Well, almost 3.30 pm on Friday the 13th, and so far, so good – although Julian is mopping the floor, trying to get rid of the thick layer of concrete dust all over it – I hope that neither of us slips on the wet tiles! 
Thank heavens all the jack-hammering is finished! It’s been terribly noisy! Julian was unable to work in the office just across the corridor, and I kept losing count while I was trying to do my treadmilling in the next room! Now we have a whole weekend of peace and quiet, which I can honestly tell you all, we’re both really looking forward to! The concrete under the shower had to be jack-hammered out to a depth of about 25 to 30ml, as the shower base will be part of the floor, with no “lip” to step over, so the concrete has to be low enough to provide for the – I dunno, I suppose you’d call it a “drainage drop”, or something – so that the water will flow down into the to drain grating in the middle of the shower and not out into the rest of the room. Clarke has given the people who are making the vanity unit the final plans and measurements, so hopefully that’ll be ready soon – it doesn’t go right down to the floor, but is a sort-of “floating” or “hanging” vanity unit in that it’s suspended from the wall instead of standing on the floor. There are going to be three drawers at each end, followed by what will only look like three matching drawers. The top one will be a “normal” drawer, but the second one is actually a double depth drawer – that is, it’ll be two drawers deep on the inside, but look like two drawers on the outside, to match the ones next to them. That’s because all the drawers are deep enough for most things, but not quite deep enough for cans of hairspray, large bottles of mousewash, and the big 1 litre bottle of Madder-root shampoo that I have, and one of those double-depth drawers will have a waste-bin hidden in it, to avoid cluttering up the floor with a free-standing bathroom-tidy! 🙂 I know we discussed it, and as far as I’m aware, there’ll be concealed lighting under the vanity unit – not because it needs it, but because it looks cool and “atmospheric” at night! 😉 Phone calls were flowing back and forth today – what sort of taps I wanted, did I want this that-way, or that this-way? Hopefully it’ll all come together the right way! One thing did annoy me a little today – when I picked the bathroom floor and wall tiles, there were two versions – a 600×600 tile, and a 600×300 tile. I liked the big, square 600×600 tiles, but Julian felt that they might be too big – Clarke said that the size didn’t make any difference, however in the end I reluctantly allowed myself to be talked into the 600×600 tiles on the floor, and the 600×300 tiles for the walls (why or how this was going to be “better”, I have no idea!) Clarke rang this afternoon to say that there was a noticable colour discrepancy between the two sizes, so did I want to use the big ones, or the smaller ones? Trying to get him to tell me exactly what the colour difference was was like trying to pull hen’s teeth – he just kept saying that there was a difference… in the end I managed to eke out of him that the bigger tiles were “whiter”, and the smaller ones a little bit “greyer” – so I (*gulp*) opted for the smaller tiles… Now, why did I do that, when I’d originally wanted the larger ones? I don’t know, but a little nagging voice was telling me that I didn’t want the room to be too white – I’d originally wanted a very pale grey softly marbled tile, but everything was either that horrible mottled grainy sort of marble that looks more like granite, which I definitely didn’t want – it reminded me of a mausoleum! The only other type of veined marble that I saw was too white! More of a “whiter-than-white” tile, with ugly thick “blacker-than-black” varicose veins going through it! That’s why I jumped on these tiles when I saw them, because they were actually a type of “pale grey”… well, perhaps a little whiter than “pale grey”? But they had the best marbling I’d seen, and the veins weren’t completely “stark black”, and they looked good in the small bit of tiling that they had on display. But when Clarke told me about the colour difference this afternoon, I chickened out of the larger ones – what if they were “too white”? Would I be better off going for the smaller, but slightly greyer ones? So I did… I hope I don’t regret it! There have been a few other minor corrections and/or adjustments made to the overall design – like two shower alcoves for shampoo bottle etc., with the shower rail in between them, instead of one alcove, with the shower rail either on top of me at one end of the shower, or too far away for the hose to reach, at the other end of the shower. Now it’ll be in the middle and be a “Baby Bear” shower rail! (“just right!”)
One thing I neglected to mention last night, about my walking all over Doncaster Shoppingtown – I got my wheelchair in 2011 and I’ve used it ever since when there’s been any sort of walking around outside of the house or garden… yesterday was the first time in four years that I’ve walked around a shopping centre, unaided by anything other than a walking stick! And between about 2005 and 2011, I either used one of the shopping centre’s little electric scooters, or I had to get Julian to go and get me a trolley that I could lean on, to be able to get around the centre! I’ve come a long way, and I have no intention of stopping yet! 🙂 Avanti Savoia! 🙂
Weigh-in this morning. Much more betterer! Maybe I should ditch doing my lunchtime treadmilling, and get Julian to drive me to a shopping centre where I can walk around for the afternoon instead! I went down another three points, from 68.0kg to 67.7kg. I worked it out on the calculator – when I get down to 67.35kg (hmm… I think my scales only weigh to one decimal place, not two! Perhaps I’d better make it 67.2kg, just to be on the safe side!) Yes, once I get down to 67.2kg, I’ll have officially lost a teeny bit more than half my original, pre-diet body weight! And because I said that, guess what! I’ll go up tomorrow, you see if I don’t! (*sigh*) Oh well, I made it to 67.7kg today…
So Julian has finished mopping the floor – which is now dry – and neither of us has had the Friday the 13th misfortune of slipping and going end over end on it, so now all we have to do is – not go outside again until the bathroom is finished and all the rubbish and bits of concrete have been taken away, so that we don’t get any more concrete dust all over the place! 😉 Hopefully it’ll be a quiet weekend – maybe a bit of shopping tomorrow (I think I might go too – apparently walking agrees with my weight-loss! 😉 ) and of course our business in Telara on Sunday. Julian’s been scanning the Rift forums looking for any clues or hints on how to handle that dinosaur-slash-dragon thingy in that impossible end battle, but either not very many people have got that far yet (though I find that very hard to believe!) or else those that do know how to handle it are keeping quiet – perhaps even selling the solution – for an emperor and a pope’s ransom – on the black market! Well, at least we have our young’ns to level up, and hopefully by the time we get them to level 65, Trion will have fixed the problem. Which as far as I’m concerned, isn’t a “problem“, so much as lack of thinking, planning, and execution on Trion’s part! Anyway, once again, that’s about it from me for this evening – but drop in again tomorrow night to see if my weight did go up (I bet it does, even if only to thwart me! 😉 ) and whether or not I did go hopping, skipping, and jumping around a shopping centre – as well as whatever else we managed to get into – like the soil, and some seeds and seedlings for the veggie beds! 🙂 But until then, please bee good (you know what’ll happen if you don’t! 😉 ) remember that somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known, but don’t forget to keep warm – or cool – depending on the weather, to drive carefully, and to look after yourselves… but most importantly, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂
My Word! 