06.17 pm
OK, I’m starting very late tonight, and because I didn’t have time to write anything last night, I’ll have to fit two nights into one tonight – which means that I’ll have to be writing until quite late tonight, whether I want to or not 😐 Yesterday, Sunday, Julian and I spent the day pulling Jemimah and Xãnthe up a little closer to level 90, by their bootstraps – and doing quite a good job of it too, even if I do say so myself! 🙂 They’re both level 84 now – and only one level to go until we hit Pandaria, and our final sprint towards level 90! We started off by going to my second least favourite questing place in the whole of WoW, Deepholm, which in my opinion is only marginally better than Vashj’ir, which is the underwater place that I hate so much – and I suppose that if you have to be “under” something, then it’s probably better to be under a pile of rock than under water – or at least, that’s the way I see it! 
Mind you, we didn’t have any intention of doing the whole of Deepholm – it was more a matter of climbing levels as quickly and as efficiently as we could – so when we hit level 84, we quit Deepholm and headed off to Uldum, to do a bit of questing around there, and once we get to level 85 or thereabouts, we’ll head out to Pandaria! And it’s not as though we’ll be missing out on any of the Lore or game-story by racing through these areas like demented ferrets either, because we’ve already done everything in these areas several times over, with other characters, like Wynterthyme and Mouselet 🙂
09.15 pm
Back again – yeah, so Jemimah and Xãnthe are doing quite well, and didn’t even die once yesterday! If anything, they’re playing a trifle too well, which is why we’re skipping chunks of areas that we’d normally be methodically questing our way through! In the meantime, nearly all day Saturday, part of last night, and most of today, I’ve been having the same sort of problem with Phoenìx, who, thanks to the Heirloom items I’ve armed her with, is really doing amazingly well! I got her up to level 37 today! 37! I’d more-or-less resigned myself to slogging through all the Ashenvale quests – but when the quests I was doing started getting too low – well, let me put it this way! You wear the Heirloom items to give you a “boost” to the amount of experience (“xp”) you get from killing monsters and finishing quests – in Phoenìx’s case, 20% extra. Right. And the quests and monsters in each area, or “zone”, in the game are linked to a particular character level… so if you level up very quickly, as Phoenìx is – either by doing a lot of Farming, or wearing “experience boosters”, like the Heirloom items – you tend to “out-grow” the area you’re in, and the amount of experience you earn per monster killed or quest completed tends to get less and less, until the quests and monsters turn “grey”, and you stop getting experience points altogether. Which is what happened to Phoenìx this afternoon in Ashenvale. The game itself will “suggest” areas, or zones, that you can go to, and that’s what I had to do with Phoenìx. Ashenvale is supposedly for levels 20 – 25, and I was level 34! The game suggested I go to the Hinterlands, which is for levels 30 – 35, and I’d just got to level 36 when I got my marching orders to go from the Hinterlands to the Western Plaguelands, for levels 35 – 40 – a rather horrible place full of diseased animals, zombies, ghouls, and demons, oh my! 😯 So… wish me luck, because that’s where I’ll be going tomorrow, as it seems that I won’t be seeing my very favourite eldest daughter tomorrow – or at all this week actually – as she has assignments and uni work to do.
Julian ordered a water-testing kit for testing the water in the Fish House, and it arrived this afternoon! He tried it out this evening, and I’m happy to report that the ph level is excellent, the nitrate and nitrite levels are good, but er… the ammonia level is way too high! Well, you know how ammonia stings your eyes? That’s probably why Auric and Dapple kept on going up to the surface – their little eyes must have been smarting, more than a bit! Unfortunately, until the good bacteria in the filters start to grow, the only way to get rid of the ammonia is to… change out about 30% of the water! Which Julian’s just finished doing. He’ll keep monitoring the water closely, so we should be able to keep Auric and Dapple reasonably comfortable until the bacteria are established and the ammonia is no longer a problem.
And now for the interesting bits! 😎
Food stuffz: Last night, being Sunday night, we had omelets for dinner – with bacon, Halloumi cheese, onion and red capsicum, and grated Swiss cheese – and you know? Every week when I have my Sunday Omelet, I seem to always tell him “I reckon it’s one of the best you’ve ever made!” – because it is! 🙂 We both make omelets completely differently, and they both taste wonderful, but mine are much more “fiddly” to make, because I separate the eggs first, and then very gently fold the beaten yolks and whites together, pour it into the frying pan, drop in the other ingredients, and when the base is “golden”, finish it off under a griller, rather than beat it all up together, and fold it over before sliding it out of the pan. For dessert I had one of my Corella pears, and a small tub of low-fat strawberry yoghurt. Today for lunch I had a turkey sandwich, made with the delicious sesame and poppy-seed whole-grain bread, some of the excellent basil-pesto hummus instead of butter, and turkey “sandwich chunks” – simple, but delicious! For dinner tonight I had a beautiful little piece of fillet steak, as usual, cooked to perfection (*preen* I taught Julian how to cook steak properly!) half a Kumato each, green beans, and chips. And for dessert tonight, I had my second last Corella pear (I must remember to add them to the shopping list for tomorrow!) and a small bowl of the yummy Coles-brand, very low-calorie, delicious Rice Pudding.
Weigh-in yesterday morning. Wasn’t good, though probably still within that mysterious “margin of error” – well, I hope so, anyway – that people talk about. I went from 64.4kg to 64.5kg. – up one point… but I was not well pleased…
Weigh-in this morning. Was a bit better – but you can see – there’s just no rhyme nor reason in it! I went from 64.5kg to 64.3kg – down two points! I dunno… it just seems daft to me…
And that brings me to tomorrow! As I mentioned earlier, I’ll not be seeing my very favourite eldest daughter tomorrow, so I’m not really sure what’s happening! Weather permitting (i.e. as long as it isn’t too cold, pouring with rain, snowing, or 50°C in the shade!) it might be nice to go shopping – there’s a few things I want to get… I have to transcribe that recipe from the magazine that wouldn’t let me look at it online, even though I am a subscriber, so it should have, and I also have to make a list of the vegetables we want to plant this winter, like Brussels sprouts, broad beans, carrots, garlic, parsley, peas, and shallots. And after I’ve done all of the above, I’ll probably put Phoenìx through her paces in the horrible and depressing Western Plaguelands, unless I can find somewhere else that caters to levels 35 – 40… Oh what joy! I just went and looked… it seems I have a choice of Dustwallow Marsh 😕 (nope!) Feralas 😐 (nuh-huh!) or the Western Plaguelands 😦 (*sigh*) Each one’s as bad as the other! Oh well… and that, dear readers, is about it from me again for tonight! Two days worth, all rolled into one! Oh, and remember that I told you all that if you were very unlucky, I’d remember to take a screenshot of my Turtle, Spinoso (which means “Thorny” in Italian) and put it on Flickr so you could all see what I meant by “little spiky horns”? Well, guess what! You’re all unlucky, because I did remember! 😮 It’s not a particularly good screenshot, and it’s a bit dark – but you should be able to see what he looks like, I hope! 🙂 So, there you go! anyway, do drop in again tomorrow night – because who knows? I may have taken an even betterer screenshot for you – besides, I’m sure you’ll all be dying to know just exactly what I did get up to, what my weight decided to do to puzzle and confuse me when I got on the scales, and how little Auric and Dapple are getting on in their now diluted and refreshed tank water. Until then, however, please try to bee good, remember that the difference between the impossible and the possible lies in a person’s determination, and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to keep warm and dry in this cold, miserable weather, and to always drive carefully – but most importantly, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂
My Word! 