Saturday afternoon – my favourite youngest daughter and her husband have just left – they came over to drop off their set of the Doncaster apartment keys, and stayed to inspect the garden and the veggie beds, Kate found another fig for me, that was generously hanging itself over our side of the fence, asking to be eaten, and Terry helped Julian hang the big gilt mirror over the marble topped dresser in the dining/lounge room. The vegetables are coming on well, except for the sugar-snap peas that we put in – they don’t seem to be doing very much at all – they’re not “dead”, but they’re not really growing, either… we think we might have planted them a bit late… still, as I said, they haven’t died yet, so I suppose that “while there’s life, there’s hope”, and well – maybe they’re just “late starters”! 😉 I played World of Warcraft for most of the morning, and I finally managed to get Arisnoë, my highest ranking Horde Hunter, up to level 82. I think I’ll work on her for a while – I’d like to get her up to level 90, and see if I can get myself a Horde Garrison. I think Julian and I both made a few “mistakes” when we got our Garrisons, and I know that there are a few things that I’d do quite differently in the initial Garrison set-up process. Arisnoë is running around questing in Mount Hyjal at the moment – I’m not quite sure where that stands in the scheme of things, really – I know I did get “a” breadcrumb quest to go and do some questing in an underwater world, but I came to Mount Hyjal instead – Ah! I just found a list! 🙂 It goes: level 80 to 82, Mount Hyjal and Vashj’ir (the Underwater World, which I don’t like because I can never get myself oriented properly in water!) [blah, blah, blah – more levels and zones listed] …level 85 to 90, Pandaria, and level 90 to 100, Draenor, if you’ve bought the upgrade. I’ve bought the upgrade for my primary account, but not for my additional account – yet. I suppose I’m going to have to, eventually, or the characters on that account won’t be able to advance past level 80 – I’m not sure if they’ll even make it to Pandaria, though they should, because I’m pretty sure I bought that expansion for both accounts – and I think I even created a Pandarian Hunter on that account, too! Anyway, we’ll see what happens…

Julian’s always grizzling at me that I never stick with just the one character, and take them all the way through – and I suppose a few of you have wondered the same thing from time to time… well, there are quite a few reasons why I never seem to get a character past about level 20. The main one, of course, is that I’m afraid that I won’t be able to do it. Death is such a fleeting thing in these sorts of games, so it can’t be the fear of my pretty young thing dying an early and gruesome death – it’s more the – I suppose fear – of ridicule, and the humiliation of not being able to do the quests that everyone else seems to sail through so effortlessly. Back in the “early days” of playing WoW, when Julian and I would team up with various friends and acquaintances to run a dungeon or an instance, it always seemed to be me who was talked down to, or berated, for not doing the amount of dps (“damage per second”) that they expected me to be doing. For starters, I have a different style of playing, and also my reflexes aren’t as good as those of an eighteen year old. If pressed too hard, I tend to suffer from “fluster-lock” – I get flustered, and get frozen in a state of  “dither”, my mind darting around like minnows, when a shark enters their pond, saying “quick! quick! what’ll I do! shoot? fire an explosive trap, or a freeze trap? Oh… I’m dead… ” In a way, it’s a lot like my fear of spiders! Intellectually, I do know that 99 and ¾% of the spiders here in Australia won’t hurt me – sure, there are some that will, however most of the ones that you find sitting on the ceiling in your bedroom, won’t. But I’m terrified of them anyway! I think there’s also an aspect of “but I don’t know what to do!” in my reluctance to take characters past a certain point – but I’ve taken at least four or five characters (in about ten years!) up as far as the level cap went when I was playing them – like Arisnoë – the last time I played her I took her up to level 80, which was as far as you could go back then, and I only got assistance from Julian in the few quests that specified needing a group of three or more – so I know that I can do it, if I put my mind to it. So I’ll keep working with Arisnoë, this time because I want to see a Horde Garrison! 😉

Food stuffz: well, last night we had pan-fried chicken, green beans, half a tomato each, and mashed potatoes (with butter! I watched Julian putting in at least two teaspoonfuls – and it was delicious! 😛 ) We had the last of the extremely nice Coles Brand low-calorie “Rice Pudding” for dessert – and once again, against all my scruples – I had to acknowledge how absolutely yummy it was, and I made a mental note to ask Julian to get some more of it, please! Then I ate one of my figs. Well, I’d thought it was a “white” fig, with the very pale, almost creamy flesh inside it – but it wasn’t! Although the outside skin was green, inside it was one of those deliciously “jammy”, deep red, succulent… words fail me! It was just the best fig I’ve eaten in years! Not under-ripe, and all hard and green and tasteless, not over-ripe and squishy – it was just right! I’m really looking forward to eating the two remaining figs tonight – I’ll have to eat them both, because the left-over one from yesterday will be past its prime by tomorrow, and Kate accidentally dropped the one she picked for me today, so it’s a bit bruised, the skin has split a little, and all the juices are leaking out. And well, I mean, I can’t waste it, can I?! 😉 Today for lunch I had a wrap, with the basil-pesto hummus, sandwich ham, red capsicum “batons”, and chunks of Halloumi cheese – it was quite delectable! 🙂 and tonight we’re having frenched lamb cutlets, probably with chips, beans, and the usual half a tomato, and I’ll have both figs for dessert… I didn’t do my second treadmilling today, and I’m not sorry! If we had the wherewithal, I’d be having a medium-sized bowl of pasta for dinner tonight, but we don’t have any sauce – and losing too much weight or not, I’m afraid that plain old “pasta al burro” (pasta with butter and cheese) is totally out of the question!

Weigh-in this morning. Was almost as bad as it was yesterday! Despite the BLT and the New York Cheesecake, despite the mashed potatoes (with butter!) and the”Rice Pudding”, I only went up two points! I went from 61.8kg to 62.0kg – the same as I was the day before yesterday – and which, in my opinion, is too low! Once again Kate told me to “eat more!”, and I said that I was, but that it wasn’t working – so she told me to have two chocolates tonight! We have a box of those little Lindt chocolate balls, all wrapped up with different coloured paper  – we daringly allow ourselves one chocolate each per night (which is really all that I want, anyway!) but Kate now thinks I need two! hmm… I suppose I could force myself to eat a second one, if I really had to… 😉 We’ll see what the scales have to say tomorrow morning. If my weight hasn’t gone up enough, I might have to brave that second chocolate after all, and just be brave about it! 😉

Tomorrow is Sunday, and Julian and I will be rampaging through Draenor – hopefully we won’t die too many times – but if we do, well, the most painful thing about dying in a game like WoW is the amount of gold that has to be extracted from your hip pocket, to pay for the healing and the armor repairs! 🙂 But it should be a good day – we both have a few Garrison quests, as well as a few “normal” type quests – and hopefully I won’t get another Garrison quest that’s as totally incomprehensible to me as the one I had last week, so much so that I had to get Julian to come and help me with it, because I had no idea at all about what I had to do! Anyway, that’s about it from me again for tonight – do call in again tomorrow night though, to see how we went in Draenor, and if we died or not, and to find out if my sneaky strategy of eating more and exercising less is bringing my weight back to what I call an “acceptable” level! So until tomorrow night, please bee good, don’t forget – chance is the first step you take, luck is what comes afterward… and remember to drive carefully, to keep cool – or warm – depending on the weather, and to look after yourselves – but above all, please remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂