04.30 pm

Here I am – on time for a change! 🙂 Well, not much at all has been happening today – Julian, as usual, has been busy, but lazy old me has spent most of the day in Hellfire Peninsula, and getting Phoenìx up to level 60! Yes, she hit level 60 just after lunch! And you know, as much as I absolutely hate Hellfire Peninsula, it was all a pretty tame and uneventful leveling up – there weren’t even any of those shudderingly horrible Fell Reavers to scare the life out of me! At one point, I had to “borrow” a bird to fly me over some – whatevers – in order to “bomb them to rubble” (well, that’s what my orders said!) I wasn’t even sure what it was that I was supposed to be bombing, so just to be on the safe side, I bombed everything that looked as though it could possibly be reduced to “rubble”! Anyway, I succeeded – even though I still don’t know what it was I was supposed to be rubbling! And so it went on! I’m sure Blizzard have dumbed things down a bit too much, as I remember it being lots harder when I first did that area, once upon a time, many, many years ago! When I was doing that bombing run today, I wasn’t even level 59, although I was close to it – and I was knocking off level 62 mobs with only about three shots! It was sort-of a matter of “ho-hum!” [bang, bang, bang] you’re dead… Next!”, which one has to admit, wasn’t exactly challenging! As for the Fell Reavers, which used to – and still do – strike terror to my heart – I did see one yesterday morning (and ran for my life!) but I didn’t even hear their “shrieking metal” sound in the distance today! Maybe they’re on “Stomp Holiday”, or something! Have any of you ever seen a bad car accident, and heard the sound of the twisting car metal “shrieking”? (shudder) It’s a most horrible sound! It sounds like the metal is screaming in agony as it gets pulled and twisted by the force of the collision – well, Fell Reavers are about as tall as a three-story building, and that’s the sound they make! They will also pursue you, no matter where you try to run to, in order to stomp you into the nasty rust-red soil of Hellfire Peninsula…

However, now that I’m level 60, and I’ve finally got my “flying licence”, so to speak, I’ll be able to fly out of their way, if any of them heave to over my horizon – and they’re only in Hellfire Peninsula anyway, and I’m not sure how much longer I’ll be there – the game usually moves me on pretty smartly whenever I reach a level “milestone”! I think Zangarmarsh is next… it’s quite a pretty place, really – it is a marsh, as its name suggests, and it’s full of Giant Mushrooms, great, tall, spindly legged creatures that just love to sneak up behind you to clobber you, Ogres, Naga, and all manner of nasty critters whose sole aim in life is ending yours! I quite like Zangarmarsh, actually, and from memory, it’s fairly easy (though if I’m now thinking of Hellfire Peninsula as being “easy”, I’ll probably want to skip Zangarmarsh completely, as being “too easy”! )

Tomorrow I may give Phoenìx a rest, and do a bit of work on my brand new Horde “Dedicated Banker” character, Jadzìa – yes, another Hunter character, just in case I ever decide to play her full-time – she’s currently level 8 – I’d like to get her up to at least level 10, so that she can (a) get a better pet, and (b) have some proper control over said “better pet”! 🙂 But we’ll see… depending on the weather, we may be going off to a Nursery to look for the winter veggies on our “To Plant” list – if Julian is able to harvest the rest of the leeks and capsicums that are still good, so that he can prepare the two beds for this – so far, mythical – winter crop! But anyway, that’s about all the newsworthy news from this end, so I can now get on with the “good bits”! 😉

Food stuffs. Last night we had an extremely early dinner at the Century City Gold Class cinema – “Gold Class Hot Dogs”, which were normal (read: “large”!) sized Saveloys in a sort-of Brioche-type roll, or bun. In case you’re not familiar with the term Brioche, it’s a type of French bread – typically made into small, often plaited, loaves, but just as often it’s made into light, sweet buns or rolls made with eggs, yeast, and butter – so it’s not exactly “slimming fare”, if you get my meaning (but it is delicious!) However while I’ll even go out of my way to have Brioche, I’m usually not all that keen on Saveloys – they tend to be a little on the tough side, especially their “skins”, or casings, and they’re a bit too thick, too – by the time you get a Saveloy into a nice hot-dog bun or roll, I have difficulty biting into them, as they just won’t fit into my mouth! So eating this “Gold Class Hot Dog” that I had was… umm… “interesting”? Firstly, there was nothing wrong or bad about it – it tasted very nice, but as the name implies, it was hot! Not only was it hot, it also had a very artfully drawn wiggly line of extremely nice mayo down its middle – and the Brioche roll was very thick and yeasty – quite delicious, actually. So there you are, reclining in the semi-dark, watching a very good movie – and you’re handed this very large, thick, hot Hot-Dog! Luckily it had been cut in half, otherwise I would have worn it, right down my front! As it was I almost wore it – when I tried to bite into the Saveloy, it immediately decided to dribble out a trickle of boiling water that had been trapped under its skin… thank heavens for the extra-large serviettes that we’d been given! Next, I couldn’t get my mouth past the roll, to actually bite the Saveloy – so I nibbled away most of the roll until I could actually get my teeth into the sausage – which squirted some more hot water at me, and by this time, with my teeth firmly planted in the sausage, I couldn’t disengage them because the sausage skin – or casing – simply wouldn’t tear, break, or give way! The hot water was burning my fingers and my mouth (yes, it was that hot!) my teeth were jammed into titanium-like sausage skin, and interesting things that I wanted to watch were happening on the screen! So, as I said… eating that hot-dog was… interesting! Eventually I did manage to eat one half of it, without having to walk out of the theatre wearing a combination of Saveloy water and tasty mustard coloured mayo – but that’s all I could eat! I was full! Well, I had eaten some popcorn, and I did eat a bit (read: “quite a lot, actually!”) of the lovely, fresh,  warm, Turkish Bread with the dips that we’d had before we went into the theatre – and I had to leave room for dessert, didn’t I! 😉  So for dessert I had the Pear and Pistachio Cake – an average cup-cake size confection with a slightly dry, dense texture (it was hard to cut with the spoon it came with – being an oval, egg-shaped sort of cake, it tended to roll around on the plate more than allow itself be broken into bite size pieces with the spoon) with about half an inch (1.2cm) of very smooth, very sweet frosting on top of it. It was tough going, but in the end I managed to get it all eaten! 😎 😉 For lunch today I had two halves of different savoury rolls from the Baker’s Delight shop up at Vermont South, and another of those oh-so-very-yummy fruit and white chocolate scones. I hope my scales don’t break tomorrow morning! Tonight we’re having pan-fried lamb backstrap, with half a tomato, chips, and steamed beans (or peas?) and I’ll be back to my usual dessert of one of my Corella pears, followed by a small bowl of the delicious Coles-brand, ultra low-calorie Rice Pudding! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. Really surprised me! I was sure I’d be w-a-y over 65kg this time! However I guess that’ll happen tomorrow morning instead, after my lunch today (which was really very yummy!) This morning I went from a disgraceful 64.9kg yesterday, to a very surprising 64.5kg today! Go figure! Down four points! But… it’ll be back up again tomorrow, just you all weight and sea!

Which finally brings me to tomorrow – which I’ve already told you about, and I’m quite sure none of you really wants me to scrape and copy and paste that section again in here? No? Good – I couldn’t be bothered doing that anyway! 😉 The fur-fins are all well – Julian changed out 30% of the Fish House water yesterday, and completely changed over Flipper’s Kitty Litter. He had more or less recovered from his dreaded lurgi, so has gone back to his morning walks and he’s been hard at work all day today, shopping, setting up a new back-up system for our network, etc., etc. *sigh* I told him to start slow and easy, that he wasn’t completely over his dreaded lurgi, but no, no, he was fine, he could cope… now he tells me that I was right (I always am, I might add! Mothers are like that with their kids you know, and it’s the same with their husbands!) and now he feels all flu-y again! *rolls eyes* Maybe he won’t be doing the veggie beds tomorrow, after all, especially if it’s raining! Anyway, that’s about “it” from me again this evening, do drop in again tomorrow night though, and find out how Julian’s feeling, and whether or not he disobeyed me and went veggie-bedding in the rain, whether my weight did go skyrocketing or not, and whatever other adventures and escapades we might have had! But until then, don’t forget to start where you are, use what you have, and do what you can, and remember to always drive carefully, to look after yourselves, and to keep warm and dry in this inclement weather… but most importantly, please – remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

09.51 pm

‘Evenin’ all! 🙂 Yes, I finally made it back to my desk – it’s been a great day, and there’s lots to tell… which, having said that, this’ll probably be a rather short episode tonight, as it’s starting to get very late. I didn’t put up anything last night because by the time I’d had my hair done, and Josh had departed, it was dinner time (more on that later though! 😉 ) and as you all know by now, I really hate having to sit down and write, after a nice dinner and an evening of television – and besides, I wanted to take Xãnthe off to the “baby” Dungeon, Blackfathom Deeps, to get her the same sort of spiny Turtle Pet that Phoenìx has! So, off I trotted – being level 89 I didn’t need an escort, but I did need someone to “jump me over the bridge” to get to the spiny Turtle part. I’m pretty hopeless at jumping – as I think I’ve probably said on more than one occasion – both in real life and in games, so Julian always does the “jumping bits” for me (in games, not in real life!) then off I went again, and there was my Turtle, waiting to be Tamed. This time everything went off without a hitch, and I got my Turtle, Ghamoo-Ra – but wait! This time there was another Turtle in there! A little more “lumpy” and not as “pretty” (if a spiny Turtle could be said to be “pretty”!) as my shiny new spiny Pet, called “Pahboo-Ra, son of Ghamoo-Ra”! Oh my! I had to have him, too! So, crossing all my fingers that I wouldn’t lose my new Turtle in the process, I “Dismissed” him (i.e. I sent him off to play on his own for a bit) and set about Taming his son! I accomplished that with no problems, and hastily Hearthed, to find the nearest Stable Master so that I could put them all in a nice comfy stall, and just choose one of them to be my “Pet du jour”, so to speak. So at the moment, Xãnthe is playing with the lumpy one… but I think next time I take Xãnthe out, I’ll switch to his spiny “Daddy”, because he looks nicer… So that’s what I did last night, instead of writing a blog!

This morning I mucked around taking Phoenìx from the Blasted Lands, into Hell Fire Peninsula (another one of my most un-favourite spots!) and dragging her up another couple of levels to level 58. It was a bit of a muddle this morning though, and I found it a trifle hard to concentrate on what I was doing – we were going to see the movie “Warcraft” this afternoon, but we had to leave early, as we’d had a phone call from our old “back-door neighbour” (currently my favourite eldest daughter and her husband’s “back-door” neighbour!) She was concerned that there’s been some earth movement occurring around her garage, and she wondered if Julian could have a look at it for her, as she’s on her own. We said we’d pop in and have a look for her today, on our way to the movie (which was at Century City Gold Class) so she left her keys with my favourite eldest daughter, and we went over before the movie to see if we could spot the problem. Luckily the problem was fairly easy to spot – it wasn’t earth subsidence or anything so drastic, it was simply that the garage’s plaster-board ceiling, which hadn’t been put in properly, had half fallen off onto the garage door, preventing it from opening properly. Julian had another chat with her this evening – apparently she was very much relieved to find that it was nothing major – and Julian will look for a Plasterer for her on the morrow. Of course, by the time Julian had looked at the problem, removed the broken piece of plaster so that she could open the garage door again, and we’d gone on to the cinema, we were nearly an hour early! In hindsight, we should probably have descended upon my favourite eldest daughter’s doorstep, seeing we were right there at the time, demanding a cup of coffee, but – ain’t hindsight wonderful? We didn’t think of it at the time! (*rolls eyes!*) We arrived upstairs at the Gold Class cafe-bar-thingy, and ordered some assorted dips with Turkish Bread, and some drinks while we were waiting for the movie to start at 3.30 pm… Our cunning plan had been that we’d have an early lunch at home, head off to look at this garage business, go on to the movie where we’d order an early dinner to be served about half way through the show – and then not have anything when we got home, apart from a cup of coffee. It sounded like a good plan at the time, anyway. Then Julian remembered that he’d been using the Hot Glue Gun this morning, and hadn’t turned it off. Ooops! So, after having ordered the dips with the Turkish Bread, and the drinks, off he raced to save the house from becoming a pile of ash and embers, leaving me to sit there – alone with my Kindle (I never leave home without it! One never knows when one is going to be left sitting all alone with nothing but one’s thumbs to twiddle… and a rather large platter of four different dips, and some extremely delicious, fresh-baked-and-still-warm-from-the-oven, Turkish Bread!) Naturally I drank my by then only warm drink… and of course, I did nibble – just a little bit (well, maybe about half of it) on the fresh-baked-and-still-warm-from-the-oven, Turkish Bread. Julian got back with about five minutes to spare, glubbed down his drink, ate what was left of the “snack”, and grabbed some popcorn before we went in to see this much-anticipated show…

Well… What can I say! It. Was. Brilliant! When I read the rather disparaging revue of “Warcraft” in The Age after it had opened, my first impression, just from the way the reporter wrote, was that he (or she) knew absolutely nothing whatsoever about Blizzard, “Warcraft” (and “World of Warcraft”) or even the ruddy genre! (to quote a semi-famous line: “You know noothing, reporter-type-Snow!”) About the only thing that I had a bit of trouble with were the oh-so terribly obviously fake teeny-weeny little fangs/tusks of the rather gorgeous could-have-been-a-great-romantic-lead Orc girl – but alas – this wasn’t “Game of Thrones”, and there was no hanky-panky at all in the movie – well, maybe a small amount of implied hanky-panky, except that I think our rather good-looking hero was a bit too under the weather to have been up for it. The movie had maybe a bit of a shaky start – if you weren’t familiar with the story-line, you might have been a bit confused at first, but it was pretty easy to work out, even if you’d never heard of Blizzard, and “World of Warcraft”, the game! But you know what I thought was the best thing about the movie? It filled you in on so much of the back-story and Lore! So many of the familiar names from the game appeared in this movie, but where the game itself never really explains exactly who they were, or their raison d’être, or why they were either loved or hated so much – this movie did! On a scale of one to ten, with one being “very poor”, and ten being “fantastic!” – I’d rate it at eleven! Dearest favourite eldest daughter – if you’re reading this, go and see “Warcraft” – I can guarantee that you’ll really regret it if you miss out! The scenery was great, they created Stormwind, Ironforge, Menethal, and the Swamp of Sorrows almost exactly like the game – only looking real, instead of cartoonish! Fabulous! And the Griffin (bird) and Wolf mounts – spectacular! (I want one of those Griffin mounts, in real life!) Honestly, it was a really great movie, and we both loved it! When it’s available on DVD, I want to get it!

So, now on to the good bits! 🙂

Food stuff. Last night for dinner we had the last of the left-over “Slow Cooker Hawaiian Chicken” – the one with the pineapple slices and mandarin segments that we had the other night – on steamed rice – and again, it was probably nicer the second time around, as the fruit flavours had mingled into everything a lot more! Another definite “keeper” – I’ll try to get the recipe for this, and the Chicken and Leek one, up on my “Recipes…” page as soon as possible. For dessert I had one of my Corella pears, and a small bowl of the excellent, Coles-brand, very low-calorie Rice Pudding. Today for our early lunch we had really delicious sandwiches, made with the very tasty whole-meal bread with the sesame seed crust, sliced corned beef, cheddar cheese, some rather nice red-pepper chutney, and our usual favourite butter alternative, basil-pesto hummus. At the cinema, we started out with the platter of four different dips – guacamole, beetroot, hummus, and tzatziki (I think that’s how you spell it!) and the ultra-nice fresh-baked-and-still-warm-from-the-oven Turkish Bread, and I had a Hot Chocolate, made with skinny milk. For our ultra-early dinner during the movie, I had a – I think it was called a “Gold Class Hot Dog”, or something – which was a normal sized (i.e. fairly large!) Saveloy sausage, with the thickest, toughest skin I’ve ever had to try to bite through – hey! Maybe it was Orc skin! you couldn’t tell what colour it was in the darkened cinema! (I ended up nearly wearing the damn thing, trying to bite through it!) It had a thin squiggle of rather nice mayo squirted across the top of it, and it came in a sweet-ish hot-dog roll. I could only eat half, there was so much of it (plus the fact that I was rather wary of this strangely sweet roll, and I’m not overly fond of saveloys anyway) For dessert I had a “pear and pecan cake” – it was about the size and shape of your ordinary or garden-variety cup-cake, with a pile of very yummy icing on the top – so lord knows what the scales are going to tell me tomorrow morning! Probably something along the lines of “don’t eat dinner at Gold Class cinemas, ever, ever again!” – but hey! Ya gotta live! 🙂 Oh, and we did have a cup of coffee with dinner, too – I had a long black, with my obligatory tiny jug of skinny milk to put in it – only it came in first, before the hot dog thingy – and of course, it had a delicious Lindt chocolate ball on the saucer, which I had to rescue from becoming melted! But as we normally have one chocolate each after dinner at night, we just went without when we got home and had our “proper” coffee! 😀

Weigh-in yesterday morning. Was really good! In fact, I couldn’t believe my eyes! I went from 64.8kg to 64.3kg! Wow! Amazing! And then…

Weigh-in this morning. Were the scales trying to tell me something? Were they warning me, perhaps? I was aghast! Crushed! Humiliated! (well, not humiliated, perhaps, but certainly downcast!) I went from my brilliant 64.3kg…. to (Gasp! Shock! Horror!) 64.9kg! And I hadn’t even sighted a piece of popcorn yet! So… you can see why I’m more than a trifle worried about the message the scales are going to give me tomorrow morning! If you never hear from me again, it’ll be because I’ve died of fright when I clamber onto the scales in the morning!

And that, gentle readers, is finally “it” from me for tonight – or should I say this morning! It’s a quarter after midnight… so I shall leave you all with the news that Flipper, Auric and Dapple are all well, I have no idea what we’ll be doing tomorrow – I mean today, but please do drop in again this evening to see what happened with my weight (I really dread to think!) and what we got up to for the rest of the day. Until then though, do try to bee good, remember that the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing, and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm and dry on these cold, blustery days… but above all, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂