Before I start off on the day’s doin’s, I’d just like to wish my favourite eldest daughter a very Happy Birthday! 🙂 She came over today, bringing with her the Birthday present that her husband Neale gave her this morning – and it’s just too, too cute! It’s the little BB-8 droid from “Star Wars: The Force Awakens”. It stands about 9 to 10 centimeters tall, and there’s an app that you can run from your tablet (and possibly your phone? I’m not sure about that though!) so that you can get him to roll around making cute little “beep-beep” droid-type noises! It’s a darling little thing, and it can actually learn its way around a room to the point that it can work its way out of tight corners and crannies! Flipper was totally fascinated by it, and followed it until Lee turned it around and trundled it towards her, whereupon she turned tail and fled – then she came back in again and followed it a bit more – rinse and repeat! I think she would have liked to play with it, but she’s just too old and arthriticky to do that any more 
I knew these little BB-8 models were available, but I had no idea that they were so small, or so very, very cute! 🙂 However, before anyone thinks to get me one for my Birthday that’s coming up in March – I love the little critter, but I don’t want one! 🙂
Well, after a somewhat upset stomach last night (I wonder why!) this morning saw both of us feeling a lot better and a lot less bloated! Next time I think I’ll have the chocolate pudding, and not the extremely rich New York Cheese-cake (though it’s equally as possible that it might have been the coffee I had with my lunch! I’ve been so used to having low-fat milk in my coffee, that the only semi-skim milk they used tasted too “thick” and not at all nice!) Anyway, next time I’ll just have mineral water with my chocolate pudding! 😛 I played a bit of World of Warcraft this morning before my favourite eldest daughter arrived, and managed to get the rest of the Nagrand girls – Horde and Alliance – all set up and ready to go (though in truth, only about two or three of them will ever be played!) I’m not even sure why I create all these characters! Yes, it’s partly the names – I think of a great new name and immediately have to try to create a character to wear that name – sometimes the name’s available for use and the character gets created, and sometimes the name’s not available – I usually try a few different ways of spelling it, mostly to see how it looks with odd spelling, or “foreign accents” on some of the letters. If it looks acceptable, I’ll go ahead and use it, and if it looks a bit too odd, I won’t bother continuing with the character creation. I’ve always wanted to use the name “Sapphire”, but of course it’s never been available, so this morning I created a new Troll Hunter, and tried several different ways of spelling “Sapphire” – I tried “Saffire”, “Saphire”, “Sapphyre”, and lots of other permutations – and they either looked a bit naff, or too ridiculous – so in the end I settled for “Såpphìre”, which I was able to get 🙂 It’s also how I managed to get another name I’d been after for many years – “Dulcinea” – from a character in Miguel de Cervantes book “Don Quixote” – in the end I tried spelling it “Dulcìnea”, with the funny accent over the “i”, and I finally managed to get the name! 🙂 I keep telling myself that all these characters are really “name place holders”, and that one day, I will use them – but I almost never do… sometimes I’ll decide that I don’t really like the name any more, and the character will be deleted to make room for a newer and more appealing name that I’ve decided I’d like to use instead – and there are some names that have been with me, and will stay with me, forever – like Wynterthyme, and Arsinoë, to name just two…
Anyway, once my favourite eldest daughter arrived, and we’d played around a bit with her cute little BB-8 droid, we repaired to the lounge room and watched 6 episodes of Season 2 of The Librarians – we didn’t have time to watch the last episode in Season 2 – we’ll have to see that next week – and then we have to wait for Season 3! 😦 We’re also waiting for the next seasons of “Orphan Black”, “Person of Interest”, “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.”, and “the 100”, which I believe is starting sometime later this month (and about time, too! I dunno – what were the actors thinking about anyway – demanding holiday breaks indeed! 😉 ) All in all, a very good afternoon! 🙂
Food stuffz: well, after yesterday’s descent into lunchtime gluttony, we only had a couple of Ryvita crispbreads with not terribly much low-fat ricotta, sandwich ham, low-fat cheddar, and some sliced tomato (sounds like a lot, doesn’t it, but it wasn’t…) and after all the rich food at lunchtime I had quite a tummy upset last night – even Julian said he felt quite bloated! Lunch today was a very simple chicken sandwich, with a slight scraping of butter on the bread (some more of the nice wholemeal Baker’s Delight sliced bread) and tonight we had sausages for dinner – the good King Island Beef ones again – with the usual 5 chips, green beans, and half a tomato. The new “Delicious” magazine arrived today and I was quite eager to see if they had any nice recipes this time – that Persian Spiced Lamb Pilaf came from the last issue – but this one was quite disappointing – lots of noodle recipes, and salad recipes… and fish recipes – but not much else! Not even any interesting-sounding ice cream and sherbet recipes! Oh well, maybe next month…
Weigh-in this morning. Was what I expected, and deserved! I went up four points – from 63.1kg to 63.5kg – and I’ll probably go up a bit more again tomorrow – but after that, hopefully I’ll start going back down again – until Sunday, anyway, when we’ll be going out for my favourite eldest daughter’s Big Birthday Bash – hopefully to the East Empress Bistro in Glen Waverley. I don’t think I have the right to grizzle about my weight going up – after all, it was “self-inflicted”, and I only managed to get in my morning 1.5 kilometer walk, too – because it was a bit too late, and I was a bit too stuffed-full to manage my afternoon walk when we got home! I did get both walks in today though, and we’ve rigged up my Dyson bathroom fan in the treadmill room because it gets a bit hot in there in the afternoon – so hopefully it’ll make my two 1.5 kilometer walks a bit more pleasant from now on! 🙂 (especially tomorrow!)
Tomorrow we thought we’d be able to get a bit more box unpacking done – but alas, once again the fates have not been kind to us, or our boxes! We had a phone call from Julian’s brother Mike this afternoon. At the moment, they’re in Tasmania, visiting with their eldest son and his wife, but they’re going to Adelaide for a few days – mainly to say goodbye to a few old family friends, as they’ll really have no reason to go back there again, now that Julian and Mike’s mother has passed… Anyway, they’re flying to Adelaide via Melbourne – tomorrow – and want to come over to say “hello” and catch up as they have quite a bit of time between flights. They also want to board all their luggage with us while they’re in Adelaide, so Julian will drive out to the airport in all the heat, pick them up, and bring them back here for an hour or so. I don’t know if he’s driving them back to the airport after their visit or whether they’ll catch a taxi on their way back, but the boxes will just have to wait another day or so. They’ll be in Adelaide for about four days, then they’re coming back to Melbourne for a week before flying back to Israel, so we’ll see them again then. And that’s really about it from me again this evening – it’s been a good day, despite going up four points, weight-wise (and yes, I do feel quite guilty!) but hopefully it’ll go back to “normal” soon! Do drop in again tomorrow night – find out how we survived the heat; whether my weight has decided to punish my gluttony by going up a bit more, and what plans Mike, Inbar and Tom have for their longer visit to Melbourne sometime next week. I know Inbar is very keen to get to the Queen Vic. Market, and I may just go along with her – but for that I would definitely need my chair – because there’s no way I could get around a market that size, with the number of people I’d have to navigate through, “a piedi”! And of course I wouldn’t dream of going if it was going to be over 22C! So until tomorrow night, try to continue to bee good, remember that it takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan, and don’t forget to keep cool – or warm – depending on your preferences, to look after yourselves, and to drive carefully – but above all, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂
My Word! 