Winter’s log, earthdate 201603.16

Well, here it is, another late start – but it’s been a good day all round – another day of WoW-ing, the washing is all folded and (mostly!) put away, my hair’s looking great, and I have some new ideas for the backyard! While I was outside chatting to Josh as he was leaving, we were watching my two little fishies in their mud-puddle. Our gardening man had been over this afternoon and had done a wonderful job of mowing, trimming the hedge, weeding, and generally straightening the place up, but he’d used a leaf-blower, amongst other plant taming implements, and the leaf-blower had managed to send a load of leaves, twigs, grit, and very fine dust into the already putridly green “pea-soup” liquid that my poor little fishies have to swim around in (it’s a wonder that so far, no-one has reported us to the R.S.P.C.A. for cruelty towards fishes!) It was bad enough before, but I was quite horrified this afternoon! Tomorrow, I want to go to either Bunny’s, or a Pet Shop, to get one of those fine mesh fishpond net-thingies, so that I can at least try to fish the worst of the debris out – and I also want to see if any of the aquarium places have some sort of “pond doctor”, who’d be able to come out and clean our mud puddle, remove the algae, and generally make it a nice place for fish to swim around in. Once we can get the water feature mud puddle under control, I want to plant a tree in our back garden – probably a fig tree, and definitely not the sort that needs a second fig tree to fertilise it into producing ripe, luscious figs! Once those two objectives are realised (the mud puddle cleaned up, and the fig tree planted) I want to put in a slightly larger, proper rock pool, close to our new fig tree – with a water filter, and a few shade producing water lilies that small fish can hide under, as well as the whole pool being able to get a bit of shade from the fig tree during the summer months. It’ll require a bit of plumbing for the water filter, I suppose – and electricity to run it, and the small fountain that I’d put in to help aerate the water, as well as provide a gentle, soothing, “burbling” sound when it’s running… If I can find anything suitable to wear on my feet, and we had a small table and a couple of garden chairs out there, I could go and sit in the shade of the fig tree, and offer advice, as Julian worked on the veggie garden! How idyllic! 😉 (I wonder if we’d need a third bug zapper out there…)

As I said earlier, I WoW’d for most of the morning – and no, Arisnoë still doesn’t have her Spirit Bear! 😦 When I went and looked in on her this morning, for once she was all alone next to the spawn point, so I sat there spamming my “/tar Arcturis” macro, and wondered where all the other Hunters were – normally at that time – around 10.15am – it’s a real jumpin’ place! Half an hour later, I was still there on my own! Where was everyone! I began to get suspicious! Suspicious that some time before I arrived on the scene, someone had either Tamed Arcturis, or killed him, and all the other Hunters, having seen this happen before their very eyes, had all gone off to do “other things”, knowing full well that Arcturis wasn’t going to spawn again for another 12 to 16 hours – so no point hanging around, eh?! I gave it another quarter of an hour – still no Arcturis, and still no other Hunters – so I left Arisnoë there, and went off to play another character – a level 76 Draenei called Shekinàh – that I haven’t played for yonks! I thought that in between Wynterthyme and her Garrison, and Arisnoë and her wretched Bear, I might trot Shekinàh out again – maybe even auto-level her to level 90, so that I can get started on her Garrison, now that I have a better idea of what I’m doing! I’ll see if I can do that after I finish this, depending on what time I finish (otherwise I’ll have to wait until tomorrow… and I hate waiting!) Anyway, Julian and I are quite mystified about something that occurred today… We were setting off to do a quest that would (supposedly) give us “great powers!” – I said to Julian at the time “Great powers! Yanno, I bet it’s something that Hunters can’t use!” – however, all we had to do was collect three items from a rather noxious area of Draenor – so we set off… but when we got there, all we found was the swirly-whirly entrance to a Dungeon (or Instance) which we definitely didn’t want to do! With very bad grace, we kept the quest, but turned “Tracking” off, so that we wouldn’t see it in our quest logs, and went back to our Garrisons. We played on as a Group, but independently of eachother, and – this is the part that has us a bit mystified – Julian bought the plans and updated his Trading Post to Level 3. “Good-o!” thought I, “I can do that too!” So… I went to buy the plans for the Building – only to find it locked! The padlock on the plans said that I had to be “Exalted” with one of the Draenor Factions! Julian had no problem buying the plans, but he has exactly the same “Exalted” status as I do! Julian did a bit of research into this small puzzlement, and apparently a lot of people are peeved, upset, and annoyed – there’s some sort of “bug” with this Building Upgrade – some people can just buy the plans, like Julian did, regardless of their Faction status. Some people, like me, can’t – though presumably once I get to “Exalted” with one of the Factions, hopefully I will be able to get it. And then again, some people who have reached “Exalted” status with a Draenor Faction can’t buy it, because their “Exalted” status isn’t recognised by the plans (or the plan Vendor, or something!) Personally, I think Blizzard should just drop the “Exalted” requirement, because too many people have already been able to buy it without this requirement, so to “fix” the bug would only alienate those who have to wait a l-o-n-g time to build up their Reputation to “Exalted”, when all their friends managed to get it without it! Leveling the Trading Post up to Level 3, by the way, increases your Reputation points by 20% – which would make getting to “Exalted” a lot quicker – but then, what’s the point, if you already have the upgrade? Egg-Chicken-Egg!? (Yes, I know the 20% will make Reputation farming a lot quicker and easier for all the multi-myriads of other Factions where you might want to gain Reputation points! I’m just saying that in this particular case it’s rather pointless!) So, Julian has a Level 3 Trading Post, and I don’t – and I won’t have, for quite a long, long time! *sob*

Food stuffz: last night for dinner we had pasta with tomato sauce and a little bit of parmesan cheese – I love my pasta, and even if I do only get to eat a small plateful about once a month, it’s still a great treat that I look forward to! 🙂 For dessert I had the last of the absolutely delicious Coles brand, very low-calorie Rice Pudding – Julian went and did some shopping this afternoon, but the Coles up at Vermont South Shopping Centre doesn’t have it – we have to go to a bigger Coles for that, so… no more Lovely Rice Pudding for Dinner Again tonight, Mary Jane! 🙂 Today for lunch I had a wrap – with pastrami, Swiss cheese, tomato, basil-pesto hummus, and baby corn – as usual, terribly messy to eat, but totally delicious! For dinner we had chicken sausages, chips, half a home-grown tomato, and green beans, with only a low-fat burnt fig and salted caramel yoghurt for dessert, because the fig that was hanging over our back fence and which Julian picked yesterday, still wasn’t quite ripe enough to eat. It should be by tomorrow though! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. I continue to amaze myself! Would you believe I went down again?! I went from 62.7kg down to 62.1kg! Six points! And I ate all those carbs yesterday! However, last night my stomach started gurgling, which apparently means that fluid is on the move, and it was steadily gurgling all this morning too , though it’d stopped by lunchtime, than heavens! So… who know what lies in store for tomorrow’s weigh-in! I guess we’ll just have to weight and see… 🙂

And so to tomorrow! I’m not really sure what’s happening – more of the same, probably, though I am determined to try and get a fine net with which to scoop the worst of the debris that got blown into the fish mud puddle today – poor fishies! I don’t know how they manage to live in that water! It must be like living in a house with a dozen heavy smokers! Anyway, if I want to get this online before it turns into a pumpkin at midnight, I’d better say that that’s about it from me for tonight! 🙂 Feel free to drop in again tomorrow night though, to find out if my stomach gurgles meant anything at all, or absolutely nothing, and that my weight’s gone back up again! And see if Arisnoë has her Bear, or if I leveled Shekinàh up to level 90, as well as all the other adventures and misadventures that were my lot during the day! However, until tomorrow night, please do try to bee good, don’t forget that information is not knowledge, and always remember to drive carefully, to look after yourselves, and to keep cool – or warm – depending on your mood… but most of all, please remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂