Winter’s log, earthdate 201603.15

Ooo-er! it’s the Ides of March today – though I guess it’s a little late in the day to be saying “Beware the Ides of March!” to you all at this stage of the day, even if there are only a few hours of it left before midnight! 😉 If only Julius Caesar had listened – who knows what the world might be like today! I often wonder about historical events, and what would have happened if they had ended up differently – I mean, what if Richard III hadn’t been killed at Bosworth Field? What if Elizabeth I had married, and produced children? Though I guess that if Richard III hadn’t been killed at Bosworth, there never would have been an Elizabeth I, because the Tudor dynasty would never have eventuated, the Stuarts would never have sat on the English throne, and Cromwell probably would have been just another soldier in the Plantagenet army! Just think! All that glorious history lost, or changed, simply because Julius Caesar had stayed home on the Ides of March! 😉 Australia might not have been discovered yet, or we might all be speaking Spanish, or Portuguese! Ho-hum!

My favourite eldest daughter did come over today, but before she arrived I did a fair bit of WoW-ing. I managed to get my Mage’s Tower up to Level 3, I’ve decided that I don’t want a Menagerie, as it’s mainly and arena for Battle Pets, which I don’t use, or play with, or whatever you do with Battle Pets (Julian says it’s like PvP for cute little Pokemon critters, which quite frankly, I don’t have the time or inclination for!) However, I just had a thought! You can put up a Building in your Garrison, and if you decide that it’s not what you really wanted, you can change it, simply by dragging another Building icon over the top of it – which is what I did to my Level 2 Inn today. I originally built the Inn because once a week you get the opportunity to get yourself another Follower, and you can choose what abilities or “traits” you want them to have – but really, that’s about the only advantage you do get from the Inn… and a week is a long time to wait for a choice of new Followers, when you can “Hire” them in your Town Hall any time you like (for quite a lot of gold, or Garrison Resources, or both – I fergit which!) Besides, I already had 19 out of 20 Followers, and I “accidentally” managed to get myself another one today, just from cutting down trees! 🙂 Anyway, I changed the Inn for a Trading Post, which I’ve also brought up to Level 2. The Trading Post allows you to “Trade” Crafting Reagents for Garrison Resources (Crafting Reagents are what characters who “Process” rather than “Gather” use to make things with) Wynterthyme is a “Gatherer” – she Gathers herbs and skins – she doesn’t do any Processing (like Leatherworking, or Tailoring, or Blacksmithing or whatever) so she has all these herbs and skins, that once upon a time, used to sell like hot cakes on the Auction House. Unfortunately, as in Rift, the economy has been totally stuffed, and these days, you’re hard pressed to make even a meager living selling your Crafting Reagents there – a “stack” of 200 skins sells for a pittance, and some of the lower level Reagents fetch more from a lowly Vendor (who buys at the lowest possible price – usually a few coppers) than you can get on the Auction House. So there’s Wynterthyme, with skins and herbs coming out of her ears, and no way to make any money from them – and then – Along came a Spider Trader, who offered to buy her Crafting Reagents for Garrison Resources, which she does need! … so Wynterthyme’s over-supply problem is solved, and the Auction House becomes even more redundant! Oh, I did get back to Arisnoë last night – I spent the better part of an hour sitting there waiting for the Spirit Bear – unfortunately, she was not alone. There was one other contender for the Bear – a Pandarian Hunter – who was very obviously waiting for Arcturis – and another total nutter who seemed to have collected every single Spirit Beast available except for two – Arcturis, and a ghostly Spirit Porcupine – all of which he kept summoning and then dismissing, one after the other, whilst leaping insanely all over the place! He was either there to distract Arisnoë and the Pandarian, or to Tame Arcturis for himself – and I don’t know about the Pandarian, but he was really making me angry! If he distracted any of us, including the Bear, any chance of Taming  would be ruined! Anyway, I got there around 10.15pm and sat there, spamming my “/tar Arcturis” macro solidly with my left hand, whilst my cursor sat poised and ready over the Taming icon, until 11.15pm, which was a quarter of an hour later than when Wynterthyme had found and Tamed him, so I figured he was going to be a “no-show”, and quit for the night. If I get this finished in time tonight, I’ll try again, otherwise I’ll have to leave it until tomorrow night.

As I said earlier, my favourite eldest daughter was over today, and we had a good time watching two episodes of “The 100”, one episode of “The Shannara Chronicles” – which really should have been the last one, because that’s where the (book!) story ends – but apparently they’re going to tack something onto the end – I have no idea where they’ll go from here – we’ll just have to wait until we can get hold of the next one! And then we watched several episodes of Marvel’s “Agent Carter” – I love that show – it’s so far-fetched, and so typically ’50’s in speech and dress! We didn’t have any more episodes of “Supergirl” to watch – according to Lee, they’re “on hiatus”, or something – I hope we can get some more soon though… And of course, the next Season of “Orphan Black” starts next month, which will be really good, and I really hope that we’ll be able to get more episodes of “The Librarians” and “Person of Interest”, too – coz I know there’s more of the latter – we just haven’t been able to get them yet (I don’t know about my favourite eldest daughter, but I’ll probably have to re-watch the last few episodes to refresh my memory of what had been happening!) So it was a really good day, all round! 🙂

Food stuffz: last night we had the most beautiful piece of King Island steak – juicy and tender (drool!) with chips, half a tomato, and green beans. Alas, there was no fresh fruit, so all I had for dessert was a Vanilla Chia Pod, which once again, was weird, but very nice. Today for lunch I had a wholemeal sandwich, with basil-pesto hummus and turkey sandwich chunks, which was really nice – we usually have the tikka chicken sandwich chunks, but this time it was turkey – Julian said that he thought the turkey was a bit salty, but I didn’t think so (after all, I’m quite addicted to salt!) Tonight I had a small plate of pasta with tomato sauce, and a small sprinkling of parmesan cheese, and for dessert, I had the last of the really yummy Coles brand Rice Pudding, so I’m not expecting to lose any more weight tomorrow!

Weigh-in this morning. Was good, actually – I went down from 63.1kg to 62.7kg (just call me “Yo-yo”!) Tomorrow will probably be the reverse! You should see my weight graph! You know I said it looked like I was drawing a silhouette of Batman in his cape, with its little pointy ears? Well, I was wrong mistaken! I’m actually drawing a saw, with a couple of rather long, broken teeth, and a few worn down, short teeth! Up… down… Up… down – across – Up! Rinse and repeat, multiple times! But… I’m pretty pleased that although it’s so up and down, overall it appears to be quite steady! Now let’s see if I can maintain that for a whole year – or until I see Dr. Y. next! 🙂

And so to tomorrow – I’m not quite sure what’s happening – Josh is coming over and I’ll be having my hair done in the afternoon, and I have two boxes labeled “Bathroom” to sift through, mostly looking for my Inglot “breathable” nail polish, which I promised I’d “lend” to my favourite youngest daughter, and another couple of nail polishes that I might start wearing again – apart from that, I’ll probably keep on WoW-ing, as usual – I have young Moonsöng to level up, a Spirit Bear to find for Arisnoë, and Wynterthyme has Missions to organise for her Followers, and her new, fledgeling fleet of ships (OK, so she’s only got two ships so far, a Troop Carrier and a Destroyer, but at least it’s the start of a fledgeling fleet! 😉 ) And that’s about it from me again this evening! 🙂 Do call in again tomorrow night to see if my weight did go up after the heavy carb day I had today, with the wholemeal sandwich, the pasta, and the Rice Pudding! Find out if Arisnoë is back in her Garrison with a new and transparent bear, whose eyes and teeth can be seen through his big bear rump, and whether or not I found my nail polishes! Until then, however, please bee good, remember to never let a bad day make you feel like you have a bad life, and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to keep cool – or warm – depending on the weather, and to always drive carefully… but above all, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂