Winter’s log, earthdate 201606.08

05.27 pm

Well, I finally thought I had it! A Theme/Template that I could live with, at least for a week or so! I finally managed to go through every single free Template on Word Press – I have no idea just how many there were, but I went through all of them – it’s only taken me two and ¾ days… and as I said – I thought I finally had a “keeper”… Out of several hundred free Templates, I only found seven that I thought were more-or-less what I wanted (who, me? Picky? What ever gave you a silly idea like that, eh?! 😉 ) This one – for some reason that escapes me right at this particular moment – was at the top of my meager list… I made so many headers that in the end I couldn’t remember which one was for which Template – luckily I used the same basic colours on most of them, and all I really had to do was change the dimensions – however, in the end I chose this one. It looked just right! So I finished it off, and hit the “Save and Publish” button, and guess what! All of a sudden, and without prior warning, a wretched damned Widget Sidebar sprang out of the woodwork and attached itself to my oh-so-carefully prepared Template! Arrgghh! I thought I’d weeded out all the ones with damned Sidebars! Well, apparently – and very obviously – not, because this Template is sporting one! 😡 So here’s a question for all you people out there in Reader Land – and I’m being perfectly serious about this – out of the following choices, which would you all prefer:

(a) a Sidebar on the right, with all the usual options, like Archives, a Calendar, a “follow my blog” button, and all the rest of it?

(b) a Sidebar on the left, with all the usual options, like Archives, a Calendar, a “follow my blog” button, and all the rest of it?

(c) a Sidebar as a Footer, right at the bottom of the blog posts, with all the usual options, like Archives, a Calendar, a “follow my blog” button, and all the rest of it?

(d) no Sidebar at all – you never look at them anyway!

Personally, I never look at them – I suppose I might look for a “Follow my blog” button, if I really liked it, and thought it was worth going back to. The thing is, I’ll put Widgets in if you, the Readers, really want them – otherwise I’ll just not bother with them. Unfortunately an awful lot of Templates (about 86%? especially of the older Templates) absolutely refuse to let you wriggle out of using those ruddy Widgets, and actually insert them into the CSS* of the Template! It really makes my blood boil! Why do something like that? It’s not as though the use of any of these Widgets is going to benefit the creator of a free Template/Theme in any way, shape or form – so why force people into having them when – in my opinion, anyway – they completely spoil the aesthetics of the Template, and subtract from the possible width of the text column!? Oh well… I guess it’s “back to the drawing board” for me again tomorrow!

As it turns out, we didn’t go off to have my Warfarin blood test done today, after all! We received an SMS from a very good friend of ours who lives in Melton – would we be home today because his partner is starting a new job tomorrow and he might not be able to get down to Melbourne again for a long time. I kid you not – if Steve said he was coming down to see us, I’d cancel an appointment to meet all the stars of “Game of Thrones”, or an afternoon tea with Her Majesty the Queen – or both – to be here when he arrived! 🙂 So we stayed home, and he duly arrived, and we all sat around and talked and caught up with eachother until he had to go. We’re really going to have to get off our not quite so fat backsides anymore and work out some way of catching up with eachother more often – once or twice a year doesn’t really cut it, I’m afraid! Anyway, we shall sally forth tomorrow to have my Warfarin blood test done, and then go on to either look at side tables (no, we haven’t measured, or tried re-arranging the chairs yet! What do you all think we are? Organised and efficient, or something?! 😉 ) or go and talk to a decent Nursery about water plants for the – now clean – ex-fish puddle in the front yard, and a nice large-ish fig tree for the back yard. We also have to organise all the vegetables we want to plant before it’s summer again!

And now we can move on to all the good bits! 🙂

Food stuffs: last night Julian made another of those Lamb and Harissa Lasagne thingies for dinner – and oh, it was sooo nice! I know it sounds as though there’s an awful lot of Harissa in it – and Harissa is well known for its spiciness – but it isn’t! Even my very favourite eldest daughter, who’s not too keen on spicy foods, said that it was just enough to give it a bit of a “kick” – and the “white sauce” made with ricotta, feta cheese, and skinny milk, is just to die for! Stick them all together in a baking dish with lasagne sheets, and you have a dish fit for an Emperor! What’s more, Julian chilled the leftovers, carved it up into individual serves, bagged and vacuum-sealed each serve, and put them all in the freezer for ‘ron – so we have enough vacuum packed plastic bags of left-over Lamb and Harissa Lasagne to give us at least another three meals of it! For dessert I had a Corella pear and a small bowl of the delightful Coles-brand, very low-calorie Rice Pudding. Today for lunch we all had wraps, with sandwich sliced roast beef, semi-dried tomatoes, roughly chopped home-grown spring onions, Halloumi cheese, and the usual butter substitute of basil-pesto hummus. Dinner tonight will be more of the Heston Blumenthal very delicious pork and sage sausages, with chips (I think) and the very, very last of our home-grown green beans, and our usual half a tomato. Dessert is most likely going to be a reprise of last night’s – a Corella pear and a small bowl of the delicious Coles-brand, very low-calorie Rice Pudding.

Weigh-in this morning. Wasn’t too bad, considering! I went from 64.6kg to 64.7kg – I only went up one point, so that was very good! But knowing me, I’ll probably go up another half a kilo tomorrow morning – I mean I devoutly hope that I don’t, but if there’s one thing I’ve learnt since last August, when I started out on my Optifast journey, it’s that this body of mine will do exactly whatever it feels like doing, whenever it feels like doing it, and there’s not a single, solitary thing that I, or anyone else, can do about it! 😛

And once again that brings me to tomorrow – when we will go off to have my Warfarin blood test done, and do a bit of shopping, here and there along the way, and with a great deal of luck, I might even get to log into World of Warcraft again, to at least check my ruddy Auctions! (not that I think I’ve sold anything though! 😉 ) Julian gave himself a bit of a break this evening by swapping out Auric and Dapple’s water this afternoon instead – both the little finnies seem well and energetic, and hopefully Auric won’t have another attack of the “floaties”, even a mild one! Flipper is getting more and more vague every day, but she’s quite happy in her own little foggy world, as long as she gets to snuggle up between us on the bed every night, and gets plenty of Daddy Pats during the day – and that, dear Readers, is once again about “it” from me for this evening! Please give some thought to the Sidebar conundrum, and let me know what you all want, and do drop in again tomorrow night to see how my weight went, if I have the results of the Warfarin blood test back, and what they were, and whether I managed to get any WoW-ing in during the day! Until tomorrow evening though, please continue to bee good, remember that the two most powerful warriors in life are patience and time, and don’t forget to always drive carefully, to keep warm and dry in all this wintry weather, and to look after yourselves – but most importantly, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

*CSS = a “Cascading Style Sheet” – which is a type of program that defines the elements within the Template, and how they work, or interact with the user.