Here I am, nice and early for a change – innit wunnerful how organised and efficient I can be sometimes! Wish I could do it all the time… Oh well, anyway, today started very early for us – actually it was really only half an hour earlier – we usually get up around 7.30am, but the alarm went off at 7.00am, and this morning there was no time for dilly-dallying, so we sprang out of bed like Cup runners from the starting gates, heading for our bathrooms and getting ourselves ready – well, Julian did – but I was staying home, so I just hopped on the scales and weighed myself. Right after my weigh-in is when I normally have my first bout of treadmilling, but I didn’t even have time for that this morning – we were off to the Den, and breakfast! Remember, Julian had to be over at Doncaster early today to let in the cleaners he’d arranged. After breakfast Julian made me a sandwich for lunch – doesn’t he trust me with a pat of butter and a jar of Vegemite?! *innocent look* (personally, though, I would have been more worried about the basil pesto hummus and the Halloumi cheese, with me left in charge of making my own sandwich! 😉 ) which he sealed in Glad Wrap and left in the fridge for me. Then, off he went, and I went back to my “normal” morning routine! I went back to the bathroom and brushed my teeth, then went and hopped on the treadmill for the first of my 1.5 kilometer jaunts. Then I went and got myself a nice cup of coffee, and settled in for a day of WoW-ing. I think I did pretty well, too – I didn’t try rearranging any of the girls, or doing anything with the extra Guild Bank, I went straight for Andronica with the aim of getting her to level 20, so that she could get a Mount, and then up to level 21, so that she could go off to the Ruins of Mathystra in Darkshore, to get herself a nice little Ghost Saber-tooth cat for her Pet. Well, we had many fun adventures today – one involving a giant-sized block of chocolate laxative, which I was supposed to feed to a stone giant, but he knew what I was up to and refused the nice piece of chocolate that I’d brought him… (probably just as well, too, come to think of it – I am a very small Goblin!) but on more than one occasion I was almost on the point of giving up on World of Warcraft, and Blizzard! A lot of their quests are so [censored] badly worded, and so [censored] lacking in even the most basic information on exactly what it is that you’re trying to do, that it’s only by Googling the quests, and seeing how other people had managed to muddle through and complete them that you even get to find out what it is that you’re supposed to be looking for! One of the last quests I did before I reached level 20 was one where I had to pick 8 (eight) bunches of a particular plant. You’re given two very big areas to search, but you’re not told what colour they are, or what they look like. You’re not told where they usually grow, like under tall trees, in a clearing in the middle of the ruins – you’re given no information at all, except that you’re to pick eight bunches of it! So I systematically started searching the two enormous areas where they were supposed to grow. Normally, if you wave your mouse over an area, if there’s anything at all that you can interact with, or pick up, your cursor will turn into a little gear cog-type thingy. I found nothing! No “glows”, no “sparkles”, no little gear thingy – absolutely nothing! I Googled the quest. From that I was able to tell that they were small orangy-yellow flowers that looked a teeny bit like four-leaf clovers – only a bit different. Guess what colours the vegetation in the two areas was! Orangy-yellow! I searched again, waving my mouse cursor all over the area. Nothing even remotely like these stupid flowers! After about half an hour (no, I’m not exaggerating!) of getting more and more angry and frustrated, I finally got a break! For just a split micro-second, my cursor turned into the little gear thingy! But of course I was moving it, wasn’t I, and the little gear thingy went back to being just a normal cursor… and do you think I could find it again, even though I knew the “general” area where I’d seen it. I decided to go a bit closer to the area and be really anal about running the cursor over Every. Square. Micro-Millimeter! Which I did. No positive sightings, Captain, Sir! (by now I’m swearing out loud!) Then, finally, I saw one. Saw it – not “found” it by any of the usual means – I saw it, by happenstance! Not being a total idiot, I marked the co-ordinates before I picked the wretched thing – quite often something that gets picked at a particular spot will re-spawn within a few minutes. Just as well I did that, too! Now I knew what I was looking for (the pictures I found on Google gave you no idea of scale, and most were zoomed in from full-screen fuzzy screenshots!) I searched the area again. Nothing, even though they’re supposed to grow everywhere! So I went back to my marked co-ordinates – yes! The [censored] weed had re-spawned, as I’d hoped that it would! I stood there, crossing my fingers that it’d repeat the re-spawning process – which it did, every two and a half minutes! I tell you what, it took me a long time to pick eight bloody bunches of the stuff! And that, gentle readers, was only one small example of some of the badly worded, badly explained, and hideously complicated quests that I managed to complete today! Still, I got to level 20, returned to Orgrimmar for my riding lesson, and I bought my little Goblin-mobile! It’s a rather cute little rocket-powered three-wheeler motorbike! However, I happen to have a couple of riding wolves in my Collections bag, so I ended up riding a black wolf. By this time, I’d reached level 21 – mainly from picking herbs, which you get xp from (“xp” = “experience”) so I set out for Darkshore, and the Ruins of Mathystra. It was a reasonably uneventful journey – I stopped off along the way to pick up all the Flight Points that I could, and finally (still picking herbs and flowers, and still gaining experience from it!) I reached Mathystra where I Abandoned my temporary Pet, and started looking for cat figurines! I found my Ghost Saber-tooth cat in about my seventh or eighth cat figurine, so I Tamed him (or her – I’m not too sure which!) and I’ve called her (I’m sure it must be a her! 😉 ) Schatenjäger – it should be Schattenjäger, but the name was too long and I had to delete one letter, so I could have had either Schattenjäge, or Schatenjäger – it’s German, and means “shadow hunter” – which is about what she is, so I thought it was quite fitting… Then I Hearthed back to Orgrimmar, Quit out of the game, went out to the kitchen to make myself a cup of coffee, and started writing! 🙂

Julian has just rung to say that he’s on his way home! Quick, everyone! Put all the booze away, and turn off the loud music, then off you all go! 😉

Food stuffz: last night we had the pan-fried pork, which was very tender and nice, with six chips this time, instead of five (Kate says I should be eating a lot more carbohydrate, or I’ll start yo-yo-ing!) half a tomato, and sugar-snap peas – which Julian had forgotten to “string”, so I ended up with a few mouthfuls of pea strings until I started de-stringing them before putting them in my mouth. I also had to have another one of Julian’s low-fat yoghurts last night (I’m sure you can all guess why! 😉 ) My sandwich for lunch today was made with that really nice multi-grain bread (of which the slices are terribly small!) It think it would be a lot much more nicer, if the slices were the same size as normal sandwich bread, instead of being more “kindergarten child sized”, if you know what I mean! Anyway, they were (a little bit of butter) ham, cheese and tomato, and it was really yummy! Tonight we have some fillet steak, which we’ll have with green beans, half a tomato, and chips (of which I’ll have six again, as per Kate’s instructions! 😉 ) I suppose I’ll also have to really force myself to have another one of Julian’s low-fat yoghurts, even though they are so very nice – especially the burnt fig and salted caramel ones! …And even so…

Weigh-in this morning. Well, very obviously those horrible little fluid-retaining pills haven’t kicked in yet! 😮 I went down another three points! From 62.6kg to 62.3kg! I feel as though I’m fading away! I think Kate might be right – in that I do need to eat more carbohydrates, or something! Anyway, I’m sure the pills will start working tomorrow, and I’ll be trying to eat less carbohydrate instead!

I think tomorrow will be a pretty quiet day – I know it’s Julian’s Birthday, but he’s got a lot of office-type work to catch up on, and that he wants to work uninterrupted – apart from my two favourite daughters ringing him to say “Happy Birthday” an’ all that – so I’ll leave him in peace, and get on with my WoW-ing! 🙂 Having managed to get Andronica up to level 22, I can probably safely leave her in Orgrimmar while I get on with other “projects” in Azeroth! Like moving that extra Guild Bank… Anyhoo, that’s about all from me for tonight – don’t forget to call in again tomorrow night to find out how all the office work is going, whether those wretched pills have started working or not, and what else we got up to during the day! 😉 Until then, however, please continue to bee as good as you can, remember that great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, and small minds discuss people – and don’t forget to always 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! 🙂