Heavens, I feel as though I’ve been slaving over a hot Guild Bank since breakfast this morning! So apart from doing three loads of washing, I’ve spent the entire day trying to “tidy up” the characters and Guild Banks – both the Horde and the Alliance ones, on Quel’Dorei! Remember I told you yesterday that I’d started a new, Human Hunter called Kødiak, on Quel’Dorei? Well, she’s coming along quite well, so there I was, barely out of the little training area, when I found myself on a quest that took me into Stormwind, the Human capital city. There are a few side quests there that you can, and should, pick up – they’re a very good source of easy experience points – terribly easy, and not at all dangerous – basically it’s just running around delivering things across the city for lazy quest givers! Anyway, seeing as I was already in Stormwind, I thought I’d drop in at the Guild Bank and pick up anything useful, like some healing potions, a better weapon, and anything else that would make my tasks easier. The Guild Banks on Quel’Dorei (again, both the Horde and Alliance banks) have the biggest and best collection of materials and gear of any of our other Guild Banks – in fact there’s so much in them that the excess has been overflowing into other character’s private bags and banks! Ye ghods and little fishes! What to do with it all?! Well, in a way that was easy too – just vendor a lot of it! You see, at the time when Julian and I stopped playing WoW, Hunters were still running around with bundles of arrows or ammo pouches full of bullets, which are now no longer needed (we use “magic” bullets and arrows instead, because they never get all used up, and they take up no room in your bags! Much more betterer! 😉 ) and we also used melee weapons, like swords, axes, and maces (though I’m not sure about the maces – I have a sort-of feeling that the Beastmaster Hunters couldn’t use them… but I might be wrong… Oh well, doesn’t matter now – as we just don’t use them any more!) and a lot of the Guild Bank was full of weapons that were no longer needed, food that no-one ever thought to pull out of the Guild Bank to take with them on a long quest chain – food wasn’t needed for nourishment, per se, but was mainly used as a “get your health back, plus other helpful attributes”, if you sat down to eat it, and took ten seconds to enjoy your meal. It was also used as a “get your Pet instantly back to full health”, by throwing him (or her!) a piece of meat (or whatever else your Pet liked to eat) Very handy! 🙂 The food, even after five or six years of sitting in the Guild Bank, was still quite fresh and tasty, but… I vendored nearly all of it (and it will be easy enough to make more of it, if we ever decide to use it!) along with all the now pretty much useless weapons. I didn’t bother to try to Auction it – the Auction House seems very paltry these days, compared to what it was like years ago! Once upon a time, a character could make quite a good living, buying and selling on the Auction House – but since we’ve been gone, things have changed a lot – people are asking stupidly ridiculous prices for level 15 gear! I mean, come on! 389 gold, for a plain old level 14 vest, that’s not even green?! And yet, that seems to be the going price! Green? Oh! Sorry! Items get sort-of colour-coded, “grey” is the “it’s only rubbish, vendor it!” colour. “White” is very common, and back then, not worth even trying to sell on the Auction House… “Green” is a bit better – it may even have a few attributes on it, like “+1 Armor”, or something. It used to be very cheap and affordable -after all, there are always “newbies” coming through who are going to need such items, even though they’ll level up out of them in a couple of days. The next colour is “blue”, and that’s better, and usually more expensive than the greens, followed by “yellow”, and finally a pinky-magenta colour. So greens should be at the bottom of the price ladder, and the pinky-magenta at the top – OK? 🙂 So I started working on the Horde Guild Bank first (because it was smaller than the Alliance one!) I vendored a whole heap of stuff, I moved items from one Vault to another, and then back again, because I didn’t think they were in the right place, I re-arranged things, and re-named Vaults and wrote descriptions of what was in each one – and as I said, it took me the whole day! Tomorrow I have the de-light-full task of tackling the Alliance Guild Bank, which is a whole heap bigger, nastier, and meaner than the Horde Guild Bank! But, it’s gotta be done, and someone’s gotta do it – so as Guild Mistress of both banks, I guess that unenviable task falls to me! One good thing though, I not only managed to get through all the washing today, but I also managed to fit in both walkies, so I’ve done my daily 3 kilometers 🙂

Food stuffz: well, neither of us had any dinner last night, just a cup of coffee, and today we had our usual breakfast (Vita Brits etc.) and lunch (2 Ryvita crispbreads with the usual toppings) Tonight we’re having the marinated chicken that didn’t get cooked at the BBQ yesterday, with either steamed rice or chips, probably green beans, and no doubt, a half a tomato. There’s still some of that very nice cheesecake left in the fridge, and some of the light cream, which we’d better eat before it goes off – I mean, it would be quite sinful to waste it, wouldn’t it! 😉 We could have had lamb back-straps for dinner tonight, but if we don’t cook and eat the marinated chicken tonight, it’ll have to be disposed of, the same as the lovely, large corned silverside that we haven’t had a chance to cook since M.I.T. have been here, and which has now sadly gone past its “use by” date and will have to be thrown out 😦 What a horrible waste! 😦 Anyway, I want to see if we can get the rest of the ingredients to make the marinade for the lamb back-straps, and if we can make it early enough we might even be able to have it for dinner tomorrow! Though that depends on what we’re doing with M.I.T., I suppose, as they’re leaving on Saturday…

Weigh-in this morning. Wasn’t quite as horrific as I was dreading! I only went up three points, from 63.1kg to 63.4kg – so that’s not bad, considering what I had to eat and drink – mind you, that doesn’t mean that I won’t go up again tomorrow – these things don’t always work instantaneously – sometimes it takes a day or two to see the real damage… Anyway, I’ve been a good girl today, and done my two walks, too! Hopefully my body will take that into consideration when it’s working out how much to go up again! We’ll see tomorrow, I guess! 🙂

Well, I have no idea what’s happening tomorrow – we’ll probably see M.I.T. at some stage, though whether we’re taking them out to lunch or not, I have yet to be informed! In the meantime, I shall continue to work doggedly on the Alliance Guild Bank, in an attempt to eke some extra room out of it – it’s completely full at the moment, but I also know that there’s a lot of deadwood to be culled from it, so… wish me luck! 🙂 And you know? That’s about it from me again for this evening! Don’t forget to look in again tomorrow night, to see if my weight is still going up, or if it’s (hopefully!) starting to subside again, what other adventures we had, plus whether or not I managed to get the Alliance Guild Bank re-organised – and whether or not we went out with M.I.T. for a “Bon Voyage” luncheon (which will undoubtedly mean that my weight will be going up some more! Especially if we go to the Pancake Parlour!) But until tomorrow night, please remember to bee good, don’t forget that to listen and to be listened to, is the way to understanding and peace, and remember to keep cool – or warm – whichever you prefer, to always drive carefully, and to look after yourselves… but above all, please remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

Sorry I’m so late tonight – it’s a combination of eating too much at the BBQ we had today, only wanting to have a nice little postprandial nap this afternoon instead of sitting down and writing (Mike, Inbar and Tom didn’t leave until after five o’clock!) and then talking too long on the phone today with my favourite youngest daughter, who’s having a lot of personal problems at the moment. So, to go back to the beginning of the day… I woke up, and reluctantly got out of bed… but I’m sure you’re not interested in a complete blow-by-blow accounting of my day! I got a bit of WoW-ing in this morning before M.I.T. arrived (I’m not going to try to keep writing “Mike, Inbar and Tom” all the time – it takes too long, and looks a bit pretentious or something, so “M.I.T.” will just have to do from now on!) I did get Brunhilda to level 23, and up into the Ruins of Mathystra, and would you believe it? I managed to get my Ghost Saber tooth cat in the fourth cat figurine I picked up! I was most relieved, as the ruddy server was coming down for a re-start in just a few more minutes! I immediately Hearthed to Orgrimmar and quit out of the game for the evening (it was after midnight anyway!) When I got back on this morning, I tidied Brunhilda up a bit, re-named my new Pet “Boojums” (I call almost all of my Ghost Saber tooth Pets “Boojums” (or just “Boo” for short) after an Abyssinian/Burmese cross cat I used to have, who lived to the ripe old age of 26!) and then went off to create yet another new Hunter character on Quel’Dorei – this time, a Human one! I don’t really like the Human “figure” much, but the quests are different, and take you to different areas in the game, so I’ll see how she goes – I’ve called her Kødiak! 🙂 She’s only level 7 at the moment, because we had another two short power outages about then – Julian was out shopping for the BBQ, and I wasn’t game enough to start doing anything “important” on the computer in case we got a power surge or something when the power came back on (nor was I able to go for my second treadmilling walkies, so I only got one done today!) but hopefully I’ll have a bit more time to get her up to at least level 15 tomorrow, as I don’t think we’ll be entertaining M.I.T. again until Friday… which is, as Julian so succinctly just said, “subject to change without notice!” I also have a load or two of washing to put on, but I don’t think they’ll interrupt my game-play too much! 🙂

M.I.T. arrived at about 12.20pm and of course, out came the nibblies, the champagne, and the BBQ got underway. It was a good afternoon, much was discussed, and we all ate and drank maybe just a wee bit too much – but that will be mentioned in my Food stuffz section… We all went out onto the deck while Julian was cooking, but brought everything inside to eat, as it was getting too hot to remain outside. Our deck is properly roofed (not just that corrugated alsynite stuff) and has a ceiling fan in the middle of it, which is excellent for preventing the BBQ smoke from coalescing under the roof/ceiling… Well, we talked about Tasmania, and we talked about property, and computers, and cooking… and I can’t remember what else – and before we knew it, it was after five o’clock! They called a taxi, and that was about when Julian and I both decided that a short postprandial nap might be a pleasant thing to do, when the phone rang… and I had a cup of coffee and talked to my favourite youngest daughter instead 🙂

Food stuffz: last night we had King Island Beef sausages for dinner (they are so nice! You all should try them – they have proper sausage skins, too, not that yukky paper stuff that splits and tears while it’s cooking, and tastes horrible unless you drown the sausage in tomato sauce!) green beans, half an Heirloom tomato, and steamed rice, instead of chips! We’d both forgotten that I’d run out of diet jellies, so I had to have one of Julian’s desserts instead – a low-fat, burnt fig and salted caramel yoghurt! It was absolutely delicious! And it had what looked and tasted like real bits of fig in it! Of course, it’s a lot higher in calories than my diet jellies, but it’s nice to have something a bit “different” now and then! 😉 Lunch today. Julian BBQ’d rump steak, scotch fillet, (commercially) marinated chicken breasts, (some more) King Island Beef sausages, bacon, and a couple of honey cured smoked salmon pieces for Inbar, who doesn’t eat meat. We also had some BBQ’d skewers of mushroom, cherry tomato, capsicum, and Halloumi cheese cubes, too. There was a tub of quinoa tabouli salad, a “garden” salad, and a tub of potato salad, fresh crusty bread, and butter. I ate some salted cashews and some salt and cider vinegar crisps – only for their salt – for nibblies, and I had a small glass of champagne, and a half glass of dry white wine with lunch – and I ate the following: one sausage, one half rasher of bacon (with the fat cut off and discarded) half a marinated chicken breast, a spoonful of quinoa tabouli salad, a small spoonful of potato salad, a small piece of bread with no butter, and one Halloumi cube. Hmm… I didn’t think I ate all that much, but looking at it all written down like that, I think it was more than I thought it was! And then there was dessert… Yes, dessert… Julian had bought a very small “New York Style Baked Cheesecake” (about 20cm in diameter?) and we all had a small piece, including me (and there’s still more than a quarter of it left in the fridge!) with a drizzle of light cream…

Needless to say, neither Julian nor I had any dinner tonight! We just had a cup of coffee!

Weigh-in this morning. This morning was good! Unfortunately I don’t think it will be tomorrow though! This morning, I’d gone down another two points, from 63.3kg to 63.1kg… then I went and ate all that stuff today, and I only managed to get one walk in, thanks to the power going out this morning! (grrr.. we’ve had four (4) power outages since Christmas! We’re starting to get just a little tired of them!) I’m seriously thinking of doing three 1.5 kilometer walks tomorrow… I’ll see how I go… I think it’ll depend a lot on what my scales tell me in the morning! Still, I do take heart from the fact that although my weight does go up somewhat alarmingly when I have “a bit too much to eat”, it usually (cross fingers, touch wood!) goes down again when I start eating more sensibly… We may be going out for lunch again on Friday, for a sort-of a “Farewell Dinner”, depending on what M.I.T. want to do – but after that, we’ll have a decent sort of “Food Break” until Julian’s Birthday in February, and then another “Food Break”, until my Birthday in March, so that should give my stomach a reasonable amount of “shrinking time” – I guess it’s a matter of “weight and see!” 😉

Tomorrow Julian will be working in the Office and in the Commodore 64 Room, while I take care of the washing, and try to level up Kødiak -and hopefully we’ll have a nice, quiet day, with not too much to eat! And that, gentle readers, is about it from me again for tonight – don’t forget to call in again tomorrow night to find out just how much my weight decided to go up after our BBQ today, to catch up on what Kødiak has been up to, and to hear about any other adventures we might have had! But until then, please try to bee good, remember that intelligence is the ability to adapt to change, and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to drive carefully, and to keep cool – or warm – depending on the weather… but most importantly, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

Well, here I go, late again! But this time I have a good excuse – my favourite eldest daughter was over today, and we watched the first four episodes of “The Chronicles of Shannara”, based on the Terry Brooks Shannara series of books. First impressions? Well, I liked it – and I’d like to watch more of it – but not if we have to rely on episodes recorded from the Foxtel SyFy channel! Honestly, I know it’s called “Pay TV”, but the commercial breaks were completely over the top! For every three minutes of show, there’d be at least five minutes worth of commercials, and if we hadn’t been able to fast-forward through the ads it would have been completely unwatchable! There simply wasn’t enough story time between the numerous, and very long ad breaks, in which to grasp the story-line properly! Well, I’d recorded the first two episodes, and Julian found and pulled down the 3rd and 4th episodes from online for us, and if we’re going to watch the rest of the series, it’s going to have to be pulled down – so far, it looks like a good show – but it doesn’t look good enough to be bothered sifting through all those ad breaks, even using the fast-forward function! It’s typical fantasy, Tolkien-wannabe-type fare, with elves, and demons, and humans, and a dying magical protector tree – but it looks reasonably well done, I’m sure I’ve seen some of the actors in other shows (so they were obviously good enough to warrant another role in this show) and the scenery is very pretty (it looks as though it was filmed in New Zealand, or possibly even Ireland – but I’m too lazy to be bothered looking it all up! Sorry! 🙂 ) So at first viewing, I’d say that it was well worth following, but only if you can get hold of an ad-free version of it! So be warned! Do NOT try to watch it on the SyFy channel, because you will go stark, staring mad, sifting through all the ads, even if you record it and wear out your fast-forward button on it!

We also watched out last episode (Season finale) of “The Librarians” ( 😦  we want more – currently it’s our favourite show, and I don’t know if there’s even going to be another Season of it!) and our last episode (well, the last one we have on file, anyway) of “Supergirl” – then we filled in the rest of the time with the next Season (6th, I think!) of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

This morning before my favourite eldest daughter arrived, I played a bit of WoW – I got Brunhilda up to level 22 – almost level 23, actually – and although I’m currently in the Northern Barrens, the “gateway” into Ashenvale, and through to the Ruins of Mathystra, where the Ghost Saber-tooth cats can be found, I’ve been far too busy questing to have even gone after Dishu, the spotted orange “Special”, that I usually try to Tame for a pet! Besides, I’ve already Tamed another, different “Special”, a white lion called “Echeyakee”! I was given a quest to go out and kill him, and to bring back his claw, or his pelt, or something, as proof – but I remembered that he was Tamable, and as I had a magickal horn to blow to make him appear, I called him, Tamed him, and then because once you tame an animal – even a special “named” animal, the Pet version is simply called “Cat”, or “Boar”, or whatever sort of animal it is, and I re-named him “Echeyakee”! Then I used the horn again, and killed this second “Echeyakee”, and took the “proof” needed back to the quest giver! Two birds, one stone! 😉 So maybe this evening I’ll be able to make my way up to Mathystra to see if I can get my Ghost Saber-tooth Pet as well! Oh, and I now have a mount! A big, black riding wolf! And it’s just sooo much more betterer, galloping along on wolf-back, rather than jog-trotting slowly along! 🙂

Food stuffz: today it’s been pretty much “same old, same old” – the usual breakfast, and the usual “at home” lunch – two Ryvita crispbreads, with low-far ricotta or cottage cheese, a spoonful of quinoa tabouli salad (I’m still looking for a decent recipe so that we can make it ourselves!) a slice of sandwich ham, a slice of low-fat sandwich cheese (half a slice on each crispbread – not a whole slice on each!) and a bit of sliced tomato on top – tonight we’re having the King Island Beef sausages again, with rice instead of chips this time, and I suppose the usual suspects – green beans and half a tomato! 🙂 Seems to be working, because…

Weigh-in this morning. Astonished me! I’d gone back down – five points! I went from that ghastly 63.8kg back down to 63.3kg! Innit amazing what a single day on decently light meals (well, sort-of, anyway) and getting in both treadmill walks can do! Nah – I think it’s more to do with fluid and fluid retention – it only takes one really hot day for me to turn into a camel, or a sponge, and my body simply refuses to give up its water – it kinda says “No! no! I might get thirsty later! It’s gunna be hot, you know!” Well, that’s my theory, anyway! 🙂 Oh well, let’s see what sort of a liar the scales are going to make of me tomorrow, eh? 😉

Well, we were going to take the Israeli mob to “The Tender Trap” for lunch tomorrow, but guess what? They don’t open again until Thursday! “Bother,” said Winter, as all her careful plans were dashed to pieces! We could do the BBQ tomorrow, but we wouldn’t be able to make the lamb marinade recipe that my favourite eldest daughter sent me because (a) we don’t have any sesame oil or fresh mint in the house, and (b) it’s supposed to rest in the fridge overnight. Not that we have to have the marinated lamb for the BBQ, of course, we can have all sorts of other meats or sausages – the lamb isn’t essential – I just thought it would be nice… Julian has suggested the Pancake Parlour as an alternative venue, at which point my eyebrows suddenly disappeared into my hair-line (I mean, isn’t the Pancake Parlour just a little contrary to my dietary boundaries?! He said I could have a salad… and I said that no-one goes to the Pancake Parlour to have a salad!) so Julian said that he’d “discuss it with Mike in the morning”. Personally, I wouldn’t mind going back to the East Empress Bistro, even though we were only there on Sunday, but when I mentioned it the other day to Mike and Inbar they gave me the distinct impression that they weren’t interested in Chinese.. so… I guess not. Anyway, no doubt we’ll all muddle through somehow or other, and still manage to have a nice meal – we could have the BBQ tomorrow (but without the lamb) and take them to “The Tender Trap” on Friday, for a “farewell luncheon” thingie… And once again, that’s about it from me this evening! Drop in again tomorrow night to find out how “The Great Saga of the Family Luncheon Or BBQ” panned out, and if we did end up going to the Pancake Parlour, did I disgrace myself by having a Short Stack, with Real Maple Syrup and Whipped Butter? 😉 (especially if the scales weren’t very kind to me in the morning!) Until then, however, do please try to bee good, and remember, if you don’t know, the thing to do is not to get scared, but to learn… and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to drive carefully, and to keep cool – or warm – depending on Melbourne’s sometimes rather weird weather… but most of all, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

I fear that I have to end this blog on a rather sad note – Terry’s mother – my favourite youngest daughter’s mother-in-law – passed away peacefully this afternoon after a long illness – our thoughts are with Terry and Kate…

Well, the Israel contingent arrived around two this afternoon, and they’ve just left – Julian is driving them back to their short-stay apartment at Southbank. So it’s been a bit of a mixture of a day – our cleaning lady was here this morning, and I’m glad that I vacated the Den so that she could clean and dust my desk – it actually looks quite presentable now, even if I can’t find anything! (the reason that I can’t find anything is because I put everything away and out of sight, lest it be “accidentally” thrown out, as she’s done once before!) I did get a bit of WoW-ing in this morning – enough to go up one level, anyway (Winter warbles, somewhat off-key: “only one more bubble to ding!”) and I’ll be able to ride, instead of having to jog everywhere! I went and sat on the bed reading while K. (the cleaning lady) was working in here, and by the time she’d finished and left, it was lunchtime, and also time for my second “walkies” – then by the time I’d been for my walk, and had my lunch, Mike, Inbar and Tom arrived! We sat around and talked for the afternoon, and true to my word, I didn’t eat a single potato crisp! Not one! (mainly because there weren’t any! 😛 ) I did nibble on a few wasabi-flavoured peas though (because I never promised that I wouldn’t eat them – and besides… the damage had already been done yesterday!) You know what? I just can’t wait until March 10th! Because by then, all the main celebratory events pertaining to this time of the year will be over, and I can start concentrating on keeping my weight stable, for a change! Apart from Easter, anyway! 😉 We’ve arranged to take Mike, Inbar and Tom out to dinner at The Tender Trap on Wednesday night (or I wonder if lunch would be better? I must ask Julian to discuss this with them!) and it seems we’re cooking a BBQ for them too – possibly Thursday night? Or again, Thursday lunchtime? My favourite eldest daughter sent me the very delicious sounding recipe for a lamb marinade this morning, and having a BBQ would be a good opportunity to try it out! Tonight was suggested for the BBQ, but it was already starting to get a bit late, and Julian would have had to go out again to get all the necessaries for it, including salad things, bread, meat, and any of the ingredients for the marinade that we didn’t have – which is just about all of them, from memory! No, I think Thursday night, or Friday lunchtime would be much more suitable… and anyway, the marinated lamb is supposed to stay in the fridge overnight!

I’d like to see if I can get Brunhilda (that’s what I’ve called my Orc Hunter on WoW, and surprisingly enough, I actually got it, without having to resort to fancy accented letters!) up to level 20, or even 21, tonight – from memory she’s about half way through level 19 at the moment, so I stand a better than even chance of making it to level 20, and if I’m really lucky, even level 21 should be within my reach this evening! Then at level 20 I can get a Mount, and at level 21 I can go after a Ghost Saber-tooth for a Pet… and after that, I’ll probably lose interest in Brunhilda, and start leveling someone else up!

Food stuffz: well, last night, as you know, I had two thin pieces of toast for dinner – one with Vegemite, and one plain – and don’t forget I didn’t have my second mill-walk yesterday, because by the time we got back from lunch, my stomach most definitely didn’t feel like taking a nice, brisk 1.5 kilometer walk on the treadmill – so I went into the lounge-room and read, until I dozed off about 2.4 minutes later (probably because I ate too much passionfruit pulp in the Passionfruit Perfection dessert! 😉 ) This morning, of course, I had my normal breakfast (two Vita Brits, extra bran, half a sliced banana, and 200 ml. of skinny milk) and for lunch today I had my usual two Ryvita crispbreads, spread with Philly Light, a slice of low-fat cheddar cheese, a spoonful of quinoa tabouli salad, a slice of sandwich ham, and some sliced tomato on top. Tonight we’re having warmed-up left-over Lamb Pilaf, because Mike and Co. left a bit later than planned – Julian’s only just arrived back from dropping them off at their short-stay apartment in Southbank, it’s almost seven o’clock, and time for the news! It’s really a bit late to have to turn around and make something for dinner, if we want to eat before ten o’clock! And I’ll have a smaller portion than I didn’t last time! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. Terrible! Shocking! And all totally self-inflicted, so I have no right to grizzle about it… so I won’t. It is what it is, and hopefully we’ll be able to reverse it over the next few days! I went up a lot! Eight points, in fact! I went from a svelte 63.0kg to a whopping obese 63.8kg! Tomorrow will be alright, but then I’ve got dinner with Mike et al at The Tender Trap on Wednesday night, and a BBQ to see them off on Thursday or Friday! (they fly back to Israel on Saturday) Well, I can only do my best, and cross all my fingers and toes that I’ll be able to shed some of this excess, once things get back to what laughingly passes for “normal” around here!

And here’s the first of these for the New Year! 😉

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

And thanks to the instant magic of the Internet, here I am back again! Where was I? Oh yes, the disastrous weigh-in this morning! Yes, well, no excuses – no regrets (well, maybe just a few…) after all, life is meant to be lived, not tip-toed through – it’s not tulips, you know! Tomorrow my favourite eldest daughter will be coming over – we’ll probably watch some of our usual shows, but I’d noticed the other day that the Foxtel SyFy channel was starting a (presumably!) new series called “The Chronicles of Shannara”, apparently based on the “Shannara” books, a fantasy series by Terry Brooks. As Lee and I have both read nearly all his books, I recorded the two first episodes of “Chronicles”, just to see what they were like. We might watch those tomorrow too, to see if it’ll be worth recording the rest of the series. I’ll let you know what we thought tomorrow night! 🙂 Because the Israeli contingent is flying out of Australia on Saturday, and I don’t really think that Mike, Inbar, and Tom are very much into Chinese food, we’ll try to make arrangements to have lunch at The Tender Trap on Wednesday, instead of at the East Empress Bistro, and maybe try to organise a BBQ lunch for Thursday or Friday as a sort-of a “farewell” dinner for them (and besides, I’m dying to try out that marinade that my favourite eldest daughter sent us! It sounds so nice!) And that’s about all I have for you this evening, so once again, that’s about it from me! 🙂 Please do call in again tomorrow night – to find out if my weight is beginning to settle down again, or if it’s still on the rise (which I devoutly hope it isn’t!) as well as what arrangements we’ve made for lunch on Wednesday, and the BBQ on Thursday or Friday, and what my favourite eldest daughter and I thought of the new series, “The Chronicles of Shannara”! Until then though, please do try to bee good, remember that failure is the opportunity to begin again, this time more wisely – and don’t forget to drive carefully, to stay warm – or cool – depending on your preferences, and to take care of yourselves… but above all, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

Well, here it is, just after six o’clock, and I have finally roused myself from my afternoon of lethargy following our sumptuous ‘feast’ at the East Empress Bistro. The main East Empress restaurant used to sit on Springvale Road, about a block away from Coleman Parade, but now that site, listed as being “closed for renovations”, is nothing but an empty building lot, looking a lot like a missing tooth in an old boxer’s mouth. Chatting to one of the proprietors today, we learned that there is indeed to be a four-storey building going up there – the two lower floors will be the new and improved East Empress, and the two floors above will be apartments. I exclaimed “Oh, fantastic! I think I’ll buy one and then we can live above our “dining room”!” – the proprietress smirked and laughed – “Well,” she said “that’s what we’re going to do!” When we first heard of the East Empress, they were in a small – and I think the term “slightly shabby” would be appropriate – restaurant on Coleman Parade, and we ate there fairly often, because it really was an excellent place! Then they moved into a two-storey building “just down the street” on Springvale Road, where they continued their excellent service, care for their patrons, and of course, their faultless cuisine! Not being Chinese, I have no idea how “authentic” it was, but I do know that an awful lot of their patrons always seemed to be asian, which is usually a good sign. Time passed, and we moved house twice, once when we moved to Doncaster, and the second time, when we moved here – and the East Empress remained one of the two restaurants that were at the top of our list when we wanted to eat out (the other being The Tender Trap, a quasi-Italian-slash-“International” restaurant, as good in its way as the East Empress) There was another restaurant that we liked, a Japanese one, on the corner of Coleman Parade and Springvale Road, but it was a little pricey, so we didn’t go there much – but the food was excellent, as was their service, and I have to tell you that when we learnt that it was owned and run by the proprietors of the East Empress, we weren’t really all that surprised! “Quality in all things” seems to be their motto! So, on to the East Empress Bistro, and our lunch today. The Bistro, it seems, has moved into what used to be their Japanese restaurant! The food is mostly from their old menu at their previous place, but they’ve retained some dishes (and also the crockery and tableware!) of their Japanese restaurant! It was lovely to see all the old familiar faces again – and some new ones, because of course, we haven’t been there since before I went on my diet, and I realised today just how much I’ve missed going there, and also how good their food is! All in all, it was a wonderful meal, and a good time was had by all, so if you want a really nice Chinese meal, “authentic” or not, do try the East Empress! I don’t think you’ll be sorry you did!

Food stuffz: as you know, last night we had some more of the Persian Spiced Lamb Pilaf – that I’m very glad I talked Julian in to making, that first time – despite the fact that it seemed to have an extraordinary amount of cinnamon in it! He remarked that the recipe didn’t seem to have made quite as much as it did the last time he made it, despite all the ingredients being the same. After discussing this strange phenomenon for a bit, we came to the conclusion that there didn’t seem to be the amount of leftovers this time because he’d given me the same size helping as he gave himself – which was far too much for me! (but I ate it anyway! I’d like to say that it was because I didn’t realise how much there was, but then I’d be telling stories! 😉 ) So, I had a bit too much Lamb Pilaf last night…then there was lunch today. I started off with a dry Martini, then because it was my favourite eldest daughter’s Big Birthday Bash, we all had a glass of Chandon (champagne) Then I had three small fried pork dumplings (delicious!) as an entrée, followed by one of the dishes from their old Japanese menu, chicken teriyaki (excellent! and apart from a few people having a mouthful of it to see what it was like, I ate the ruddy lot again (but it wasn’t a terribly big dish!)) and we all shared a large dish of fried rice. I drank mineral water. Dessert – *sigh* – what can I say? I had a concoction called “Passionfruit Perfection”, which consisted of a layer of Pavlova meringue, with two (!) scoops of a very excellent passionfruit ice cream on top of the meringue (I must remember to ask them where they got it, or if it was “home-made”, and if so, could I have the recipe, please?) and then passionfruit pulp and passionfruit sauce over the lot! It! Was! Magnificent! So… guess what I had for dinner tonight?! Can’t guess? 🙂 You dread to guess?! 😉 …I had two slices of thin toast – one plain, and one with a smear of vegemite on it, plus my diet jelly (one can always find room for a bit of jelly!) and my three prunes… which leads be to wonder what the scales are going to say tomorrow morning, because…

Weigh-in this morning. I was (as I usually am, when I feel guilty!) expecting the worst, especially after consuming that entire tube of sugar, which I thought had contained sugar-less, or at the very least, sugar-free Fruit Mints! So it was with some trepidation that I clambered onto the scales this morning… and I’d gone down a point, to 63.0kg! Oh dear! Now, tonight, I’m really scared to get on the scales tomorrow – all of these “indulgences” are going to catch up with me, I just know it! I sort-of feel that I’ve been thumbing my nose at my weight loss, almost daring it to go back up to unacceptable levels and I’ll have to go back on the Optifast! Actually, it’s not that I’d mind going back on the Optifast – I quite liked it – but it would mean that I’d failed. I would have let myself down, and I would have shamed myself in the eyes of all the people who said that I wouldn’t be able to do it on my own – they’d be entitled to point their fingers and say “See?! We were right, after all! You weren’t able to do it on your own, were you!” – and I simply cannot, and will not, permit that! The next Birthday on the list is Julian’s, in February…

Tomorrow… tomorrow, the cleaning lady is coming. This time, when she gets to the Den, I think I’ll “vacate the premises” and go and read in the lounge-room, so that she can get at my desk. I’m usually playing WoW or something when she arrives, so when she gets to the Den, she usually doesn’t disturb me, and just cleans around me – but my desk is getting terribly grotty and dusty (yes, I suppose I could clean it myself, but why waste the services of a perfectly good cleaning lady? Hmm? 😉 ) so this time I think I’ll get out of her way, and let her give it a bit of a clean for a change… Then I was actually looking forward to a nice, peaceful afternoon after she’d left, but I’d forgotten about the Israeli mob! They arrived back in Melbourne from Tasmania this afternoon, and Mike rang to ask if it was alright if they came over and annoyed us tomorrow afternoon – so it looks like we’ll be “entertaining” (but I’m not going to be eating! I swear (with my fingers firmly crossed behind my back) that I will not be nibbling on potato crisps, or whatever…) And Tuesday, my favourite eldest daughter will be over (unless she comes on Wednesday instead) So it looks like another busy week ahead – and there’s still plenty of boxes to be unpacked (I’m thinking we need the air conditioner on – I’m starting to get really hot in here!) Anyway, that’s about it from me again this evening! 🙂 Do drop in again tomorrow night, and find out if my desk got dusted and cleaned, if I did give in to temptation and ate a “but I only eat them for the salt!” potato crisp or three – though I think that might largely depend on what the scales tell me tomorrow morning – and which is something else I guess you’ll all be itching to know! Well, you’ll just have to wait until tomorrow night to find out, won’t you! 🙂 In the meantime, do try to bee good, don’t forget that we’re all just as happy as we make up our minds to be, and please remember to look after yourselves, to drive carefully, and to keep cool – or warm – depending on our weather… but most importantly, remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

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! 🙂

My goodness! I don’t know what’s come over me! I’m starting early today! 😉 Well, this morning was pretty ordinary – Julian went for his walk – I went for my walk, and we had breakfast! My hairdressing appointment was at 12.30pm, and as well as having my Warfarin blood test done, Julian wanted to get to (one of our) banks to organise my name change, which simply meant fronting up at the Teller’s window with my new Birth Certicate and filling in several forms – in triplicate! (no, I’m just joking! I did have to sign a couple of forms, but only in singleicate!) And now we only have one other bank, plus my passport and Medicare to do! *sigh* I guess we’ll just have to get a round tuit! Anyway, we left here at about 10 past 11, and went straight to the bank – from there, we went to Doncaster, and as we just had time, we had lunch, at Jamaica Blue. I had some sort of minced beef rolled up in pastry, which looked quite nice, but -it was very insipid and tasteless – it tasted as if it had been made completely and totally without salt – in fact I don’t think they even waved the salt shaker over the top of it – and if they used any butter in its making, it was unsalted! I don’t think it could have been more boring if they’d made it out of cardboard. The next time we have something to eat there I’ll try to get them to make me a toastie – the last nice-looking savoury food I had there was tasteless, “gluggy”, and very definitely “fatty” (because the bacon in it hadn’t been cooked enough!) We should probably try somewhere else, but strangely enough, I do like the place – so we’ll give them a third try, and if they still don’t measure up, we’ll go elsewhere. So after that I trotted on into Oscar Oscar, was sat down, given a cup of coffee, and had my nice, relaxing aroma-therapy neck and scalp massage, before being whisked off to have my hair washed. I was going to talk to Elliott about having my hair re-coloured, but apparently he’d already decided what he was going to do! Next time – next Thursday, in fact, I’m going into the copper-and-peach tones! Darker underneath, and lightning up on top to an almost frosted-copper (if such a shade exists!) Sounds nice – and I was always somewhere between a copper red and a Titian red before I got… umm… older, and my hair sort-of “silvered”. I can’t wait to see what I look like with copper hair again! 🙂 Oh, bad news on the shoe front! As you all know, I had a new pair of shoes made just before Christmas. The first time I tried them on, they were quite comfortable, but the back of the shoes seemed to be too high and rubbed a fair bit of skin off my heels, and I had to wear band-aids so as not to get blisters. Well, that’s OK – I don’t mind wearing a couple of band-aids on the back of my heels! Brian, the shoemaker, had told me to wear the shoes while I was sitting watching television or whatever, to allow my body heat to soften and mould the shoe leather to the shape of my foot – which I’d done. The next time I wore the shoes for just walking around a shopping centre, I found that the top of the sandal part of the shoe cut into my second last left toe, so I remedied that by bunging smaller band-aids (damn it! I should be buying shares in the ruddy company!) on the third and fourth left toes, but I put them up too high on the toe to be much help, so this time, today, I donned the two band-aids on my heels, and stuck another two of the smaller band-aids underneath the ones already on the third and fourth toes of my left foot. The shoes still stuck into my toes, but it was bearable, and after a while the shoe and my toes decided to be friends after all, and I thought no more about it, until… I was coming out from the blood collection place after having my Warfarin test done, and I realised that the instep area of my left foot – actually the part where your ankle “funny-bone” is – was getting more than a little painful! I limped along as best I could, I bought a new handbag, and we did the rest of our shopping, and my left foot was just getting sorer and sorer! When we got back to the car, I had a look at it, thinking that I was going to get a wonderful bruise there, and then I noticed that the shoe had actually broken the skin and that I had quite a nasty abrasion, right on the edge of my inside ankle “funny-bone”. I’ll give Brian a ring on Monday morning and let him know that I’m having problems with the shoes… Why won’t they listen to me! I keep telling these ruddy shoemakers that they can give my feet all the support that they seem to think my feet need – but that my feet are too old and too “set in their ways” for all this unwanted support to do anything except give me and my feet a lot of grief! For half a century (!!) my feet have been used to going around as naked as the day they were born! For fifty years, my feet have grown accustomed to spreading out and balancing my weight superbly – which is why I stagger around as though I’m drunk, unable to balance properly, when I wear shoes! And the shoemakers, in their wisdom, think that giving me orthotics in clumpy shoes in order to give my feet more “support” now is going to make my feet “better”, in any way, shape, or form?! Well, I have news for them! They don’t! So with tears in my voice, I plaintively repeat “Why won’t they listen to me!” (have I ever told you all that I hate shoes? I have? Oh… well, I hate shoes, anyway!)

Re-cap: we’ve been to the bank, and I should be getting my new Visa cards in the mail “soonish”. I’ve eaten a totally salt-less lunch, been to the hairdresser, bought a new handbag, and had my Warfarin blood test done – the results of which will be in later this evening, I hope, …and my helpfully supportive shoes have succeeded in hurting my foot and drawing blood. So I grizzled about it. Copiously.

Food stuffz: we had “chicken in boats” for dinner last night, with steamed rice mixed with finely chopped spring onions, green beans, and fried onion (because we’d run out of tomato) and it was very nice – there’s even a little bit of the chicken left over that can be sliced up for lunch tomorrow, I think! Lunch today I’ve already told you about, except to say that I had a small, mini-cheesecake with some blueberries in it after the saltless beef whatever-it-was. Tonight, I’m indulging myself once again – I haven’t had pasta for nearly two years, so I have requested a small bowl of pasta, with tomato and basil sauce, and a teeny sprinkle of grated parmesan cheese… I thought that it was probably a good idea to have the pasta on a night where I wouldn’t want much dinner because I’d already eaten a fair sized lunch – well, that’s the theory – and also my excuse – and I’m sticking to it, anyway! 😉

Weigh-in this morning. Was better – though it probably won’t be, by tomorrow! (self-inflicted! so I have no right to grizzle about it, except at myself!) This morning, however, I went down four points – from 63.8kg down to 63.4kg! Watch me reverse that tomorrow morning! 😉 Anyway, it’s good that I did go down – it means that my body is still trying to get down to a weight it’s happy with – which I’d thought was around the 64kg mark, but… if it wants to go lower, I’ll be more than happy to go along with it! 🙂

Tomorrow we’re doing more boxing – or should that be “un-boxing”? I don’t mind doing that, as long as I get a little bit of time to play around with WoW as well – I haven’t had time to even log on today! However, I think we managed to accomplish a fair bit this afternoon, and I really do want to get on with the boxes – time is starting to run out until Settlement Day for the apartment! On a much sadder note, I was quite devastated to hear of Alan Rickman’s death yesterday – he was a great actor, a gorgeous man, and had the most wonderful speaking voice! Like David Bowie, he was my age too… and does anyone ever die from something other than Cancer? 😦 Both the acting and the music world are a lot poorer for their passing… and once again, that’s about it from me for this evening! Feel free to drop in again tomorrow night – you’ll learn how many boxes we managed to unpack, and if there was anything unusual or exciting in them – besides the obligatory dust, general grot, and rubbish! You’ll also find out if I did manage to reverse today’s very pleasant weight drop, or if the downwards trend is continuing. I do know that the weather plays a big role in which way my weight jumps – hopefully with this cooler weather it’ll continue going down… however, you’ll have to wait until tomorrow night to find these things out! 😉 In the meantime, do please continue to bee good, remember that people will forget what you said, and people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel… and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to drive carefully, and to keep warm – or cool – depending on the weather… but most importantly – don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

There! That’s better! I’ve made a proper header for this style… template… whatever! 🙂 Well, today’s been a very interesting day! It’s been as cold today as it was hot yesterday – much more betterer! 🙂 This morning I did a bit more WoW-ing, and… would you believe, the macro icon turned back into what it was supposed to be! Actually, now I’m not sure if the icons vary between realms or not, because I was on Quel’Dorei last night, and Nagrand this morning. Hmm… this will need further investigation! Or as Alice would say, “Curiouser and curiouser!” Anyway, progress has been made with the new characters I’ve created, and I’ve found out how to finish a quest that’s been driving me absolutely around the bend for the past few days! I had to go out and “extract” venom from some scorpions, using a magickal totem that you’ve been given. You’re supposed to put the totem in the sand near a scorpion, which will then attack you (they’re extremely aggressive actually, and will sprint across half an acre of sand to attack you, even when they can’t see you!) The totem is supposed to extract the venom whilst your Pet kills the scorpion. But what’s been confusing me is that you plant the totem, but nothing seems to be happening – the scorpion is busy attacking you and your Pet, and all of a sudden, there’s a message on your screen telling you “Quick! Use the totem now!, the scorpion is releasing its venom” Only you’ve just used the totem and you can’t use it again until it “cools down” (i.e. becomes usable again after several seconds) In the meantime, your Pet has killed the scorpion, and you don’t have any venom to take home to your quest giver! I knew I had to be doing something wrong, and as I said – this quest has been bugging me for days! So today I gave up, and asked Julian to have a go at this stupid quest so that he could show me what I was doing wrong. Naturally, he got the venom samples straight off – no problemo whatsoever! It turns out that I was doing it more-or-less right anyway, when I’d target the scorpion and bung the totem in the sand next to it, however I should have let my Pet take care of the scorpion by itself – I didn’t need to, and apparently shouldn’t have, attacked it myself, and as for that stupid screen message, it’s either been added to deliberately mislead you, or is a “hang-over” from the good old days when quests were actually harder to complete and you often needed to be told what to do, and when to do it! Anyway, I now know how to get the ruddy venom samples with the other three characters that I’d more-or-less given up on, when I got to this particular quest! *grr!*

This afternoon we repaired to the lounge room to unpack the five boxes that Julian had brought over from Doncaster – neither of us had the foggiest idea as to what was in them, so it was all a bit of an adventure! We found lots of “stuff” – half a ton of ancient but still serviceable bed linens, which have now been re-boxed and labeled “St. Vincent’s”, books (which we didn’t really want to find yet, because we have nowhere to put them!) these have also been re-boxed, and correctly labeled “Books”. There was heaps and heaps of computer  gear which has been carted off to Julian’s Commodore 64 Room, a partially completed tapestry cushion cover – I think it’s mine, but it might be one of mother’s – I haven’t had a good look at it yet, there was a sewing box, some photo albums, cello music, from when Julian used to learn the cello, way back when, lots and lots and lots of rubbish, and… Grandfather’s manuscripts! 🙂 I’d thought that they were already here somewhere, but apparently not, because they were in one of the boxes! I think they’re probably all there, too, because there are three large parcels of them! I’m going to have to transcribe them all, because the paper that they were typed on is pretty ragged and flimsy now, and it would be really quite tragic to lose them! Some of his short stories were hilariously funny, some were really rather dark and nasty, but he was a very good writer, and as I get them transcribed, I’ll put up links to them, in case anyone wants to see where my favourite eldest daughter got her literary talents from. Grandfather (my mother’s father) had been in the Army, but when WWII broke out, he was a Bank Manager with the now extinct State Savings Bank of Victoria (thank you John Cain! Not!) and was needed here, so he never did get to serve. In his spare time, he wrote short stories for magazines – some were published, some were sent back. I do have some of the magazines that published his work, though I’m not sure if they’re in these three bundles or not – I haven’t had a chance to look through it all yet. His sister Agnes also wrote for magazines and other periodicals, but she was much more “into” poetry than prose and short stories – I have some of her work too, but only some of the poems that she wrote in her journals. So anyway, I’m really thrilled to have found his manuscripts, and I’m looking forward to transcribing the stories. I’ve toyed with the idea of having them published when I’ve transcribed them all – or if not actually published, then at least have them properly bound, for Posterity (whoever he is! 😉 )

Food stuffz: well, I have come to the conclusion that I’m going to have to stop eating so many of the “boiled lolly” type of sugarless sweets. Yes, that may be “sugarless”, but they’re certainly not “calorie-less”! I tend to suffer from a very dry mouth – probably from my umpteen million years of heavy smoking (50+ per day!) but also from the oral surgery I had when I got my implants and part of my top jaw was removed – anyhoo, my mouth gets so dry that it gets almost impossible to talk properly, especially when I’m tread-milling – that’s why I started chewing gum and sucking on the sugarless lollies. The lollies helped a bit, but I had to keep eating them for the effect to last more than a few minutes. The gum worked fine too, but once again it was almost a matter of “chain-chewing”, which Julian couldn’t stand the sight and sound of, and which gave me quite a painful jaw ache – so I started relying solely on the sugarless lollies. And my weight is starting to climb! Not a good look! So, once again, the Mistress of Compromises has come up with a clever plan! I’ll… compromise! 🙂  I’ll only eat one or two sugarless lollies a day, which won’t upset me too much because they really are far too sweet for my liking – the chewing gum I’ll use as though it was the sugarless lolly – pop two in my mouth, and chew until there’s no taste left, and then spit them out dispose of them in a tissue. That way I won’t eat too many sugarless calories, Julian won’t have to watch me chewing all the time, and hopefully my mouth won’t get too dry! Last night we had the cold-cuts and a couple of commercial salads for dinner, which was lovely, but I think that once again, I ate a bit too much of the meat, and today I had my usual 2 Ryvita crispbread with low-fat ricotta, and some of the very yummy quinoa tabouli salad (because we’d run out of tomato!) with some ham and some low-fat cheddar cheese. Tonight we’re having “chicken in boats” – pieces of well seasoned chicken breast, loosely wrapped in alfoil and baked in the oven. The pieces of chicken steam inside the alfoil, leaving a lot of very delicious juices in the little aluminium “boats” that should be drizzled over whatever vegetables you’re having with it… a very tasty and low-calorie way to have chicken! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. It must have been the potato chips (crisps!) that Julian and I both gobbled yesterday when Mike, Inbar and Tom came over – so, once again, self-inflicted damage! But honestly – I only eat crisps for the salt in or on them! Not because they taste yummy, and go crunchy-crunch in your mouth, leaving an empty void behind which you immediately have to fill with another fistful of crisps… Anyway, getting on the scales this morning was not a pleasant experience! I went up another three points – from 63.5kg to 63.8kg! This was not good, and will stop right now – or whenever I can persuade my body to start behaving itself again – like when I don’t eat any more crisps, which I can’t eat any more of anyway because there aren’t any left, and we won’t be buying any more! (until Easter, when everyone will be over here for Easter luncheon, and will need to be entertained with “nibblies”, like crisps, and nuts, and stuff other thingz) Anyway, no doom and gloom, just determination! 😉 Let’s see what tomorrow brings… hopefully I’ll have gone down a point or two…

Tomorrow I have a visit to the hairdresser, when I’ll have to talk to Elliott about having my hair colour done again – it’s starting to look very faded! I might see if I can have that done next week… and there it is – my day today! There’s really not much more to tell you all, so I guess that’s about it from me again for tonight! Do call in again tomorrow night, to find out what my weight did to me, and when I’m going to be able to have my hair colour done again. I also have to have my next Warfarin test done tomorrow, so I might have the results of that back by the time I write tomorrow night’s “episode”! (and won’t that be exciting! *rolls eyes*) But until then, please bee good, do remember that a limit on what you will do, puts a limit on what you can do, 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! 🙂

Yes, this is another new Theme – I just wanted to see what it looked like – I haven’t even done a header for it yet, and the chances are very good that I’ll go back to the last one, anyway, as I rather liked it… but… why does today feel like a Saturday?! I said to Julian just before, that today felt like a Saturday – and he was most surprised, because, he said, while he was driving Mike, Inbar and Tom back here after picking them up at the airport (late! Their flight had been delayed!) he’d been thinking that today felt like a Saturday, too! Does anyone else do that too? Feel as though the day is another day that it isn’t? (Umm… I don’t think that came out sounding the way I wanted it to! Sorry, but I think you know what I mean?) The day has been pretty normal all told – we got up and did all the usual things – except that Julian didn’t go for his walk this morning – but I did my “morning-milling”, which was a lot more pleasant with the fan blowing on me! I’m getting to the stage where I feel that I could speed the walk up a bit now – I’m walking at 3.4 kilometers an hour, and I’m finding that I’m unconsciously out-pacing the machine! As you know by now, I usually count as I’m walking – 1 pace (step) equals approximately 1 meter – so if I count to 100, that’s 100 meters, or so close to it as to make no never mind – but now I have to either force myself to slow right down, or count about every thirtieth step twice, or I get right out of synch with the treadmill’s pedometer! So I reckon I could probably up my speed from 3.4 kilometers per hour, to 3.6 kilometers per hour (because it only goes up in 2’s!) I might try that tomorrow…

After breakfast I played WoW for a while – still straightening out the characters on Quel’Dorei and Nagrand! I was a bit annoyed, too, because I’d made a lot of simple macros, and I wanted everyone’s to be the same – and up until now, they have been! But for some inexplicable reason, the extremely extensive macro icons list has changed! It no longer appears to be the same for both Horde and Alliance! I have a rather nice icon I use for my macro “sleep” (when I want my character to show how bored she is by lying down and snoring!) it’s a simple black background, with a white crescent moon and a couple of stars. All of my characters have used it – both Horde and Alliance – but today when I was sorting out these trivial little matters, I noticed that the icons for some of my Horde macros seemed to have changed – in fact, some of the macros themselves had changed! So I set about “fixing” this strange problem – but I couldn’t find the icons that had been there previously! There are quite literally hundreds of these little icons! You can’t scroll down them, you can’t sort them, and you can’t search for them, except for continually clicking on the bottom scroll arrow. You can drag the scroll button down, but then it goes too quickly and you miss a lot of them *sigh* so there I sat this morning, “click, click, clicking” away, looking in vain for my suddenly vanished macro icons! The next thing I knew, it was lunch time, and I’d wasted the entire morning! I was not terribly amused! Anyway, I’ve had to use “compromise” icons, for the more “important” (to me, anyway!) ones, and I shall no doubt waste some more time tomorrow looking for more suitable “compromise” icons!

After lunch I drifted off for my “midday-milling” (and again, the Dyson fan from the bathroom did make the entire exercise a lot more pleasant!) and Julian took of to go and pick up the Israeli mob, while I finished off my walking and went to put on some makeup. Then I sort of dithered until they arrived – I didn’t want to get all involved in WoW before they got here, so as I said – I dithered (I don’t want to big-note myself or anything, but I really am rather good at dithering! and of course, I do practice whenever I can! 😉 ) So they arrived, and we had coffee and chattered – as I think I’ve told you, they’ve been down in Tasmania visiting their eldest son and his wife, and Inbar has fallen in love with a quaint little cottage on a huge acreage, complete with its own waterfall, a pine plantation, and both a rain forest and a temperate forest! For what it is, it’s extremely – in fact almost unbelievably – cheap! I told her that if they really like it, they should put their foot on it, because at that price it probably won’t last long! The only real drawback is the lack of a decent internet connection – but I’m sure that something could be worked out without undue trouble! And you know, if it did have a good internet connection, I wouldn’t mind buying it for ourselves! Not that I’m really into waterfalls, pine plantations, and two types of forest – I’m not really the outdoors-y type – but it’s Tasmania, which means that it would be cooler than Melbourne in the summer, and it’s a gi-normous property, which means that we’d have peace and quiet, and no close neighbours. I think Inbar said that it was about an hour’s drive from Hobart (but everything in Tasmania’s close, because it’s so small!) so we wouldn’t have the convenience of “just nipping down to the local milk bar” if we ran out of milk – and it’s a long way to drive for breakfast bananas! 😉 Actually, where we are here suits us just fine – and we have a good internet connection – so you won’t see us moving this side of us dying from old age! 🙂

Food stuffz: dinner last night was sausages, chips, green beans, and half a tomato – which I’ve already told you, and lunch today was the usual 2 Ryvita crispbreads with low-fat ricotta, off-the-bone ham, sliced tomato, a few pieces of preserved? pickled? capsicum (which was really yummy!) and some low-fat cheddar cheese, and dinner tonight, which Julian is preparing now, is going to be cold-cuts and a spoonful or two of commercial salads, because it’s still quite hot (though the temperature is dropping very rapidly, thank heavens!)

Weigh-in this morning – well, firstly I have to tell you that I was wrong mistaken yesterday! I didn’t go up 4 points, I went up 5 points! I went from 63.1kg on Monday, to 63.6kg yesterday (Tuesday – such was my gluttony at the movies the day before!) Today, Wednesday, I went down one point – from 63.6kg to 63.5kg. Hopefully it’ll go down a bit more again tomorrow! But who knows? However, if I was totally amazed that I seemed to stick around in the 64kg zone for so long, I’m completely flabbergasted that I’m still in the 63kg zone now! I’ve lived with this body for a great many years, and it never ceases to amaze, annoy and astound me!

So once again, not very much got done today – it seems that whenever we make up our minds to do something constructive – like get some boxes unpacked or something – life gets in the way and decides that we’ll be doing something else instead! The boxes that we were going to unpack today are still sitting on the deck outside – perhaps if we pretend that we’re not going to open them, we can sort of sneak them in under the radar before life notices! 😉 Mike, Inbar and Tom will be back in Melbourne on Sunday – I’m not sure when we’ll be seeing them again – possibly Monday or Tuesday? And that’s really about it from me for tonight (I think I ate too much dinner – I’m feeling very full!) Apart from the boxes outside to be unpacked, and booking for lunch at the East Empress Bistro on Sunday for my favourite eldest daughter’s Big Birthday Bash, tomorrow’s looking relatively clear! Maybe I’ll even get all those [censored] macro icons sorted out! Don’t forget to drop by again tomorrow night to see what we’ve been up to, what my weight decided to do this time, if I managed to get those WoW macros of mine tidied up, and whether the boxes did finally get unpacked (and what was in them! They’ve been there so long that even we have no idea what’s in them!) Until then, though, please try to bee good, remember that you can never plan the future by the past, and don’t forget to drive carefully, to look after yourselves, and to keep cool – or warm – depending on our weird weather patterns… but most importantly, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

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! 🙂