Well, I’m late again tonight because we swapped days… that is, because we’re going to be out for a lot of tomorrow (Sunday) Julian and I decided to call today “Sunday”, and have our usual Sunday romp in Draenor. We did quite a lot of questing, and I thought we did rather well – neither of us died, and we got through a lot of our “backlog” of unfinished quests. Julian, of course, already has his “Level 3” Trading Post – unfortunately, I wasn’t as lucky as he was, and I can’t “buy” my upgrade until I can get “Exalted” with one of the Draenor Factions, so I’m having to farm my Reputation with the “Council of Exarchs”. As I’ve already reached “Revered” status with them, and only “Friendly”, or “Neutral” with all the other Factions, it shouldn’t take me as long to go up that last level – or at least, that’s the theory! You can make the Reputation bar for your chosen Faction visible (the Reputation bar works the same way as your experience bar) so that you can see how well you’re progressing to your next level with them – and judging from my Reputation bar today, it should only take me, oh… about three and a half years to reach “Exalted”? In other words, most of the quests that we finished off today were done specifically to gain Reputation with the Council of Exarchs – and my Reputation bar hardly moved more than a bubble and a half! Very disappointing! I did drop in on Arisnoë this afternoon – just to say “Hi!” and to let her know that she hadn’t been totally forgotten, in my mad scramble to get Wynterthyme’s Reputation with the CoE to Exalted, and to get Shekinàh up to her next Garrison upgrade, at around level 98 (or maybe 96 – as I said – I fergit which it is, now!) Strangely enough, Shekinàh has found herself in the same predicament that Wynterthyme was – she hasn’t got enough ruddy Garrison Resources to be able to send Followers out on Missions to earn Garrison Resources! Still, as she does more quests and gets more Followers, it’ll get easier – or at least, it has for Wynterthyme – though she’s now having problems with her Fleet! This time she doesn’t have enough barrels of oil to be able to send the ships out on naval Missions! And I do every quest, and take every Follower Mission, that will net me oil! I dunno… I did a quest today that should by rights allow me to build Battleships – but I’m going to have to disable one of my existing ships to do so, because my Fleet already has the maximum number of ships available, until my next Shipyard upgrade (in about three and a half years? 😉 ) Wynterthyme earned herself another Follower today – one level higher than my lowest level Follower, but when I tried to send her out on a Mission, I was politely told that I’d have to “disable” one of my Followers, because I already had the maximum number that I was allowed! Sheesh! So I “disabled” the lowest level Follower – at least for now – and I’ll see how this new Follower goes… if she’s not up to scratch, I’ll disable her and hopefully be able to bring the first Follower back again! Getting back to Arisnoë this afternoon, I wasn’t at all surprised to find her standing in the Grizzly Hills meadow, with two other level 100 Hunters! One had even set up a nice cosy little campfire to make her wait for Arcturis a little more pleasant! The other Hunter had his current Pet with him – a Diseased Bear from the Plaguelands, from the look of it! I sat there for a bit, then decided that I was being silly, and logged out again – I think that probably the only time it’s going to be worthwhile trying to find and Tame Arcturis will be late at night – from 11.00pm onwards – that seems to be about one’s best bet of getting the place to oneself… Anyway, I don’t know if I’ll get a chance to do anything much tomorrow – we’re all going off to have Julian’s and my Big Birthday Bash, and I don’t think I’ll have enough time to do much more than just check on Wynterthyme’s and Shekinàh’s Followers before we leave – and I’m quite sure that after a big lunch, I’m not going to be feeling much like taking a couple of Hunters out questing! So any more work on my Reputation with the CoE is going to have to wait until Monday or Tuesday! 
Food stuffz: last night of course, we had the very yummy Chicken Provencal, with steamed broccoli florettes, and steamed rice with finely chopped spring onions (a small aside to Julian – I know it’s mixing metaphors an’ all that, but I reckon a bit of sliced water chestnut would have gone well in that rice too – I think fancy chefs call it an “East-West Fusion”, or something – Chicken Provencal with Asian Style rice! 😉 ) And for dessert, I had one store-bought fig, and some of that delicious Coles brand very low-calorie Rice Pudding. Today for lunch I had a wholemeal sandwich with some of the basil-pesto hummus, ham, Halloumi cheese, and home-grown tomato – very, very nice! Dinner tonight was pan-fried pork fillet, with snow peas, chips, and a half a home-grown tomato, and dessert was a reprise of last night’s dessert – another of the store-bought figs, which was lovely, and some more of that wonderful Coles brand, very low-calorie Rice Pudding.
Weigh-in this morning. Was horrible, but not nearly as bad as I thought it would be, after all the carbs I ate yesterday! I went up five points today – from 62.2kg to 62.7kg – which I was slightly pleasantly surprised by – I’d expected to go up a lot more! Never mind, that’ll happen on Monday morning, after tomorrow’s lunch, I’m quite sure of that! Then I’ll have just under a week to drop back down again, so that I can safely eat a Hot Cross Bun (or two, or three) and a small-ish Easter Egg on Easter Sunday… (*Winter is mortified*) uhhh… I forgot to add Easter Sunday lunch into the weigh-in equation! We normally get Nandos Chicken Tenders and chips and a couple of salads and Perinaise sauce, and a dessert of some sort, for Easter Sunday Lunch – plus a chocolate or two after dinner… *sigh* Oh well, I have to live, and I have to enjoy living, or there’s no point in it – so I’ll eat what I want over Easter – yes, I’ll be careful, but I’m not going to make myself either miserable, or resentful – so let the chips fall on the floor where they will – if I have to, I’ll go back to Optifast for a month afterwards – but I’m damn-well going to enjoy Easter this year! 😛
I don’t know whether you all noticed or not, but I decided to go back to an older Template that I’ve used before (it’s one of the Free ones) just for a bit of a change – Why? Well, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I found the last one slightly …awkward, reading only the right hand side of the screen – I kept feeling as though I wanted to move my chair over so that the text would be in front of me, and not over on one side. Anyway, I’ll see how this one goes, at least for a few days… So… I’m looking forward to tomorrow – we don’t really go out very often – it’s also going to be quite a change because we’re going to somewhere other than The East Empress Bistro, or the Tender Trap! We have been to this place before – many years ago – it was quite good then, and I don’t know why we haven’t been back before – but it’s still there, so it must still be quite good, in theory, anyway! 😉 I’ll write up a full report for you all tomorrow night, and you can then either go there yourselves, if the report is good, or steer clear of it, if the report is less than glowing! 🙂 Anyway, there it is – that’s about it from me for this evening! Please drop in again tomorrow night to read my report on our luncheon venue, and to see how much my weight continued to climb in the morning (and how much more I’m expecting it to climb on Monday!) I’ll let you know if Wynterthyme and Shekinàh have progressed any further in their personal questing, and you’ll find out all about the adventures we’ve had during the day. Until then though, do please try to bee very good, remember that breakdowns can create breakthroughs, and that things fall apart so things can fall together, and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm – or cool – depending on how you feel… but most importantly, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂
My Word! 