Well, the first day of the New Year, and what did we do? We slept in! “Start off as you mean to go on,” I always say 😉 Anyway, as you can imagine, we didn’t do very much today – I think we were both too tired and washed out after last night, even if the only thing we had to drink all night was a couple of cups of tea! It was probably my fault that we stayed up well past our usual bedtime last night….er…. this morning, but you can’t go to bed before at least half past one, on New Year’s Eve… alright, so I’m a pedant! New Year’s Morning, then! But just in case that “starting off as you mean to go on” business isn’t just an old adage, let’s cross all our fingers and toes and hope that today wasn’t a true indication of what the rest of the year’s going to be like, because if it is, the [censored] wall of boxes in the library will never get unpacked! I managed to get to 2.31 kilometers on my first walk today – which took around 41 minutes… For my second walk , I managed 2.43 kilometers… and that took 42.46 minutes, so obviously even a minute or two makes a lot of difference in how far I walk. Interestingly, I’ve noticed that it takes me ten steps to walk 10 meters, so I can either count in hundreds, which takes me up one hundred meters, or when I’m getting towards the end, I can count in tens, which gives me greater control of exactly how far I’ve walked – if any of that makes any sense! 🙂
This morning I played World of Warcraft, as usual, and have taken Winterwight into the next questing area. She’s now level 27, and has her Ghost Saber-tooth Pet, whom she has called IceKat – and oh boy! Was it a real “Keystone Cops” business to get her! (him? I dunno…) I took Spot with me as a “disposable” Pet, and after several abortive “short cut” attempts to get from Undercity to Darkshore, I finally arrived in Orgrimmar, the Orc’s capital city. Now, in the past, I’ve simply run out of Orgrimmar’s front gate, turned right, and just run until I got to the Northern Barrens and the main road that runs down the middle of it, turned right again, and run right up into Ashenvale. Easy-peasy! But I thought that I’d be smart, didn’t I! And that I could possibly shorten this terribly long run by flying to Thunder Bluff, the capital city of the Tauren, in (the land of) Mulgore, and running on from there – it’d be shorter (which it wasn’t!) and there’d only be fairly low-level mobs around who would probably leave me alone (which they weren’t, and which they didn’t!) It was all terribly nasty and dangerous, and I died so many times that even running back and retrieving my body (most of the time) wasn’t enough to save my gear from destruction! Everything I had on me – my armor, my weapons – everything – was totally wrecked! What’s more, there was nowhere safe for me to stop and look for someone to repair it, so I just had to… muddle along! In the end, I ended up Hearthing back to ruddy Undercity in desperation, where I was going to get some repairs done, only… I forgot to, didn’t I! *blush for shame!* Then I took the Zeppelin back to Orgrimmar again, and did my run the tried and true – and long way (but definitely shorter than the route I’d tried to take before) to Ashenvale, and from Ashenvale to Darkshore, and the Ruins of Mathystra, where the Ghost Saber-toothed cats live in a pretty little cat figurine houses. Sometimes. All that way… with that horrid blood-red wrecked armor icon sneering at my forgetfulness from the upper right hand corner of my screen! Oh, I died a few more times on the way – but what the heck – you can’t really ruin scrap-iron and leather scraps all that much, can you! 🙂 Well, more dead than alive, I eventually got to the Ruins of Mathystra, and knowing that there was a Horde outpost there, I made a bee-line for that, hoping that there’d be some sort of Repairing-type person there. Of course there wasn’t! But in my haste, I’d come a shade too close to the Night Elf encampment, when several things all happened at once. I spotted one of the cat figurines – the second one I’d seen since arriving. I’d recently died and had resurrected in the Graveyard, so not only was all my gear kaput, but I was suffering the last five minutes of my sixth or seventh bout of “Resurrection Sickness”* Unbeknownst to me, a Night Elf Guard had spotted me just a bit too close to their wretched encampment, and she was running up behind me, about to attack me. I’d “Abandoned” Spot when I found the first cat figurine – which had turned out to be empty – so I was suffering from the Rez Sickness, my armor was totally useless, and I was Pet-less! I didn’t for one moment actually think that the Ghost Saber-tooth cat would be in this second cat figurine – I knew I was being stupid trying to see if there was one, and I didn’t know that I had a Night Elf rushing me from behind. I clicked on the cat figurine… Immediately the Ghost Saber-tooth materialised in front of me and started lashing out at poor little unprotected me, I couldn’t find my Taming wand (not that it would have done me any good!) and the Night Elf knifed me in the back! I couldn’t believe it! I died again! Only once before, many, many, many years ago, have I found the Ghost Saber-tooth cat in the second figuring I clicked on! Only once! And here I was, I’d done it again, and died, before I could Tame the ruddy thing! I ran back for my body, but of course the Ghost Saber-tooth was long gone! I was quite thoroughly discombobulated by this stage, to the point that twice more, I ventured too close to those despicable Night Elves, and twice more, I died! One of those times I even had the Ghost Saber-tooth within my grasp again, so to speak – but I’d left my Action Bars unlocked, and the Taming Wand had been accidentally removed from where I was expecting to find it, and I couldn’t get my Spell Book open in time to relocate the icon, and the Ghost Saber killed me – again! I guess you could either call it “Death by misadventure”, or probably, and much more correctly, “Death by stupidity and haste!” I was getting really upset with myself – I just couldn’t seem to put a foot right! Julian brought his high level Tauren online to give me a hand, and eventually, after about 18 empty cat figurines, I found, and Tamed, IceKat! I immediately Hearthed home to Undercity where I got my repairs done, at long last! But talk about a fiasco! Everything I tried to do in WoW yesterday pretty much fell apart! Today’s effort went a lot better, though some of the quests are so buggy that everyone has problems with them… one usually has to resort to going through the WoW Forums to find out how to complete them successfully!
Food thingz: I have come to the very reluctant decision that I’m going to have to cut back on the yummy home-made wraps that we’ve been having for lunch, and go back to the Ryvita crispbread “open sandwiches”, and maybe only have a wrap once a week. Last night we had cold cuts for dinner, with a little bit of (store-bought) potato salad, and a little bit of (store-bought) quinoa tabouli salad, with (the usual) half a tomato. Lunch today was two Ryvita crispbreads with low-fat cottage cheese and some sliced tomato, and tonight we had some absolutely lovely pan-fried chicken breast, with (fresh, not frozen) green beans, my usual 5 chips, and… half a tomato. The reason I’ve decided to stop eating the home-made wraps is because I think there’s just too much in them, and while they’re lovely to eat, they’re not lovely when I get on the scales in the morning! 
Weigh-in this morning. Was ghastly! I almost couldn’t believe it! I’d gone up another three points, from 65.5kg to 65.8kg! That’s the heaviest I’ve been since I hit Maintenance! Thank goodness I decided to go down as low as 65kg! Granted, I’d forgotten to take my lunchtime anti-fluid for the two days previously, and my feet had been very swollen because of the retained fluid – but the only reason that I can think of, and the only thing I’m doing differently, is having a very yummy home-made wrap for lunch. The one we had yesterday, and the day before that, not only had a lot of lean meat (OK, so mostly protein) in them, but also a fairly “generous” spreading of left-over cold mashed potatoes, which I think was probably one of the main culprits, even though it was made with low-fat plain Greek yoghurt instead of butter and milk. There’s also a fair amount of carbohydrate in the flat-bread itself – they’re much softer and more moist than your average pita flat-bread – they’re actually more like a very thin French pancake… I’m sorry, I’m not allowed to say, or even write, the correct term for “French Pancakes” because Julian doesn’t like it – he says it’s like scraping your fingernails down a blackboard to him (however the word starts with a “C”, ends with an “e”, and has “rep” in the middle of it!) So that’s the reason that I’ve reluctantly decided not to have wraps for lunch every day… We’ll see how I go on a somewhat lighter luncheon diet of crispbread and low-fat cottage cheese or ricotta for a while…
Tomorrow we’re off to buy vegetable seedlings! 🙂 And herbs… and a rosemary bush, and a small bay tree, and a little kumquat bush, too! 🙂 Julian installed the “irrigation” for the two veggie beds this afternoon, and I went out to see how they looked – they certainly seem to pump out a lot of water! More news on all of that as it comes to hand! 🙂 Anyway, that’s about it from me for tonight – drop in again tomorrow night though, and find out what sort of vegetables and herbs we decided on, and have put in our veggie beds – if you’re very lucky, there might even be some photos! 🙂 Hopefully my weight will be starting to behave itself – certainly my feet aren’t as swollen tonight – hopefully this is a good sign (but knowing me, probably not! ) But whatever happens tomorrow, rest assured that you lot will be the first ones to know about it! 🙂 So until tomorrow night, do make an effort to bee good, don’t forget that you can have anything you want if you are willing to give up the belief that you can’t have it – remember to look after yourselves, to keep cool – or warm – depending on the weather, and to drive carefully… but no matter what else you do, remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂
*“Resurrection Sickness”: if you resurrect in the nearest Graveyard, rather than running back to re-claim your body, you suffer ten minutes of “Resurrection Sickness”, where your health and stamina are reduced to about half. Never try to fight anything – or Tame a feisty new Pet – whilst suffering from “Resurrection Sickness”! Believe me, you’ll be talking to the Graveyard Angel again in a matter of seconds! I know this from bitter experience!
My Word! 