05.47 pm
Yes, a very late start tonight, due to several factors, the main one being that my very favourite eldest daughter was over today. I haven’t even really had the time to get into World of Warcraft, so I’m very much behind in my efforts to get Phoenìx up to level 90 by the end of August. Oh well, I shall keep trying… Today we watched one episode of “Orphan Black”, which is really getting exciting, and the rest of the time we watched “Wynonna Earp”, which, to tell the truth, is rather confusing – but I do like it. Around lunchtime we also watched the very last three episodes of “Person of Interest”, which did quite a good job of tying up all the loose threads – only two well-loved characters died (sorry, no spoilers for you this time! 😉 ) “Tha Machine” (the good one) turned out to be more aware and a lot cleverer than Finch ever dreamed, and there were plenty of “hooks” left for any potential “Spin-Off” series that may possibly (read: “hopefully”, because it was a darn good series!) follow.
Auric and Dapple are both well, and flittering around happily in their Fish House – when they’re not busily “vacuuming” the gravel for bits of forgotten fish-food, or tickling their sides by swimming through the small curtain of bubbles coming off the “air-stone” (which they both seem to love doing) their main “project” seems to be the construction of strings of bubbles, all along the top of the front wall of their tank! Why they do it, goodness only knows, but they were both very diligently swimming up and adding to the line… Oh! Oh dear, I hope not… Just this afternoon we were idly discussing whether they were two boys, two girls – or one of each, and the possibility of little baby goldfish if they were! I then said that even if one did turn out to be male, and the other a female, the tank conditions wouldn’t be right for breeding, as they had nowhere to deposit and fertilise the eggs… and then just now I remembered reading somewhere that some fish make a little raft of bubbles as a kind of a nest – er… or maybe that was frogs… I can’t remember now, but crikey! I hope they’re not building a nest! 😯
Tomorrow, if it’s not raining, I’d like to get over to the Nursery again, to see if we can get one of the very large planters so that we can get the rest of the vegetables planted – otherwise we may find it too late to put in our carrots and the rest of the broad beans! I also need to get to Office Works, as I need some display folders, and probably some more of the plastic “oversheets” that are used for laminating printouts, as I want to protect the recipes I’ve printed out so far. I’m also starting to get the “itch” to start working on our “Family Cookbook” that I started years ago – the trouble is, I just can’t seem to find the right software! I’ve used “Word”, and the recipes looks horrible because “Word” doesn’t convert all the fractions one uses when writing out a recipe – f’rinstance, on one line you have ½ a cup of whatever, and on the next line you get 2/3 of a cup of whatever – see the difference? It looks “messy” and slack – so I’m constantly searching for either an Ap for “Word” that makes these conversions look uniform, or a new Word Processor that makes all the conversions. I’ve tried “Libre Office” (which used to be “Open Office”, if I remember correctly – which is open source – so if anyone out there in Reader Land knows how to add to coding to make it do the conversions properly, please let me know how, and I’ll be your slave for 40 years (if I live that long!)) This morning I downloaded a Trail version of Corel’s “Word Perfect”, a word processor that I used to use so many years ago that it feels like last century (which it might well have been, come to think about it!) I haven’t really tried it out yet, however it does have one very large drawback – which may yet turn out to be a deal breaker – in that it won’t work if I’m running Windowblinds. I’m not sure if I can live without my Windowblinds, and I don’t really fancy the idea of turning Windowblinds off whenever I want to write a short note to remind myself of something, and then turn it back on again. “More experimentation is required”!
My left ear is still all bunged up, and still hurts – to differing degrees, depending on my ear’s mood – when I chew anything. But I’m only on Day 2 of those disgusting ear drops, so I really feel that I owe it to the Doctor to finish off the full five days of the damn things, before going back and complaining that my ear’s still not behaving as it should. However, you can colour me “cat”, with a despairing look on its face, and the caption on top of “Do Not Want!” 😦
And now to the good bits! 😉
Food stuffs. Sunday night, of course, we had omelets for dinner, and I had my usual just desserts… Monday lunch, well, the cleaning lady was over, and Julian had to go out and get a lot of things, which resulted in him being late enough getting back so that we ended up having fresh savoury bread rolls from Baker’s Delight, plus one of their absolutely deliciously scrumptious fruit and white chocolate scones… 😳 Dinner last night was an extremely nice piece of steak, which we had with baby Brussels sprouts, half a Roma tomato, and chips, and for dessert I had one of my Corella pears, followed by a small bowl of lovely Coles-brand, very low-calorie Rice Pudding. For lunch today I had a wrap, with basil-pesto hummus, ham, Halloumi cheese, and Roma tomato – very yummy, but also very messy to eat! Tonight we’re having the second lot of our left-over Lamb and Harissa Lasagna, which I’m very much looking forward to, and pretty much exactly the same dessert as last night, only tonight I might have one of the brown Nashi pears instead of a Fuji apple, or a Corella pear…
Weigh-in yesterday morning. Wasn’t too bad, really – from Sunday’s 64.1 kg to 64.3 kg – the same as I was on Saturday! A real see-saw effort on my body’s part, don’tcha think? 😉
Weigh-in this morning. Well, considering the savoury rolls and the fruit and white chocolate scone that I had for lunch the day before, was really rather gratifying… I went from 64.3 kg to 64.3 kg – in other words, I stayed the same… so it’ll probably be tomorrow morning that I shoot up about have a kilo! I think I’ll be facing the scales with a small amount of trepidation tomorrow morning…
And that brings me almost full circle, except to add that: remember that I’d said that Auric and Dapple were well, and not having any problems? It seems I spoke too soon… Julian tested the water this afternoon, and everything was exactly as it should have been – even the PH level wasn’t too far off what it should be. As usual, I fed them both around six o’clock as I always do, only just for a change tonight, I gave them their wafer-thin fish flakes, instead of their new spirulina pellets, as we do every day or so… and tonight both of them are suffering from a dose of “the floaties” again, Auric much more than Dapple! Apparently some goldfish really have sensitive digestive systems – and we seem to have become proud owners of both of them! 😉 The very first Fish Food we had for them were a type of fairly large spirulina pellets, and they didn’t agree with them (or maybe they were still in transition and “acclimatising” after being removed from their toxic mud-puddle outside!) Anyway, we threw those pellets out and got them the wafer-thin flakes, and at first they seemed to do well on those, and that was when Auric started getting “the floaties” – so we gave them a couple of peeled peas, to settle their gut, and then started feeding them the much smaller spirulina pellets, the water quality gradually improved, and there were no more “floaties” – until tonight, after I’d given them the flakes… I don’t think we’ll give them any more of those – Julian has just come back from swapping out 30% of their water, so we’ll see how they go overnight…
And now to tomorrow. I’m not too sure what’s happening tomorrow – if the weather’s good enough, we’ll go traipsing off to look for a suitable large planter box. Julian asked me where I thought it ought to go, and I thought that probably the best place would be on the concrete path that used to lead down to the old clothes-line, or if that was going to be too much sunlight for carrots and broad beans, along the back garden bed in front of the back fence. We discussed it a bit, and Julian would like it to be raised, so he’s suggested putting a couple of strong planks between the two raised veggie beds – but it’s late, and it’s pouring with rain, so we’ll have to wait until tomorrow, or whenever it stops raining long enough to go out and have a proper look at it, and measure the space available. Roll on tomorrow! 🙂 And once more, that’s about “it” from me for tonight! Do call in again tomorrow night for all the latest on my silly weight, how Auric and Dapple are getting on, and whether or not we managed to get out and do some measuring and planter buying. Until then though, please do try to bee good, remember that good imagination is a sign of great intelligence, and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm and dry in this cold, wet weather… but whatever you do, please, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂
My Word! 