Well, I meant to start early again, but once again, Life had its own ideas about that, and so I didn’t. We got onto the Great Unpacking of the Boxes, almost directly after breakfast, and we unpacked, and we unpacked, and then we unpacked a bit more. We found lots of “stuffz”, and surprisingly, most of it was useful! I found a lot of my little figurines, ornaments, and nicknacks, from the Den’s shelves in Doncaster, which immediately got moved onto what little shelving there is in here. I’m afraid I had to crowd them all together fairly snugly when I put them on their new shelving, as there’s not that much room there, and there are still heaps more “little details” to be re-housed as soon as they’re located. I found all my little soft toys, too, which have scored a whole shelf of their own, and I found – finally! – my dear little pussy cat Tarot pack! I found one little black velvet bag which felt sort-of “pack of cards-like”, but it wasn’t them – and I did remember – or rather, I thought that I remembered – wrapping them up in one of my Nonna’s (my father’s mother) favourite old scarves (dark blue silk, with teeny little white spots! Very unmistakable! 😉 ) and sure enough, there they were, in one of the boxes! I’m so pleased to have found them! I’ll have to give them a lot of gentle handling, until they remember me! 🙂 Lessee… what else did we find… half a ton of blank discs/dvd’s/whatever, odds and sods of electrical things, from an external hard drive to a fistful of headphones, with all of their wires knotted together in a damoclean mess! We found Lever Arch Files full of Bank Statements, Mum’s old “Teddy Bear Ledger” (my mother used to keep track of her share portfolio, by hand, in an ancient old Kalamazoo loose-leaf ledger which had a big, teddy bear decal stuck on the front cover – hence, the term “The Teddy Bear Ledger”) which we’d been looking for for ages,  and we also found all my old Graphics Tutorials that I’d found on-line when I was teaching myself how to make and achieve certain effects with graphics – all because I wasn’t satisfied with what was commercially available and wanted to make my own, only much more betterer! (which I did, after many, many long months of trial and error, experimentation, and – let’s face it – sheer good luck!) In fact, I got remarkably good at it, but that’s a story for another time! Though speaking of graphics, I also found an old wine label that I’d designed – Julian’s family used to make a batch of wine every year, and always named it after a close friend or family member who had done, or achieved, something special. It was always “Chateau Michael” (after their oldest son) then “Vintage [whoever]”, with a pretty picture on it. Once I “arrived”, so to speak, I designed and made the labels – sometimes I was told what was wanted, other times I had pretty much free rein. This particular one was “Vintage John” (Julian’s father) and as he played the violin extremely well, they wanted something to do with music and a violin. This one features a white vignette, with a somewhat stylized violin in front of some sheet music – Julian must have laminated it for posterity 🙂 But basically what we found in the boxes today were “office stuffz”, and “pretty but mostly useless nicknacks” There are still two boxes that we opened… and then closed again, rather quickly! They’re both brim-full of my stuff! Useless stuff! Rubbish! Junk! Bits of flotsam cast up into our lounge-room in a cardboard box type of stuff! And… I’m going to want… to keep it… all, heaven help me! Even at first glance I can see that nearly all of it is comprised of the type of nostalgic and sentimental stuff, over which one invariably exclaims – “Oh, I remember when [some anonymous person] gave me that! Oh, I can’t possibly throw that out!” – and I can almost guarantee that the above phrases will be uttered over just about everything in those two wretched boxes! And then I’ll have to find somewhere to put all these… “un-throw-away-able” gifts! I wish Julian had left them in the shed…

Food stuffz: well, last night we had the pasta – it was only a small bowl of pasta – but gee, it was sooo nice! I’m not a terribly big fan of plain old tomato sauce on my pasta – or even the tomato and basil sauce – I much prefer the bolognese-type sauces, or better still, the carbonara mixture! However, despite walking the length and breadth of Doncaster Shoppingtown about twice, I’d had a pretty calorie-high lunch, and then pasta for dinner – my weight was surely going to go through the ceiling! Today for lunch we had our usual 2 Ryvita crispbreads, this time with low-fat sliced cheddar sandwich cheese – I had the leftover chicken sliced on top of my cheese, and Julian had smoked salmon on his – and we both had some sliced Heirloom tomatoes on top of that. No, we didn’t grow the Heirlooms, Julian got them the other day to try them, because we had no idea what they were like! (they were actually very nice – we’ll definitely get some again, and/or grow our own!) Tonight Julian’s making some more of that very delicious Spiced Persian Lamb Pilaf (the one with the ten tons of cinnamon!) so it’ll be very interesting indeed, to see what my weight does tomorrow morning! (probably go right through the roof, no doubt!) However…

Weigh-in this morning. Well, I didn’t think I’d see much difference this morning, because although walking the length and breadth of a shopping Mall, like Doncaster, several times, seems to make me lose weight, I’d had a fairly calorie-high lunch, and I’d also had the small bowl of pasta for dinner – so I thought that each would cancel the other out – but no! I went down another three points! I went from 63.4kg to 63.1kg! Unfortunately I’ll probably have undone all of that loss this afternoon! 😦 I’ve been chewing gum, as you all know, but I’m trying to find other things to keep my mouth from drying out – so amongst other things, I bought a “tube” of “Eclipse Chewy Mints”. Now Julian buys the Eclipse sugarless mints, which he eats like popcorn, and I’ve bought the Eclipse sugarless chewing gum, so we’re both conditioned to equate the name “Eclipse” with the word “sugarless”. So I’d just eaten the last chewy mint from the “tube” when I realised with horror that there was a word missing from that tube, and the missing word was “sugarless”! In other words, I’d just eaten a whole tube’s worth of sugar! Noooooooo! So, whatever the scales tell me tomorrow morning, that tube of sugar will have to be taken into account! I am not a Happy Little Vegemite about that, but hopefully it’ll have taught me to read the fine print a bit more carefully!

I very nearly forgot my second daily walk this afternoon! We’d been opening boxes, left, right, and centre – but Julian had to make a quick sortie to get some saffron for the lamb, so I was going to have my walk when he went out. Time passed, we put ornaments away, and eventually Julian went off to do the bit of shopping we had… “Great!” thinks me, completely forgetting about my walk “I can WoW until 4.30pm before I start my blog!” – and so I did. More time passed… It was nearly 4.30pm and I was thinking to myself “I’ll fly back to Orgrimmar, dust down, and start my…” – and that’s when I finally remembered my walk! I flew into Orgrimmar, and quit out of the game, raced for the bathroom, put on all my socks, and was just clambering onto the treadmill when Julian got home! So I did get my second 1.5 kilometer walk done, but it also meant that I started this half an hour later than I had planned! Never mind, it’s going to take a while for Julian to cook the Pilaf, so I’ve actually got a bit more time than I thought I had. Tomorrow, of course, we’re off to have lunch at the East Empress Bistro, for my favourite eldest daughter’s Big Birthday Bash! I’m so looking forward to it – the East Empress was one of our most favourite restaurants, and around the middle of last year they closed for renovations… in fact the entire building has been knocked down, so it’s sure going to be some rather hefty “renovations”! Anyway, in the interim, they’ve opened up a smaller place and called it a “Bistro”, whatever that means, and I intend to enjoy it, no matter what the scales tell me tomorrow! 😉 Anyway, that’s about it from me again for this evening – drop by again tomorrow night for a detailed critique of the East Empress Bistro, and to find out what the scales said, and what else we’ve been up to! 🙂 But until then, please try to bee good, remember that worrying is like a rocking chair: it gives you something to do, but it doesn’t get you anywhere – and don’t forget to drive carefully, to keep warm – or cool – depending on the weather outside – and to look after yourselves… but above all, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂