04.35 pm

Here I am – just about starting on time for a change, after a most productive day! 🙂 I even managed to get Phoenìx up another two levels, to level 51 this afternoon, so how’s that for productive, eh? 😉  This morning I had a look at another couple of Themes/Templates that had been bugging me – remember the one I was telling you about that was so nice, etc., etc., but that I couldn’t get it to display the Header? Yeah, well I did manage to get it to display the Header – more by good luck and accident, than anything else, really! I was fiddling around with backgrounds and colours – vainly trying to find an acceptable way for the Template to display its own icky old text header, as apparently it had decided that it simply wasn’t going to have a bar of mine! Anyway, I got all muddied up in backgrounds that wouldn’t tile properly, colours, and lines where there shouldn’t have been any. It seems that the Template felt that there was a pressing need to underline its own “text header”, and I kept trying to get rid of it, as I didn’t want the header to be underlined, so we ended up having a bit of an argument over that, until I set it back to the “default” background (i.e. plain, boring old white!) Lo and behold, as soon as I’d done that, suddenly, there was my Header, in all its colourful glory! I changed the background colour. My Header vanished. I re-set the default, and bingo – my Header re-appeared! I felt a bit like that part in Winnie the Pooh, where it’s Eeyore’s Birthday, and Pooh has a jar of honey for him, which of course he has to test, to make sure there’s honey all the way down to the bottom of the jar. He ends up eating the whole lot, so all he has left is the empty jar! Meanwhile, back at Piglet’s house, Piglet has a nice blue balloon for Eeyore. He sets out for Eeyore’s place, hurrying anxiously lest he be late. He ends up running, but tripping over and bursting his nice blue balloon that was to be Eeyore’s Birthday present. Long story short, as Pooh and Piglet set out for home after Eeyore’s Birthday Bash, we see Eeyore sitting there with his empty jar and his broken balloon, happily putting the piece of burst balloon into the empty jar, and taking it out again… over and over. It can get quite mesmerising, really – setting the background back to default, and watching my Header appear, then changing the colour of the background, and watching my Header suddenly disappear again… “They” say that “small things amuse small minds”, so I’m not sure how tiny my mind must be, because I must have sat there doing that about half a dozen times! I’d almost got to the point where I was thinking “Damn it all! I like the Template – I’ll just have to put up with everything except the text being [censored] white!” Almost! And then I noticed that the right hand side of the screen looked… a bit… grubby? Well, I did a bit more fiddling around with colours and so forth, and found that the right hand side of the screen wasn’t grubby at all, it was the ruddy Template that had a built-in gradient applied across it, making everything look darker on the right hand side! It was at this point that I threw my hands up in the air in disgust, declared loudly to an empty room that I’d had it up to “here” with this Template, and that I didn’t like it very much, after all! Then I metaphorically stomped off to play WoW!

So, I played WoW for a bit, broke for lunch, then went back to WoW again where I’m trying to organise upgrades for my two remaining Heirloom items, as they’ll stop working at level 60 – only another eight levels to go, now! 🙂  However, I’m very pleased to have managed to get Phoenìx up to level 51 today – at this rate, she may even beat Xãnthe and Jemimah to Draenor, though I doubt it! 😉 Then I came back from WoW to start writing, and decided that there was w-a-y too much blue on this Template, so I quickly (?!) set about choosing new colours, and re-making the Header in the new colours! What do you all think of this new look?

Julian had to go off looking for a new washing machine this afternoon, to replace the – now twelve years old – one that we’d left in our old house in Glen Waverley when my very favourite eldest daughter and her partner moved in – yesterday, after about twelve years of sterling service, it sprang a leak, necessitating a great deal of mopping up, and a replacement machine organised… It will be delivered some time next Tuesday, which means that I’ll not be seeing my very favourite eldest daughter on Tuesday as I usually do, as she’s going to have to be home to take delivery of the new washing machine.

And now, on to the good bits! 😉

Food stuff: Last night we tried out a new recipe – the “Crock-Pot Hawaiian Chicken” that I was telling you about yesterday, remember? Well, it was excellent! It could have perhaps had just a little more lemon juice in it, but the chicken was tender and succulent, and the tinned fruit – pineapple slices and mandarin segments – didn’t make it sweet at all! It’s a definite keeper – Julian is going to laminate the recipe that I printed out, and I’ll transcribe it for you and put in on my “Recipes…” page for all of you, so that you can try it. It’s really terribly easy – the type of “no mess, no fuss” recipe that you can set up in your slow cooker in the morning before you leave for work, and when you get home, all you have to do is cook the rice! So that’s what we had for dinner last night, and there was enough left over to cool, and store in the freezer for a second meal some time next week! 🙂 For dessert I had another Corella pear (oh dear – I only have one left for tonight!) and yet another small bowl of the delicious Coles-brand, very low-calorie Rice Pudding. For lunch today we had wraps – as usual, terribly messy to eat, but scrumptious! The wrap consisted of ham, one of our own home-grown green capsicums, Halloumi cheese, pickled button mushrooms, sun-dried tomato, and our usual butter substitute of basil-pesto hummus. As I said – very “Yumm!” but also very messy… Tonight we’re having Beef, Garlic and Herb sausages, probably with chips (mashed potato would be nice for a change though!) Brussels sprouts, and our usual half a tomato – and I’ll be reprising last night’s dessert of the last of my Corella pears, and a very small bowl of the decidedly yummy Coles-brand, very low-calorie Rice Pudding.

Weigh-in this morning. Once again, better! Surprisingly so! I went from 64.5kg to 64.1kg – down four points today – but I don’t expect that to last – no doubt I’ll be up again like a yo-yo tomorrow! Oh well, at least weight loss and weight maintenance aren’t boring around here! It’s always a surprise in the morning to see what I’ve either gone up to, or come down to – it’s not often even boringly the same for more than a couple of days at a time! I wonder what I’ll be up to tomorrow morning… 😉

Which finally brings me to tomorrow – and for once I can’t say that I have no idea what’s happening, because it’s our WoW-ing Day, or should I perhaps say our “Pandemonium in Pandaria” Day! I’d like to see if we can get ourselves to the “Shrine of Seven Stars” – a very handy Inn in “central Pandaria”, as it has Portals to all the main cities of Azeroth and beyond, so it’s a very good place to Hearth oneself! The trouble is, it’s a bit hard  – not to mention dangerous – to get to, if you haven’t learnt to fly in Pandaria yet – and we haven’t! It’s also exorbitantly expensive to learn to fly in Pandaria! Oh well, we shall see – I have a vague feeling that once Wynterthyme had learnt to fly in Pandaria, when Arisnoë and Sylvänas got there, they found that they were able to fly too – but I might be misremembering! Anyway, whatever happens in Pandaria tomorrow, it’s sure to be entertaining, and fun! And once again, gentle readers, that’s about it from me or this evening! However, do call in again tomorrow night to find out which way my weight decided to bounce, how Auric and Dapple are getting on – Julian tested their tank water earlier, and the Ammonia level is starting to get nicely low, which is excellent news! 🙂 I’ll also be able to let you all know how Xãnthe and Jemimah fared in Pandaria, and whether they can fly there yet (from memory you can’t fly in Pandaria until you’re level 90 – just when you’re leaving for Draenor, which is a real shame!) But until tomorrow night, please do your best to bee good, don’t forget that information is not knowledge, and remember to always drive carefully, to look after yourselves, and to keep warm and dry on these wintry days… but most importantly, please remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂