Ahhh! A nice, early start this afternoon (for a change!) Well, I haven’t been doing very much, really… remember that orange and black tiger I said I was going to try and tame for a pet? If I could remember how I got there? And then later said that I’d remembered where they were? So, naturally, today I set off to get one. First of all, I went the wrong way – but this is typical of me! If I’m supposed to turn right, I turn left! If I’m supposed to turn left, I end up going straight ahead. I’ve always been like that, ever since I was a little girl and I heard my mother telling someone that she didn’t know her left from her right, and that she always had to stop and look at her hands to see which one she wrote with – and “just like liquid gets into this chalk” (with apologies to the late Mrs. Marsh!) her words got into my head, and I’ve been muddle-headed about directions ever since. Actually, I didn’t actually go the wrong way, I just went the long way… the very l-o-n-g way, because I didn’t realise that I was already on the island-slash-continent that I needed to be on anyway. So… I went from the Exodar, the Draenei capital  on Azuremyst Island, to the Night Elf capital Darnassus, on Teldrassil, and from there I flew (on a hippogriff!) over the central ocean to Stormwind, the Human capital over on Azeroth (the other island-slash-continent) and from there, on to Ironforge, the Dwarven capital, where everyone speaks with a very strong Scottish brogue! Then I ran to Menethal Harbour – via Thelsamar, a small village in Loch Modan, because I thought I might have been able to tame Ashtail, a “Special” grey fox that lives up there – he’s very cute, and quite a few of my WoW girls have him as a Pet. However, I died a few times doing that – I hadn’t realised that nearly all of the animals up that far north were quite a lot higher than I was (say… ohh… about seven or eight levels? hmm?) I didn’t manage to find Ashtail, and it wouldn’t have done me any good even if I had, because you can’t tame a Pet that’s a higher level than you are – they just end up killing you. So I managed to extract myself from Loch Modan and continued on my way down to Menethil Harbour. Now, in the “old” days, I used to make this trip from Stormwind to Menethal Harbour all the time – we used to call it “The Menethal Run” – and it was a combination of mapmaking, “death-running” (at level 1 or 2, just about everything forms an orderly queue to have a go at killing you – and they always succeeded!) So I’d strip off to my underwear, and leave any and all weapons behind, because if you run back (as a ghost) to reclaim your body, you aren’t penalised, but if you run along to the closest Grave Yard, which I always did, your gear took damage, so it was best to run next-to-naked. So as I was saying, I’d run… die… ghost run to the next Grave Yard, resurrect, run, die, ghost run to the next – you get the picture, I’m sure! 🙂 Tedious and clumsy, but it worked! Julian had a level 10 Gnome who explored the entire world that way – sometimes he’d only get to move one step before he got killed again – but it was all good fun! 🙂 You also get to pick up all the Flight Points on the way, which is important, because you can only hire a flying mount to fly to a Flight Point you’ve been to. Well, I made it to Menethal, where I boarded the ship that was supposed to take me to a place where I had to jump off the ship, and swim to the Echo Isles in Durotar – Horde territory! – where I thought the tigers were. Notice I said “thought”, as in past tense? Blizzard, in their infinite wisdom, have seen fit to remove the pretty little level 10 tigers from the Echo Isles – so I’d gone all that way for – well – practically nothing – except that I went up two levels just from Discovering places I hadn’t been to before. So to cut a long story even longer, I then realised that I was stuck in Durotar, Horde Territory, without a Pet, as I’d Stabled mine before I set out (and which was one of the reasons why I’d died so many times, with nothing to defend me!) So I Tamed a temporary pet and set out to find Dishu, who lived in the Northern Barrens – right next door to Durotar, but also Horde Territory! Dishu is another “Special”, like Ashtail, and is quite a highly sought-after Pet. She’s a leopard, in that she’s orange, with black spots (so I’d still get my orange and black cat!) Dishu has three known “spawn” points (places where she’ll appear if and when she feels like it) but even so she’s still very, very hard to find. She was this time, too, and I died another three times, even with a temporary Pet, while running around from spawn point to spawn point looking for her. I was extremely lucky to get her, too, because my stupid temporary Pet almost killed her before I had a chance to try to Tame her! I Dismissed my stupid temporary Pet, and Dishu’s mate promptly killed me! Oh dear – I ran back to my body, and luckily, she was still there! So I Tamed Dishu, and immediately transported myself back home to The Exodar, two levels higher, and proudly accompanied by a Special Pet! 🙂 When I turn level 22, I’m going to fly over to Darkshore to try and tame myself a Ghost Saber! 🙂 Ghost Sabers are large white tigers that spawn from a cat statuette – there are dozens and dozens of these statuettes all over the Elven ruins at Darkshore – you just have to be damn lucky to get one that’ll give you the ghost cat – they’re extremely fierce, too, and take a lot of Taming! And that, gentle readers, was pretty much my day! There are still orange and black tigers that can be Tamed, some are even “Specials” – but they’re all very high level, so I’m afraid that my orange and black tiger Pet is going to have to wait for quite a while, as I’m only a humble level 15!

Food. Seared steak for dinner last night, with five chips, half a tomato, broccoli, and a lovely side salad with capsicum and spring onions! It was really nice – and today at lunchtime I had a turkey, cheese and tomato toastie – Julian says I can eat them if I don’t have them too often – all the carbs in the bread (wholemeal) and the fat in the cheese (even though it was “low-fat” cheese, it wasn’t “no-fat” cheese!) and it was extremely delicious! We have lamb back-strap for dinner tonight – I just hope that the turkey, cheese and tomato toastie doesn’t act like a lead weight on the scales tomorrow morning! (but it probably will!) However…

Weigh-in this morning. Considering all the food I’ve been shoveling into my stomach since I went on Maintenance, this morning’s weigh-in wasn’t too bad – I went from 64.4kg to 64.5kg – up one point – at the moment I seem to be sort-of hovering around the 64.4kg and 64.5kg mark a lot – but I think today’s delicious toastie might “up the ante” a little bit (what am I saying? “a little bit”! It’ll probably be more like “a whole lot!”) Ah well, back to the Ryvita crispbreads with low-fat ricotta and sliced tomato for me tomorrow! 🙂 If the end result (weight-wise) isn’t too bad, maybe I can have a toastie once a week, or maybe once a fortnight…

Julian braved the heat to go out and get our BBQ today – it was decided that as I’d probably never use the beastie anyway, I didn’t really need to have a say in what sort Julian got, as it would be “his” BBQ! Well, he got a beauty! Absolutely! It has a lift up lid, and an extra hot-plate on one side and a plate shelf thingy on the other – I wouldn’t be surprised to find that it even had a kitchen sink hidden in it somewhere! It’s enormous! I can’t wait to try it out – er… beg pardon, for him to try it out! 🙂 I’ve also just been to examine the work on my bathroom – it’s really looking fabulous! Clarke was in this morning, doing “thingz” with the top of the vanity unit – er that is he’s put some sort of wooden base down over the top, and he’s cut the hand basin holes, where the two hand basins will sit – he actually had one of the basins (both of the basins? I really only saw one in situ though) so I got to see what they’ll look like – they’re oval, not round – and I think he was right when he chose the oval basins for me – to put round ones in such a long bench-top would have made them look ridiculously small – so that’s looking pretty good at the moment – and Paul’s finished tiling the shower-slash-toilet wall area, so now there’s the window wall, the wall where the door is, and the wall behind the vanity unit to be tiled – then the shower glass and door (we’ve decided to have a door in the shower section after all) and the caesarstone bench-top, and all “the little fiddly bits around the fjords”, and my bathroom will be finished! Yayyy! 🙂 Unfortunately we won’t be seeing Steve tomorrow, as he has an appointment elsewhere – so we’ll see him next Wednesday instead – however my favourite eldest daughter will be over, and we’ll watch something pre-recorded – “Supergirl”, or “The Librarians”, or “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.”, because I’m quite sure that Satai and Dishu really deserve a bit of a rest, after all their running around today (most of the travelling today was just plain old shank’s pony, or “jogging along”) And once again, peoples, that’s about it from me for tonight! Do drop in again tomorrow night though, to see if we christened the new BBQ for lunch tomorrow (highly unlikely, but… you never know your luck in a big city! 😉 ) if that delicious toastie I had for lunch today did sink to the bottom of the scales like a ten-ton lead weight, what Lee and I watched on television for the afternoon, and how my bathroom is progressing! Clarke said he’d brought me the books of handles/knobs to choose for the drawers in my bathroom, but he’s forgotten to give them to me – I hope he remembers to bring them back tomorrow, so that I can choose something that’s not made out of solid amber! (Winter whispers wistfully: but they were very pretty…) However, until tomorrow night, remember to bee good (remember – only 17 days to go! 😉 ) don’t forget that the person who views the world at 50 the same as they did at 20 has wasted thirty years of their life, and remember to look after yourselves, to keep warm – or cool – depending on the weather, and to drive carefully – but above all, remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂