Well, I’m very late indeed tonight, but we’ve had visitors today… Steve arrived around lunchtime and we sat around and chatted about this, that and the other all afternoon – and then after dinner, Julian’s sister arrived on a very brief stop-over from Sydney! It was really lovely to see them both – especially Melissa – sorry, The Honourable Justice Dr. Melissa P. 🙂 (she’s a Federal Court Judge and Doctor of International Law) unfortunately we don’t see nearly enough of her, though next weekend she’ll be back here again, along with the Israeli component of the tribe – Julian’s brother Mike, his wife Inbar, and their middle son, Tom. Their eldest son and his wife live in Tasmania, so on their way down to see them they’re gracing us with their presence for the weekend.

Paul has finished off the bathroom floor, and it looks absolutely fantastic! That small strip of “pebble” tile between the very light grey bathroom tiles and the creamy corridor tiles looks as though that was the way it was always meant to be – it’ll all be grouted tomorrow, and once that’s set and dried, he can start on the walls! However on Friday, I believe that the vanity unit will be installed – Clarke wants it in as soon as possible so that he can make the template for the caesarstone top – and then the walls can be tiled! 🙂 I’d told Clarke that I’d let him know this week if I wanted to use the fancier (and much more expensive!) Clipsal switches and power outlets – I’ve tried to look at them online, but you can’t really tell anything from Clipsal’s silly website – sure, they tell you what colours they come in, but they don’t show you any examples of the colours, or how they’d look on a wall! Idiots… So tomorrow I’m going to have to make an emergency dash to Habitat in Vermont, where they’re supposed to stock them, and actually have a physical look at them before making my final decision! I’ll try to incorporate that into picking up my favourite eldest daughter, who’ll be over for the day tomorrow.

It looks like we’ll be off shopping for a new BBQ this weekend! 🙂 The plan is that the following weekend with the family gathering we’ll have a BBQ out on the back deck – only at the moment we don’t have a BBQ! Nor do we have any bug zappers, which will also have to be obtained, otherwise I shall insist on sitting indoors, where the nasty, creepy, crawly, and flying blood-suckers can’t reach me!  (ahhh! Something else for the electrician who’s coming tomorrow to do! Power outlets for two bug zappers, somewhere out on the back deck!) We shall dine on burnt offerings, salads, bread, butter and tomato sauce, imbibe quantities of beer, wine and mineral water, and finish off with delectable macaroons from Sydney – everyone can admire my almost ready to use by then (I hope!) bathroom, and a good day will be had by all! 🙂

Steve wasn’t able to get all his puddle-cleaning gear out of his garage, so my little fishies will have to wait a bit longer to get some cleaner water – unless any of you nice people reading this have any quick-fix solutions (apart from the most obvious one, which is to forget the fish, drain it, and start again – which I don’t want to do if I don’t absolutely have to!) but it was a good afternoon – unfortunately we had to cut it a bit short because we had to have an early dinner before Melissa arrived. However, next time, I’m going to lengthen my morning and evening walks to 30 minutes each, instead of the usual 20 (sometimes 21 minutes) and skip the lunchtime one altogether – just for the day, not permanently – so that I don’t have to race off to do walkies while Steve’s here.

I did manage to get a bit of World of Warcraft in this morning – and I think I’m beginning to see why I left it… Compared to Rift, the UI (User Interface – what you see on the screen – controls, action bars, and layout) is very primitive and “klunky” – on the other hand, it’s much more customizable – there are figuratively hundreds of addons for WoW, from Map functions to extra Action Bars that you can put just about anywhere you want on the screen… there are very, very few addons available for Rift, because mostly, they’re just not needed! Their “Edit layout” function means that you can pretty much configure your screen any way you want. If I’m going to keep playing WoW I’m definitely going to have to pay a visit to Curse and get myself a few handy-dandy addons… One thing I’ve been dying to try out, but don’t know how to go about it (so I’m waiting for Julian to help me explore the possibilities – I don’t want to break anything! 😉 ) is housing! Apparently WoW has introduced player housing – similar to Rift’s Dimensions, I believe, and Garrisons – whatever they are! Maybe this weekend we’ll have a chance to explore it all…

Weigh-in this morning. It was a bit better! I actually went up four points! (must have been that carrot I ate yesterday! And the celery, and the extra half a banana!) from 64.3kg to 64.7kg. We had some absolutely delicious pan-fried chicken for dinner last night (and I had another two small chicken-nugget sized pieces for lunch today too, so I reckon that’ll probably add another two or three points on tomorrow!) and tonight we had some lovely lamb backstrap for dinner – so I suppose I’ll probably be back over 65kg again tomorrow morning! (I ate another raw carrot tonight, too! – so yep, I’ll definitely be back over 65kg tomorrow! Perhaps I’d better start slowing down a bit…)

Well, that was my day today – not all that much to tell you all, really – as we mostly just sat around and talked all day! Tomorrow Paul will be grouting the bathroom floor, we have to go and have a look at theose Clipsal power outlets and switches, the electrician is coming (and we mustn’t forget to ask him to install some power outlets somewhere on the back decking for the bug zappers!) and my favourite eldest daughter will be over – I’m not sure what we’ll be watching, but I’ll let you know what it was tomorrow night. The vanity unit will be installed on Friday, according to Paul, so I’ll have to cancel my hair appointment, which is a shame – I wonder if I could re-schedule it for Saturday morning? I’ll try – anyway… and that’s about it from me for this evening – do drop in again tomorrow night though – and find out if I managed to get this evening’s blog online before midnight (I’m trying! I’m trying!) if my weight has gone back to over 65kg, and how the bathroom floor looks all grouted (probably very messy, if it’s the same as when we had the bathroom re-done in Doncaster!) Until then, do try very hard to bee good (not long to go now! 😉 ) remember to open your arms to change, but don’t let go of your values, and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to keep warm – or cool – depending on the weather, and to drive carefully – but above all, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂