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! 🙂
My Word! 