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! )

09.05 pm

Here I am – back to my old habits, late again! Well, we got up at 04.30 am this morning, and Julian was out the door and off to the airport about fifteen minutes after that… I sat around and did all my usual morning things, except for my “morning constitutional”, until Julian rang me to say that he was boarding the plane – then I went and hopped on my trusty treadmill (good grief! I almost wrote “windmill” instead of “treadmill” there, for some weird reason!) and walked for my daily two kilometers at the slightly faster speed of 4 kilometers per hour instead of only 3.8 kph. Then I had breakfast and a cup of coffee, and settled in to collect all my finished Work Orders, check on my Followers, and send them all off on new Missions. Then I went back to Arisnoë, who’s finally starting to make some decent headway towards level 96, and played with her until my very favourite eldest daughter arrived, around eleven o’clock. When I was bringing Arisnoë back to the Town Hall, I noticed that in the very lucrative little Herb Garden, where so far I haven’t even been able to talk to anyone, there’s now a greyed out exclamation point over one of the worker’s head… (a greyed out exclamation mark means that there will be a quest there for you eventually, but you’re still a bit too low level to be able to accept it. Conversely, a greyed out question mark means that you will have a quest to hand in there, but you can’t hand it in yet because you haven’t finished it) So… apparently when I reach level 96 I’ll be able to get that quest and open up the Herb Garden. Only another couple of bubbles to go…

My very favourite eldest daughter had emailed Julian a list of episodes from our favourite TV shows to download for us last night, so pretty much as soon as she arrived we migrated to the lounge room, made ourselves a cup of coffee, and sat down to mesmerise ourselves with such favourites as “Supergirl” (one episode) “The 100” (two episodes, with a lunch break between them) and the first of the new Season of “Orphan Black”, which was a sort-of “prequel” to the show, mainly consisting of a series of flash-backs, showing how the whole mystery of the cloned girls started, and what pushed the young Detective, Beth, to commit suicide in front of one of her clones (who didn’t realise that she was a clone, if you see what I mean) It’s quite a fascinating story line – very convoluted and complicated, as the clones all start to find out who and what they are, with the main issue becoming “Why?!” If any of you ever decide to start watching it, please try to see the series from the beginning, otherwise it simply won’t make any sense (a USB key is all you’d need 😉 ) After “Orphan Black”, we watched one episode of “Flash”, and one of “Arrow”, and then it was about time for my very favourite eldest daughter’s equal but more technical half to come and pick her up, as Julian was still on his way home from Adelaide.

Julian finally arrived home around 06.40 pm, after having stopped off to pick up some steak and a few vegetables for dinner tonight – and some bananas – because he totally forgot them when he was doing the shopping yesterday, and I had to have a banana-less breakfast this morning! I must make sure I put a couple of those jars of tinned fruit in Natural Juices on the shopping list (“jars” of “tinned” fruit??! Oh well, you all know what I mean – I hope!) they’re very handy to have in the fridge, for just such an occasion as this morning, with no bananas, and nothing to use in their place!

And so on to the “important bits”!

Food stuffz: last night we had pan-fried lamb backstraps, with half of our very last home-grown tomatoes each, steamed green beans (store-bought) and some very nice mashed potatoes. For dessert, I had the last slice of my cake (I’ll make another one tomorrow or Thursday!) and another of the dark cacao Chia Pods – very delicious! 🙂 For lunch today, I was going to have a couple of Ryvita crispbreads, with low-fat Ricotta, ham, and tomato (store-bought) but as I had to make them myself, I changed my mind at the last minute and made myself a wrap, instead. I spread some of the basil-pesto hummus over the flat-bread, then sliced up one piece of sandwich ham, one piece of (sandwich) low-fat Jarlsberg cheese, and about a quarter of a tomato, all of which I spread out neatly on the hummus-smeared flat-bread, and rolled it all up, whereupon it immediately proceeded to un-roll itself – much to my eldest daughter’s delight! I managed to get it more or less rolled up again (with the emphasis being on the word “less”!) and went over to the couch to eat it. It was alright – heck, it’s the first time in goodness knows how many years since I’ve made my own lunch! Needless to say, it wasn’t nearly as nice as the ones that Julian makes (probably because he’s had years of practice!) Tonight we had steak for dinner – pan-fried – with chips, steamed Broccolini, and half a (store-bought) tomato. For dessert, I had …no cake, as there wasn’t any left… a tub of low-fat strawberry yoghurt, and a long, yearning look at some of the new Corella pears that Julian brought home with him. Maybe one of them will be ripe enough to eat tomorrow…

Weigh-in this morning. Well, I don’t by any long stretch of the imagination think that anyone could possibly claim that this morning’s Weigh-in was “accurate”! I usually weigh myself at around 07.45 am – and this weigh-in was just after 04.30 am. The scales, however, read at 63.8kg – exactly the same as yesterday, which is why I didn’t think that it was a “true” reading… However I’m sure that “normalcy”, or what laughingly passes for normalcy around here, will return to the weigh-in scales tomorrow morning! 😉

And there we have it – “A Day in the Life Of” – so to speak! 🙂 I’m not quite sure what’s happening tomorrow – I do know that Julian has to head over to my very favourite youngest daughter’s place to help her with some car things, and if possible, I’d like to make a different sort of Babka! I have the orange, for the orange zest, I have the mixed peel for the centre of the cake, but what I don’t have is… almond essence! I don’t have to use almond essence, I just thought that it’d be nicer in this cake than the usual vanilla essence… and that, Gentle Readers, is once more about “it” from me for this evening! Methinks an early night is called for again, and I wouldn’t be too surprised to find us both sleeping in, just a little, tomorrow morning! However, do drop in again tomorrow night to find out just how accurate – or inaccurate – this morning’s weigh-in was (or wasn’t!) how Arisnoë is going on her personal quest to reach level 96, and if she’s managed to get there yet, and whether or not I’ve made another cake! Until then though, please try to bee good, remember that the purpose of a good education is to show you that there are three sides to a two-sided story, and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep cool – or warm – depending on your personal preference… but above all, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

03.37 pm

This is nice and early, isn’t it! 🙂 As there’s a lot to tell you about yesterday (Sunday) and our day in Draenor, I thought I’d better get a good run at it! We started off in the morning catching up on a lot of our Dailies and Reputation farming quests – they’re a bore, and a chore, but we’re getting into quite a good routine with them so that we get through them all pretty quickly – but I’m still only half way to that wretched “Exalted” Reputation I have to get before I can upgrade my Trading Post – and “win” the right to earn 20% extra Reputation points in Draenor… which is about the same as shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted, because Reputations only go up to “Exalted”, and neither Julian nor I really go in for Reputation gathering, any more than we go in for PvP or Group Dungeons! *sheesh!* All I want to do is be able to upgrade my ruddy Trading Post so that I can go after the mechanical parts with which to build myself an Auctioneer for the Garrison! Anyhoo, we spent the morning doing that, had lunch, and then decided to go off and do a Dungeon neither of us had done before called “Ulduar“, a Dungeon for character levels 80 to 83 (which, if you all remember, I mentioned a few episodes ago?) Because there was a chance for the “25 Man Raid Party” to score a “special” Mount out of it, us two cocky, and vastly over-confident level 100’s decided to do a 25 Man Run… on our own! Because… what could possibly go wrong, hmm?! Well, the first part of it was a breeze! We pretty-much one-shotted everything, including the minor Bosses! It was like taking candy from a baby – so to speak… until we got to Yogg-Saron, the Big Bad Boss at the end. He creamed us! He annihilated us! He folded, spindled, and mutilated us! And we both died, multiple times… however, I can boast that Wynterthyme died more times than Mouselet did, because I’m not as fast as he is, my stupid Pet kept running off to fight and bite anything that even looked as though it was going to twitch an eyebrow in our general direction, and… I didn’t have a ruddy clue as to what I was doing, or was supposed to be doing! Well, that’s not quite true – I did know what I was supposed to be doing, but every time I went to do just that, either my mind would be controlled by Yogg-Saron and I couldn’t move, or I’d be gyrating madly in the air, being maniacally flag-waved by nasty, Yogg-Saron controlled tentacles – which I was supposed to shoot at and kill, and which I tried to shoot at and kill, only to get the ridiculous error message “Target must be in front of you”, over and over again. So when Julian and I started getting cross with eachother because I wasn’t fast enough, and when I’d lost count of how many times I’d been killed (and also by which time I’m afraid my mind was busier figuring out how much gold I was going to have to pay out to get my armor repaired when this was all over, than on strategies to handle this debacle!) we decided that maybe – just maybe – a 25-Man Raid was a teeny bit too much for us big, brave, cocky, and vastly over-confident level 100’s to handle on our own! We left, and crawled back to our Garrisons to lick our wounds, and cry over all the fantastic loot (for level 80 to 83 characters!) that we’d pillaged from the minor Bosses and Mobs, and now had to Vendor as trash! Oh, how we would have loved to have had these things if we’d gone through the Dungeon when we were level 80, or to be able now to pass these amazing items on to our younger alts – but alas! It was all soulbound to us, and all we could do was Vendor it, and cry bitter tears! 😦 Once we’d cleaned ourselves up, dried our eyes, and repaired our somewhat dented and mangled armor, we finished off the day running two or three short, “normal” type instances and Dungeons, just for “old time’s sake” – which brought us up to dinner time, so I didn’t get a chance to write anything!

Today Wynterthyme and Mouselet got their dailies done early – Julian has to fly to Adelaide again tomorrow, for the funeral of an old family friend who passed away last week. It’s a 10.00 am Service, so at least he’ll be home early tomorrow afternoon, but funerals are never fun things to go to… I took Arisnoë through a few quests, including a Fishing quest, where I had to fish for Fat Sleepers (a rather strange name for a fish!) in Nagrand – and I didn’t have a single Flight Point there! “Oh, that’s alright,” though I, “it’ll give me a chance to boost my experience by Exploration!” So I set out to “explore” my way to Nagrand… but I couldn’t get through, or past, Shattrath City – the Capital City of Draenor, now overrun by the Iron Horde – which was why I couldn’t get through that way!

08.44 pm

So I ended up swimming around the harbour there – all the way around the coast line to one of the hairiest places in Nagrand, where a soft whimper, followed swiftly by the despairing, bloodcurdling cry of a Hunter casting “Feign Death” brought a kind-hearted Mouselet with his motorbike and side-car to offer assistance to a sadder but wiser Arisnoë, who hadn’t thought that Nagrand might have been a bit more than she could handle on her own. Mouselet drove her around to pick up as many Flight Points as possible, and she ended up where she wanted to be – in Telaar, where she could safely fish for her Fat Sleepers behind safe Outpost Walls! 🙂

Then I quit, and started writing this until Josh arrived, and then it was dinner time, and we have to have an early night tonight because Julian has to leave for the airport at 04.45 am tomorrow morning. 😦 Oh, the joys of flying interstate for a funeral!

So, now on to the important bits!

Food stuffz: do you all really want to know what we had for dinner on Saturday night, and for lunch yesterday? No? Oh, good! because I can’t remember now – that was a whole day ago! 😉 However, last night being Sunday night, we had omelets – and delicious omelets they were, too! Julian put in ham, store-bought tomatoes, Halloumi cheese, home-grown spring onions, and home-grown green capsicum – really delicious! For dessert I had a slice of my cake, and a Dark Cacao Chia Pod. Today I had a sandwich for lunch, with turkey breast sandwich chunks, and basil-pesto hummus instead of butter (which works extremely well, I promise you!) on the very tasty Baker’s Delight whole-meal bread. Tonight we had lamb backstraps, with mashed potato, half a tomato – the very last of our wonderful home-grown crop *cry* – and steamed fresh, store-bought green beans – all very nice, and once again the lamb backstraps were fantastic and tender! For dessert, I had the last slice of my cake (I’ll be making another one on Wednesday – I’d make another tomorrow, but Julian won’t be here to tell me where everything is, so it’ll have to wait until Wednesday!) and another of the Dark Cacao Chia Pods – they really are worth trying!

Weigh-in Sunday morning. Was not good! I went up quite a bit – from 63.4kg to 63.9kg – I suspect fluid retention, but I spent the rest of the day trying to concentrate on WoW, instead of fretting about going up four points – and I asked Julian to give me a smaller slice of cake from now on!

Weigh-in this morning. Wasn’t too bad, but still wasn’t good, and my feet were swollen this morning – apparently they couldn’t even wait until this evening! Actually, looking under the desk at my feet now, they don’t seem to be as swollen tonight as they were this morning when I first got up! Weird! But then, that’s me – topsy-turvy! This morning I went from 63.9kg to 63.8kg – down one point. As I think I said the other night – I’m beginning to feel as though I have no control over my weight any more – it just seems to do whatever it feels like doing, whenever it feels like doing it!

I’ve been walking on the treadmill every morning before breakfast – two kilometers @ 3.8 kilometers and hour, which takes me about 32+ minutes. Lately I’ve decided that if I do 32+ minutes Monday to Friday, on Saturdays and Sundays I’ll only do one kilometer. I’ve also sped things up a bit, and I’m now walking at 4 kilometers an hour (and still not breaking into a sweat! I really don’t feel as though I’m working hard enough…) So not only am I walking faster, but I’m still walking the full two kilometers from Monday to Friday – and you know what? It only shaves two minutes (!) off my time! I was hoping that by speeding things up, I’d be able to do the same distance but spend less time getting “there” – but I wouldn’t call two minutes much of a saving! Oh well, I’ll keep on with the 4 kilometers an hour speed because quite frankly, it feels more comfortable! (I feel more comfortable walking faster? Go figure!)

Our little fishies are still doing well – or they seem to be, anyway! Julian went out and bought a small filter and aerator for their little Fish House today, and they seem to be delighted with it, and we also gave them a teeny little bit of fish-food, because although we were told not to feed them for about three days, we thought that they might be getting hungry, seeing that they were nosing about on the bottom of the tank trying to nibble the gunk that arrived in their puddle water with them. The fishy-food went in a matter of minutes, once they realised what it was, so I guess they must have been hungry. I’ve decided to call them “Auric” (which means “gold”) and “Dapple” (because one has more silvery spots on him (or her) than Auric) 🙂 We still haven’t decided where they’re going to end up living permanently…

Which once again brings me to tomorrow – although Julian won’t be here until the late afternoon, my favourite eldest daughter will be over and it’ll be fun, because we’ll be able to turn the television up, and laugh and talk loudly without disturbing himself, and getting glowering looks because the television is too loud! 😉 So, it’ll be a fun day tomorrow for us, but not for Julian – and I fear that as we both get older, there’ll be more of these unhappy impromptu trips hither, thither, and yon – as old family friends leave us – but, that’s the cycle of life, I guess… and on that somewhat doleful note, it is my sad duty to tell you all that… once again, that’s about it from me for this evening – but do drop in again tomorrow night to find out what my weight decided to do to me in the morning, what my favourite eldest daughter and I watched during the day (I’m even going to have to make my own lunch! How ’bout that!) and how Auric and Dapple are doing. But until then, please remember to bee as good as you can; and that opportunity is often missed by most people because it’s dressed in overalls and looks like work, also, don’t forget to keep warm – or cool – depending on what it’s like outside, to always drive carefully, and to look after yourselves… but most importantly, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

11.10 pm

Well, this is just a short note to let you all know that we’re fine, Flipper’s fine, and the Fishies are also fine 🙂 (but I really must think of names for them!) As you can see from the time stamp above, ’tis very late indeed! So I’ll just leave you with a promise to tell you all about our adventures today, tomorrow (Hey! That sounds like a really good and catchy name for some sort of Current Affairs television program! Hmm! so I shall also write to Channel 9 tomorrow, and suggest it! “Today, tomorrow!” – it could be a real winner! 😉 )

What do you all think of the new blog template?

Until tomorrow then, please try to bee good, remember that every exit is an entry somewhere else, and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to keep warm – or cool – depending on the weather, and to always drive carefully… but most importantly, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

04.31 pm

Well, it’s been another interesting and productive day today – Julian “forgot” to look at his shopping list properly yesterday and consequently didn’t get quite a lot of essential supplies, like… toilet paper, and food… and what-not, so while he was out “reshopping”, I neatened up all of Arisnoë’s quests (read: I finished off all of her quests prior to the Commander Vorka one, which I am incapable of doing on my own!) and then parked her until Julian got home and we’d had our lunch. In the meantime, I pottered around toying with the idea of starting a new character, then I decided against that, and decided to change Shekinàh’s name and Race instead, as being the fastest way I could think of to get a Night Elf character with the name “Sylvanas”. Now, “Sylvanas” is a very pretty name, that I’ve admired and coveted for a long time – but it already belongs to Sylvanas Windrunner, one of the major NPCs in World of Warcraft, so I couldn’t use it – but I could, and did, use “Sylvänas”! So the lovely level 94 Draenei known as Shekinàh, is now the lovely level 94 Night Elf known as Sylvänas! Although Shekinàh, now known as Sylvänas, had been created a Draenei, it’s actually about her third or fourth name change – I can’t remember what they all were now, I’ve had her for so long, but I do know she’s had lots of different names – but this time, she’s changed Races, too. I prolly shouldn’t have though, as I have this “theory” that Draenei are more likely to “slip through the cracks” and obtain the Trading Post upgrade to level 3, without having to get an “Exalted” Reputation with a Draenor Faction, seeing they’re of the same Race. Oh well, it’s a theory that I can’t very well prove or disprove, now that she’s a Night Elf called Sylvänas! Never mind – one of these days I’ll get bored with Garrisons and go and bring a young’un up to level 90 – though by then I’ll have become so old and doddering that I won’t be able to play WoW any more, anyway!

Aside from all of that, after lunch Julian logged on as me, and took Arisnoë through the Commander Vorka quests in less time than it takes to say “Commander who?”! So, now that’s out of the way, Arisnoë’s busy running around in Gorgrond, and killing all these nasty, walking plants (weeds, really! 😉 ) I really, really hate those nasty little pant things! They’re easy enough to kill, but they jump out at you when you’re in the middle of fighting something a lot more worthwhile, and they gang up on you at the most inopportune times – and if you don’t get rid of them, like about two minutes ago, they can, and often do, inflict quite severe damage upon your person, and that of your pet! (if you happen to be a Beastmaster Hunter!) but hey! I made level 95 – in fact I’m about four bubbles into level 95, so Garrison Building Upgrades are not all that far away now, so I’d better start scraping together as many Garrison Resources as I can!

Julian still had a few other things to get done, but when he’d finished, we set up the very rudimentary and temporary Fish House! It’s sitting on the marble top of the dining room sideboard, on a nice clean (if somewhat wrinkled, because we don’t own an iron!) tea-towel. After cleaning it with tap water and some paper towels, Julian worked out its volume, then we filled it to the half way mark, and put the appropriate number of drops of this anti-gunk-stuff (er… hnag on a minute, I’ll go and get it so that I can tell you what it is, in case you ever want to re-house some fishes!) Right, it’s called “Biotec Water Ager CN“, and it cleans the water, gets rid of chemicals and heavy metals, and puts a layer of slime on the fishes to help protect their skin. Then came the fun bit! 🙂 We got a large-ish jug and went out to the muck-puddle, where we scooped up a nice big jugful of the disgusting liquid. Then Julian used the fish-net to locate and capture the poor little fishies, one by one, and put them into the jug. Unsurprisingly, they seemed quite agitated and distressed! They kept bumping their noses into the glass walls of the jug, in a vain attempt to swim through the glass and escape, poor little babies… Then Julian fetched a large bucket and scooped up a bucketful of watery green slime, and with me carrying the fish in their glass jug, and Julian carrying the disgusting-looking bucket of “wet stuff”, we went inside. First, the contents of the bucket went into the temporary Fish House, then the contents of the glass jug were added to the mixture… “Oh!” cried the little fishies “Let us flee back to the safety of our stone caves under the fountain!” and… promptly bumped their noses into the glass walls of the Fish House! I’m sure they were surprised and a little bit upset – probably feeling as though these weird-looking aliens from outer space had landed, and then abducted them in order to perform all sorts of nasty experiments upon their little bodies. I hope they don’t get too hungry – we have purchased special Fish Food for them, but we’ve been told not to feed them for three days – so… I guess they’ll lose weight! (though there’s probably still enough algae in their water to last them a couple of days) We put the lid on the Fish House, not so much to keep Flipper out, but to keep them in! They were swimming around exploring their new, temporary premises and one looked as though he was going to make a jump for it (perhaps he though he was an octopus!) I had visions of finding a cold, stiff little body on the floor, so we decided that discretion was probably the better part of valour, and put the Fish House lid on. Then we went out to have more fun! Draining their erstwhile home, and getting as much of the evil muck out as we could. The little pump thingy that Julian had bought did the job beautifully, and the puddle emptied surprisingly quickly! It’s quite deep, really, and has lots of river stones on the bottom – and it’s probably just as well that we emptied the puddle now, as one of the two hollow bricks that the water feature (fountain) rests on was crumbling away – it wouldn’t have been very long at all before the water feature tumbled into the water, and probably squashing, or trapping, the little fishies in a landslide of broken rubble! All that’s left in the bottom of the puddle now are two crumbling hollow bricks, some rather nice (if filthy!) river stones, and a lot of mud and dead algae. It’ll take quite a bit of cleaning – the stones really need to be individually scrubbed by hand I think, but we should end up with a nice little pool, with fresh, clear water, ornamental blocks for the water feature to stand on, and some shady, protective and sheltering floating water plants. I’m not sure if we’ll put the fishies back in there, or keep them for the bigger pool that we’ll be putting in the back garden… But that’s where the fishies are up to, at the moment – at least they’re still alive… let’s hope they stay that way! 🙂

Food stuffz: last night for dinner we had pan-fried chicken breasts on a bed of steamed rice with our very own finely chopped spring onions, and half a tomato. I had a slice of my cake, and one of my Corella pears for dessert. I didn’t get a sandwich today, I was given a nice, fresh, wrap, with sliced up capsicum, tomato and spring onions, all organically grown in our own veggie garden, and some ham, and chunks of low-fat Halloumi cheese. Most delicious! I’m not sure what we’re having for dinner tonight – ahh… himself has just informed me that we’re having chicken sausages, with green beans, chips, and half a tomato. For dessert, naturally I’ll have a slice of my yummy cake – without cream again, as I think that was one of the things that Julian forgot to get yesterday – and today! And I shall have another of my Corella pears…

Weigh-in this morning. Was a bit better – I went down two points, from 63.6kg to 63.4kg, and I’m starting to feel a bit like a yo-yo! Still, I don’t much care if my weight does go up – just as long as it comes down again! I suppose it’ll go up again tomorrow… *sigh* I just feel as though I have absolutely no control over it any more…

And then there’s tomorrow – Sunday! Julian and I will be doing one of the biggest Dungeons, or Instance, in Azeroth – Ulduar! It’s supposed to be terribly hard for the appropriate level of adventurer who would normally go there – but it should be a lot of fun for two, hardened and seasoned level 100 characters like Mouselet and Wynterthyme! 😉 Let’s hope we don’t die too many times! 🙂 Anyway, I’ll let you all know how we went tomorrow night! However – for now, that’s about it from me for this evening! Don’t forget to drop in and catch up on all our adventures, both in, and out, of Azeroth, and how our little Fishies are going (and if they’re still alive after their traumatic move!) What my weight’s up (or down!) to, and if there’s still any cake left! Until then though, please do your level best to bee good, remember, you can’t be brave if you’ve only had wonderful things happen to you, and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm – or cool – depending on your preferences… but most importantly, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

05.33 pm

My goodness! I’m starting quite late tonight – that’s because I’ve been busy finishing off my new desktop bookmarks wallpaper thingy – I really wasn’t happy with the last one – and besides, it didn’t really go with the new window blind that I got this morning 😉 It’s quite dark – as in a fairly dark charcoal – with a very smart “ox-blood” type of red (it has a fair bit of brown in it) for the trim – so I’ve done a sort-of reverse. I did try for the charcoal background, but that made the screen terribly dark and gloomy – so I’ve reversed it and made the background the smart “ox-blood”, and used the charcoal (which actually looks black) as the “trim” – with accents of gold on my “Winter” symbol, up near the top next to the text frame, and white on a small snowflake down near the lower right-hand corner. It does look quite smart – but who knows when I’ll decide to change it again – probably the next time I download and use a new window blind, I guess… 🙂 Well, look at it this way – while I’m happily messing around with new desktop bookmarks wallpapery thingies, I’m not fiddling around changing the blog templates and headers, am I! 😉

I spent most of the day playing WoW – only breaking off to work on my graphics when my right shoulder and arm got too sore to keep playing. I’m beginning to think that the arms on my chair might be just a wee bit too high, which tilts my posture to the left (which is probably why all my tops keep sliding off my almost non-existent shoulders on the left hand side! It’s extremely most annoyment!) however, I managed to get Arisnoë to within four bubbles of level 95 – and she’d pretty much only just turned level 94 yesterday at close of play – so that’s not too bad going for a day, I suppose. While I was out hacking away at monsters and demons and such, Julian was out doing some shopping for our disgusting grot and algae puddle, laughingly called a “fish pond”. We now have a pump, to get the water out of the puddle, and we have a small glass aquarium, in which to place our two little fishies while we clean up their home (it also has a glass lid, so that Flipper can’t get in and have a bath with said fishies!) This will all be happening tomorrow (I think!) but we may yet keep the fishies in their small holding tank for a while longer. We’ll clean out the grot and algae puddle, and put in some water plants and some snails, so that it will look nice, and keep reasonably clean, but not put these fishies back in there – we thought we’d get going with planting our fig tree, and installing a somewhat larger and deeper, proper fish pond, with some pretty water plants and a small waterfall-slash-fountain in it, where it will get plenty of shade from the fig tree and the shed on summer afternoons (we don’t want boiled fish!) and then put our little fishies in there, and get them a few new friends to play with. Those lucky little fishies! I’m starting to feel quite jealous! I wouldn’t mind frolicking around in a nice clean little pond, with pretty plants, and a waterfall or fountain to play in! According to the gentleman in the Aquarium place that Julian went to, we’re to fill the little holding tank half full of tap water, let it sit for a bit (Julian did tell me how long the man said to let it stand for, but that was half an hour ago, I was concentrating on my graphics, and I’ve forgotten what he said! Sorry!) and after it had sat there for “X” hours (or minutes!) to fill the rest up with their disgustingly filthy, grotty and algae filled pond water, and then we can catch our fishies and transfer them to the holding tank, where we’re not to feed them for about three days, as they’ll be stressed out from their enforced  resettlement – and I guess with slightly different and cleaner water, they may get upset tummies, too!

Ah yes! Tummies, and what’s good for them, and what’s not so good for them! Remember that cake I made yesterday, with the sultanas and apple bits in it? It was absolutely delicious! I’m not quite sure what I was expecting, but it’s been a very long time since I made even a packet cake, let alone one from scratch! But, it seems that I haven’t lost my touch – next time I’ll make the citrus variation, and if that turns out alright, I might even try my hand at a Devil’s Foodcake recipe! It’s one that my mother made every Saturday, for years and years and years, when I was growing up. Friends would always come over on Saturday night to play Poker, or Solo, and it was always to our place because they were all bachelors, and I guess they liked getting a good meal when they arrived, and a luscious chocolate cake for supper! Anyway, Mum would make this cake, and one of my favourite things to do on a Sunday morning, while my parents were still asleep, was to get out of bed, creep into the kitchen, cut myself a healthy size chunk of cake, pour some cream over it, then scuttle back to bed with my cake and a teaspoon, where I’d cuddle into the blankets and devour my filched prize with glee! Ahh… nostalgia! 🙂 It’s a fairly easy cake to make, in that most of it is created in the blender (or Vitamizer) then you simply add the blender mixture to the flour, and bake it – in two tins because it’s a two-layer cake. The icing, or frosting, is a little harder – Mum used to make it with Copha, I think, and it can get a bit tricky – I always found that the Betty Crocker ready-made chocolate frosting tasted exactly the same as Mum’s icing, and all you had to do was scrape it out of the tub and apply it to the cake! Much more easier! 🙂 It’s also nice just to eat it straight from the tub, but I’d never do that now (well, maybe just a teeny taste then, just for old time’s sake! 😉 ) But getting back to the cake I made yesterday, the sultanas and apple bits all went where they were supposed to – that is, they didn’t all just sink down to the bottom of the cake – though next time I’d use three or four mini-packets of the dried fruit – I thought it could have done with a bit more in it, and the texture was right, and it tasted… just like it should! 🙂

09.32 pm

Food stuffz: last night for dinner we had another one of those delicious steaks – the ones you could cut with a spoon – with our green beans, from our own veggie garden, and which were very, very nice – half a store-bought tomato, and chips. Naturally for dessert I had a piece of my cake, and a low-fat strawberry yoghurt. We had sandwiches for lunch today, made with the Baker’s Delight whole-meal bread, with sliced sandwich silverside, low-fat Halloumi cheese, and some tomato and chili relish – very delicious – and tonight for dinner we had pan-fried chicken breast on a bed of steamed rice which had our very own home-grown, finely chopped, spring onions in it. Julian also got some more Corella pears today, so for dessert I had another piece of my cake, and one of my pears, so I feel very well-fed! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. Was a bit of a shocker! I must admit, I’d grown so used to bobbing around the 63.2kg – 63.3kg mark that I was a trifle taken aback this morning to see that I’d shot up four points! From 63.2kg to 63.6kg! And I didn’t even have any cream on my cake! S’not fair! If I’d known I was going to go up like that, I would have at least put some cream on my cake, and be damned to the consequences! Unfortunately, those damned consequences must have known what I had planned, and got their crumb in the door first! *pout* I didn’t have any cream on my cake tonight, either… because the cream had gone past its “use by” date *cry* Oh well, let’s see what my weight does tomorrow…

And then there’s tomorrow – Saturday – with all its fishy connotations… It’ll be fun to see the little fishies swimming around on top of the dining room sideboard – which is about the only place they can go, apart from the hall table, which is really a bit too dark  – the little fishies would think we’d moved to Alaska, and the land of the midnight sun! And Sunday, I believe that Mouselet and Wynterthyme have a hot date planned in Ulduar! Now that I’ve finished my new desktop bookmarks wallpaper thingy, I’ll be able to concentrate on Arisnoë’s very gradual level advancement, though I’m sure that Mouselet and Wynterthyme will also get a good run with their Reputation and Riding quests! And once again folks, that’s about it from me again for tonight! Don’t forget to look in again tomorrow night to find out if there’s any cake left, what my weight is up to (or, hopefully, down to!) and whether Arisnoë has reached level 95.5, with only a few more bubbles to the longed for level 96! Until then though, Gentle Readers, please do your very best to bee good, don’t forget that if you don’t raise your eyes you will think that you are the highest point, and remember to always drive carefully, to keep cool – or warm – depending on the weather, and to look after yourselves… but above all, please! Remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

04.50 pm

Well, today’s been quite “productive”, as my mother would have said! Alas, the tomato plants have all been removed… however we did manage to salvage one more good, small tomato! It’s not quite ripe yet, but it’ll only take about a day to get it ripe enough to eat. Julian harvested (“harvested” – isn’t that a nice word! 🙂 ) a beautiful bowl full of green beans from the main veggie bed, and a fistful of fresh spring onions from the second veggie bed. We were going to use the lovely little green capsicum that he picked yesterday in our lunch today, but I’ve had a better idea. We’ll get some baby bocconcini, slice up some tomato and the capsicum, plenty of salt and pepper, a couple of torn up basil leaves (unfortunately our basil plant has all but gone to seed, but I think there are still enough edible leaves on it for one “last hurrah” ) and make a little salad, to have with our dinner tomorrow night! It’s so nice having a veggie garden at long last – and everything we get from it is organic! Alright, so the baby bocconcini in the salad won’t be “organic”, but I know how to make cheese (it’s very, very easy! Can you still get junket tablets?) and we can jolly-well make our own! Well, not our own bocconcini – they’re supposed to be made with buffalo milk, and we don’t have a buffalo – yet! 😉 But we can make our own cottage-type cheese with organic milk – which I suppose we could then roll into little balls, and pretend that they were baby bocconcini! 😉 We also planted the little kumquat bush this afternoon – we’ll get some slow-release citrus plant food tomorrow, to give it a bit of a boost – I fear it’s been languishing somewhat, parked out on the back deck for so long 😦 but it should perk up (I hope!) We’ve put it in the middle, between the two veggie beds, where it’ll get plenty of sunshine, and being under our noses, so to speak, it shouldn’t miss out of getting watered regularly. When it develops its first crop of kumquats, I’m going to make marmalade! 🙂

And I made a cake today! 🙂 I was so torn – I didn’t know whether to make the sultana version, adding “about a small fistful” of sultanas to the cake mixture, or to make the citrus version, by mixing the zest of one orange into the mixture, and adding a generous “trail” of mixed peel through the centre of the cake. I ended up making the easier of the two, and added some sultanas to the mixture – only it wasn’t just sultanas! When we were buying all the stuff for my cake(s) I was loath to buy a whole, great big packet of sultanas, so I got Julian to get me down an 8-pack of those “school lunch snack” sultanas, in the little boxes. When we got them home, we discovered that they weren’t just sultanas – Julian had grabbed a pack of sultanas, and dried apple “bits” by mistake! Oh well – what’s the difference? You put apple in some cakes too, so I just tossed in two little packets of sultana and apple bits (of course I discarded the little cardboard boxes first!) We’ll have some of that for our dessert tonight – and I’m very curious to know how the sultanas and apple bits turned out! I’d read, many times, that to stop fruit from sinking to the bottom of a cake, the best thing to do was dredge and dust off the dried fruit through a bit of flour before adding it to the cake mixture – so I thought I’d try that – I didn’t want all the sultanas and apple bits sinking to the bottom of the cake! Well, I didn’t have to dredge the fruit through the flour, I simply added them to the sifted flour and mixed them through a bit – this particular cake is nearly all made in the food processor, which you then pour in, and mix into your bowl of sifted flour (on this occasion, with the sultanas and apple bits in it!) so I’m curious as to where the sultanas ended up – all through the cake, or all up the top of the cake (because the bottom of the cake tin becomes the top of the cake when it’s turned out to cool, so if the fruit was going to sink to the bottom while it was cooking, that bottom would become the top when you turned it out onto the cake rack!)

I also managed to get Arisnoë up to level 94 – I haven’t had to do Commander Vorka yet – someone evidently tripped over a cable at Blizzard this morning, and I had to log out – the lag was so bad that the game was unplayable Still, Wynterthyme did get her Dailies done, and she did finish off all her Mount Training, at long last! So now we (Mouselet and Wynterthyme) have to take their six different types of Mount, and defeat all the nasties, before getting the Achievement (and I think Title!) of “Stable Master”! It’s supposed to turn out to be (Julian did the math!) or add up to be – six times six – six Mounts, one after the other, against each nasty, or 36 battles altogether… And yes, there are six different Mounts, and each one has to battle each nasty – that makes sense, and I understand that – but there are more than six nasties – there’s about 12 of them – so does each of your six Mounts have to battle the same nasties, or can they pick and choose which nasty they’ll face, as long as they battle six of them? It’s very confusing… Anyway, we’ll look into that tonight, ot tomorrow…

Food stuffz: Last night we had chicken sausages for dinner, with half a store-bought tomato, snow peas, and chips. I had the last piece of Julian’s cake and a Dark Cacoa Chia Pod for dessert – I miss my fresh fruit! 😦 And for lunch, I had a sandwich made from the Baker’s Delight whole-meal bread, with corned silverside, low-fat cheese, and tomato relish – which was extremely nice! Tonight we’re having steak, half a store-bought tomato, the green beans that Julian picked this afternoon, and probably chips… and for dessert, I’ll have a piece of my cake, possibly with a bit of low-fat cream (I haven’t decided yet!) and another of those delicious Dark Cacao Chia Pods. We’d like to plant some broad beans this autumn – I must look up “broad beans” in relation to Warfarin though – there are so many things that I should avoid as much as possible – like leafy greens – though if I’m consistent, and eat them on a regualr basis (that is, don’t have heaps of say, Brussels sprouts one day, and then not have any more for a couple of weeks, and then eat another huge plateful of them) the regular blood tests will manage my INR levels. However, I don’t really want to eat broad beans every day while they’re in season! More research will be needed as to what we plant next…

Weigh-in this morning. Yup, still bobbing around like a good little cork in the weight-and-sea! I went from 63.3kg to 63.2kg this morning – that does make a full week, vacillating somewhere between 63.1kg and 63.5kg – so I suppose I must be what laughingly passes for “stable” at the moment – but who knows what my silly body is likely to do next week! 😉 Especially if I do decide to have some low-fat cream with my cake! 😮

And that brings me to tomorrow – Friday! Hopefully I might even get Arisnoë up to level 95! Wouldn’t that be good! However, I have no idea what’s happening tomorrow – I know Julian’s going to be going out to look at some things for my favourite youngest daughter – but hopefully that won’t take too long. I haven’t decided whether I’ll trot along or not – because I’m also working on yet another new desktop wallpaper-y thingy, as I’m not really happy with the one I’ve just finished. It sounded like a good idea when I first thought of it, but the actuality didn’t match with the concept, so I’m trying something different. Anyway, dinner’s nearly ready, and that’s really about it from me for tonight! Don’t forget to call in again tomorrow night and see if my weight is still bobbing aimlessly around, or whether it’s decided to do something different, for a change. I’ll be able to catch you all up on what’s going down the Drainor – oops! sorry, in Draenor, and what my sultana Babka was like! 🙂 Until then though, do please at least attempt to bee good, remember that you will never be like the ‘Little Engine That Could’ if you sit around on your caboose, and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep cool – or warm – depending on how high the central heating has been set… but above all, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

04.09 pm

Oh well, at least it’s not a Friday! 🙂 I decided to try using different colours today – what do you all think? Is it too bright, or not bright enough? It looks good from this end, but everyone’s monitors seem to display colours differently – I wonder why? Surely it can’t be that hard to develop, or work out, a colour display standard that everyone (including monitor manufacturers!) can stick to! *growl* Ruddy programmers! Why can’t they produce some intelligent and badly needed software for a change, instead of producing silly new bells and whistles that nobody really wants – except for maybe one person in their own office, who – once upon a time – thought that maybe it might be a fun thing to try out! I dunno…

Anyway, we took the opportunity to get the bulk of our Dailies out of the way this morning – the usual oil quests and so forth that we usually do in the evening, because Julian was going to be hard at work in the Office for the rest of the morning. I, on the other hand, was very happy to have the chance to get Arisnoë a little closer to the elusive level 96! Unfortunately the Mount Training Dailies don’t become available until late afternoon, so I’ll have to wait until tonight to see if I can get all my trainee Mounts ready to take human passengers (plus, of course, the Achievement that goes with that accomplishment!) Actually, Arisnoë’s getting pretty close to that ghastly section where I have to face Commander Vorka, where I’m going to have to get Julian in to do that for me – I suffer from “fluster lock” too badly and just end up dying, multiple times. It would be much easier if we could do it as a group, but Mouselet’s already done that quest so he can’t pick it up again – and as the quest is “instanced” – that is, it goes into a sort-of “closed circuit” routine, where only one player can participate at a time – I’m sure you can imagine the chaos if fifty or more players wanted to do that particular quest at the same time! It’d be totally impossible to complete – whereas forcing each player into a little “fenced off” corner of the game of their own to complete the quest, means that quite literally, hundreds of players can do the same quest at the same time, without getting in eachother’s way. So the only way that I can get Julian to help me is to get up and vacate my seat, and let him take over my character, while I go off somewhere and nervously chew my nails down to the quick! 😉 No, I go and stand behind him, peering over his shoulder – gasping in shock, horror, or awe – and sometimes all three together – at all the carnage and mayhem! There actually aren’t very many places where I have to call of Julian’s services like that – maybe about three, in the entire game, I suppose – and I don’t really look on it as “cheating”, because I’d probably manage to get through it on my own – in about seven or eight months of dying continuously and denuding the Guild Bank to pay for all my armor repairs – and if I still couldn’t finish it on my own, I’d give up, and call Blizzard a lot of very rude names for forcing me try to get through such a ghastly quest on my own (the Forums also have a lot to say about this quest, along exactly those lines!) then cancel my account, and Blizzard would lose my valuable contributions to the running of BlizzCon next year! 😛

Food stuffz: Last night for dinner we had herbed and marinated chicken breasts, pan-fried, and served on a bed of steamed rice into which had been mixed some finely chopped spring onions, and half a tomato – a store-bought one this time, because unfortunately, all of our tomatoes are finished for the season, and Julian plans to pull them out tomorrow 😦 However, on the bright side, our capsicums are starting to come on very well indeed! We’ll even be having one of them chopped up in our sandwich tomorrow! 🙂 But going back to dinner last night, I had the last of my Corella pears – which was really, really delicious – very juicy, but also very firm! I also had a slice of cake – without cream, this time, and it’s just as nice, with or without cream! For lunch today I had a sandwich made of the extremely nice Baker’s Delight whole-meal bread, with some basil-pesto hummus, some of the left over chicken breast from last night, and sliced low-fat Halloumi cheese. Very yummy! 🙂 Dinner tonight will be chicken sausages (no, I don’t know what brand they are) with chips, half a store-bought tomato (*cry*) and snow peas. And seeing that I have no more fresh fruit available, I’ll have a slice of cake – probably without cream again – and either a Chia Pod, or a low-fat yoghurt. I was actually reading in The Age today (unbelievable, I know, that the newly “Tabloid” Age does still have the occasional article worth reading!) that we should be starting to move away from the low-fat products, and back into the full fats, but steering clear of any and all artificial sweeteners and processed foods. You can find it here, if The Age hasn’t pulled it by order of the so-called “diet food” producers, and the low-fat Food Manufacturers. I’d like to start having the non-low-fat dairy products for a couple of months, anyway – and just see if it does make any difference to my weight and my health! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. It seems I’m bobbing around like a cork in a tub of water at the moment! I mean it’s interesting that – at the moment, anyway – I’m bobbing up and down around the same weight – give or take a couple of points here and there. It’s gone like this: [Thu] 63.3kg [Fri] 63.0kg [Sat] 63.1kg [Sun] 63.3kg [Mon] 63.3kg [Tue] 63.2kg [Today] 63.3kg. All up and down around the same weight, and if it’s the same, or close to it, it’ll have been for a full week! It’s quite… strange, for me – I usually fluctuate much more than just one or two points… not that I’m complaining! I’m quite pleased that my body seems to be happy, bobbing around at this weight! Let’s see what happens tomorrow morning! 🙂

I’m not sure what’s happening tomorrow – more of the same, I expect, as Julian still has a bit more office work to do. I think, that if I really get stuck into it, and try very hard, I can possibly get Arisnoë up to level 96 by the end of the weekend, even taking into consideration that Julian and I spend nearly all of Sunday with Wynterthyme and Mouselet. But who knows? We have a kumquat bush to put in a nice big new pot, and we have to decide what to plant for autumn… it’s a real shame that I’m on Warfarin, because I’m supposed to steer clear of “leafy greens” – which I love, and which are so good for you – it’s just that they do funny things to your INR when you’re on Warfarin. Oh well, we can plant onions, and garlic… and broad beans, I suppose… so roll on winter and spring! 🙂 And once again, that’s about it from me for this evening – but do drop in again tomorrow night and find out if my weight is still just “bobbin’ along”, or if it’s decided to make a bigger move – if it does, hopefully it’ll be downwards! 🙂 There’ll be heaps to tell you all tomorrow night, so make sure you don’t miss out on all the hot goss and interesting trivia! Until then though, please try to bee good, remember that a positive mind finds a way it can be done; a negative mind looks for all the ways it can’t be done, and don’t forget to keep cool – or warm – depending on how you feel, to always drive carefully, and to look after yourselves – but above all, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

05.45 pm

Yes, I’m afraid it’s yet another late start for me! Well, my very favourite eldest daughter was over today, and we had a lovely day watching episodes of “Arrow”, and “The Flash”, including the “cross-over” episode where we meet up with Flash and Arrow discussing their activities. Some of the “Arrow” episodes were quite harrowing – a favourite character dying – but apparently she comes back after a trip to the Lazarus Pit (which Lee’s mentioned to me – more than once or twice – but apart from that, I know nothing!) so it’s all very new and exciting – even my very favourite eldest daughter hasn’t seen any episodes from this season of “Arrow”, so it’s all “new stuff” for both of us! “Orphan Black” should be starting again – next week! I’m really looking forward to seeing that again – I’m going to recommend getting as many episodes as we can, and saving them up, so that we don’t have to watch it s-l-o-w-l-y, one episode per week! I hate doing that! I like to know what happens next – which is why I don’t mind spoilers – in fact, if I think someone knows what happens next, I’ll keep on pestering them until they tell me, or hit me over the head with a wet fish! 🙂 Anyway, we had a very good day watching “Arrow” and “The Flash” – and I’m really looking forward to next week! Hopefully we might even have some more episodes of “The 100” and “Supergirl”, too! 🙂

Before Lee arrived this morning – I know I should probably have been playing “catch-ups” with last night’s extremely truncated blog – but I decided to sort out Wynterthyme and Arisnoë’s Followers and quests, because I knew I probably wouldn’t have time to do them tonight, such a busy life I lead! I found a new WindowBlind¹ this morning, too, which I bought, as it’s quite decorative, and the colours all go extremely well with the new bookmarks desktop wallpaper wot I made – you should all go and have a look at them – they’re easy to use, and they make your screen look so much more nicerer than the boring, “same-old, same-old” Windows look! The one I’m using at the moment is called “Andromeda” – click on the Thumbnail to see a screenshot! 🙂 But getting back to “Les Girls” 😉 Arisnoë is now level 93 – oh, it seems like such a long way to level 96, and her next Garrison upgrade! I just want to get some new buildings up, and level up the Mine and the Storeroom – but you have to be level 96 before you can do that 😦 S’not fair! If we get a bit of time this evening, Wynterthyme should be finishing her last two Mount Training quests – Julian finished off his last night, and as he was a day ahead of me, I should finish mine tonight! I wonder what they’ll give us in the way of Dailies, once all our Mounts are fully Trained! Wynterthyme’s also been racking up quite a few Achievements for all her efforts to build up a decent Fleet – so far (so far, cross fingers, touch wood!) I haven’t lost any ships in battle – Julian’s lost one that I know of – but I think I’ve just been lucky! When you lose a ship, you can build another one to replace it – it even gets the same name, I think – but you really have to start all over again, and re-build your ship’s “experience” from “beginner” (I’ll bet that not very many of you knew that ships level up by earning experience points, just the same as character do! 😉 ) So as I said – I think I’ve just been lucky so far! At the moment Wynterthyme’s been eyeing off a vacant plot of land down near the Garrison’s Main Gate – it has a dirt “driveway” (for want of a better term!) or path, leading to a round patch of bare ground. It looks like the ideal spot to put a Medium Sized Building on! At the moment it’s covered in stacks of building materials (bricks, planks, rope, “stuff”) so I’m betting that come the new expansion later this year, we’ll be allowed a new Garrison Building. At the other end of the Garrison, I have a Menagerie that I could unlock – but I don’t want it! It’s a complete waste of space because it’s for Battle Pets, and I don’t use Battle Pets! I’ve toyed with the idea of unlocking it, getting it to Level 1 or 2, and then trying to move something else onto its space, but I’m not at all sure that I’ll be able to do that! I tried moving something else into the space occupied by the Herb Garden and the Mine, when they were both outside the Garrison walls (the Herb Garden has since been moved – not by me – to be inside the Garrison walls) I haven’t tried moving anything into the Herb Garden since it’s been moved inside though… I might go and have a look at that when I’ve finished this…

09.57 pm

Well, I’ve just completed “Training” my last two Mounts, but I didn’t finish, and I didn’t get the Achievement! I succeeded with one of the Mounts, but the other, apparently, still needs work! I am not happy! Not happy at all, actually! *frown* The animal that I didn’t expect to finish with, because someone else was killing Maimclaw (a very vicious Giant Dire Wolf) at the same time. Usually when you’re successful, you get a sort-of “Ta-dahhh”, and a very quick sort-of a yellow sunburst effect will flash over the Mount’s head – which I didn’t get. I got it for the other Mount though, the one that apparently needs more Training. No… definitely not happy! *frown* [please insert very rude word here!] Grrr!

Oh well, on to much more important matters!

Food stuffz: Last night for dinner we had very delicious lamb backstraps – cooked very simply and pan-fried – with half a tomato, Brussels sprouts, and chips. For dessert I had a Corella pear, and a piece of Julian’s cake with just a smattering of cream. Lunch today was a very nice ham, cheese and tomato sandwich, on the delicious Baker’s Delight whole-meal bread. I really don’t know which bread I like most – the Coles-brand whole-grain bread with the rather heavily seeded crust, which is very tasty and (hopefully!) good for you, or the Baker’s Delight whole-meal bread, with a fairly plain crust, which is equally as tasty, and (hopefully!) just as good for you! I have a great idea! (“Oh no!” cries Julian – he really hates it when I get one of my “great ideas”! 😉 ) No dear, it really is a great idea! You’ll love it! If we got a loaf of each, we could use one slice of the Coles-brand bread, and one slice of the Baker’s Delight bread in the sandwiches! That way we could have the best of both those tasty breads! 😀 Tonight for dinner we had pan-fried “pre-marinated in some sort of herb-y stuff” chicken breasts, which were really very nice (and I noticed that there was probably enough left over for a sandwich tomorrow! 😉 ) on a bed of steamed rice that had some finely chopped spring onion through it. For dessert I had the last of my Corella pears, and a slice of cake – this time without cream – so maybe the scales will be a little kinder to me tomorrow morning (though they really weren’t that cruel to me this morning, anyway!)

Weigh-in yesterday morning. Was OK, I guess – and at least I didn’t go up! I went from 63.3kg to 63.3kg – that is, I stayed the same! It’s actually been a while since I’ve done that! I wasn’t too upset about it – it’s still within the margin of error (i.e. between one or two points, either way) And I have to say that I really don’t think that the slice of cake – with or without a smattering of cream – has anything to do with one or two points either way…

Weigh-in this morning. More or less proves my point, I think. I went from 63.3kg to 63.2kg – down one point – not really enough of a “trend” to start worrying about – well, not yet, anyway! As long as I go down again, just as much as I go up occasionally, I think I’m reasonably safe – and I watch my weight every morning like a hawk looking for a field mouse! So I reckon you could say that my weight is fairly stable, overall… Yanno, “everyone”² keeps telling me “Don’t lose any more weight!” – and I look at them pensively. Yes, I’ve lost a lot of weight – over 70 kilograms – and yes, I look a lot thinner (obviously! I’d be a lot worried if I didn’t!) I wear a size 14 now, instead of a size 26… BUT! I still could – and probably should – lose another couple of kilograms… Size 14, in most circles, is considered to be a size for the obese. Size 12 is considered “overweight”, and even size 10 is looked askance at. Fashion (HA!) dictates that to be slim and trim, you shouldn’t be any more than a size 8 – and preferably less than a size 8. I think that size 8 is going just a wee bit too far – but I should probably aim at trying to go down to a size 12. One of my jumpers is a size 12, and it fits me… like a glove? 😉 It’s a trifle tight around the neck – I’m no Ann Bolyn – but once it’s on, it’s very comfortable, and doesn’t look tight on me – so yeah, I could go down another size…

Anyway, those were my two days – yesterday and today. The other two jumpers that I’d ordered arrived today – one’s a size “S” (which, I’ve found out, is mid-way between a size 12 and a size 14) and the other is a “proper” size 14, and they’re both great – I’d like to get another one like the one I’m wearing now – it’s a turtle-neck, and really lovely and warm around the neck! Only in black, or some other, darker colour – this one is a dark magenta, or fuchsia – which is very nice, but… (I don’t think I’m really a dark magenta, or fuchsia sort of person) Julian has some more office work to do tomorrow, so I guess I’ll be labouring to drag Arisnoë up to level 96 – though I doubt I’ll get anywhere near that tomorrow! But anyway, I’ve rambled on long enough, and really, that’s about it from me for tonight! Do call in again tomorrow night to find out what’s been happening around this neck of the woods – but until then, please bee good, don’t forget that if you are not willing to risk the unusual, you will have to settle for the ordinary, and remember to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm – or cool – depending on your preferences… but most importantly, please remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

¹WindowBlinds – a “skin” for Windows, to make your desktop look prettier (because boring old Microsoft are sooo unimaginative!)

²“everyone” = people like Doctor B., Dr. Y., Julian, my favourite youngest daughter Kate, and the nurses who take my blood for my Warfarin tests…

11.23 pm

Sorry everyone – I got a bit caught up with things this evening (alright, we were getting our Dailies done – I need the oil to run my Naval Missions, don’tcha know! 😉 ) Anyway, it’s a bit too late to start writing now, so I’ll fill you all in on the days doin’s tomorrow morning, before my favourite eldest daughter gets here! All is well – no need to worry or anything – catchyas all tamarra mornin’! 🙂

P.S. Bee good, remember that when you know yourself you are empowered – when you accept yourself you are invincible, don’t forget to always drive carefully, to keep warm – or cool – depending on your preferences, and to look after yourselves… but most importantly, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂