Once again I’m starting a little later than I really wanted to – but it’s well worth the late start, having had my favourite eldest daughter over for the day! She has her uni time-table, though the exact times largely depend on whether she’s able to get her preferred class times – but basically it’ll be Mondays and Wednesdays (I think – please correct me if I’m wrong, Lee!) As you can all see, yes, I’ve changed the Template and colours yet again (I’m going through my “mauve” period I think, because I seem to keep returning to these colours, for some unknown reason!) It’s a template that I bought some time ago, and although I haven’t used it since last November, and although I don’t really like light (or white) writing on dark colours, I thought that it was worth another visit… I made the new header this morning, so I hope you all like it! 🙂

Last night at about ten o’clock we removed all of Flipper’s food bowls, leaving only water for her, and this morning Julian took her up to the Vet for her tooth extraction. Apparently they do medical surgery in the morning, but do any dental surgery in the afternoons, to reduce the possibility of cross-infections – which seemed like an eminently sensible thing to do – so Flipper was put on a drip to make sure she was well hydrated before the procedure, while we sat at home, nibbling on our nails and wondering if we’d done the right thing… We received a call from the Vet a bit before three o’clock this afternoon, to say that Flipper had had four teeth removed, had come through the surgery well, and was awake and looking happy, which was an enormous relief for us, I can tell you! I think we managed to catch the worst tooth just in time though – the infection in the tooth had eaten a large abscess in her jaw, and the poor old girl must have been in quite considerable pain, constantly! That’s now been cleaned out and flushed clean, and the Vet has given her a “two-week” antibiotic injection (that is, the injection will cover her for two weeks, so we won’t have to give her tablets or the standard antibiotic paste, which would very definitely be painful for her!) so that should heal up pretty quickly now, with no nasty or unwanted side effects. The four teeth she had taken out – well, I think it’s actually easier to tell you which teeth she still has! 🙂 She still has all four of her “fangs”, the two large top ones and the two smaller bottom ones. Only one lower molar is left on one side (I think it’s the right hand side?) though its opposing top molar is missing, but she’s been able to retain both the top and the bottom molars on the opposite side – which means that she’ll only be able to “crunch” things on that side, but I’m sure she’ll cope! She’s always enjoyed chewing things, and really loves her big “pussy biscuits” (which are specifically designed to make cats who don’t like chewing things, to either chew, or go hungry!) and if she could manage to gobble through those by the bowlful, with the sort of pain she must have been enduring, she’ll most certainly be able to cope with only having one pain-free side on which to chew! 🙂 The Vet said that she was probably looking happy because the Novocaine hadn’t worn off at that stage, and her mouth was probably still pretty numb but that it would be quite sore when she started to get feeling in her mouth again – so they’ll keep her on the drip tonight, both to keep her hydrated as well as to administer pain relief, then tomorrow they’ll keep her under observation, and if she seems well, and is eating well without the need for an appetite stimulant, she should be able to come home tomorrow evening. Julian took in several tins of her favourite food this morning, as well as all her medications, so at least she’ll have familiar food that she likes this evening. She’s a great favourite with all the staff there too, so she shouldn’t miss her “Daddy Pats” too much, as she’ll get loads of attention from everyone! 🙂

This afternoon my favourite eldest daughter and I watched a couple of episodes of “Supergirl”, then the only episode we had left of “The 100” (hopefully there’ll be more next week!) followed by the latest episode of “The Shannara Chronicles” – and then finally, our remaining episode of “Supergirl”! So it looks like we’re all caught up with our episodic watching – we’ll have to see what we can find for next week! I know we’d both like to get more episodes of “The Librarians”, and I don’t know about Lee, but I’m really hanging out for the next Season of “Orphan Black” to start! However we had a good day, had some interesting discussions, and had fun watching all our shows – while Julian set about cleaning all the picture frames before we start hanging them (needless to say, they were all absolutely filthy!)

Food stuffz: Last night we had the (un-marinated this time, unfortunately!) lamb back straps, with properly prepared sugar snap peas, chips, and half of our very first home-grown tomato, which was absolutely delicious! 🙂 As I mentioned last night, there was a second tomato which we took off the same vine – not nearly as “luscious” looking as the first, but we had a little bit of that one sliced up on our lunch today. I had two Ryvita crispbreads, with Philly Light, sliced up sandwich ham, a small spoonful of quinoa tabouli salad, and some sliced up “Tomato #2” – which was just as delicious as “Tomato #1” last night, even if it didn’t look as pretty! 😉 Tonight we’re having cold cuts and a couple of (commercial) salads for dinner – and unfortunately you’ll just have to wait until tomorrow night to find out what they all were, because at this stage I don’t even know what they are myself! Sorry about that one, chiefs! 😉

Weigh-in this morning. Was a trifle better – I’m still retaining far too much fluid though – so thank heavens there’s only one more of those truly dreadful little pills left to take in the morning! However, I did go down a bit this morning – from 63.6kg to 63.2kg (four points) and once more I did manage to get in both my 1.5 kilometer walks. I think it might take a bit more “experimentation” for me to work out if it’s the lunch-time wraps that I’m so fond of, or the horrible little pills and the resulting fluid retention, that make me put the weight back on (of course, fancy lunches with very sugary desserts whilst out shopping couldn’t possibly have anything to do with it, could they! 😉 )

I’m not really sure what’s happening tomorrow – probably more picture hanging, and early tomorrow morning we have an “interview” with a possible new gardening and lawn-mowing person. We had a very good gardener and lawn-mowing man when we lived in Glen Waverley, and he’s continued to do an excellent job of mowing the lawns and doing the gardening for my favourite eldest daughter and her husband, since we moved to Doncaster and they moved into our Glen Waverley premises – but unfortunately he wasn’t getting any younger, and now he’s retiring He’s sold his business to a younger guy, who will be taking over his duties in Glen Waverley (and elsewhere) and because we’re not terribly satisfied with the lawn-mowing man that we currently have, we’ve arranged to talk to, and get a quote from, this new young man! I’ll let you know how it all goes tomorrow! 🙂 Also, if you’re really, really lucky, I might even try to get up a few photos of the pictures wot we hang! Now, won’t that be exciting for you! 😉 Anyway, once again that’s about it from me this evening – do call in again tomorrow night – there’ll be lots of news and other fascinating bits of trivia for everyone – from whether my weight’s still going down, or if it’s gone up again, to the possibility of photos of some of our pictures, “in situ”! 🙂 And for the cat lovers amongst you, there’ll be the latest updates and bulletins on Flipper, and maybe even a quavering “meow”, followed by a dismissively vague tail wave from the Prima Donna herself as she wafts past! So, until tomorrow night, please try to behave yourselves, and to bee good! Remember that your imagination is your preview of life’s coming attractions – and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to drive carefully, and to keep warm – or cool – depending on the weather… but above all, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

Well, finally – here I am… It’s been quite a busy day today, what with sorting out all the pictures, and trying to decide what goes where – and then Julian had to go racing off to Doncaster this afternoon to let the buyers into our old apartment to do some measuring up for their furniture and “things” (Settlement Day is in a week or so, and we still haven’t moved everything out!) The Agent had sent them off armed with the keyless “door swipe” disc to let themselves in with, but of course last time we were over there, we locked up properly behind us when we left – so off he went to the rescue, yet again… Apparently the new-owners-to-be had brought their whole clan with them, plus a few of “Rabbit’s friends and relations”, and everyone was running around, exclaiming in delight at the magnificent views, the bespoke built-in Office and Den bookcases and furniture, and (according to Julian, anyway) generally milling around and getting in everyone else’s way! Once he got back, we continued with working out where the pictures were going to go. At the moment, the gargantuan “Sunset Over the Torrens” will be going in the middle of the main corridor’s wallpapered “feature” wall (almost opposite the little alcove with the hall table and the bronze busts of Dad and myself) The frame around “Sunset Over the Torrens” is in extremely poor condition, as is the actual painting itself – so we’ll hang it there for the nonce, but we’re going to have to get it professionally cleaned and restored (which will probably cost a mint! But it really does need to be done!) and then it can hang in pride of place on the plain white wall opposite the Office. “Bert’s Bath” will be hung in the smaller, “bedroom” corridor, on the wall between my treadmill room and my bathroom, instead of actually inside the bathroom as it was in Doncaster. The two Michael Parks prints that lived in the Spare Room in Doncaster are going in the Office here – they were going to have been put on the wall behind the lounge-suite in the Living Room – but Julian said that he didn’t want anything with a reflective surface (like glass!) facing the television – so the wall behind the lounge-suite will now be occupied with the two silver, black, and red “Poppy” paintings, that used to live over the double doors onto the balcony in the apartment. We’ve re-located the camphor-wood chest, so that the large print – a copy of an early 17th century screen showing the parade of Portuguese Merchants arriving in Japan – that always hung above the chest in Adelaide, can continue the association here too. My absolute favourite of all the art though, is a beautifully framed print of “Circe Invidiosa“, by John William Waterhouse, will be hung on the wall opposite the double door to the Den, so that I can see her standing there every time I turn towards the door! (and I might mention that the colours in the print are much more vivid and bright than they are in any of the pictures I’ve been able to find on the ‘Net, which don’t even begin to do her justice!) The small replica of a teeny part of Leonardo da Vinci’s “Journey of the Magi” (can you believe that it’s been made to look as though someone very naughty’s chipped off a part of a fresco!) is to go on the wall between the folding door onto the deck, and what was intended to be the Library (but which we’ve now decided is far too small to be used as a Library, so it will officially become “The Spare Room”!) And really, that’s about as far as we were able to get today, what with Julian having to dash off to open up Doncaster, and Josh arriving to do my hair! 🙂 Tomorrow my favourite eldest daughter will be over, so I guess Julian will have the fun of getting everything hung up on the designated walls, while we girls lounge around watching TV and drinking coffee! 😉

Food stuffz: well, due to my weigh-in this morning, I decided to go back to my diet jellies and Ryvita crispbreads – yeah, it was that bad – I can’t decide whether or not it’s the flat bread, the hummus, or the Halloumi cheese, that make up our lunch-time wraps that’s doing it, or the low-fat yoghurt for dessert after dinner – perhaps if I had the hummus without the flat bread… or maybe if I had the flat bread, without the hummus, or the Halloumi cheese… hmm… Or perhaps if I had the wrap for lunch, but didn’t have the low-fat yoghurt for dessert at night? Nah – t’is much more easier just to retreat back into the two Ryvita crispbreads, with Philly light, and some slices of peri-peri sandwich chicken (which is what I had for lunch today) though I was a trifle disappointed in the chicken – I think they must have just wafted (Winter makes a graceful “wafting” gesture with one hand) the peri-peri over the top of it, as it didn’t taste at all (spicy) hot! Oh well… I ate two of my four apricots, and I was lucky! One of the apricots was just on the verge of being “over-ripe” – but it was still edible, so I did (eat it) And… remember that veggie garden that Julian had always promised me, and now I have one? Well, we had our first produce from our very own veggie bed today! 🙂 A beautiful, large(ish), ripe, red tomato! There was another tomato on the same vine too, which we’ve picked and will probably have with our dinner tomorrow night, but it doesn’t look nearly as nice as the one we had with our dinner tonight! Unfortunately, Julian forgot to take a photo of it before he cut it in twain – but here’s the two halves of our own, very first, produce, ready for plating! 🙂 Next time I’ll try to remember to remind him to take a photo of whatever we’ve managed to grow, before he cuts it! 😉 So tonight for dinner we had lamb backstraps (not marinated this time 😦 ) properly prepared sugar-snap peas, chips, and half of our very own, home-grown tomato each! It really was delicious! Firm, ripe, and juicy! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. Well, I’d been hoping that I might have started going back down the scales again, but alas – it was not to be! I’d actually gone up another two points! I was not amused! From 63.4kg to 63.6kg! And that’s why I decided to put the lunch-time wraps on hold for a while, and to go back to the diet jellies – I did my two 1.5 kilometer walks today, and I spent a lot of time standing, too, while I steadied pictures, moved the camphor-wood chest across the room on my own (it’s quite a big heavy chest – if I were younger and more agile, I reckon I could actually climb into it to hide, if I had to!) and decided (correctly, of course!) where the centre of the wall was, for hanging up a small mirror. I’ll be very interested in what the scales say tomorrow morning – and in the meantime, I still have another two days worth of those obnoxious little fluid loving and retaining pills! Surely there’s some other medication that Dr. Y. can prescribe for me that doesn’t try to turn me into a camel, and store as much fluid as I possibly can! 😦

Anyway, whatever happens, tomorrow will be a good day, with my favourite eldest daughter coming over – I’m not sure what we’ll be watching – but we’ll be making the most of it – she goes back to uni soon, and I haven’t got her new time-table or schedule yet so I don’t know what days she’ll be free! You know, I’ve mentioned putting up pictures, but what we’re really needing in this house are some wall clocks – especially in here! I have a small desk clock, which if I scrunch my head around and squint past the empty glasses and cups that are usually carelessly placed in front of it (not by me, of course! 😉 ) I can see what the time is, or I can use my wrist watch – except when I forget to put it on in the morning… which is quite often – so yes, a wall clock in here would be a good idea – after all, Julian has the Grandfather clock in the office! Anyway, that’s about it from me again for this evening! Feel free to call in again tomorrow night – find out if we ate our second tomato for dinner, and if my weight is doing anything besides sulking and refusing to go down again (Ah has mah fingers crossed, but I ain’t a-holding mah breath! 😉 ) Until tomorrow night though, do please try to bee good, remember – don’t compromise yourself – you’re all you have! and don’t forget to drive carefully, to keep warm – or cool – depending on the weather, and to look after yourselves – but most importantly, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

Well, here I am a lot later than I should have been, but we had a very busy and full day in Draenor today – we even went up two levels! Two! Imagine that! And we both went up at the same time – which is even more remarkable, as one of us is always a little ahead of the other! But as the fates would have it, both times we leveled up it was by so many experience points that it cancelled out the one and a half “bubble” lead that Julian had on me – so now we’re both level 95, and according to Blizzard, have “outgrown” the area (read: zone) we were in, and we’re now off to explore and civilise? tame? subdue? conquer? I’m not sure which term would best describe what we’re doing – but anyway, going in and killing all the baddies and making things safe for the new settlers coming in – you know, taking the land from the natives, and turning it into farms, ranches, and mines for the newcomers… that sort of thing. Civilising the place. Mind you, the “baddies” that we’re running around and slaughtering, really are nasty types! Slavers, torturers, drunken ogres who ill-treat everyone and everything, so I really don’t feel very guilty about killing them (except sometimes…) So after we’d finished today, only a little later that usual, I had heaps of “junk” in my backpack that I needed to sort through, sell off most of it, wear some of it, and put the rest in the Bank – and that’s what took me so long getting to this writing bit! Today’s little foray was not only unusual in that we both went up two levels, but also in that we didn’t die! Well, I did, once, because Mouselet had found a level 94 Gold “Named” Elite mob, and wanted to kill it, bless his little heart and soul! I was a bit dubious – Silver “Named” Elites? Yes, sure! We were knocking them down like ninepins – but a Gold? They’re pretty much made of diamonds and titanium, or something! They’re very tough, and extremely difficult to take down – but I thought “Oh well, what’s the worst thing that can happen? hmm? We’ll die…” Well, Julian didn’t die, but I did, and so did my Pet – and although we fought long and hard and well before the Gold Elite killed us, we were hardly even putting a scratch on him! So after Mouselet had Resurrected me (and apologised!) and I’d resurrected Boojums (my Pet) we both decided to leave this particular Gold “Named” Elite strictly alone – for a few more levels, anyway! The main thing is, we had a good time and enjoyed ourselves, and I finally managed to get my Garrison “supplies” organised enough to start sending “Followers” out on Missions again (I thought I’d run out of these Garrison supplies that you need for sending people out on Missions, and building up the Garrison – but I hadn’t – I was wrong mistaken!) At around half past twelve we took a lunch-break and I did my second treadmill-a-thon for the day, then we had a yummy lunch (wraps, in that really nice, special, “baked fresh on the premises every day”, Coles Flat Bread) and we went back to taming the jungles of Draenor. We managed to get in quite a number of “bonus” quests – which I think are not connected to any story arc, and don’t have any actual “NPC” quest givers – but they’re represented on the map of the area by a pair of crossed swords, and (usually) the presence of a skull – to indicate to  players that there’s some sort of Elite monster there for you to kill (or not, as the whim takes you) for extra “bonus” experience points, gear, or Garrison supply crates. I think we ended up doing about five of these “bonus” quests, but it’s hard to tell because the map markings seem to be fixed – that is, they don’t vanish when you pick up the quests, or when you finish them – it could also mean that they’re “repeatable” quests – ones that you can do over and over on a daily basis, depending on your time constraints and your boredom threshold! 😉 But anyway, that was pretty much our day! 🙂

Food stuffz: last night we had the veal schnitzels – cooked one of the ways that my grandmother and my father used to cook them – beaten almost paper-thin, dipped in flour, cooked quickly in a small amount of butter, with lemon juice poured over each schnitzel as soon as they were turned over in the frying pan! We had (properly prepared this time!) sugar snap peas with them, plain boiled potatoes, with some plain, low-fat Greek yoghurt and finely chopped spring onions drizzled over them, and of course, the usual half a tomato. If I had to find any fault with anything, I suppose I could say that the schnitzels were just a tad overcooked – but to tell the truth, I think they worked better slightly overcooked! They were nice and a little bit crispy around the edges, which I liked! 🙂 Apparently I’m having a bit of a rest from my diet jellies, as they still haven’t been made, and I’m happily lapping up the low-fat yoghurts that Julian usually has for dessert! Either way, I’m happy – I like them both, though I think it’s probably a good idea to have a few made up diet jellies in the fridge, for “just in case” scenarios! As stated above, lunch today was a delicious wrap made with that Coles brand Flat Bread – which really is very nice, even if it is a Coles branded one! It had the usual fillings – basil pesto hummus, quinoa tabouli salad, chopped red capsicum, sandwich ham, and cubes of Halloumi cheese – quite delicious! And for dinner tonight we had omelets, with tomato, capsicum, semi-dried basil flakes, some finely chopped onion, and (more) Halloumi cheese, followed again by a low-fat yoghurt for dessert. Yesterday while we were out doing the little bit of supermarket shopping, I bought some fresh fruit which I’ll have over the next few days – I bought four nice-looking apricots, and four yellow nectarines – I would have bought some pears if they’d had any decent Corella ones – in my opinion, the nicest tasting ones – but they didn’t, so I got the nectarines instead. According to the Optifast fruit and vegetable “free” list, I can have two small apricots a day, and one large, or two small nectarines a day without having to worry about their calories (or kilojoules) so tomorrow – if I remember – I’ll have two of the apricots… If I forget, then they’ll probably get over-ripe and mushy and have to be thrown out, so I hope I do remember! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. Was only what I expected! I did go up – not much, but enough – from 63.0kg to 63.4 kg. I should (hopefully!) start going down again tomorrow, though I am still on those damn fluid-retaining pills for a few more days – I am pretty sure that quite a bit of the extra weight I’ve put on over the past three or four days is largely due to my diet (or rather, the lack thereof!) but I also suspect that about a third of it is retained excess fluid. We shall see… As I said, I should be starting to go down a bit from tomorrow… hopefully, anyway 🙂

And so to tomorrow – Chinese New Year – the year of the Fire Monkey, I believe? So “Gong Hey Fat Choy!” for tomorrow, everyone! 🙂 We’ll be placing pictures around the house, and trying (key word, that: “trying“!) to decide where everything should go… I really wish we had some of the pictures that I know are still in storage to put around the place too, because some of them are rather nice (from memory, anyway!) Still, we’ll see how we go – a lot of the pictures from Adelaide are surprisingly big, but we’ll squeeze them in somehow! I still can’t decide if “Bert’s Bath” should go on the very small amount of wall space in my bathroom, or if it’d be better on one of the walls just outside my bathroom – f’rinstance between the exercise room and my bathroom – it would look quite good there, I think… Anyway, they’re tomorrow’s decisions! Josh will be over in the late afternoon to do my hair, and if I end up with any spare time, I’ll probably be working on ways to level up some of my new girls, and on ways to incorporate my “extra” Guild and Guild Bank – I still think I’m going to have to spend the money on a Faction change and go from a Horde Guildmistress and Guild Bank, to an Alliance one – however, the jury is still out… Anyway, once again, that’s about it from me for this evening! 🙂 Please feel free to drop in again tomorrow night, to see if we’ve found places for all the pictures (well, all the ones we currently have here, anyway!) and whether or not my weight is starting to go down a bit (hopefully, it will – but I wouldn’t hold my breath!) and anything else interesting that happened during the day! But until then, you’ll just have to be patient, and try very hard to bee good! Don’t forget… you are what what you eat eats…and always remember to drive carefully, to look after yourselves, and to keep cool – or warm – depending on Melbourne’s totally unpredictable weather patterns – but above all, remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

So, here I am again, starting at a reasonable time again  (crikey! what’s wrong with me! I must be ill! 😉 ) We had a fair bit to get through today, but what with one thing and another, we got a fairly late start, so we didn’t get as much done as we’d hoped to. Never mind, it wasn’t really a “matter of life and death”, so to speak… What we had intended to do was go over to Doncaster to pick up the rest of the pictures to be hung, call in at Bunny’s to get some stronger picture hanging hooks, because the ones that we did have were a bit “flimsy”, and some of our pictures are – to put it mildly – “pretty big”. Once we’d done all of that we had a bit of supermarket shopping to do, then we were going to come home, get out all the pictures, and “dot them around the house” (leaning against walls, etc.) just to see what we thought should go where. Of course, we don’t have all of our pictures – there’s still a hell of a lot of them in storage from when we moved to Doncaster, in  2007! We’re not going to have nearly enough room for them all, especially as most of the walls are going to end up covered in bookcases, but that’s exactly why we were going to do this “dot them around the house” exercise – so that we could pick out the best – or should I say, “the ones we couldn’t bear to part with”! There’s one print that’s always hung in our bedroom which we’re going to replace, because it was hanging in the full afternoon sun while we were in Doncaster, and over the years it’s become very faded and “sun-bleached” – it’s called “The Kiss“, by Gustav Klimt. The one that’s always hung in our bedroom has a plain, thin, black frame (a very minimalist post-modern style!) but I’d like to get something a little… nicer, this time – or at the very least, something that will “blend in” a little better with all the other frames that will be going up around it! So… first we went up to the Vermont South shopping centre, to check our P.O. Box, and my goodness! There was a MICA Ambulance, and Police cars… and blood on the ground! (a fair amount, and it looked fresh and very “wet”, too!) There were lots of people milling around, looking somber, and standing in small groups, “discussing” something of apparently great import – in other words, “lollygagging about”! When we got home this afternoon I had a look in The Age (online version), but there was nothing mentioned about any sort of “trouble” in Vermont South; maybe there’ll be something on the news tonight? So, yeah, we went up and checked the P.O. Box, gawked at the mess on the road, and went down to Bunny’s for the stronger hooks. Then we went off to Doncaster – gee, it looks so bare and, for some reason, old and tired – where we picked up the last of the pictures from there that we wanted to keep… Then we went off to do our supermarket shopping, up at the Coles/KMart Plaza thingy on the corner of Burwood Highway and Blackburn Road – because by that time it was after one o’clock, and there’s a Ferguson Plarre there where we thought we’d get lunch. And… uhhh… I was a naughty girl again! Julian hasn’t made up his mind yet as to whether he’ll make Hot Cross Buns this Easter, or if we’ll get them from elsewhere, so – just in case – I asked them there at Ferguson Plarre whether they made Hot Cross Buns or not, to which the gentleman serving us replied that yes, they did, but they didn’t make them until much closer to Easter (I suppose to give everyone a chance to get sick and tired of the HCB’s made by Coles, Woolworths, and other “assorted bakeries”, who’ve already been selling them for weeks – so that they’ll buy theirs instead!) but I forgot to ask them if they had, or if they made, Simnel Cakes… though I’d be extremely surprised if they didn’t – and anyway – I’m sure we’ll be up there again lots of times before Easter, so that I can order one from them (if they do make them! And if they don’t, I’ll cry!) Well, by the time we got home, it was after three o’clock, so we figured it was too late in the afternoon to start manhandling heavy picture frames around the house, so we collapsed into our chairs and had a cup of coffee instead! 🙂 I played a bit of WoW – mainly to get my “Followers” off on missions on my behalf – and then I started writing this! 🙂

Food stuffz: last night, neither of us had any dinner – we were still too full from lunch, so we just had a cup of coffee while we watched television. We had lunch today at Ferguson Plarre – Julian had a large sausage roll (with a little sachet of tomato sauce) a Red Velvet Cup Cake, and a Cappuccino… I was torn between having a Tiddly Oggie, or the large “Gourmet Spinach and Cheese Roll” (which was just a teeny bit smaller than the large sausage roll that Julian had) I love Tiddly Oggies, but I ended up opting for the “Gourmet Spinach and Cheese Roll”, as I’d had something almost similar yesterday for lunch, and I hadn’t been at all impressed with it and I wanted to compare them… Well, I can tell you that the “Gourmet Spinach and Cheese Roll”, made by Ferguson Plarre, was somewhere in the region of 3000% better than the lump of soggy, saltless pastry, filled with spinach and not very much fetta, that I had yesterday! I also had a Ferguson Plarre Hedgehog slice, which while extremely good – and which I would gladly have every day, if I thought I could get away with it weight-wise – just wasn’t in the race to compete against that absolutely luscious, delectable, dee–vine, cake I had yesterday, with the caramel, and the chocolate cream, and the thick, sticky, gooey, chocolate frosting! *sigh* Tonight we’re having veal cutlets, with boiled potatoes, sugar snap peas, and (I presume) half a tomato. The method of cooking the veal cutlets is thus: first, you pound the hell out of them – they should end up being about three to four millimeters (yes, that’s “millimeters”!) thick. Cut the veal into suitable sizes for cooking – the pounding will stretch them quite a bit, and they could end up too big for your frying pan, but do remember that the pieces will shrink a fair bit while cooking! Next, you dip them into well seasoned plain flour – no egg wash, just the seasoned flour, pressing each side firmly in the flour to get it well coated. Set the floured veal on a large plate, making sure that each one is lying completely flat, and that none of them overlap (or they’ll stick together, and then they’ll be a right mess and won’t cook properly!) Squeeze a couple of lemons and keep the juice close to the stove – these cutlets don’t take long to cook! Heat some butter in a frying pan, and when the butter begins to “bubble” a bit – but before it burns – gently slide in as many cutlets as will fit comfortably into the pan. When cooked on the bottom – gently lift one edge with a spatula – if the flour’s gently browned, it’s time to turn the cutlet! Once you’ve turned the cutlets, pour some lemon juice over the top of each cutlet, and cook for about the same amount of time as you cooked the first side (remember! Check underneath to see how the browning is going! You want a sort-of a cappuccino-froth brown, not a dark caramel brown!) When cooked, serve immediately with vegetables of your choice 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. Was surprising, considering what I ate yesterday, and the fact that I’m on those nasty little fluid retaining pills! I went down three points! From 63.3kg to 63.0kg! To quote someone who was once famous (or should that be “infamous”? 😉 ) “Please explain!” Anyway, today’s lunch should probably take me well back into the 63 kilogram zone, if not into the 64 kilogram zone! So why am I doing this, “dicing with weight” dance? Well, I have to know what I can and can’t eat – what will take me up too much, and what I can get away with, if I don’t do it too often. In other words, I’m learning to eat all over again – what’s safe, and what’s not… Everything is being noted and stored – recorded here in this blog, and noted down for future reference. I wonder what I’ll go up to tomorrow? We’ll just have to weight and see, I guess…

Tomorrow is Sunday, and our day for Frolicking in Draenor – where hopefully I’ll be able to “earn” some more “supplies” in order to send my Followers out to win me more supplies, with which I can then build up my Garrison! I have references to read about how to go about it which I haven’t read yet – but I will! I’ll be sure to let you all know if we managed to get ourselves killed or not, and how many times we had to cough up gold for repairs to our armor after we’d died, and then on Monday, now that we have all the pictures under the one roof (except for the ones still in storage!) we’ll start depositing them around the house, so that we can see where we want what! I’m actually quite looking forward to that! 🙂 And really, that’s about it from me again this evening! Do drop in again tomorrow night – find out how our cutlets turned out, and how we went in Draenor! I’m sure there’ll be heaps to tell you, so don’t miss out on all the news from this side of the black stump! 😉 Until tomorrow night then, please try very hard to bee good, remember that crying doesn’t indicate that you’re weak – since birth, it has been a sign that you’re alive – and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to drive carefully, and to keep cool – or warm – depending on the weather… but above all, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

*smirk* Well, at least I’ve managed to get rid of those two horrible and unsightly black lines running through the middle of the header! 😉 What do you think of this layout and set-up? I thought that as Chinese New Year is almost upon us I’d go for a slightly more “oriental” look and theme. The kanji symbol is “Summer”, and I thought that it turned out quite nicely – what a shame that summer officially ends at the end of the month! I’ll have to dig out my Autumn kanji symbol then (I know I’ve got one – somewhere – I just can’t remember where I put it! The same with this Summer one – I have got one, but I couldn’t find it, so I had to go hunting for one to download! *tsk!* Honestly! The things I have to go through for this blog! 😉 ) Anyway, I think this Template and style look quite good – they’ll do for the moment, anyway!

So, this morning! Well, we didn’t get as early a start as I’d planned, but we trundled off at around eleven-ish, and went down to a Dorevitch Collection Centre on Ferntree Gully Road in Wheelers Hill – a rather strange place, I thought, as one wasn’t requested to “Take a number and sit down”! It’s in a Medical Clinic, so you go in and trundle down a fairly narrow and somewhat gloomy corridor to the “Pathology” area, where you just sit down and wait. There were hardly any people in there, and we didn’t have to wait long (so I think we might go there again next time!) The woman (nurse, I think!) taking my blood had a somewhat strange sort of “English” accent – Julian thought she sounded as though she was having trouble with an upper dental plate or something – and after asking the usual questions (date of birth, address, etc., etc.) she proceeded to take my blood… She was damn good! I didn’t even feel the needle go in! So off we went again – to Knox City, where Julian thought he knew where the JB HiFi shop was, only it wasn’t – it was a Hardly Normal Harvey Norman, so we went in there to get his Birthday Present! 🙂 I gave him a new Samsung Galaxy S2 Tablet, to replace the old one he’d had for four years, and which was slowly dying – and Flipper gave him a Nutri-Bullet, which we have yet to examine and try out. I think Flipper thinks that Daddy might be able to make her a pussy-biscuit thick-shake after she’s had her tooth (or perhaps teeth, plural!) removed next week, if her mouth is too sore to eat them whole. I suppose he could, you know, if it came to that – but I hope he doesn’t! Those pussy-biscuits smell totally revolting! (sometimes I’m very glad that I’m not a cat!) and if he made a thick-shake out of them the poor old Nutri-Bullet would never get rid of the smell of them – *bleeech!* Then we went and had lunch – and no, I’m not going to tell you what I ate, except to say that one item had a lovely filling of spinach and fetta cheese, but had far too much gluggy pastry around it (but the chips with it were delicious! 😉  and the salad that I asked for “without dressing, please” was wearing a ball gown!) and the other item involved a great deal of caramel filling, chocolate cream, and very thick, sticky chocolate frosting! I’ll also add that neither Julian nor I will be having any dinner tonight – just a nice cup of coffee, as we sit and watch the newly returned “Dr. Blake Mysteries” on ABC1 tonight! After lunch, we waddled upstairs to Katies where I bought my 3/4 length sleeved Tee-shirts – they’d only come in yesterday, and they only had four of them in my size… so I took all of them! They were on sort-of “special” – they were (from memory!) $35 each, but if you bought two of them you got them for $15 each – that is, a bit better that half price – which is why I decided to take all four of them. They’re exactly what I was after – the sleeves come down to just below my elbows, and hide a multitude of tattered curtains! They also came in white, and a sort-of chartreuse colour, but as those colours look awful on me (white makes me look sick, and my skin is too olive to wear chartreuse – it just makes me look jaundiced!) so I only took the black ones 🙂 (which were the ones I wanted, anyway!) Then we did a bit of supermarket shopping, and came home!

I was planning on having an hour’s play on World of Warcraft when we got home, but as usual, I checked to see if Word Press had any new Templates first, and I saw this one. It’s not new by any means – it’s quite old, actually, and I have used it before, but I decided to have a fiddle… which turned into making a new header, and looking for summer kanji symbols, and before I knew it, it was time to start writing, and… here I am! 🙂

Food stuffz: well, you pretty much know what we had for dinner last night at the East Empress Bistro, coz I told you all last night – and right now I don’t really feel like talking about food (I’m sure you all understand and sympathise!) – ditto with lunch today – suffice to say that we both ate far too much, and we shall both rue our gluttony, and face our weight punishment stoically, if not philosophically, with the understanding that what goes up can also come down (and believe me, it will!) However, I did get in my morning 1.5 kilometer treadmill-a-thon, and at Knox I walked briskly the length and breadth of the centre, twice, so that’s gotta count for something, doesn’t it? I sure hope so, anyway!

Weigh-in this morning. Wasn’t quite as bad as I was expecting – I went from 62.5kg to 63.2kg – seven points – a lot of which will be fluid, because of those wretched little pills I’m taking at the moment… However… my weight tomorrow morning will not be a pretty sight! 😦 (but ohh… that thick, sticky, chocolate frosting was dee–vine… and I refuse to regret eating it!) Still, no more heavy eatings now until my Birthday in March, or our Saint Valentine’s Day Dinner, which we never have on Saint Valentine’s Day anyway! Why go with the mob, and have to put up with a “special” and much restricted dinner menu, with lots of people sitting and milling around you, usually spoiling what would otherwise be a nice, romantic dinner for two! No, we always have our Saint Valentine’s Day Dinner a week, or even two weeks, afterwards! Anyway, hopefully we’ll have shed all this excess weight by then – so we can “start all over again…”

Tomorrow, we hope to be hanging pictures – we have a couple from Adelaide to hang – one is gi-normous, “Sunset Over the Torrens”, I think it’s called – it’ll have to go somewhere in the hall, or on one of the walls near the Den (I don’t think it’ll go in the Den though – it’s too “formal”!) and another is a print that I’ve always adored – by John William Waterhouse – and I have no idea where we’re going to put her, except that it’s got to be somewhere where I’ll see her every day! Then there are a few from our old place – “Bert’s Bath”, and the only possible place for that is in the bathroom (or maybe on the wall just outside? dunno…) and “PB* in His Floral Dress” (ya just gotta see that one to understand it! 😉 ) our family crest, as designed and embroidered by my Nonna when she was a young woman, and many, many (far too many!) more… I might post up some pictures of some of the best ones, once we get them sorted out and work out exactly where they’re all going to go! So, all of that should keep us fairly busy, and out of mischief! 😉 And now it’s that time again – time for me to say well, that’s about it from me for this evening! Please drop in again tomorrow night – I’m sure you’ll all be agog to find out how much more my weight has gone up (a lot, probably!) and how many pictures, in total, we managed to get hung on the walls, and where we ended up putting the great big, gi-normous “Sunset Over the Torrens” – if we even managed to get that one up – I think it might need more than just Julian and I to get it on the wall – it is very big! Anyway, until tomorrow evening, please remember to bee as good as possible, don’t forget that plenty of people miss their share of happiness, not because they never found it, but because they didn’t stop to enjoy it… and do remember to drive carefully, to keep cool – or warm – depending on what it’s like outside, and to always look after yourselves…but above all, remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao all! 🙂

*PB – PB is a cat – it stands for “Pussy Bxxxxx” (the “B” stands for Mum and Dad’s surname – and of course my maiden name, because he was originally my cat!) because we had a cat who was known by that name (“Pussy” + “family surname”)

Well, we’re back from dinner, and a very nice meal it was too! 🙂 As I mentioned before, we went to the East Empress Bistro, and I ended up having pretty much what I had last time I was there! For “Starters” – excuse me for a moment, please, but can anyone tell me, seriously, when the term “Entree” – a word which denotes “entry”, or the part of the meal which “enters” the dining room first – get changed to “Starters” (such a terribly plebeian and pedestrian word!) and the term Main Meal suddenly become an Entree, or an “entry” dish?! Anyway, back to what I was waffling on about – here we go – for “Starters” I had the three little fried pork dumplings (each one is about as large as your common or garden variety “dim sum”) – I fergit what they’re called now – and then I had the Teriyaki chicken, which was so good I ate nearly all of it (Julian had to help me eat it! I couldn’t help him eat his though, because he took the opportunity of eating “fishy” things!) Julian had the chicken satay for “Starters”, and some sort of calamari for his main meal. I was going to have a different dessert this time around – but one look at the dessert menu convinced me to stay with the “Passionfruit Frenzy”, with its wonderful mixture of passionfruit ice cream. passionfruit sauce, passionfruit “pulp” (for want of a better word!), and the layer of strawberry and meringue underneath it all! Heaven in a spoonful! 🙂 Julian had the East Empress Sundae, which had green tea ice cream, chocolate sauce, meringue and strawberry in it – I think I got the better deal! 😉 I also had a Martini when we got there, and a half glass of wine with the meal, and quite frankly, it was a lot better than Julian driving up to the supermarket and looking for inspiration, and then coming home and cooking it – on his Birthday! He can do that tomorrow night! 😉

Weigh-in this morning. Maybe those horrible pills are starting to kick in after all! I went up two points this morning, from 62.3kg to 62.5kg – and I have a funny sort of feeling that I might just be up a bit more tomorrow morning! Oh well, as I keep saying, life is to be lived, and enjoyed as much as possible – not cringed at!

Tomorrow, as I mentioned in Part 1, I have my Warfarin blood test, which hopefully we’ll be able to get done a lot earlier than we normally do – we’ve noticed that the later we go, the more people there are in the waiting room, and the longer we have to sit and wait to be called in for a three-second jab of a needle! Anyway, I’m hoping we can get in early, because we have quite a bit of shopping to do afterwards – Julian has to get his Birthday Present (a new Tablet because his old one is dying) I need to get some long sleeve and/or three-quarter sleeve Tee-shirts from either Katies or Millers, with which to hide my hideously “ragged” arms, and Julian really, really needs a haircut – badly! So that’ll probably be our day tomorrow – unfortunately it’ll mean another fulsome meal – but I’m sure we’ll be able to force ourselves to survive it! 😉 And once again, that’s about it from me for this evening! Don’t forget to drop in again tomorrow night – I’m sure you’re all waiting with bated breath to find out if my weight skyrocketed, what with those ‘orrible little pills, and not one, but two meals out – and what the results of my blood test were, and if Julian’s had all his hairs shaved off! I’m sure there’ll be lots more to regale all of you with tomorrow night, so… don’t miss out! OK? However until tomorrow night, please try very hard to bee good, don’t forget that one must dare to be happy… and remember to keep cool – or warm – depending on how you like it, to drive carefully, and to look after yourselves… but please, most of all, remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

Well, I had intended to get an early start today, but I found a Template that I’d bought quite a while ago, so because I couldn’t really remember having used it (but I must have, because I bought it!) I decided that I’d try it out again – and it looked quite good, so I set about making a header for it – and the result you see is above the title (hopefully! 😉 ) Except for the two unsightly black lines running through the middle of the top of the header! I have absolutely no idea where they came from, and I can’t seem to get rid of them, because I can’t find where the [censored] they are! Hopefully they’re an “Editing” problem only, and that no-one else can see them – otherwise I won’t be able to use this Template! I do know they weren’t there when I originally bought the Template, because I wouldn’t have spent good money on it, if I’d known that those two lines were going to appear! Anyway, let me know if you can see them, and I shall “take steps!” *scowl*

Anyway, back to the main happening of the day – or “les événements du jour”, as the French would say! Well, the main event today, of course, was Julian’s Birthday, though apart from a card from me, he won’t get any presents until tomorrow, when I drag take him off to buy it! (psst! it’s a new Tablet, but don’t tell him! Flipper’s going to buy him a Nutri-Bullet, too! shhhh! It’s supposed to be a surprise! 😉 ) The rest of the day passed with Julian working head down, tail up, in the Office, and me sitting in the Den here trying to decide what to do with the “extra” Guild, and all the “extra” arrow fodder that make up my pretty Hunters! (Yes, even the two Troll girls, and the two Undead Hunters are as pretty as I could make them!) Julian had a really good idea of what to do with the “extra” Guild that I’ve acquired – he suggested I turn it into an “Overflow”, or “run-on” Guild Bank – which really is a good idea! Unfortunately I will have to spend a bit of money on it – luckily it’s already on Quel’Dorei, so I don’t have to move it between Realms – but it’ll have to change Faction. At the moment it’s a Horde Guild and Guild Bank, and our Quel’Dorei Horde contingent already have a reasonably “comfortable” Guild Bank status, with (I think!) three Guild Bank Vaults, and at this stage they wouldn’t be able to make use of a second repository… But! The Alliance Guild Bank is once again starting to run out of space, and really could do with the extra space that this “extra” Guild Bank would provide. At the moment none of the Alliance characters can get near it, of course, so it’ll have to become “Alliance-friendly” by changing Factions. I won’t be able to get onto it tomorrow, because we have my next Warfarin blood test to have done, and we also have to get Julian’s Birthday Presents, and Katies are having a very nice sale at the moment – in which they’re selling – at ridiculously low prices, compared to My Size and Autograph – both long-sleeved and 3/4 sleeved Tee shirts, which I’m desperately in need of! Having lost so much weight, and not having the nice fresh, young, elastic skin of an 18 year old, my arms (not to mention my thighs and stomach!) look like tatty old, and very badly hung, curtains – which either long, or 3/4 length sleeves hide admirably! 🙂

Food stuffz: the fillet steak we had last night was delectable! Cooked just right, and with chips, green beans and half a tomato… and I had another of Julian’s very nice low-fat yoghurts for dessert… For lunch today we both had one of my favourite wraps, with basil pesto hummus, quinoa tabouli salad, ham, capsicum batons, and (I think!) cucumber… And tonight, we’re going out! We’re off to the East Empress Bistro, so I’m about to whizz off to make myself presentable!

I’ll post some more, including today’s weight, later this evening! 🙂

Here I am, nice and early for a change – innit wunnerful how organised and efficient I can be sometimes! Wish I could do it all the time… Oh well, anyway, today started very early for us – actually it was really only half an hour earlier – we usually get up around 7.30am, but the alarm went off at 7.00am, and this morning there was no time for dilly-dallying, so we sprang out of bed like Cup runners from the starting gates, heading for our bathrooms and getting ourselves ready – well, Julian did – but I was staying home, so I just hopped on the scales and weighed myself. Right after my weigh-in is when I normally have my first bout of treadmilling, but I didn’t even have time for that this morning – we were off to the Den, and breakfast! Remember, Julian had to be over at Doncaster early today to let in the cleaners he’d arranged. After breakfast Julian made me a sandwich for lunch – doesn’t he trust me with a pat of butter and a jar of Vegemite?! *innocent look* (personally, though, I would have been more worried about the basil pesto hummus and the Halloumi cheese, with me left in charge of making my own sandwich! 😉 ) which he sealed in Glad Wrap and left in the fridge for me. Then, off he went, and I went back to my “normal” morning routine! I went back to the bathroom and brushed my teeth, then went and hopped on the treadmill for the first of my 1.5 kilometer jaunts. Then I went and got myself a nice cup of coffee, and settled in for a day of WoW-ing. I think I did pretty well, too – I didn’t try rearranging any of the girls, or doing anything with the extra Guild Bank, I went straight for Andronica with the aim of getting her to level 20, so that she could get a Mount, and then up to level 21, so that she could go off to the Ruins of Mathystra in Darkshore, to get herself a nice little Ghost Saber-tooth cat for her Pet. Well, we had many fun adventures today – one involving a giant-sized block of chocolate laxative, which I was supposed to feed to a stone giant, but he knew what I was up to and refused the nice piece of chocolate that I’d brought him… (probably just as well, too, come to think of it – I am a very small Goblin!) but on more than one occasion I was almost on the point of giving up on World of Warcraft, and Blizzard! A lot of their quests are so [censored] badly worded, and so [censored] lacking in even the most basic information on exactly what it is that you’re trying to do, that it’s only by Googling the quests, and seeing how other people had managed to muddle through and complete them that you even get to find out what it is that you’re supposed to be looking for! One of the last quests I did before I reached level 20 was one where I had to pick 8 (eight) bunches of a particular plant. You’re given two very big areas to search, but you’re not told what colour they are, or what they look like. You’re not told where they usually grow, like under tall trees, in a clearing in the middle of the ruins – you’re given no information at all, except that you’re to pick eight bunches of it! So I systematically started searching the two enormous areas where they were supposed to grow. Normally, if you wave your mouse over an area, if there’s anything at all that you can interact with, or pick up, your cursor will turn into a little gear cog-type thingy. I found nothing! No “glows”, no “sparkles”, no little gear thingy – absolutely nothing! I Googled the quest. From that I was able to tell that they were small orangy-yellow flowers that looked a teeny bit like four-leaf clovers – only a bit different. Guess what colours the vegetation in the two areas was! Orangy-yellow! I searched again, waving my mouse cursor all over the area. Nothing even remotely like these stupid flowers! After about half an hour (no, I’m not exaggerating!) of getting more and more angry and frustrated, I finally got a break! For just a split micro-second, my cursor turned into the little gear thingy! But of course I was moving it, wasn’t I, and the little gear thingy went back to being just a normal cursor… and do you think I could find it again, even though I knew the “general” area where I’d seen it. I decided to go a bit closer to the area and be really anal about running the cursor over Every. Square. Micro-Millimeter! Which I did. No positive sightings, Captain, Sir! (by now I’m swearing out loud!) Then, finally, I saw one. Saw it – not “found” it by any of the usual means – I saw it, by happenstance! Not being a total idiot, I marked the co-ordinates before I picked the wretched thing – quite often something that gets picked at a particular spot will re-spawn within a few minutes. Just as well I did that, too! Now I knew what I was looking for (the pictures I found on Google gave you no idea of scale, and most were zoomed in from full-screen fuzzy screenshots!) I searched the area again. Nothing, even though they’re supposed to grow everywhere! So I went back to my marked co-ordinates – yes! The [censored] weed had re-spawned, as I’d hoped that it would! I stood there, crossing my fingers that it’d repeat the re-spawning process – which it did, every two and a half minutes! I tell you what, it took me a long time to pick eight bloody bunches of the stuff! And that, gentle readers, was only one small example of some of the badly worded, badly explained, and hideously complicated quests that I managed to complete today! Still, I got to level 20, returned to Orgrimmar for my riding lesson, and I bought my little Goblin-mobile! It’s a rather cute little rocket-powered three-wheeler motorbike! However, I happen to have a couple of riding wolves in my Collections bag, so I ended up riding a black wolf. By this time, I’d reached level 21 – mainly from picking herbs, which you get xp from (“xp” = “experience”) so I set out for Darkshore, and the Ruins of Mathystra. It was a reasonably uneventful journey – I stopped off along the way to pick up all the Flight Points that I could, and finally (still picking herbs and flowers, and still gaining experience from it!) I reached Mathystra where I Abandoned my temporary Pet, and started looking for cat figurines! I found my Ghost Saber-tooth cat in about my seventh or eighth cat figurine, so I Tamed him (or her – I’m not too sure which!) and I’ve called her (I’m sure it must be a her! 😉 ) Schatenjäger – it should be Schattenjäger, but the name was too long and I had to delete one letter, so I could have had either Schattenjäge, or Schatenjäger – it’s German, and means “shadow hunter” – which is about what she is, so I thought it was quite fitting… Then I Hearthed back to Orgrimmar, Quit out of the game, went out to the kitchen to make myself a cup of coffee, and started writing! 🙂

Julian has just rung to say that he’s on his way home! Quick, everyone! Put all the booze away, and turn off the loud music, then off you all go! 😉

Food stuffz: last night we had the pan-fried pork, which was very tender and nice, with six chips this time, instead of five (Kate says I should be eating a lot more carbohydrate, or I’ll start yo-yo-ing!) half a tomato, and sugar-snap peas – which Julian had forgotten to “string”, so I ended up with a few mouthfuls of pea strings until I started de-stringing them before putting them in my mouth. I also had to have another one of Julian’s low-fat yoghurts last night (I’m sure you can all guess why! 😉 ) My sandwich for lunch today was made with that really nice multi-grain bread (of which the slices are terribly small!) It think it would be a lot much more nicer, if the slices were the same size as normal sandwich bread, instead of being more “kindergarten child sized”, if you know what I mean! Anyway, they were (a little bit of butter) ham, cheese and tomato, and it was really yummy! Tonight we have some fillet steak, which we’ll have with green beans, half a tomato, and chips (of which I’ll have six again, as per Kate’s instructions! 😉 ) I suppose I’ll also have to really force myself to have another one of Julian’s low-fat yoghurts, even though they are so very nice – especially the burnt fig and salted caramel ones! …And even so…

Weigh-in this morning. Well, very obviously those horrible little fluid-retaining pills haven’t kicked in yet! 😮 I went down another three points! From 62.6kg to 62.3kg! I feel as though I’m fading away! I think Kate might be right – in that I do need to eat more carbohydrates, or something! Anyway, I’m sure the pills will start working tomorrow, and I’ll be trying to eat less carbohydrate instead!

I think tomorrow will be a pretty quiet day – I know it’s Julian’s Birthday, but he’s got a lot of office-type work to catch up on, and that he wants to work uninterrupted – apart from my two favourite daughters ringing him to say “Happy Birthday” an’ all that – so I’ll leave him in peace, and get on with my WoW-ing! 🙂 Having managed to get Andronica up to level 22, I can probably safely leave her in Orgrimmar while I get on with other “projects” in Azeroth! Like moving that extra Guild Bank… Anyhoo, that’s about all from me for tonight – don’t forget to call in again tomorrow night to find out how all the office work is going, whether those wretched pills have started working or not, and what else we got up to during the day! 😉 Until then, however, please continue to bee as good as you can, remember that great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, and small minds discuss people – and don’t forget to always look after yourselves, to drive carefully, and to keep warm – or cool – depending on the weather… but most importantly, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

Well, Julian is driving my favourite eldest daughter home, and as I’ve done all my footslogging walking for today, I guess it’s time to let my fingers do the walking instead! 🙂 Before Lee arrived, though, I went through all the World of Warcraft “Realms” (servers) where I have characters, looking for a Realm – any Realm – that didn’t already have its full complement of Guilds, or Guild Banks (with or without two nice big Bank Vaults!) however, I only found two! “Borean Tundra”, which is lacking a Horde Guild, and “Bladefist”, which is lacking an Alliance Guild. On “Bladefist” though, I only have one character, total, so even though transferring my “extra” Guild there, and being able to change my current faction (Horde) to Alliance, for free (it usually costs real $$$ to change factions) there’d be nobody there to use it, which would be a waste of a perfectly good Guild and Guild Bank (not to mention the two Bank Vaults! 😉 ) Actually it’d probably be a good idea to delete that character and close up “Bladefist” – I doubt that there’s any point in me keeping her there – I’m not really into playing on a realm with no backup or support team behind me, and it would also free up another character slot for me to use elsewhere… hmm! Food for thought! 🙂 “Borean Tundra” – or “Boring Tundra”, as it’s affectionately called by the local yokels, might, I suppose, be suitable – but once again, I don’t have many characters there to make use of it. So, what to do with my “extra” Guild (and GBwTGBV!*)?! Well, I did have one idea… (Julian hates it when I get these sorts of “ideas” – as they usually involve $$$! 😉 ) Because we’ve been away from WoW for so long, a lot of changes have taken place during the interim. Before we left, Hunters – even the Beastmaster Hunters – used both melee and ranged weapons – if you were too close, you couldn’t shoot your foe, you had to use your melee weapon, and if you were far enough away you couldn’t use your melee weapon, you had to use a ranged one – which made sense in a way – but Blizzard, bless their little hearts and souls, changed all of that in our absence, and now Hunters are restricted to ranged weapons only (and as you can now shoot point-blank, it nicely solved the problem of what to do when you were fighting up close and personal!) so when we returned to WoW a week or so ago, I found that almost all of my girls were armed with melee weapons, and without a bow or a gun to their names, unless they had something waiting in their Personal Banks. What’s more, most of them were wearing cloth armor, instead of leather! How that came to be I have no idea, but they look ruddy stupid! So, the silly idea that I had was that a lot of the girls on Quel’Dorei could be moved off-realm somewhere, and could take the nice extra Guild (and GBwTGBV) with them, where they can be held as “extras”, if I ever had the need of them again. The part that involves the real $$$ is the transferring of the characters – it costs $27AUD to transfer a character to another Realm (shard transfers were free on Rift! 😦 ) and I have at least five or six characters to be moved! A very expensive enterprise! The only other thing I can do is strip off the extraneous characters – all of whom are about level 24 or so – strip them, sell off their worldly goods, send the proceeds to the new Guild Mistress, and then delete them! Transfer the Guild to another Realm, and re-create the deleted characters from scratch on the new Realm, and invite them into their new Guild. Messy, but cheap… Anyway, I’m still thinking about it… And in the meantime, this afternoon, what did my favourite eldest daughter and I watch on television? Another episode of the “Shannara Chronicles”, where the old Elf King gets killed, and a couple of episodes of “The 100” – an excellent show – I really hope we can get hold of some more episodes for next week! 🙂 and we both spent a very relaxing and enjoyable afternoon!

We’ve decided that Flipper can’t keep her rotten tooth – and as she’s in as good health as she’s ever likely to get now, it’s probably better to have it done while she’s at peak health, rather than later, when her health might have deteriorated – so next Tuesday is the day! Please send warm and positive thoughts her way – she’s not going to be a very happy little Vegemite!

Food stuffs: well, we had the sausages from the Natural Sausage Company – beef ones again – we haven’t bought any of the chicken ones yet, but I’d love to try them! (I like chicken sausages!) and again, they were very nice! Well worth trying, if you can’t think of anything to get for dinner! We had chips, green beans, and the obligatory half a tomato with them, and again I had one of Julian’s low-fat yoghurts, as my jellies hadn’t (still haven’t?) been made. Julian and I had another really yummy wrap for lunch today with the basil-pesto hummus, some of the quinoa tabouli salad, some sliced pieces of sandwich ham, tiny cubes of Halloumi cheese, red capsicum “batons”, and some diced cucumber – my favourite eldest daughter had her Optifast bar, because she’s a very good girl and is dropping weight rapidly! Tonight we’re having pork fillet again – cut up into medallions, or “collops”, and pan-fried – most delicious! With those we’ll be having sugar snap peas, chips, and tomatoes – and I’ll be having yet another of Julian’s low-fat yoghurt, because (my jellies, etc., etc., etc!) 😉

Weigh-in this morning. Well, you know I went back on those nasty little fluid loving and retaining pills yesterday, so I was really expecting the worst when I hopped on the scales this morning – so imagine my surprise when I… went down again! Four points! I went from 63.0kg… to 62.6kg! Prolly just as well too, because when those rotten little pills kick in, my weight will positively soar! (actually I’m a bit mystified! I’m eating really well-stuffed wraps for lunch, chips with my dinner (well alright, only five of them!) blitzing through sugar-free chewing gum and lollies… so why am I still losing weight?!) I’ve been getting my two 1.5 kilometer walkies in every day, so maybe that’s helping… and I’m beginning to wonder if I should start having six chips with my dinner, instead of just five? (besides, the more chips I eat, the more salt I get to eat! 😉 )

Tomorrow is going to be an extra early start for us, as Julian has to be over at Doncaster to let the cleaners in – leaving me to sit here and play WoW for the best part of the day – Oh dear! However will I manage to put up with it! 😉 I do have lots of other things to do too though, like folding the washing (which will take all of seven minutes out of my busy schedule!) start transcribing my Grandfather’s manuscripts (but which I shall no doubt procrastinate about and decide to do them “later”!) and make a small list of things that I want to get done – none of them are urgent, or even terribly important, in the Grand Scheme of things – they’re just little itty-bitty things that irk me a bit – things like me not being able to wear my rings, because they just fall off me… getting the clasp on my gold watch fixed before I lose it… putting up the crystal dingly-dangly thingies in the bathroom, and the black and white picture of “Bert’s Bath” – as I said – hardly important, considering all the other things that Julian’s been manfully trying to work his way through, while being constantly interrupted by trivial things like me begging for another cup of coffee (when I could easily – and should easily – get up and get it for myself, or for both of us!) So anyway, once again, that’s about it from me for tonight – do drop by again tomorrow night to find out if those rotten little pills have started working or not, what adventures befell Julian whilst packing up the books over at Doncaster, with the cleaners all milling around him, and whether or not I’ve come to any decisions as to what to do with my “extra” Guild (and, of course, its wonderful GBwTGBV!) …But until then, please bee good, remember that it is not only for what we do that we are held responsible, but also for what we do not do, and don’t forget to drive carefully, to keep warm – or cool – depending on what it’s like outside, and to always look after yourselves… but above all, please, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

* GBwTGBV – Guild Bank with Two Guild Bank Vaults

As they say in the classics – “better late than never” – and I’m afraid I just got a tiny bit caught up with things this afternoon, so this is well and truly an “AD&T*” edition! (I’d apologise and say I was sorry for being so late tonight, but that would be untrue, because I had a very enjoyable afternoon, having my hair done, and discussing plans for our aviary! 😉 😛 ) Anyway, I’m here now, with all the latest news from chez nous! Our cleaning lady came this morning, and unlike the last time she was here, today I sat stolidly at my desk and kept “working”, so  K. had to work around me, and my desk didn’t get dusted or cleaned. Next time she comes (depending on what I’m doing, of course) I’ll move into the lounge room while she’s working in this part of the house and let her shiny up my desk for me 🙂 I was working on getting all the characters on Quel’Dorei set up “in-sync”, and getting rid of extraneous characters that I’d probably never use again, and replacing them with new characters that I’ll probably hardly ever play with anyway! If truth be known it was really more to retain the two names, Calypsõ and Calliopé, on characters that  – who knows? I might end up playing! 🙂 I did do a bit of work on Andronica as well, but unfortunately I just wasn’t in the race to get her up to level 20… but she is almost level 17 now! Maybe Wednesday I’ll get a chance to take her to level 20 – or better yet, level 21, so that I can get her to The Ruins of Mathystra, and the Ghost Saber-tooth cats!

Julian is getting the cleaners in over at Doncaster on Wednesday – Settlement Day is this month – and they’re arriving “very early” – they’re arriving at “09.00-a.m.-very-early”, so it’ll be an excruciatingly very early breakfast for us – and a very l-o-n-g day for us both, too! Julian has to be there to let them in – at 9.00am – then he’ll spend some time packing up the last of our books while they’re there cleaning – and maybe tidying out some of our Storage Cage in the underground car park – while I man the fort here, playing WoW, no doubt, or slopping about reading – I dare say that he’ll come home for lunch – or make something for my lunch the night before, or at the very least, point me in the direction of the lunch making materials, and I’ll get my own (I think I still remember how to make a sandwich (ghod knows, I made enough of them when the kids were at school and he was going to work!) though it’s been a long, long, long time, since I’ve done anything quite so daringly… “independent”! 😉 )

I’m pretty sure that my favourite eldest daughter will be coming over tomorrow – we’ve been trying to find some more episodes of The Shannara Chronicles to download, but unfortunately there don’t seem to be many of them around, and quite frankly, if the only way we can get to see them means that we have to wade through the never-ending tons of ads on the SyFy Channel, then I’m afraid we’ll be missing out, at least until the series becomes available on DVD, anyway! But no doubt we’ll find something to watch tomorrow! 🙂 (And when is “Orphan Black” starting again, anyway!)

Food stuffz: last night we had a delicious omelet for dinner – I reckon we should have them more often – especially when they have Halloumi cheese in them and bits of yummy bacon! 😉 Today for lunch we had a wrap – once more with the basil pesto hummus, quinoa tabouli, some sliced ham, sliced tomato, and… yup! Some Halloumi cheese cubes! Very delicious – I don’t know why we can’t all just live on wraps like that – they’re very satisfying and very delicious! Tonight I had a sausage from the Natural Sausage Company, with green beans, the obligatory five chips, and ye olde half a tomato, plus another of Julian’s low-fat yoghurts – my favourite! Burnt Fig and Salted Caramel! (because my jellies haven’t been made yet, but I’m not complaining! 🙂 )

Weigh-in this morning. Wasn’t too bad – I went down another point today, taking me from 63.1kg to 63.0kg – but bad news! I started back on those wretched fluid loving and retaining pills this morning! I was to be taking them for the first ten days of every third month (one month “on”, two months “off”, remember?) I last took them in November, so I had December and January “off” them, and now that it’s February, I’m, back on them this month – then (hopefully) I’ll be off them again for March (my Birthday month!) and April… Well, we can only cross our fingers, toes, eyes, and ears, and hope for the best! And anyway, it gives me a damn good excuse if I do go up more than just a few points, doesn’t it! – because of course it won’t have been the food I’ve been eating, it’s much more likely to have been those horrible little tablets that I’ve had to start taking again, right?! 😉 So it’s probably just as well that I hit 63.0kg today, coz my weight’s gunna be going up and up and up, for the next few days! 😦

Oh, I nearly forgot to mention this! While I was “tidying up” on Quel’Dorei today, I found that one of my Horde girls was a Guild Mistress! But not the Guild that everyone one else was in, it was a second Guild, that I’d forgotten all about! Julian said that he vaguely remembered someone offering me a Guild – with a Guild Bank and two Guild Bank Vaults, no less! When he said that, I kind-of remembered too – I think the person who owned the Guild was getting out of World of Warcraft completely, and from memory “whispered” to me along the lines of “Hey lady, ya want a free Guild?” – well, I was already in our Guild, “Hunters Incorporated”, but when he mentioned that it also came with a Guild Bank, and two Guild Bank Vaults – well, I mean! How could I refuse such an offer? (so I guess that there’s a bit of the greedy Goblin in me, after all!) So I said “Yes please!”, resigned from our Guild, and joined his – he promoted me to Guild Mistress, and then “/gquit”, leaving his Guild, with me as the only person in it! Unfortunately the Guild has a rather stupid name – I think I’m going to have to change it – at the moment it’s called “Only Ninjas allowed” – I think that a much more betterer name would be something like “Supremely Confident!” – or maybe “Supremely Overconfident!” 🙂 I looked it up on the Blizzard (World of Warcraft) website today – it costs $10 to rename a Guild, which I think is reasonable. I wish there was a way of combining the two Guilds, but the only way you can “combine” them is to have everyone move from one Guild to the other – and then you’re left with the same problem, because each of them has the same set-up – a Guild Bank with two Guild Bank Vaults! – So! What do I do with the second Guild with two Guild Bank Vaults? Give it away, like the first guy did? No way! Those Guild Bank Vaults cost an arm, a leg, and a crowned head as well! So if any of you can come up with a reasonable (and polite!) solution, please feel free to drop me a comment or three, OK?! 😉 And with that, I fear that that’s about it from me for this evening! Do drop by again tomorrow night – find out if those ‘orrible little pills have adversely affected my weight, and if I’ve managed to change the name of this Guild that I’ve suddenly found myself Mistress of! I’ll be able to fill you in on what my favourite eldest daughter and I watched on television, and anything amusing or interesting that we got up to during the day! Until tomorrow night though, do try to be extra good, remember that most people pursue pleasure with such breathless haste, that they hurry past it – and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to drive carefully, and to keep cool – or warm – depending on your preferences – but most importantly, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

*AD&T – After Dinner & Television