Winter’s log, earthdate 201606.21

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! 🙂