Well, I’m starting a little bit later than I wanted to, but we’ve only just returned from our Big Day Out – however, much has been accomplished! I’ve been to the hairdresser, and had my Warfarin blood test. We’ve purchased the Birthday presents, and the major part of all the Christmas Presents, though I have yet to get one for Julian – my favourite eldest daughter is being press-ganged into “escorting” me around Chadstone next week, for the sole purpose of getting something for him (and looking at handbags, and makeup and rings that might fit me – “only kidding, dear!”, says Winter, crossing her fingers behind her back! 😉 ) We had lunch at Doncaster Shoppingtown today – downstairs, this time, and I had a ham, cheese and tomato toastie (*blush*) as well as a – and this is probably going to sound as though it belongs in a book entitled “Confessions of a Sugar Junkie” – beautiful, very large, brownie, which could just as easily have been called “a very large block of chocolate flavoured sugar”! Oh, the calories! I’ll be paying for that brownie for the next three months, or more! And you know what? While the brownie was very nice, I really felt quite ill afterwards – too much sugar – and I still feel slightly nauseous just thinking about it – however that’s one of my “deprivation itches” scratched, and next time I’ll have something a lot smaller, and not quite so rich! I also said I wouldn’t have another toastie for at least a couple of weeks, but quite truthfully, it really was the lesser of all the evils nestled in the display case! (apart from the brownie!) and I felt that after my weigh-in this morning, I could maybe afford to indulge a little bit…  Anyway, I walked the length and breadth of Doncaster Shoppingtown almost three times today, so that should go some way to atoning for my gluttony at lunchtime! (I hope!)

Last night I played WoW for a while, and got Satai up to level 22. Just to be on the safe side, I looked up what level the Ghost Saber Tooth cats in Darkshore were, because I was determined to get one. I thought that at level 22 I was probably high enough to go after one, and I didn’t think that the mobs over there would be too high for me, but – best to be safe, rather than sorry, so I did a bit of research. The Ghost Saber Tooth cat is usually between level 19 and level 21, so I reckoned I’d be safe enough (if the cat was that level, I figured that the mobs should be around that level too) so off I went. First, I Stabled my Pet, Dishu – I didn’t want any possibility that I might “accidentally” lose her, and re-called my temporary Boar from Durotar (the stupid one, that nearly killed Dishu when I was trying to Tame her!) So there I am in Darkshore, running around the Ruins of Mathystra, looking for cat figurines! There were plenty of mobs there to get in my way too, but… they were only level 12! I found that I was running around killing them with only one or two shots, so they were more of a mild annoyance than a problem (and they were dropping some fairly decent loot for only level 12’s, too!) The cat figurines are fairly scarce, and very, very few of them even spawn the Ghost Saber Tooth cat. Once, many, many years ago, I remember running around there for a couple of days – camping out in the ruins – searching for my GST! For every figurine that you find that doesn’t spawn the cat, you get to keep the figurine in your bag – the highest number of figurines I’ve even had before getting the cat itself was about 20, I think! Anyway, last night I’d made three circuits of the area and only found seven “empty” figurines – then I got lucky, and I found my Ghost Saber Tooth cat on my eighth figurine – and once again, that ruddy stupid Boar Pet was nearly my undoing! Mind you, he was a very effective Pet – polished off mobs with the greatest of ease (sometimes too much ease!) which is something you want in your Pet! However, as soon as I found a cat figurine, I’d “Dismiss” the Boar, and try to pick up the figurine. If I did pick it up (if it didn’t spawn the Ghost Saber Tooth) I’d re-call the Boar, and off we’d go again. Well, I came to the eighth figurine, Dismissed the Boar, and tried to pick up the figurine. Two things happened at the same time! First, the Ghost Saber Tooth materialised, and secondly, a Troll mob appeared behind me and started attacking me! Now, if you’re trying to Tame a Pet and your concentration is interrupted by an attack or whatever, the potential Pet gets mad and starts attacking you, too! So… I re-called the ruddy Boar, who promptly killed the mob for me, then turned and started attacking the Ghost Saber Tooth who’d been attacking me because my Taming routine had been interrupted! Once again, I wasn’t going to lose my potential Pet, so I “Abandoned” the Boar! “Dismissing” the Pet means that you can re-call them later – “Abandoning” the Pet means that they’re gone for good. I was a bit sorry to lose that Boar – he was a damn good fighter – but let’s face it – it’s easy enough to pick up another Boar – they seem to live just about everywhere you go, which was why I Tamed him as temporary Pet in the first place (I hadn’t even named him, which is very unusual for me!) In the end though, I ended up with my Ghost Saber Tooth cat, whom I have named “Shadowfang” 🙂 I immediately “Hearthed” (“zapped” myself back to The Exodar!) where I walked Shadowfang around for a few minutes, because… (and this is quite amusing to watch happen to people who don’t know to expect this!) after about ten minutes, the Ghost Saber Tooth cat suddenly keels over, dead! Just… walk… walk… walk… fall over, dead! All you have to do is use your Resurrect Pet function on them, and they’re fine again 🙂 After that, I went back to my questing again, and now I’ve almost finished all the quests there – and I can’t remember where I get sent off to next! I’ll find out tonight, I guess…

Food: well, I’ve already told you about my lunch today, and we’re having (good) sausages with all the usuals for dinner tonight. Tomorrow, of course, will be the BBQ luncheon – Julian will be BBQing steak, salmon, and chicken (I’m having some chicken, please!) and there’ll be pita bread and some smoked almond and currant hummus which Julian has just made (and it’s delicious! He just gave me a teeny taste of it!) It’s basically home-made hummus, with finely chopped up smoked almonds and vincotto in it, and sprinkled with currants and olive oil, to serve – I found the recipe in the December/January 2016 Donna Hay magazine and I thought it sounded nice, as well as quite intriguing, so I talked him into making it! 😉 We’re also having a home-made potato salad, using seasoned plain Greek youghurt, with spring onions (or chives) as the dressing.  If it’s warm enough we’ll eat outside on the decking – if it’s not, we’ll eat at the dining room table, and a good time should be had by all! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. And the reason I indulged so greedily at lunchtime today… I went down (down!) another four points! I couldn’t believe my eyes! I went from 64.4kg to 64.0kg! So at lunchtime today, I thought “bugger it! I’m going to be naughty, and have something I know I shouldn’t! My weight should be going up, and it’s not, so I’ll make it go up by eating all of this enormous sugary brownie! So there! 😛 ” So… let’s see what happens tomorrow! I’ll probably shoot right up to 67kg, and it’ll serve me right, too – but at this point? I don’t care! (but if I do go up to 67kg overnight, you can bet your sweet bippy that I will care! I’ll probably cry, and never eat a brownie again as long as I live!)

Having been out all day today, I wasn’t able to keep my eagle-eye on the bathroom doin’s – but when we got home I found Paul just putting the final trim around the window and the shower alcoves – by the time he left tonight, the tiling had finally been finished – all that’s left to do to it now is the grouting, which was supposed to have been done on Monday, however there’s now some confusion as to whether the painter is coming in on Monday, or whether Paul will be doing the grouting! I don’t care which it is, as long as I get my bathroom soon, because it really does look fantastic (if very dusty and messy at the moment!) And once again – you know the drill – that’s about it from me for tonight! 🙂 But please call in again tomorrow night, and find out how our BBQ luncheon went, if my weight has tripled overnight, and how our preparations for Sunday’s Big Double Birthday Bash are progressing! I might mention, too, that it’s our Silver Wedding Anniversary on Monday – which we may have to postpone until the New Year, due to time constraints! Anyway, until tomorrow night, please try to bee good (not long to go now! 😉 ) remember that the best way to predict the future is to invent it, and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to drive carefully, and to keep cool – or warm – depending on the weather – but whatever else you do, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

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! 🙂

Well, here it is, another late start – and a new template – a free one, too, this time (just for a change! 😉 ) I always check, at least once a week, to see if there are any new templates, and this afternoon I was rewarded with this one. I think it’s quite nice – I haven’t had time to make a header for it yet, so you’ll have to put up with one of the “standard default” colour and header – I’ll see what I can make tomorrow though, as I bought a new font the other day from one of my old font haunts, “The Scriptorium“, which is just itching to be used in a header (and why I bought the font in the first place!) So, let’s see what’s been happening today… Paul arrived early this morning and got stuck into my bathroom – I went and checked on it about half an hour ago and it’s coming along beautifully! Last night almost all of the shower and toilet wall had been tiled – there were really only a couple of rows still to be done – well, they’re all finished now, and he’s finished the window wall, too! Lovely very, very pale grey marble tiles, floor to ceiling! The very small, narrow, hard-to-get-at area under the vanity unit has been tiled (I think! There’s too much equipment stacked up in the room to be able to get in and see it all properly!) – so I think that only leaves the door wall to be tiled now! Then, of course, it has to be grouted, but that probably won’t be happening until next Monday, because the glue under the tiles on the wall that still has to be done probably won’t be set and dry enough before then. Once the grouting has been completed, and is dry enough, Clarke will be able to measure up and order the glass panels for the shower screen and door, and with a great deal of luck, the caesarstone bench top will be ready to be installed (that is if they can get it around two close corners and into the bathroom! It’s a very long bench top!) So that’s where things are at as far as my bathroom is concerned! 🙂 All coming along nicely! I do have one teeny little grizzle though – Clarke didn’t come in today, so I still don’t have the books of drawer handles and knobs to chose from! Before Paul left this evening, I asked him to remind Clarke that I’m still waiting for them! 😉

My favourite eldest daughter was over today, so we spent most of the late morning and the whole of the afternoon watching episodes of “Arrow”, which seems to be starting out on a new story arc – and quite an intriguing one too, so far! However this morning before she arrived, I dived (dove?) back into World of Warcraft – my Draenei Hunter Beastmaster only had five levels to go before she could learn to ride (at level 20 you can learn to ride a mount – in Rift, you’re born (or resurrected!) already knowing how to ride! 😛 ) and I wanted to get to level 20, not only so that I could travel around a lot faster on cat-back (or elephant-back, or fancy ostrich-back, or whatever) but also to see if all the fancy mounts that my characters have accumulated over the years would be available for my use, or whether I was going to have to go and buy them all again, in which case I’d probably be leaving World of Warcraft permanently, new Garrison possibilities or not! So anyway, now I only have three levels to go to find out – I dinged level 17 this morning! Actually, if I can get Satai up to level 22 tomorrow, I’ll go over to Darkshore and see if I can get myself one of the Ghost Saber Pets from a cat figurine! That’s been one of the first things my Hunters have always done, as soon as they “got old enough” to do so! (and nearly all of my fifty characters are Hunters!)

Food: after my little adventure into delicious turkey, low-fat cheese and tomato toasties for lunch yesterday, I decided that discretion might be the better part of eating, so I reverted to my almost equally delicious Ryvita crispbreads with low-fat ricotta and sliced tomato (and plenty of salt and pepper!) And tonight we’re having sausages for dinner – once again, “good” sausages (although, is there really such a thing as a “good” sausage?) with proper sausage skins an’ all – with chips (I think!) and from the sounds coming from the kitchen, a salad… I’ve also decided to cut my three treadmillings per day down to two… Why? Well, mostly because my knees are getting very sore, and because whilst treadmilling this morning, my left knee was making quite distressing “clicks” with every step I took. Anyway, I’ll try doing just two twenty-two (sometimes twenty-three) minutes per walk, which works out to approximately 1.23km each walk – making for a total of about 2.46km per day, and see how that goes for a while (and if my knees calm down a bit with the respite!)

Anyway, it’s “that” time again, I’m afraid – so…

+———————–+ * Dinner & Television Break * +———————–+

So here I am again, sausage, chips, beans and mixed salad eaten, and television watched. We usually don’t watch it, but tonight we kept the television on ABC1 to watch the 7.30 Report, where Leigh Sales was interviewing Harrison Ford about the new Star Wars movie – naturally it was the last ruddy segment of the show and we had to sit through the rest of it before he was on. My goodness, he’s aged! (but then, haven’t we all! 😦 ) and neither Julian nor I thought he looked very well – or maybe he was just tired, or jet-lagged… Anyway, I’m quite looking forward to the movie, though I think we’ll wait until January to see it, after all the hype and crowds have died down a bit 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. It was the toastie wot done it! It was the toastie! I’ll never eat a toastie again! 😉 Well, I will though, because I have to be able to eat at least semi-normally, and it was very nice – but perhaps I’ll only have a toastie about once a fortnight or something, because I went up two points, from 64.5kg to 64.7kg! After the sausage tonight, I shall probably go up to 65.0kg! We shall see… I’m also starting to get a little concerned about my consumption of chewing gum. I think I mentioned once before that I hate chewing gum – I absolutely detest the stuff, and I think that watching other people chewing gum is disgusting. But I got Julian to get me some sugar-less gum to chew while I was on the treadmill, because there’s no way of carrying a bottle of water that I can drink while I’m walking that I can think of, but my mouth gets so dry that I can’t even talk by the time I get off the treadmill. Well, the gum works just fine – I can walk for my twenty-two – twenty-three minutes, counting aloud, and the gum keeps my mouth from getting dry – but! (you knew there was going to be a “but!” in there somewhere, didn’t you! 😉 ) It’s very addictive, and I love the taste of it when you first start chewing it – but it rapidly runs out of taste, so I wrap it in a piece of tissue and throw it out, and find myself starting to chew on a new piece of gum almost immediately – wherever I am, or whatever I’m doing – so can any of you suggest some way of stopping my mouth from drying out so much, instead of my having to chew this wretched chewing gum (even though it tastes nice!)? I’d much prefer to have a bottle of water, if I could think of some way of drinking it while I was walking, without having to let go of the treadmill handles…

I’m not quite sure what’s happening tomorrow – I’m pretty sure we’ll be home most of the day, and as I’ve “volunteered” to clean out the cat litter boxes from now on, I guess that’ll be my first job after breakfast (it shouldn’t take long – we only have the one cat, Flipper, and two litter boxes to sift and stir) Poor little Flipper – she’s very arthriticky, and the effects of her cartrophen injections aren’t lasting as long as they used to. These last few days, despite the warmer weather, she’s been very stiff and sore – she was due to have her next injection next week, but Julian rang the Vet and took her up today, instead. She absolutely hates going to the Vet, even though she always feels better after she’s been – I think she associates the “feeling better” with the “coming home again”, not with her visit to the Vet and the prickle in the back of her neck! Oh, she lets out such a wail of anguish and despair when she sees the cat box! She put on a right show this afternoon, and kept it up all the way to the Vet – but was quiet as a mouse on the way home again! 🙂 Anyway, she’s a lot better this evening, and moving a lot more freely – let’s hope that with the injection this afternoon and the extra anti-inflammatory drop we put on her dinner last a little longer this time! She’s a happy little cat most of the time, as long as she’s got her cave, her food, and most of all, her Daddy Pats! 🙂

Anyway, once again that’s about it from me for tonight – I think I’ve rambled on long enough – but feel free to call back again tomorrow night, to see how my bathroom is progressing and if I’ve chosen the handles and/or knobs for the vanity unit drawers, if my weight is still on its way up (it probably will be – but it’s supposed to, anyway!) what my various characters are up to in World of Warcraft, and how Flipper’s doing! Until then though, do try very hard to bee extra good ( 😉 ) don’t forget that attitude is the difference between an ordeal and an adventure, and always remember to drive carefully, to look after yourselves, and to keep cool – or warm – depending on the weather – but above all, please remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

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! 🙂

Well, it’s been another quiet day on the home front – too hot to go out and do anything, though Julian ventured out this afternoon to check the P.O. Box and do a bit of shopping… There was a little bit of disturbing news this afternoon though – the house next door was burgled on Friday! It’s strange – we were home during the afternoon, and Paul was busy working here all day, and none of us saw or heard anything untoward… except… during the mid-afternoon on Friday, around maybe 3.00pm? We can’t really remember – Julian thought he heard one of the car alarms, and went out into the garage (which is accessible through the house, so he didn’t go outside at all) to investigate. Naturally, by the time he got to the garage door, the noise had stopped – so he more-or-less just shrugged his shoulders, unlocked and re-locked both cars, and came inside again. I too thought I heard a sound, but I wasn’t really paying any attention – I thought it might have been Julian receiving an SMS (because his phone makes a sound like a submarine “ping” when he gets an SMS), or maybe one of our UPS’s complaining briefly about some sort of power fluctuation, but when the noise stopped, I promptly forgot about it. We’re now wondering if the noise we heard was the burglary in progress, and wasn’t from our place at all, but from our next door neighbours! We rang the number provided on the Police notification form that we found in our letterbox and told them, but from what I could hear of Julian’s side of the conversation, they didn’t seem even mildly interested. So as I said – it was all a little bit disturbing! Now I don’t know whether I want to stay home all the time – just in case, or if I want to be out all the time, so that I’m not here if anyone does break in!

Clarke arrived really early this morning – I hadn’t even finished in the bathroom! (or maybe we were just running a tad late… 😉 ) so I just flung on my jeans and a t-shirt and went out to show him what I’d meant about the shower bench being maybe a bit too steep. After clearing off all the little wedges and pins that hold the tiles in place while the glue under them is drying, I actually sat on it – and with dry jeans sitting on equally dry tiles, it was actually very comfortable! The fact is that when I’m in a sitting position on the bench, both my feet sit flat and firmly on the ground, so maybe I’m not going to be in deadly danger of sliding off the bench and onto the floor when both the tiles, and my backside, are “shower-wet”! 🙂 Clarke did end up pulling (prising?) off one of the tiles that comprise the shower floor – he said it was too low (or something!) but it’s back on again now (I think – I haven’t really checked now that everyone’s gone home!) Anyway, one shower wall is now tiled, and is looking really good. It’s the one that has the alcoves in it, which are not tiled yet – I think they want the bigger wall tiles to be set and grouted before they put in the highlight tiles. I’ll ask either Paul or Clarke tomorrow… I’m quite anxious to see what those little mosaic highlight tiles look like once they’re actually in the alcoves, and whether they’ll look as good as the marble tiles and vanity unit do, colour-wise, because so far, I’ve done exceptionally well with my choice of materials and colours (I think, anyway!) Yes, the vanity unit is in, and it’s going to be totally fantastic! For once in my life, I’m going to be able to sit in the bathroom and actually be close enough to the mirror to see what I’m doing with my hair and makeup, without having to resort of a small mirror, propped up on a rickety and wobbly stand! The vanity unit colour is a sort-of a matt finish (i.e. it’s not high-gloss or shiny!) “aubergine” colour (Oh, alright then, “egg-plant” colour, OK?!) so it’s not brown, for a change, and depending on the light, will show subtle shades of mauve and purple. I wasn’t sure what sort of opening and closing mechanisms the drawers were going to have – sometimes you don’t need knobs or handles, there’s just a small indent in the top of the drawers to act as handles – but unfortunately that’s not the case with these drawers – I’ve been told that I have to choose handles for them, only not the ludicrously expensive handles that I innocently chose for the kitchen bench handles when we were re-decorating the house in Hampton East, where my favourite youngest daughter and her husband now live. It’s Clarke’s fault! He gave me a couple of books of handles to choose from, so I just flipped though them all, and found a matching set of handles for the whole kitchen, from cupboards, to drawers, to doors that I really liked, and said “I’ll have them, please!” Unfortunately we couldn’t use them – they would have cost over four thousand dollars ($4,000.00!) for the six or seven handles that we needed! (well, they were made from solid pieces of amber!) That was a real shame – because they really did look lovely… So I’ve been very firmly told – “No more solid pieces of amber handles!” Oh well, maybe they’ll have some amethyst, or lapis-lazuli handles that would go… (only kidding Julian, only kidding!) Clarke is bringing over his books of drawer knobs for me to choose from tomorrow – I wonder if they’re the same ones? No, surely they would have updated their styles in the three or so years since we re-furbished Hampton East! Anyway, I shall try and choose a little more… cheaply… this time! (It wasn’t my fault! They didn’t show any prices in the stupid books!) I’ll let you know what sort of knobs (or handles!) I choose 🙂

So this morning I played a secondary character in World of Warcraft – also a Hunter Beastmaster – called “Satai”, who has “earned” her second Pet that she’s named “Remorse”. When a hunter starts out in the world, they’re given a Pet – which supposedly reflects, or is representative of their Race – to fight with them. The Draenei get a…. moth! Granted, it’s a pretty big moth (about as big as a medium-sized cat?) but it’s a moth, all the same! (and by the way, Blizzard, just exactly how is a ruddy Moth representative of the Draenei?!) Once you reach level 10 you learn all about how to Tame, Call, and Dismiss a pet of your own choosing – many, many years ago I used to travel over half of Azeroth to tame myself a proper tiger coloured tiger – orange and black – a passage fraught with danger and death (the islands where the tigers live is deep within Horde territory – and I’m Alliance! It never stopped me before though, and only my memory is stopping me this time!). Unfortunately I’ve momentarily forgotten exactly what route I took to get there, so “Tiger-tiger” will have to wait a bit until I do remember! 😉 I made it from level 1 to level 13 today, which was pretty good going, I thought (alas! No experience enhancing potions here on World of Warcraft! ) Actually, I do remember how to get to the “tiger islands”, but I’ll have to do a fair bit of scouting around to see what’s changed geographically in the game before I set out to tame my pretty orange and black Richmond Football Team Tiger 🙂

Food. Well, because I was so late last night I was able to tell you then what I’d had for dinner – the delicious pork fillet with onions! Tonight we’re having steak, five chips (I presume!) and a salad! (with no dressing on mine because I can’t stand the stuff! I do like it on other types of salad though, just not on “garden” salads!) and once again I had two Ryvita crispbreads with low-fat ricotta, sandwich ham, and slices of tomato for lunch today (and I munched on a raw carrot for “dessert”) I think I’m doing fairly well at the moment, because…

Weigh-in this morning. Yet another day in the 64kg zone! 🙂 This morning I found that my weight had gone from 64.4kg to…. 64.4kg! I stayed the same again, for the second day in a row… and again, I’m not bitching and grizzling about it! Now that I’m on Maintenance, I want to stay the same weight, for as long as possible! Oh No! [insert very rude word of your choice here] I shouldn’t have said that! I hope my body wasn’t listening! If it was, I’ll either go down again tomorrow (which wouldn’t be so bad now, would it! 😉 ) or go skyrocketing upwards – which I am expecting to do… just so long as it doesn’t go too high!

So, for me, tomorrow will probably be more of the same as today – Julian has Office-type work to do, and hopefully a bit more of my bathroom will get tiled. Clarke says the caesarstone vanity top should take about a week, so maybe by next Monday I’ll have the marble bench in my marble bathroom (it’s not really marble, it just looks like it!) My favourite eldest daughter will probably be over on Wednesday, Thursday is a mystery so far, and Friday, I have the hairdresser again! And once again, that’s about it from me for tonight! Please drop by again tomorrow night and find out whether or not my body was listening when I foolishly said that at this point, I actually want to stay at the same weight, and what it’s done in retaliation, whether I mustered up the courage to go after my tiger-looking-tiger in WoW, whether I’ve found my drawer knobs (or handles!) and how much of my bathroom has still to be tiled! Until then, however, please at least attempt to bee good (do I have to remind you? 😉 ) remember not to just go through life, but to grow through life, and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to keep cool – or warm – depending on Melbourne’s crazy weather, and to drive carefully – but most importantly, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

Goodness, what a late start tonight! That’s because today was a Sunday, and we usually romp around in Telara all day, only today we didn’t – we romped around on Azuremyst Isle, for a change! Where and what is Azuremyst Isle? I hear you mumbling – well, Azuremyst Isle is a large island – two islands, actually, just off the “coast” (for want of a better term) of Teldrassil, which is a gigantically, enormously gargantuan tree rising up out of the ocean to the north-west of Kalimdor (do you really want a link to that too? Look, if you’re really interested, click on its link from the Teldrassil one!) where the Night Elves live, work and play. The “capital” of Azuremyst is called The Exodar, which is actually part of a crashed space ship – but I digress! We discussed at some length (or about three minutes total, whichever comes first!) whether to pick up where we left off last week in Telara with our two Primalists, or to venture into the strange World of Warcraft universe, “resurrecting” (as it were) two of our top level 90 characters, Wynterthyme and either Mouselet or Bobranda, as mentioned last night, or to start off afresh, with two new characters on one of the new Oceanic servers, because let’s face it, these new servers, one being actually based in Sydney, are a lot faster than the state-side server that our older characters are on – we could have transferred them, but unlike Rift, where transfers are free, we would have had to pay about $50 (about $25 each, from memory) and probably more importantly, it’s been sooo long since we played World of Warcraft that we’re both a little bit hazy about game-play, abilities, and strategies – apart from the expansions, changes, and new features that Blizzard have introduced since we last played! So anyway, we opted to start with two new characters, to bring up together to face the challenges of their little world… After even more discussion about which race to play (about five minutes this time!) we decided to create two Draenei (which is a word like “sheep” – it can be singular or plural!) one of the “Alliance” races. Mine is a Hunter Beastmaster called Callisanda, Julian’s is a Mage called Betrübnis (don’t ask me how to pronounce it, but it means “dejection”, “sorrow”, or “sadness” – nice, huh? 😉 ) Draenei are strange creatures from another planet – some rude people call them “Space Goats”, because they have hooves and horns – you can find some art-work of them here, if you’re interested. So, anyway, we started off with our two newbies and actually managed to get them to level 10 by this evening, so we were quite pleased with that – but I can’t wait to get to level 20, when we can start riding, instead of having to run (actually more like a slow jog!) everywhere! In Rift you can start riding from level 1, if you have a mount, but in WoW you have to be level 20, and you have to pay money to learn to ride! Oh, and I did manage to find that Action Bar Addon that I’d used before, and that I’d been looking for – it works a lot better than the other one – so now I have all these extra Action Bars, I also have the headache of working out what (keyboard) keys to bind to which buttons… *sigh* decisions, decisions… This detour into World of Warcraft does not mean that we have abandoned Rift! We’re… just having a little holiday from it, is all! 🙂 (which reminds me – I haven’t processed my Minions tonight yet!)

Julian has just been speaking to Clarke – we both have a few concerns about my bathroom – Julian is worried that by the time they get to the part where they put the glass shower screen in, the Glaziers will be closed for the holidays – and I’m concerned that the pitch on my bench seat is too steep, and that when I get my bare bottom on the wet bench tiles, I’ll slide straight off it onto the floor! (which would not be a good look!) I understand why the bench has to slope that way – it’s so that water won’t pool there and cause leaks and problems a few years down the track – but this bench looks… odd… out of plumb… too extreme – even from the doorway! Oh well, I’ll try sitting on it tomorrow, and see how it feels. Clarke has assured us both that Julian’s fears about a late finish because of the holidays, and mine about the bench seat being too steep are groundless, and has confirmed that the vanity unit will be installed tomorrow, and the template for the caesarstone top taken, so I guess that’s two less things to have to worry about! 🙂

Last night we had some delicious pan-fried chicken for dinner, with kipfler potatoes, half a tomato, five chips and a spoonful of beans – really yummy – and there was some chicken and potatoes left over, so for my lunch we mushed up the potatoes and spread them on a couple of Ryvita crispbreads, then sliced the chicken up on top of that – I thought it could have done with a little more salt, but it was still just as delicious cold, as it had been last night for dinner! This evening we had pan-fried pork fillet with onions, brussels sprouts, the obligatory five chips, and half a tomato. The pork was really nice, too, especially with the onions! So I’m eating really well now – cross fingers and toes that I’m not eating too much, because I feel really full after dinner… which brings me to….

Weigh-in this morning. I keep expecting the worst…  this can’t possibly last! I stayed the same again this morning – I went from 64.4kg to 64.4kg. Who knows what’ll happen tomorrow morning! All this eating has got to catch up with me sooner or later, surely! I mean, I won’t be miserable if it doesn’t, but I’m starting to get anxious that the longer I don’t put on any extra weight, the more I will put on when I do start to go up again! (worry,worry,worry,worry!)

Well, tomorrow, I’ve already told you about – Julian has a whole heap of Office work and stuff to do (amongst other things!) and I have a whole heap of stuffing around with WoW and/or Rift. As usual (sometimes I feel a bit like a fish with a bicycle!) Tuesday is likely to be more of the same – especially as it’s going to be hot – I’m the sort of person who hates going out and doing anything if the temperature goes above 23C! I do have one idea of what to get Julian for Christmas, but I have absolutely no idea of how I’m going to get out to get “it/them” for him – in fact I don’t even know where there’s a suitable shop that sells “this item/these items”! I may have to stoop to online shopping, or even a gift voucher, heaven forbid! 😉 We should have time to pick up my favourite youngest daughter’s Birthday present next Friday, when I go to the hairdresser; I’ll probably have to get Julian to pick up Neale’s Birthday present next time he’s at Doncaster Shoppingtown… and I guess I’d better get busy writing Christmas Cards, if I want people to get them before Easter next year! And with that somewhat whimsical note, it’s time to say that that’s about it from me again for tonight! But please call in again tomorrow night, and find out if we’ve decided that the shower bench seat is too steep and will have to be dismantled and re-done (don’t worry, I’m sure we won’t! 🙂 ) or whether my weight has suddenly gone through the ceiling, and what the new vanity unit looks like! Until tomorrow though, do try to bee good (the countdown is on! 😉 ) always remember that the only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be – and don’t forget to keep cool – or warm – depending on the weather du jour, to drive carefully, and to look after yourselves… but most importantly, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

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! 🙂

And yet another very busy day! Julian says “Get used to it, with Christmas so close!” – so OK, I’ll get used to it – but it doesn’t mean that I have to like it! This morning wasn’t a rush, but it was “fast-paced” – no time to sit and smell the daisies, or play a bit of Rift or WoW (but I did process my Minions! One has to get one’s priorities right, after all! 😉 ) S’truth, it’s hot in here! I just had to get up and go and turn on the air conditioner! Where was I? Oh yes, a busy morning. My hairdressing appointment was for 11.45am, so we left around 11-ish, checked the P.O. Box, where we found that my brand-new Driver’s Licence had arrived – with the weirdest signature on it! You see, when we went up to have my name change registered at Vic Roads and to get a new licence, I also had to have a new photo taken for it (which as it turns out, actually isn’t too horrible, for a driver’s licence photo!) as well as a new signature to go on the card. Well, signing “Winter”, or “W”, is still very new to me, too (I knew I should have started practicing my new signature months ago!) and I accidentally signed “C” instead of “W”! Big “whoops!” – but the nice lady who was taking the photo just smiled and said “Never mind!”, and gave me another piece of signature paper to sign, which I did – with a rather wobbly “W” this time (because I hadn’t had any practice at it!) and off we went… this morning my brand-new licence arrived… with the correct “W” overlaying the incorrect “C”, which meant that a part of the first letter of my surname on the incorrect signature was sitting so close to the first letter of the correct one that it looks as though I’ve written “IPxxxx” instead of “Pxxxx”! What a mess! Oh well, luckily they don’t seem to check signatures that closely any more! (or at least I hope they don’t – if they do, I think I’m going to have trouble explaining things all the time!) Anyway, off we went to Doncaster, and I had my hair done – then we went and had lunch… and I had a proper food lunch at Jamaica Blue for the first time in what feels like centuries! 🙂 I had a spinach and bacon and fetta frittata, which looked and sounded 100% better than it tasted (and they put dressing on my salad, but because I’ve always preferred my salads “naked”, I didn’t eat it!) I also had a slice of lemon youghurt cake (no icing or cream or anything, just a nice, plain piece of cake) which I ate almost all of, and then wished that I hadn’t – because it was far too much, far too soon, not to mention sheer and utter greed (which is sort-of understandable – I hadn’t had even a taste of cake since before August 2014!) …and I felt slightly nauseous after afterwards 😦 That’ll larn me! So next time, I’ll only eat half of it! 😉 Then we went and bought heaps of coffee – not all of it for us, most of it was for my favourite eldest daughter, and then we went and got her a small tea canister from T2. In the meantime, I’d spotted Suzanne Grae downstairs, which seemed to have what looked like a long(ish) sleeved red top sitting in their doorway. I had to investigate… my arms look so… horrible, with all the excess skin hanging off them… that I’m almost desperate for long-sleeved summer tops – which, of course, are as rare as hen’s teeth! Anyway, we found the shop, and because dress sizes are so disparate depending on the brand, I thought I’d better try the size 14 one on. It did fit – rather nicely, actually! It’s a very bright arterial-blood red, and although it’ll go quite well with everything I’ve got, I would have much preferred it in black – but red was all they had, so I got that – then the lady brought me in a couple of black t-shirts with slightly longer sleeves than normal (and by “slightly”, I mean about half a millimeter longer – in other words, not really all that much longer than a normal t-shirt!) One was a “M” (Medium), the other a “S” (Small) – I tried on the “S” one first, and it fitted “like a glove”! Oh, la la!, as the French say! It was très cool! 🙂 However, I bethought myself that as I’ve started Maintenance, it’s supremely possible that I may load on a little extra weight, making the “glove” look more like a very tight sausage skin! I bought two of the “M”s! They still fit very nicely, but will probably be more appropriate until I stabilise my weight. But… me! Buying clothes that fit me! In Suzanne Grae! If you’d told me that at the beginning of 2014, I would have laughed hysterically, and I wouldn’t have believed you! Not in a thousand years! 🙂 Then we came home via Habitat, where we finally managed to have a look at those Clipsal switches – they are very nice, and I have chosen what I feel are the most appropriate for the room – the “Pure White” ones. The “Ocean Mist” ones would have been alright too, even though they were a very, very light greenish blue – but I think that the “Pure White” ones will look better against the ultra-light grey tiles, and the lilac in the window bricks, and the aubergine shade of the vanity unit. I tell you one thing – Habitat is not very disabled-friendly! It’s up a million stairs (well, maybe only a couple of dozen stairs, but they were quite steep! I had to take my shoes off to come down them again!) and there’s no lift – but I made it up and down again unscathed 🙂 (Winter wonders: “How do they get their stock up and down all those stairs! The’re quite steep, and the “treads” are very shallow! I wonder how many staff and delivery people fall and injure themselves!” Winter thinks: “probably quite a lot!” ) Anyway, Julian then dropped me off at home and went on to deliver my favourite eldest daughter’s coffee… (and tea canister)

Weigh-in this morning. Again – a surprise, because again, I was quite sure I would have gone up! I went from 64.5kg to 64.5kg – that is, I stayed the same – and for once, I’m not bitching about it! 🙂 I’m pretty sure that after the fatty lunch I ate today – and we’re having sausages for dinner tonight (but good ones, not el-cheapo, paper-skinned, “who-knows-what’s-in-them” sausages!) I most likely will put on a few pounds – even though once again I walked the length and breadth of Doncaster Shoppingtown – twice! But this is something that I’m going to have to acclimatise to, and learn to live with. I’ll do my best to eat sensibly, I will always try to eat well (as in good food, not junk – except sometimes) but one has to live, and one should enjoy living (mostly, anyway) so I’m not going to sacrifice enjoyment in order to stay thin – I’ll do my very best to maintain my weight, and if I go above 70kg, I will go back on the Optifast, and I’ll have to learn, through trial and error, exactly what, and how much, I can eat, and what I can’t. This is still, and probably always will be – for me anyway – a work in progress…

And so it’s the weekend again! Tomorrow, weather permitting, we must go BBQ and bug zapper shopping – hopefully we’ll find what we’re after fairly quickly, because I’m waiting, not terribly patiently I fear, to get a chance to sit down with Julian and have him walk me through some of the new things in World of Warcraft. Sunday, of course, will be our Day in Telara day, and then it’ll be Monday, and more mundane weekday hassles to sort through. Paul finished tiling my shower bench seat around lunchtime, and then went on and grouted the bathroom floor this afternoon, so that it can dry out over the weekend for the vanity unit installers to trample all over on Monday. Once the vanity unit is installed, Clarke will be able to make a template for the caesarstone top, and once that’s done, the basins and taps can go in – it’s getting so close now! 🙂 (Winter jumps up and down, flapping her hands in impatient excitement!) And that, gentle readers, is about all I have for you this evening! 🙂 Do call in again tomorrow night, and find out if we’ve found our ideal BBQ and bug zappers, whether or not I got to play a bit of World of Warcraft with Julian, and if that gluttonous lunch I ate today made me put on too much weight – and I’m sure there’ll be heaps more to tell you all about our day’s adventures! Until then though, do bee good (just in case!) remember to open your arms to change, but don’t let go of your values, and don’t forget to drive carefully, to keep cool – or warm – depending on the weather, and to look after yourselves – but most importantly, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

Oh me, oh my! Late again, but that’s because my favourite eldest daughter was over today… We usually watch episodes of our current favourite TV shows, but we only got to see two episodes of “Supergirl”, and one episode of “Arrow” today, because the power was off for most of the day! We had the electricians in, you see – Julian had been holding off getting them in until all the networking cables were in, so now that they are (in) we had all the wiring bits and pieces done. F’rinstance – the people we bought the house from had a gi-normous TV mounted on the wall in the bedroom, and there was a television “thingy” and a power point in the middle of the wall, about two feet down from the ceiling – most unsightly! So we had those removed (and Paul has plastered up the holes they left behind, ready for painting when the painters come to paint my bathroom) as well as a new double power point put in just above the skirting board, so that I can now plug in and use my little crystal lamp wot lives on my chest of drawers. We’ve had two power points put in near the ceiling over the outside entertainment deck, for the two bug zappers which we’ll be getting this weekend, a new light put in over a dark corner of the kitchen, and Julian has at long last had his “comms cabinet” (communication cabinet – where all the computer networking cables are connected) wired in so that he doesn’t have to run a long extension cord between the Office and the beating heart of the network – as well as a few other bits and pieces of electrical work done. Unfortunately, this necessitated the power being off for long periods of time (read: most of the early part of the day!) so we couldn’t use the computers, and we couldn’t watch anything on the television – we managed to get three cups of coffee made just before they switched the power off, so we were able to survive – after a fashion – for a few hours, until they took pity on us and turned the power back on again, just long enough for us to make another three cups of coffee. The power was finally turned back on again around half past one, so I was finally able to do my lunchtime walk, and then we had lunch and my favourite eldest daughter and I watched, as I said, two episodes of “Supergirl”, and one episode of “Arrow”, before it was time for Julian to take her home. There’s a bit of superficial electrical work to be done in my bathroom, like the switches for the concealed lighting under the vanity unit, the over head lights, the lights that will be put on top of the mirror, and the power points and switches that’ll be going on the wall, but I think either Clarke will do those himself (all the wires are there) or, we might just have to get the electrician back again – it shouldn’t take too long to get those few things done.

As it turns out, the grouting hasn’t been done yet, and the vanity unit won’t be installed until Monday morning! Paul decided that the tile glue wasn’t quite set enough to go ahead with the grouting today, only to have people trampling all over it whilst installing the vanity unit tomorrow – so the grouting will be done tomorrow instead, then it can have all of the weekend to “cure,” before the people go trampling all over it whilst installing the vanity unit. Instead, he tidied up a few things around the room and the corridor outside, then went off to pick up the rest of the tiles, the highlight tiles, and the trim that goes around the corner edges… I’d been wondering how he was going to handle the sharp corner edges – they can be finished off with just grouting, but they get knocked easily and frequently, and when that happens the grouting tends to break off, leaving the sharp corner edge looking very ragged and unsightly! Anyway, he’ll be back again tomorrow morning to do the grouting! (at long last!)

Needless to say, that with the electricians here this morning, I didn’t get a chance to go and look at the Clipsal switches and power points at Habitat, but with luck, I might be able to get there tomorrow – either before or after I go to the hairdresser – I don’t care which, just so long as I do finally get there, to sight these wretched little switches! I don’t think we have much more to do tomorrow – hopefully not, anyway – though we do have a bit of shopping to do for my favourite eldest daughter, as there’s  neither a T2 shop nor a Nespresso place at The Glen, and as we’ll be at Doncaster Shoppingtown tomorrow, where there’s both, I thought we might as well save her and Neale a trip to Chadstone, and get them for her – and now that we’re living a lot closer to them it’s no problem to drop them off to her on our way home.

Weigh-in this morning. More amazement! I was quite sure I was finally on the way up, after the rise of four points yesterday, but I went down two points, from 64.7kg to 64.5kg! So at least for the moment, it looks as though I’m sort-of hovering in the mid 64kg zone. I don’t mind at all, actually – I’d love to be able to stay around this weight for the rest of my life – not that I really think that’s going to happen… but a girl can dream, can’t she?! 😉

This weekend we have to go shopping for a BBQ and a couple of bug zappers, because the following weekend is going to be a doozy! Wednesday December 9th is Neale’s Birthday, and Saturday December 12th is my favourite youngest daughter’s birthday – we usually celebrate the two together as close to either the 9th or 12th as possible, which would make it Saturday December 12th this year. BUT! That’s the weekend that we’ll be having a “clan reunion” with Melissa, Julian’s sister, his bother Mike and Mike’s wife Inbar, and their son Tom. At this stage I have no idea if they’ll be here on the Saturday or the Sunday, and although I do think that Lee and Kate, plus their spouses, should attend the “clan reunion”, if possible, I definitely do not want to combine the Birthday celebrations and the reunion! I’m not sure how to handle it all – we might have to have the reunion on one day, and the Birthdays the next (or vice-versa!) because the following weekend is just too close to Christmas Day, and we’re all going to be flat out like lizards drinking, doing all those fiddly little last-minute Christmas-y things!

I meant to mention it the other night, but I got quite sidetracked and completely forgot to! Have you noticed the different font I used in the header? What do you think of it? I get notifications from all sorts of Font sites, and the font in the header is from one of them – well, it’s actually more of a Lettering and Scrap-booking site really, called “Lettering Delights” – and I just couldn’t resist it! It’s called SNF Ambrosia Bold, and it was only 75c! They have a lot of good – and very cheap – fonts there! Definitely a good place to go if you’re looking for something a little “different” 🙂 And once again, that’s about it from me for tonight! Tomorrow night I should be a little earlier with my writing – Sundays, and the days when my favourite eldest daughter are over are days when I’m always late, but this week’s been unusual in that we’ve actually had (gasp! shock! horror!) visitors, as opposed to just workmen, coming in at all odd hours! However, do call back again tomorrow night, to find out what my topsy-turvy weight is doing (I’m supposed to be going up – a bit, anyway – not down, now that I’m on Maintenance!) and whether or not I’m gaining any (weight) yet, staying the same, or still going down, and whether my bathroom floor has been grouted yet (it’d better be! Or else!) Oh, and with a bit of luck, I might even be able to tell you what those ruddy Clipsal switches and power outlets are like! Here’s hoping, anyway! Until then, however, please try to bee good, don’t forget that our attitude toward life determines life’s attitude towards us, and remember to look after yourselves, to drive carefully, and to keep warm – or cool – depending on our silly weather, but whatever you do, please remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

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! 🙂