04.32 pm

I’m really tired at the moment – I created Cynthìa, my little Gnome Beast Master Hunter this morning, and except for a short lunch break, have been playing with her ever since… and I’m totally exhausted! Yes, I know, “self-inflicted”, and all that, but at the moment I just want to curl up and go to sleep… Ah! Julian has just returned from the Cardiologist, where he’s been told that he’s not going to drop off the twig next week, or even the week after, which is very good news! I mean… who’d bring me my cups of coffee, if anything happened to him! 😉 Just to be on the ultra-safe side though, the Cardiologist wants him to have one of those lovely Stress Tests in the near future! I had to have a Stress Test about two or three years ago, but because it wasn’t possible for me to have it on the treadmill, I had to have a chemical one instead, where they keep taking your blood pressure every three minutes, while they pump you full of some sort of stimulant (I suppose it’s a stimulant! I know you’re not allowed to have any sort of caffeine for 24 hours before hand!) that makes your heart and lungs behave as though you’ve just run a country mile at 7 or 8 kilometers and hour in stiletto heels! Ladies and gentlepersons in the reading gallery, I can very truthfully assure you that it is not pleasant! So anyway, he has the delightful experience on the treadmill ahead of him! So, getting back to Cynthìa, I don’t think I’ll mess around too much longer in the “Baby Areas”, though I did want to get a good feel for the “New and Improved Beast Master” build, which I think I’ve more or less done now… One thing that’s surprised me a lot is that before this “pre-expansion patch”, Hunters, of all three persuasions (Beast Master, Marksman, and Survivalist) as well as a couple of other Classes, had to reach level 40 before they could start wearing Mail. Well, that’s changed now, and instead of being clad in Leather gear until level 40, we can all now start wearing Mail from the get-go. This, by the way, is good – but that’s not what surprised me! Before this new “pre-extension” patch, and all the changes it brought with it, Hunters always looked for gear and/or weapons with the highest Agility rating – quest rewards nearly always included an item with a reasonable amount of Agility, and if the quest reward didn’t include an item with decent Agility, then you usually chose the quest reward that had the highest Vendor price! But Cynthìa is level 12, almost level 13, in fact, and although she’s received some rather good quest rewards, not one of them has had any Agility in its specs! In fact, the only items with any Agility specs at all that Cynthìa’s wearing, are her four pieces of Heirloom gear! So, at the moment, I don’t know what sort of gear I should be looking for on the Auction House, or in the menu of Quest rewards! Well, I guess I’ll find out soon enough, when I keep on dying too often! 😉

As for my Blog Project,well, it’s been “having a holiday” today, though that doesn’t mean that I haven’t been thinking about it! I’ll probably try to get a bit more work done on that tomorrow, or maybe Friday… We’ll see! 🙂

And that’s pretty much all I’ve been doing today, so I guess I can now get on to the important part of the blog – the good bits!

Food stuffs. Last night we had plain-old pan-fried chicken, on a bed of plain steamed rice, which had finely chopped spring onions mixed through it. It was really lovely, and I wished that my piece of chicken breast had been a bit bigger! For dessert I had one of the new “Jazz” apples, that I’ve never eaten before, and I have to say that it was extremely nice! I think I like my Corella pears best though… and then I had my small bowl of Coles-brand, very, very yummy, as well as very low-calorie, Rice Pudding. For lunch today I had a delicious wrap, with ham, green capsicum, cut into batons, Halloumi cheese, tomato, and some of the very tasty basil-pesto hummus instead of butter – though this time, I did manage to drop two pieces of the Halloumi cheese… but they fell on the plate, so maybe that doesn’t count? Tonight we’re having the last of the left-over Beef and Stout stew – probably on rice again, because “stews” really need something to soak up all the lovely juices and gravy that makes just about all stews so yummy – and for dessert tonight, I think I’ll have one of my Corella pears, followed by my usual small bowl of Coles-brand, very low-calorie, and totally delicious, Rice Pudding!

Weigh-in this morning. Was quite amazing – I think we were both extremely surprised! I went from 64.7 kg to 64.2 kg – down five points, or half a kilo! Overnight! Why, I have absolutely no idea whatsoever – but I ain’t a-gunna complain about it! I’d like to go down another half kilo tomorrow morning, too…. but I’m virtually positive that I’ll go back up again instead… *sigh* “say lar vee”, as the French say! 😉

And that brings me around to tomorrow – Julian has a few bits and pieces to do, and I expect that I’ll potter around with Cynthìa, and maybe do a bit more work on my Blog Project. I’ll be sure to keep you all posted about how that Project is coming along, and how soon I’ll be able to make it Public, so that everyone can see it, but for now it’s a “Blog Under Construction”! Auric is still worrying us with his “floaties”, not just at night now either – yesterday afternoon while my very favourite eldest daughter and I were sitting watching episodes of “Arrow” and “The Flash”, we couldn’t help noticing that Auric spent more than 75% of his time, up at the top of the tank, totally unmoving, and with his tail just drooping down in the water! Then little Dapple would swoosh by, and he’d wake up a bit and swim around, as goldfish are wont to do, then he’d simply stop swimming and bob back up to the top again, and just… sit there! I really hate it when he does that – it just doesn’t seem “normal” – but then I’m such an expert on goldfish, aren’t I, so what would I know?! I suppose you could say that we are starting to get a little more blasé about it – after all, he hasn’t come to any harm yet – we just don’t like him doing it! He’s eating well, and behaving normally most of the time… so we’ll just keep an eye on him and “play it by ear”. Flipper is her usual self, noisy, demanding, and a regular walking fur shedding machine! Also, she’s now officially the oldest cat that they see, up at the Whitehorse Veterinary Hospital – a really fantastic Veterinary practice that we’ve been going to for almost 40 years! And that’s really about “it” again from me for this evening! Call in again tomorrow night though, to see if my weight did go back up again, how Cynthìa is going, whether Auric still has “the floaties”, and what else we’ve been up to during the day. But until then, please bee good, don’t forget that everyone smiles in the same language, and remember to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm and dry in this changeable weather… but most importantly, please, always remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

05.29 pm

Oh dear, late again! Never mind, I think I finally might have a good header for my Blog Project – and a possible background tile for it too, even though I know I’m not going to be able to get it to tile properly because it’s a photo… but I think I can make it a “fixed” tile (if Word Press will let me! “if” being the operative word there!) so that the photo itself doesn’t scroll, the blog just slides over the top of it – that would work very nicely! However the main reason I’m so late today is because my very favourite eldest daughter was over today, and Julian has only just got back from dropping her off. We watched alternating episodes of “Arrow” and “The Flash” today because we’ve watched everything else! Apparently, just like “Game of Thrones”, we’re going to have to wait until next year for more episodes of “Supergirl”, “The 100”, “Orphan Black”, and “Wynonna Earp”! (“But that’s a whole ‘nother year!“, mutters Luke Skywalker in the background, as Winter sobs quietly into a rather soggy tissue!) And of course, “Person of Interest” has finished altogether, and although the Powers-that-Be have left enough “hooks” for at least three or four spin-offs, I don’t think we’ll be hearing anything from that particular corner of the woodshed for quite a long time to come – or even if ever! So today we watched “Arrow”, and even though I like it, it’s starting to get quite “dark” at the moment, so we’re really needing the interleaving “Flash” episodes as a bit of “comic relief”, so to speak… Oh, and I’m completely forgetting that we have quite a lot of “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.”! We might watch some of those next week, though I’m going to request that we back-track two or three episodes, because I’ve completely forgotten where we were up to, and what had been happening! I’m glad I remembered “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.”! 🙂

Let’s see… what else… Julian went off to have his CT scan yesterday afternoon, and it took forever, because he had to drink a whole liter (I think!) of some gunk, slowly, before he was put into the “sausage machine” (the scanner!) and then they had to inject him with some sort of dye which stays in his body for a couple of days (but it doesn’t hurt or anything) so although his appointment was for two thirty, he had to be there ten minutes before hand, and he didn’t get home until after four thirty! Tomorrow he’s off to the Cardiologist to have one of his heart valves looked at, as he’d had some problems with it when he was a child. I think it was last looked at about five years ago (give or take a few years! 😉 ) and the verdict then was that it was perfectly fine, and to look at it now that he’s an adult, you’d never know that there’d ever been anything wrong with it! So we’re not expecting any nasty little surprises there – it’s just that our doctors are very… meticulous about making sure that they have all the pertinent facts about their patient’s health. Thank goodness! I’d much rather have an over-zealous doctor who tests for everything, than a doctor with a “She’ll be right mate! Take these pills, and see me in a month or two if you’re not better by next Tuesday morning! Next patient, please!” attitude!

The cleaning lady arrived yesterday morning, and did her work while Julian took some Dry Cleaning over to “Daisy” in Doncaster, did a bit of shopping, and booked the car in to have the alignment looked at (yet again!) And you know, I really must make a much more serious attempt to drag myself away from my desk next time K’s here – she usually comes in and cleans and vacuums around me, but yesterday I must have been so engrossed in what I was doing that I didn’t even notice her! Unfortunately, me not noticing her meant that I didn’t even scoot my chair out of the way so that she could at least vacuum under the desk, and this morning I see that there’s quite a lot of grot and crumbs and a paper-clip on the floor between my chair and my desk “return”! I do wish she’d asked me to move out for a minute or two, and I would have been only too happy to oblige! I know that she must have been cleaning in here because the rest of the floor is clean(ish!) I know my left ear is still nastily blocked, but I honestly didn’t hear her, or even notice her, cleaning as best as she could around my desk, while I was busily working away at my Blog Project! Next time she’s here I shall have to make a point of asking her to please ask me to move, so that she can clean this area properly! Anyway, I played a bit of WoW after lunch, Josh arrived shortly after Julian got home from his CT scan, and by the time my hair was done, and we’d spent a bit of time deciding on hair colours, dinner was ready, so there wasn’t time for me to sit down and write… *tsk!* Such a busy life I lead! 😉

And that’s pretty much been the sum total of my last two days! I’m getting a bit excited though, because somewhere between 10 and 11 o’clock tonight, the pre-Extension patch will be going in! The Realms will be down until around about 4.00 am tomorrow, which means that as soon as I’ve done my Treadmilling tomorrow, I can create my Gnome Hunter! Tonight I’ll have to read up on all the changes that are coming, so I’ll have a bit more of an idea what to expect, especially in regards to Garrisons, Followers, Fleets, and Beast Master Hunters in general! And now, having filled you all in on the mundane events of my life, I shall now get on to the good bits for you! 🙂

Food stuffs. Yesterday for lunch, because Julian had been out for most of the morning, and because he had to take off for his CT scan pretty much right after lunch, we had delicious cheese and mushroom bread rolls from Baker’s Delight, and one of their absolutely divine fruit and white chocolate scones… Last night for dinner we had a really delightful piece of Three Island fillet steak – absolutely superb meat – with chips, steamed green beans, and our usual half a tomato. For dessert I had one of the “kiwi-fruit-brown” skinned Nashi pears, which was lovely and tasty and crisp, as usual, which I followed up with a small bowl of Coles-brand, very low-calorie, yummy Rice Custard. Today for lunch I had a really nice ham and cheddar cheese toastie (but no tomato this time – we’d run out!) and tonight for dinner we’re having pan-fried chicken breast on a bed of plain steamed rice, with some finely chopped spring onion mixed through it. For dessert I’ll have a “Jazz” apple – I’ve never had one of those before, but they look lovely – all nice and pink and yellow! And after the apple, I shall have a small bowl of my delicious Coles-brand, very low-calorie Rice Pudding! 😉

Weigh-in yesterday morning. Wasn’t too bad, I suppose – I went from 64.4 kg to 64.4 kg – I stayed the same – and then, of course, I went and spoilt it all by having that extremely nice cheese and mushroom roll from Baker’s Delight, and one of their really, really “to-die-for” fruit and white chocolate scones! Will I ever learn?! (No… probably not! 😉 )

Weigh-in this morning. Was bad! I really did pay the price for my delicious lunch yesterday! I went from 64.4 kg to 64.7 kg! Up three points! Aaarrggghhh! Oh well, hopefully I’ll come down again fairly quickly, if I’m ultra careful!

And that sort-a brings me back full circle to tomorrow! No need to be wondering what I’ll be doing tomorrow! My precious Blog Project can go on hold for a day or two (maybe! 😉 ) because I’ll be busy working with my new little Gnome Hunter, Cynthìa! 🙂 I’m still trying to decide whether I want to try creating a Demon Hunter, when they become available later on, but for now, I’ll be “Gnomin’ in the gloamin'” with my mechanical rabbit Pet! Yes, Gnomes, being an Engineering-type of race, get mechanical rabbits as a “starter” Pet! Or so my favourite eldest daughter tells me! 🙂 But that’s really about “it” from me for tonight – however do call in again tomorrow night, to find out how Cynthìa’s doing, whether I’ve bumped her up to level 100 yet or not, what my weight’s been up to (or, hopefully, down to!) how Julian got on at the Cardiologist, and if Auric still has a dose of the “floaties”! Until then though, please try very hard to bee good, remember that the greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another, and don’t forget to always drive carefully, to keep warm and dry in this wintry weather, and to look after yourselves… but most importantly, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

05.21 pm

Apologies for not making an appearance yesterday, but it’s a bit difficult to write when you can’t breathe properly and your nose is threatening to overflow onto the keyboard! Luckily it wasn’t a return of the blood clots in my lungs, it was (and still is!) a very bad head cold! My nose was so stuffed up I could hardly see straight, in spite of me dutifully spraying Otrivin up my nose, and swallowing those ruddy Telfast antihistamine tablets, in a vain attempt to unblock my ear… which is still stubbornly refusing to clear up! I did spray some Otrivin up my nose this morning, but I haven’t taken any of the Telfast tablets since last night – and guess what! I feel a whole lot better! (thank heavens! I was not a happy little Vegemite, yesterday!) Anyway, I’m here now! 🙂

I did a lot of work on my Blog Project yesterday morning, but by lunch time, I’d just about had it, and after lunch I pretty much just went and huddled miserably in the lounge room, trying to read… so not a lot of anything got done yesterday Today of course, being Sunday, we (a) slept in, and (b) took Xãnthe and Jemimah up another two levels to level 97! Not long to go now, and on Tuesday, the “pre-Expansion” patch will be going in! We’ll get our first ever Gnome Mages and Hunters, and lots and lots of new stuff! Blizzard, I think, must have been keeping a very close eye on how they organise “Wardrobes” in Rift, because from Tuesday on, whatever one of your characters “unlocks” in the way of clothing and/or gear, the rest of your characters will be able to access it too (just like in Rift!) with a set-up that looks extraordinarily like the one they use in Rift! (or maybe it’s just my delirium with this head cold! 😉 ) We both “pre-paid” for the Expansion, set for release on August 31st, so that we’d get the “free upgrade” to Level 100 for one character per account – which I’m going to be using on my Gnome Hunter, when I create her next week! Anyway, today we just quested as usual, going up two and a half levels. We both died once, when we were horribly overrun by Fel Demons (neither of us took into account their lethal green fire!) but we got better and soldiered on! 🙂 I’m really looking forward to next Sunday, however I think that the major part of next week will be exploring all the changes that I know are coming with the pre-Expansion patch on Tuesday! I believe some really big changes are being made to the Hunter Class, and I’m not sure that I’m looking forward to those! My very favourite eldest daughter, who’s been getting used to all the new stuff by getting herself into the Beta Testing cadre, has told us that they’re pretty radical, so I’m just a tad trepidated!

I’ve been doing a lot of work on my “Blog Project”, and I’m working on a new background tile which I’m hoping will work! If I make it too long, it’ll wrap around and spoil the left margin – if I make it too short, it’ll repeat too soon, messing up the right hand side of the screen – and of course, I have no idea how long to make it – Word Press, in their infinite wisdom, will only tell you how long to make your header, which doesn’t always span the screen, and half the time Word Press get it wrong, anyway! It’ll be a matter of trial and error, so I’m going to need people with different size screens to let me know if it doesn’t tile correctly. Back in the “good old days” when I used to make free Web Sets, I had all the major Browsers loaded onto my computer so that I could see whether the set worked with all of them, and if they didn’t work properly on all Browsers, I tweaked them and changed things until they did – far too many web “designers” thought that if their set displayed properly on Explorer, that was good enough – they reckoned that not enough people used Netscape (now Firefox) or Opera to be worth worrying about! So anyway, I’m just as committed to making sure that everyone is going to be able to see this Blog Project of mine correctly, as I was back then.

Wasn’t it cold last night! We were a little worried about our new little veggie seedlings, if there was a frost, as we have nothing with which to protect them – Julian doesn’t think “smudge pots” are allowed any more because they’re very polluting. I’m wondering if making a huge hessian “fitted sheet” type cover that could be tied onto poles above the veggie beds (like the canopy over a four-poster bed!) would be of any use… Then this morning, when we finally did manage to prise ourselves out of bed, and I went down to pull up the blind and turn on Auric and Dapple’s “little sun in a bottle”, I noticed with some dismay that there were still patches of frost on the lawn. I yelled out to Julian that there’d been a frost, so, what did he do? In his dressing gown, and in his bare feet, he goes running out onto the frosty lawn to check on the vegetables! I told him he was an idiot, and how ruddy difficult it would be for me to get into the hospital to visit him, when he ended up in a ward with double pneumonia! And you know what? He didn’t apologise, he just laughed! Men! 😡

Flipper, Auric and Dapple are all well – we’ve taken to giving Auric and Dapple a lot less to eat, but still, every evening, always around the same time – about 8.30 – they get a (much milder these days, thank heavens!) bout of the “floaties”, and we still can’t work out why! They seem to spend an awful lot of time up at the top of the tank, “nibbling” the surface of the water! I’m wondering if perhaps it’s a “habit” that they picked up when they lived outside for so long in that atrocious little mud-puddle? Do fish even develop habits, both good and bad? Still, they seem happy enough now… I’d like to see how the water condition is going at the moment, too – and I must ask Julian if the ultra violent steraliser-anti-algae whatever-it-is is still running…

And now onto the good bits 🙂

Food stuffs. Yesterday for lunch we had ham, cheese and tomato Toasties, which were delicious, and for dinner we had Heston Blumenthal sausages (either pork and sage, or pork and leek – we can’t remember which – but whichever they were, they were very nice!) with chips, steamed green beans, and our usual half a tomato. I had my second (and last!) “Eve” apple, and a small bowl of my absolute favourite Coles-brand, very low-calorie Rice Pudding. Today for lunch we had wraps, with our favourite butter substitute, basil-pesto hummus, ham, Halloumi cheese, tomato, and yellow capsicum batons. Very delicious, and once again I managed to eat it without dropping half of it down my front, or on the floor! Amazing! 🙂 Tonight of course we had omelets, because it’s a Sunday night, and once again, it was “one of the best he’s ever made!” with tomato, cheese, green capsicum, pre-cooked onion, and pre-cooked bacon, and (obviously) eggs… 🙂 For dessert I had my second last Corella pear, and a small bowl of Coles-brand, very low-calorie, very delicious Rice Pudding.

Weigh-in yesterday morning. Wow! I should get sick more often – I seem to lose a lot more weight! 😉 Yesterday morning I went from 65.0 kg to 64.6 kg – how about that! Down four whole points! Excellent! I was quite chuffed about that, actually!

Weigh-in this morning. Was even betterer! I definitely should get sick more often! This morning I went from 64.6 kg to 64.4 kg! Down another two points! Not quite as good as going down four points, but certainly a lot much more betterer than going up two points! *sigh* Unfortunately, knowing me, I’ll probably go back up again tomorrow morning, so I’d best enjoy this small “dip” in my weight graph whilst I can! 😉

Tomorrow morning our lovely cleaning lady will be here, and Julian has his CT scan booked for 2.30 pm. Josh will be here in the afternoon, and tomorrow morning I’m going to be torn between doing what I can with the Garrisons while I still can, or getting on with my attempts to make a properly tiling background for my Blog Project! Oh dear, decisions, decisions! (I used to think that I was indecisive, but now I’m not sure if I really was or not, hmm…) Anyway, once again that’s about “it” from me for tonight, but do call in again tomorrow night and see if my weight did go back up again, whether I worked on my background or my Garrison, and whether our veggie garden survived the frost last night. Until then though, please try hard to bee good, remember that failure is the opportunity to begin again, this time more wisely, and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm and dry on these cold, frosty nights… but please, above all, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

04.21 pm

Just a brief “place-holder” tonight – I’m too tired to do more – sorry! I feel as though I’ve been writing all day, which I have, mostly, working on my Blog Project, and I’m exhausted, and now my ear is threatening to ache. Yes, it’s still blocked! (I’m getting so very sick and tired of only being able to hear out of one ear!) Julian is a lot better, and is actually walking around the house, fed the fish this morning, and has been to get his test results. Nothing nasty or untoward showed up, but the doctor now wants him to have a CT scan on Monday, to check out his Pancreas, just in case it’s Pancreatitis. The ultrasound was to check for a gall stone, but there wasn’t one (actually there most likely is – everyone has gall stones, it’s only if one gets jammed into the bile duct that you get any problems – or so I’ve been told by no less than three different doctors!) Anyway, if it had been a gallstone problem he would have been in excruciating pain – ditto if it had been Pancreatitis, but as I said last night, it’s better to be safe than sorry! I played a bit of WoW this morning, but mainly to see if I could get a Spirit Beast for Xãnthe – she’s still looking… Flipper has recovered from her traumatic visit to the Vet yesterday morning (anything apart from her normal routine of sleep, eat, get patted, sleep, eat, get patted, etc is traumatic, as far as she’s concerned!) Auric and Dapple still have a few “floaty” problems, but not enough to be terribly concerning. What? Oh, sorry! The CT scan that Julian has to have next Monday is to check out a heart valve that he had some problems with as a child. Last time it was checked, a few years ago now, the Doctors couldn’t find any trace of it, but…. safe, rather than sorry, you know how it goes…

I had two slices of thin, sandwich bread toasted last night, with just a smidge of butter and nothing else… and I went from 64.7 kg to 65.0 kg! Up three points! I did 25 minutes on the treadmill, I didn’t eat or drink anything unusual, apart from the cheese roll and the fruit and white chocolate scone at lunch time, and what happens? I get the “floaties” too, only mine weigh more! 😥 s’not fair!

That’s pretty much all that’s been going down around this neck of the woods – I’ll fill you in on all the minutiae tomorrow! Until then, please bee good, don’t forget to use what talents you possess, the woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best, and remember to always drive carefully, to look after yourselves, and to keep warm and dry in this mercurial weather… but above all, please remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

04.34 pm

Well, here I am – though it may be a bit of a rushed and intermittent episode this evening – Julian’s not well, and has spent most of the day either at the doctor’s, or having blood tests and an ultrasound, so I’m just a trifle “distracted”, you might say. He’s been having stomach pains since about Tuesday afternoon, but last night they were bad enough to wake him up, and by the time he got back from taking Flipper up to the Vet for her six monthly checkup and jabs early this morning, he was a right mess! Luckily he managed to get an “emergency” appointment at the doctor’s (not our usual Doctor – whom we’d only seen yesterday about his sore foot and my blocked up ear – unfortunately!) Anyway, this Doctor thought it was only a very bad case of indigestion, but sent him off for blood tests and an ultrasound, anyway! (this is the first time I’ve ever heard of someone being sent off for an ultrasound because of indigestion! Still, better to be safe than sorry, I guess!) And now he’s doing something that I don’t think he’s ever done before (except for maybe once, when he’d sprained his ankle so badly that he couldn’t walk, even if he’d been allowed to!) he’s out in the lounge room, lying down on the couch in the dark! 😦

in the meantime, I was able to get quite a lot of WoW-ing in, and have managed to get Phoenìx up to level 74! Oh, but it’s a long, slow crawl up the ladder! I also managed to get in quite a lot of work on my new Blog Project, and I’m more-or-less happy to say that it’s coming along quite well – so far, anyway. The opening page, or ‘Introductory” page, is very short(so far, anyway) and it looked kind-of weird with the short intro, going straight into the Widget area, so I thought “If I can put an empty table in there, maybe that’ll pad it out a bit!”, so I tried that, and it didn’t. WordPress is nothing if not thrifty, I’ll give’em that! You see, if it’s a run-on line, like text, it’ll wrap around, and you get continuous lines like these… and if you hit <enter> at the end of a line, it puts in a blank line, or line break, and you can start a new paragraph. However, if you hit <enter><enter><enter><enter> in Edit mode, it looks as though you’re making a space of four blank lines… but unless you actually put something on those lines, WordPress saves all that “wasted” space by ignoring three of those four blank lines, and just giving you a new paragraph line-break! So I thought… “in my web pages, I stretch tables both downwards and sideways by inserting a transparent image, which I can adjust to whatever size I need! I’ll try putting one of those in the table!” It took a lot of mucking around – Julian gets most annoyed with me because – like most men and road maps 😉 – I won’t ask, or look it up – oh-no, I have to “fiddle” around trying to do something myself.. until I usually break something, and then it’s “Oh, Joooolien! Could you come and (fix whatever it is that I’ve managed to break) please?!” Anyway, I finally figured out that the term “Media” means images, as well as music and video and photos, so I uploaded my nice, newly stretched transparent image to the “Media Library” – unfortunately, I still haven’t figured out how to move the image from the Library into the blank table in the middle of this particular page (no, I won’t tell you where and what it is yet – I haven’t got enough done yet!) So there I was, with a very short Intro page, looking silly with the Widget sitting “under its chin”, metaphorically speaking, and a skinny blank table acting as a chin strap. Hmm! Not a good look! I couldn’t even find a way of inserting the transparent image directly onto the page, like a pretty photo of the Dandenongs, or something! So… look for the lowest common denominator, which is, of course… Text! The full stop is a very handy little beastie 🙂 Not only does it tell you where the end of a sentence is, it also acts as a handy-dandy “Hey! This line has something on it! Better not ignore it then!” marker! Therefore I put one full stop at the beginning of the next five or six lines… and made my “padded space” between the text and the Widgets! Cool! But wait! Wouldn’t six lines of just one black full stop at the start of it, and nothing else, look kinda silly? Of course they would, but because I can change text colour like this, and the text container is white, I simply changed the full stops’ colour to white, and all of a sudden, they… disappeared! 😛 You’ll see what I mean when I go Public with this Blog Project of mine 😉

So that’s what I did today, while fretting and worrying about Julian. I think we’re having toast for dinner…

Anyway, on with the good bits!

Food stuffs. Last night we had the little pork roast, and it was really great! It took a long time to cook (but then, roast pork usually does take a while) but it was truly delicious! Moist, as tender as butter, well cooked, with only one tiny little sliver of fat on one side of it – beautifully cooked! With it we had mashed potatoes, steamed green beans, and our usual half a tomato. For dessert I had one of the two “Eve” apples I’d bought, and I think I should have left it in the fruit bowl for a few more days, as it wasn’t really ripe enough to enjoy. I also had a small bowl of the delightful, Coles-brand, very low-calorie Rice Pudding. Today for lunch I had a Baker’s delight cheese roll and one of their yummy fruit and white chocolate scones, which Julian picked up on his way home from his ultrasound, as he didn’t feel much like standing around preparing food 😦 Tonight as I said before, we’ll probably end up having a couple of slices of toast – but I don’t mind – to tell you all the honest truth, I really don’t feel all that crash hot myself (my ear is still blocked too, but I don’t think it’s as bad as it was!) I might just have one of my Corella pears for dessert, or maybe a few dates and a dried fig, or something…

Weigh-in this morning. Wasn’t good – I seem to be on another “upward spiral” 😦 I went from 64.6 kg to 64.7 kg – up a whole point! Oh well, today’s lunch won’t have helped, though I must admit, I didn’t get my morning walk at all yesterday, because we had to leave too early to go to the Doctor’s – and at least this morning my ruddy blistered toes did let me walk for 25 minutes, so that was good – maybe tomorrow’s weigh-in won’t be too bad after all… Cross fingers, and touch wood! 🙂

Which brings me to tomorrow. Julian has another appointment at the Doctor’s (I fergit what time he said it was, and I’m not going to go out to the lounge room to disturb him again!) to get the results of his blood tests and ultrasound, but apart from that, I think we’re both going to be hunkering down and taking it fairly easy… Flipper seems to have forgiven Julian for taking her up to the Vet this morning to have her fingernails cut, a whopping great horse pill (worming tablet) shoved down her throat, and generally poked, prodded, and injected! This afternoon Auric apparently has had another mild dose of the floaties, and last night Dapple had a mild bout of them too (are anyone else’s stomachs playing up too?!) And really, that’s about all that’s been happening in this neck (or maybe “stomach”?) of the woods… so once again, that’s about “it” from me for this evening! Do drop in again tomorrow night, and find out the latest on Julian’s health, if my bunged up ear has become “un-bunged”, what my weight did to me this time, how the little Fur-Fins are, and whether I’ve done anymore work on this mysterious Blog Project of mine! 😉 Until then however, please do try to bee good, remember that we are continually faced by great opportunities, brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems, and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to keep cosy and warm and dry in this inclement weather, and to always drive carefully – but most importantly, please, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

04.37 pm

(Winter, looking at the date in the title, mutters crossly to herself…) “Well, at least it’s not a Friday – though it might as well have been!” Honestly, everything that could go wrong, did go wrong this morning! Our doctor’s appointment was for 10.00 am – so I didn’t have time for my walk – not even for a shortened version! I hate having to rush breakfast, and have vowed never to rush another breakfast – besides, even if I’d had a shortened walk, and rushed my breakfast, and hastily scrambled into the car in my pyjamas, I still would have been out of time! Then, while I was eating my breakfast – quicker than I normally would have – I tried to log onto WoW to check my Auctions and such. Nah! I couldn’t connect! Thinking I’d give it a little time to sort itself out, I remembered that I’d received an email from Optifast last night, telling me that they’d changed their system and website, and would I please go and log in, click on the “I’ve forgotten my password” button, change my password (because of their new security arrangements, everyone has to log in and change their password!) I’d done that part the night before (i.e. last night) so I was expecting an email from them this morning telling me where I had to go to chance my password. Yes! The email was there! I clicked on the link, and tried to change my password. It took me several goes, because every password I tried to use was apparently not “Strong” enough! So I tried this, and I tried that, and eventually I found one that was – hallelujah! – “Strong” enough! Unfortunately, by this time I was so mad at them and their pernickety new system that I’d forgotten what I’d put down, and after so many “Not Strong Enough’s”, I hadn’t bothered to jot this particular one down in my notebook, first!! Back to the drawing board! By now I was starting to sweat on the time! I tried again – this time using a word I’d already used before, but which had turned out to be not “Strong” enough (why does no-one ever warn you that some wretched systems insist on a “Strong” password, which always turns out to be something that you’re not likely to remember easily!) but to which I added a couple of numerals, and a punctuation mark or two – which was what they’d wanted, only umm… I didn’t… ahh… read the fine print! 😳 This time I did write it down, and I did manage to change my ruddy password – I even got an email to that effect! So, just to test it out, I tried to log in… Now, we use a “password manager”, which usually does a very fine job of getting our passwords right for us – only this time, it insisted on using my old password, even though I’d already entered the new one in for this “password manager”! I couldn’t log in! I tried three times, ran out of time to get ready, and gave the whole thing away as a totally bad joke. I still couldn’t log into WoW, either!

Totally disgruntled, I repaired to the bathroom to get myself ready to go forth to see the lovely Doctor B. – only there’s no clock, or any other timepiece in the bathroom, so I had no idea how long I had left – therefore I rushed, and, as one usually does when one is blindly rushing about like a chook with its head chopped off, I managed to break a nail, which I then had to stop what I was doing to file it down, to prevent it from catching in everything I touched. Luckily I had a little more time than I thought I’d had, and we did leave on time, after all!

Doctor B. has given Julian a Referral for an X-ray and an Ultrasound of his foot and ankle, and she’s got me on Telfast 180mg and Otrivin to try and dry up my eustachian tubes, which she thinks may be causing my blocked ear. Those two medications aren’t on prescription, they’re over-the-counter “Pharmacy Medicine”, and are really more for Hay Fever and colds, but they should help to dry my nose and eustachian tubes out a little faster than they’re not doing on their own! It’s strange, you know, because I’ve had blocked eustachian tubes lots of times, but it’s always made me feel giddy if I move my head too quickly! Oh well, maybe these are different eustachian tubes or something, and hopefully my ear will be all unblocked by tomorrow morning! 😎  We called in at Vermont South on the way home, and I got some “Eve” apples, some more Corella pears, and some more “kiwi-fruit-brown” skinned Nashi pears, which should keep me going for a few more days 😉 We also went into the big Pet Barn next to Aldi’s to see if we could spot the little chartreuse goldfish that we’d seen there, as we want to get one next week – but they were all gone! 😦 We did see two very nice deep orange goldfish – one big one, one much smaller one – which as I said, were a deep rich orange – but their top fin, and the tips of their tails, were black! They looked very smart indeed, and if we can’t get one of our little chartreuse goldfish, we might get one of those instead. Anyway, at least we’ve found out what the little chartreuse goldfish are called! They’re called “Golden Comet’s“, and they come in varying shades of a pale lemony-green! Julian’s going to look around at a few other Aquariums and Pet Barn-type places, to see if anyone else has them! I hope we can get one – I might call him (or her) “Lemony Snicket”! 😉

Our friend Steve SMS’d us this morning, wanting to know if we were going to be home this afternoon because he was going to be in Springvale this morning, and thought he might pop in this afternoon, which he did! 🙂 It was good to catch up again – I’ve told him to bring Beth down one weekend for lunch, and if they can get a babysitter for the kids, that’d be even betterer! 🙂 Hopefully we might see them soon… I’ve also been working a bit more on my new Blog project, and it seems to be coming along quite nicely! So far, I’ve “blocked out” the “chapters”, or sections, and I’m working on a sort-of “template page”, that I can use over and over for the individual pieces of writing, because it seems that I can “insert” a table into these blog pages – if I create it in Word first, then “copy and paste” it into the blog, although I’m not too sure how well they’ll work in the long-term. Time, I guess, will tell! 🙂

And now it’s time to get on to the good bits!

Food stuff. Last night we had chicken breast, pressed into a fairly spicy dukkah – Julian gave me a tiny taste of it on the end of a teaspoon, and it was very, very spicy indeed! Anyway, he pan-fried the chicken-pressed-in-fiery-dukkah, and it was wonderful! It was still quite spicy, but the cooking process seemed to have moderated the fiery-ness a bit, and it was really yummy! We had the chicken with chips, steamed green beans, and our usual half a tomato, and for dessert I had a “kiwi-skin-brown” Nashi Pear, which as usual was lovely and crisp and crunchy! I also had a small bowl of my very favourite Coles-brand, very low-calorie, delicious Rice Pudding. Lunch today was a wrap, with basil-pesto hummus as a butter substitute, ham, red and yellow peppers cut into batons, and Halloumi cheese – delicious, and for once I managed to eat it all without dropping ¾ of it on either myself or the floor! Tonight for dinner we’re having a very small roast pork, but I have no idea what we’re having with it, so you’ll all just have to wait until tomorrow to find out all about it! For dessert, tonight I’ll have one of these new-fangled “Eve” apples (I mean, who could resist an “Eve” apple, eh? Even Adam couldn’t! 😉 ) and my usual favourite, a small bowl of scrumptious Coles-brand, very low-calorie Rice Pudding.

Weigh-in this morning. Wasn’t good at all! 😦 I went from 64.4 kg to 64.6 kg – up two whole points! Well, I had quite a “slimming” sort of lunch today, so hopefully I might start going down again tomorrow… Cross your fingers for me, please!

And that brings me full circle to tomorrow! Poor old Flipper has to go off early to have her six-monthly check-up and her injection of “anti-arthritis” medication. She’s really getting very stiff at the moment, but although she hates going to the Vet – and hates us for taking her there – she is nearly 100% better after having had the injection! You’d think she would have cottoned on by now that “horrible visit to the Vet = not feeling stiff and sore all the time” – but she’s an old cat, and I guess she never really was much of a “thinking” cat, like Boo or Artie… and actually that’s about “it” again from me for this evening! Do call in again tomorrow night to find out if my weight did start to go down again, or if it’s flooded over the 65 kg mark, how little Flipper went at the Vet’s, and whether I’ve got my connection to WoW back again yet! Apparently it was a Tel$tra issue! However until tomorrow night, do please try to bee good, don’t forget that what worries you masters you, and remember to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm and dry is this antarctic-type weather… but most importantly, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

04.51 pm

Well, here I am, a little later than I’d hoped, but I’ve spent nearly all day trying to organise a new blog site – not for this particular blog (well, not yet, anyway!) but for another blog that will hopefully be ready for visitors within the next day or two… You’ll hear all about it then, but in the meantime, grit your teeth and prepare to be patient for a little while longer! 😉

However, I had occasion to be extremely angry with WordPress again! “Oh goodness!” I can hear you all asking “What are you angry with them about this time?!” “Oh! I’m so glad you asked!” says me in relief “well, the thing is…”

The thing is that all this time I’ve been writing the blog, I’ve been doing my best to make it as nice (read: “visually attractive”) as possible – changing Templates – many of which I’ve bought, only to find that they don’t work as they’re supposed to – creating new Custom Headers, Custom Backgrounds, and so forth – always in search of that elusive and probably entirely mythical beastie, “The Perfect Blog Set-Up”! I’ve bought quite a lot of Templates over the years, always with the thought somewhere in the back of my mind, that it isn’t a waste of money if I don’t use it for this particular blog, because I have another three fledgling blogs that I can use them on! I found out today that that’s not the case at all! I was pretty upset when I learned that if you buy a Template for a particular blog, that’s it – it can only ever be used on that blog! If you want to use it on a secondary or other blog, you have to buy it especially for that blog, and so on! Now, is that a scam or is that a scam?! At no point do they say openly that “are you sure you want to buy this (usually expensive) Template? You do realise, don’t you, that you can only use it on this one blog!”

I had to go hunting for that information this morning, because quite frankly, I didn’t believe – I didn’t want to believe – what I was beginning to suspect! I actually had to go fossicking in the forums to find it out! Someone had asked a specific question about using a Template they’d bought in the past on another blog, and they received the answer that, in my opinion, should have been made quite clear, but wasn’t, when the Template was bought! That is, that you could only use it for that particular Template!

Anyway, cut back to an extremely irate me! I was ropable! I’d decided that I’d use this Template (the one you’re currently looking at) on my newly resurrected experimental blog, only to find that if I wanted to use it, that’d be another $80.00, thank you very much, on top of the “per annum”, payable in advance, “Premium” charges, (applicable to only one blog, of course!) for being able to use a few extra fonts, and get the choice of a few more colours and backgrounds.

The worst of it is, they know that they’ve got you over a barrel! There is no “equivalent” to WordPress! Sure, there are lots of other “blog sites”, but you either have to not want anything too special or sophisticated, and not care terribly much if your Template looks more suitable for a texting teenager – or else you need to be tech-savvy, know how to write in CSS, and be prepared to do an awful lot of the “housekeeping” work yourself – something that not very many ordinary “men (or women) on the street” are capable of, especially me! Yes, Julian could, and would, of course, help me, but he’s a hardware and networking engineer, not a programming specialist. And so unfortunately, there is only one blog site that’s relatively easy to use, and that ticks all the right boxes – believe me, I know – I’ve tried them all – so, here I am, back again with Word Press. Thoroughly pee’d off with them, but I guess the old saying is true… “Better the devil you know…”

Oh, and just as a warning – I’ve also heard that WordPress can “cancel” your blog, at any time, and for any reason – in fact no reason or warning will be given – so if one day you come to read my blog, and it’s not here – that’s what will have happened, as if I do ever move this, I’ll be sure to let you all know, well in advance! 🙂

I also spent a fair amount of time tidying up the (one of the two) Horde Guild Bank(s) on Quel’Dorei over lunch – it was getting to the unmanageable stage, and most of the stuff that should have been in the Guild Bank was stuffing Xãnthe’s Personal Bank Bags to overflowing! Anyway, that’s all done now, and Xãnthe has some room in her Bank Bags where she can store “Costume” Clothes for Transmogrification, and souvenirs from all the fun places she and Jemimah are visiting in Draenor! 🙂

Yesterday, as you all know, my very favourite eldest daughter came over, and we ended up watching all of the episodes we had left, up to and including the final, “End of Season-cliff-hanger” of “Wynonna Earp”! And a Second Season hasn’t been mentioned, yet! 😥 but… I wanna know what happens! 😯  Poor Josh arrived about fifteen minutes before the show finished, and I’m afraid I was terribly rude and asked him if he’d sit down while we watched the last little bits… 😳

And now on to the good bits!

Food stuff. Lunch yesterday… well, we’re obviously not planning things very well, because once again, Julian had to run out at lunchtime, because we’d run out of just about everything edible (again!) and he came back with a great load of groceries, including one of my most favourite lunches, from Baker’s Delight – two different types of savoury rolls (we shared them, half each) and two of those absolutely divine fruit and white chocolate scones! Yum! For dinner last night we had the first of the two lots of leftover “Rich beef and stout casserole”, again, on a bed of plain, steamed rice – and once again, it was delicious! For dessert I had one of the “kiwi-fruit-brown” skinned Nashi pears – they really are very nice – and of course, my usual small bowl of the extra delicious Coles-brand, very low-calorie, Rice Pudding. For lunch today we er had… the left-overs of last night’s left-overs – if that makes any sense to you all – with three halves (each) of the very tasty whole-meal, sesame and poppy-seed crusted, bread, lightly buttered. Once again, the stew (or casserole) was really nice. Tonight we’re having spicy dukkah sprinkled chicken breasts, pan-fried, and probably with chips, steamed green beans, and our usual half a tomato. Dessert tonight will have to be the same as last night – a “kiwi-fruit-brown” skinned Nashi pear, as there’s no other fruit left (we’ll get some more tomorrow!) and a small bowl of my extra favourite Coles-brand, very low-calorie, scrumptious Rice Pudding.

Weigh-in yesterday morning. Was relatively good – I went from 63.2 kg to 63.1 kg, down one point, but still very much within the margin of error area… but then of course, I went and had the two half pieces of savoury roll, and the fruit and white chocolate scone… 😳

Weigh-in this morning. Wasn’t quite so good, as I’m sure you guess! Oh dear, the bits of roll and the yummy scone did their dirty work alright – I went from 64.1 kg to 64.4 kg! Up three points! And I had one and a half slices of buttered (but only lightly buttered!) bread with my lunch today. Tomorrow morning is going to be a lot of a rush – I think I’m going to have to get up half an hour early to fit in a twenty-five minute treadmill walk before breakfast! We’re seeing the ever-charming Doctor B. tomorrow morning at 10 o’clock – me about my ear, which is still [heavily censored!] blocked, and Julian to get a referral to a Physio for his sore ankle! (his left one this time, so he can still drive unimpeded) I’ll let you know how we go…

And that’s really about “it” from me again this evening – after our visit to the Doctor’s tomorrow, I dare say that if the weather’s good enough, we’ll stop off at Vermont South to do a small bit of shopping (I must get some more fruit!), and maybe pop into the great big Pet Barn place and see if we can spot which little chartreuse fishie that we’ll be taking home for Auric and Dapple to play with (not tomorrow though! We won’t be taking one home tomorrow! Next week! 🙂 ) Anyway, do call in again tomorrow night to find out whether my weight gave in and went down again, or it it’s still got it in for me and has gone up! Hear all the latest in the blog saga, and find out what Flipper, Auric and Dapple have been up to, and what sort of adventures we had at the Doctor’s! Until then though, please try to bee very good, remember to be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind! Don’t forget though, to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to make sure you keep warm and dry in this cold, miserable Melbourne weather… but above all, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

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! 🙂

04.18 pm

I must apologise for not writing anything yesterday – but I didn’t have anything to write it on! (well, I did have a very small half a screen that I probably could have used, but I didn’t want to give myself a headache and a very bad case of eyestrain!) What happened was that Julian had to go out to pick up the dry cleaning, get some more coffee, and do the shoping for our dinner tonight, all of which was going to take several hours. Not a problem, I was busy looking for some sort of “book-writing” program, or utility, and after I’d finished with that – that is, as soon as I found something that I thought I’d be able to work with, I was going to make an early start on my blog. So, there’s Julian, the computer guru and all-round “fix-it” guy for anything electrical and/or computerish, and there’s not-quite technophobic, but most definitely not computer-smart me, sitting at home, happily playing around with strange programs that I’ve never even heard of before – all because I’ve taken it into my cotton-woolly head to write a Family Recipe Book. So I suppose you can all guess what happened next, can’t you! Yes. I did “strange things” to my computer (I accidentally turned it into a Windows 8 machine, where until now, we’ve been very careful to keep it looking like a Windows 7 machine – even though it is, in fact, running Windows 8!) Neither Julian nor I like the plain, flat, boring Windows 8 start screen, with no familiar “Start” button down in the bottom left-hand corner of the Task Bar – in fact there’s no Task Bar at all – just a mesmerisingly bland and flat screen, with a jumble of different coloured rectangles strewn across it. Anyway, for days I’ve been Googling “Word Processors”, and “Page Layout” programs, and “Self-Publishing” Aps, and I suppose I was starting to get a bit blasé about it all… So, when I saw “Microsoft Publisher” sitting there in Google’s list of possibilities, I simply thought “Oh well, in for a penny, in for a pound – I might as well have a look at it,” – and I clicked on the link… I should tell you all at this point that I’d seen “Microsoft Publisher” mentioned in some of the reviews I’d been reading, but somehow or other, my eyes always glazed over at the beginning of the word “Microsoft”, and I never did get to read those bits… and I know why – it’s because I dislike all things Microsoft! I hate Word, and Excel is about as stiff and clumsy as a stone golem!

For a moment, the world seemed to slip sideways underneath me. My screen was doing strange things! Letters, and lines of words flashed fleetingly across it, as my eyes tried to make sense of what they were seeing – then just as suddenly as it had happened, it was over – and I was staring at a mesmerisingly bland and flat Windows 8 screen! Ladies and gentlepersons, I can tell you all very truthfully that I was totally gob-smacked! And horrified, but mostly, just plain angry! Microsoft had hi-jacked my machine, and inserted its ugly Windows 8 persona into my setup, without let or hindrance! And as if that wasn’t enough, I didn’t have a clue how to work with it, or how to even find anything! Well, I suppose I could have had a fiddled around with it, to see if I could work it all out, I mean, how hard can it be?! But I’ve been well trained! All I’d probably do was break it further, and having been told often enough by Julian to “Google it!”, or failing that, to obey the seventy-fifth and a half rule of computer management, which is “when in doubt, don’t, and call me!” – Julian is a klutz with sharp and hot things – I’m a klutz with electronics and programs. ‘Nuff said!

So I called him on his mobile. When I’d told him what happened, he knew immediately what I’d done (he’s clever like that!) and, had he been here he could have fixed it in about two seconds flat – but he wasn’t here, and it would have been too painful to try and talk me through it, so I just had to grab my Kindle, go and sit in the lounge room with my feet up, and read, until he got home. Which was around dinner time. So by the time I got back to my now thoroughly normalised computer, it was well after nine o’clock, and I really didn’t feel like sitting down and writing 1.5 thousand words.

We were supposed to be going out early yesterday to have my Warfarin blood test done, but we didn’t. I did manage to do a somewhat shortened walk on the treadmill yesterday morning, but my blisters just weren’t up to walking up and down stairs, my ear wasn’t any better, and I was feeling a bit headachy… so I stayed home, and Julian went out (see above!) So yesterday, for me, anyway, was a bit of an anti-climax – I played WoW in the morning, broke for lunch and looked for Recipe Writing software, and had my machine hi-jacked by Microsoft, whereupon I retired to the lounge room to read and doze until Julian got home. Pretty exciting day… NOT!

Today we slept in a bit… well, alright, too much…and neither of us ended up going for our walk this morning! We used the joint excuses that (a) it was too late, and (b) my toes were still too sore – and in both cases, quite true! We did, however, go and have my Warfarin blood test done – hopefully we’ll get the results SMS’d through to us before midnight tonight. We also went to the Nursery on Blackburn Road near the Ferntree Gully Road off-ramp to look for planters large enough to grow carrots in, but they didn’t have anything suitable, so we decided to go to Bunnies, just down the road from us here. We’d just got onto Burwood Highway on our way back from the Nursery, when I remembered that we were supposed to stop off at the Vet’s to pick up some more Loxicom drops for Flipper (they’re anti-inflammatory drops that we put in her food, for her arthritis) So we drove past Bunnies, and all the way back to Whitehorse Road Blackburn for those, turned around, and drove all the way back to Bunnies again! Bunnies, thank heavens, did have the right sort of planters, and we ended up getting three of those, a couple of bags of small pebbles to use as “draining stones” in the bottom of the planters, and about four or five bags of garden soil to put on top of the pebbles – and then we came home!

After lunch, Julian went out and set the planters up on sleepers (big chunks of wood!) placed securely between the two veggie boxes, and finally managed to get the rest of our winter crops planted! I think there are still a few herbs to go in, but they can live quite happily on the sheltered back deck for a bit longer. When I went out to have a look at everything, I looked at my new little fig tree and thought that he looked very lonely in that corner, all by himself… I think that later on, it might be nice to plant a nectarine tree, and either an apricot, or a loquat tree in what’s left of the garden bed underneath the back fence… Julian just said “We’ll see…”, which in “Mother-talk” to their children means “No!”, but he’s not my mother, and I’m not his child, so… 😉 We’ll see! 🙂

Tonight for dinner Julian’s cooking a very nice looking recipe wot I found in the on-line Taste magazine, called “Rich beef and stout casserole” There’s a fair bit of preparation in it, but boy, the house smells divine! Yum, yum! I’m looking forward to dinner (which will be late again, but that’s OK…) Tomorrow night I’ll let you all know what it was like, and if it turns out to be another “keeper”, I’ll transcribe the recipe for posterity and post it, with the appropriate accreditation, on my “Recipes…” page! 🙂

And that’s really all we’ve been up to, so now I shall move on to the good bits!

Food stuff. Yesterday for lunch we had wraps – fairly plain, but really nice! Naturally there was our usual basil-pesto hummus butter-substitute, with ham, Halloumi cheese, and red capsicum. Last night for dinner we had Three Island Beef sausages, mashed potatoes, half a Roma tomato, and steamed green beans, and for dessert I had a “bald-kiwi-fruit-brown” Nashi pear, and a small bowl of the yummy Coles-brand, very low-calorie Rice Pudding. Today for lunch we had sandwiches, made from the very tasty whole-meal bread with the sesame-seed and poppy-seed sprinkled crust – again they were fairly plain, with a smearing of real butter (instead of our usual basil-pesto hummus) ham, cheese, and some Beerenberg Tomato Chutney. Most delish! 🙂 And of course I’ve already told you what we’re having for dinner tonight – the “Rich beef and stout casserole”, which we’ll have with plain, steamed rice. I’ll either have the last Fuji apple for dessert, with my usual small bowl of Coles-brand, very low-calorie, scrumptious Rice Pudding, or if the apple’s a bit past its “Use By” date, I’ll have my last Corella pear.

Weigh-in yesterday morning. Was quite astonishing! I went from 63.8 kg…. to 63.8 kg! I stayed the same, for the third day in a row! Even after that lunch I had at the Shingle Inn, plus the fact that my feet have been too sore for me to be able to do a full walk every morning, and this morning I didn’t walk at all! (though I did walk around the Nursery, and Bunnies instead!)

Weigh-in this morning. Was still astonishing! I went from 63.8 kg to 63.9 kg – up one point – well within the mythical “margin of error” area! I’m pretty sure I’ll go up tomorrow though… (Winter prays to the ghods of E.coli not to let her go up too much, please!)

Let’s see… what else is there to tell you all… Auric and Dapple are well, as is Flipper… Julian’s well, but tired after all the work in the garden that he did today, and moi-même? apart from my blisters (on both feet!) my bunged up ear (it hasn’t changed in the slightest, despite the horrible and disgusting ear drops for five days!) and mildly aggravated sinuses, I’m as fit as a fiddle! 🙂 Tomorrow, which is a Sunday, we’ll be Daintily Dancing Down Draenor Drives, slaughtering any hapless monsters who happen to get in our way – I’ll fill you all in on our adventures there tomorrow night – whether we died or not, and if we did, how many times, and what was it that actually killed us? And that, gentle readers, is about “it” from me again this evening! Do call in again tomorrow night though, to find out if my weight did go up, and exactly how much it went up! And to see how Xãnthe and Jemimah went in Draenor, and whether Auric and Dapple have had any more “fits of the floaties”! But until then, do try very hard to bee good, remember that sleeping is the healthiest thing you can do without doing anything, and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to keep warm and dry in this cold, wet weather, and to always drive carefully… but above all, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

04.31 pm

Now, let’s see how I go… I’m using a different keyboard! Yes, we did go to Officeworks, and I got a few things (that I just couldn’t bear to live without! 😉 ) This new keyboard, f’rinstance – it’s an HP one, and comes with its own mouse, which I’m also trying out… so far, so good! 🙂 I’ll let you know how it goes…

We went out just after 11.30 this morning, and went off to the Vet, to pick up some more Norvasc tablets (blood pressure medication!) for Flipper – yes, cats do suffer from high blood pressure, and you should see the little cuff they use on their little legs! It’s so cute! 🙂 It’s nothing like the ones they use on humans though, it’s pretty much just a small microphone, so they have to shave a bit of the cat’s leg so that the sound isn’t muffled by their fur. I suppose they use the same sort of contraption for dogs, too… Then we went on to The Glen, where we had lunch at the Shingle Inn, did a bit of shopping, and Julian got himself a new “stew pot”, I suppose you’d call it – it’s a reasonably large saucepan, with two little handles instead of one long one – to tell you the truth, I’m not even sure what he uses it for, apart from the lamb and Harissa mixture for our Lamb and Harissa Lasagna! We also did some supermarket shopping (what a shame we forgot to get any milk!) we didn’t get very much as we mainly went to get some more cat food! Flipper was completely out of her favourite dinner, and at her age, it’s not worth the hassles of trying to get her to eat something else instead – she either straight-out won’t eat anything else, and just wanders around crying for her dinner all night, or else she does eat it – and then sicks it up, usually on the carpet! We went on to our next appointment, and finally came home via Officeworks (I love Officeworks! 😉 ) where I got this keyboard (which so far seems to be working very nicely!) a clear desk mat, because I keep running my mouse off the mouse mat when I’m playing WoW, which is most annoyment! I also got myself a very elegant “display” folder, where I can keep copies of the recipes that I print or type out, and a new three-ring binder for the graph pad I’m using to chart my weight. The graph pad has holes down one side, so that you can put it in a ring binder, but you can also flip the pages over at the top, where it’s very easy to tear one or more off if you’re not careful – so I figured that by putting it in a ring binder, any page(s) that tore off at the top wouldn’t get lost. We arrived home to find a large box sitting on our front porch, with a big label on it saying “Signature required at delivery” (!!! hmm!) It was another item for the Fish House – some different filter pads, and an ultra-violet steriliser, primarily to kill algae… You don’t think we spoil our little fishies, do you? 😉

And that was pretty much our day today! Well, so far, anyway – though I can’t really think of anything else exciting or noteworthy that might happen around here this evening, from now until midnight! I didn’t get a chance to log onto WoW at all today, and it was far too dank and damp to go to the Nursery to look for Planters – I rather suspect that tomorrow won’t really be suitable, either – so the poor little seedlings, currently languishing on our back deck, will either have to survive another couple of days to be properly planted out, or replaced, come the weekend!

So now, having filled you all in on all the mundane events of the day, I can get on to all the good bits! 🙂

Food stuff. Last night we had the lamb backstraps that Julian had marinated in the Feta “brine” for four or five hours. It was extremely nice, and I think I can happily put a “tick” against it, to say that “Yes, it works with lamb backstraps as well as chicken!” – that being said, I also think that it would be even nicer with lamb fillets, and I think it could only have benefited from being thrown into the fridge overnight. I find it fascinating that only four or five hours in the Feta “brine” is enough to change the texture and appearance of the inside of the piece of meat! You know how your fingers go all wrinkly and “prune-y” when they’ve been in water too long, and start to go a bit “white-ish” if you leave them in the water even longer? Well, that’s about the best way I can describe the appearance of the inside of the lamb backstrap when you cut into it… sort-of, anyway! It was a bit like tenderising it, I suppose – it was certainly very tender, moist, and delicious, anyway, and we had it on a bed of plain steamed rice, which had finely chopped spring onions mixed through it. For dessert I had one of my Fuji apples – they don’t look all that appealing, because they’re not red or yellow or green – or a combination of those colours – being a sort of yellow-y-brown-ish colour, with red tinges, but they’re very nice indeed! I also had a small bowl of my favourite Coles-brand, very low-calorie, delicious, Rice Pudding! For lunch today at the Shingle Inn, I didn’t have my usual BLT on sourdough bread! I had one of their “specials”, announced on the flyer on our table – it was some sort of lamb in filo pastry type thingy, and came (as does the BLT!) with a side salad, which I never eat because of all the dressing they put on it. The lamb thingy was also a lot lower in kilojoules than the BLT, too – Shingle Inn always puts the (I suppose, “approximate”, or “general”) kilojoule count on their menus, next to the price of the menu item, which I think is a damn good idea! So I had the lamb filo-pastry thingy, and it was rather nice, even though it tasted as if it had been cooked with no salt whatsoever, and I had to ask them for some tomato sauce! The lamb was good quality too, real “bite-size” chunks, with no fat, or gristle, or other “not-so-nice” bits – it really just needed a bit of seasoning And then I went and blotted my copybook by having a chocolate and caramel slice for dessert! Oh dear! But all-in-all, it was a very nice lunch! 🙂 Tonight we’re having pan-fried chicken breast, with chips, steamed green beans, and our usual half a tomato, and for dessert, tonight I’ll have one of my Corella pears, and a small bowl of the Coles-brand, very low-calorie, scrumptious Rice Pudding.

Weigh-in this morning. Was really amazing! Incredibly, I went from 83.8 kg to…. wait for it, wait for it! 83.8 kg! I stayed the same! Incroyable! (which is French for “incredible”! 😉 ) Unfortunately, I don’t think I’ll stay the same tomorrow! I’ll be up, that’s fer sure! Oh well, as long as I come down again… the red line that I drew across the graph page at the 64.5 kg marker is showing more days under 64.5 kg, than over it – so maybe I’m not slowly creeping upwards, after all! I hope not, anyway! 🙂

And that brings me to tomorrow… I have to have my next Warfarin blood test, and I know Julian has to go off to Doncaster to pick up the Dry Cleaning, drop off the next lot, and to pick up some more coffee pods, because we’re nearly out of them (again! Hmm.. I wonder if maybe we drink too much coffee?! NO! Surely not!) but as far as I’m aware, that’s about all I have on for tomorrow, so maybe I’ll get a chance to push Phoenìx up another level or two… and really, that’s about “it” from me again for tonight! Julian is fine, Auric and Dapple are well, and dear old Flipper is well, I only have tonight and tomorrow for these horrible ear drops (not that my ear is much better though, it still feels a bit “blocked”!) I think it’s sinus problems – I woke up this morning with my whole top jaw, near my sinus cavities, aching – it didn’t last long, but it was a bit concerning at first! Do call in again tomorrow night though, to find out how much my weight went back up (my guess is at least half a kilo!) how I’m getting along with this new keyboard, and whether we managed to get out to a Nursery or not. But until tomorrow night, please bee good, remember that the word “Hello” is the most powerful defence against loneliness, and don’t forget to keep warm and dry in this changeable weather, to always drive carefully, and to look after yourselves… but above all, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂