05.11 pm
Crikey! I’m really starting late this evening! That’s because Xãnthe and Jemimah were having a really great time in Draenor, and didn’t want to go back to their Garrisons to dust down! 😉 We went up three levels today, which is really, really good for a day’s gaming, when you’re in the higher levels, because the higher your level, the slower it is to level up – even with Heirloom Items to give you a bit of a “boost”! We’re both level 95 now – actually we were closer to level 95½, by the time we logged off – so it looks like we will get to level 100 before the 30th of next month! I think that’ll make either four or five characters – I fergit which – at level 100, for me… and I guess Julian would have a similar number of characters at that level, or close enough to make no never mind, too! We didn’t do anything terribly exciting in WoW today – we just quested fairly solidly, and – as usual – the game moved us on pretty smartly – usually when we were just about to move on to some interesting quest chains! Oh well, “Say La Vee”, as the French say! As a matter of fact, we were moved on with such alacrity, that we went through three zones! We started off in our “home range” of Frostfire Ridge (levels 90 to 92, and where our Garrisons are) where we finished off a few “left-over” quests, because we’d really started to move into Goregrond (levels 92 to 94) last Sunday. We didn’t stay in Goregrond for long though – I think we may have finished off maybe three decent-length quest chains, when we were perfunctorily shuffled off to Talador! Talador (levels 94 to 96) is really a very “pretty” place, with lovely trees, green hills, steep mountains, and lots of Ogres and other nasty critters! My bet is that we’ll be moved on again pretty quickly next Sunday, to the Spires of Arak (levels 96 to 98) I hope so, anyway, because you have to get to either a certain level (98, from memory?) or be doing a particular series of quests in that area to be able to upgrade your Storage Shed (that is, your Bank!) to Level 2, where you can finally get access to your Guild Bank as well! Julian (Jemimah) didn’t die at all today, and I (Xãnthe) only died once! We’d gone after a Treasure in Talador… it’s in a cave which is “protected” by great long sweeping beams of light, which make all your movements terribly slow – which in turn enables the zapper weapons to hit you – very often, and very hard! I got slowed down to the point where I was hardly moving at all, and consequentially, I perished! Anyway, Jemimah resurrected me, and I got better! 😉 Yeah, so we had a really good day today, and we’re both looking forward to next Sunday!
There’s not much more to tell you about today – we’ve both been heads down, tail up, questing away in Draenor! During our lunch break, Julian went outside and put some climbing bars and sticks in for the broad beans and the peas that he’d planted the other day, so that they have something to lean on as they’re growing up, and last night he was out there in the garden, installing a new irrigation-come-watering system for the newly planted seedlings, so that they won’t get thirsty on warm days (warm days!? HA! We should be so lucky! It’s winter in Melbourne, for goodness sake!) Flipper has just finished munching on her bowl of pussy-biscuits, and is now parading around demanding her dinner, which she won’t eat now because she’s just filled herself up on kibble! She’ll get her dinner a bit later now, when she’s not quite so “full”! 
I really must remember to put her pussy biscuits away at around 3.30 pm, so that she doesn’t spoil her dinner! Auric and Dapple have been behaving themselves as well as little goldfish in a tank can be expected to behave – Auric was funny last night though! I’d just fed them, and of course, with the filter running, their food (and the by-products of their digestive system!) tends to get carried around on the top of the water on the currents. Auric saw what he thought was a bit of food floating by on the top of the water, made a top-speed bee-line for it (he always seems to get the lion’s share of the food!) and gulped it down. Well, it wasn’t food, it was the other “what-I-mentioned”… remember, Auric is still travelling at full speed. He gulped in the piece of green stuff, and in surprise and dismay, immediately spat it out, and actually jumped out of the water in doing so! Well, it’s probably just as well that we have a glass cover over the tank, or he just might have ended up either on the floor, or in Flipper’s tummy, but as it happened, he hit his head on the glass ceiling instead (there! that has to prove, beyond any reasonable doubt, that Auric is a female!😛 ) He hit it quite hard, too – it made quite a loud “thump”! Poor little Auric – it’s amazing that he didn’t stun himself (or herself!) just from the amount of noise it made!
And now, it’s really time to move on to the good bits!;)
Food stuff. Last night, as you already know because I told you all about it last night, we had the “Rich beef and stout casserole”, the recipe for which I found in an online Taste magazine – and it was ten-out-of-ten excellent! It is a “slow-cook” recipe, in that you cook it for five hours on the stove top, not in a slow cooker, OK? (though I’m quite sure you could find a slow cooker version of it, if you wanted to!) Anyway, it was really, really delicious, and because there’s only the two of us, there are another two meals-worth of it left over in the freezer! It’s a most definite “keeper” recipe, and as such, I shall endeavour to get the recipe transcribed onto my “Recipes…” page for you all, as soon as possible! We had it on a bed of plain steamed rice, though it would have been equally nice with mashed potatoes and vegetables, or with a couple of slices of bread and butter – and you know what? You could even stick it in a casserole dish and put a layer of flaky pastry on top of it, and turn it into a really yummy family pie! Once again, as with nearly all recipes, the different variations you could make with a recipe like this one are only limited by your imagination (or lack thereof!) I had my last Fuji apple for dessert, followed by a small bowl of the luscious Coles-brand, very low-calorie Rice Pudding. Lunch today was a fairly plain sandwich – “tandoori chicken sandwich chunks”, with our favourite butter substitute, basil-pesto hummus, between two pieces of the very tasty whole-meal bread with the sesame seed and poppy-seed crust, and tonight being Sunday night, we’ve got omelets for dinner – I have no idea what Julian’s planning on putting in them, you’ll have to wait until tomorrow night to find out, I’m afraid! 🙂 For dessert though, tonight I’ll be having my last Corella pear (if it’s still edible! If it isn’t, I’ll have one of my “kiwi-skin-brown” Nashi pears, and get some more of my Corella pears tomorrow!) and of course, a small bowl of Coles-brand, very low-calorie, scrumptious Rice Pudding 🙂
Weigh-in this morning. Well, I’ve been saying for the past three or four days, that my weight was going to have to go up, and so it finally did this morning! I went from 63.9 kg to 64.2 kg – up three points! That’s probably because I didn’t do any walking (apart from going for my Warfarin blood test – up and down two flights of stairs – and around the Nursery, and then Bunnies after that) yesterday, and I’ve only been doing half-walks for the past few days because my feet are so sore. I did another half-walk again this morning – re-bandaging has helped a little bit, but I can tell you, it ain’t a pretty sight, underneath all them-thar band-aids! So… despite all my best efforts to the contrary, I’ve really only gone up four points! Which really isn’t too bad, considering! Hopefully I’ll start to slide back down again once I can start doing my full walks again!
And once again, that brings me around to tomorrow! Josh will be here tomorrow afternoon, and my very favourite eldest daughter will be over as well, instead of Tuesday (though she’s very welcome to come on Tuesday as well, if she wants to!) because she’s having her hair cut tomorrow afternoon. And part from those two items of interest, I have no idea what’s happening. Julian’s somehow managed to injure his ankle (his other ankle this time, not the one he usually injures!) and my stupid ear is still exactly the same as it was two weeks ago – blocked, and it hurts when I chew sometimes – so I fear that a visit to see the lovely Dr. B. within the next few days is on the cards… but tomorrow? I guess my delightful favourite eldest daughter and I will be watching television shows for the better part of the day… and that, dear readers, is about “it” from me for this evening! 🙂 Do call in again tomorrow night to find out which way my weight slid – up, or down? and what we watched on television, and how the rest of the day panned out. Until then though, please try hard to bee good, remember that you don’t need anyone’s permission to do what you feel is right for you, and don’t forget to keep warm and dry in this unpleasantly cold weather, to always drive carefully, and to look after yourselves… but most importantly, please, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂
My Word! 