Well, as they say in the classics, “The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley”! There was I, thinking that I’d be able to get a nice early start this evening, and what happens? My favourite eldest daughter called in one her way home from uni – so I’m starting after dinner (and television) again. And yes, I have changed the blog Template and header – yet again! I couldn’t find a colour that didn’t look too “twee”, so I just made everything… white. I did make something in a rather pretty shade of lilac, but it was a bit too bright – I’ll see if I can tone it down with a bit of grey, and if I think it’s suitable, I may re-do this again tomorrow, because it’s got the widest text column that I’ve been able to find, so far! So… what’s been happening today – let’s see… I played WoW this morning, and took Wynterthyme on a Daily run with Mouselet, to get some drums of oil for my Fleet – a “Daily” quest is one with a fixed quest reward (usually gold or goods) that can be done once every day – they’re very handy for getting items that you always seem to need a lot of, like…. money, or in this case, oil for our ships! Mouselet and Wynterthyme have resolved to do this Daily quest together, every day – we both need all the barrels of oil that we can lay our hands on! We actually had quite a good run today – we scored a very welcome 600 barrels of oil each – and while each of us is capable of doing this Daily solo, it’s a lot quicker and easier with the two of us doing it! 🙂 Then I woke up Shekinàh, and took her out to Gorgrond to finish up a couple of quests she’d started the other day, and that went quite well too – but I’m frustrated at how slowly she’s leveling up! Leveling up solo at lower levels isn’t too bad – you do move up the ladder fairly quickly – but I’m afraid I’m spoilt – I’m so used to leveling up higher level characters as a team with Julian – and when you’re in a group, not only does each character share a percentage of the other’s experience points (I think it’s called a Group Bonus, or something) the game fairly races along because you get through the longer quest chains a lot faster! Shekinàh’s doing it all on her own, and with the exception of that “Vorka” quest, she’s handling it quite well – it’s just that it’s painfully s-l-o-w! Oh well, at least she scored another Follower today – now all she needs to do is get enough Garrison Resources to be able to send all her Followers out to do Missions for her! Unfortunately, I think both Wynterthyme and Shekinàh are going to have to take a break tomorrow, as I’m finally going to be able to do my shopping!
You know – Julian read my blog last night and didn’t pick up on it, but apparently somewhere along the line we got our wires crossed or something… He’d told me that Clarke was coming over today – and I’ll swear on a stack of anyone’s “Holy Literature”, that’s what he said. Today he tells me that it wasn’t Clarke who was coming over, it was the Cabinetmaker, about the drawers in my bathroom – and I wouldn’t mind betting that he’d probably be happy to swear on a stack of anyone’s “Holy Literature”, that’s what he said! So, the Cabinetmaker duly arrived, with my properly made double drawer (thank goodness! I was beginning to wonder if I’d ever get it back!) of course, it’s minus it’s little “built-in” waste basket that the original drawer had – the bin from that disappeared with Paul when he took the drawer off to the Cabinetmaker to be re-built, after he’d re-hung the shower door a cuppla weeks ago – and every time I’ve been in the bathroom since the Cabinetmaker left, I’ve looked at that drawer and wondered if I really need to have a small waste bin tucked away in there, when I so desperately need every square mico-millimeter of room in there for tall bottles and stuff… so I’m slowly coming to the decision that there’s plenty of room underneath the vanity unit for a small, discrete, white bin in which to put used makeup wipes and band-aid wrappers (all right then, chewing gum wrappers!) So when we go shopping tomorrow morning, I’ll go to Howard’s Storage World up at Knox City and see what they’ve got in the way of small, white tidy bins! 🙂 Oh, the drawers that were so stiff and weren’t closing properly? The Cabinetmaker didn’t have a clue as to why they weren’t working properly – they should have been – and in the end it was Julian who diagnosed the problem – he removed the “soft-closing” mechanism (it’s supposed to make the drawer close gently on its own) and the drawers worked perfectly (though they didn’t close on their own when not fully closed manually) In the end, the three of us decided that – we all hated self-closing drawers, that they weren’t at all helpful to people who had them installed, and what’s more, didn’t always work properly! We left the self-closing bits in the long drawers though, because they worked reasonably well – and Julian can always remove them if I decide I can’t stand them any longer! 🙂 Talking about things that don’t work properly in bathrooms, do any of you out there have those ghastly push-down plugs in your hand basins? You don’t use a loose plug to fill the basin, you push this little knob down instead – then when you want to let the water out, you push the little knob down again, and it pops back up, allowing the water to drain out. I hate them! I detest them! I loath them with a passion! I can’t stand them! I wish they’d never been invented! I think they’re just a wicked plot by the Government to force us to use less water, like those wretched flow restricters that they make you put into showers! (we don’t have one in ours, we took it out! I refuse to be dribbled on by the shower when I’m trying to rinse shampoo out of my hair!) Anyway, I’m trying to find out if there are bathroom basin “drain insets”, like you can get for kitchen sinks – they’re like little flat strainers, that stop small pieces of vegetable waste going down the plug hole, because you want to save them for the compost bin. You see, those horrible little “pushmi-pullyu” plugs can screw out, and you can throw them in your nice, white waste-bin and forget that they ever existed – but that leaves a yawning great hole in the bottom of your hand basin, and heaven help you if happen to drop an earring, or a diamond ring down it – it’ll be a major job requiring a $Plumber to extract it from the U-Bend – so if anyone knows where I can get one of those little sink-strainer thingies, I’d be ever so grateful if you could drop me a comment about where I can get one! Ta! 🙂
Food stuffz: last night we had a very delicious piece of steak, with half a tomato, chips, and broccoli and cauliflower florets – a really lovely meal – and for dessert, I had one of the store-bought figs, and one of the Doncaster Hot Cross Buns, just cut in half, with a bit of butter scraped on it. Lovely! 🙂 Lunch today was a wholemeal sandwich, with ham, low-fat cheese, and tomato, and while he was out picking up the Ferguson Plarre Hot Cross Buns, Julian also picked up a couple of little, almost muffin-sized orange cakes, which we had for a lunch dessert! I almost never have a lunch dessert, unless I’m out, so it was a real treat! 🙂 For dinner tonight we had the leftover Chicken Provencale, which Julian had frozen the other night – if anything, it was even better the second time around! That recipe is a definite keeper! 🙂 We had another of the Doncaster Hot Cross Buns for dessert tonight – this time slightly warmed up in the microwave – cut in half, and with a scraping of butter. Next time, I’d like to try them toasted… especially as they’ll prolly be a little bit stale by tomorrow…
Weigh-in this morning. Astounded me! I was sure I’d have gone up again – especially with the Hot Cross Bun for dessert! But I hadn’t. I’d gone down seven points, from 62.9kg to 62.2kg! There’s just no rhyme nor reason to it, is there! I’ve given up trying to work out what makes it tick – all I can do is keep an eye on it, and record it for posterity – then despair if it goes up too far, and worry if it goes down too low… As I think I said in an earlier blog – my weight graph looks like an old, broken toothed saw! 
Well, today I had a sandwich (carbs!) a little cake (more carbs… and fat!) and a Hot Cross Bun (even more carbs, and even more fat!) let’s see what my scales say tomorrow! I can’t guess – can you? 😉
And so to a nice, long shopping trip! Here’s hoping I can get everything I want, from a fish-net scoop thingy for the mud-puddle, to a nice little white bathroom tidy-bin, as well as Easter Eggs for the children, and whatever else takes my fancy… (I’m also in the market for a nice turtle-neck jumper!) But that’s about it from me again for this evening – Drop in again tomorrow night to see what sort of surprise the scales had for me in the morning, and whether I managed to get anything at all done in WoW. I’ll fill you in on our shopping adventures, and if I managed to get my fish-net thingy – I think I might try the pet shop at Knox for that though, before we go to Bunny’s for the kumquat tub, as I also want to get a small bag of fine sand – not for an aquarium – or a fish pond – but for an incense bowl! Anyway until then, please try to bee good, remember that humans, not places, make memories, and don’t forget to always drive carefully, to keep cool – or warm – depending on the weather, and to look after yourselves… but above all, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂
My Word! 