Thank goodness! 🙂 It’s the last day of Summer! Tomorrow is the first day of my second favourite season – Autumn! One can almost smell those beautiful crisp, clear mornings, with the sun shining brightly, the air clean and cold – the only thing better is a cold winter morning, the sky a soft, kindly, woolly grey, hinting of rain – but only if we’re very good, and deserve a morning of snuggling under the doona for another few minutes of warmth… 🙂 I almost feel like skipping about and singing “Summer is gone, tra la, tra lay!”, except that I know it’s going to get hot again soon, so I won’t. Not yet, anyway 😉 You know, the year is all divided neatly up into little compartments – three months of summer, starting on December 1st, followed by three neat little months of autumn, March 1st until May 31st, then we get three months of winter, until September 1st, when it becomes spring. So neat and tidy and “set” – but it’s not! How long has it been since Christmas was so hot that all you could do after Christmas Dinner was to collapse onto the nearest couch, or the floor, suffering and sweltering, hmm? When I was a child, summers were at their hottest over December and January, and winters were at their coldest and wettest in August and September – even in Melbourne we used to get the odd pea-souper of a fog, late at night. No more, though! I ‘spect it’s Global Warming or summat, but our seasons are changing! Christmas no longer drives Melbourne households into indulging in Christmas Pudding Ice Cream, because it’s just too hot to eat a proper Christmas Pudding, which has to be boiled in the cloth for several hours. The savage hot weather lasts a lot longer, into March and April, and the blossom trees start blossoming earlier and earlier every year. Summer these days lasts into mid to late March, and spring starts in early to mid August! Personally, I like to have only two seasons – Autumn, and Winter! 🙂 But anyway, all I can say is that I’m very glad that summer is officially over, at midnight tonight (but what about Daylight Saving? Is summer over at midnight DST, or does it actually last until 1.00am? And does it really even matter, because most of us are asleep then anyway!)
Our cleaning lady was here this morning, and I had her sweep both the front and back decks, and give a bit of a dust around the doors and windows to get rid of all the spider webs and dead leaves and general detritus that collects during the fortnight. I played WoW for most of the morning, but instead of trying to level Arisnoë up, I spent the time with Wynterthyme, galloping around Draenor collecting things for my Garrison Work Orders! I badly needed lumber for the Lumber Mill, so I went around marking trees to be cut down (and then putting all the wood into my Bag Of Holding*) and I went around killing a lot of very nasty wild animals because I needed their skins for my Tannery, and I went hunting Ogres because I needed lots and lots of Ogre Waystones for my Mage’s Tower Work Orders, then I went and picked a lot of flowers, because I needed the seeds for my Herb Garden Work Orders… I tell you, running a Garrison is a lot of hard work! Setting up and creating things for your Dimension in Rift is child’s play, compared to supporting your Garrison! Of course, you get experience points for all the things you kill, skin, mine, cut down, and pick, which is just as well, because there ain’t too much time left over for questing, while you’re out hunting trees to cut down! 😉 During the course of my labours this morning though, I now find myself with only about six more bubbles to ding level 100! Next Sunday should see us both reach that lofty pinnacle! I just said to Julian “Are they going to raise the level cap for Legion?” (“Legion” is the new expansion that’s supposedly going live in September – my favourite eldest daughter is in the Alpha testing team!) We both suppose that they are going to have to raise the level cap, because they raised it to 100 for Warlords of Draenor – which means that if they don’t raise it again, people who get to Draenor will have nothing to strive for, except “content”, and let’s face it – content is good, as far as it goes, but goals and rewards are better! 😉
Food stuffz: well, we had our Sunday omelets for dinner last night, which were lovely, and for lunch today I had two Ryvita crispbreads with low-fat ricotta, some sandwich ham, low-fat Halloumi cheese, and tomato. Tonight we had some sliced cold ham and sliced cold turkey, with a spoonful of potato salad and a slightly larger spoonful of quinoa tabouli salad, and for dessert I had one of the three figs that Julian picked last night, and a fresh apricot. I’m still chewing on sugar-free chewing gum, and eating (probably far too many! Just because they’re sugar-free doesn’t mean that they’re calorie free!) sugar-free boiled lolly thingies, and I’m still doing my two lots of 1.5 kilometer walks (making a total of 3 kilometers per day) on the highest incline (10) that my treadmill will do, at 3.4 kilometers an hour…
Weigh-in this morning. I don’t know whether to be pleased or cross! I was concerned that my weight was going down too low, but now I’m concerned that it’s going up more than I wanted it to! I went up another three points, from 62.8kg to 63.1kg. So, what exactly do I want?! I know what I thought I wanted, but now I’m… nonplussed! I’d like to have stayed down in the low 62kg zone, even if it was only so that I could grizzle about going down too much. On the other hand, here I am going up again, which gives me exactly the same opportunity to grizzle – about how quickly I’m going up! Arrggghhh! I can’t believe myself! I wish I knew what I did want! 
Josh was over this afternoon, and as usual, my hair looks immaculate – and next week, instead of doing my hair on the Monday, he’ll do it on Tuesday, because on Wednesday morning (my Birthday) I’m off to see Dr. Y.! I can’t believe it – I thought I still had ages – weeks! to get my weight down, and to get myself looking my best – and it’s next [censored] week! I’m nervous! I’m very glad I’ve never been a nail biter, or I wouldn’t even have any hands left by next Wednesday week! And as for trials and tribulations, it’s Julian’s turn to go to the dentist tomorrow morning – Flipper can sit there and cheerfully wave her paw at him as he drives off to his appointment, with a little thought bubble coming out of her head saying: “So now you know how I felt! (*smug cat smile*)” Then, tomorrow afternoon, the Tax Man Cometh – our accountant is coming over to collect all the bits and pieces of paper to do with taxation – and oh, what fun that will be! (NOT!) And no doubt at some stage of the day, I’ll somehow manage to squeeze in a bit more felling of trees, skinning of nasty critters, and picking the wildflowers, for the benefit of my Garrison denizens. And that, gentle readers, is once again about it from me for this evening! Do drop in again tomorrow night, and see if I’ve come to any conclusions as to what I really want and expect of my weight, how Julian got on at the dentist, and whether we managed to get all our bits and pieces of paper together for The Tax Man (actually, he’s not really “The Tax Man”, he’s an accountant who prepares our tax for us) plus all the other little bits of trivia that make up my day. But until then, please try to bee good, don’t forget that success is a journey, not a destination, and remember to keep cool – or warm – depending on your preferences, to always drive carefully, and to look after yourselves, but above all… remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂
*Bag Of Holding – a small magical bag that’s as light as a feather, but you could put the entire universe in it, and it wouldn’t fill it up! What’s more, you can’t lose anything in it, because all you have to do it put your hand in it and think of what it is you want, and it immediately jumps into your hand! 🙂 I wish I had one…. )
My Word! 