“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! 🙂