Boy, am I exhausted! I’ve been working on Shekinàh pretty much all day – I gave her the boost up to level 90, as you know – and she’s now level 92 and a half (slightly more that half way to level 93, actually!) It’s a damn hard slog, doing it all solo, but thanks to Blizzard’s nerfing, it’s not been excessively hard (so far, anyway – this, of course, is liable to change without notice!) in fact I’ve found that the hardest part of going solo for questing is trying to work out (a) exactly what I’m supposed to be doing, and how – I’m quite sure that some of the quest “instructions” are a literal translation from the original Sanskrit! and (b) how to get to where I have to go! Today, for instance, I spend nearly all of my time running around annoyingly mountainous rocky molehills, trying to find a way up – and of course, you run (or gallop) around some rocks at the foot of this mountainous obstacle only to come face-to-face with a small (medium – large – take your pick, they’re all there, all around the mountain!) mob of vicious, snarling, bent solely on your demise, wolves, or demons, or orcs, or ogres – which you can either try to outrun (which doesn’t always work) or fight off (which doesn’t always work either, and it also takes a lot of time, especially when you’re maniacally running around a stupid mountain, trying to find a way up! Oh, I’m sorry, did I sound somewhat disgruntled just then? Well, I was!) Gahh! I need to be able to fly! Anyway I think I did fairly well, all told! Poor old Arisnoë has been temporarily put into suspended animation in Grizzly Hills, as I simply don’t have the time to sit around for a couple of hours, mindlessly spamming my “N” key, while waiting for a Spirit Bear to materialise – but don’t worry, I will get back to her – she’s one of my best characters! 🙂 Every now and then during the day, I went back to Wynterthyme, to check on her Followers Missions, and her fledgeling Fleet – (*very proudly*) she now has six ships! Three Transports, and three Destroyers! (*preen*) I’ve set up Shekinàh’s Garrison slightly differently from Wynterthyme’s – now that she’s turned level 92 and the Town Hall has reached Level 2 status, she’s had access to more building sites. One of the first things I did was get rid of the Barracks – all it was good for was military things and producing Body Guards, which I didn’t want. It’s now the Mage’s Tower, Level 1, and instead of the Lumber Mill, I’ve put in a Trading Post (Level 1), and I’ve put in an Enchanter’s Studio, so that I can DE things, and a Salvage Yard, because you can get some way cool Follower as well as Personal Gear out of the Salvage Bins that you get in your Mission Rewards. I also put in a Storage Shed, which will be the first Building I’ll be trying to get to Level 2, so that I can have unfettered access to my Guild Bank, and I’ve completed the quest to open up my Mine, so that’s operational now, too. I dithered a bit between putting in a Lumber Mill or a Trading Post, but the Trading Post won out – the Lumber Mill is an excellent source of Garrison Resources, but it’s also very time hungry – you have to be constantly going out to harvest timber for it to produce the Garrison Resources, and I figure that can wait until I get my next Garrison upgrade, when I hit level 98 (or is it 96? I fergit!) whereas with the Trading Post, I only have to have excess Crafting Reagents, and heaven knows, the Guild Bank is already bursting at the seams with those! So at the moment, everything seems tickety-boo with the Garrison itself – I’ve also been picking up a lot of Followers, where I’ve made another change from Wynterthyme’s group! When I was given a choice of three Draenei Followers – a female Rogue, a male Warrior, or a female Priest, I chose the female Priest, where Wynterthyme chose the male Warrior… actually I was very dubious about making that switch – the male Warrior has been an excellent Follower, but there’s no way I can go back and do things differently now! I probably would have played a bit longer this afternoon, but the Podiatrist was coming, so I logged off and went and read a magazine until she arrived…

Food stuffz: last night we had frenched lamb cutlets, steamed rice with finely chopped spring onion, green beans, and our usual half a tomato – all delicious! I love frenched lamb cutlets, all the fat has been trimmed off, they have a nice little built-in bone handle so that you can pick them up and gnaw on them, and they don’t have too much meat on them! For dessert I had my yummy over-the-fence fig, and a delicious Jalna yoghurt with black cherries. For lunch today I had a scrumptious wrap, with basil-pesto hummus, sweet chili chicken sandwich chunks, tomato, red chili batons, and a different sort of Halloumi cheese, and for dinner tonight, Julian accepted my “Food Challenge” and made this Chicken Provencale (I found this recipe for him last night!) and we had it with a reprise of last night’s rice with the spring onion, and steamed broccoli florettes. It was really, really nice – it’s a “keeper” recipe, that’s fer sure! 🙂 The chicken breasts he used were a little on the large side, and I hate to think what the scales are going to say to me tomorrow (I think I’ll wear a blindfold when I get on them in the morning! I don’t think I want to know!) but it made a lot, and there’s enough left over for Julian to freeze so we can have it again next week – but it was lovely! For dessert I had a very nice store-bought fig, and… (do I dare say it?!) even more rice, in the form of that wonderful Coles brand very low-calorie Rice Pudding! Oh dear – the amount of rice I’ve eaten in the past two days would probably sink one of Shekinàh’s Destroyers! Oh well, he only puts the food in front of me – I’m the one who eats it, so I’m the one who has to live with the consequences – the trouble is, he’s such a good cook! It would be a lot easier if he was a terrible cook, then I probably wouldn’t want to eat so much (of it)!

Weigh-in this morning. Slowing down a bit now – I went from 62.2kg to 62.2kg – that is, I stayed the same! It’s probably my body slowing down and psyching itself up – getting ready for the gigantic leap skywards that it’s going to be making tomorrow morning! As I said – I think I might wear a blindfold tomorrow morning when I get on the scales – I don’t want to know! The we’re going out for lunch on Sunday, and next week is the “Great Chocolate Eating Weekend”, with Hot Cross Buns, too! I’m scared…. 😦

And so to tomorrow – I’m not sure what’s happening – Julian did the shopping today, so I don’t think he’ll have to go out again until Sunday – and quite frankly, unless the weather’s calmed down a bit, I don’t think I want to go out in it! The rain, very early this morning, actually woke me up, it was so heavy and loud! No doubt I’ll be working on Shekinàh again – it would be nice to get her up to level 98 (or 96) but I doubt it’ll be tomorrow! Still, it’s fun doing things a bit differently. We won’t be able to do our normal “Dusting Down Draenor” on Sunday, because we’re going out for lunch, but maybe we could do that tomorrow instead – I dunno – depends on what himself has planned! Anyway, that’s really about it from me for tonight – do call in again tomorrow, and find out what Shekinàh and Wynterthyme are up to, and how much my weight did go up! If I do wear a blindfold when I get on the scales tomorrow, I’ll have to get Julian to type in what my weight was, because I don’t want to have to see it! And if he tries to tell me, I’ll put my fingers in both ears and go “Lalalalala!” really loudly, so I won’t have to hear it either! No, I won’t do either of those things – but I know I’m not going to like it! So until tomorrow night, please try to bee good, remember that ability is what you’re capable of doing, motivation determines what you do, and attitude determines how well you do it… and don’t forget to keep warm and dry – or cool and dry – depending on what the weather’s like tomorrow, to always drive carefully, and to look after yourselves… but above all, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂