Well, here we go again! 🙂 So, what do you think of my new header? It would be wonderful indeed if all browsers displayed colours the same way, but alas, if all browsers displayed things in the same way, how could Google say that Chrome was better than Firefox, or IE say that it was better than either of them? See, ya gotta have a selling point, even when the product is free! So – some readers may notice a very small discrepancy in the colours of the background and the header, but I can assure you – they are both exactly the same colour! #A69785… anyway, I hope you like it! 🙂 Oh, and the screen should have a very small patterned border around it – please let me know if you can’t see it!
I’ve just been given my first lesson in Operating The Washing Machine – it’s all very straightforward – except for one thing! Julian keeps the soap powders and stuff in the overhead cupboards. I’m no longer the five foot seven that I used to be, when I was young and charming – unfortunately old age, arthritis, and a wretched curvature of the spine have left me standing, almost on my tippy-toes – at about five foot nothing – on a good day, and that’s after I’ve been stretching on the rack for a few hours! So when Julian was showing me where everything’s kept, I promptly said “I’m not going to be able to reach that!”, to which he gave me a very dirty look and replied that they weren’t allowed to be kept on the bench-top. We’ve compromised – he’ll leave everything as close to the front of the overhead cupboard as possible, and if I still can’t reach the canisters and bottles, he’s going to have to get me a sturdy little stool that I can stand on, if he wants me to take over the laundry duties! Anyway, I’ve just put on my first load of washing – hopefully it’ll come out cleaner than it went in! 😉
This morning I hopped straight into WoW – I wanted to get my ride! 🙂 Julian logged onto Rift, to find that the next patch has gone in – “Fae Yule”, or “Fae Winter”, or something, which is ruddy-well annoying! Alright, so why is it annoying? It’s annoying because they’ve added a whole lot of new bonuses for Patrons – new Minions, new incentives to log on more often and to play for longer, to earn rewards of all sorts of goodies – grr! Just when I’ve been starting to get back into the swing of things in WoW! Now I’m torn! Do I want to concentrate on WoW, and start drifting away from Rift, or do I want to go rushing madly back to Rift, and stop trying to reach the far off galaxy in the World of Warcraft universe that are the new and highly mysterious Garrisons? S’not fair! 
However this morning, I ignored the Rift patch and quickly started leveling up my WoW Hunter instead! I got to level 20 pretty quickly, but as I was in the middle of a particularly long and somewhat tedious quest chain, I persevered with that, and by the time I got back to The Exodar for my Riding training, I was half way through level 21! So, off to the Riding school I went – paid my dues, and was told “Congratulations! You are now an Apprentice Rider!” (or words to that effect!) But… none of the mounts in my Collections became available! All it would tell me was where I could buy these mounts, and how much they were going to cost me! I was not impressed! I could have bought either a brown or a grey Elekk (basically, an elephant!) for nine gold (and there was “Collections” telling me that I could buy them for one gold!) Something had “gang agley”! Anyway, I didn’t want to ride an Elekk, I wanted to ride a big cat! Apparently I could buy one of those for – one gold – in Darnassus, the Home of the Night Elves (up in Teldrassil, the big tree!) so off I went to Darnassus, and found the Riding Cat vendor. Would you believe, she wouldn’t sell me one – not at any price! Get this… because I wasn’t considered “Exalted” with Darnassus! AArrggghhh! “Oh, bother,” said Pooh, when his hopes were dashed. I logged out, and logged in again as someone else who was “Exalted” with Darnassus (well, she’s a Draenei, and she has a Riding Cat, so she must be!) but luckily she read the fine print on the Riding Cat’s Pedigree before handing over the gold… the fine print read: “Bind on Pickup”, which meant that as soon as she took hold of the Riding Cat’s reins, it became bound to her, and couldn’t be given to anyone else. As she already had one of these Riding Cats – she didn’t need another, so I logged her out and went back to my level 21 and-a-half year old Satai. All I could think of to do was to ditch my quests on the Azuremyst Isles, and “migrate” to Teldrassil, where I’d have to start at the very beginning like a little level one year old, doing all the silly little baby quests, and “work my way up” the Reputation Tree until I reached the position of “Exalted” (actually, I just checked – at the moment I’m “Honored” with Darnassus, next would be “Revered”, and finally “Exalted” – so maybe it wouldn’t have been such a long, hard slog, after all!) I was on the point of organising all of that, and as I didn’t want to keep on jogging around, I caved in and bought myself an Elekk. I couldn’t ride it! The Elekk I’d bought could only be ridden by a Journeyman Rider, and I was only an Apprentice! That was an expensive way to find out! Nine gold down the drain, until I was experienced enough to become a Journeyman Rider! So I bought another, smaller, less expensive Elekk – one that said “Suitable for Apprentice Riders” marked in red ink on his Pedigree Papers (please note! No Mounts have Pedigree Papers ! It’s a joke, Joyce!) Finally! A Mount of my own! I couldn’t ride him! What??!! The error message read: “you need to be an apprentice rider to use this mount” “I beg your pardon? I am an Apprentice Rider!” I yelled at the screen in frustration! Apparently, I wasn’t. Yes, I’d been to the Riding Trainer, yes, I’d paid for my lesson, and yes (again!) she’d told me that I was now an Apprentice Rider! But I hadn’t entered the Training window and clicked on the button marked “Learn”, had I, because the last time I had to do that was years and years ago – just about everything has changed, and I’ve forgotten a lot. The Training window with the “Learn” button isn’t marked anywhere, or pointed to in any way. Why are Game designers and programmers so bloody dim that they just expect everyone to know! (and for that matter, why am I so bloody dim and forgetful that I didn’t remember!) Anyway, as soon as I clicked that “Learn” button, all of a sudden a whole heap of Mounts became available to me, and I didn’t have to migrate to Darnassus and do silly little baby quests after all! 🙂
Food: last night we had sausages for dinner – well, I only had one – and the obligatory five chips, green beans, and a nice salad, with spring onion, mushrooms, capsicum, and iceberg lettuce – eating “proper” food is still a big novelty for me, and it all tastes wonderful! 🙂 For lunch today I reverted to my two Ryvita crispbreads, this time with low-fat ricotta, ham, and tomato slices (with plenty of salt and pepper!) – I have no idea what we’re having for dinner tonight – chicken, perhaps? That’d be very nice… so would a nice little piece of steak… However, those sausages last night must have been really good ones, because…
Weigh-in this morning. Remember how I keep expecting my weight to blossom forth and grow up to the clouds like Jack’s beanstalk? This morning however… I’d lost three points! I went from 64.7kg to 64.4kg! I don’t know about all of you, but I think that’s truly amazing! I hit Maintenance on November 28th, and it’s now been twelve days and I’m still teetering around the 64.4 – 64.6kg mark! Well, “They” always say, if something sounds too good to be true, it generally is, so I’m not expecting my weight to stay around this level for much longer – but it sure is nice while it’s lasting! 🙂
By the time Paul went home this afternoon just about all of the tiling in the bathroom had been done, including the pretty mosaic highlight tiles at the back of the two alcoves! There’s only a very small bit of tiling left to do on the wall where the sliding door will be – less than half a wall, really, as he’s already tiled up to the other side of, and above, the door – and those highlight tiles really “make” the room, too – they look lovely, and just as I imagined they’d look! The mirror was measured for today, and will probably go in soon after the grouting has been done – it’s going to be a really l-o-n-g mirror, which will help the room look even bigger! Oh, it’s so close to being finished now, I can almost taste it! (actually, I don’t think I really want to taste it – but I’m sure you all know what I mean! It really does look fabulous! 🙂 ) But once again, that’s about it from me for tonight! Tomorrow we have a lot of shopping to do for the weekend – for the BBQ on Saturday, and the Big Double Birthday Bash on Sunday – so I don’t think that very much Rifting or WoW-ing will be done, but – it’s almost Christmas, so eat, drink, and be merry – a bit, anyway – and call back again tomorrow night to see how everything went – from my weight and my bathroom, to how our day progressed! There’s sure to be heaps to tell you all! 🙂 Until then, though – do bee good (because… 😉 ) remember that if your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete, and don’t forget to keep cool – or warm – depending on what the weather’s like, to drive carefully, and to look after yourselves – but most importantly, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂
My Word! 