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! 🙂