, but it could have been (and probably still will be!) a lot worse! 😦 I went back up a point, from 65.9kg back up to 66.0kg. Only one point, but still… I wasn’t very happy about it. And after all, I was expecting it – I mean I did lose an awful lot of weight in a matter of days… Maybe tomorrow will be better… One kilo to go….

I just popped my head in to see how my bathroom is going! The plaster will be going in tomorrow, and Paul’s cleaned up the room, re-concreted the two shallow holes that were still in the floor from where the two extraneous hand basin pipes had been. He’s even vacuumed the floor! (with a big, hefty industrial vacuum cleaner, not our little “in-house” one! 🙂 ) They took down the entire ceiling which will be completely re-plastered – there would have been too many visible patches where it would have needed repairs, which would have spoilt the look of the room. So! Paul’s hung sheet stuff all over the gap in the wall where the door will be going, to keep the dust, and more particularly the smell of the dust, from invading the rest of the house (it’s bad enough in the treadmill room next door!) My bench seat is finished, and everything is, so far anyway, running to schedule! I just can’t get over how big it looks without that stupid bath in there! 🙂

Tomorrow… as I said, my favourite eldest daughter will be coming over, which will be really good. Steve will be coming down from the Black Stump again next week, and if he can find the gear in his garage, which at the moment he says is like a huge 3D slide puzzle, he’ll bring some things to try to clean up our fish “puddle” for us (ahhh! Coffee has arrived!) On Thursday, weather permitting, we may do the name changing things that we were going to do today, but which I decided – for no specific reason – that I didn’t want to do today (never do today what can possibly be put off until the next day, or preferably, the day after that! 😉 ) Friday, I’m off to the hairdresser again, with perhaps a name-changing visit to Medicare, as well as maybe a little bit of shopping on the side, afterwards 🙂 And once again, that’s about it from me for tonight! Do call back again tomorrow night though – find out whether or not my weight continued to go up, what my bathroom looks like with the ceiling and walls covered in plaster again, and what my favourite eldest daughter and I watched on the television 🙂 There’ll be lots more news tomorrow night, and probably none of it about Rift! Wouldn’t that be a nice change! 🙂 But until then, do try very hard to bee good, because you wouldn’t want to get onto the wrong list! Do remember that a vocabulary of truth and simplicity will be of service throughout your life, and don’t forget to drive carefully, to look after yourselves, and to keep cool – or warm – depending on the weather… but most importantly, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

Here I am, early for once! (well, early-ish!) Today has been a good day – Paul arrived traffic-late, but that was OK, because Julian went off on his morning walk, leaving me to let Paul in when he arrived, so I put off my treadmilling, came in here, and got all my preliminary morning chores over and done with early (like… scanning through the Foxtel television programs and turning on the “record” function for anything that looked remotely interesting, checking my email, etc.) Once Paul got here I put on my two pairs of socks and hopped on the treadmill – and as there was a great deal of noise going on (the wall between the corridor and my bathroom was being knocked down!) I wasn’t able to do my usual “counting steps” – I kept losing my place. Instead, I amused myself by seeing if I could walk faster than the treadmill was counting seconds! I was able to count to sixty without losing my place, so I’d wait until the timer on the console hit “the” minute, then started walking as fast as I could, counting each step – when I got to “60”, I’d look at the console (part of the “game” consisted of not looking at the timer on the console until I’d counted sixty steps!) and see where the timer was up to – I usually managed to beat it by about 3 seconds, which I thought was pretty good for an old woman to keep up for nineteen and a half minutes straight – then I’d slow down for a couple of steps until it hit the “minute” mark again, and rinse and repeat! 🙂 It was actually fun, in a way, seeing if I could “Beat The Machine”! I might employ it more often in the mornings, even when it isn’t noisy – as I’ve often said, the morning walk is the worst – I’m still half asleep, my legs don’t want to do what I tell them, and my mouth gets terribly dry because I haven’t had my morning cup of tea, or my after-breakfast cup of coffee. Well, I hadn’t this morning, either, but I did have a glass of diet cordial with my Vitamin D capsules, so it wasn’t too bad. Besides, playing my new “game” took my mind off the usual first-walk-of-the-day discomforts! 😉 After “walkies”, when Julian got back from his walk, we had breakfast (and an after-breakfast cup of coffee) and then Clarke arrived to help Paul with the bathroom door. He also brought over one of the floor and wall tiles, and I must say that they look even nicer than I remembered! They’re not exactly grey marble, they’re more of a soft grey-ish off white marble? with very soft light grey veins running through them. They’re the 600X300 tiles, not the 600X600 that I think would have looked better, being a nice, big square tile – but they’re going to be really nice and light! The old bathroom was all dark chocolate-brown with a few dark cream highlights – and dark colours tend to pull a room inwards, making it look smaller than it actually is (and of course, light colours do the opposite! Which is why I wanted a light marble look! 🙂 ) I also had a quick chat with Clarke about a new project of mine for the back yard, but I’ll get a proper quote from him before I decide which way to do it. After that, I jumped into Rift, where I got Blyce up to level 24 and finished off the last Silverwood quest chain, so I’m now off to Gloamwood (again! I think I must know these quests better than the Trion programmers and writers!) The noise in the corridor and bathroom, by the way, are still resounding throughout the house… Anyway, by that time it was lunchtime – I had my lunch, but Julian headed out to return a mattress protector. Our old mattress protector was getting a bit worn, so a couple of days ago he decided to replace it. He went up to Knox City and ended up at Adairs, where he got a supposedly nice one (it cost a fair bit, too!) did a bit of other shopping and brought it home. The mattress protector wrapping said to “Wash before Use”, so, following the washing instructions to the letter, he did. Dried it, according to the drying instructions, and brought it into the bedroom to put on the bed. The package it came in said “King” on the label. He’d washed and dried it according to the instructions on said package. The ruddy thing had either been mislabelled, or it had shrunk by over a foot – whichever, it was too small for our quite normal, standard, king-size mattress! So he took it back to Adairs, and they refunded the money – but we don’t have a new mattress protector any more. We’ll be going out tomorrow to Vic Roads to register my change of name and get a new driver’s licence, so after we’ve done that we might go off and see if we can find a haberdashery shop that has a (hopefully slightly cheaper!) king size mattress protector that won’t shrink when washed as per the washing instructions! If we do go up to Knox City there’s a Medicare Office just about opposite Adairs, I think, coz we have to dart in there, too, to have my name change registered and put on my Medicare card. That’ll only leave the Banks, Electoral Roll, and Passport left to get changed over (I think!)

After lunch I did my midday treadmilling, had a cup of coffee, and then I had a couple of emails to write – and by the time I’d done that it was almost time to start writing this, so I filled in the rest of the time doing an online jigsaw puzzle 🙂 I just noticed! At the top of this editing page there are four little boxes! The first one is to add media – so apparently I’m able to add music for you to listen to while you’re reading this! Bagpipe “music”, anyone?! 😉 Or I can add a location (*shrug*) or a contact form (*??*) …. and a poll! Now, that could actually be handy, when it comes time to ask you which font you like best in my experimental headers! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. I was dreading it, I really was! I wondered how much I would have bounced back! Hopefully not too much, but knowing my luck… I gingerly hopped up onto the scales, dreading what I was going to see… I saw… 65.9kg! 😮 What??! I got off the scales, and then got on them again, for a confirmatory weigh-in. Again, I saw 65.9kg – so I’m now in my “goal weight” zone – less than a kilo to go! Nine more grams to go ’til Maintenance, and (gasp, shock, horror!) real food again for more than just breakfast! I can’t believe that I’ve lost 68.8kg in fifteen months! And to tell you all the honest to goodness truth, it’s been so easy, I almost feel as though I’ve been cheating somehow! I’ve been voluntarily exercising regularly, for about the first time in my entire life (I’ve always hated and detested exercising, except for horse riding and ballet, the only two things that I was good at, and did love doing) and I’m fitter than I’ve been for goodness knows how long! Decades probably! So, this year has been “The Year of the Me!” – I’ve pretty much re-invented myself, and so bless you, Dr. Y., because you made me realise that I didn’t care, and that maybe I should… 🙂

So tomorrow it’s off to change my name at a few places – Oh, I’ve waited so long to do this! 🙂 I’ve never liked my birth name – and although I have retained the name my parents gave me – more out of some sort of misguided sense of “duty” to them, I suspect – I’ll never use it again if I can help it! So please, everyone – it really and legally IS “Winter”, now, OK? 🙂 I just went and checked on my new door-to-be – the framework is all up, the lintel and doorjambs are in, and even plaster-less, dusty, dirty, and messy, the room looks three thousand percent better than it did before they started!  Yes, this has been a very good day! And on that happy note, that’s really about it from me for this evening! Do drop by again tomorrow night to see how much my weight bounced back (because it will! It will! It’s just too good to be true, and you know what “they” say – If something seems too good to be true, then it generally is, OK? 😉 ) how all my name changing exercises went, and exactly how many of the ones listed actually did get done! I’ll also be able to tell you if my new bathroom door is in or not, and what other work has been done in my bathroom! However, until then, once more let me exhort you all to bee good (because “you-know-who’s” watching you! 😉 ) don’t forget that it is never too late to be what you might have been, and always remember to look after yourselves, to drive carefully, and to keep cool – or warm – depending on the weather – but more importantly, remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

Well, I am starting a little earlier than I normally do on a Sunday – that’s because we finished about ten minutes earlier than we normally do, and this time I didn’t race straight off to do my evening walkies before settling down to write – so with a bit of luck (hmm… better make that “with a lot of luck”!) I might get this finished before dinner time, and still get my treadmilling in. This morning didn’t start off too badly – certainly a lot better than it didn’t the other day, when my bio-rhythms seemed to be all over the place, and I had a horrible day all round. But not today 🙂 I felt that we actually managed to get started fairly quickly this morning, and you know what? Neither of us died today – we didn’t even come close, and we were questing at my most unfavourite time – night-time! Mentally shrugging philosophically, I said to myself: “Oh well, I can’t see a thing, let alone where I’m going – I’ll just follow Julian and hope I don’t fall off any cliff-tops!” Not that it would have hurt me if I did (fall off a cliff-top) because Trion have removed the once dreaded, and extremely time-consuming “death by accidentally falling from a great height” headache. Actually, I think they removed it because it takes so [please insert expletive of your choice here] l-o-n-g to get back up to where you fell from – which wasn’t so bad if you were on your own, but group members tended to get a bit annoyed if they had to hang around waiting for you to climb back up again. Notice I used the past tense there? There’s another very handy little ability that I think only Patrons get – you can summon your team member(s) to you with the click of a mouse button about once an hour, or something. I had to use it twice today to get Julian back, because he’d (Winter coughs delicately) accidentally fallen off something… But I digress! I just followed blindly along behind Julian, and we managed alright. We finished off Gloamwood, and have already made big strides into Scarlet Gorge, the next area we have to get through. We did have a choice – we could go to either Scarlet Gorge, or to Iron Pine Peaks. Both of them have their pluses and their minuses – I tend to get hopelessly lost in Scarlet Gorge, an arid, dessert-like place – I look at the map… I can see where I have to go – I even put an “X marks the spot” mark on the map! I close the map… and go galloping off in the opposite direction, wondering why I can’t get to my “X”! Iron Pine Peaks, on the other hand, blinds me! It’s arctic in nature, with snow, snow, snow, and then a bit more snow, just for good measure, everywhere! It dazzles you, blinds you, and disorients you. When the snow is actually falling, which it does most of the time, I can’t see any better than I can in the dark – and at least in the dark you can very dimly see the red glow of an enemy’s name plate in the blackness, so that you know where to aim – but with the white snow falling heavily all around you, against an almost solid, white background… (*shakes head sadly*) so I opted for Scarlet Gorge. We finished off the afternoon by doing the somewhat long and convoluted quest at the Demon Steps, which I thought was pretty good going for the day… and, we went up five levels each! That’s extremely good, and yet another example of just how powerful the Primalist is! Both Julian and I are experienced, and dare I say it, reasonably good players, but using Classes other than the Primalist, polishing off the final quest for the Hag in Gloamwood, plus the somewhat more complicated Demon Steps quest in Scarlet Gorge, would normally take us about two days. ‘Nuff said – we had a great day, had fun, and made a lot of progress! 🙂

Tomorrow work starts on my bathroom again – I went and had another peek at it before – it’s hard, at the moment, to picture it all nice and light-grey marble, with plenty of room everywhere, because it’s all grotty with concrete and dust, bare wall studs, empty glass-brick cartons, bits of wall insulation lying around everywhere – but it’ll happen! 🙂 (and the window looks lovely!) The sliding door goes in tomorrow, or so I’m told – the mixers for the two basin taps have already gone in – the shower mixer goes in next, and I think that’s about all of the plumbing that needs to be done (apart from hooking everything up when the vanity unit, the toilet, and the tiling are done) so I’m really hoping that they’ll be able to start tiling around the beginning of the following week (that is, around the 30th!) and that a week after that, I should have my new bathroom, in time for my favourite youngest daughter’s Birthday, our wedding anniversary, and Christmas! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. Was very surprising! I was quite sure that I’d bounce back up again, at least a little bit, after that massive half kilo drop the other day! (*shrug*) I guess it’ll be tomorrow that I bounce back up, then… because today, I went down another point, from 66.1kg to 66.0kg! Almost there! 🙂 One kilo to Maintenance! That is, if I don’t skyrocket back up again tomorrow! Which I probably will…. But I hope not… and I won’t even complain too much if I stay the same for a couple of days (but I will if I stay the same for more than two days in a row!) Let’s wait and see what tomorrow brings… 🙂

Remember I told you that I hurt my right hand yesterday, trying to open the treadmill room window? (I gotta think of a better name for that room! Writing “treadmill” all the time is too long and boring!) Well, the first joint of my index finger (where the finger joins the hand) is a little swollen, and quite bruised (you bruise terribly easily when you’re on Warfarin!) It’s still sore, but not as sore, and at least I can now hold a cup of coffee in that hand safely! (gotta get one’s priorities right! 😉 ) If you’re very observant, you might have noticed that the blog header has changed a little – it’s actually exactly the same, I just changed the font used on the “My Word!” part. For the past two days I’ve been looking for a suitable font to use on a permanent title (i.e. only the size, shape and colour of the header may change, to suite the template requirements) In the end, I chose three fonts – this one, called “Endor“, is Julian’s favourite. Next week I might try one other the other ones that I liked. I’ll use each one for a week, so please let me know which one(s) you like most when you’ve had a chance to see all three of them – thanks! 🙂 So there we go – and once more, that’s about all I have for you this evening – do call back again tomorrow night, see how my weight went, and whether or not it bounced back a lot, or a little bit – or not at all! (hopefully it’ll go down again – but that’s probably just wishful thinking! ) also, find out the latest happenings in my bathroom, and if there’s any news of when the vanity unit will be ready, or when the tiling is likely to start! Whatever happens though, you know there’ll be a lot to catch up on, so don’t miss out on all the latest! But until tomorrow, do try very hard to bee good 😉  remember that you should always judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers, and 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! 🙂

What a mish-mush of a day this has been for me! I dunno, my bio-rhythms must be out of whack or something, because everything has been… exasperating, off-kilter, mistimed, or fumbled. This morning, we slept in – a deliberate decision by both of us because if we slept in on Sunday morning, when we used to have our weekly “sleep-in”, we lost valuable Rift-playing time (which sort-of shows you where our priorities lie, doesn’t it! 😉 ) so we decided to sleep-in on a Saturday instead. This usually works well, but this morning, for me, it didn’t. When I got dressed this morning, I found that my very favourite black jumper wot I love had somehow managed to stretch about three sizes, which made it look absolutely ridiculous on me (but I’m wearing it anyway cos it’s my favourite, and I don’t have a second favourite that isn’t at the Dry Cleaners) By the time I got to the Walking Room I was still half asleep, and I know that I’ve always said that the first walk of the day is the hardest, but today was a doozy! I was still so sleepy that couldn’t stand up straight on the treadmill, so I did my nineteen minutes leaning all over the control panel (which I don’t think you’re supposed to do) and also, for some unknown reason, the first walk of the day always leaves me with an ultra-dry mouth – but this morning, I don’t think I’d even done a hundred paces – let alone 1.12km worth of paces (yes, favourite eldest daughter, 1.12km!) – before my mouth felt like a piece of blotting paper. Perhaps I was dehydrated? Perhaps that’s the reason my morning walk was so difficult? Anyway, I eventually finished off my nineteen minutes, leaning heavily on the control panel all the way, and went into the Den for a much-needed cup of tea, followed by breakfast. Then I did my Minions, and got all caught up in setting up a Guild and Guild Bank on Wolfsbane. Things have changed a little since the last time I set up a Guild on Rift – you used to need nine signatures to register a Guild Charter – now you only need five, including your own, as Guild Mistress! Guild Bank Vaults now start at only 30 platinum, instead of 1000 platinum, which is what the first Vault used to cost, with each extra Vault rising exponentially in cost thereafter. So that went well enough – now all I have to do is remember to kick out the two people I bribed to sign the Charter! 🙂 Oh, the name of the Guild is “Stillwater Downunder” – “Stillwater”, because that’s the name of this place, and “Downunder” because it’s in Australia 🙂  Then it was lunchtime, and time for my next walkies, which I usually quite enjoy, but today, I dunno, I really didn’t feel like doing – but of course I did… but I made the mistake of trying to open the window first. The window slides open, from right to left, and the window catch is very close to the top of the treadmill control panel – for a left-handed person, opening the window from any position is no problem, but for a right-handed person, standing in front of the treadmill, it’s the wrong angle entirely! I grabbed the window catch with my right hand, and attempted to depress it to unlock it, at the same time as I was trying to push it to the left to open the window. All I succeeded in doing was almost dislocating my right index finger, and the window stayed stubbornly shut! Naturally I emitted a soft anguished yelp (well, it was probably more like a scream of agony, but I’ll settle for anguished yelp, this time) Julian came in to see what I’d done to myself this time, seeing that it hadn’t been a “Help! an Evil Spider is about to devour me alive” squeal, or a grief-stricken “Oh no! I’ve broken a tooth!” wail. When I told him what had happened, he gave me an exasperated look, and standing on the treadmill, he nonchalantly leaned over and opened the window (with his left hand!) and said “Why didn’t you open it like this?!” and he got off the treadmill. I, nursing my poor sore hand, replaced him on the treadmill, and said “Because,” as I leaned over and reached as far as I could towards the window catch – missing it by about six inches – “I can’t reach it from here! I’m too short, and my arms aren’t long enough!” He had to admit that I had a point (and very short arms!) My right index finger is still too sore for me to grip anything properly with my right hand – even trying to hold a coffee cup is painful! I hope it recovers by tomorrow! Just think of all the coffee I might have to miss out on if it’s still as sore as it is at the moment!

Weigh-in this morning. Was either terribly good, or terribly bad – depending on your point of view! The consequences of this morning’s weigh-in are quite likely to be dire… I went down five points… half a kilo… overnight! From 66.6kg, to 66.1kg! With a drop as big as that, I’m definitely going to be bouncing back tomorrow! If I don’t, it can only mean that my body is so looking forward to eating proper food again that it’s going all out to get to 65kg as quickly as possible! 🙂 Not that I mind, of course – I’m even starting to construct lunch menus for Maintenance – and maybe even a bite of KFC here and there – do they make low-fat ricotta? When I was a little kid, one of the things we’d occasionally guzzle for lunch was a slice of bread, spread with ricotta (or home-made soft cheese – if anyone wants the recipe for that, just ask – I have it!) …spread with ricotta (not low-fat in those days!) and sprinkled with Bournville cocoa powder! Mmm! delicious! Anxious thought: are there any calories in plain-old Bournville cocoa powder, if you don’t add any sugar? Most likely my lunches will be two Ryvita crispbread with a bit of Philly Extra Light and some slices of tomato, or chopped up celery, or just sprinkled with cayenne pepper (or all three! 😉 ) I’ll even still have the occasional Optifast bar for lunch now and then – simply because I really like them! 🙂

Tomorrow, of course, is our day for terrorising the evil mobs of Telara – from memory, we’ve just started in Gloamwood (or “Gloomwood”, if you want the name to paint an accurate picture of the place!) There was a fairly big update a couple of days ago and I’ve been hoping that it might have rectified the quest in Into The Wilds with that hulking great Dinosaur-slash-Dragon thingy – the patch notes did mention that quest, but I don’t think they’ve made it any easier! Just thinking about that, you know – usually when you have such a formidable Boss Mob to bring down, it’s a quest for a group of two or three players, and depending on the nature of the Boss Mob, even a Raid quest (a “Raid” being a group of 20 players or more) – so why are players forced to go in solo, if there’s no hope of getting out alive? There has to be a catch here somewhere… I just wish that we could see it! Monday my bathroom door will be installed, and the walls will be plastered and waterproofed, then, the week after next, (fanfare, please! 🙂 ) let the tiling begin! Just between you, me and the gatepost, Julian’s shower is horrible! It doesn’t have a shower hose and head, it has a very large fixed overhead shower – it’s so large that no matter where I stand I have great difficulty in keeping the soap on myself long enough for it to clean me! That shower is much more likely to drown you than cleanse you! (*whimper*) I want my own proper shower back! Anyway, that’s just about it from me for tonight – hopefully my bio-rhythms will be back in sync tomorrow, because I really don’t need another day like today! However, do drop around again tomorrow night to find out if my weight did bounce back up again (after a drop of half a kilo in a day, I’m pretty positive that it will!) how we fared in sunny, downtown Telara (and how many times we managed to get killed!) and if my day was any better than today (which wouldn’t be all that hard!) – but until then, continue to bee good (you never know who’s watching! 😉 ) remember that common sense is not so common, and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to drive carefully, and to keep warm – or cool – depending on the weather – but above all, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂