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! 🙂
My Word! 