05.00 pm

Oh dear – I cowered when I put the date in up there! It’s the end of the month… and tomorrow (shudder) I have to start taking those horrible pills again – what’s even worse is that my spiteful, turn-coat body seems to be already gearing up for the inevitable weight gain that will occur when those wretched pills start “conserving” every single drop of liquid that passes my lips, be it tea, coffee, or just plain water! *sigh* Still, it’s only for ten days (but a veritable lifetime for someone trying hard to keep the weight off!) and I’m going to try, very hard, to ignore the slowly rising graph line from my daily weigh-ins… but it’s not going to be easy! However, on a happier note, Julian and I had a great time in Dun Morogh (where Ironforge, the Dwarven Capital is) and Loch Modan (the area immediately north-east of Dun Morogh) Gnomes start out very close to the Dwarven starting area and share quite a few of the early quests, especially the “beginner” ones! Last week, when we first created Dulcineà (me) and Tourbillon (Julian) we didn’t really get very far, what with all the setting up of each character, organising bags, healing potions, money, and what-not, as well as getting ourselves into our Guild, “Grumpy Old Farts” – so we only made it to level 5 last week! However I’m very happy to report that we made up for last week’s very slow start today, going up a very cool 12 levels, to level 17, and we even managed to keep pretty much even with eachother, too, which is a big bonus!

Unfortunately, we did die once today, and as many times as I’ve done this particular quest (which I have to admit is only about ten times, as I don’t often roll Dwarves or Gnomes!) I’ve always died! Personally, I think it’s a very badly written and constructed quest, especially considering that it’s the last one you do in the pretty much “No Kill” Baby area! You have your Grand Illustrious Leader-type person, sitting astride a mechanical emu, or ostrich, or whatever, and he gives this big, long-winded speech about getting back the Gnome Capital City, Gnomeregan from some sort of Mad Scientist (I think!) and off we’re all supposed to charge. Which we do, across a frozen lake, to an island where this Mad Scientist and all his Insane Leper Gnomes (hereinafter referred to as “Hench People”!) are waiting for you. But you can’t fight them yet, no, you have to wait through some more terribly long-winded exchanges between the two Leaders, then, when you’re distracted with boredom, the two sides finally get it on. Now, this is what kills me, every time, and it killed the two of us today too. According to the Unwritten Rules of fighting Boss mobs in WoW, you take down the Hench People first, then you work on the Boss – it makes sense, you take out the distractions that are going to hit you, and try to kill you, while you’re smacking their Boss around, right? And it nearly always works too, because in Boss fights, the Hench People you’ve taken out generally don’t re-spawn – or not terribly quickly, anyway. However, in this particular Boss fight, (a) he was extraordinarily tough! (far too tough for a Starting Area Boss, in my opinion, anyway!) Even with both Julian and I – and my Pet – fighting him, we were hardly making a dent in his armor! In fact, it was taking so damn long to even tickle him that all his Hench People re-spawned… and started killing us! We had two options, neither of them very workable! (1) We could stop fighting the Boss, and try to take down his Hench People again, during which time the Boss would be able to kill us at his leisure. Or, (2) We could try to ignore all the newly re-spawned Hench People and keep on doing our best to take down the Boss – who, after all this time, was only just under half health – before all these newly re-spawned Hench People of his polished us off! In other words, you’re damned if you do, and damned if you don’t. I’m not quite sure which option Julian chose, but I chose option #2, which is the way I usually tackle these types of fights, but I dunno, maybe I should have tried option #1 in this case, because my usual choice of option #2 – in this particular fight, anyway – always ends up with me getting rather deaded! So there we were, both dead, running back from the local Graveyard, to reclaim our bodies, when Mr. Kingpin on the mechanical emu (or ostrich, or whatever!) suddenly rallies, kills the Mad Scientist, and wins the day! Now, normally in a Boss fight, if something like this happens and you end up dead, the Boss returns to full health, and you’ve “failed” the particular quest which demanded that you kill this Boss – and you have to keep doing the whole thing over and over, until you get it right! In this fight though, it almost seems as though the Kingpin, perched on his robotic bird, had simply been waiting for us to die, so that he could start his rally, and win the day! I mean, it took literally for-evah to get the Mad Scientist down to half health, but only seconds after we’d died, Kingpin and his men kill the Boss, in one foul swoop? What’s more, we didn’t “fail” the quest (even though, technically speaking, we did!) we’re treated as true heroes, as in being immediately sent off to somewhere else to kill more monsters for other quest givers!

But it was a fun day – we really achieved an awful lot – and next Sunday should be even betterer! 🙂

So, now on to the good bits! 😉

Food stuffs. Last night we had the Outback Spirit Beef and Bush Tomato sausages for dinner, with our usual chips, steamed green beans, and half a tomato, and for dessert I had a “bald-kiwifruit-brown” skinned Nashi pear, and another Apple Le Rice. For lunch we had a “different” type of wrap, with some of the Sesame and Sumac hummus, sandwich-sliced turkey, red capsicum batons, Beerenberg Tomato Chutney, and some Nimbin “elbo-style” cheese (yes, it is spelt “elbo”, and it was quite delicious!) and – this seems to be becoming a bit of a habit – once again I managed to devour it all without getting sauce all over my fingers, or spilling half of it down my front, or onto the keyboard! 🙂 Tonight, because it’s Sunday night, we’re having omelets! I can’t tell you what’s going to be in it yet, coz I don’t know – you’ll have to wait for tomorrow night to find that out! 😉 For dessert I’ll probably be having one of my Corella pears, and one of the Le Rice tubs.

Weigh-in this morning. Was horrible, and a snide omen of the week to come, no doubt! I went from 64.0 kg to 64.5 kg 😦  Mind you, it was probably mostly the yummy lunch I had yesterday, with the fruit and white chocolate scone, so “mea culpa” and all that, but I was not happy about this morning’s weigh-in at all! So, in a fit of pique, I decided not to do my morning walk! *pout* Well, it was late, coz we’d slept in (being Sunday!) and I didn’t want to get too late a start with WoW – so it’s (quite literally!) back to the treadmill tomorrow morning, sore foot be damned!

And once again, this brings me back to tomorrow! Tomorrow morning our cleaning lady will be here, and once more I’ll be on my own because Julian has a doctor’s appointment at 10.30 am. I’ll probably be working with Phaédra a bit, as well as working on my Blog Project, and Josh will be here in the afternoon – so a full day for me! 🙂 Oh, remember I said that Julian changed the fish’s water over yesterday, and set up the small tank for Lemon and Butter (temporary names only, at this stage!) Well, he tested the water today, around lunch time, and it was awful! The PH level was far too high, and so was the Ammonia – so he hastily changed about 30% of the water in there, and he’ll test it again after dinner, to see if we can work out what’s going wrong… We’re wondering if maybe it was the water that they arrived in that was the problem, because a couple of hours after Julian changed out the water this afternoon, it was a lot better. When we got them, the Pet Barn place person half filled up a large-ish plastic bag (complete with logos and colourful printing on the outside of it, and probably who-knows-what sort of chemical residue on the inside of it) from an (empty of fish) tank above the one that Butter and Lemon were in, scooped the two fish up in a net, deposited them into the bag, then blew into the bag a bit, folded the top up tightly, and secured it with an elastic band… and we finally brought them home, sloshing around in their bag of water every time the car went over a bump, or turned a corner. Once home, we balanced their bag of water inside their new (temporary) home for about half an hour, then cut open their bag, depositing them, and the water that they came home in, into the small holding tank that was more than half full of water from Auric and Dapple’s Fish House. Hopefully, by the time they’re ready to go into the Fish House with Auric and Dapple, the two lots of water should be pretty much the same, chemically. I’m not sure when we’ll move them all in together… and as they say in the Classics, “but that’s a story for another night!” 😉 And now it’s time for me to say goodnight, and that’s about “it” from me this evening! Why not call in again tomorrow night, to find out more about “The Great Saga Of The Fishies and What They Did Next”(or “what Auric and Dapple thought of their new playmates”) what my weight has been up to (or hopefully – but not very optimistically – down to) how Julian’s visit to the doctor’s went, and what the outcome of his tests were… but until then, do try very hard to bee good, don’t forget that if you obey all the rules, you’ll miss all the fun, and remember to keep warm and dry in this highly changeable weather, to look after yourselves, and to always drive carefully… but above all, please, remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

04.22 pm

Goodness gracious! I don’t know what can have come over me – I’m not starting late today! Today’s been rather interesting, actually – this morning Julian was going to change over the usual 30% of the water in Auric and Dapple’s Fish House, but as we were going to be getting another couple of fishies for Auric and Dapple to play with, he was also going to set up the little “holding tank” for the new fishies as a sort-of “quarantine station”, until they settled in. It was the one that we’d had for Auric and Dapple, when we first brought them inside, and it didn’t need much to get it ready, as we already had a filter pump for it, and some plastic plants – all we needed was some gravel for the bottom of the tank, and of course, the new fishies, which we thought we might get on Monday. So before changing over 30% of Auric and Dapple’s water, he went up to the nice big Pet Barn place (next door to Aldi, up at Vermont South) to get some more Fish Tank Gravel. When he came back with the gravel, he told me that the Pet Barn place had some more of the fishes that we wanted to get, “Golden Comets” (last time we’d looked for them they appeared to have sold out!) Then he looked at me and said “And I suppose you’re going to want me to take you up there this afternoon, so that we can get them!” I was a trifle surprised at that, because I’d thought it would take a bit longer than a couple of hours to get the water right for new fishies! But he said no, it wouldn’t take long – he’d do all the preparation, and change over Auric and Dapple’s water, and then test both tanks after lunch. Which he did, and apparently the water was fine, so we jumped in the car, and came home with two pretty little Golden Comets, temporarily being called “Lemon” and “Butter”, until I can think of better names for them. They’re a lovely, very slightly greenish “new lemon” colour (“new lemon” in that they’re a very pale yellow, not the almost “dark yellowish/brownish orange” of old lemons, that you’ve left in the fruit bowl for too long!) though if you look straight down on them in the water, the tops of their heads have a very slight orange tinge to them – which I hope won’t darken up too much as they get older and bigger! We’ll keep them in the holding tank for about a week, then we’ll introduce them to Auric and Dapple – I hope they’ll like eachother and get on well – all of the people at the aquariums we’ve been to have told us that goldfish get on fine with new ones, unless they’re very small, in which case they’ll try and eat them! Goldfish, I’ve been told, will eat anything they can fit in their mouths, and as they don’t have stomachs, everything just goes straight through them, which is why you shouldn’t feed them too much because they can easily get a blockage, so now when I feed them in the evenings, I only give them about six or seven teeny little pellets of spirulina (each one is slightly smaller than a sesame seed, and slightly larger than a poppy-seed!) The trouble is, Auric is bigger, much more agile, and a great deal faster than poor little Dapple (who’s growing at a rate of knots, I might add!) and he’s so greedy! Naughty little Auric always manages to get the lion’s share of the little pellets, and it’s hard not to feel sorry for Dapple, and feed them a bit more, so that he’ll get some dinner too…

So, we have our new little fishies! 🙂

I bought another six new fonts today – so made yet another header for my Blog Project – I haven’t put it up yet, but might do so tonight… I’ve done a bit more work to the “body” of it, and it should be ready to go Public by about the middle of next week – I’ll keep you all posted! 🙂

I’ve actually spent most of today with Phaédra – who is now level 40 – and still in Feralas, though I’m not sure for how much longer – I’m already starting to “one-shot” most mobs, which is a real bore! I do hope Blizzard are taking serious note of the number of, and types of, complaints that I’m quite sure are pouring in, especially in regards to Shamen – the Demon Hunters are going to be available for creation and play on August 9th, and of course the entire “Legion” Expansion goes live at the end of August, which starts on Monday! August starts on Monday, I meant – and for me, Monday is also “Weep and Despair” Day for me! I go back on those horrible, evil, nasty, despicable, cruel and unnatural, fluid loving and retaining pills again! Arrggghhh! And my foot still hasn’t recovered fully! I did a short “weekend” walk of 20 minutes today, and I know I said I wouldn’t do it again, but I had to! I hadn’t quite got to the ten minute mark, when my damn left foot started acting up. I ignored it, and started limping a bit (believe it or not, it’s quite difficult to limp on a treadmill!) so I did manage to complete my twenty minute “weekend” walk – but it wasn’t fun! Going back on those damn pills again, even if it is only for ten days, means that I should probably lengthen my walk every morning, not scale it back! Oh well, I’ll just have to see how I go…

And now, once again it’s time for the good bits!

Food stuffs. Last night we had a nice little piece of steak for dinner – at least, I thought mine was nice, Julian wasn’t all that happy with his, as he found a bit of gristle in it. The trouble is, the supermarket shelves are all but empty, thanks to the strike – and apparently there were hardly any fresh vegetables at all left at Coles in Vermont South! We had steamed green beans, chips, and the ubiquitous half a tomato with that, and for dessert, I had an “Eve” apple, plus that Jalna “Cafe Latte” pot-set yoghurt that I was telling you all about last night- which, I must tell you, was very, very nice! It had quite a nice, strong coffee flavour, though… somehow it’s difficult to reconcile the slightly “sour” yoghurt taste, with the creamy, slightly sweet, coffee flavour! But in spite of that anomaly,  I really did like it, and I do hope that it’s going to be a “permanent” on-shelf product at the supermarket, not just a special, “limited edition” type of “here today, gone tomorrow” item! Because he was up at the shops this morning getting the gravel for the bottom of the small fish tank, amongst a bit of other shopping, and knowing that he’d be pretty busy getting the holding tank ready for the new fish when he got back with everything, Julian also brought home some very nice savoury Danish’s for our lunch, plus a couple of those delicious fruit and white chocolate scones, so I had a small “ham and cheese Danish” for lunch, and the fruit and white chocolate scone – unfortunately, when the fruit for the scones was being handed out to the Bakers, my Baker must have been hiding behind the door or something, because I think there might have been one, or perhaps two, small pieces of fruit in mine… but it still tasted delicious! 🙂 Tonight for dinner we’re having a reprise of the Outback Spirit Beef and Bush Tomato sausages – with our usual half a tomato, chips, and steamed green beans – and for dessert I’ll have a “bald-kiwifruit-brown” skinned Nashi pear, and a Vanilla Le Rice.

Weigh-in this morning. Was very interesting, and I almost can’t wait to see what I weight tomorrow! I went from 63.9 kg to 64.0 kg – up one point! I wonder if I’ll stay on that tomorrow too, as I’ve been staying on each weight for two days at a time for the past week! I doubt it though – a combination of not being able to do my proper length walks every morning, and the nice but “not really good for me” lunch that I had today will make quite sure of that, unfortunately! Then of course, come Monday and those ‘orrible little pills, I’m going to start having veritable King “fluid” Tides for a while! 😦

And that brings me around to tomorrow, Sunday, which as everybody knows, is our day for gallivanting around Azeroth, walloping nasty creatures, and playing the “Cousin Guido” game for quest-givers¹ – not that we mind all that much, especially if we get decent quest rewards! Hopefully we won’t die too often, though death is but a fleeting thing, in World of Warcraft, and we always have a good time! 🙂 And that, I’m afraid, ladies and gentlepersons, is about “it” from me for this evening! Do call in again tomorrow night though, to find out how we went in WoW, and whether we died or not, what my weight did, how all the little fishies are, and how Flipper is, as well as all the other fascinating and exciting things that filled our day… but until then, please try hard to bee good, remember that a sure way to lose happiness is to want it at the expense of everything else, and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm and dry in this contrary Melbourne weather… but above all, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

¹“Cousin Guido” – A typical “Cousin Guido” scenario plays out something like this:

Cousin Guido [enters stage left] “You called for me, Boss?”

Boss: “Yeah… that lousy rat, Stinky LeRue, owes me big time! I want youta go around there and measure him up for a bespoke pair of concrete shoes… and book him aboard a nice sea cruise while you’re there too… one-way ticket! Bwahahahaha!”

Cousin Guido: “Yeah Boss, consider it done!” [Cousin Guido grins evilly, and exits stage left, cracking his knuckles…]

05.22 pm

Well, I’m late again – so what else is new, hmm? I’ve spent a bit of time on a slightly new design for my Blog Project – why is it, do you suppose, that I just can’t seem to leave well enough alone? It was perfectly alright the way it was – and maybe that was the problem! It was “alright” – not “good”, or “really nice”, or “wow!” – just… “ahh… it’s alright, it’ll do…” – which is not good enough for me! So I fiddle. I actually quite like this latest one – but I’ll wait and see how well it passes the “visual taste” test! 😉

Once again, there’s not all that much to tell you this evening – Julian was supposed to be going to see the Doctor to get the results of his foot and ankle scans and x-rays, but we got a phone call early this morning to let him know that the lovely Dr. B. was not going to be available today, after all, so he’s going to try to get another appointment for Monday instead! The results are really mostly academic – the doctor has probably already forwarded all his test results on to his Physiotherapist – the same one that he saw when he injured his other ankle – and he has his “Referral” – all he really needs to do is make an appointment to see her! So once again, we both stayed home today – Julian did go out to do some shopping this afternoon, and got caught in the rain! He was literally dripping water all over the floor when he came inside! The rest of the time, he’s been doing a lot of washing and “Office-y” things, while I’ve been working hard on Phaédra, who is now level 36 and questing in a lovely (mostly!) “jungle” environment! Honestly, I’m beginning to wonder if I made a mistake, creating her as a Gnome Beast Master Hunter! I’m having a really enormous amount of difficulty seeing where I’m going… because I can’t see over the top of the ruddy grass! (“stop laughing! It’s not funny!” yells Phaédra, tripping over a blade of grass…)

Have I ever mentioned to you all that Julian is a bit of a klutz? Oh, I have… I see… well anyway, he really is a bit of a klutz when he puts his mind to it, and his latest little “mishap” occurred this afternoon, when he spilt a whole fresh cup of tea… over his $20 keyboard! This necessitated him going down to Officeworks and getting another one, and I said “Oh good! You can get me another one too, and you can have this one, if you like…” – Mine kept on “losing” letters when I was typing! Julian said it was because it was a cordless keyboard, and we “discussed” this for a bit, the upshot of which is that I’m now using a fairly klunky-chunky corded keyboard – and I have to say that I haven’t had to go back correcting hundreds of typos where letters had been “missed”, though I have had to go back and correct a few ordinary misspelt words, here and there… So I’ll see how I go with this klunky-chunky, $14 keyboard for a week or so, and if it proves to be “satisfactory”, I might see about getting something a little bit more… elegant? 😉

Auric and Dapple are still being naughty at night, so we’re adopting a different strategy! Instead of feeding them around 6.00 pm-ish, when we’re about to have our dinner, I’m now feeding them about ten minutes before we turn their lights off, so that they can sleep! Hopefully this will mean that they’ll have less time to go up to the surface to swallow chunks of air, which makes them float up to the surface where they swallow even more air, and before you know it, they’re lying listlessly up at the top of the tank with their fins drooping! I really hate seeing them like that… it makes me nervous for them… Anyway, we’ll see if this new feeding regimen makes a difference… “Watch This Space!” 😉

Anyway, that’s about all of the mundane news for the day, so I guess I can now get on to the good bits!

Food stuffs. Last night we had the “Easy Grilled Dijon Chicken” for dinner, and it was (a) very easy to prepare, (b) equally as easy to cook, (c) it kept the chicken extremely juicy and succulent, and (d) incredibly tasty and delicious! So that’s another “tick” for the Mass-Media recipes, and another “Keeper” recipe for us! Actually you know, it’s not really a “recipe” per se. – it’s really more of a “marinade de méthode” (“marinade method”, but it sounds better in French, n’est ce pas? 😉 ) The “recipe” just says to dunk your chicken in the “sauce”, and onto the grill with it. Julian made the sauce “mixture” in a medium-sized zip-lock bag, put the chicken breasts in the bag with it, zipped it up, massaged the chicken around in the “sauce”, then chucked the whole lot into the fridge for a couple of hours before cooking it. I’ll write up the recipe, along with our variations, as soon as possible for you all, as it’s really well worth doing! We had the chicken with plain steamed rice to which had been added some finely chopped spring onion, and it was a dish “fit for a king!” – or even an emperor, for that matter! For dessert I had a “bald-kiwi-fruit-brown” Nashi pear, and another Apple Le Rice. I very much fear that the absolutely scrumptious and delicious Coles-brand, very low-calorie Rice Pudding, has been discontinued 😥 I mean, who’d buy Le Rice, when they had the Coles Rice Pudding as an alternative! (Julian probably would, though…) Today for lunch we had ham, cheese and tomato toasties, made from that yummy, tasty whole-meal bread with the sesame-seeded crust – they were really nice, but I did burn my mouth a bit – it’s really hard to wait patiently for them to cool down a bit, while something as tasty as those toasties is sitting there staring at you, saying “eat me, eat me!” Tonight we’re having steak, pan-fried in a little lemon infused olive oil, with chips, our usual half a tomato, and steamed green beans. For dessert I’ll be having one of my “Eve” apples, and this afternoon while he was out, Julian bought us both a small tub of “Jalna Cafe Latte” yoghurt for dessert tonight – we’ve had some of their fruit flavours before, and they are really nice! I’ll let you all know what the coffee one was like! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. I had that strange feeling of déjà vu this morning when I clambered onto the scales… I had to look twice, because once again, I’d “doubled up”! I went from 63.9 kg to 63.9 kg. To re-cap, on both Sunday and Monday, I was 64,5 kg. On both Tuesday and Wednesday, I was 64.1 kg, and both yesterday (Thursday) and today (Friday) I was 63.9 kg! I think that’s weird! I wonder what I’ll be tomorrow (and the day after!) especially seeing as I didn’t do my usual walk again this morning, as I’m trying to get my foot to recover. Depending on how it goes, I may be able to do a short, 20 minute walk, but I’ll definitely stop if it starts hurting again!

And once again I’m back to tomorrow! I’m not sure what we’re doing, but no doubt I’ll be working with young Phaédra. I’d like to get her up to level 45 by the end of the weekend – which I think should be manageable, so I’ll see how I go! And that really is about “it” from me again for tonight, but do call in again tomorrow night, to find out what my weight did this time, and whether or not Auric and Dapple’s new feeding times are working, and if my new, corded keyboard is still working better than my old one, as well as what sort of adventures we got up to during the day! Until then however, do try really hard to bee good, don’t forget that knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom, and remember to always drive carefully, to keep warm and especially dry in this mercurial weather, and to look after yourselves – but most importantly, please remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

04.58 pm

Well, it’s been another fairly quiet day chez nous – I did play with Phaédra this morning, but had to give up in the end – I mean, I really do like the game, and I’d really like to actually play the damn game, and not have to stand idly in a queue, twiddling my thumbs while I’m waiting for my turn to pick up the quest items I had to pick up – once they respawn, that is, or for the mobs I’m supposed to be killing to re-appear – or for whatever-it-was that I was supposed to be doing to finish the quest to come back – only I’ve forgotten what “that” was now, it’s been so long between drinks! All kidding aside, it was getting to be a real yawn, not made any easier because I’m in Australia on a West Coast US Server, so even if I’m more than half way through picking a flower, thanks to the “time-lag” involved, someone else, State-side, can come up and pick it first – and so I sit back to wait a bit longer for it to re-materialise! So anyway, I chucked my dummy out of the pram and went off to do something else – that something being re-organising my Bookmarks wallpapery thingy! No, not making a new graphic/wallpaper for it, I’ve already done that the other day – no, this time I wanted to change, and add to, what was on it, link-wise…

Once Upon a Time, a long time ago – about last Tuesday, I used to use a “WYSIWYG” (“What You See Is What You Get”) Html editor called “Front Page” – it meant that you could put pictures, videos, text – whatever you wanted to appear on your website, anywhere you wanted on your page, and “Front Page”, behind the virtual curtain, would write it all out in html so that it could be displayed in all its glory for everyone with a Browser to be able to see. “Front Page” had the reputation for writing the worst html possible – but I was used to it, and I even managed to pick up enough knowledge of html to be able to go through it afterwards, and clean it up. Not perfectly, mind you, but – well enough… Years went by, and I became pretty much a full-time gamer, first with WoW, and then Rift – so I didn’t really have any call to think about, look at, or use, html – which of course “grew up” in the intervening years, and became much more sophisticated, and started calling itself “CSS” (yes Julian and Lee, I know that CSS isn’t html, per se., but for things like WordPress Templates, it might as well be, to me!) But for once I’m not talking about WordPress Templates (Oh yes, don’t worry! I did hear that great collective sigh of relief from all of you!) I’m talking about html “as she is ritten on my Bookmarks Wallpapery thingy”, K? Sadly, “Front Page”, in all its woeful html glory, no longer exists in a usable form, so I’ve had to rely on a very rough-and-ready WYSIWYG editor called Kompozer (oo-er! It looks like a much more newer version than the one I’m using! I wonder if it’s any better?! I must get Julian to have a look at it! 😮 ) it’s not bad, you know – and it gets the job done (i.e. all the links I put on my Bookmarks list actually work!) but I can tell you, very honestly, that the html editing that Kompozer writes – well, that my version writes, anyway – makes “Front Page’s” html look like it’s been written by a professional programmer, and then edited, polished, and perfected to the “nth” degree! I did try delving into Kompozer’s html editor for about three-quarters of an hour, but in the end I had to give up and admit defeat. I have no idea what the finished html of my Bookmarks list looks like – I daren’t look – but as I said – all the links work, and that’s all I really care about! 🙂 And… that’s what I did for the major part of the afternoon!

So, after grizzling at Julian ad infinitum, about the state of affairs on WoW, he snapped at me that we could always move away from Quel’Dorei…

Hmm… have we actually looked at any other Realms to see if they’re not as “busy”? Well, yes and no… I have several characters on Nagrand, an Oceanic Realm based in Sydney (why is everything always based in Sydney! Why can’t we have a Realm based in Melbourne!) but to tell you the truth, I’ve never really looked further afield… most of our worldly goods are concentrated in the Realms of Quel’Dorei or Nagrand, with a bit of a spill-over in Borean Tundra and Azuremyst. When we started playing WoW all those years ago, we started out on Scarlet Crusade, because that was where my very favourite eldest daughter and her husband were based – then we picked up our belongings and trekked over to Quel’Dorei, because it was the least populated of all the Realms – but we must be trend-setters or something, because it almost seems as though half the population of World of Warcraft followed us, because it’s now one of the busiest and most over-populated!

We have Guilds on most, if not all, of the US Realms – if fact we have two Horde Guilds on one Realm! We could move that one across, and it doesn’t need to remain Horde, if we’d rather it was Alliance – nor does it need to keep its name, so that’s certainly a lot of food for thought!

Oh, and before I forget, I should probably let you all know that I’ve kept my promise – you’ll find the recipe for the “Shepherd’s Pie with Cauliflower Mash” that I’ve been raving on about for the past couple of days, waiting for your perusal and enjoyment on the “Recipes…” page. Do try it – it’s very easy, and tastes delicious! It does call for 80 ml of dry red wine, but the alcohol completely cooks off and all you’re left with is the flavour.

Anyway, so that’s what I’ve been up to today, so having got all of that out of the way, I can now move on to the good bits! 😉

Food stuffs. Last night we had the Outback Spirit Beef and Bush Tomato Sausages, which ere really extremely nice! Sometimes sausages can be a bit “same-y”, but these were really flavourful and tasty! With them we had steamed green beans, chips, and half a tomato, and for dessert I had one of my Corella pears and a small tub of Apple Le Rice. Today for lunch I had a sandwich made from that yummy whole-meal bread, the one which has the sesame seeded crust… this time with the Sumac and Sesame hummus, and some “tandoori chicken sandwich chunks”,which finally allowed the flavour of the Sumac and Sesame seed to come through – and it was utterly divine! I think I have a new favourite butter substitute, though to tell the truth, they’re both delicious! (Oh! I wonder what they’d be like… on their own… but together?! 😮 ) Anyway, it was a most yummy sandwich! 🙂 Tonight we’re having “Easy Grilled Dijon Chicken”, which is so easy and uncomplicated that it almost doesn’t need cooking! Yes, it’s another one from one of my foodie e-zines, and if it’s any good, and we decide to make it a “Keeper”, I’ll print it up for you all to try! For dessert I might have the last of the “bald-kiwi-fruit brown” skinned Nashi pear – we haven’t been able to get any more this week, so I hope they’re not going out of season! I’ll also have another Le Rice – Apple, if there any of those left, Vanilla if not…

Weigh-in this morning. Was quite amazing! I went from 64.1 kg to 63.9 kg! Down two points, and under the 64 kg barrier! 🙂 😀 Unfortunately though, I don’t think I’ll stay down for very long… Remember I told you that I’d hurt my foot yesterday? Well, I wasn’t able to do my walk this morning, and from the way it feels at the moment, I don’t think I’ll be able to go tomorrow morning, either! 😦 Dammit! I should have stopped when I noticed my foot getting worse with every step yesterday morning! This has happened before – quite a while ago now, but I couldn’t get back on the treadmill for almost a week! 😦 I are not happy!

And here it is, I’m up to tomorrow, which I expect will be much the same as today… Auric and Dapple told me to wave my fin at you all, on their behalf, so consider my “fin” waved at you! But when I asked Flipper if she had a message for you all, or if she wanted me to give you all a wave of her tail, she just gave me one of her usual dirty looks, and went back to sleep! So… consider yourselves ignored by a cat! 😉 And really, that’s about “it” from me again for this evening! Do drop in again tomorrow night to find out how Julian went at the doctors (he’s going to get the results of his foot x-rays this time!) just how much my weight decided to go up because I haven’t been able to walk on it, and how we’re going with a possible “re-location” to another Realm on WoW… But until then, please try hard to bee good, and remember, you are no one until you have been ignored by a cat, but don’t forget to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm and dry in this nasty, changeable weather… but above all… please, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

05.27 pm

Here I am – I have my computer back again! Not only has my very favourite eldest daughter been over here today, but Julian took the opportunity, whilst we were sitting goggle-eyed in front of the television, watching episodes of “Arrow” and “The Flash”, to “overhaul” my computer, and “fix” a few things that weren’t working as properly as he would have liked. This also involved un-installing World of Warcraft, with all its Add-Ons, then re-downloading everything, including the latest versions of the Add-Ons I used, and setting everything back up again! Anyway, ’tis all done now, and everything – so far – seems to be working correctly, at least as far as World of Warcraft is concerned, anyway – I haven’t had a chance to check anything else out yet.

My very favourite eldest daughter and I spent a very pleasant day out in the lounge room, watching our episodes of “Arrow”, which is getting murkier by the episode, and “The Flash” which is really getting even more heavily into the whole “Time Travel” scenario! Apparently we’re watching the two shows, which occasionally link in with eachother, in chronological order, so we watched one episode of “Arrow”, followed by one episode of “The Flash”, then “Arrow”, “The Flash”, and finally, two episodes of “Arrow”, back to back! She also brought over a printout of the “project” she’s working on for uni, a futuristic fantasy short story set in Melbourne, which, as usual, I thought was very good! She’s written a couple of other stories in the same “universe”, but with a female protagonist, and this one could, I suppose, be considered a “prequel” to those – so I’m impatiently looking forward to reading the next part! 🙂

Not really much else has happened around here since yesterday, so there’s not really much else for me to tell you about! The Fishes are still Fishering, Flipper is still Flippering, Julian is still doing everything from the cooking, the gardening, to the washing, and everything else in between, whilst I just laze around the house and fiddle with unnecessary graphic-y things and with my Blog Project – as the old saying goes, “the more things change, the more they stay the same!” We were supposed to be going to the RACV in the city for lunch tomorrow, but there’s too much to be done around here, and besides, we haven’t booked yet, so we’re going next Monday – or Tuesday – to the RACV in Healesville! It’s supposed to be very nice, and it’s a lot newer than the RACV in the city – we’ve often meant to go and see what it’s like, but being us, we never really got a round tuit before! I’m crossing my fingers for Tuesday, because my hair should still be looking good! 😉 (Vanity, thy name is Winter!)

Anyway, I might as well get on with the good bits, because as I said – there’s not much more to fill you in on! So…

Food stuffs. Last night we had the re-heated left-overs from the “Shepherd’s pie with cauliflower mash” that we had the other night, and it was possibly even more delicious than it was then! As it’s really a meal in and of itself, we didn’t have our usual “three veg” with it, however it’s definitely a keeper, and I promise, I’ll get the recipe posted up for you as soon as possible! For dessert I had another of the “Eve” apples – slightly riper than the last one I had, so it was much more nicer, and just to keep with the “apple theme” (so to speak) I had an “Apple Le Rice”, which was quite a lot nicer than the usual common or garden variety “Vanilla” Le Rice, and while I did enjoy it, it’s still not a patch on my delicious Coles-brand, very low-calorie Rice Pudding! 😦 Today for lunch we had wraps, with a different sort of butter substitute this time – Sumac and Sesame hummus! It was very nice – I think! – but there were so many flavours going on in the wrap that it was a bit hard to really tell! Apart from the Sumac and Sesame hummus, there was ham, sliced tomato, red capsicum batons, and Halloumi cheese, so as you can see, there was a lot going on in a fairly small wrap! Tonight we’re having “Outback Spirit” Beef and Bush Tomato Sausages, which sound interesting and look very nice – the “Outback Spirit” sausages that we usually have – when we’re not having the Heston Blumenthal sausages – are the Pork with Lemon Aspen and Kakadu Plum ones, so these will be an interesting change – I’ll let you all know if they’re any good! 🙂 For dessert I’ll most likely have one of my Corella pears, and a small tub of (hopefully!) Apple Le Rice… or maybe even a yoghurt tonight – I haven’t made up my mind yet!

Weigh-in this morning. Hmm… I seem to be doing “double-takes”, these last few days! This morning I went from 64.1 kg to… 64.1 kg! Once more, I stayed the same! Not that I mind, of course – it’s much more betterer than going “up-scale”! I’m hoping I’ll be able to do my full 25 minute treadmilling tomorrow, but I’m a trifle doubtful! This morning while doing my usual walk, I somehow managed to hurt my left foot! First, I’d just got to about the 15 minute marker when my left “bunion” joint started to feel as though some nasty person was mashing it with a sledge-hammer… it’s “only” arthritis, I know – but it hurts, all the same! And to add to that, the base knuckle of my right index finger was playing up too! Same miserable deal – the finger I can cope with, the foot isn’t quite so easy! While I’ve found out that it is possible to limp on a treadmill, it doesn’t make for a pleasant walk! Then my knees started hurting, and my lower spine – but by then I was at 20 minutes, so I thought “What the heck – it’s only another five minutes!”, and kept going. I shouldn’t have. I can hardly put my left foot down on the floor now, the whole top of my foot feels like I’ve broken something in there… But it’ll probably be better tomorrow! 🙂

And that brings me around to tomorrow again! I’ll spend most of the morning on Phaédra, and hopefully, most of the afternoon on my Blog Project – but as far as today and this evening are concerned, I fear that’s about “it” from me for tonight! Feel free to call in again tomorrow night though, to find out if my weight has started going up again or not, and to catch up on all things fur-ish, fin-ish, wow-ish, and blog-ish, not to mention anything else of moderate interest that we might have been up to! Until then though, do try very hard to bee good, remember that it’s not how good you are, it’s how good you want to be that matters, and don’t forget to keep warm and dry in this cold, blustery weather, to look after yourselves, and to always drive carefully… but most importantly, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

04.31 pm

Well, here I am, back at the keyboard again – better late than never, eh?! 🙂 So, what’s been happening this side of the black stump… Not all that much – I’ve done a bit of work on Phaédra, and a bit of work on my Blog Project… and for good or ill, I’m going to consider that the “Blog Project” is ready enough for me to stop worrying about the Template and the Header any more, and start writing… thingz… in it! 😉 The background is a trifle clumsy, and I know I can do better – but at least I have managed to get it to tile, if not perfectly, then “well enough”, for the nonce anyway, and hopefully people will be too busy reading “stuff” to notice the rather glaringly obvious Photoshop anomalies! Phaédra is making great strides at the moment – she’s now level 28 and on her way to Northern Stranglethorn! – Hopefully I’ll be able to get her to an Inn this evening before the Rolling Re-starts begin! (once a week – occasionally more often – one by one, Blizzard closes down, and re-starts all of the Realms (read “servers”) one after the other. The Re-start itself doesn’t take all that long, but together the whole thing lasts about an hour, give or take a few weeks! *rolls eyes*) Not that it really matters whether or not I get her to an Inn – but getting your character to a “rest” place, like an Inn, or a Capital City, gives you a small “resting” bonus, which shows up as a blue line along your experience bar. This doubles your experience points when you start playing again, and the only things that “eat up” your bonus bar is killing mobs. That is, if you complete quests to gain your double experience points, your blue bar won’t shorten, it remains the same. However if you kill mobs to get your double experience points, the blue bar shortens exponentially, and when the blue bar is all eaten up, your resting bonus is finished, until the next time you spend time in an Inn, or a Capital City, and (Winter begins to sing, somewhat off key:) you start all over again!

Yesterday morning I had to go off and have my Warfarin blood test (again!) and this time I was very pleased to see that my INR had actually gone up a little, to 2.4 – not as much as I would have liked, mind you, but it was certainly a lot better than the time before, when it was a bit too low, at 2.1! My rat poison dosage is still the same too, at 4.5 mg per night. We usually go shopping after that, but this time we didn’t, and I came straight back here and played with Phaédra until Josh arrived in the afternoon. My very favourite eldest daughter should have been over here today, but she’s coming tomorrow instead, because I had the Podiatrist over today (so my feet look vaguely human again, despite all the cracked blisters and blood blisters that I keep getting from walking into table legs and things!), and it would have mucked up our day of television watching. So she’ll be here all day tomorrow, and this time I’d like to watch some “Agents of Shield”, as well as some “Arrow” and “The Flash”.

Julian is planning on changing out some of the Fish House water tonight (well, that’s what he said last night, anyway) but this time he’s going to be keeping some of it in the smaller “temporary” tank that we had for Auric and Dapple, before we decided that instead of putting them back outside in the newly cleaned and now habitable puddle that they’d come from, they were going to become “inside fish”, and live in the lounge room, with us! Once we get the water in the small “holding” tank ready, we’re going to get at least one new fish – most likely a “golden comet”, if we can find a nice one (we’re looking for one similar to some we saw in the large Pet Barn near Aldi in Vermont South – they were such a pale, pale yellow as to almost appear to be chartreuse, and they were really pretty and unusual!) We plan on quarantining the new fish in the small holding tank for about a week – mainly to give it a chance to acclimatise to the water, and to make sure that he (or she!) is healthy, then we’ll shift him (or her!) into the main tank with Auric and Dapple. If that all goes well, and we think that there’s still enough room in the main tank, we might get a fourth fish, but that’s still filed under “Pending”….

Anyway, time is ticking along, so if I want to get finished before dinner time, I’d best move on to the good bits! 😉

Food stuffs. Yesterday for lunch I had a ham and cheese toastie, made from the nice tasty whole-meal bread with the sesame-seeded crust. Toasties are really nice, but you have to be careful you don’t burn yourself on the molten cheese! Last night we had pan-fried lamb backstrap, with baby Brussels sprouts, chips, and our usual half a tomato, and for dessert I had a “bald-kiwi-fruit-brown” skinned Nashi pear, and a Vanilla Le Rice. Julian went and did some more shopping today (because we’d run out of our breakfast bananas, as well as lots of other stuff – I dunno – we must be eating it all, or something!) and looked in two Coles… and neither of them had my Rice Pudding! 😥 I think they’ve discontinued it now that Le Rice is back on their shelves! 😥  So because Julian went shopping this morning, and didn’t get back until fairly late-ish, he stopped off at Baker’s Delight, and, yes, you guessed it, came home with two different types of very nice savoury rolls for lunch, of which we had half each, and another two fruit and white chocolate scones (and I’ll also bet that my weight goes up again tomorrow!) Tonight we’re having the left-over Shepherd’s pie with cauliflower mash for dinner – if it’s even half as nice as it was when we had it before, I’m really looking forward to it! I really should stop being so lazy and get a round tuit, and type it up for you all to try! 🙂 For dessert I’ll probably have another Corella pear, and this time, an Apple Le Rice!

Weigh-in yesterday morning. Wasn’t too bad, considering the way my weight’s been see-sawing up and down lately! I went from 64.5 kg to 64.5 kg again – in other words, I stayed the same, which at least is better than going back up again! I still haven’t decided if it has anything to do with my morning walks on the treadmill. I do know that walking pretty much first thing in the morning (after weighing myself, but before breakfast) “wakes up” my extremely slow metabolism, but how, and why, and should I be looking at the amount of time that I walk for, or the distance I walk? At the moment I’m walking by “time” – but should I perhaps be looking at how far I walk, and forget about how long it takes? I dunno…

Weigh-in this morning. Was even betterer! 🙂 I went from 64.5 kg to 64.1 kg – that’s almost a kilo in four days! However, after my lunch today, I’m sure to be back up again tomorrow *sigh* “Say lar Vee”, as the French are wont to say! 😉 And so I guess I’ll just… [reprise: Winter singing, definitely off-key this time:] start all over again!

And that more-or-less brings me back to tomorrow, when my very favourite eldest daughter will be over. With Blizzard re-starting of all the servers tonight, I probably won’t get a chance to play with Phaédra until tomorrow morning, before Lee arrives, and as I’ve been told that we’re going out for lunch on Thursday, to the RACV in the city, I probably won’t get a good run at anything WoW-ish until Friday – but I will get a chance to do some writing for my Blog Project! Depending on how much I can get written before next Monday, I expect to be able to fling the doors wide, and make it a Public Blog, accessible to all! 🙂 “Watch This Space!” 😉 And once again, that’s really about “it” from me this evening! Do call in again tomorrow night to find out what my weight did to me in the morning, and whether I’m crying tears of blood, or dancing around (figuratively speaking!) for joy! Get all the latest news on Auric, Dapple, and Flipper, and also what we’ve been up to, in our infinite spare time! 😉 Until then though, do try hard to bee good, don’t forget to stop saying ‘I wish’ and start saying ‘I will’, and remember to always drive carefully, to look after yourselves, and to keep warm and dry during this extremely cold and wet spell… but above all, please remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

04.59 pm

Right, well here I am again – we’ve just finished our weekly excursion into Draenor, where we ran around completing quests, killing monsters, looting loot, and (hopefully!) gaining some worthwhile Reputation, as well as the usual run-of-the-mill experience! Today, however, Xãnthe and Jemimah garnered their last basketful of experience! Today they reached Level 100, at long last – Xãnthe has hung up her bow, and Jemimah has hung up her staff, and they will remain hanging up there in the Hall Closet, at least until such time as Blizzard sees fit to “modify” (read: “restore”!) some of the more vital spells and abilities that are, essentially, what makes a Shaman a Shaman, and not just a clump of pixels on the screen!

I have to admit, we did cheat, just a teeny little bit, to get to level 100 as quickly as we did. We were both level 97 when we started – late as usual, because it’s Sunday, and we slept in a bit (alright, a lot, then!) However it seems that the Garrison Quartermaster has some rather cheeky little potions that he’ll sell you for 100 Garrison Resources… each! Each of these canny little potions lasts for an hour, and they increase your experience by 20%… and Xãnthe and Jemimah bought four bottles worth, each! So what with their doing every “Bonus” event that they could find, marked on the map by two crossed swords, their Heirloom gear, plus one of these little potions every hour, it didn’t take all that long for the two of them to whizz through the last three levels to 100! And now they’ll just sit on their hands in their Garrisons, sending out their Followers to collect loot and general resources, until Blizzard “un-nerfs” the Shamen! It’s a real shame, just how badly they’ve pruned back the Shamen – it might have been kinder, perhaps, to just say “Well, look! we think that we have too many Classes, especially now that we’ve created the new Class of “Demon Hunter”, so we’re cutting out the Shamen Class altogether!” So… at the moment, I guess that’s about “it” for Xãnthe and Jemimah!

In the meantime, however, we’ve created two new characters! Mine is a Gnome Beast Master Hunter (so what else would I use, hmm?! 😉 ) called “Dulcineà”, after a character in Don Quixote, and Julian’s is also a Gnome – a Frost Mage called “Tourbillon” – which I suppose is reasonable, as he is a fully qualified Watchmaker! 🙂 We’ve just started them out, and they’re only level 5 so far. We won’t be bumping them up to level 100, as the whole object of this exercise is to actually play them, and to enjoy playing them – so now we’re back to romping around Azeroth, progressing from one zone to the next, hopefully in an orderly manner, but leaving plenty of chaos, dead mobs, and lots of disorder in their wake! 🙂

Tomorrow morning I’ll probably pick up again with Phaédra and Cynthìa, but tomorrow afternoon it’ll be back to the grindstone again, working on my Blog Project! There’s still so much to do, but first of all I want to get the background fully sorted out, so that I can just concentrate on writing! If I don’t, I’ll find my mind isn’t on my writing, it’ll be mostly on “if I did this to that part of the background, then I could…” – and so it would go on until I’d completely messed up my writing because I wasn’t concentrating, and nothing constructive would get done. So I keep telling myself to get the hard bits, the graphics, done first, and the easy part, the writing part, will follow in due course! Well, that’s the theory of it, anyway! 😉

I’m still worried about Auric and Dapple – last night Auric was floating enough for me to wonder whether I should tie a piece of cotton to his tail, so that I could pull him back down from the ceiling, if I had to! Actually, it wasn’t so much that his floating upset me, it was the – apparent, anyway – trouble he seemed to be having getting down to the bottom of the tank! Dapple was here, there, and everywhere, having a lot of fun sucking in, and then spitting out, individual grains of gravel from the bottom of the tank. They both like doing this, hanging head down, tail up, hoovering  away at the gravel on the bottom of the tank (why this gives them so much pleasure, I have no earthly idea! Personally, I can think of lots of things I’d much rather be doing with my spare time!) So there was little Dapple, hanging in there, hoovering the gravel, and there was Auric – twisting himself almost into a pretzel – one is almost tempted to say “desperately” – trying to keep himself head down at the bottom of the tank in order to hoover the gravel – but he’d just end up bobbing back to the surface, where again – to my eyes – anyway, he’d try to twist himself into a corkscrew in another attempt to get back down to the bottom! I’d love to know why he seems to get the “floaties” so often and so badly – or is it just “playing”? Dapple get the floaties sometimes, but not nearly as often as Auric does, and certainly not for so long! We’ve cut their feed back down to only one or two very small pellets of spirulina per feed (Julian feeds them in the mornings, around about nine o’clock, and I give them their dinner round six o’clock in the evening) Julian tests and changes over 30% of the water very regularly, about once every three days, and other than this strange “floating” behaviour, they both seem to be happy, relaxed little fishies! I might get Julian to make a short video of this upsetting (to me!) behaviour, which seems to occur mainly in the evenings (but then, during the bulk of the day we’re in here, and not in the lounge room where we’d be able to see what they get up to!) so that we can take it to the aquarium place, and ask them if they know why they’re doing it. I’ll keep you posted!

And now on to the good bits again!

Food stuffs. Last night we had the extremely nice “Shepherd’s pie with cauliflower mash”, a recipe wot I got from one of my online “foodie” haunts, and what will definitely be a “keeper”! I must get a round tuit, and type it up for you all to enjoy, as soon as possible! It’s very easy to make, and with cauliflower instead of potato (you really can’t tell the difference in this recipe, either – it all tastes so yummy!) I will, however, say that it seems to use an awful lot of olive oil in the “mashed cauliflower”, but we only used about half of what the recipe calls for, and it worked really well! For dessert last night I had one of my Corella pears, and one small tub of Vanilla Le Rice, as I didn’t have any of my Rice Pudding 😦 Today for lunch we had a repeat of the absolutely divinely delicious sandwich that we had the other day, with basil-pesto hummus as the butter substitute, sliced turkey, and Beerenberg Tomato Chutney, in tasty whole-meal bread (the one with the sesame-seeded crust) and of course tonight being Sunday night, it’s omelet night! I’ll have to fill you all in one what was in the omelet tomorrow night, as I won’t know until I eat it! For dessert I’ll probably have another Jazz apple, and another small tub of the Vanilla Le Rice.

Weigh-in this morning. Will wonders never cease? This morning I went from 65.0 kg… to 64.5 kg. Down a whole half kilo! I don’t know why I still get surprised by things like this – you’d think I’d be used to it by now, wouldn’t you! But… I do! I’m constantly being surprised at some of the totally illogical things that his wretched body of mine does! It’ll probably be back up again tomorrow – because, who knows? I certainly don’t, that’s for sure!

And once again, that brings me round to tomorrow, which I’ve already told you about – Julian will be planting the seed potatoes, and if it’s too wet to do it out in the garden, he’ll have to plant them in their bags on the back deck, and cart them out and during any dry spells – if there are any! 😉 And there it is – once again, that’s really about “it” from me for tonight! Do call in again tomorrow night to see what my weight did this time – whether it went up or down… and how little Auric and Dapple are, and what adventures we had during the day! But until then, please bee good, remember that the most effective way to do it, is to do it, and don’t forget to always drive carefully, to keep warm and dry when you’re outside, and to look after yourselves… but please, most importantly, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

04.34 pm

For once I’m not late in starting to write this! Strange, too, because we’ve been out for most of the afternoon – Julian decided to drag me off to The Glen, because I hadn’t been out of the house for almost two weeks, so I was able to do a little shopping 😉 I got a new dressing gown, with pockets in it, and a cardigan, again with pockets in it, seeing that slacks and jeans aren’t allowed to have pockets any more – I mean, you can’t go putting lumpy things like a tissue, in pockets near your hips now, can you!? It’d spoil the nice, slender, sleek line! Apparently fashion designers have decreed that even if you have a really bad head cold, it is by far much more betterer for you to wipe your badly running nose on the back of your hand (and which you then surreptitiously transfer to the material of your jeans (or slacks)) because you have nowhere to keep a ruddy tissue! At the moment I still have the remnants of a bad head cold (and my damn ear is still blocked up!) and I’m sick to death of never having a tissue on me when I need one! Of course not having any pockets in my jeans means that I have nowhere to put said tissue, which in turn means that I have to go around continuously sniffing and sniffling, which drives me, and everyone else around me, completely batty! Gahh! So anyway, as I said earlier, I bought myself a cardigan which has pockets in it! Hallelujah, I can now carry around a humble tissue, with which to wipe my nose if it needs it! Ditto with the dressing gown in the morning, while I’m scurrying around pulling up the outside blind, and freezing to death, while I wake up Auric and Dapple by turning their Fish House light back on again. I really do wish clothing manufacturers would get on with “standardising” their sizes though! I got the dressing gown at David Jones – I told them “I need a size 14, please” and they gave me a size “S” (Small!) which fits beautifully! I bought the cardigan at Suzanne Grae, where I helpfully told them “I wear a size 14”, and they gave me a size “M” (Medium!) and it too fits perfectly! Perhaps from now on I should say that I’m a size S&M?! 😮

This morning though, I played WoW, and got Phaédra up to level 22 before we left for The Glen. Blizzard have done some fairly horrendous things to some of the character Classes – Julian’s Mouselet, who is a Shaman, was one of the best, strongest, and most versatile characters in our Guild (albeit that the Guild only consists of Julian’s characters, my characters, and a few of my very favourite eldest daughter’s characters!) and Mouselet has been rendered totally unplayable! Julian’s had to park him in “a safe place”, strip him, and pretty much abandon him! On the other hand, Schpadöinkle, Julian’s Mage, is turning out to be extremely formidable! I say this with some surprise, because generally speaking, Mages are very fragile “Clothies” – they wear cloth armor, which doesn’t give them the same sort of protection as Leather, Mail, or Plate Armor, so they tend to…. die a lot more often. However Schpadöinkle, newly boosted up to level 100 by Julian, is holding up remarkably well, and from what he tells me, turning into a very powerful character! According to the Grape Vine of Gamer Gossip, a lot of gamers have been raising their voices in protest at what Blizzard have done to the Classes in general, and some Classes in particular! It’s also one of the reasons that I decided to create Phaédra, and bring her up “the old fashioned way”, from level 1 to level 100, with no boosts other than the use of Heirloom gear. As I said, she’s now level 22, and so far, so good. Beast Master Hunters have lost a few of their abilities, or “shots”, but so far, I haven’t noticed anything particularly nasty or “unplayable” about those changes. Time will tell, no doubt! 😐

Well, this is going to be late! I got half way through the previous paragraph before dinner, when the phone rang. It was my very favourite youngest daughter, who wanted a chat, so I talked with her until dinner time, so I’m now continuing AD&T (After Dinner & Television) and it’s now 10.00 pm! However, before going on to the good bits, I’ll tell you that something really, really terrible happened to me at The Glen today! As you all know by now, I always take my dear little Kindle with me, wherever I go – it’s truly a “Don’t leave home without it” item, and it rides around with me in my handbag. Well, we went to the Shingle Inn for lunch, and while Julian was off ordering our lunch, out came my Kindle and I started reading. Julian came back and sat down, and shortly after, I closed my Kindle and – I thought! – put it back in my handbag, and zipped it up! We had lunch, and went off to do our shopping. I got my dressing gown, and my cardigan, both of which have quite capacious pockets in them, and then we went to Coles to get the ingredients for tonight’s dinner, and some more of my very favourite Coles-brand, very low-calorie, delicious Rice Pudding. That done, we went back to the car and came home via Vermont South Shopping Centre to check our PO Box. Once more waiting for Julian, I went to pull out my trusty Kindle, and… It wasn’t there! The compartment in my handbag where it lives when I go out was empty! I sat there quietly panicking until Julian got back to the car, and I told him. We felt that it must be back at the Shingle Inn, that when I’d thought I was slipping it into the compartment in my handbag, I must have inadvertently slipped it down between the handbag and the seat instead! We turned around and went back, and once again, I sat in the car, almost – but not quite – biting my nails in distress, while Julian went in to see if it was still there. After a bit of confusion between two staff members at the Shingle Inn, it was found, safe and sound, and I was finally reunited with “my preciousssss”, my little Kindle! (actually, it’s not a Kindle at all, it’s a Samsung Galaxy something-or-other Tablet, a sort-of an up-market Kindle Fire, but “Kindle” is easier to say, and at least everyone knows what you mean!) And after the stress of almost losing it today, you can bet your sweet bippy that I’ll be a lot more careful with it next time! 🙂

And now on to the good bits!

Food stuffs. Last night we had some really delicious pork fillets pan-fried with some home-grown rosemary, with mashed potato, half a tomato, and not steamed green beans – it turned out that we didn’t have any left, so we had peas again instead! Then I had a “bald-kiwi fruit” brown Nashi pear – lovely and crispy, and a small bowl of my very favourite Coles-brand, very low-calorie, delicious Rice Pudding, and alas, that was our last tub of that delicious dessert! We were going to get some more today… only… Coles didn’t have any either! 😥 I hope they’re not going to discontinue it, because… Yoplait seem to have reconsidered their decision to stop producing the extremely popular low-calorie dessert, “Le Rice“, which was Julian’s favourite dessert while I was still Optifasting and having diet jellies for dessert, because this afternoon, there it was on their dairy shelves again! So we got extra Le Rice, because I couldn’t get my usual Rice Pudding fix! Oh dear… 😦 Anyway, getting back on track, we had lunch at the Shingle Inn today, and I had my usual BLT on sourdough bread, my usual long black (coffee) with a small jug of skinny milk on the side, and my rapidly becoming usual “chocolate caramel slice” – a gorgeous, gooey, slice of compacted crumb base, topped with a good inch of thick, creamy, yummy caramel, with thick chocolate icing on top of that! A really, truly, “slimming biscuit” dessert! (“slimming biscuit” = because it doesn’t! 😉 ) Tonight for dinner Julian made one of the recipes I found online, called “Shepherd’s pie with Cauliflower mash“, and guess what! It’s turned out to be a “keeper” too! It sounded nice, and it was! Most delicious, and unless you were told, you’d never guess that the cauliflower mash wasn’t potato! There’s tons left over too, which is an extra bonus! And for dessert , I had one of my Corella pears, and a small tub of Vanilla Le Rice… which was nice enough, but very bland compared to my Rice Pudding. Maybe one of the other Le Rice flavours will be better…

Weigh-in this morning. I have to admit, I wasn’t terribly hopeful when I went to clamber onto the scales this morning… still… I went from 65.2 kg to 65.0 kg, so at least I didn’t go up again this morning – that’s happening tomorrow morning instead! You know I’ve mentioned fluid retention, and swollen feet on this blog, many times – probably about as many times as I’ve brought it up to our doctor, but she doesn’t seem terribly concerned about it because the rest of me is very healthy! *sigh* well, she might not be terribly concerned, but or a while there this afternoon I didn’t think I was going to be able to get my shoe on! So, fluid retention it is, and I suppose I’m just going to have to wait until the tide goes out before my weight subsides…

And here we are, almost up to Sunday again, and our little jaunt in Draenor with Xãnthe and Jemimah! I wonder how they’ll take to all the changes, especially as Jemimah is a Shaman, like Mouselet! Well, we’ll see what happens, won’t we! I was going to say “maybe Schpadöinkle could swap with Jemimah”, but Schpadöinkle is Alliance and Xãnthe is Horde, and “in game” they don’t even speak the same language! I’ll let you all know what happens tomorrow night, but until then, that’s about “it” from me this evening! Drop in again tomorrow night though, and find out what happened with my weight – my bet is that it’ll be up again – how we fared in Draenor, and to get all the latest newz about the Fur-Fins. Until then though, do try to bee good, don’t forget that the future starts today, not tomorrow, and remember to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm and dry in Melbourne’s “dynamic” weather patterns… but most importantly, please remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

05.31 pm

Well, I’m late again – but this time I have a really good excuse! I’ve been working on Phaédra pretty much all day – and I’ve managed to get her to level 20, which means that she can ride now! Woo-hoo! It’s so much more betterer than having to run everywhere! Poor little Phaédra! She has such short little legs, and to run along behind her (from my perspective of her, anyway) with her little legs working so hard – I get tired, just watching her! But she can ride now, so I have her mounted on our “Imperial Quilen” (the Imperial Quilen Mount can fly you around too, as soon as you get old enough to fly!) She looks so cute – she’s so small, and the Quilen is fairly big, so she almost looks as though she’s riding on an overstuffed, mobile armchair! Anyway, I spent all day with her, except for a very short time this afternoon, while I was trying to work on some graphics for a new Bookmarks Wallpapery thingy (totally unsuccessfully, as it turned out, which annoyed me no end because I ended up wasting a perfectly good three-quarters of an hour on it that I could have spent writing!)

Now that I’ve set Cynthìa up as a level 100 character, I’m sort-of leaving her on her own for a bit, to get used to sending off her Followers to earn her some Garrison Resources, which she needs to change the dynamics of her Garrison. I’ve now changed over most of the unwanted “businesses” and Buildings that I’d been given when Cynthìa first “moved in” – a sort-of “default” Garrison lay-out, I suppose you could call it – to the types of Buildings I wanted her to have there, but I still need to upgrade them all to Tier 3, which means… lots and lots and lots of Garrison Resources! It’s a damn shame that Garrison Resources are “Soulbound” to the individual character – I reckon that Garrison Resources should be “Account Bound”, not “Soulbound”! Wynterthyme has Garrison Resources coming out of her ears, and about all she can do with them is sell them to one of the Traders for a mere pittance! (50 Garrison Resources will net you between 13 and 18 gold, plus the odd bit of silver and copper coinage!) while newer characters, like Cynthìa, have to send Followers out to (maybe, if they’re lucky!) pull in 90 or so Resources per day! S’not fair!

So anyway, that’s been my day today! I’m not sure what’s happening tomorrow – but if the weather is fairly clear, Julian intends to do a bit of planting, and organising the tarps so that if the weather report after the news says there might be frosts, he can quickly dart outside, pull the tarps up over the veggie beds, and somehow manage to anchor them down so that they don’t blow away. I’ll probably work on getting Phaédra first up to level 40, then to level 60, where you can get your “Flying Licence” – I think! You know, I’ve just gone and wasted another fifteen minutes of what’s left of my day, trying to Google what level you have to be before you can fly in World of Warcraft! A simple enough query, you might think! But no! I was given all sorts of unwanted information about what expansions of WoW you needed to get which Mount, what types of flying Mounts were introduced with each expansion, etc., etc., and just about all the information you could possibly want on flying – except what level you had to be, because some sources said level 60, some said level 40, others said level 70 – no two web sites seemed to say the same thing! So, I dunno – it’s probably level 60, so that’s what I shall aim for!

Anyway, having had my grizzle for the hour (!!) I can now get on to the good bits!

Last night we had some of the extremely nice Three Island Beef sausages, with chips, half a tomato, and peas this time, instead of our usual steamed green beans! It was a lovely meal, and it was good to have peas for a change! 🙂 For dessert I had one of my “bald-brown-kiwi-fruit-skin” Nashi pears – they really are nice you know – very crisp and crunchy, juicy, but not too juicy, and very tasty! I also had a small bowl of my very favourite Coles-brand, very low-calorie, delicious Rice Pudding. Today’s lunch was a sandwich, made from that lovely whole-meal bread with all the sesame-seeds in the crust, this time with our favourite butter alternative, basil-pesto hummus, sandwich-sliced turkey, a little of the Beerenberg Tomato Chutney… and all the flavours just seemed to sing together! It almost seemed as though the ingredients could have been created especially to be combined in a sandwich! (secret! I think it’s the basil-pesto hummus that works the magic! If you haven’t tried any yet, you don’t know what you’re missing! 😉 ) Tonight we’re having pork fillets, pan-fried with a little home-grown rosemary, mashed potatoes, steamed green beans, and our usual half a tomato. I’ll be having one of the Jazz apples for dessert tonight, but I’m not sure what else I’ll have – I have a horrible feeling we’re completely out of my delicious, Coles-brand, very low-calorie Rice Pudding – I might have to have some yoghurt instead! 😥

Weigh-in this morning. Was utterly demoralising and terrible! I knew as soon as I got up that I wouldn’t have gone down, but I didn’t reckon on going from 64.9 kg to 65.2 kg! Up another three points! I’m distressed, even though I know it’s all fluid, and that it’ll all go, as soon as my stupid body decides that it doesn’t really need to store all that extra fluid, after all! I think it’s just the ignominy of seeing ones weight go up like that, for no discernible reason – and it’s humiliating, too! I are not happy! 😦

So here I am once more, sighing dejectedly over my recalcitrant weight, frowning with annoyment over a problem I’m having with one particular Photoshop filter – because the older version, which alas no longer works, was much, much more betterer than this newer version, and beaming with pleasure over the further advancement of my Blog Project, and my heroic progress with both Cynthìa and Phaédra! Who knows what will transpire tomorrow! Maybe my weight will be down, my Photoshop filter working correctly, and my Blog Project ready for its “Grand Unveiling”! Of course, pigs may fly, too, but as they always say in all the great classics, “always expect the unexpected!” 😉 And that, gentle readers, is about “it” from me for this evening! Make sure you call in again tomorrow night to find out all the latest at chez nous! Has my weight gone up again? the text will be tear-stained if it has! Have I finally managed to get “the” perfect drop shadow on my graphic? And is Phaédra flying solo yet! Well, you can find out the answers to these, and all your other questions, this time tomorrow night – but until then, do try extra hard to bee good, remember that you can do anything, but not everything, and don’t forget to keep warm and dry during this latest cold spell, to always drive carefully, and to look after yourselves… but above all, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

05.21 pm

Yes, I am starting late today, because I’ve been sitting here playing solitaire, and wondering what to tell you all today, because… well, all I’ve done, pretty much all day, is play with Cynthìa, and later with a new Gnome Hunter, Phaédra, whom I’m not going to boost up to level 100, I’m just going to sputter along, bringing her up in the mysterious ways of the Beast Masters! 😉 Oh, she’ll wear all her Heirloom gear, so she will level up a little faster than she normally would, but not all in one fowl swoop, like Cynthìa did! 🙂 So really, there’s not all that much to tell you!

I started off with Cynthìa, getting her all nice and cosy in her Garrison – actually, I’m a little cross about her Garrison! I had expected to either sneak into Draenor via the handy-dandy little “short-cut” that’s been found, or to do it in the usual fashion – via the abysmally long and torturous trek through the Tanaan Jungle with Archmage Kadgar, in order to “establish” your right to build a Garrison in Shadowmoon Valley. The handy-dandy little “short cut”, on the other hand, involves swimming out to an island somewhere off the coast of Pandaria, where there’s an underwater cave. So you swim up inside the cave, clamber up onto the sandy shore, and lo and behold, there are some nice, comfy chairs, artfully arranged around a cosy campfire. If you’ve been told what to do when you get there, or if you’re clever enough to click on the fire, for whatever reason – all of a sudden, “Click, wham, vooom, holy campfire smoke Batman, we’re not in Pandaria anymore!”, and there you are in Draenor! Gorgrond, actually, where you then have to fight your own way  across to Shadowmoon Valley! That’s if you’re level 90. At level 100, you get your own “ready-made” Tier 3 Garrison – which was the part that I objected to, so I spent most of last night after the Realm Restart, changing things around to my liking! I needed to get my Storeroom (read: “bank”) up to Level 3 so that I’d get my Transmogrifier. Why was I in such a hurry to get my Transmogrifier up and running? Because I’d just spent about twenty minutes at the Stormwind Transmogrifier, getting myself looking all nice and presentable for my adoring Public, before I went and bumped myself up to Level 100. I patted my hair, making sure that I was looking nice and neat and tidy, then clicked on the booster button. My screen went blank for a second, then I saw the Garrison Load screen, and the next thing I knew, I was standing outside my Garrison Gates, wearing a completely different (and quite frankly hideous) new set of gear! And I’m afraid to say that most armor does look quite ridiculous on us very short, somewhat plump, and, er… “buxom” Gnomes! 😉 Well, my upgrades were finished this morning when I logged back on, and I’m happy to say that I look at lot nicer now! I have one more Building to change-over – the Barracks – I’d much rather have a Mage Tower and Portals to a few places – which are much more handy for my line of work…

It was after lunch that I decided to try running a Gnome Hunter from the ground up, so I created Phaédra, who is now level 7, questing happily away in Kharanos, near Ironforge 🙂

And that, believe it or not, is about the sum total of my adventures today! Julian went out this morning to pick up the Dry Cleaning (Yayy! I’ll have some warm jumpers to wear this weekend!) and do a bit of other shopping over at Doncaster, and got home around lunch time… so of course I talked him into getting some more savoury rolls from Baker’s Delight, and a couple of those yummy fruit and white chocolate scones for our lunch. Then, after lunch he went out again, this time to the nursery, to get some soil for the potato bags, some more seed potatoes, because he made a bit of a mess with the first bag that he cut up for planting, and some replacement chives, onions, and carrots, which didn’t survive the sudden frost we had the other night. Oh, and he also bought a couple of tarps to drape over the vegetables, if we do happen to get a frost warning (unfortunately, there was no warning last time!)

So now I reckon I can get on with the good bits! 🙂

Food stuff. Last night we had the last of our frozen, left-over beef and stout stew. Julian heated it up thoroughly in the microwave, and we had it with plain steamed rice – it was absolutely delicious, and we’ll be making it again fairly soon, I should imagine! For dessert I had a Corella pear, followed by a small bowl of Coles-brand, very low-calorie and utterly yummy, Rice Pudding. Today for lunch I had two halves of different savoury rolls from Baker’s Delight, and one of their scrumptious fruit and white-chocolate scones. Tonight we’re having Three Island beef sausages, probably with chips, steamed green beans, and our usual half a tomato, and for dessert I’ll have one of the “bald-kiwi-fruit” skinned Nashi pears, and a small bowl of my utter favourite, the Coles-brand, very low-calorie Rice Pudding!

Weigh-in this morning. Was beyond belief! Why does my body do this to me! I haven’t done anything different, eaten anything different, been drinking anything different – but this morning I went from 64.2 kg, to…. 64.9 kg! Overnight! For absolutely no reason! WHY! Oh, I know I’ll go back down again – if not tomorrow, then the day after, or whatever – but it’s unsettling and upsetting 😦 I was not a very happy little Vegemite this morning, no sirree! 😦 I’ve been doing my full walks every morning too, even though I felt like only doing the shorter, “weekend” version, the last couple of mornings!

And so once again, we’re almost up to tomorrow, which I think will probably be a clone of today. Last night Julian swapped out 30% of the water in the Fish House, and even wiped down all the (plastic) plants in there, so Auric and Dapple shouldn’t (shouldn’t!) feel the need to “float” listlessly up at the top of the tank tonight. We hope! And that’s really about “it” from me for this evening! Do drop in again tomorrow night to see how my stupid weight is going, if Auric and Dapple are still persisting in their aimless floating, and how Cynthìa and Phaédra are getting along. Until then though, please do your best to bee good, remember to stop being afraid of what could go wrong, and focus on what could go right, and don’t forget to always drive carefully, to keep warm and dry, especially if it’s going to be a frosty night, and to look after yourselves… but above all, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂