Boy, am I going to have to write f-a-s-t to get this up before midnight! 😉 What a busy day! Our cleaning lady was here this morning, and yes, I did remember to ask her to clean the glass bricks in my bathroom window, which has been done, and they do look a great deal better! 🙂 However, most of my morning was taken up with getting my young Blood Elf up to level 11, so that I could haul her all the way to Loch Modan, the very beating heart of Dwarven territory, to tame for herself the mighty Mangeclaw! Oh boy, was that fun! Think of a map of New Zealand. Blood Elves are right up at the very tippy-tippy-top of the North Island. Loch Modan is about two-thirds down the length of the South Island, and just about everything in between wants to kill you on sight! I Stabled my original Pet, and set off from Silvermoon City, the Blood Elf capital. When I got to Silverpine Forest, I Tamed myself a temporary Bear, and continued on my way…. and all went fairly well, until I got to the Hillsbrad Foothills – about the equivalent of Napier on your handy-dandy map of New Zealand – and ran into some very nasty Worgen, the first one of which jumped on me – I ran away, leaving my valiant temporary Bear to sacrifice himself on my behalf – or that was the theory, anyway, but “TB” (“Temporary Bear”) lasted little more than a quarter of a second, and that damned Worgen was after me again. I died! Well, at least it was quick! So, I rezed in the local Graveyard (because I would have had to retrace my steps quite a long way to get to my body – I was better off putting up with the resulting rez sickness and continuing on! So I did…) I ran on a little way, resurrected my Pet, and continued. Another Worgen jumped me, but this time there was another player around who unwittingly aided and abetted my Pet in fighting the damn thing, and I almost got away with that one. Alas, my Pet got killed – again – and I don’t know what happened to the other player, but the Worgen was not going to let me get away again! So I died. This time I did run back to my body (it was actually ahead of me this time) and after a few more narrow escapes (thank you, TB! 🙂 ) at long last I made my way to the border wall between Hillsbrad Foothills and the Arathi Highlands (think “around about the Wellington area” on your map of New Zealand!) a much more dangerous place than the piddly little Hillsbrad Foothills! (no, I’m not just being sarcastic!) I actually fared a lot better there, which surprised me a lot, because all the nasty beasties there are a much higher level than those in the Hillsbrad Foothills. At about this point Julian very kindly brought in a couple of his high level characters to give me a bit of protection, and I think I only died once there – killed by a Human this time… Almost at my goal, I eventually got to the Wetlands, where I jumped into the sidecar of Thuglet’s motorbike, and we turned left (read: “South”) towards Loch Modan and Dun Morogh (think Mt. Cook, on the South Island of New Zealand!) Well, the Wetlands were a breeze – and even the first tunnel or two on the way to Loch Modan were fairly easy going – but boy! Those damn Dwarves sure pack a wallop! Exiting from one of the higher tunnels, a couple of Dwarves spotted us speeding out of the blackness (the light they’d seen in the tunnel wasn’t an oncoming train, it was Thuglet’s speeding motorbike!)and gave chase! One of them took a swing at me in the sidecar as we raced past, and I fell out – dead! This happened a couple more times (see?! I wasn’t kidding when I said that those Dwarves sure packed a wallop!) before Thuglet got tired of having to stop and wait while I ran back to my body, so instead of attempting to speed past these pesky little Dwarves, as soon as we saw some, he’d get off his bike, and just go and whack ’em – and then they died instead! 🙂 Much more betterer! 🙂 We finally found Mangeclaw – who was unfortunately dead – but death is such a fleeting thing in World of Warcraft (and Rift) so after a short time, Mangeclaw appeared again, and I Tamed him! Thuglet and I both Hearthed back to our respective cities, and… I logged out, because Clarke had arrived.

We spoke about a couple of problems in my bathroom (like water coming out from under the shower door, and my vanity unit drawers sticking) and I showed him the pictures of how I thought our aviary should be built, and we talked about that for a bit, and we discussed fantasy films, series and books and stuff, and then he left, and we had lunch. Clark will be here again on Friday to fix my shower door (hopefully!) and adjust one of my vanity unit drawers – which is good, because when Josh arrived this afternoon and I showed him the picture of the aviary I was thinking of getting Clarke to build, he could see a lot of problems with it – so he did a few rough sketches here, which I was going to show Clarke on Friday – but this evening he sent me some more drawings which are a bit better than the quick sketches he did this evening, so I think that between the four of us, we’re going to end up with something eminently suitable and where our birds should be pretty happy! 🙂 Thanks, Josh! 🙂

Food stuffz: lunch today was a reprise of the chicken tikka wrap, only this time it was a sandwich instead, and it was just as delicious! There are a few more tomatoes ripening on our plants? Bushes? What do tomatoes grow on – these ones aren’t vine ones – whatever! Anyway we should have some more tomatoes in a day or two – and possibly even some beans! Yes! Our little baby bean plants had flowers, and now they’re starting to grow baby beans! The peas aren’t doing so well though – I think they got a bit sunburnt… Anyway, dinner tonight was a fairly quick meal – steak, chips, fresh green beans (not ours yet, fresh store-bought ones though) and half a tomato – because we were expecting to get some boxes from Adelaide delivered tomorrow, but the removalists rang and said could they deliver them tonight please, around eight o’clock? Which sort of chucked a bit of spanner into our dinner-works, so to speak. But, the steak was beautiful, the beans were fresh and a bit crunchy (“al dente”, anyone? 😉 ) and it was all good – so was our dessert tonight! Coles, bless their little hearts and souls, have developed a new sort of low-calorie “rice pudding” – along the lines – sort-of – of the now defunct “Le Rice”, once upon a time made by Yoplait, so Julian decided to get a tub of it to see what it was like. Normally we’d steer clear of the “You’ll love our new Coles blah-blah-blah whatever”, but the calorie count seemed low enough, and it was a bit of a change from yoghurt, so he got some, and we tried it tonight…  I really hate to have to say this, you know – it goes against all my principles – but… it was very, very nice! Hopefully, it’ll also be “very, very nice” to my weight, when I get on the scales in the morning! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. Slowly… s-l-o-w-l-y… going down… I went down another point today – from 63.6kg to 63.5kg – hopefully I’m sinking back down again – though after that yummy sandwich at lunchtime, and that very nice rice pudding for dessert tonight… Oh well, this is my silly body we’re talking about – so it’ll probably just do whatever it feels like doing, as it usually does! Hopefully it’ll continue to do what it’s been doing for the last couple of months, and waver up and down between 62.5kg and 63.8kg for the next 30 or so odd years! 🙂

Tomorrow my favourite eldest daughter will be over, and I know we have the next of the Shannara Chronicles to watch, but I’m not sure what else we have at the moment… I also have to pick her brains about Garrisons and where to put what (in the way of buildings, etc. in them) It’ll be a good day, and at least we won’t have the interruption of the boxes arriving from Adelaide, because they already came tonight! 🙂 And that, dear peoples, is about it from me again this evening! Do drop in again tomorrow night to catch up on all the latest from chez nous (or from casa nostra, whichever you prefer) how’s my weight going? Up or down – or stuck! What did my favourite eldest daughter and I watch? Where will I put my lumber mill? And… have we had any more ripe tomatoes off our tomato plants? All these questions and more will be answered here for you tomorrow night – but until then, do please try to bee good, remember to keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others, and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to drive carefully, and to keep warm – or cool – depending on the weather… but most of all, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂