Goodness me – the 1st of December! Only 24 days until Christmas! 🙂 Well, we had a very early morning today – we were up at 5.30 – a truly unearthly hour – so that Julian could get to the airport on time – so things were somewhat out of kilter for me. I wasn’t sure what time Paul would be arriving, so I held off my first treadmilling of the day until he got here. Last night he said he’s be here around 7.30, as he didn’t have to pick anything up on his way over – but he didn’t arrive until after eight… because he had to go and pick up the glue for the tiles! (*sigh*) Anyway, I’d already had breakfast, at around seven o’clock, so as soon  as Paul arrived I dived off and did my morning walk. Julian had already taken off and I had the rest of the morning to myself. I thought I’d have another fling at World of Warcraft. I used to have just about the maximum number of characters allowable on just about all of the realms back then (they call servers “realms” on WoW – they’re called “shards” on Rift – horses for courses, I guess!) and I think I was very close to the maximum number of characters allowable for my account (which was why I opened up a second account – but that’s another story for another time! 😉 ) I’m still getting back to grips with WoW – it’s slowly coming back to me (even down to the best routes to take to finish off the quests most efficiently!) But the point that I’m meandering myself along to is that I had Guilds, and more importantly, Guild Banks, on just about all the realms! When I logged on yesterday for the first time in years I found I two characters on this particular realm, Negrand – and one of them just happened to be the Guild Mistress of “death by chocolate”, the Guild I had there. And there were quite a few large bags sitting in the Guild Bank! Unfortunately I couldn’t send one of them over to the new character I’d created – Finnah, a Blood Elf Warlock, because she’s Horde (the opposite faction) and therefore “unfriendly”. If I could get her into the Guild she could access the Guild Bank herself, which would save a lot of bother, but both the Inviter and the Invitee have to be online to do that, and of course, you can’t have two characters online at the same time – so Julian will have to be the one to invite her, but he’s not here, so I’ll either have to wait until he is (here), or re-create her as an Alliance character – but Julian’s just rung to say that he’s at the airport, and it’s “wheels up” at 5.05pm Adelaide time – whatever time that is in Melbourne – about 5.35pm Melbourne time, I think, so I’ll leave all the World of Warcraft machinations until tomorrow 🙂

I’ve just popped my head into the bathroom to see what progress has been made, and it looks stupendous! 🙂 Paul had finished off the shower base just before lunchtime – a lot of intricate, complicated, and persnickety work, definitely requiring the skills of an expert jigsaw puzzler! This afternoon he finished off almost all of the rest of the floor, and all that’s left of that to do are two flat rows to the doorway, and a strip of “pebble” tiles (a lot of small pebbles stuck to a mesh background, which gets glued down and then grouted in, so that it ends up looking like someone just laid an abstract mosaic down between the bathroom and the hallway tiles – there’s already a decoration of these “pebble” tiles running down the wide hall corridor, so they’ll go very nicely in the narrower, bedroom and bathroom corridor) Paul says that the glue pretty much dries overnight, so we’ll be able to walk on it tomorrow if we really have to – but he should be able to start on the walls by tomorrow afternoon. Walls are pretty uncomplicated beasties, however the wall in the shower area won’t be quite so straightforward, because there’s not just one “toiletries alcove” set it the wall about (my) chest height (I’m only about 5′ tall now, remember!) there’s going to be two of them (the shower rail and the shower hose will be in between them) and both those alcoves are getting a highlight of a multi-coloured mosaic made of very small stones on their back wall. These multi-coloured mosaic stones also come on a mesh backing like the “pebble” tiles, and the stones are small enough so that the tile can pretty much be cut to measure, but I still think it’s going to be pretty fiddly! Oh well, if the rest of the tiles look even half as good as the ones Paul laid today, the room is going to be absolutely fantastic! 🙂 Gee, I’m a good Interior Decorator! 😉

I sat on the couch and read and dozed for quite a bit of the afternoon – I was so tired! Flipper even came out and allowed me to pat her for about ten minutes, then she said “That’s enough! You’re not Daddy!”, and stomped off in a huff! I tell you, you’ve never seen a cat “stomp off” until you’ve seen Flipper “stomp off”! She’s got it down to a fine art, and she really makes you feel… inadequate!

Weigh-in this morning. Once again, it can’t have been accurate – it was two hours earlier than I normally weigh myself – but I’d really like to know what’s going on! I went down another three points! Aren’t I supposed to be going up, now that I’m on Maintenance? I went from 64.6kg to 64.3kg! Of course, it does mean that when I do start going up – which I will, probably tomorrow – I’ll have a lot more room between me and my final goal weight, so this can only be a good thing – I suppose… But I don’t want to lose much more, for heaven’s sake! I’ll vanish, if I turn sideways! I can’t even say “Does my bum look big in this?” anymore, because I don’t have a “bum” to look big in anything now! I’m pretty much “flat down the back”, so to speak… and my jeans are starting to fall off me – again… 😉

So, it was a quiet, pretty boring old day today, with a tiresomely early start, and a predictably very late dinner. I thought we’d be having a very quick dinner – that Julian would be having a bowl of tomato lasagna, and I’d be having one of my Optifast soups – but I just spoke to him and he’s planning on cooking chicken! So maybe I’ll get a decent dinner (I had an Optifast bar and some celery sticks for lunch – and of course, the celery got stuck between my teeth again, even though I peeled it this time! grrr!) I’m not sure what’s happening tomorrow, apart from more tiling – maybe we’ll get a chance to get our Medicare name and address change done (and maybe we’ll get some preliminary Christmas Shopping done, too!) (and I still have no idea where we’re going to put the Christmas tree, or what I’m going to get for people!) Anyway, that’s about it from me for tonight, but do call back again tomorrow night and find out how the bathroom looks with all its floor tiles down (and hopefully some of the wall tiles!) and whether or not my weight has finally started to go up, as it’s supposed to do, now that I’m eating normally again. There’ll be lots to tell you all, I’m sure, so don’t miss out on hearing (sorry, reading) about all our adventures! Until then, though, remember to bee very good (you know why! 😉 ) don’t forget that sometimes in order to get what you want, you must either modify your dreams or magnify your skills, and do remember to keep warm – or cool – depending on the vagaries of this city’s weather, to drive carefully, and to look after yourselves… but above all, remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂