Well, we had a very novel and interesting day in Azeroth, and considering where we were, and how long it’s been since I played a high level Beast Master Hunter character, it was quite amazing that we only died once! But I digress! We slept in far longer than we’d intended to – we didn’t wake up until about nine o’clock, which is most unusual for us! Leaping energetically out of bed (that’s a joke, Joyce!) we immediately sprang into action – I weighed myself, and went off to have my somewhat later than usual brisk 1.5 kilometer walk on the treadmill, while Julian had his shower. Then we had our breakfast, and opened our Magickal Portal into Azeroth – more commonly known as “logging into World of Warcraft”. We didn’t play with our young characters today – I was still waiting to see one of these new-fangled “Garrisons” that Blizzard have dreamt up – supposedly an equivalent to Rift’s Dimensions that I was, and am, so keen on. The thing is, not just anyone can get a Garrison – you have to be level 90, and to have completed a certain series of quests. Julian and I both had level 90 characters on the realm Quel’Dorei, which had always been our main realm all those years ago. Wynterthyme, who’s been pretty much my main character ever since I started playing WoW, is a level 90 Night Elf Beast Master Hunter whose main Pet (amongst a lot of others!) is – you guessed it – a Ghost Saber-tooth cat called “Boojums” – or just “Boo”, for short. Julian’s level 90 character was his secondary main character, called Mouselet – a huge Draenei Shaman. We often teamed up – in fact I teamed Wynterthyme up with Mouselet or Bobranda, Julian’s very first character,  more often than I soloed her! So there we were – kitting ourselves up for the day in Stormwind, the Human’s capital city in the state? province? zone? whatever! Elwynn Forest. We’d done all the pre-requisite quests, quite literally years ago, and I was feeling distinctly nervous as I eyed off all the spells, shot rotations, and abilities available to me that I hadn’t used, or even thought of, for more than four years! Would I even remember how to play Wynterthyme?! Well, long story short an’ all that, off we went, through all sorts of confusing, busy, and hectic quests – killing bands of Black Orcs and other evil dudes, finally winning through to the “ship” that would take us through to Draenor, which unfortunately I can’t tell you much about as I haven’t read up on my story arc and/or Lore, yet! (but I will! And oh boy! – you’re all going to be in for a real treat then, coz I’ll be able to tell you all about it! 😉 ) As I said at the beginning of the blog, we did die once, getting to Draenor – we were on land mounts, but we really should have been on one of our flying mounts, because we were mobbed and totally overwhelmed by a band of Black Orcs – but we got better, and off we went again! Arriving in sunny downtown Draenor, we found that it wasn’t “sunny”, in fact it was quite dark and gloomy – very pretty, but dark and gloomy! For anyone reading this who does, or has played World of Warcraft, and who hasn’t been to Draenor – but has been to Zangarmarsh and Nagrand, I can tell you that it’s a bit like a cross between sunny and cheerful Nagrand, with its green meadows and a pleasant ambience, and Zangarmarsh, with its somewhat darker aspect and lots and lots of shallow pools of water, and strange plants and mushrooms! Anyway, after a few more quests and a lot of running from pillar to post, we were finally led to an area which was to become the Garrison, which all had to be built from the ground up, and provisioned – so… more questing, to obtain a permanent source of supplies, then even more questing, to obtain suitable “staff” (Minions?) to be sent off to perform “assignments” for you – sort-of similar to the Minions in Rift, but there’s hell of a lot more work involved for you in organising these “assignments”! But it was great fun! Your Garrison has its own Flight Point, so that you (and other people) can fly back to it – and in case you’re not able to catch a flight back, you even have a Garrison Hearthstone, that magickally transports you back to your Garrison! There are vendors there, and people who can repair stuff, and all sorts of other things that aren’t even remotely available in Rift’s Dimensions! So, we had a great day (well, I did, anyway! 🙂 ) and I’m really looking forward to learning more about Garrisons, and the story arc and Lore behind this new land of Draenor – but please! Don’t let anyone tell you that Garrisons are sort-of like Dimensions in Rift, because I can assure you – they’re nothing at all like them! One thing I should perhaps mention though – being grouped with Julian (Mouselet) of course we were together, and we could each see eachother, and eachother’s little blue “map dot”, indicating on the map where the other one was. But when we got our Garrison, all that disappeared, and we were whisked off into separate, individual “instances” – both occupying the same space and the same time, but totally invisible to eachother! It was quite strange! Once we left the designated “Garrison area”, we could see eachother again, but as soon as we crossed that invisible line at the border of the Garrison – whoosh! We became invisible to eachother again!

Anyway, that was Our Day In Azeroth! 🙂 The “Grumpy Old Farts” Guild Bank on Quel’Dorei is doing very well indeed – so much so that I’m contemplating “migrating” some of it over to both the Alliance and the Horde Guilds on Azuremyst – but that’s still in the pipeline! 🙂

Food Stuffz: last night we had pan-fried chicken for dinner, with the usual chips and half a tomato, but the beans were cooked somewhat differently – we’d had beans with almonds the other night, but Julian wasn’t satisfied with them – the recipe (or methodology) is to cook the beans (steamed or boiled) drain them, and put them in a frying pan with a little bit of butter and some lemon juice. Stir them around a bit, add some toasted slivered almonds, mix, and serve. Julian thought that the mixing them around with the toasted slivered almonds didn’t really work all that well (the almonds got a little bit over-toasted, I think) so he tried them again last night with un-toasted slivered almonds, and no butter – and they seemed to work quite well. It’s actually very similar to a dish we often had when I was a little girl – beans would be cooked (typically boiled to death, in those days!) and eaten, but any left-over beans (for some strange reason there were always “left-over vegetables” – from beans, to peas, to cauliflower or pumpkin, or carrots – you name it – whatever vegetables got cooked, there’d always be enough left-overs to make another dish!) Anyway, the leftover green beans were added to a frying pan with butter and garlic, seasoned, and sizzled up for a few minutes (these days it’s called “stir-frying”, but we didn’t know that back then! 😉 ) then added to the meal as a vegetable accompaniment. So dinner last night was excellent – unfortunately Julian forgot to make my diet jellies yesterday so I had to have one of his yoghurt desserts – a low-fat apple and rhubarb one, which was very nice! There was enough of the pan-fried chicken left over to be sliced up and added to another sandwich made with the very nice wholemeal bread that we had in our lunches yesterday with the cold roast beef. Today it was the sliced left-over chicken and tomato, and I noted that there was a tiny scraping of butter on the bread too – goodness knows what the scales are going to say to me tomorrow morning! (probably something horribly rude, like “you’ve gone back up to 70 kilograms”!) Oh, and tonight we had the very last of the very more-ish Persian Spiced Lamb Pilaf for dinner – I was quite saddened to eat the last of it, though we’ll be having it again soon-ish, I hope – and I had to have another one of Julian’s apple and rhubarb yoghurt desserts again tonight too, as again, the diet jellies had been “overlooked”! 😉 But still, despite the bread, and the butter, and the low-fat yoghurt, and the rice and all that…

Weigh-in this morning. Was, all things considered, quite acceptable! I didn’t, as I expected I would, go up again – I ruddy well went down the two points that I’d gone up yesterday – from 63.2 kilograms to 63.0 kilograms! But who knows what it’ll be up to (or down to – as there doesn’t seem to be any rhyme nor reason to the fluctuations and vagaries of my weight!) tomorrow! 🙂

I’m really looking forward to tomorrow – we’re off to see “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” at Gold Class – I’ll let you all know tomorrow what we thought of it! 🙂 You’ll also be pleased to know that we haven’t managed to kill off any of the veggies we planted (er… that Julian planted – I just watched from the decking!) and from the back window they certainly look sturdy and healthy, so that has to be a good sign! We also managed to get a couple of bug zappers so once those are hung up and plugged in, I should feel safe enough to venture outside a little more often – though I’ve noticed recently that the bugs must be getting impatient to meet me or something, because they’re starting to make themselves at home – in my bathroom! This, of course, is simply not to be tolerated! It’s my bathroom (it’s mine, all mine, I tell you! and no, I won’t share!) and I won’t have peeping bugs loitering with intent! I found one in there this afternoon, so I tied a teeny-weeny note to one of its legs telling all its friends and relations to keep out of my bathroom, “or else!”, before I flushed it down the toilet (I didn’t really, but I thought it sounded good! 😉 ) And now, I’m afraid that’s about it from me for this evening! Do call in again tomorrow night, to find out what my weight decided to do, and what we thought of the new Star Wars movie, and all the other little bits and pieces of trivia that made up our day… but until then, please endeavour to bee good, remember to live out loud, and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to drive carefully, and to keep cool – or warm – depending on the weather… but above all, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂