I’ve been putting off starting to write this afternoon because I wasn’t sure how well I was going to be able to type. I did a “Julian” this morning, and accidentally managed to cut the middle finger of my left hand, whilst cutting the store label off one of my new pairs of slacks. Well, I was wearing them at the time, and if the silly people doing the tagging of the garments had taken a bit more care, and not managed to get the little plastic “T” poked half way through the waistband, as well as their “Made By” label, I wouldn’t have been holding the scissors at an awkward angle, and I wouldn’t have cut myself quite so badly! But of course, I’m on Warfarin, aren’t I, and blood just went every which-where (it was quite a nasty deep cut, actually) and it damn-well hurt a lot, too, so I sat there dangling my injured finger under the cold water tap (so as not to get any blood in the grouting, something that Julian is very strict about!) in the bathroom and called out “Julian, can I have a band-aid please, NOW!” He brought the band-aids, and I took my finger out from the cold water and we tried to dry it so that we could use the band-aid – but the wretched thing wouldn’t stop bleeding! We eventually got the bleeding to at least slow down a little, and applied the band-aid, but by the time I got to the Den here, blood had soaked through the band-aid and was happily getting all over anything I touched  I had to do everything one-handed for a while, which let me assure you, wasn’t terribly easy! I used a tissue to apply pressure to the band-aided cut, and everything calmed down again (but I wasn’t a very Happy Little Vegemite!) The cut is just below the fingerprint pad of my left middle finger, and only just slightly above the top finger joint crease, so it’s an awkward and uncomfortable spot – typing is fairly uncomfortable, so this blog might be a bit shorter than most, depending on how many typos ol’ fumble-fingers Winter manages to make (or not, as the case may be!) So, apart from trying to cut my finger off with a pair of scissors, how has my day been… well, pretty much “same as, same as”. I alternated between Wynterthyme and Arisnoë today, still looking for Arcturis (the Spirit Bear) and Loque’nahak (the Spirit Cat) to no avail – you know, in all the years I’ve been playing World of Warcraft, I’ve never, ever had such difficulty locating and Taming a “Special” Pet, or a Spirit Beast! Never! Either Blizzard have wound back the spawn rates, or there are simply too many people lining up for their chance to get something “different”. When I got to Grizzly Hills this morning, there were already two people there who were obviously waiting for Arcturis. How did I know they were waiting for Arcturis? 🙂 Well, why else would two level 100 Beast Master Hunters be hanging around a level 76 area, at the exact co-ordinates where Arcturis spawns? That’s why Wynterthyme was there, too! 🙂  After a while of hanging about wasting time there in Grizzly Hills, I went off to the Sholazar Basin to look for Loque’nahak. Once again, I don’t know what Blizzard have done with the spawn times – once upon a time, Loque’nahak used to spawn about every twenty minutes – give or take a few seconds if your watch wasn’t set correctly – but now? S’truth, I waited there for thirty minutes yesterday and didn’t see hide nor hair of him, alive or dead! He’s also got an awful lot of spawn points, and the Sholazar Basin isn’t all that big an area, so if you fly around the perimeter mountains, spamming “/tar Loque’nahak” (“tar” is short for “target”) if he’s around, dead or not, his “portrait” will pop up on your screen – you really can’t miss him – or should I say “you really couldn’t miss him!” – once upon a time… obviously you can now! 😦 I’ll give them both another try tonight, but I really don’t like ma’ chances! Too many people are after them – all one can do is try to pick a server time when just about everyone in America is likely to be asleep, and try then. Anyway, Wynterthyme and Arisnoë both had things to be done for their Garrisons, and I did a bit of straight Draenor questing with Arisnoë, and boy, it really is tougher for Horde than is was for Wynterthyme and Mouselet! I did notice a couple of new things though! In Wynterthyme’s Garrison, I was unable to locate the Stable Master – because there wasn’t one! I hit the Forums looking for information, and there were a lot of threads complaining about this lack of a Garrison Stable Master. In the end I had to go to Dalaran to stable my Pet while I looked for these Spirit Beasts (only because I knew where the Stable Master was in Dalaran!) However, last night when I was doing my “rounds”, I noticed that there was a new path, just outside my Town Hall! “Hello,” says I “I wonder where this goes!” so of course I had to go and look, didn’t I! Well, it goes down to a new little town, which I’ll swear black and blue wasn’t there the day before yesterday, and guess what! There’s a Stable Master there! This little town, by the way, is also down near where we did our Fishing Quests to open up the Garrison Fishing Hut – and quite frankly, the map doesn’t make sense – the little Village wasn’t very far down the new path that I found, but it was miles away from the Garrison – that is, following the path from the Garrison to the Village, and from the Village back to the Garrison (and yes, there is only the one path!) it took a lot longer to get back to the Garrison than it took to get to the new Village! The other thing I found while I was questing with Arisnoë, is a large Horde City – very similar to the old, pre-Cataclysm Orgrimmar! Arisnoë got a quest to go to Ashran for something or other, and she arrived at this “city”! It has a multi-Teller’d Bank and Guild Bank facilities, an Auction House, Stable Master ( 😉 ) both Class Trainers and Profession Trainers, and there’s a Portal to Undercity, and another to Orgrimmar – I think if I’d spent a bit more time looking around I would have found a Portal to Silvermoon City, the Blood Elf Capital, too! I don’t recall finding anything like that for the Alliance side – though no doubt my favourite eldest daughter will write a Comment if I’m wrong! 😉

Food stuffz: last night we had a gorgeous piece of King Island steak for dinner, plus our usual half a tomato, chips, and steamed sugar-snap peas – it was one of the nicest pieces of steak, too! For dessert I had an apricot, and a low-fat strawberry yoghurt. It was the last of the apricots, and when Julian went to buy some more today he was told that the apricot season is over, and there won’t be any more good ones until next season! 😦 But they did have some figs there, and I think he got a few of those – I hope he did, anyway! Lunch today was a reprise of Tuesday’s sandwich – chicken tikka sandwich chunks with some basil-pesto hummus in whole-grain bread – very yummy, and a lot less messy to eat than Ryvita crispbreads with toppings! Tonight we’re having slow-cooked Corned Silverside, with mashed potatoes, half a tomato, and, with any luck, some home-grown green beans! I have no idea what I’m having for dessert – you’ll just have to wait until tomorrow night to find that out! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. Wasn’t as bad as it could have been, what with me having that BLT on sourdough, half a piece of flourless Orange and Almond meal cake, and half a chocolate-walnut Brownie (well, it was my Birthday!) I went up two points – from 63.3kg to 63.5kg, which I didn’t think was too bad, all things considered! Now I have until March 20th to get rid of a bit of it, because March 20th is when we’ll be having the Winter and Julian Big, Double, Birthday Bash – so I need to go down a bit, so that I can come up a bit! 😉 Back to the crumbly Ryvita crispbreads…. 🙂

Julian has just come in to show me a plate full of beautiful, lovely, and luscious home-grown green beans! Oh! They do look splendid! 🙂 I can’t wait to eat them with our dinner tonight! It’s so exciting, growing your own vegetables – there’s a baby capsicum growing there, too, and some baby leeks! Tomorrow our cleaning lady will be here instead of Monday, because Monday is a Public Holiday (Labour Day and Moomba, or something, I think?) She could come Monday, she said, but we’d have to pay her Penalty rates or whatever, so she said that Friday might suit us better? 🙂 Nice girl… So I’ll probably have another day of trying to find those pesky Spirit Beasts, and trying to get Arisnoë a better sort of Garrison – once I can find where to buy the Garrison Blueprints so that I can put up some more buildings, that is! And get her a few more Followers (she only has three at the moment!) And also at the moment, that’s about it from me for this evening! Do call in again tomorrow night to see if Arisnoë has a Spirit Beast yet, or whether my weight is slowly starting to drop down again – and there’s sure to be lots of other news and gossip, too, so make sure you don’t miss out on anything! Until then though, do try very hard to bee good, remember that life is like a coin – you can spend it any way you wish, but you can only spend it once… and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm – or cool – depending on the weather… but above all, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂