04.02 pm

Oh, aren’t I nice and early this afternoon! 🙂 I didn’t think I would be – even though Phoenìx’s wearing all of her Heirloom pieces, she still seems to have been leveling up a lot slower than she used to! You see, I’d finally managed to make it to level 69, and I was determined to get to level 70, before I logged out for the day! At the rate I was leveling up at that stage, I thought that an ice-block might stand a better chance in the tropics! There was so much flying here – flying there – so much to-ing and fro-ing, I dunno! There was another player going through just barely ahead of me, so they pretty much slaughtered everything in sight, leaving me to wander aimlessly around, loitering with intent – waiting impatiently for the object of my quest to re-spawn, so that I could kill it, so that the person waiting in the queue behind me could wait for it to re-spawn, etc., etc – I’m sure you get the picture! Anyway, about ten minutes ago I finally made it to level 70, and promptly logged out! 🙂 So – now I only have another 20 levels to go, to get to level 90 by the end of August! I dunno – maybe I can still get there, after all!

We’ve not done terribly much today – it’s been far too wet for traipsing around in Nurseries, or going to Officeworks – maybe we can go to Officeworks tomorrow…? We’ll see – we do have to go out after lunch – maybe we could go to Officeworks early, then go on to The Glen, do any shopping that we have to do (and we always seem to have something we need to get!) have lunch there, and continue on our merry way after lunch! That could work…

However, apart from trying to get Phoenìx up to level 70 today, I’ve also been working on the new Header that you see at the top of the page. On Monday I went looking for “seamless patterns” from which to make backgrounds, and I found a whole heap of them over at Brusheezy – I tell you what, paying for a “Premium” membership has paid off handsomely! 🙂 Every time I go there looking for something specific, it doesn’t seem to matter if I find those “specific” things or not – I always find tons of things to download – and sometimes I even get around to using a few of them, too! 😉 You saw one of the patterns last night – it’s a sort of a small “netting” type of pattern, and I’ve used another of the ones I got on Monday in the Header here today. It was in with a whole mixture of Greek borders, but it was a little big, so I smallerated it, and used it above and below the main text. I’d intended to put a border around the entire header, but in the end I couldn’t be bothered putting in the hard work to get it to fit around the corners without overlapping, or very looking odd, because as you can see, it looks smaller (read: “narrower”) on one end. It isn’t actually, it’s an optical illusion, and it would have been quite hard to get it all looking “symmetrical” – so for today, top and bottom only! 🙂

And really, that’s about all I’ve done today, so now I can get on to the good bits!

Food stuff. Last night for dinner we had the very unexciting – but at the same time very delicious – second lot of our left-over Lamb and Harissa Lasagna – and y’know, it does seem to improve it! Keeping it in the freezer and then warming it through when needed, seems to spread all the spices and flavours around the whole dish very nicely! I think we only have another two meals of it left, before we have to go and make another one! For dessert, I had a “bald-kiwi-fruit brown” Nashi pear, which was really nice, and luckily there’s still one of them left in the fruit bowl! These “bald-kiwi-fruit brown” ones really do seem to have a lot more flavour than the very over-juicy, somewhat bland and tasteless, yellow-golden ones! And after that very nice Nashi pear, I also had a small bowl of my favourite Coles-brand, very low-calorie, decidedly yummy, Rice Pudding. Today for lunch I had a very nice sandwich, made with the extremely nice whole-meal bread that’s got the sesame and poppy-seeds embedded in its crust, along with our tasty butter alternative, basil-pesto hummus, and tandoori chicken sandwich chunks. Sandwiches always seem to me to be smaller, but that too, might only be an optical illusion, because they’re more compact, and much more easy to hold and eat, than a wrap! Tonight for dinner Julian’s made the Feta “brine” slurry again, and this time he’s marinated some lamb backstrap in it, along with a nice little sprig of freshly picked rosemary. It handled the chicken so well last time, I thought it would be equally as nice if we used it for lamb too – it should be really delicious, but I’m afraid you’ll all have to wait until tomorrow night to find out how it all went! 🙂 Oh, and don’t forget, the recipe for the Feta “brine” is written up on my “Recipes…” pages for all of you to try – it’s very simple to make and use, too! Tonight we’ll be having the Feta “brined lamb backstraps on a plain bed of steamed rice – probably with either finely chopped spring onions, or fried onions mixed through it, and I’ll have the last of my still usable Fuji apples for dessert, as well as my usual small bowl of the delicious, Coles-brand, very low-calorie, Rice Pudding.

Weigh-in this morning. Was quite startling, and neither Julian nor I were expecting it! (I was quite sure that I’d have gone up this morning!) I went from my second day in a row at 64.3 kg, down to 63.8 kg! Down five points! No, I have no idea why I went down instead of up! Yes, I am pleased, if more than a little surprised! And no, I don’t think I’ll go down again tomorrow, in fact I’ll probably bounce all the way back up to 64.3 kg again, if not even higher! But… I guess that’s just par for the course with my stupid body! 😉

Auric and Dapple were back to their usual selves again this morning – I think they just like scaring us! As I told you last night, Julian changed out 30% of the water again last night, even though it didn’t need it, and the two of them seemed to be pretty happy with that, and Auric stopped “floating”! I’m starting to think that it is just an attention seeking device, after all! Naughty little fishies! However they seem to have stopped lining up bubbles along the top of the water at the front of the Fish House, thank heavens – that was starting to concern me a little! 😉

I’m still suffering the two ear drops that I have to have twice a day – it’s really ikky! It doesn’t hurt or anything, it’s just… ikky! (*shudder*) plus my ear’s still bung – not as badly blocked, but still blocked, nonetheless, and last night it was as itchy as all get-out, right down deep inside it, which I took as a sign that it’s healing, or getting better. Only another five lots of drops to go…

And that brings me finally to tomorrow, which I’ve already more-or-less told you about – I’m hoping that we can get to Officeworks, as I do need some folders – and I love going around and looking at everything, because there’s nearly always something there that I simply can’t live without! 😉 Hopefully by Friday the weather will have dried out enough for us to go Nursery shopping again – otherwise we’re just going to have to put on our raincoats, gumboots, rain hat, and any other wet-weather gear that we can scrounge up (what a shame we don’t have any!) And that, gentle readers, is about “it” from me again for tonight! Do drop in again tomorrow night though, to find out just how much my weight bounced back up, what the Feta “brined” lamb backstraps were like, and what I managed to get if we did go to Officeworks! But until then, do try very hard to bee good, don’t forget to save some time to be lazy, because it’s good for you, and remember to keep warm and dry in this wet Melbourne weather, to always drive carefully, and to look after yourselves… but most importantly, please, remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

05.47 pm

Yes, a very late start tonight, due to several factors, the main one being that my very favourite eldest daughter was over today. I haven’t even really had the time to get into World of Warcraft, so I’m very much behind in my efforts to get Phoenìx up to level 90 by the end of August. Oh well, I shall keep trying… Today we watched one episode of “Orphan Black”, which is really getting exciting, and the rest of the time we watched “Wynonna Earp”, which, to tell the truth, is rather confusing – but I do like it. Around lunchtime we also watched the very last three episodes of “Person of Interest”, which did quite a good job of tying up all the loose threads – only two well-loved characters died (sorry, no spoilers for you this time! 😉 ) “Tha Machine” (the good one) turned out to be more aware and a lot cleverer than Finch ever dreamed, and there were plenty of “hooks” left for any potential “Spin-Off” series that may possibly (read: “hopefully”, because it was a darn good series!) follow.

Auric and Dapple are both well, and flittering around happily in their Fish House – when they’re not busily “vacuuming” the gravel for bits of forgotten fish-food, or tickling their sides by swimming through the small curtain of bubbles coming off the “air-stone” (which they both seem to love doing) their main “project” seems to be the construction of strings of bubbles, all along the top of the front wall of their tank! Why they do it, goodness only knows, but they were both very diligently swimming up and adding to the line… Oh! Oh dear, I hope not… Just this afternoon we were idly discussing whether they were two boys, two girls – or one of each, and the possibility of little baby goldfish if they were! I then said that even if one did turn out to be male, and the other a female, the tank conditions wouldn’t be right for breeding, as they had nowhere to deposit and fertilise the eggs… and then just now I remembered reading somewhere that some fish make a little raft of bubbles as a kind of a nest – er… or maybe that was frogs… I can’t remember now, but crikey! I hope they’re not building a nest! 😯

Tomorrow, if it’s not raining, I’d like to get over to the Nursery again, to see if we can get one of the very large planters so that we can get the rest of the vegetables planted – otherwise we may find it too late to put in our carrots and the rest of the broad beans! I also need to get to Office Works, as I need some display folders, and probably some more of the plastic “oversheets” that are used for laminating printouts, as I want to protect the recipes I’ve printed out so far. I’m also starting to get the “itch” to start working on our “Family Cookbook” that I started years ago – the trouble is, I just can’t seem to find the right software! I’ve used “Word”, and the recipes looks horrible because “Word” doesn’t convert all the fractions one uses when writing out a recipe – f’rinstance, on one line you have ½ a cup of whatever, and on the next line you get 2/3 of a cup of whatever – see the difference? It looks “messy” and slack – so I’m constantly searching for either an Ap for “Word” that makes these conversions look uniform, or a new Word Processor that makes all the conversions. I’ve tried “Libre Office” (which used to be “Open Office”, if I remember correctly – which is open source – so if anyone out there in Reader Land knows how to add to coding to make it do the conversions properly, please let me know how, and I’ll be your slave for 40 years (if I live that long!)) This morning I downloaded a Trail version of Corel’s “Word Perfect”, a word processor that I used to use so many years ago that it feels like last century (which it might well have been, come to think about it!) I haven’t really tried it out yet, however it does have one very large drawback – which may yet turn out to be a deal breaker – in that it won’t work if I’m running Windowblinds. I’m not sure if I can live without my Windowblinds, and I don’t really fancy the idea of turning Windowblinds off whenever I want to write a short note to remind myself of something, and then turn it back on again. “More experimentation is required”!

My left ear is still all bunged up, and still hurts – to differing degrees, depending on my ear’s mood – when I chew anything. But I’m only on Day 2 of those disgusting ear drops, so I really feel that I owe it to the Doctor to finish off the full five days of the damn things, before going back and complaining that my ear’s still not behaving as it should. However, you can colour me “cat”, with a despairing look on its face, and the caption on top of “Do Not Want!” 😦

And now to the good bits! 😉

Food stuffs. Sunday night, of course, we had omelets for dinner, and I had my usual just desserts… Monday lunch, well, the cleaning lady was over, and Julian had to go out and get a lot of things, which resulted in him being late enough getting back so that we ended up having fresh savoury bread rolls from Baker’s Delight, plus one of their absolutely deliciously scrumptious fruit and white chocolate scones… 😳 Dinner last night was an extremely nice piece of steak, which we had with baby Brussels sprouts, half a Roma tomato, and chips, and for dessert I had one of my Corella pears, followed by a small bowl of lovely Coles-brand, very low-calorie Rice Pudding. For lunch today I had a wrap, with basil-pesto hummus, ham, Halloumi cheese, and Roma tomato – very yummy, but also very messy to eat! Tonight we’re having the second lot of our left-over Lamb and Harissa Lasagna, which I’m very much looking forward to, and pretty much exactly the same dessert as last night, only tonight I might have one of the brown Nashi pears instead of a Fuji apple, or a Corella pear…

Weigh-in yesterday morning. Wasn’t too bad, really – from Sunday’s 64.1 kg to 64.3 kg – the same as I was on Saturday! A real see-saw effort on my body’s part, don’tcha think? 😉

Weigh-in this morning. Well, considering the savoury rolls and the fruit and white chocolate scone that I had for lunch the day before, was really rather gratifying… I went from 64.3 kg to 64.3 kg – in other words, I stayed the same… so it’ll probably be tomorrow morning that I shoot up about have a kilo! I think I’ll be facing the scales with a small amount of trepidation tomorrow morning…

And that brings me almost full circle, except to add that: remember that I’d said that Auric and Dapple were well, and not having any problems? It seems I spoke too soon… Julian tested the water this afternoon, and everything was exactly as it should have been – even the PH level wasn’t too far off what it should be. As usual, I fed them both around six o’clock as I always do, only just for a change tonight, I gave them their wafer-thin fish flakes, instead of their new spirulina pellets, as we do every day or so… and tonight both of them are suffering from a dose of “the floaties” again, Auric much more than Dapple! Apparently some goldfish really have sensitive digestive systems – and we seem to have become proud owners of both of them! 😉 The very first Fish Food we had for them were a type of fairly large spirulina pellets, and they didn’t agree with them (or maybe they were still in transition and “acclimatising” after being removed from their toxic mud-puddle outside!) Anyway, we threw those pellets out and got them the wafer-thin flakes, and at first they seemed to do well on those, and that was when Auric started getting “the floaties” – so we gave them a couple of peeled peas, to settle their gut, and then started feeding them the much smaller spirulina pellets, the water quality gradually improved, and there were no more “floaties” – until tonight, after I’d given them the flakes… I don’t think we’ll give them any more of those – Julian has just come back from swapping out 30% of their water, so we’ll see how they go overnight…

And now to tomorrow. I’m not too sure what’s happening tomorrow – if the weather’s good enough, we’ll go traipsing off to look for a suitable large planter box. Julian asked me where I thought it ought to go, and I thought that probably the best place would be on the concrete path that used to lead down to the old clothes-line, or if that was going to be too much sunlight for carrots and broad beans, along the back garden bed in front of the back fence. We discussed it a bit, and Julian would like it to be raised, so he’s suggested putting a couple of strong planks between the two raised veggie beds – but it’s late, and it’s pouring with rain, so we’ll have to wait until tomorrow, or whenever it stops raining long enough to go out and have a proper look at it, and measure the space available. Roll on tomorrow! 🙂 And once more, that’s about “it” from me for tonight! Do call in again tomorrow night for all the latest on my silly weight, how Auric and Dapple are getting on, and whether or not we managed to get out and do some measuring and planter buying. Until then though, please do try to bee good, remember that good imagination is a sign of great intelligence, and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm and dry in this cold, wet weather… but whatever you do, please, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

05.29 pm

Well, I hate to be so harsh, but…  “Malcolm Turnbull. You are the Weakest Link – it’s time for you to go!” – So many people had such high hopes for Mr. Turnbull – he looked the part, with his well-cut suits and urbane smile, and he sounded, so very much like the Statesman that the Liberals hoped he’d be… but unfortunately he gave us all a glimpse of the “real” Malcolm Turnbull, way back in 2009, with the unfortunate “Utegate” affair – and really, we should all have been warned then. At the time Utegate occurred, I’m pretty sure that most Liberal supporters – like me – thought that Malcolm Turnbull had to have provable hard evidence against Mr. Rudd and Mr. Swan, before going so public with his pretty shocking allegations. But he didn’t. All he had was the “word” of a Treasury official called Godwin Grech that anything untoward had happened. But, as it turned out, nothing untoward had happened! Mr. Rudd and Mr. Swan had not acted dishonourably and lied to the Parliament (they had, and they did though, many times, and about many things, but not, as it turned out, in this particular case!) and all too soon it was found out that Godwin Grech was a fraud. Mr. Turnbull had acted hastily, without due thought or investigation, and, to coin a phrase, he “came a cropper“!

But, time passed, and people tend to forget political events all too quickly – and besides, everyone deserves a second chance, don’t they?! Alarmed at Tony Abbot’s often stupid and foolish decisions, Caucus decided to offer the leadership to Mr. Turnbull again – certain moves were orchestrated, by certain shadowy individuals, and when Mr. Turnbull took the Prime Ministership away from Tony Abbot, just about the whole of Australia heaved a great sigh of relief! I was dubious about this move – after Utegate, I’m afraid that I still didn’t completely trust Mr. Turnbull… and it seems I was right to be wary of his abilities as a Prime Minister! He made the Australian people an awful lot of promises, leading the trusting people, Pied Piper-like down the garden path, and reneged on all of his promises – most likely to please the powers-that-be who’d handed him his lofty position… “sold” to him for a price higher than most people would have been willing to pay – his integrity!

So, here we are. Mr. Turnbull wanted a Mandate, he said, so he pulled the Double Dissolution – or should that be “Disillusionment”?! Now, thanks to his arrogance and ineptitude, he’s worse off than he was before the election, as far as a Mandate is concerned, and so are we! One almost feels like writing Mr. Abbot a note: “Dear Tony – all is forgiven, please come back (as Prime Minister)!” So who knows what’s going to happen now? For once, I think Andrew Bolt is right – Mr. Turnbull should apologise, most abjectly, to all Australians, resign from the Parliament, the Liberal Party, and politics, altogether! One wonders – where do we go from here?!

Well, I can tell you where we went! We went to Draenor! 🙂 We had a good go today – I died once, and Julian died twice – in the middle of a Garrison “invasion”. It’s one of the “set” Garrison quests where the Garrison is due to be invaded, and you have to help fight for your new home. The quest itself isn’t actually all that hard, and I have done this particular quest solo, twice… in Alliance Garrisons, where you don’t get extraneous flying beasts swooping in and chomping on your head! So that we wouldn’t have to do the quest twice – once for my Garrison, and once for Julian’s, we had the bright idea that I could “visit” his Garrison, earn a “Garrison Buddy” Achievement by doing so, and stay there and help him fight off the invasion – which would hopefully count for both of us! (it did, luckily!) So, we’re fighting away, fighting… fighting… and all of a sudden a notice flashes across the screen: “A Rylak has been attracted by the noise of the fight”, or words to that effect, so you have to go along and help kill the Rylak, whilst still being clobbered by the invading army! It was actually the Rylak that killed us both – they’re really vicious big beasties! Still, we both went up a level – we’re both level 92 now, and we’ve pulled our Garrisons up to Stage or Tier 2, have extra buildings in it, and a much nicer “Town Hall”. We’re both looking forward to next Sunday, and getting back into the thick of things! 🙂 All good fun! 🙂

Auric and Dapple seem well – the water is now good, except for the PH level, which we’ve bought a special piece of stone (or you can use coral, if you know where to get it!) to nutralise the acid from the dissolving carbon dioxide from the air bubbles. The “Goldfish Experts” that Julian’s been speaking to are divided about the use of the stone – some say “don’t use it, the bacteria in the filter may fix the problem – give it a month!”, and the others say “The stone is a good idea – you should try it!” so, I think Julian’s intending to put, not the whole stone into the tank, but a piece of it… I’ll let you all know how this somewhat fysh-brained scheme works out! 😉

And now it’s on to the good bits! 🙂

Food stuffs. Last night for dinner we had the first lot of the Lamb and Harissa Lasagna leftovers from the freezer (re-heated, of course!) and it was just as nice, if not nicer, than it had been the other night, as all the different flavours had been given a chance to blend in together properly. Then I had one of my Fuji apples, which again was extremely nice, and a small bowl of my delicious Coles-brand, very low-calorie, Rice Pudding for dessert. We had wraps for lunch today, which were made with the basil-pesto hummus, sliced Roma tomato, some of our home-grown dark green capsicums sliced into batons, ham, sliced spring onions, and Halloumi cheese. Very delicious, but as Julian warned me, very messy to eat because they were stuffed rather full with all those yummy bits and pieces, which kept on trying to escape! Thank goodness for the “5 second rule!”¹ Tonight, being Sunday night, we had omelets for dinner. I’m not sure what Julian did differently, apart from using cheddar cheese instead of the usual Halloumi cheese, but the outside of the omelet tonight was deliciously crispy and even a bit crunchy, without being in the slightest bit burnt, just a lovely golden brown all over! There was Roma tomato, onion, ham, cheddar cheese, and the very last of our home-grown dark green capsicum in this particular omelet, which has to have been the best omelet ever! For dessert tonight I had a pale golden-yellow Nashi pear (they seem to come in either a dull brown, the colour you’d expect a bald kiwi fruit to be, or this pale golden-yellow colour – currently we have a couple of each) which was sooo juicy that I probably should have sat in a bath to eat it, except that we don’t have a bath anymore, so I couldn’t have, even if I’d wanted to! I don’t think we’ll get any more of the pale golden-yellow Nashi pears again – it was a bit bland and insipid, too… and I followed that up with a small bowl of my favourite Coles-brand, very low-calorie yummy Rice Pudding.

Weigh-in this morning. Was actually good, for a change! I went from 64.3 kg to 64.1 kg – down two points, which is good, because I know it’ll be up tomorrow. How do I know it’ll be up tomorrow? Because I didn’t do my walk this morning! At the moment, the stupid blood blister on my right toe is so bad that I can hardly walk up and down the hallway with it, let alone walk on a speeding treadmill for half an hour! I mean, I can walk on it, sort-of, as long as I concentrate on (a) limping, and (b) trying not to let my toes touch the floor! If it’s not a lot better tomorrow, I’ll just have to try adding a few more band-aids…

My ear is still bung… I’m being brave, and putting up with my ear-drops, but oh, I really, really hate them! 😦 This time last night I thought my ear was a bit better, but tonight it’s quite sore again , especially when I chew on anything 😦 *sigh* Oh well… this time next week will come, and it’ll be all better and I won’t have to have the drops, ever, ever again!

And all of this brings me to tomorrow 🙂 Our cleaning lady will be here in the morning – I must remember to ask her to open the treadmillery window and to dust, or vacuum the bottom of the fly-wire screen – I think there’s a spider’s egg-nest-thingy on it, and as I always have the window open when I’m walking, I would hate for the little baby spiders to hatch out while I was in the middle of my walk – I might step on one… and I believe that baby spider’s venom is just as bad as the adult’s, and I don’t want to be raced off to hospital with a deadly spider bite, even if it is only a baby one! Josh will be over in the afternoon, and that’s about all that I know is happening! We do have to go back to the Nursery to get a very large planter, but the forecast is for rain, so we might have to wait until Wednesday for that. So, all in all, that’s about “it” from me again for tonight! 🙂 Do call in again tomorrow night to see how much my weight went up because I didn’t do my walk this morning, whether or not the spider-egg-thingy is still on the fly-wire screen, if Julian put “the stone“, or part of “the stone” in the Fish House, and whatever other fun stuff we might have got up to! However until then, please try to bee good, remember that thinking too much about a problem won’t make it any easier to solve, and don’t forget to always drive carefully, to keep warm and dry on cold, wet winter days, and to look after yourselves… but please, above all, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

¹ The “5 second rule” states that anything edible which falls to the ground is fine to pick up, dust off, and eat, if it hasn’t been on the ground for more than 5 seconds, because the germs won’t have had a chance to make it go bad in that small amount of time. This rule can, and usually is, lengthened, in proportion to how badly you really wanted to eat that piece of dropped food.

04.15 pm

I wonder how the election is going? Not that the outcome is going to make very much difference to anybody – you are aware, aren’t you, that if voting really could change anything, then voting would immediately be declared illegal? F’rinstance – marriage equality… Plebiscite or not, do any of you think that even if 99 and 3/4 of the Australian population voted in favour of it, that the Christian hard right MPs would allow it to go ahead? Ditto euthanasia, becoming a Republic, and many other things that the people want, but that the politicians, the authoritarian rulers of this wonderful sunburnt country, won’t let us have – because they don’t want to give up their power and prestige … All this stupid, expensive “voting” business (which we pay for, by the way) is just a huge waste of everyone’s time, and a very clever con game to make us think that we actually have a say in how the country is run! Oh well – as I said – it doesn’t really matter who gets in, nothing will change, but it’ll be interesting to see who’s lies were swallowed the easiest.

Although I was hoping to beat the eager crowds to the Polling place this morning, we didn’t leave until around eleven-ish. It was interesting to note some changes in the placement and numbers of the people handing out their party’s “How to Vote” leaflets! While we lived in Doncaster, we used to send in Postal Votes, as being easier than carting me and my wheelchair around, especially if it was wet and miserable outside, so it’s been quite a while since we actually fronted up to a School or Scout hall – however I do remember voting at the local Primary School when we lived in Glen Waverley. People stood around then handing out their “How to Vote for the “XYZ” Party” pamphlets – but they were all mixed in together – Liberals, Labor, Greens, the little Independents – never in great big clumps of one particular party, as they were today. Everywhere we walked, there’d be a contingent of about six to eight (and sometimes a lot more!) of “a” particular Party – it was like running a gauntlet! They’d be there in a group in front of you, and you’d walk towards them. Like the Red Sea, they’d part down the middle before us, each of them stretching out a hand clutching one of their leaflets, and waving them in our faces. We’d hurry through, with a somewhat stiff smile and a hastily muttered “No, thanks!” Then there’d be a bit of a gap until we got to the next big group, all from the same party – and the original scene would be repeated – the parting, the leaflet waving, the muttered “No, thanks!”, and we’d be through, for another short breather, before the next gauntlet, and the next, and the next… They seemed to be – when I dared to raise my eyes to actually look them in the eye – mainly from the Christian hard right? I think! It was really hard to tell, but I don’t recall seeing any Labor or Liberal groups there, though I’m quite sure they were (Julian might have spotted them, but I didn’t) I think I saw a motley group of Greens, but, you know, they were all wearing completely anonymous jeans and Tee-shirts, with no “House Colours” or badges to show which Party they were representing! And if they were wearing badges, or a coloured ribbon, or something, they can’t have been very eye-catching or remarkable, because I didn’t see them  – at this point, I should probably point out that I marched in, wearing jeans, a dark rust jumper hidden underneath a smart black cape… which had a large, round, white “button” pin, proudly displaying the Australian Sex Party logo! I’m pretty sure that none of the “gauntleteers” missed it – because I got a combination of smirks, annoyed looks, and looks of sheer disbelief, as I shouldered my way through the waving leaflets. But that’s the sort of thing that they should have been wearing! Something that shouted out to the passer-by “Look at me! I’m with the Greens!”, or “Look at me! I’m with the Family First Party!” Perhaps I might have been more interested in their silly leaflets if I’d known what party they were for! Actually, I probably wouldn’t have been – but you never know, I might have!

And so we made our way into the hall – I think it was a Gym Hall, actually – presented ourselves, and were given our papers. I finished mine first and put them in the boxes, and turned around to see Julian sitting with an official, getting a new big white voting thingy! He’d managed to muck his first one up! Oh, and if you’re thinking that I might have put in a “Donkey Vote” because of my disparaging remarks about this election, and elections in general, well, I didn’t! I do believe in voting, even though I’m cynical enough to think that it doesn’t really achieve anything – and I believe it’s every citizen’s duty to vote, because if you don’t vote, the chances of anything ever changing diminishes, with every invalid ballot paper pulled out of the boxes.

Anyway, we voted, came home, had a most welcome cup of coffee… and then Julian gave me the first two of my (shudder!) ear drops 😮 When I’d recovered sufficiently from that harrowing ordeal, we had lunch. The weather was still holding together moderately well, so Julian went out to plant some of our new little vegetables – and guess what! He ran out of garden bed! We’re going to have to go back to the Nursery to get a large planter, in which to put the rest of them! Not tomorrow, of course, because that’s Sunday, and we’ll be busy continuing to set up our Garrisons in Draenor! We’re putting in potatoes, too, and apparently you have to cut the seed potatoes before you plant them, so that they can “heal” themselves (across the cut) before you plant them – I think it’s to stop them getting any diseases from the soil? Summat along those lines, anyway! Anyway, we ordered some interesting looking “Potato Bags“, so we won’t be cutting and planting the potatoes until those arrive, sometime next week, we hope. Julian’s also planted my Fig Tree, so now I just have to go out and talk to it every day, to encourage it to grow quickly, so I can have some yummy fresh figs next year! 🙂

While Julian was outside busily planting things, I stayed inside, getting Phoenìx into the swing of things in Netherstorm! So far, so good – I did die once though – I made the mistake of getting myself caught under a piece of machinery while I was waiting to get the machine’s “heart”, but I was being attacked on all sides, and I couldn’t see where these attackers were, as everything (including me!) was hidden under this great big piece of machinery! So I got myself all better again, and sorted that out, and finally got the “heart” of the machine. I didn’t go up a full level, but I managed just over half a level before it was time to stop playing, and start writing! 🙂 And now I’ve got this far, it’s time to get onto the good bits! 😉

Food stuffs. Last night we had chicken breast with dukkah, on a bed of plain steamed rice with finely chopped spring onion mixed through it. What Julian did was cut the chicken breast in half, and drop it in a plastic zip-lock bag with the dukkah, then tossed it around and massaged it all together a bit – then he simply pan-fried it! It was absolutely delicious! We’re starting to experiment a bit with rubs and marinades, and I’m starting a file of “interesting sounding” spice and herb rubs and mixes – they’re usually dry, so they keep fairly well in little air-tight jars and tins! For dessert I didn’t have one of my Fuji apples, I had a Corella pear, which was exactly at the right “ripeness” (?) to eat, and it was lovely – but not quite as lovely as what I had after it – a small bowl of my favourite Coles-brand, very low-calorie Rice Pudding! Today for lunch we had a ham, cheese and tomato Toastie, again made with the really yummy whole-meal bread with the sesame and poppy seeded crust, and with a bit of butter, as we don’t think that the basil-pesto hummus would work terribly well toasted! Tonight, because it’s election night, and we wanted something quick, easy and mess-less, we’re having one of the Lamb and Harissa Lasagne frozen left-over meals, and for dessert tonight I will have one of the Fuji apples, before my small bowl of the delicious and yummy Coles-brand, very low-calorie Rice Pudding.

Weigh-in this morning. Wasn’t too bad – in fact, not much change at all! I went from 64.4 kg to 64.3 kg, back down one point, to where I was on Thursday! However, I’m still within that narrow “margin of error”, so just as in voting, everything’s still more-or-less the same! It’ll be interesting to see what my weight decides to do tomorrow – on the one hand, I did have a Toastie for lunch, with butter and cheese in it – but on the other hand, I did walk a fair way to the Polling Booth from where we’d parked, and then I stood around for quite a bit… So we’ll see what the scales thought of them little red apples in the morning! 🙂

Which brings me to tomorrow, and our “Day Doing Draenor”, or the “Definitive Dancing Duo Do Draenor” – whatever! I’m looking forward to doing some more work on Xãnthe’s Garrison, as well as handling the Draenor quests – the last time I did this with a Horde character (Arisnoë, before she changed Factions) I was doing it solo, and it really wasn’t much fun! I think I really prefer playing with Julian – it’s much more fun ganging up on nasty monsters! 😉  And once again, that’s about “it” from me for tonight! 🙂 Do drop in again tomorrow night though, to see what my weight did, how Xãnthe and Jemimah fared with their Garrisons, and whether they died while questing or not – and what else all of us, including Flipper, Auric and Dapple, have been up to! Until then though, please bee good, don’t forget that courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that sometimes, something else is more important than fear – and remember to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm and dry during this bleak mid-winter – but most importantly, please remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

04.15 pm

Here I am – pretty much on time, for once! 🙂 It’s been a pretty quiet day for the 1st of the month, though – we went out fairly early this morning to pick up my very favourite eldest daughter so that we could go up and collect our repeat prescriptions. While we were there I had the Doctor peer into my left ear, too, coz it’s still all bunged up, and actually starting to hurt a bit when I chew anything – and I really hate having to try to listen to people, music, or whatever, with everything sounding as though one ear was full of water! I also hate having anything put in my ear, almost to the point of paranoia – anything, from a drop of shower water (scream! shudder! gag!) to one of those Star Trek-looking blue-tooth thingies – the mere thought of something being plonked into my ear makes my stomach churn – so by the time I’d sat there making small-talk with the Doctor, and psyched myself up to ask her to have a look at my ear, I was absolutely terrified! 😦 This extreme phobia of mine is the main reason I can’t swim properly – I can only dog-paddle, with my head sticking out of the water… (I’m the same way about spiders, too – no matter how small or harmless they are!)

Anyway, the nice Doctor gave my ear a look, and said it was quite clear (i.e. there was no wax blocking it up) and that the ear-drum looked fine, though the ear canal looked a bit red and inflamed, which was probably all part and parcel of the dreaded lurgi I’d had, but which is still affecting my sinuses a bit – and apparently my ear too – so guess what! 😥 I’m to have ear drops! Two of them, twice a day – for five days! 😥 I’ve been telling my ear “Get better quickly! Get better quickly!” – but it’s all bunged up and I don’t think it can hear me properly! 😦 I’m sure I’ll survive it (the ear drops, not the sore ear!) but I’m not going to be a very happy little Vegemite for the next five days, so roll on, next Thursday!

I also asked the Doctor whether or not I could take Sudafed, now that I’m off my blood pressure medication – although I’m still on a half-dosage of the beta blocker. I’d been under the impression that the pseudoephedrine (try saying that six times quickly after you’ve had a few drinks!) in the Sudafed had a bad reaction to some of the blood pressure medications, and that was why you weren’t supposed to mix the two, but the Doctor enlightened me on that score 🙂 Pseudoephedrine raises blood pressure, so it makes no sense to take anything with pseudoephedrine in it if you’re taking medication to lower your blood pressure – they just cancel eachother out, and depending on your particular reason for being on one or t’other, fatalities have been known to occur – in other words, it’s just best not to tempt fate! Taking Sudafed for a couple of days to try to dry my sinuses out a bit would be fine – and would have been fine while I was on the blood pressure medication too, as it’s not a very high dose, and I wouldn’t have been taking it for long – but apparently Telfast would be just as good, why, she didn’t say – perhaps it doesn’t contain pseudoephedrine or something? (but I might be wrong! It’s more expensive though – I think!) Well, I just went and checked – apparently Telfast does contain pseudoephedrine – and the Doctor didn’t actually say that it didn’t. Basically, when in doubt, ask your own doctor, not me – I’m not a doctor!

Where was I? I got totally sidetracked, going and looking up all that stuff! Oh yes… I have to have ear drops! I wish I hadn’t remembered that, now!

After being to the Doctor’s, we dropped my very favourite eldest daughter off at her place, came home, and had some lunch – then Julian took off again to go and pick up a few things from the supermarket, and to pick up the Dry Cleaning.

Well, today might have been fairly quiet, but last night certainly wasn’t! As you all know, Flipper absolutely loves Julian – I’m not even a poor second-best, when it comes to Flipper’s preferences in human slaves, and if she calls for Julian, Julian had better drop what he’s doing and go and tend to her needs, otherwise we both cop the full force of her very loud, insistent, caterwauling (the neighbours on both sides probably cop it too!) So, last night she was caterwauling away, demanding her dinner, nearly two hours before it was her dinner time. Eventually, for the sake of household (and neighbourhood!) harmony, Julian did give in, and got her dinner for her… unfortunately though, she was in one of her all too frequent “Vera Vague” phases, and had to be carried into the Library and shut in with her dinner, because she’d forgotten that she’d been demanding it. Needless to say, she didn’t eat it – she’d completely forgotten that it was there, and she just did her usual evening mooching around – that is, she went to sleep on our bed. Time passed… she snored on, and – didn’t eat her dinner. Our bed time came, and she still hadn’t eaten. She curled up, as usual, around Julian’s right arm, and went to sleep. We went to sleep, even though I was freezing cold because I was missing half my share of the doona which was all rucked up underneath Flipper! At about two thirty we were rudely awakened by Flipper, throwing up on Julian’s face, pillow, sheets, and doona! Julian was not best pleased, and made his somewhat irate mood amply known to both Flipper and myself, as he set about cleaning things up as best he could – at two thirty in the morning, and with a wife who wasn’t inclined to get out of bed because she was cold! Flipper fled, probably still feeling queasy, and in abject terror of Julian’s quite warranted wrath! After things had calmed down again, we went back to sleep. I still didn’t have all my doona – I could have pulled a bit more over my way, but I didn’t want to disturb Julian anymore than I had to, and also because I didn’t know which bits of the doona cover were clean enough to drape over my person – so neither of us really got a good night’s sleep, and we were feeling just a wee bit testy this morning when we got up. Meanwhile, Flipper had finally eaten her dinner…

This afternoon I got back into WoW, and Phoenìx has turned level 67, and finally has her “breadcrumb” quests to bother Shadowmoon Valley and Area 52 in Netherstorm. I think I’ll go to Netherstorm… Probably after we’ve gone out and voted tomorrow – honestly, I am soooo tempted to scrawl “I Hate ALL Of You Liars” in very large letters, over the enormous white paper! I won’t, of course, but I’m very tempted…

And now on to the good bits! 😉

Food stuff: Last night Julian made another Lamb and Harissa Lasagne with Oregano and Feta, and as usual, it was absolutely delicious! Plus there’s four more “dinners” from the leftovers in the freezer! 🙂 For dessert I had, for the first time ever, a Nashi Pear, which was rather nice – sweet, but with a certain amount of tartness to it, fairly juicy, firm, crisp, and crunchy! I also had (I bet you all guessed already! 😉 ) a small bowl of my very favourite Coles-brand, very low-calorie, delicious Rice Pudding. For lunch today I had a really nice sandwich, made from the tasty whole-meal bread, with the poppy-seed and sesame-seed crust, basil-pesto hummus as a butter substitute, and “tandoori” chicken sandwich chunks. I really wish those sandwiches were just a teeny bit bigger Tonight we’re having plain old-fashioned pan-fried chicken breasts, with chips, steamed green beans, and half a tomato. For dessert, tonight I’ll have one of the new Fuji apples, and another small bowl of my very yummy Coles-brand, very low-calorie Rice Pudding.

Weigh-in this morning. Was alright, I suppose… I went from 64.3 kg yesterday, to 64.4 kg today – up one point, but still well within the so-called “margin of error”. I’ll probably be up a bit more again tomorrow, but I should start going down again after that – I hope!

Which once again brings me to tomorrow… and, of course, voting. Personally, I’d like to get there as the polls open, and get it over and done with as soon as possible, so that we can get back here and barricade ourselves into a nice, warm, dry house where there’s lots of coffee! 😉 But, as usual, we’ll see… Apart from the voting chore, I’m not really sure what’s happening – I guess I’ll be doing a bit more WoW-ing, and if the weather clears up any (who am I kidding! This is Melbourne!) we might be able to get the baby vegetables planted! However, all that is in the lap of the ghods! 🙂 Auric and Dapple are well, and seem to really be enjoying the new air-stone that sends up a small area of small, medium, and large bubbles – Dapple especially seems to like swimming into it, biting the bigger bubbles, and then squiggling out again (and “squiggling” is about the best word I can think of to describe his wriggle action to get out of the bubbles!) Their new diet of spirulina pellets seems to be agreeing with them both, and (touch wood!) Dapple seems to have got over his desire to sit in a corner, moping down on the floor of the tank. And that’s really about “it” from me for this evening! Don’t forget to drop in again tomorrow night to find out how much more my weight went up, what time we actually got out to vote, if Flipper was sick again in the wee small hours of the morning (and if so, who copped the brunt of it this time!) and what else we managed to get up to during the day. Until then though, please try to bee good, don’t forget that hope is the dream of a man awake, and remember to keep warm and dry when you go out to vote tomorrow, to always drive carefully, and to look after yourselves… but, above all… please remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂