Oh well, here I am, still trying to create the “poifeckt” header for the blog – yanno, they really look fantastic in Photoshop, and I feel really pleased with my work – but some of these templates enlarge everything (to different degrees!) some of them “muddy” up my colours because the [censored] template has an automatic “header shading” effect written into it – so it’s a very rare template that is truly “WYSIWYG” (i.e. What You See Is What You Get) rarer than hen’s teeth, actually! So I does me best, and as I said – they look great in Photoshop, so I upload it, and the [censored] template stretches and enlarges it until it doesn’t look very much like the way I designed it. This is one of those “stretchy” templates, and what you see in the header is nearly three and a half times larger than my design. “So, make it smaller, then!” I hear you laughing. Don’t think I haven’t tried it, because I have! Unfortunately, it’s not quite that simple. If I make the font size any smaller than the one I’m using now, I can hardly read it – which also means that I have no way of knowing how the effects I use on said fonts are going to look! I’ve made the text and text effects on this one as small as I possibly can and still be able to read what I’ve written, but it’s still too big… 
Anyway, this morning I organised Wynterthyme’s Followers into their Mission Teams and sent them off to “do things” and bring me home some nice Garrison Resources, then I went back and picked up Arisnoë in Pandaria – I tell you, trying to find your way around Pandaria without being able to fly really sucks, big time! I don’t know if any of you have seen any of those beautiful old, Chinese scroll paintings, depicting tall “fingers” of mountains, their tops covered in bright green mossy-looking grass, and studded with quaint “bonsai” looking trees, lush plants and flowers, tiny streams that turn into majestic waterfalls, as they drop over the sides of these remarkably tall, skinny mountains – it’s extremely pretty – it looks as though it should be peaceful and idyllic, but you’ll find extremely lethal but handsome latte and dark chocolate tigers, vicious jade green tigers with glowing eyes, cute, harmless little critters that look like a cross between a beaver and a porcupine, small racoon-like squirrels – there are lots and lots of little animals running all around, and there you are, trying to get from Point A to Point B, with a big, fat gold arrow pointing in the direction you’re supposed to be going. I say “supposed” with good reason! You can’t go over the mountains – they’re un-climbable. There are roads through them, here and there, but once again, most of the time you’re obliged to go around the bases of the pretty mountains to find them, which sometimes takes you so far out of your way that you turn back, thinking you must have become lost! And most of the time, you have! (become lost!) The quests themselves are relatively easy, as long as you don’t have a gaggle of players all doing the same quests at the same time – re-spawn time is fairly slow, and hanging around twiddling your thumbs whilst awaiting your turn to kill the Boss Mob gets very boring, very quickly! Leveling up is fairly slow, too – so for goodness sake, don’t make the mistake I made this morning, and look at your experience bar! It’s really very discouraging, to see it creep along at less than a snail’s pace! It’s all pretty slow at the moment – at level 98, Wynterthyme and Mouselet are leveling at more than twice the speed that Arisnoë is, but she did manage to get to level 87 this afternoon! 🙂 Going back to Wynterthyme, whose Garrison had quite a nice level 2 Tannery, I found I was getting an awful lot of “Burnished Leather”, a crafting material used by Leatherworkers. I had nearly 400 of the ruddy things, but Wynterthyme isn’t a Leatherworker, and nor are any of my other girls! This Burnished Leather is “Soulbound”, meaning that you can’t sell it on the Auction House, so what was I going to do with it all? All I could do with it was Vendor it for a pittance – what a waste! If I hadn’t turned all the results of my Skinning into Work Orders at the Tannery, at least I could have sold the unprocessed skins on the Auction House, for around 1 gold each! Ouch! Anyway, after a bit of discussion with Julian, I decided to swap my level 2 Tannery for an Enchanter’s Study, which I used to have, but I got rid of it because I wasn’t able to DE (Dis-Enchant) things… then my favourite eldest daughter told me that I could DE things in the Enchanter’s Study, but only things that I’d either found, or been given, on Draenor! Whoops! And although I’m not an Enchanter (and I don’t think any of my other girls are either) I can most certainly sell the proceeds of my Dis-Enchanting on the Auction House! What’s more, if Mouselet gets anything he can’t use, he’ll give it to me for DE-ing, or if we come across a “drop” item (from something we killed) that’s “Bind on Pickup” (which makes it Soulbound) Mouselet will “Pass” on it, so that I’ll get it by default, and which I can then DE as soon as I get back to my Garrison! Well, making the switch back to the Enchanter’s Study was going to cost me valuable Garrison Resources, but I went and did it, anyway! Oh no! I clicked on the wrong “shop” to change! I clicked on my level 2 Storeroom, where my Banker, and the Guild Bank were situated! Arrrggghhh! *sigh* so, sacrificing yet more Garrison Resources, this time I clicked on the correct “shop”, and turned the Tannery into another Storeroom! It’s ironic, really! The Enchanter’s Study was opposite the Storeroom, and I didn’t have a Tannery. Now the Storeroom has become The Enchanter’s Study, and what used to be The Tannery has become the Storeroom… The Storeroom and the Enchanter’s Study are once again opposite eachother (only on different sides this time) and I no longer have a Tannery! This ably demonstrates the fact that – if there’s a long and convoluted way of getting something done, I’ll find it! 😉
Food stuffz: last night we had the rest of the Julian-burgers, with half a tomato, ordinary old chips, and green beans – and I’m already looking forward to having more of those Julian-burgers 🙂 For dessert I had a small fig, an equally small apricot, and some “mixed berries” low-fat yoghurt. For lunch today I had a whole-meal sandwich, with a bit ‘o betta butter, and some sandwich “tandoori chicken” chunks (Julian and I both reckoned that the last time that chicken saw the inside of a tandoor oven was probably several incarnations ago…) Tonight we’re having sausages for dinner (I’m not sure what sort though!), with all the usual – chips, half a tomato, and green beans or sugar-snap peas. We don’t have any more figs at the moment, so for dessert, I’ll have an apricot, and some of the extremely nice “Coles brand” (very) low-calorie Rice Pudding. After quite a bit of discussion, Julian and I have come to the conclusion that I really don’t need to do my lunchtime treadmillathon – as my favourite eldest daughter said yesterday, I only need to do half an hour, three times a week, to remain fit and healthy. As my 1.5kg walk before breakfast only takes 26 minutes, I’ll lengthen that to a full half hour, and skip the lunchtime walk. The early morning walk is very important though, as it helps kick-start my metabolism for the rest of the day – there’s no way I’m going to wriggle out of that one (unless I’m desperately ill, of course!) besides, I don’t want to wriggle out of it! 🙂
Weigh-in this morning. See-saw, Margery Daw! Back up again today – from 62.8kg back to 63.1kg – or, as I like to put it, “putting the point on Batman’s ear”, because on my graph chart, it looks like I’m drawing the silhouette of batman’s cape, with the two little pointy ears on top 🙂 So… let’s see what I’ll be drawing on my graph tomorrow morning! Maybe an antenna, if my weight goes up again, or maybe the edge of Batman’s cape, if it goes down! I’ve started setting up a spreadsheet on which to record this weighty business – but really, I don’t know very much about Excel, and how to set up spreadsheets – I’m pretty sure I could get the program to do it all automatically for me, if I knew how to work out the formulas – but I don’t, so I’m having to do it all very laboriously, but hand! It’s taken me since August 2014 until now, so that’s how many dates I have to put in, one by bloody one, and it has to range between 134.7kg an 61.5kg (or thereabouts) with every point in between listed, so that’s going to take a long time, too! Oh well, it’ll get done when it gets done, I suppose!
Tomorrow I have my next Warfarin blood test, but apart from that, I don’t think much else is happening – at the moment, the air conditioner is working again – goodness knows what’s wrong with it – we have a technician coming out to look at it – hopefully tomorrow afternoon, but at least it’s working for the moment! 🙂 Well, dinner is almost ready, and it’s really about it from me again for tonight anyway! 🙂 Don’t forget to look in again tomorrow night to find out if the air conditioner really is fixed, or if it needs some terribly obscure part that has to come from a remote little village in Siberia where they don’t even have email, before it can get fixed properly, if I still have any blood left after the Vampyre Nurse attacks me in the crook of my arm with a blunt and rusty syringe, and whether Batman will have to have an antenna or a cape hanging off the pointy ear of his cape 🙂 But until then, do behave yourselves, and bee good! Remember that every exit is an entry somewhere else, and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep cool – or warm – depending on Melbourne’s weird weather – but most importantly, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂
My Word! 