Here I am – on time for a Tuesday for a change – Julian has just left to take my favourite eldest daughter home, and here I am, putting fingers to keyboard once again! It’s been a quiet but interesting day – I did quite a bit of work with my “Followers” on WoW this morning, and have learnt a bit more about how to outfit my Garrison. I’ve swapped my Enchanter’s Studio for a Tannery, because I have more characters who can skin dead animals and create leather goods than I have people who can DE (Disenchant) items to the components needed by Enchanters, for enchanting gear, weapons, and just about anything that you want enhanced, so the Enchanter’s Studio was of little use to me – and I also swapped my Inn for a Lumber Mill, because once more I have more use for enriching my Garrison’s resources than I do picking up weird and wonderful quests. Oh well, “say lar vee”, as the French say! 😉 Julian will probably spend the majority of tomorrow cleaning the rest of our guff out of Doncaster, which means that I should have ample time to fold the washing (I bet he thinks I’ve forgotten that I’m supposed to do that! 🙂 ) as well as advancing my Followers and my Garrison assets! I now have a Mine, which is doing very well, and I hope to be able to upgrade it to a Level 2 mine (which will lengthen the depth and therefore the veins of mineable ore in it) by sometime tomorrow. I have a Herb Garden, which grows Gatherable Herbs and Flowers that are used in quite a few of the Manufacturing Professions for me, the Tannery, which I’ve already upgraded to Level 2, which can create special hides used in Leatherwork, the Lumber Mill, which will allow me to harvest the local trees to add to my resources, and last but not least, I have a few more “fetch” quests to complete in order to get a Fishing Professional to assist my local Fisherman with bringing in the best of the local produce – again, to enrich the Garrison’s resources – so it’s all going well… at the moment! 🙂 And if I get bored doing all of that, I’ve created another character (yes, again!) a Pandaran, this time. “Why?!”, I hear you all sobbing into your handkerchiefs “Why have you created another character! Don’t you have enough?!” – well, yes… and no. Once upon a time, there was a mystical city that everyone wanted to get to, even though you were supposed to be very high level to be able to get there – it was called “Shattrath”, which means “City of Light”, and the reason everyone wanted to go there was because it contained instant “portals” to every major capital city in Azeroth. It was so very handy! You’re in Ironforge, but you need to get to Darnassus, on the other side of the world, quickly? Easy Peasy! Instead of having to run down to the harbour, wait for a boat, and sail across to the other side of the world – if you’re Hearthed (or “home based”) in Shattrath, you just have to go home, and run down to the Portal! Quick and simple! People, even little baby level one’s, used to pay good gold to “bribe” a Mage to magically “call” them to Shattrath! And then Blizzard went and closed all the Portals down (except for one (I think!) to Stormwind) and there was no longer any point in being Hearthed in Shattrath. What had been a vibrant, dynamic, bustling and busy city became a ghost town – it was very sad! I don’t think anyone ever goes to Shattrath anymore, except to follow quest chains… Then Blizzard created Dalaran, exactly the same as Shattrath, only with a different name and in a different place, and it too had Portals to everywhere, and of course, the same thing happened, with everyone wanting to go there, and getting there, and then Blizzard closing all the Portals again, because all the main capital cities were ghost towns, with everyone was in Dalaran! So now both Shattrath and Dalaran are largely deserted! So, can you guess what Blizzard did next? Yes, that’s right! They created another beautiful city, this time in the new area, or “zone” of Pandaria, in “The Vale of the Eternal Blossoms”… with ruddy portals to every main capital city, again! One set for the Alliance, and another set for the Horde! Anyway, when we heard about the Portals, Wynterthyme and Mouselet couldn’t get there fast enough, and they hastily “Hearthed” themselves at the Inn there – which is why – in a round-about sort of way, I decided to create a Pandarian character! Pandarians are neither Alliance, nor Horde, and they don’t have to choose which Faction they want to belong to until they’re about to leave Pandaria (once again, I think!) so until then, with all those nice Portals to choose from, they’re free to roam and enjoy the best of both worlds, which I thought would be rather fun! 🙂 And so Braåchaë the Pandarian Hunter was born! 🙂

My favourite eldest daughter and I watched one episode of “Supergirl”, one episode of “The 100”, and one episode of “The Shannara Chronicles”, because we only had one new episode of each – and we watched a couple of episodes of “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.”, which were all good! 🙂 So we had a great day, and I learned quite a bit about Garrisons, and the fact that there’s a multiple Portal area in Pandaria – I wonder how long it’ll be before Blizzard close them down? Actually, they might not! Shattrath and Dalaran both had two Banks, and one or two Auction Houses – so does this city in Pandaria – but! Blizzard have removed the Auction Houses there, meaning that people will still have to go back to the main capital cities in order to make use of the Auction Houses, so…. with a bit of luck, the Portals might remain this time! Let’s hope so, anyway! 🙂

Food stuffz: well, I had a ham, cheese and tomato sandwich for lunch today – and a very nice sandwich it was too! Then for dinner tonight we had a reprise of the veal schnitzels, done in the seasoned flour and the lemon juice, along with mashed potatoes made with plain low-fat Greek yoghurt, green beans, and half a tomato. For dessert, I had another of those Chia Pods – this one was “Dark Cacao” flavoured, and it was really nice! It had a really nice strong chocolate flavour – nothing bland or wishy-washy about this one – with the same weird type of almost-crunch from the teeny sago-sized bobbles in it (which I think are Chia seeds? – what is Chia, anyway?!) … (apart from some sort of seed!) So what with the sandwich yesterday, and today, plus the mashed potato, and the flour coated, cooked-in-oil schnitzels – goodness knows what’s going to happen when I get on the scales in the morning!

Weigh-in this morning. Went a lot better! I went down four points, from 63.5kg to 63.1kg – a really nice little drop! However, as I said above – goodness knows what the scales will say tomorrow morning! Still an’ all, it is encouraging to see that although I do go up – sometimes alarmingly so – I then seem to come down again. If I were still trying to actually lose weight, I’d be worried and upset, but I’m not trying to lose weight any more, I’m trying to maintain my weight – “around about” where I am now… and so far, anyway, it seems to be working (touch wood, cross fingers, eyes, ears and toes!) Does this mean that I’ve (more-or-less) become “stabilised”?! I think that the answer to that question has to be “maybe”, or “goodness knows” – ask me a year from now, and if I’m still more-or-less within the same weight zone, I think I’d still tell you “Maybe!” – methinks that this has to remain an ongoing project for the rest of my life… which won’t upset me unduly – I can still eat what I want, when I want, as long as I understand that the only person who has to live with the consequences of doing so, is myself! 🙂

So hopefully tomorrow I can get back into WoW, and upgrade a couple of my Garrison resources, and perhaps work on my new Pandarian Hunter, Braåchaë (pronounced “Brar-kay”, by the way!) I have played a Pandarian before, but never taken them very far – to tell you the truth, they’re a little too “cutesy” for my liking – I much prefer “pretty” to “cutesy”, anyway! The starting area is the newest, and therefore the least well known (by me!) the scenery is pretty, and I get a nice little Turtle (or is it a Tortoise? It’s a bit hard to tell…) as a start-out Pet, which is nice. The Pets I prefer are the Ghost Saber-tooth cat, the orange and black striped cats (like tigers) the orange and black spotted cats (i.e. Dishu) Bears, and Turtles/Tortoises. The foxes are really sweet and pretty, but like all the “dog” type Pets, they’re always stopping to scratch themselves – which makes me wonder about fleas! And, on that somewhat itchy note, I guess I’ll say goodnight to you all! 🙂 Don’t forget to stop by again tomorrow night to find out all the latest – just how much will my weight go up after the mashed potato? Will I still have a Pandarian Hunter? And lots of other bits and pieces of trivia for your reading enjoyment! Until then though, please try to bee good, do keep in mind that neither success nor failure is ever final, and remember to keep warm – or cool – depending on the weather, to look after yourselves, and to drive carefully… but above all, remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂