And now, just to confuse you all, here I am, starting early! Oh, it’s been a very intense day today – getting Shekinàh “instant leveled” to 90. Now, that was an experience that I don’t want to have to repeat! Well, I can’t, anyway, because the single level 90 boost is granted to one character only, when you buy the Warlords of Draenor expansion. So, never having done it before, I wasn’t fully prepared to find myself suddenly dumped, minus my Pet and most of my Abilities, at the Dark Portal – not the sort of place you want to go to totally unprepared! Even my Hearthstone had been re-set to the Dark Portal! Good grief, you know I don’t think there’s even a decent Inn there! My plan had been – sweet, innocent liddle-ol’-me – to use the level 90 boost to get Shekinàh from level 76 to level 90 in the one foul swoop, then to neaten myself up, straighten my tie, put my Pet in the Stables, and go off looking for a more “Draenor suitable” Pet – if there even is such a beastie! I decided not to trespass on Arisnoë’s turf by looking for Arcturis, because that wouldn’t be fair to Arisnoë, after I’d left her outside in Grizzly Hills for so many nights. So, I wanted to have a quick snoop around in Petopia, looking for something else to Tame – possibly a Turtle or some other type of Bear – and I did find a few – but this turning up at the Dark Portal, totally unannounced, and with most of my shot rotation “missing in action”, and three-quarters of my Abilities all greyed out, was a teeny bit of a problem! I could go along as I was, more-or-less fighting with the equivalent of one and a half hands tied behind my back, tightly blindfolded, and without my Pet, and (I was told) I’d get all my missing Abilities back once I established my Garrison – or I could turn myself into a pretzel, trying to get my missing bits and pieces back again. I chose the latter. One thing that Blizzard did – in their wonderfully expansive generosity – was to give me a new weapon and a new set of armor, which was much more suited to a level 90 character than my old level 76 armor had been! And it was all good gear too! I checked on what was available for a level 90 character in the Auction House, and there was absolutely nothing there that even came close to being as good as my new gear! Thank heavens for small mercies, eh?! 😉 And thank heavens too, for favourite eldest daughters who’ve been playing WoW for a lot longer than Julian and I have! Lee knows World of Warcraft inside out, back to front, and upside down – and she was able to give us some pointers as to how to get all my Abilities back – unfortunately it took a lot of time! I’d found a cool looking Turtle in Mt. Hyjal, called “Terrorpene” – he was a Rare Silver Elite “flaming turtle” – and as Turtles make good Tenacity Pets, and have the ability to shield themselves with their shell, he would have been the perfect choice! I went to Mt. Hyjal – at this stage, I hadn’t realised that nearly all of my Abilities were “greyed out” – I thought I’d just be able to retrieve them from my Spell Book, you see. I’d also looked for other information on this turtle – and learned that he spawns about every six to twelve hours, and that being a Rare Silver Elite, a lot of people like to kill him, because they think that he’ll drop some good loot – he doesn’t. He drops a single Crystalline Tear of Loyalty, worth about 29 gold, if that! So there I was, flapping around in Mt. Hyjal looking for this turtle – and I did! I had his Portrait up on my screen! But I couldn’t locate him on the ground… then his Portrait vanished, and I couldn’t find him again 😦 Either someone had killed him, and skinned him, because I couldn’t even find his dead body – or they’d Tamed him 😦 Either way, it’d be another six to twelve hours until he respawned again, so I left – bitterly disappointed, and went to look in Petopia again… Boars make good Pets! 🙂 They’re pretty rugged and very aggressive – and there was (yet another!) Rare Silver Elite in the Eastern Plaguelands, called “Varah” – I’d try for him (or her) instead! Time was passing – I’d been doing this all morning, and I just wanted to get this ruddy Pet and go and do all the prerequisites for getting my wretched Garrison, and I still wasn’t aware of the fact that I wasn’t going to be able to just re-acquire my Abilities from my Spell Book. I’d been in the Eastern Kingdoms, and to get to Mt. Hyjal I’d had to catch the boat to Kalimdor – now I had to go back to the Eastern Kingdoms to get to the Eastern Plaguelands – I’d been Hearthed in Stormwind, and I would have been able to fly from straight there from Stormwind – but now I was Hearthed at the Dark Portal, so I took the ruddy ship all the way back to Stormwind, and flew to the Eastern Plaguelands (now can you see why it took me such a long time to do all this? and this was just the beginning!) I eventually got to where I needed to be to get “Varah”, and started looking for him (or her) and that was when I realised that it wouldn’t do me any good even if I did find this Boar, as I wasn’t able to get my Taming spell out of my Spell Book – it was greyed out! Locked! For once in my life I was speechless! And that was when we started the long and involved quest to get my Abilities back! In the end, the answer was to go to Ironforge – a l-o-n-g way away from the Eastern Plaguelands, but it was the nearest capital city with a Hunter Trainer. So, off I trekked again – this time to Ironforge – found the Hunter Trainer, and re-set all my Abilities! Hey presto, I got all my Abilities back – scrunched in any-old-where they’d fit on my Action Bars, so then I had to go and waste more time, getting everything all set up again! (this was starting to get really annoying! Thanks Blizzard, for needlessly obliterating a character’s Abilities!) Finally I had everything ready, and off I flew again, to the Eastern Plaguelands. Well, I never did manage to find “Varah”, but I figured that it didn’t much matter – all Specials, Silver Elite or not, lose any special abilities they might have had when they get Tamed, so I Tamed a “Varah” look-alike Boar, called “Eggsand” – because he’s basically “Bacon”, isn’t he! 😉 I was then able to Hearth to the Dark Portal, complete all the Garrison prerequisites, and Shekinàh is now the proud Commander of her very own Garrison! But it took me from about nine thirty this morning, plus several less strands of hair, some – shall we say – rather colourful language, and a couple of foaming-at-the-mouth temper tantrums, until just after four o’clock this afternoon. If I hadn’t had to contend with Blizzard’s totally needless meddling, the whole thing from go to whoa, would have taken about two hours, and I probably would have been able to Tame “Terrorpene”, the flaming turtle! Not impressed, Blizzard! 
Food stuffz: last night we had chicken sausages for dinner, with green beans, chips, and half a home-grown tomato (not one of the Heirlooms this time, but it was absolutely delicious! juicy, firm, nice thin-ish skin that was easy to cut and bite through – a perfect specimen!) For dessert I had a low-fat burnt fig and salted caramel yoghurt, which in my opinion, is probably the nicest of all the low-fat yoghurts! Julian cooked all of the chicken sausages, so there were a couple left over for lunch today… which I had sliced up in a wholemeal sandwich with some of the basil-pesto hummus and a bit of salt and pepper! We should have chicken sausages more often… Tonight we’re having Frenched Lamb Cutlets, probably with all the usual suspects – chips, green beans, and half a tomato. The over-the-fence fig that Julian picked the other day should be ripe enough to eat tonight, so I’ll have that, along with some sort of low-fat yoghurt. Tomorrow night, Julian wants me to give him a “cooking challenge”, so I’ll have to start looking at recipes tonight 🙂
Weigh-in this morning. This morning I went up… one, whole point, from 62.1kg to 62.2kg – I do hope this isn’t going to be a “growing trend”! Well, I’m not eating anything that I shouldn’t, and I’m very diligently doing my 32 minute, 2 kilometer walk, at 3.8 kilometers an hour every morning before breakfast, so hopefully I’ll either stay the same tomorrow, or go down. Mind you, if I go up one more point tomorrow, I won’t gnash my teeth and weep and wail… but I will if I go up too much, like about 7 points, or something! 😉
And so to tomorrow! More of the same, probably, though I do want to go and do a bit of shopping – I want to get some fruit! I’m missing my apricots, and figs are almost out of season – especially in the fruit shops. What I want are Corella Pears – which according to that link, have just come into season, so I think a visit to The Colonial Fruit Company is in order, as they seem to have the best and freshest produce! I know there’s one at Forest Hill Chase, and another at Doncaster Shoppingtown, but I’m not really sure if there’s one at The Glen, or Knox City – however I need to go and look for myself, because if Julian rings me and says “They haven’t got Corella Pears – what else would you like instead?” I just go blank – I need to see the fruit before I know what I want! Oh, and we didn’t get to Bunny’s or a Pet Shop today to get one of those fish net-thingies, but we have got a very fine mesh plastic tea strainer – one of its little arm rests (that sits on one side of the cup to balance the tea strainer) is broken, so I’ll try that out as soon as I finish this – hopefully I’ll have some positive news about the mud-puddle tomorrow night! 🙂 And finally – that’s about it from me for tonight! 🙂 Don’t forget to drop in again tomorrow night – find out how Shekinàh is getting on in her new Garrison, whether Arisnoë has her Spirit Bear, and what Wynterthyme’s been up to! See if my weight has been behaving itself or not, and whether the tea strainer was able to scoop any gunk out of the mud puddle (actually, it’s not green mud, it’s green algae!) But until then, please do try to bee good, remember that confidence is the companion of success, and don’t forget to keep cool – or warm – depending on the weather, to look after yourselves, and to always drive carefully… but most importantly, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂
My Word! 