Ugh! I absolutely hate this hot, muggy weather! While Julian’s been outside madly shoveling scoria and soil into a wheelbarrow, and wheeling it around from the front driveway to the back yard, then shoveling it all into the veggie bins, I’ve been inside, where it’s been pretty hot most of the day (we’ve only just turned on the air-conditioner! It should have gone on hours ago!) Anyway, he’s been hot out there, and I’ve been hot in here – he’s been working hard in the garden, and I’ve been working equally as hard in here to keep awake! All morning I’ve been working on the “holding shard”, Seastone – it’s gone from thirteen characters to six, which is a pretty severe cull for me! Going around deleting characters isn’t as easy as just typing “delete” into the correct field! First I have to check what they have in their bank – what I can sell, and what can be salvaged or used by someone else. Then I have to check their Dimensions, and if there is anything in them, pull everything out and distribute the items to whoever has enough room for them (this has not been easy! Luckily, most of them had already been emptied out when I first moved them to Seastone! I guess I must have had a premonition or something! 😉 ) Next, I have to check what they’re wearing. They’re already wearing “virtual costumes” (that is, they can’t be taken off and sold!) so I strip them of their armor, weapons, rings, amulets – whatever, and sell that to the nearest Vendor. Then I run a quick check: Bank empty? check… Dimensions empty? check… Is everything remotely possible either sold off, or given to someone else? check… Right. Now I go to the nearest “letterbox” and send off whatever money they have left in their virtual pockets to Zibeline, my very first – well, actually the very first second character I ever created on Rift. My very first character was a Warrior called Winterthyme, and I did actually get her up to level 50 (which was the level cap back then) but although I found the Warrior Class easy enough to play at the lower levels, it was a very different matter once they got past level 25, and I really struggled to drag her up to level 50 – so I was never really all that fond of her, and about a year or so ago, I deleted her. Zibeline was (is!) a Rogue/Hunter/Beastmaster, with a Pet that fights with her – but playing a Rogue/Hunter/Beastmaster on Rift is vastly different from playing a Rogue/Hunter/Beastmaster on World of Warcraft, so although I had a lot of fun with her, and enjoyed playing with her, once I got her to level 50 too (which was still the level cap) I sort of… I dunno – pretty much abandoned her? But I don’t think I’ll ever get rid of her permanently – she means too much to me, and besides, she’s handy for playing a “pretend Guild Mistress”, and organising the distribution of goods from those who have been culled – as she did today! 😉 Anyway, so once all of the above has been done, and the money’s been collected at the “other end”, then I can delete the character, and move on to the next one – so depending on how much “stuff” has to be shunted around via a relatively small, 38-slot bank vault, deleting seven characters can be a fairly complicated and lengthy job! Still, it’s all done now 🙂 I’m left with three Guardians, and three Defiants (I do like things to be even and symmetrical! 😉 ) and I have seven lovely, empty… 🙂 cold… lonely 
*sniffle* “holes” in my shard population 😦 *cry*. . . . Winter! Stop it at once! You’re not going to create new characters to fill up those nice, handy, needed empty spaces! Ya’hear!?! (aww! alright! spoil-sport! 😦 )
And in the middle of doing all of that, Clarke arrived! He had a couple of questions for me about taps and shower rails, and did I need another small shower rail closer to the bench? No, I didn’t need a second shower rail, but apparently it’s very difficult to get “swivelly” bathroom taps – damn! I should have remembered to tell him that I saw any amount of “swivelly” bathroom taps at Ikea, when we went cupboard shopping a while back! I might get Julian to SMS him later… So Clarke had just finished with me and had gone out to talk to Julian, slaving away in the hot sun, when the phone rang! I rolled my eyes a bit, but the caller ID made me grab the phone up quickly with a smile 🙂 Our friend from the other side of the Black Stump felt like a bit of a chat, so I sat and talked to him for a while, then Julian came in for a break, and he chatted to him for a while, and then I had another go at trying, unsuccessfully I hope, to bore him 😉 and the upshot of it all is that he’ll drive down to see us tomorrow, arriving sometime after lunch! It’s going to be really great to see him again – it’s been ages! 🙂 I’ve also got my first visit to the shoemaker (yuk! I put too much milk in my coffee – it’s a lot better when Julian makes it – I always seem to put in too much milk! 😦 I guess I just don’t make it often enough! Hmm! I’ll have to rectify that! 🙂 ) The appointment is at 10am in Ringwood, and I can’t see it taking too long – I’m expecting to be back before lunch, anyway! If he’s anything like the first guy who made my shoes (let’s face it – he was good – they’ve lasted me over five years!) he’ll probably get me to stand on a piece of paper so he can draw the outline of my feet, then he’ll make a plaster cast of them, and then he’ll say “Right, well, see you in three weeks!” – or whatever (well, it was over five years ago – I might have got a few points “not quite right”, but it’ll be something along those lines) I also wonder if this Brian will be any more amenable to making me what I want, and not what he thinks would be best for my feet, than the other guy? What I want is a type of moccasin – with a sturdy enough sole so that I can walk outside without feeling every tiny little stone in our pebble-mix paths, and I want the uppers to fit snugly enough so that the shoes (moccasins) (yes, I know! How terribly “bogan”, but I don’t care – I wants what I wants!) …so that the shoes wouldn’t just fall off every time I raised one of my feet, and I also want the uppers to be made prettily and elegantly enough so that they don’t look like slippers. I’m dreaming, I know – for the whole of my life, my feet have never, ever, looked pretty and/or elegant! They’re great, long, clumsy, clod-hopping appendages that I try to never look at, and never think about, if possible. Anyway, I shall be able to tell you all about it tomorrow night! 🙂
Weigh-in this morning. Was quite spectacular! I went down four points, from 67.5kg (where I’ve been for the last three days!) to 67.1kg! This, of course, probably means that I’ll go back up again tomorrow… looks like I’m starting my “end of the kilo zone see-saw” again! But we’ll see – there’ll be a lot of excitement, and comings and goings, so hopefully I’ll be able to break the 67kg barrier in a couple of days! Eeek! That means I’ll only be one kilogram away from Maintenance! (or thereabouts, anyway) And having to get used to eating real food again! I almost feel too trepidated to get on the scales tomorrow morning!
So we’re going to have a very busy day tomorrow! I just hope that Julian hasn’t made himself ill, carting all that scoria around in the wheelbarrow from the front drive to the veggie beds out the back, in the hot sun! He is coming in regularly to cool off and have a big glass of water, but I worry, anyway! Paul plans to be here around 7.30am tomorrow – traffic permitting – and I’m just going to go and poke my nose into the bathroom so that I can tell you all the latest – uno momento! Well, the timber framework for the bench seat and the alcoves is in (there’s an awful lot of timber in them, so it looks like they’ll be good and solid, if nothing else!) and the smaller hole in the floor where the extraneous pipes were has been filled in – more or less – it looks like he ran out of concrete or something, but it’s probably fine… While Clarke was here this morning he measured the window, and when he left he said he was going off to pick up the glass bricks! I can’t wait to see what they look like! Paul was telling Julian the other day that there’s at least a whole week of tiling to be done – Julian, I think, was a little dubious, but when you stop to think about it, there’s going to be an awful lot of tiles going into that room, so I do hope they start soon! Like maybe… next week? Could be! I don’t know if the window has to be in before they start laying the tiles, or if it can be done after the tiling’s done (but then they might break some!) Oh well, if the window has to be done first, then they probably won’t be able to start the tiling until the following week Anyway, I’ll know more tomorrow! In the meantime, that’s about if from me again for tonight! There’ll be lots to tell you tomorrow night – the bathroom, the shoemaker, and the friend! (Ha! Sounds like a good name for a movie, or a book!) and also whether my weight managed to behave itself for another day! So do drop in again tomorrow night, to be entertained, amused, intrigued, or maybe even bored – but at least you’ll know what’s happening over this way! 🙂 Until then – you know the ropes by now! 😉 Bee good (for goodness’ sake!) remember to try to be a rainbow in someone’s cloud, and 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! 