As it turns out, we didn’t go BBQ and bug zapper shopping today – we both chickened out because of the weather! Instead, we spent a nice, quiet day at home with the air conditioner making us feel as though it was just a very pleasant, balmy spring day… I spent part of the day searching for WoW addons to give me extra Action Bars (rows of little square boxes that you can put just about anywhere you like on your screen, where you can put things like food, and drink, and spells, so that you can get at them quickly when you need to!) I only found about two that I thought might be what I was looking for – one came highly recommended, the other was a totally unknown… I tried the recommended one, but quickly gave up on it! I couldn’t turn the row of boxes so that it sat vertically, and I wasn’t able to access any of the other game controls while it was running! I dunno – maybe I wasn’t holding my mouth the right way or something! I’ll try the other totally unknown one out a bit later, after I finish this. I did find another couple of oldies but goodies though, “Routes”, which maps out the route to follow to find things for the Gathering professions, like herbs and minerals – and “Altoholic” – an absolute “Must Have” for people like me, who have lots and lots of characters! It lets you know what all your “alternate characters” have in their banks, and in their backpacks. So, say you need a wigwam for a goose’s bridle in a hurry, and you just know that you only saw it the day before yesterday, or something, when you were playing your little Mage who’s currently in Darnassus, Altoholic will allow you to quickly check on what she has in her bank and backpack, without having to log out, and then log back in again as her, check everything, then log out to try another of your characters, because she didn’t have it, after all! There are another couple of very handy addons which I’ll also try to re-find – once I can remember what they are, that is! I know there was a really good one for the Auction House, and another really, really good one for the Map function, called “Cartographer”, but alas – to a lot of people’s disappointment, that one was discontinued years before we even left WoW, and has never been re-written by anyone else… So, yeah – I pottered around in the WoW universe for most of this morning, and I’m not really too sure what Julian did (apart from untangle the addon files I’d downloaded and saved to a directory not to his liking) Julian and I have vastly different methods of doing things on the computer – neither is “gospel”, or the only correct way to do it, they’re just… “different”. F’rinstance, I tend to save everything – from graphics I’ve made, to program files I’ve downloaded – in very neatly labeled directories on the File Server (drive Z) This makes things easier for me to find, because if I don’t put things in a directory like “2015- 12-December Files”, or “2015 All Wincustomize Skins”, etc., nine times out of 10 I have to go and either download, or save the files, all over again, because I can’t remember where I put them when I originally got them! And that’s what I did with the addon files – I put them very neatly in a directory called “AAA 2015 WoW Addons” – perfectly clear and straightforward – and I made a separate sub-directory for each of the addons – “Routes”, “Altoholic”, “Dominoes”, etc., and downloaded all the zipped files to their corresponding sub-directory. But apparently I should have just downloaded all of them directly to drive C, into a sub-directory called “Addons” in the WoW folder! I mean – how was I to know? Oh well, they’re all where they were supposed to go now, and they all work the way they should – more or less, anyway. This afternoon Julian mopped the floor in a somewhat vain attempt to get rid of all the dust from the sanding down of plaster, in and around my bathroom, and the very fine, powdery silt from when the grouting was being wiped down.

I’ve just been looking at the weather report in The Age – unfortunately it looks like Wednesday or Thursday before we’ll feel like braving the weather to go BBQ and bug zapper shopping – although if the weather follows the pattern that they had after the ABC News last night, we’ll probably be eating indoors anyway! I don’t mind either way – as long as I’m not spending more time flapping insects away, than I am in enjoying my lunch! Hench my insistence on the two bug zappers… The BBQ, though, is a different matter – one doesn’t have to sit outside to enjoy a lovely BBQ’d meal, because it’s just as nice to sit comfortably indoors to enjoy it, and now that I’m eating real food again, I find my mouth watering at the thought of a piece of BBQ’d steak, or chicken… (drool!) I’ve even modified my famous potato salad recipe to be more “calorie conscious”, and I’m quite curious as to how it’ll turn out… And speaking of food, and “calorie consciousness”…

Weigh-in this morning. You’d think, after that reasonably fatty frittata that I had for lunch yesterday, and the almost entire slice of lemon youghurt cake, followed by a sausage, five chips, half a tomato, and beans for dinner last night, that my weight would have gone up – at least a little bit, wouldn’t you! I went down a point! From 64.5kg to 64.4kg! I’ve been on Maintenance for a bit over a week now, and I haven’t been over the 65kg mark yet. I keep expecting my weight to go up, but so far it’s been dithering around in the mid to high 64kg zone… As I keep saying, I don’t mind staying within the 64kg zone, in fact, I’m very pleased – but I’m starting to get very edgy, I just feel that the longer I stay down here in the 64kg zone, the more of a weight explosion it’ll be, and the higher my weight’ll go when I finally do start gaining! I’ve stretched out my treadmilling to 22 minutes now, and I’m averaging 1.22km per walk… about 3.66km per day, give or take a few umm… what are parts of a kilometer called again? Give or take a few of them, anyway! 🙂

Tomorrow is traditionally our Day in Telara, and that’s what we’ll be doing, I surmise… though I wouldn’t mind pulling Wynterthyme on WoW out of her mothballs, re-setting her up, and running off to Darnassus with Mouselet, or Bobranda – both Julian’s, and both level 90 (as is Wynterthyme) and having a look at this “Garrison” business that I keep hearing about! We’ll see – I really want to do both! And once again, that’s about it from me for this evening – I’ve already done my evening treadmilling, as I wanted to get it over and done with before I started writing, but Julian is heading out to the kitchen to start getting dinner ready (we’re having a reprise of that lovely pan-fried chicken that we had the other night, with potatoes, this time!) and I really didn’t do much today except puddle around in WoW, getting myself acclimatised to it again – and it is starting to come back to me – Julian couldn’t remember where the Forge in Stormwind was, but I remembered! It’s in the Dwarven Quarter, in a paved courtyard close to one of the Inns 🙂 Anyway, please drop in again tomorrow night – there’s sure to be a lot to tell you all, either Rift-wise, or WoW-wise, and about whether my weight has suddenly remembered that I’m eating quite a lot now, and that perhaps it’s time to get a little… heavier? The Israeli chapter of the clan won’t be arriving until next Friday – it seems that their travel agent stuffed up the bookings  – they were supposed to be arriving on Wednesday – but frankly, with all the bathroom work going on at the moment, I rather welcome the extra couple of days grace! It’s going to be hectic enough getting the weekend organised as it is, with the clan gathering on the Saturday, and Neale and my favourite youngest daughter’s Birthday Celebrations on the Sunday! Next week promises to be… interesting! 😉 However, until tomorrow night, please try to bee very good (only a couple of weeks to go! 😉 ) don’t forget to share your knowledge, it is a way to achieve immortality, and always remember to look after yourselves, to drive carefully, and to keep cool – or warm – depending on the weather… but above all, remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂