05.23 pm

Well, ’tis Sunday evening, and Xãnthe and Jemimah have had a rip-roarin’ day prancing around Pandaria! We did die a couple of times (I only died twice, but Julian/Jemimah died three times) and at least two of those deaths were due to “Player Stupidity”, like when we were trundling along in Julian/Jemimah’s very cute little motorbike, and I thought we were getting just a bit too close to the edge of a very, very high cliff! I half turned to Julian as I said with some small amount of alarm: “Careful not to get too close to the… Aaaarrrggghhh!!”, as we executed a lazily graceful swallow dive over the rocks – and plummeted to our doom! And there was silly me, thinking that surely he must have out-grown his propensity for doing “Demelzas*” by now! 😉 😀

However, we did go up two levels, we’re level 89 now, and only one more level away from flying! Well, actually, half a level, in my case, coz I’m just this much <-> away from half way through the level! 🙂 Once again, we’d just settled in for a good long slog through Pandaria, when we leveled the second time this afternoon, and got our little “exclamation mark” down on our Action Bar, “notifying” us that we were “needed elsewhere” – so what else could we do? (apologetic shrug to the Pandarians who were relying on us to save their collective bacons!) Remind me to Abandon all those old quests please, Julian! While we were dusting down this afternoon, I realised that (a) Xãnthe has picked up quite a lot of rather nice “Bind on Equip” cloth or leather gear that she can’t use (she wears Mail gear now) and which she’d like to see if she can sell on the Auction House, however, (b) Now that they’re Hearthed in Pandaria, it means two trips each way to get to, and back from, the Auction House, which because of the Portals in Pandaria (doesn’t that have a nice ring to it! 🙂 “Portals in Pandaria” – It almost sounds good enough to be a movie or a song title, or the title of a Best Selling novel!) …isn’t all that hard… but it is a hassle, especially when you’re in the middle of a complicated quest chain, so you can’t really spend the time to go back to Orgrimmar, but your bags are getting full, and your bank is full! It’s much more easier to just mail it all to a specialist “Banker” character, whom you’ve created expressly for such a purpose, right? Which brings me to (c) I have three other Horde characters on Quel’Dorei that I could use as a specialist Banker – two Blood Elves and a Goblin. One of the two Blood Elves is sort-of a “name place holder” for a Gnome Hunter, on August 30th, when the new Expansion goes live (i.e. I’ve created a temporary character, “holding” the name I want to use for my little Gnome Hunter – so that no-one else can sneak in ahead of me and grab the name – and no, I can’t tell you what that name is – yet! 😉 ) I’m debating with myself whether or not to keep the Goblin character, and all three of them are only about level 4 or 5 – so I guess I have some tough decisions ahead of me! I either compel Xãnthe to go all the way back to Orgrimmar to sell stuff on the Auction House all the time, even when it’s totally inconvenient, or use one of the three remaining Horde characters as a Banker, in which case whoever I choose will have to be all set up for it, with a lot of very big and expen$ive bags, money… and a nice, comfortable place to call home! *sigh* Decisions, decisions… Oh well, I’m sure it’ll be all right on the night, or whatever! 😉

Anyway, that was about all we did today – we slept in maybe even a bit later than we usually do on a Sunday, thanks to the fuddled state our brains were in last night with this miserable lurgi. This morning, Julian couldn’t find his mobile, and in the end he had to ring it, to find out where it was! And guess what! Somehow, in his lurgi-induced befuddlement, he’d managed to “swap” it for my phone! My phone was shivering on his desk, and his phone was happily keeping warm in my handbag! So anyway, I guess it’s now time for me to get to the good bits!

Food stuff. Last night we had the last of the left-over Lamb and Harissa Lasagne that we had in the freezer – and once again, it was absolutely delicious! Every time we’ve had that (and the three extra “left-over” meals that it gives us!) I find myself swallowing the last mouthful and wondering how long I should wait before asking Julian to make it again! For dessert I had one of my Corella pears, but I couldn’t have my usual, delicious Coles-brand, very low-calorie Rice Pudding, because there wasn’t any left – I had to rough it was a small tub of low-fat strawberry yoghurt! At lunch time today Julian discovered that he didn’t have anything suitable for my lunch! He could have smoked salmon, but I’m allergic to anything that lives and breathes in either fresh or salt water – so he had to go up the street early, and not only did he bring home things for lunch, but he also brought home some more of my very, very favourite Coles-brand, very low-calorie Rice Pudding, so that I’d have some for tonight! He’s very thoughtful like that… 🙂 Anyway, for lunch we had wraps, with the lovely basil-pesto hummus butter substitute, corned beef, cucumber, Halloumi cheese, and a nice little green capsicum that had been picked, brought in and washed, mere seconds before it went into the wrap! Now, you can’t get much fresher than that! 🙂 Dinner tonight of course will be an omelet – I’m not sure what’ll be in it – but at a guess, Halloumi cheese, capsicum, leeks or spring onion from the garden, and I believe, some of the diced up corned beef! I don’t think I’ve ever had corned beef in an omelet before, but it was very tasty in the wrap, so I expect that it’ll be just as nice in the omelet! I’ll let you know… And of course I’ll have one of my Corella pears and a small bowl of my delicious Coles-brand, very low-calorie Rice Pudding for dessert! 🙂 Oh, here’s a “P.S.” regarding the omelet for dinner tonight, with the corned beef in it… All I can say is – people should use corned beef in omelets much more often! It was terrific! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. Wasn’t the best, but it’s hardly surprising, I suppose – (Winter puts on a posh voice with a plummy accent) “We shall hope for better things on the morrow!” (and exits stage left with her nose in the air) The scales must have decided that they’d got it right the first time, yesterday, and then erred on the side of caution and got it wrong, because this morning they went very quickly and deliberately up a point, from 64.7kg to 64.8kg. Oh, the shame of it all! 😳 I hope it’ll start going down again soon

So there it is – “our Sunday” – and a good day it was too! Auric and Dapple are doing well (so far so good, regarding Auric’s floaties!) Flipper seems to be teaching herself new tricks all the time – she’s now experimenting with walking across the new lounge suite – up onto the first armchair, then across a small table to the first two-seater couch where Julian usually sits, then across a narrow gap to my arm-chair… but she hasn’t quite got the hang of getting from my arm-chair to the second two-seater couch, because the gap’s just a bit too wide for her old bones to make the jump – or so she thinks at the moment. Eventually she’ll work out that if she can jump up onto our bed, she can jump from my arm-chair to the couch. 🙂 Who knows what she’ll be doing tomorrow! 😉 And that, I’m afraid, is about it from me for this evening! Do call in again tomorrow night though, and find out if Flipper has worked out how to get from my chair to the two-seater couch, what my weight shot up to in the morning (oh pretty please! Don’t let it be more than half a kilo – in fact, please don’t let it be more than two points!) and what other excitement and adventures we had during the course of the day. But until then, please try extra hard to bee good, remember that time is nature’s way of keeping everything from happening at once, and don’t forget to always drive carefully, to keep warm and dry, no matter how cold and wet it is, and to look after yourselves… but most importantly, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

 *“doing a Demelza” – generally means inexplicably falling from a great height – usually fatally – Julian does it a lot…

03.54 pm

Well, here I am at last – once again, apologies for yesterday – we went over to Doncaster, even though Julian was feeling like death warmed up, and to be honest, I wasn’t feeling all that much better! But… we needed to get coffee, or else go without our favourite blend… and I think we’d both prefer to walk barefooted over an acre of broken glass, than to do without our favourite caffeine fix! The Dry Cleaning had to be picked up too, so moaning and groaning, we bundled ourselves into the car, and off we went… Oh, and in case any of you are wondering why I went along too, if I was really feeling so poorly… well, Julian must have been feeling bad enough that he felt he needed the moral support (he was a lot sicker than I was then) and he told me that it would “do me good to get out of the house!” – we could have lunch over at Doncaster, and I’d get to see the newly re-furbished Priceline shop (it’s been “under re-construction” for weeks, and I’ve been dying to see their new lay-out!) so, I tottered into the bathroom and put on some makeup, struggled into my torture devices shoes, and staggered out to the car. Well, we were out a hell of a lot longer than we’d thought we’d be, or had planned on, and by the time we got home, around 3.45 pm. – about thirty minutes before I should have started writing – I was so totally exhausted and dejected that I just couldn’t write. Normally the first thing we do when we get back from shopping trips like that one is have a cup of coffee, but yesterday afternoon we were both so completely spent that neither of us had enough energy to go into the kitchen and make two measly little cups of ruddy coffee! Talk about an acre of broken glass! Anyway, I was too bushed to write anything yesterday, and you know what?! You’re lucky to be getting this today, because I think you could now say that I have Officially contracted Julian’s dreaded lurgi! To quote my very favourite youngest daughter, when she gets ill, “I-feel-like-a-duck-that-is-dying!” 😦 But we must have done quite a bit of running around over at Doncaster – I know we went to lots of different places, and I was doing a lot of just “standing around”, which really aggravates my lower back – because this morning on the treadmill, I was getting pains in my lower spine! That has never happened on the treadmill before! Sure, the blisters on my feet hurt on the treadmill, my arms ache a lot on the treadmill, and even my arthriticky fingers holding the treadmill’s handles ache, but never my lower spine! That usually reserves itself for when I’m, ahh… free-walking – around a shopping centre with nothing to hang onto like I do on the treadmill, if you see what I mean… Oh well, we’ll see how it goes tomorrow – it’s probably all just part and parcel of this dreaded lurgi of Julian’s that I’ve caught, and I’ll be better tomorrow! 🙂 One thing though, while I was meandering around the new and improved Priceline (and it is very much a “new and improved” Priceline, too!) a nice young woman bounced up to me and said “Oh, I love your hair! It’s a fantastic colour and it looks fabulous! I’m a hairdresser, you see, and I keep an eye out for good hair!”, and with a friendly wave of her hand, she bounced off again! It left me smiling 🙂 So Josh, if you’re reading this, your work is still being noticed and admired,  wherever I go – and I won’t even charge you commission for being a walking advertisement for you! 😉 (but maybe you should get some business cards made up!)

Today has been pretty much a nothing sort of day – neither of us felt like taking Xãnthe and Jemimah out – our brains were too fuzzy for that, though we both played a bit of half-hearted WoW – and I got Phoenìx up another couple of levels, and I went and wrote down every single character in the Wynterthyme Account, and every single character on the Tinselfluff Account, and I’ve been putting them in a big chart. I’m not exactly sure why I’m doing this – I delete and create characters pretty much at the drop of a hat – but this time I really want to keep track of how many character each Account has – you’re allowed 50 characters per account – and the Wynterthyme account is going to need at least one or two character slots for when the new Expansion goes live, in August or September, I think – because for the first time you’ll be able to create Gnome Hunters, and I want to make a couple! 🙂 At the moment, the Wynterthyme Account has 44 characters in total, and the Tinselfluff Account has 19 characters, so unless I go completely overboard with character creation between now and when the Expansion goes live, I should have plenty of room to create a couple of Gnomish Hunters! 🙂

And that’s really about all that’s happened to us over the last couple of days, so I can now get on to all the “good bits”! 😉

Food stuff: yesterday we had lunch at the Shingle Inn in Doncaster – it seems to have changed hands, but the food is still as good as it was the last time we were there. I had my usual BLT on Sourdough, but instead of my usual two small éclair-type thingies, I had a chocolate and caramel slice – the same sort as Julian had when we ate at the Shingle Inn at The Glen the other day – and it was really, really delicious! Last night for dinner we had some more of the Three Island Beef sausages, with chips, our usual half a tomato, and peas! Peas! We haven’t had peas for (quite literally!) years! Too much starch/carbohydrate in them, or something… And for dessert, I had my usual – a Corella pear, and a small bowl of that really divine Coles-brand, very low-calorie, Rice Pudding. Today for lunch we had another sandwich made with the very tasty whole-meal bread, this time with real butter (instead of our usual butter substitute of basil-pesto hummus) some very nice sliced sandwich ham, tomato, and cheddar cheese – all very nice indeed! Tonight we’re having the last of the frozen left-over Lamb and Harissa Lasagne, as Julian’s feeling too debilitated to want to stand around messing up the stove, and cooking a proper meat and three veg. dinner – and the Lamb and Harissa Lasagne suits me just fine too, as I feel too debilitated to sit around eating a proper meat and three veg. dinner! And for dessert, I’ll have another of my Corella pears, but I won’t be able to have my usual Coles-brand, very low-calorie, scrumptious Rice Pudding, as I ate the last of it last night 😥 and I’ll have to rough it with a small tub of low-fat yoghurt instead! 😥 Hopefully we’ll be well enough to rectify that situation by tomorrow! 😉

Weigh-in yesterday morning. Well, it could have been worse, I suppose… I have been doing a lot of “eating out”, so to speak… I went from 64.6kg to 64.7kg. Up one point… and, after yesterday at Doncaster…

Weigh-in this morning. Was a bit surprising, for two reasons! The first being, of course, that I had the BLT on Sourdough, which was cut fairly large, actually, and then I had that yummy chocolate and caramel slice, which was just the way I like my slices – thick, and gooey, and rich! And then I had sausages and chips and peas for dinner! The second surprising thing this morning was that when I got on the scales, fully expecting to have gone up at least about half a kilo, they dithered around a bit, as though they couldn’t make up their mind about how harshly to judge my gluttony of the day before, and they finally settled on… 64.8kg. I was a bit surprised – I thought that I would have gone up more than just one point, and I was just about to hop off the scales, when all of a sudden, they suddenly changed their mind and went… back to 64.7kg, the same as yesterday! I clambered off, and then hopped back on again. This time they went straight to 64.7kg, with no dithering or shilly-shallying – so it was either this dreaded lurgi of Julian’s that melted the poundage off the big lunch that I’d eaten, or it was all the walking and standing about that wrecked my back yesterday that kept the poundage off! Hey! Maybe that’s the secret to weight loss, and I should do a bit more walking and standing about, and making my back hurt abominably! 😉 Anyway, this morning I was boring again, and went from 64.7kg to 64.7kg, so that’s good, isn’t it! 🙂

There’s really not all that much to tell you – Julian has managed to get us tickets to go and see the Warcraft movie next Tuesday at 3.30 pm at Century City Gold Class, which I’m really looking forward to, Flipper has been sulking down at the foot of the bed, instead of up between our heads, for reasons known only to her dear little self, 30% of the Fish House water was changed over this afternoon, and Auric and Dapple seem fine. Julian and I aren’t fine – but I’m quite sure we’ll both be all better by tomorrow – and that’s about it from me again for this evening! Do call in again tomorrow night to see what we’ve been up to, and whether or not we were well enough to have our usual Sunday in Draenor, or Azeroth, or wherever, if my weight went up or down or stayed the same (heaven forbid!) and what other adventures, if any, that we found ourselves embroiled in – but until then, please do try very hard to bee good, remember that freedom is not overcoming what you think stands in your way, it is understanding that what is in your way is part of the way… and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm and dry, especially in this ultra changeable weather… but above all… please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

05.36 pm

Julian has just taken off to drive my very favourite eldest daughter home, and I’m just sitting down to fill you all in of what’s been happening around this neck of the woods today. Julian spotted something this morning that neither of us have seen since we’ve been here (since last August!) unfortunately, I was on the treadmill at the time – and I think Flipper was probably still asleep on the bed, but Julian saw a very large, very fluffy, grey cat, prowling around our back deck! Imagine! the absolute gall of the creature! Parading around on our back deck, completely uninvited! Or maybe it was… Flipper has become a lot more “vocal” lately, sometimes almost to the point of yowling non-stop, especially when Julian’s not around! But Flipper is 22 years old – almost 23 years old now – very arthritic-y and crotchety, and very occasionally, seems to suffer from what could only be described as a mild form of feline Alzheimer’s – so I very much doubt that she’s “calling” for a mate! However, this large, strange, fluffy cat may have come to investigate what all the noise was about, or perhaps it just “misunderstood” Flipper’s message – if there even was a message in her caterwauling to be misunderstood! We don’t even know if it’s male, female, or neuter, so  next time – if there is a next time – I’ll ask Julian to call me before it disappears over the back fence, so that I can see what it looks like… I certainly hope that this large, strange, fluffy cat hasn’t come a-callin’ in response to Flipper’s rather loud “Where’s my Daddy!” yowls, every time he leaves the house!

Before my favourite eldest daughter arrived this morning, once again I went mooching through the Themes and Templates again, just picking things at random as I went through, looking for I don’t-really-know-what – and found this one! Unfortunately, it does have a Widget Sidebar, more’s the pity, but I decided to try it anyway. If anything, I think I like this background better than the other, much more “Art Deco” one that I used last night – what do you all think? This time I promise that I’ll try to just stick with this one for a few days at least, instead of rushing off and changing it at the very first opportunity!

As my very favourite eldest daughter was over today, we rather quickly repaired to the lounge room to watch “Orphan Black” which we only had one episode of, unfortunately, and then we started on a new show – one that’s apparently based on a comic book, called “Wynonna Earp” (yup, a direct descendant of the (in)famous Wyatt Earp!) We watched about four episodes, and I think it’ll be a show that the actors will settle into, as they go along. As with all shows of this ilk, it’s terribly far-fetched, and requires an enormous amount of “suspension of belief” – but hey! We watch shows like this for entertainment, don’t we, and not as “just another Reality show” (which I reckon are also pretty hard to take as being in any way shape or form “real”, or as being even vaguely “realistic”!) So, sit back, enjoy the ride, and prepare to be “Entertained”, with a capital “E” – and don’t look for realism, logic, or seriousness! 🙂 After lunch we watched two episodes of “Person of Interest” with Julian – it’s getting very close now to the “showdown” between the two machines, and the final dénouement, and I must say that I’ll be very sad to see the show finish – I’ve enjoyed it very much, despite it’s complete implausibility! 🙂 We should have another “Orphan Black” episode by next week – I hope we do, anyway – and of course we have tons of “Arrow”, “Flash”, and “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D” if we run out of the others! 😉

And seeing as that’s about all that happened here today, I can now get on to the “good bits”!

Food stuff. Last night we had a really dee-licious piece of Three Island fillet steak – Julian doesn’t think it’s as nice as the King Island steak, but I think it’s definitely on a par with it! I honestly don’t think we could have had a nicer piece of steak, last night! With it we had our usual half a tomato, chips, and some very nice Brussels sprouts, just as an “And now for something completely different” occasion. For dessert I had my usual – one of my Corella pears, and a small bowl full of my favourite Coles-brand, very low-calorie, delicious Rice Pudding. For lunch today I had a sandwich made with some very tasty whole-meal bread, our favourite butter substitute, the basil-pesto hummus, and some rather nice BBQ chicken sandwich chunks. Really nice… For dinner tonight, as Julian’s still feeling very seedy with this dreaded lurgi, we’re having the left-over chicken and leek “bake” that we had the other night, with steamed rice. And once again, I’ll have my usual Corella pear, and small bowl of delicious, Coles-brand, very low-calorie, Rice Pudding for dessert.

Weigh-in this morning. Could have been worse, I suppose – though it’ll probably be up even higher tomorrow! I went from 64.4kg to 64.6kg – up two points, though dare I say it? Still within the “margin of error”. Tomorrow it’ll be a bit higher, as I’ve really just “lazed the day away” in front of the television! But, “Say lar Vee”, as the French are wont to say! 😉

And that brings me to tomorrow, as the fur-fin kids are all well – Flipper is walking up and down the corridor complaining to anyone who’ll listen (let’s hope that the large, fluffy, grey cat is scoffing his dinner in his own kitchen or laundry, and can’t hear her over the noise of his chomping!) Julian changed out 30% of the Fish House water last night, and I gave Auric and Dapple their dinner before I came in here to write this evening, so all’s well in Winter’s household! And that’s about it from me again for this evening – as I said earlier, not much has happened here today for me to be able to tell you all about! Do drop in again tomorrow night though, to find out what my weight skyrocketed up to, whether I managed to actually log into WoW for a change, and what else has been going on chez nous! Until then though, please try really hard to bee good, remember that while not everything that is faced can be changed, nothing can be changed until it is faced, and don’t forget to always drive carefully, to keep warm and dry in this nasty cold weather, and to look after yourselves… but above all, please, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

04.20 pm

Here I am – sorry about yesterday, but Josh was a bit late due to finding a nail in one of his tyres, and dinner was a bit late due to a slight altercation over a recipe – and by the time we’d had dinner and what-not, it was too late for me to start writing! What do you think of this background, by the way? I’ve been absolutely itching to find a use for it ever since I found it! (it’s one of Word Press’s backgrounds) It’s so “Art Deco”, but I didn’t know how it would go with a great big solid header over it, and it was too busy and colourful to just write over – and then I thought… I could try making an invisible background! I don’t often make invisible backgrounds because – and I hate to have to admit this – but I occasionally hold my mouth the wrong way when I’m saving them, and they end up not working. This time, it did. I’m still not quite sure that it’s what I wanted, but I was starting to run out of time, so I’ve left it like this for now.

This morning I had to go up and have my blood pressure checked again – I’d been taken off one lot of blood pressure pills completely, and reduced to only a half-dosage on the other one, so this morning was more or less to see if I still had to stay on the half-dosage one, or come off that one too. Dr. B. has decided that I should keep on with the current regimen, at least for now. We were going to come home via The Glen, and have lunch there, but because Julian has a bad case of the dreaded lurgi, I decided that it’d probably be better if we just came straight home… but we didn’t do that, either! We stopped off at Vermont South Shopping Centre – ostensibly to check our PO Box there, but also because I wanted to see the very comprehensive and extensive Pet Barn that’s right next door to Aldi’s! I also wanted to see the Continental Delicatessen that’s in the Shopping Centre, which I did after lunch… Anyway, Julian was really feeling pretty rotten, and he thought that getting our lunch up there at the Shopping Centre would be easier than us coming home, whereupon he’d have to turn around and start making our lunches. He did have a point, so we looked around the Pet Barn, bought a couple of things, then we left the Pet Barn, and had our lunch at one of Vermont South’s little snack and coffee shoppes – more on that later! 😉 After we’d eaten, I sent Julian off to check the PO Box, whilst I had a look around the Continental Delicatessen, and it does look very good indeed! It looks like the sort of Continental Delicatessen that would probably stock such items as Motta Panettone, and Panforte, around Christmas time – I shall definitely be keeping my eye on them! 🙂 And after snooping around in the Delicatessen, we went back to the car and came home!

Actually, there’s not much to tell about today! I didn’t even log into WoW this morning, because although we didn’t have to leave until eleven-ish, I hate just getting into things and then having to get up and go, so I just played Solitaire, had a bit of a giggle over at Bored Panda, and that was about it! I haven’t been on WoW this afternoon, either, as I badly wanted to play around with that background what’sit, and that’s about all I’ve had time for! At the Pet Barn this morning, we bought some pretty blue sand for me to use in my bathroom incense bowl, and a packet of some sort of “kangaroo bits” – which, if you ask me, look far more like those ultra, ultra strong, Irish Moss throat lozenges, called “Fisherman’s Friend” than anything even vaguely “kangaroo-ish”! Erm… we actually bought them for Flipper, not for ourselves, even though Julian and I both know that she’ll most likely turn her nose up at them – well, she hasn’t liked any of the other “treats” we’ve bought for her in the past, so there’s really no reason to suppose that she’ll be any different about these [and if Flipper could speak “human”, this is what she’d call them – so imagine, if you will, an elderly, crotchety, and scratchy old voice, with a very broad cat brogue, saying:] “new-fangled kangaroo thingies!”

And so, now on to the “good” bits! 😉

Food stuff: Yesterday for lunch we had wraps, with ham, home-grown capsicum, Halloumi cheese, the last of the pickled mushrooms, and our very favourite butter substitute, basil-pesto hummus. I do wish there was a way of wrapping up wraps so that they weren’t quite so messy to eat – however, it was really delicious! For our late-ish dinner last night, we had what was erroneously called a chicken and leek “bake”, and this, it turned out, was the subject of the slight altercation between Julian and I. He’d wanted me to find him some recipes containing leeks, as we have quite a lot of leeks ready to be harvested in our veggie garden. I found him about six or seven, and printed them out for his perusal. Well, he went through them all, and chose this “Chicken and Leek Bake”, which on the surface, sounded easy enough, and which looked very nice – he even went as far as writing down all the ingredients, so that he could go off and get anything that we didn’t have in the pantry. Just before he was going to start cooking, he actually read the recipe, and decided that it wasn’t what it said it was! A “bake”! The only time the oven was even indicated was to put this concoction under the griller, to brown it on top! The kilo of chicken was supposed to be cut into cubes, cooked in a frying pan, along with the sliced leeks, on the stove for five minutes (we both looked more than a little askance at this – five minutes? To cook – or even just lightly brown – a whole kilo of chicken?? Plus four leeks?? Can you really set your stove top to fry things at 1 million °C?!) Then you were supposed to use another stove-top utensil – a saucepan this time, and make some white sauce, so which you added half of the grated cheese the recipe called for. I said “let me read the recipe” – I read it, and it was quite wrong in its instructions, and I told Julian exactly how it needed to be cooked, and why. No, he didn’t want to do that, and it wasn’t a “bake”, it was a lot of hard work. So – we had a few words – and then Josh arrived, and while he was doing my hair, Julian made the Chicken and Leek “Bake” anyway – and it was actually very, very nice! Yes, it’s a bit messy and “utensil-heavy” in its construction; you do have to cook the chicken quite a bit longer than the recipe says, you do need to use more than just four leeks, especially home-grown ones, as they tend to be smaller, and you do need to make more white sauce (or to be more technically correct, “cheese sauce”!) than the recipe specifies, and it’s definitely not a “bake”, per se. However, you could certainly make this a day ahead, keeping it (covered, of course) in the fridge for dinner the next night, then pop it in the oven, and yes, bake it, in order to heat it through, and to brown the top nicely – bugger the use of the specified griller, it doesn’t need one! The oven will brown the top very nicely, thank-you-very-much! If we do make this again, I’ll re-write the recipe (“next time – my way!”) the way it should have been written in the first place, and I’ll add more leeks and more white (cheese) sauce to it. We had it with steamed rice, and it really was lovely! For dessert, I had my usual – one of my Corella pears, and a small bowl of the scrumptious Coles-brand, very low-calorie, Rice Pudding. Today for lunch I had a very nice little square of (supposedly) “home-made” spanakopita, with a rather limp and a little oily-looking side salad (which, as usual, I didn’t eat! I much prefer my salads naked!) The spanakopita was nice enough that it may very well have actually been “home-made”! 🙂 I also had a very nice little slice of some sort of “Jaffa” cake – it was orange cake on the bottom – complete with small pieces of orange rind – and a layer of chocolate cake on top – which had very much appreciated tiny chunks of dark chocolate in it – and there was a very nice butter-cream frosting on top. The whole thing was quite small, really – about 2.5″ (6.3cm) long, about 1″ (2.5cm) wide, and about 3″ (7.6cm) high (it sounds an awful lot bigger when you say it in centimeters! I think I much prefer inches…) Tonight we’re having steak for dinner, with chips, our usual half a tomato, and probably some steamed green beans. For dessert, I’ll have my usual Corella pear, and a small bowl of the really yummy Coles-brand, very low-calorie, Rice Pudding!

Weigh-in yesterday morning. What was I saying the other day about my weight fluctuations not being “boring”? Well, yesterday they were! I went from 64.5kg to 64.5kg! I stayed the same! *sigh* as soon as I say something about my weight, my body has to go and make a liar out of me! Sorry about that one, chief(s)! I suppose you could call that weigh-in as being “within the margin of error”, n’est ce pas? 😉

Weigh-in this morning. Well, still within that “margin of error”, but at least there was a small bit of movement at the station – I went from 6.5kg to 64.4kg – down one point! Never mind though – it’ll definitely be up again tomorrow! Oh well… at least it’s starting to get “non-boring” again 🙂

Julian changed out another 30% of the water in the Fish House again last night! The Ammonia count had been nicely on the way down, but last night it was back up again, and Auric was back to his old trick of floating up and sitting looking harassed on the surface… I told him to stop it immediately, but as usual, he took absolutely no notice of me! Hopefully tonight will be a bit better! I do worry about that little fish… Tomorrow my very favourite eldest daughter will be over, which will be good fun – and although I won’t get a chance to do anything with Phoenìx, we’ll be able to catch up on some of our favourite shows, which quite frankly, is much more enjoyable! 😉 And that’s pretty much “it” from me again for tonight! Feel free to drop in again tomorrow night, and find out what malicious tricks my body decided to play on me, weight-wise, and what my very favourite eldest daughter and I watched on television – whether Auric had another attack of the floaties last night, and whether Flipper deigned to consume any of her new “kangaroo bits” treats! Until then though, do try hard to bee good, do remember that “stressed” spelled backwards is “desserts”, and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm and dry in this very changeable weather… but most importantly, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

04.07 pm

Well, it looks like I’m remarkably early today, even though I’ve been quite busy – for me on a Public Holiday, anyway! 😉 Yes indeedy, I’ve been very industrious – as has Julian – I played WoW nearly all morning, and took Phoenìx up another two levels, to level 54 – only another four levels before I’ll be able to fly! 🙂 I seem to be racing up the levels, too, with all this Heirloom gear I’m wearing, and it’s a bit of a mixed blessing, to tell you the truth – yes, I’m racing up levels, which is good! I love it that I’m progressing so quickly! On the other hand, I no sooner move into a quest zone and pick up half a dozen quests – and zap! I’m “gently prodded along” to the next quest zone! First, I was prompted to go to the Badlands, and that was OK, I’m reasonably familiar with the area and the questing is fairly straightforward there – but I’d only just started on one particular, very sad quest, when – zap! I had to head off to Searing Gorge! So, off I went to Searing Gorge, completed maybe three quests? And  zap! Again! I was sent off to the Burning Steppes! Once more, I settled in, completed the first quest chain, picked up the next lot of quests and – you guessed it! Zap! Report to [unpronounceable] in the Swamp of Sorrows! Rolling my eyes somewhat, I Abandoned all the new quests I’d just picked up, and set off for the Swamp of Horrors Sorrows – which is only the other side of the country – but never mind that, it was a good excuse to pick up some new Flight Points along the way, wasn’t it! 😉 Well, the Swamp of Sorrows was pretty much a Swamp of Horrors for me! For some reason the place was literally crawling with other players (Julian said it was because it was Sunday night over in the States, which I suppose could have had something to do with the fact that it was sooo busy that the game was almost unplayable, here in Australia!) It was so bad, in fact, that I considered giving up and logging out several times, but I’d just taken a very rare-and-hard-to-get-these-days “water breathing potion”, and I didn’t want to waste it (true! I wasn’t being facetious, I really didn’t want to waste it!) so I sat there under the water and twiddled my thumbs while I waited, and waited, and waited, for the mobs I had to kill to re-spawn. The thing is, being here in Australia, there’s a bit of a lag between what you do here, and when it actually registers in the game over there – so if you’re about to shoot something, or pick something up, or whatever, you can get there three seconds or more before your counterpart in the States does, and you can shoot something, or pick something up, while your counterpart over in the States is still running towards whatever it is that you’re doing – and your shooting or picking up action has actually finished – you have the – “whatever-it-was” – in your hot little paw, so to speak… and as you’re standing there gloating, because you have the “whatever-it-was”, and there’s your counterpart, starting to go through all the same motions that you’ve just finished… and they walk away with the “whatever-it-was”, not you! That’s how bad that little time lag is, and it’s a constant. Don’t bother trying to get something first, coz it ain’t never gunna happen! It makes me sooo mad! 👿 Really, about the only thing you can do is go off and pick herbs, or mine nodes, or kill things and skin them (depending on your Professions!) until everyone else has what they wanted, everything they killed in order to get what they wanted has nicely re-spawned, and you can finally have a go at completing your quest. However, as many people will attest – I’m not best known for my patience, and I’m afraid that my tether is at the end of elsewhere – every day, and every evening here seems to be either Sunday evening, or the middle of the weekend, over in the States! I shall have another bit of a play-around on Nagrand, which is based in Sydney, and see if the situation there is a little better – in a way, I hope not – because I do not want any justification for moving everything – lock, stock, and barrel – from Quel’Dorei to Nagrand! Anyway, I managed as best I could in the Swamp of Sorrows – but when I dinged level 54, I saw the dreaded little “exclamation mark” down on my Action Bar… and yup, sure enough, I’m being zapped out of the quest zone again, and being sent off to The Blasted Lands! I hate The Blasted Lands! Dunno why – I just don’t like it there… Oh well, if things continue the way they have been lately, I’ll be moved on pretty smartly…

I finished playing WoW early today, because I’ve been promising myself that I’d get Julian to find me an empty box, and that I’d go through my bathroom, packing up things that I didn’t want to throw out, but that I hardly ever used, and store them up on the shelf in the walk-in-wardrobe. Julian found me the box, but I was having a cup of coffee – I’d start on the bathroom as soon as I’d finished my coffee, I told myself… However, while I was drinking my coffee, I accidentally went to see if Word Press had any new Themes/Templates available – they didn’t, but I spotted this one (Winter points at the screen) which I’d been using for quite some time, up until a couple of days ago, when I went on my latest little Template constructing “binge”. Sipping my almost too hot to drink coffee, I idly wondered why I’d stopped using this particular Template, so I opened it up as a “Preview” – just to see why I didn’t like it any more, you see – but I did – like it, that is – though I didn’t like the colours I’d chosen. Still sipping my coffee, I tried a few other colours… and then I tried making another Header, only it didn’t look as good as I knew it could – by now I’d finished my coffee, but the Header still needed work… “I’ll go and do the bathroom as soon as I’ve finished this!”, I blithely informed Julian “I have plenty of time to do the bathroom, and start my blog on time!” And so I did. I finished the Header (I still think I can find better colours though! Is there anybody out there, with a suggestion for a good colour to use?) I sifted through three drawers in the bathroom (mutter-mutter damn drawers! I wish I’d stuck with the cupboards that I originally wanted!) and as you can all see, from the time stamp on the top of this “episode”, I still managed to start writing – if anything, a little earlier than I normally do! 😎

And having said all of that, it’s now time for the good bits! 🙂

Food stuff: Last night being Sunday night, we had our traditional Omelet Night – these ones had bacon, onion,  Halloumi cheese, little mini-red capsicums, and semi-dried basil flakes (the sort that I used to have in my Optifast soups!) My omelet really was absolutely delicious, and once again, I had to tell Julian that it had to be “one of the best he’d ever made”! For dessert, seeing that he’d gone out on a “mercy dash” for me, to get me more Corella pears, and some more of the utterly fantastic Coles-brand, very low-calorie, yummy Rice Pudding, I was able to have my usual dessert… Today Julian had to go out again – this time to Doncaster for coffee, Dry Cleaning, and a few other things, and he brought a very nice – but very naughty – lunch home with him, so for lunch I had something that I haven’t had for eons! (well, it felt like eons when I saw, and tasted it, anyway!) I had a Ham Danish (drool!) and another of my ultra-favourite Baker’s Delight fruit and white chocolate scones! Expect my weight to sky-rocket tomorrow, everyone! 😉  For dinner tonight we’re having the next “parcels” of the left-over Lamb and Harissa Lasagne, which Julian’s had thawing in the fridge over night, but after dinner tonight, I think there might only be one more meal left from the delicious Lamb and Harissa left-overs 😦 For dessert I’ll have my usual – one of my Corella pears, and a small bowl of that Coles-brand, very low-calorie, delicious Rice Pudding that I like so much!

Weigh-in this morning. Regular as clockwork – well almost – my weight’s now going up again… I went up another two points – from 64.3kg to 64.5kg – today, but as I said last night, that seems to be what my body likes to do – it goes up a bit, and it comes down a bit – up quite a lot, and then down quite a lot – the only thing is, we have no idea why it happens, or even when it’s most likely to happen! Still, at least it’s not boring! 😉

Last night Auric went through another of his weird little “I’m gunna sit around on the top of the water tonight – why? Because I can! 😛 ” so Julian changed 30% of the water out this morning, and we’ll see what happens with cheeky little Auric tonight! And this of course brings me to tomorrow! Now, my very favourite eldest daughter won’t be over tomorrow, because their new washing machine is being delivered, but a very reliable source has given me to understand that we will be seeing her on Wednesday instead, and we’ll be able to catch up on all our favourite TV shows again (bother “The 100” being on hiatus at the moment! I wanna know what happens next!) Josh will be over tomorrow, and Julian and I are hoping to get a little WoW-ing in seeing as we didn’t get a chance to do anything today – besides, the Dungeon we haven’t finished yet re-sets on Tuesday, so I’ll cross my fingers for that! We’re not really sure, but we think that the new Warcraft movie opens in Australia tomorrow, so with luck we may be able to get tickets – I want to get them as soon as we can, actually – I wonder if it’ll be shown in Gold Class?! I sure hope so! 🙂 And there you go! Once again, that’s about it from me for this evening! However, drop in again tomorrow night, to find out how much my weight went up, after I ate the Ham Danish and the fruit and white chocolate scone for lunch today, if we managed to score tickets for the Warcraft movie, and if I managed to find a good recipe for the leeks which Julian harvested this afternoon, whilst preparing the veggie bed for the new winter crop that we hope to be planting soon! But until then, please do your very best to bee good, remember that you have to do your own growing, no matter how tall your grandfather was, and don’t forget to keep warm and dry in this changeable winter weather, to look after yourselves, and to always drive carefully… but most importantly, please, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

05.05 pm

Yes, it’s yet another Template – I can’t remember the name of it, off the top of my head, but it is one that I bought some time ago, and I have used it before… quite a bit, actually… and now I’m using it again – I hope you all like it! Well, today was our WoW day, and so we did – only we didn’t take  Xãnthe and Jemimah out – we may do that tomorrow, as tomorrow’s a Public Holiday – but today we took Wynterthyme and Mouselet out to do the “short” Dungeon that we’d handled so hopelessly and atrociously with Xãnthe and Jemimah the other day. Needless to say, Mouselet and Wynterthyme sailed effortlessly through it – pretty much one-shotting anything that even turned to watch us, skipping and laughing our way through the scenario! However, it was not a “short” Dungeon, or whatever it was, as that one Dungeon led to another one, which led to another, after another, and so forth – seemingly ad infinitum! Mouselet had already done a bit of a run through most of it on his own, to see how difficult it was – but we got to bits that he hadn’t done, and eventually we got ourselves into a part that we couldn’t get through on our own – we had to remove three pieces of armor plating from the back of a very angry dragon – and it goes something like this: jump on said dragon, and start attacking him. He spawns several (three? more? dunno…) snaky-arm-tentacle-things. Dragon then sends in nasty little blood globules to attack you. Kill at least three of the snaky-arm-tentacle-things. When the nasty little blood globules stack up to nine (yes, you have to count them!) another mob spawns, which attacks the globules (supposedly!) After it’s killed the globules for you, you then have to lure it to where one of the plates that you have to retrieve is, and kill it. Apparently it then explodes, blasting off most of the armor plate that you need, leaving it only attached by a tendon, which you then attack, to collect your plate. Meanwhile, the dragon isn’t just flying calmly along, ohhh no! He’s ducking and weaving through the air, and rolling over (as dragons do, dontcha know!) and that’s where we died – we fell off him when he rolled left! However you are notified that the dragon is going to roll, and which way he’s going to roll – if you have time to read – or even notice – the words suddenly popping up in the middle of your screen! Apparently you’re supposed to drop everything and run around screaming – no! you’re supposed to get into one of the holes left behind by one of the snaky-arm-tentacle-things that you’d killed earlier, so that you can hang on while he’s rolling around in a fit of pique – but we didn’t know that at the time, so we both plummeted to our death! So, yeah… we think we’ll leave this one for a bit, while we have second and third thinks about it! Julian, as “Sir Mouselet the Brave”, is going to have a shot at it on his own (perhaps we should make that “Sir Mouselet the Brave-But-Foolish”!) and then depending on how he goes, we’ll do it again – only properly, this time (we hope!) By the time we’d done all of the other Dungeons attached to the first one (which we thought was going to be nice and short!) and talked about this “rolling dragon” part, and Julian had done all his research, it was lunch time – so we took a brief break. After lunch, we came back to try to finish off one of the Dungeons we’d started, but never finished, several weeks ago – Ahn’Qiraj, remember me telling you about that one? There’s lots of things you have to pick up in that particular Dungeon, and it’s really not possible to do it all on the one run, so to speak, because unlike ordinary questing, where any Specials or Elites that you kill usually re-spawn in a fairly short length of time – but in a Dungeon, what you kill stays killed – only the body disappears to protect the unwary! Anyway, the point I’m making is that you kill mobs to get the items you need – and in a Dungeon, once you’ve killed all the mobs, but haven’t collected everything you need to complete a particular quest, you have to come back later – usually in a week, when the Dungeon has “re-set” itself – and then, off you go and fight your way through it, all over again – hoping that this time you’ll pick up the missing items that you didn’t get last time. Well, we did get a few more bits this time round, but we’re both still missing a few things, so it’s back again we’ll go – possibly on Tuesday, if we’re lucky…

So we finished playing a little earlier than usual, and I thought it’d be a good idea to start writing a bit earlier too – but then I remembered this Template, and wondered why it was that I’d left it, and I got to playing around with it a bit, and… well, I didn’t start writing quite as soon as I’d intended… but I’ve decided that I still like the Template, so I’ll use it until I forget what it was about it that I liked… I suppose… 😉

And now on to the good bits! 🙂

Food stuff: Last night we had the Beef, Garlic and Herb sausages for dinner, and they were very nice indeed! With them we had chips, Brussels sprouts, and our usual half a tomato, and for dessert, I had my usual Corella pear, and a small bowl of the delicious Coles-brand, very low-calorie Rice Custard. I’ll just add here that (a) it was my last Corella pear, and (b) it turned out that it was also the last of my lovely Coles-brand, very low-calorie Rice Custard! However Julian, as always, came to the rescue this afternoon while I was fiddling with the Template, and made a “mercy-dash” up to the shops to get more of both those items, and if I’m having a complete and full meal tonight, it’s all thanks to Julian – so, “thank you very much, sweetheart!” 🙂 For lunch today we had a slightly different sort of sandwich – made once again with the very tasty sesame and poppy-seed crusted whole grain bread, with basil-pesto hummus instead of butter, sandwich chicken chunks, Swiss cheese, and tomato. Very, very nice – but if I may say so – almost as messy to eat as a wrap, but it went down a real treat! 🙂 Tonight, of course, is “Omelet” night, which I’m really looking forward to, and for dessert, once again I’ll be able to have my Corella pear, and my small bowl of my favourite Coles-brand, very low-calorie, delicious Rice Pudding! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. Wasn’t too bad, considering that on Saturdays and Sundays I only walk one kilometer on the treadmill, instead of my usual one and a half kilometers (I usually walk by “time” rather than “distance”, and as it takes me just short of 30 minutes to walk 1.5 km, that’s how far I walk these days!) Anyway, this morning I went from 64.1kg to 64.3kg – up two points – almost within the “margin of error”, one could say! I dare say that I’ll be up a little tomorrow, too – but then knowing my body, it’s just as likely to be up half a kilo, or down another couple of points – so, who knows!

And that almost brings me to tomorrow – Julian tested the water in the Fish House yesterday, and the Ammonia is the lowest it’s been since Auric and Dapple came inside to become “Indoor Fishies” after their tough life outside in the cold, and the heat, and the yukky water they lived in. Although Auric did start off with some very serious flotation problems in the beginning, he seems to have mostly overcome them – especially now that the Ammonia level in the water is dropping (it means that the tame bacteria in the filter pump are starting to do their job!) However both Auric and Dapple come up to the top of the tank, every evening, no matter what they’ve eaten or not eaten, and always around 09.00 pm – and they just mooch around there – it seems to have become part of their daily routine – so although we keep a close eye on Auric, we’re becoming used to seeing up there, gulping air, going down and blowing bubbles, and then swimming up to bite the bubbles, and then do the whole thing all over again – usually for about fifteen minutes or so!

Tomorrow being the Queen’s Birthday Public Holiday (Happy Birthday, Liz!) we’ll have another Sunday – sleep in a bit, and spend a fair amount of time WoW-ing! If the weather is good enough, we may head off to a Nursery to talk to someone about Fig Trees, or to Hardly Normal to look for side tables – but whatever we do it’ll be leisurely and fun! And that’s really about it from me again for this evening – but do call in again tomorrow night, to find out what my weight did, whether we got any more Dungeons done, of if we played with Xãnthe and Jemimah, to get them a little closer to Draenor, and what other adventures we got up to! Until then though, do try to bee good, remember that when someone tells you, “you can’t” they really mean, “I can’t”, and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm and dry, because it may be sunny, but that doesn’t mean it’s not cold – but above all, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

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! 🙂

04.02

Well, here I am – starting early for a change! As it turned out, I didn’t go and get back into WoW again this morning, or this afternoon, either! No, I got stuck into still more Template viewing, sorting, and discarding! This time, with the one’s that I’ve bought since I started this blog back in August 2015. Actually, I didn’t start this blog back in August last year – I’d started it ages ago, and made about two posts in it, if that, and then just let it… drift away on the breeze… my prime excuse being “Well, why bother? *shrug* Who’d be interested in what an unknown, bored Melbourne housewife had to say about the price of fish in North Fitzroy, anyway?!” – and so the empty blog sat here, unused and unloved. Then, when I decided to lose weight last year, I thought I’d use the blog to sort-of “document” everything – not so much for other people to read, but for me to be able to keep track of my progress, as I stumbled blindly along the path to caring about what happened to me for a change. But you all know about that part of the story anyway, so I won’t bore you to death by going into it again. So, where was I? Oh yeah – having a look at the “Premium” Themes/Templates that I’ve bought since then. I bought a couple of them before I actually knew what I was doing with the blog – some of them are quite nice, and some of them, well, let’s just say that I should have known better! There is one, though, that’s a real beauty! A fantastic Theme/Template, does everything I want it to do, except one thing… No matter what I do, I can’t get it to display the ruddy header! I can get it to display a clumsy and daggy text Title and so forth, but I don’t want to use that! All the instructions and information on the Template assures me that I can make my own header – it gives me the size it has to be, and it gives me the ability to upload it to the blog file… but it just won’t display it! So, as Julian’s always telling me, I thought I’d approach the author of this very-nice-except-for-one-thing Template, and ask him/her/it how to fix this little problem! Arriving at his (or her) website, guess what?! It’s all in Spanish… or Portuguese… or Mexican – whatever, but some “Latino” language that wasn’t Italian (which I probably could have coped admirably with) Perhaps I’d better see if I can find the Word Press Forums… So today we’re making do with a nice, free Theme/Template called “Ever After”

So as I said, I never got a look-in at WoW today, but at least I’ve finally worked my way through all of my Premium Themes/Templates, as well as all of Word Press’s freebies – can I take a break from them now, please?! Oh, we heard back from Dorevitch late last night with the results of my Warfarin blood test – things are going well, my INR is about bang on target at 2.5, my rat-poison dosage is to remain the same at 4.5mg daily, and my next blood test is in a fortnight. Unfortunately, I think I’m coming down with a cold or something – yesterday and the day before I had a mild sinus headache on and off for most of the day, and today I seem to be losing my voice (oh please! stop cheering with delight! It’s bringing my sinus headache back again!) I feel so tired and lethargic that it’s a wonder I got anything done today! I feel like something that the cat’s dragged backwards through a hedge, after nibbling bits off it here and there, and all I want to do is sleep… I’ll be better tomorrow though! 🙂

I’m beginning to strongly suspect that Auric’s evening “floaties” are a type of goldfish attention seeking device – because pretty much as soon as we go over to look at him, and to discuss his buoyancy problems, or as soon as Julian starts to change over the water, he comes good and goes swimming off as though nothing was wrong! Who would ever have thought that such a dear little goldfish could be so…. devilishly devious! 😀

There’s not really all that much to tell you about today’s doin’s – I’ve been largely sitting here feeling a bit slow and not quite with it, muddling about with headers and Templates – so I suppose I might as well get on with the good bits!

Food stuff: Last night we had the first of three lots of leftover Lamb and Harissa Lasagne, and it was just as nice, if not even a little better, because all of the flavours had had more of a chance to permeate through everything, and for dessert I had another Corella pear, and a small bowl of the delightfully delicious Coles-brand, very low-calorie Rice Pudding. Today we had chicken sandwiches for lunch, made with the very nice and tasty multi-grain bread with the sesame and poppy-seed crust, and with our favourite butter substitute, the basil-pesto hummus. It’s was a bit of an “oopsie” really, having chicken sandwiches for lunch, because we’re having chicken for dinner, too! It’s a new recipe wot I found through one of my many “foodie” emails, newsletters and e-zines, and it sounded not only delicious, but also seemed to be very easy to make, so I printed it out. We got the ingredients for it yesterday, and Julian prepared it all and put it in the slow cooker this afternoon. I don’t think there’s too much preparation, because there are only three main ingredients, chicken breasts, pineapple slices, and mandarin segments – and of course doing it in the slow cooker means that there’s not very much to have to clean up afterwards!  It’s called “Crock-Pot Hawaiian Chicken”, and you have it with steamed rice. I’ll let you all know what it was like, and if it was good enough, I’ll transcribe the recipe and put it on my “Recipes… page”, along with my other “classic” dishes! 🙂 As for dessert tonight, don’t look now, but I believe I’ll be having about the same as I’ve been having for the past three or four days, seeing as there’s no cake left 😦 Another Corella pear, and a small bowl of the really yummy Coles-brand, very low-calorie Rice Pudding.

Weigh-in this morning. Wasn’t too bad, all things considered – but I was right – I did go up! I went from 64.2kg to 64.5kg – up three points, which considering what I had for lunch yesterday at the Shingle Inn, was quite reasonable, and the rest of the lunch I had yesterday will go onto my weight “punishment gain” tonight! 😉

And all of that, of course brings me up to tomorrow! I’m not sure what’s happening tomorrow – it is a long weekend, but I don’t think that’s going to make any difference to us. Weather permitting – and my cold and lethargy permitting – I really, really want to go to a good Nursery to get these wretched vegetables that we should have planted two weeks ago! I also want to talk to someone there about fig trees – what’s the best sort to get, and will their roots pose a problem to our concrete slab house! On the other hand, if I still feel like this tomorrow, I think I’ll just sleep – after all, I have to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed on Sunday for our “Pandemonium in Pandaria and Questing to Level 90 Day”! And if that turns out to be the case, maybe we can go to the Nursery on Monday instead? Anyway, once again, that’s about it from sleepy little me for this afternoon! Do call in again tomorrow night, and find out what our Hawaiian Chicken was like, and if it’s nice enough to warrant a new item on my “Recipes…” page! I’ll fill you in on Auric and Dapple’s strange attention seeking behaviour (strange, in that I didn’t think goldfish were so… aware, as to want or need to seek attention!) I’m sure you’re all going to want to know which way my weight jumped, too, so if you drop by tomorrow night, you’ll have all the answers you need or want! 😉 Until then however, please keep trying to bee good, and remember that nothing is written in the stars – not these stars, nor any others – no one controls your destiny, and don’t forget to keep warm and dry in this strange Melburnian weather, to always drive carefully, and to look after yourselves… but above all, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

05.05 pm

Well, I have finally finished my Word Press Theme/Template “project”! It’s taken me about four days, and I’ve – quite literally – gone through every single free Theme/Template that Word Press has to offer… and in all several hundred of them, I only found seven even worth considering. Of those seven, three of them had the sort of Sidebars that I wasn’t keen on using, so those three ended up on the “discard” pile – leaving me with a scant four Themes/Templates to play around with… so… Ladies, Gentlemen, and Small Children in the Reader’s Gallery, I have set up each of the four Themes/Templates that I deemed suitable (as well as using up four pages of the notebook wot lives on my desk with notes!) and all of “the chosen” are ready to roll! The one you’re looking at tonight is named “Suits”, and its Widgets are right down at the very bottom of the “page”, where they can’t interfere with the width of the text column – so if any of you are desirous of finding out which day of the week today is, or if you would like to re-read some of my much older posts, that’s where you’ll find the calendar, the archives, the “follow my blog” button, and various other odds and sods!

Back to the present! This morning we left early to go and have my Warfarin blood test done, and as our next stop was going to be the Bank of Melbourne at The Glen, we stopped on the way there and picked up my very favourite eldest daughter, who also had some urgent banking to do. After we’d finished our banking business, first we made our way to the Shingle Inn where we had lunch, and then we headed off to the supermarket for a few things. I’d found a very nice looking recipe for an Hawaiian-type of chicken dish in one of my daily “foodie” emails this morning, which I printed out, and we’d thought we might try it for dinner tomorrow night. The recipe called for tinned pineapple slices, tinned mandarin segments, lemon juice, and cornflour, amongst other ingredients (like chicken!) so we got everything except for the cornflour – we were quite positive that we had cornflour in the pantry – because, I mean, it’s a staple, isn’t it, and everyone has cornflour in their pantry, don’t they? 😯 and we didn’t get any chicken either, because Julian said we probably had enough in the freezer… As it turned out though, we didn’t have any cornflour in the pantry (gasp! shock! horror!), nor did we have quite enough chicken in the freezer, so Julian’s had to go out again to get the ruddy cornflour (which I’m still convinced that we have, somewhere in the pantry!) and some more chicken! So after our little supermarket preamble at The Glen, we dropped off my very favourite eldest daughter at her place, and from thence proceeded to chez nous, and a much needed cup of coffee!

I was going to start writing straight away, but I thought, ‘no, I’d better get all these Themes/Templates finished, because I’m not sure which ones have Sidebars, and which ones have Footer Sidebars’ – so one by one, I set them all up, made appropriate Headers for each of those that didn’t have Sidebars – which was a bit of a scramble, really, because all the Headers are different sizes, and sometimes a font that looked great on a very wide Header ended up looking a trifle “too much” on a shorter one, which meant either making a new Header from scratch, or cropping and “modifying” a wide one – and vice-versa, “growing” a short Header into a much longer one. Actually you know, I don’t know if I saved any time modifying existing Headers or not – but the point is moot now – they’re all done – and saved in situ – so I won’t – er… I shouldn’t have to set each Template up again. Hopefully, anyway!

Anyway, now that I’ve finally finished messing around with these wretched Themes/Templates, tomorrow, finally, I should be able to get back to WoW-ing! To tell the truth though, I’ve quite enjoyed my little break from WoW, and getting back into my graphics, and scribbling down Hex codes for colours all over the place – sometimes it’s nice to have a change of pace! 🙂 Anyway, now that I’ve caught you all up on my activities today, I can move on to the “good bits”! 😉

Food stuffs: Last night we had the Heston Blumenthal pork and sage sausages, which once again were very nice! With them we had chips, the absolute, very last of our home-grown beans, picked straight out of the veggie garden, and the ubiquitous half a tomato. For dessert, I had a Corella pear, and a small bowl of the Coles-brand, delicious, and very low-calorie Rice Pudding. Alas! All the cake is eaten, and we haven’t had time to make another one yet 😥 We had lunch at the Shingle Inn today, where I had my usual BLT on Sourdough bread (toast, really!), a very small chocolate-type éclair, and I swapped my equally small raspberry-type éclair for a half of Julian’s caramel slice thingy, which was delicious! I wished I’d had one of those, instead of the éclair  thingies! 😦 Tonight we’re having the first of our three lots of frozen Lamb & Harissa Lasagne leftovers for dinner, which I’m really looking forward to, and no doubt I’ll have the same old boring dessert that I’ve had for the past three nights – a Corella pear and a very small bowl of the Coles-brand, very low-calorie and yummy Rice Pudding. Or maybe I’ll have a yoghurt tonight instead, if there is any…

Weigh-in this morning. Was surprisingly good! But don’t worry, I’ll go up again tomorrow, I’m quite sure of that! Anyway, this morning I went from 64.7kg to 64.2kg, down five points! Extraordinary! Unfortunately the chocolate éclair thingy and the half of Julian’s caramel slice will put paid to my little weigh-loss slide! 😦 I hate to think what the scales are going to hit me with tomorrow!

Which again brings me to tomorrow! I know Julian has a few errands to run, and hopefully I’ll be able to get back to WoW-ing, but apart from those two things, I don’t think much is happening around here… Auric and Dapple are both well, though Auric did have a slight touch of the “floaties” again last night – I wonder why it’s always at night? Perhaps I give them too much food? I might try swapping with Julian, and feed them in the morning instead, and let Julian give them their evening meal – then if Auric starts getting the “floaties” after breakfast, but not at night, I’ll know that it’s because I’m feeding them too much – and thereafter give them a bit less! Flipper is still her grumpy old self – but I don’t blame her – I know what it’s like to have arthritis, and it’s not much fun, I can assure you! We still haven’t heard anything from Dorevitch regarding my Warfarin test this morning, so I’ll have to fill you all in on that tomorrow night – I’m not expecting much change – so go on Dorevitch, prove me wrong! 😉 And there you go – that’s about it from me for this evening, but do drop in again tomorrow night, and find out if my weight did go back up again (it will!), what I ended up doing tomorrow, whether my Warfarin dose is the same or different, and how the fin-fur kids are doing… but until tomorrow night, please try to bee good, remember that success is the sum of small efforts repeated day in and day out, and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm and dry in this cold, miserable weather… but above all, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

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.