As usual, we had a very enjoyable day in Draenor today – I only died twice, once more than Julian did! 😉 I suppose it was all my fault really – we were trundling around the countryside, felling trees, picking flowers, and – by sheer chance, of course – finding and taking on “bonus” quests, wherever we saw the crossed swords and “Boss Mob” skull icon on the map. “Oh, look!” says me – “there’s a Boss up there – let’s kill it!” – well, it was quite a busy area, with lots of demons and nasties throwing hideous neon lime-green and bright, bright, fluorescent yellow fire bombs every which-where, but “let’s kill it!” seemed to be our war cry at the time, so up we charged! Oh, it was a Boss Mob alright – but not your average, every-day Silver Framed knock-‘im-over in a cuppla shots Boss Mob, oh no! This was a full-scale, very nasty, big, Elite Gold Boss Mob, and what’s more, he wasn’t the only one! What with all the bright green and yellow flashes of the fire bombs going off all around us, we’d failed to see that apart from all the “movie extras” of the minor demons running amok, there wasn’t just one of these Elite Gold Boss Mobs, there were several of them! Of course, we died fairly quickly! We put up a valiant fight, but we fell, all the same. I actually died twice there, and after the second time, we decided that maybe discretion was the better part of valor, and we… moved on. We did a lot of questing that netted us two new Garrison Followers each – one a level 91 Dwarven Death Knight (whom I ended up Retraining, as his only use seemed to be as a Bodyguard, which I didn’t need or want!) and the other, a level 97 Goblin Rogue, who also doesn’t seem to have any abilities except for “Sprint”, which may perhaps be of some small use in running away from danger… I think we did rather well, considering, and the fact that we both managed to ding level 98 was an extra bonus! I’m still having a hard time coming to grips with running a Garrison and organising my Followers, but I’m getting there – and that’s another reason that I want to get Arisnoë up to level 90 – so that I can get her a Garrison too, and build again from the ground up (I could pretty much “build again from the ground up” with Wynterthyme, but it’d cost me dearly in Garrison Resources!) Besides! 😉 I want to see what a Horde Garrison looks like! Oh, and I found out that you can invite other people into your Garrison! They have to be in your party, or Group – and you have to be the Group leader – then they just click on their own portrait, and chose “Visit Leader’s Garrison” from the resulting drop-down menu, and lo and behold, they’re instantly transported to just outside your Garrison’s front entrance – and they can just walk in! I don’t think they can do anything much except run around and look at things, or maybe use the Guild Bank, if they’re in your Guild (or the Personal Banker in the Store Room if they’re not) but at least the Garrison isn’t a total “one-man-band” type of thing. To tell the truth, I didn’t really have time to do more than just briefly scan the information I found on Garrisons this afternoon – I’ll have more of a look at it all tomorrow, along with the link to an article on Garrison Followers that Julian sent me a few minutes ago! Congratulations are in order to my favourite eldest daughter, too, as she’s managed to get herself into the Alpha testing stage of the next expansion – “Legions” – due to be released on September 21st this year! There was a time when I would have been hot on her heels, putting up my hand to participate in the Alpha, too – but I simply don’t have the time any more (or maybe I’m just too lazy!) The advantages of participating in the Alpha tests are that you get to see all of the exciting new stuff before anyone else – the disadvantages are that you cop all the bugs, which you then have to report on, listing all the hows, whys, whats, whens, and wheres – and as I said – maybe I’m just too lazy to volunteer to do that, this time around… 😉
Food stuffz: last night we had frenched lamb cutlets, with our usual half a tomato (one of our own, too!) green beans, and plain, boiled Kipfler potatoes, with some plain, low-fat Greek yoghurt drizzled over them. I had a low-fat strawberry yoghurt for dessert, Julian had a mixed berries one, and I had my two figs for “supper” later on – and they were wonderful! I’m wondering if our backdoor neighbour would notice if we went out at about three or four o’clock in the morning, and sort-of “trained” a few more branches of his fig tree over to our side of the fence… Crikey! I’d even go so far as to pay him for a plate of fresh figs, every day or so… (I suppose I could walk around the block, knock on his door and offer to buy his figs…) Hmm… I had another wrap for lunch again today – pretty much the same as yesterday’s, and just as delicious! And we had an omelet each for dinner tonight – which seems to be becoming our preferred “Sunday Dinner”, and really, Julian does make a damn fine omelet! I make mine completely differently – in fact, I’m not sure if you could even really call it an “omelet”! I read about it once, and tried it, and it does make the thickest and “fluffiest” (sorry Julian! 😉 ) omelet, but it’s messy, and a bit complicated – it involves separating the eggs, and beating the yolks and whites separately. When the whites form soft peaks, you very gently fold it into the beaten yolks, and pour it all into a warmed frying pan with a little melted butter. Shake the frying pan very gently to even out your egg mixture, and gently drop in your chopped up vegetables, ham, whatever… Keep lifting the omelet around the edges, to judge when it looks golden enough, then remove from the heat, and put the whole frying pan under a griller for a few minutes, the egg mixture will puff up, thicken, and “crisp” a bit – this will only take a matter of seconds, so watch it! Remove from the griller before it burns! I suppose it’s a sort-of a cross between an omelet, and a savoury, filled meringue? Anyway, it’s nice in its own way, but really too much trouble to want to cook too often! I had another of those weird Chia Pods for dessert, but alas – there were no more figs tonight! 😦
Weigh-in this morning. Went a little better, after eating more, and not doing my lunchtime treadmilling yesterday – well, I couldn’t really be rude and go off to walk while my favourite youngest daughter and her husband were visiting, could I! Anyway, I went up a measly two points – from 62.0kg to 62.2kg. Big Deal. Oh well, I did have another wrap for lunch today, that might help – but on the other hand, I did get both teadmillings in, so maybe they’ll cancel eachother out, or something. I dunno – we’ll just have to weight and see what the scales have to say about it in the morning, I guess… 
I’m not too sure what’s happening tomorrow – Josh will be here tomorrow afternoon, I haven’t heard anything more from Clarke yet, so as far as I know, tomorrow morning’s “free” – for me, anyway – and I’m pretty sure that my favourite eldest daughter will be over on Tuesday! I’ll probably work on Arisnoë in the morning – and it’s proving to be a long, slow slog to level 90! It’s not that the quests are hard, or anything – on the contrary, Blizzard have nerfed things so much that even with only a semi-decent weapon, mobs pretty much fall over dead if you merely point said semi-decent weapon in their direction! Oh well, it’ll be worth it in the end, I’m sure! 🙂 Only another eight more levels to go (and I’m more-or-less averaging two levels per day, depending on how long I play for) 🙂 And that’s once again about it from me for tonight – I’m sorry this is late, but we played a bit longer than usual today, and let’s face it – omelets don’t take all that long to cook, so I didn’t really get a chance to start this before dinner. Anyway, do drop in again tomorrow to see if my treadmilling and the lunchtime wrap canceled eachother out, or if I went up a bit more – see how my new Followers are panning out, and what level I’ve been able to get young Arisnoë up to, as well as all the latest news and trivia from this side of the Black Stump! But until then, please do try to bee good, remember that it is easier to prevent bad habits than to break them, and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep cool – or warm – depending on your preferences… but above all, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂
My Word! 