03.45 pm
I think my weight is doing strange things to me, because my timing is yo-yo-ing, just like my weight! I’m early this afternoon… I was late yesterday, and late the day before, but early the before that! I wish I had more control over my life… but then, if I did have more control, I’d probably find myself wishing I had more excitement, and more random surprises – “the grass is always greenest”, etc. 😉 Well, let’s see… how did today go… I played WoW this morning – did all of Wynterthyme’s Follower bits and pieces, and sent another six ships off to their doom on their Missions, and then swapped over to Arisnoë, where I was very pleased to see that she only had two and a bit bubbles to go to level 96! So, off she trotted, to try to fill those two bubbles “toot sweet”, as the French say, and I’m not quite sure how I managed it, but I manged to pick the two most horrible, and hardest quests that I had! I died about four times, just trying to fight my way in to the quest giver, and then I died at least another three times, trying to finish off the rest of those ruddy quests – and I was only in Talador! Still, I did ding level 96 – right in the middle of a horrendous fight, where I was losing badly. I did try to do everything the right way, like sneaking around the edges of the fight, picking off demons one by one, and avoiding areas where I could easily get overwhelmed – but there were “portals” all over the place, and demons were – quite literally – streaming out of them, and I just didn’t stand a chance! I don’t recall Wynterthyme and Mouselet doing this particular quest chain, or if we did do it, we must have been quite a few levels higher than poor old Arisnoë, because I’m quite sure I’d have remembered how hard this part was, and I would have left it for a couple of weeks – however, I persevered, and I did get through those wretched quests, albeit with my armor in tatters, and my ego in rags… it cost me 69 gold for repairs, too, and that was with the Garrison discount!¹ Needless to say, after I’d finished those three [censored] quests, I Hearthed back to my Garrison before even turning them in – I had Building Upgrades to perform! (ya gotta get ya priorities right! 😉 ) Unfortunately, I can’t get my Trading Post upgraded to level 2 before I turn level 98, but I did get my Herb Garden – which I immediately upgraded to level 2, and at time of writing, I’d upgraded everything except the Trading Post to level 2! Even the Fishing Shack! (which even at level 3 doesn’t look any different to what it was when I first saw it! It just means that you can fish for bigger fishes, locally) I’m looking forward to logging in again later and seeing all my nice, new, upgraded buildings (everything (except the Fishing Shack) looks bigger and nicer when you upgrade your Buildings!) The “renovation” work takes an hour – I have no idea why – because the “freebie” Buildings, like the Mine, the Herb Garden, the Fishing Shack and the Town Hall, are all “instant makeovers”, and are pronounced “open for business” as soon as you walk outside. After I’d finished all of that, I flew back to my exceptionally patient quest givers, and handed the three quests in.
I also worked quite extensively on my re-modeled, re-named Sylvänas, buying her a whole new outfit to look nice in, and getting her set up as would befit the NPC Sylvanas Windrunner, so I spent quite a bit of time in the Stormwind Auction House, trying to make her look cool on a mini, mini-budget, and I like to think that I succeeded, too! 🙂 I’ll probably be working on her next, as she’s only level 94…
Tonight it’ll be back to Wynterthyme and Mouselet, as Wynterthyme s-l-o-w-l-y and painfully edges her way a bit closer to the “Exalted” Reputation with one of the three possible Factions that she’s already reached “Revered” with – they are (in no particular order!) the Arakkoa Outcasts, the Council of Exarchs, and the Hand of the Prophet. I seem to have come to a bit of a hurdle with the Council of Exarchs – they’re based in Shadowmoon Valley, where the Garrison is, and really, it’s the “starting out point” for the Alliance. I’ve done all the quests that I can find², I’m slightly further than half way through “Revered” with them, but… there’s nothing left to do to make them “Exalt” me! Unless I’m missing something, somewhere along the line. The Arakkoa Outcasts have been a bit of a surprise entrant in Wynterthyme’s Reputation race! They have a small(ish) toe-hold in an outpost called Lion’s Watch, where Wynterthyme and Mouselet go every night to run their Daily “Oil” quests, which gives us Reputation points with the Hand of the Prophet, but we also pick up several Dailies from a couple of Arakkoa there, and we seem to be piling on quite a lot of Reputation points – Wynterthyme has already reached “Revered” with them, and their Reputation gauge is catching up fast to where she’s at on the Hand of the Prophet Reputation one (she’s almost two thirds of the way through the “Revered” gauge with the Hand of the Prophet) It’ll be interesting to see who “wins the day” for her! 🙂
And now on to the important, serious part of the blog! 😉
Food stuffz: last night we had another lovely little piece of fillet steak – just pan-fried, but really, I think that’s the best way to cook steak – it’s so easy to stuff things up when you try to do “fancy things” with it. My father used to get a large piece of rump steak – gigantic, to my child’s eyes – and lay it flat on a large dish. He’s pour copious quantities of good olive oil over it, the juice of at least two large lemons, and season it well with salt and pepper. Then he’d leave it, for a couple of hours… Once he thought it had marinated enough on that side, he’d go in, pick the piece of steak up with two forks, hold it up to drain most of the oil and lemon juice off into the plate, then turn the steak over, and put it back down into the marinade, for another hour or so (no, he didn’t put it in the fridge, this was all done on the kitchen bench!) When it was time to cook dinner, he’d heat up a large, strong frying pan (we didn’t have electric fry-pans back then) to really, really hot, pick up the plate, and slide everything from the plate into the frying pan. He taught me how to judge when the steak was ready to turn over – he’d point out the colour change creeping up the edge of the steak, from a dark, “meat” red, to grey, and then when the grey got half way up the side of the steak edge, and the bottom was starting to turn brown, he’d flip it over and do the same on the other side – you were supposed to make sure that there was a very thin “line” of dark, “meat” red running through the middle of the edge – and that was it! It would be put back on the now washed and clean large plate, and cut into portions – it was perfect every time (Dad was an exceptional cook!) and the caramelised juices on the bottom of the frying pan were simply heaven to scrape up with a crust of bread and devour, while the rest of the meal was being dished up. So Dad taught me how to cook steak, and he must have taught me well, because I taught Julian how to cook steak, and now he cooks it exceptionally well, too! 🙂 Anyway, we had steak last night, with chips, half a store-bought tomato, and some very nice steamed broccolini. For dessert, all I had was some low-fat yoghurt, as I hadn’t made another cake because Julian was in Adelaide, and the Corella pears he’d bought weren’t ripe enough for ingesting 😦 Tonight Julian’s making home-made hamburgers – actually, I don’t know why we call them “hamburgers”, because they’re nothing like hamburgers – except that they’re made with mince beef, onions, and a few other bits and pieces – but they’re really more like rissoles, or maybe large meat-balls – but we call ’em hamburgers, and they’re really delicious. We always put things like (raw) rice in the mixture (it cooks in the juices of everything in the hamburger while it’s cooking, and along with a beaten egg, helps to hold everything together so that it doesn’t crumble when you look at it) Sometimes we have them with mashed potatoes, and sometimes we have them with plain old boiled potatoes, and sometimes we have them with chips – so I don’t know what we’ll be having them with tonight (mashed potatoes would be good though!) and no doubt there’ll be the usual half a store-bought tomato and something green – probably beans… I’ll be having a reprise of last night’s dessert as Julian was out for a lot of today, so I didn’t get the chance to make another cake – besides, I needed the almond essence, which this time, did get bought – so we can look forward to a really nice slice of cake for dessert, tomorrow night! 🙂
Weigh-in this morning. Was quite astounding, and neither of us were expecting it! I went from 63.8kg to 63.1kg – down seven points! I have no idea why – but it’s nice, all the same. I’ll most likely be up again tomorrow, so I’ll just put it down to another random event associated with my uncontrollable “Yo-yo” syndrome!
Tomorrow will probably be much like today – Julian has to play taxi-driver for my very favourite eldest daughter, who has a Dental appointment, right bang-smack in the middle of the day – nicely bisecting it – but at least we’re a lot closer to both her, and the Dentist, here in Vermont South, so I should have enough leeway to make a cake tomorrow afternoon. The rest of the time, no doubt I’ll be WoW-ing along, as usual – but that’s really about it from me again tonight! Don’t forget to call in again tomorrow night, to see if my weight did go up again – if I managed to get my cake made, and if Wynterthyme has managed to get any closer to her “Exalted” Reputation! Until then though, please try to bee good, don’t forget that life is just a phase you’re going through at the moment… but don’t worry, you’ll get over it 😉 and remember to keep warm – or cool – depending on where you are, to always drive carefully, and to look after yourselves… but most importantly, and above all, please – remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂
¹“Garrison discount” – I’m pretty sure that there’s no such thing as a “Garrison discount” – not even for the Garrison Commander – that was just something I made up on the spur of the moment, mainly because (a) it sounded cute, and (b) because if there isn’t a “Garrison discount” for the Garrison Commander, well there jolly-well ought to be! 😛
²Of course… there’s always the Dailies, of which I think there are a few… (boor-ring! 
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My Word! 