04.42 pm

Ladies and gentlepersons – at 05.00 pm last night, the much talked about, eagerly awaited, and feverishly anticipated, World of Warcraft Expansion, “Legion”, went live! Understandably, of course, I was online waiting for it to happen!

My very favourite eldest daughter was over for the day, as she usually is on a Tuesday. We sit in the lounge room and watch Dapple and Auric swimming lazily around as we catch up on the pre-recorded episodes from our favourite television series – and a good time is had by all. We usually watch these shows until it’s time for Julian to drive her home, anywhere from five o’clock to about five thirty – but last night, we finished watching our last episode at around four forty-four-ish, but didn’t start another – instead, we made our way back to the Den, where I logged into World of Warcraft, and my very favourite eldest daughter started to make nervous little moves towards the garage door. Gentle readers, perhaps it is at this point that I should remind you all, that it was she who first introduced me to World of Warcraft, back in 2006. I used to sit next to her and watch her play – day in, day out – and in about 2007 I eventually worked up the courage to start playing myself. Whenever a new Expansion is announced, my favourite eldest daughter is always one of the first to put her hand up to become part of the Beta Testing team (and I have been known on several occasions to do likewise!) and she always gets one or more of the “Collector’s Editions” of the game (this time she managed to acquire three of them, for some unknown reason!) so it was fairly understandable that she started making nervous moves towards the garage door as soon as I’d logged into the game. Julian took the hint, and took her home, while I metaphorically sat on my toey Frostsaber Mount in the main square of Stormwind’s Trade Centre, along with a crowd of other anxious players, as we waited for the Big Count Down! “Bong!”… “Bong!”… “Bong!”… “Bong!”… “Bong!”… went the clock in the square, and all over the map of Azeroth, the Invasion points blinked out. There was silence for a whole point seven five of a second, then everyone exploded out of the square, heading out to do their quests to get them all started in “Legion”! Er… including me, playing as Wynterthyme. The initial quest chain was a trifle complicated, so I won’t go into too many details – suffice to say that Julian had to come to my rescue a couple of times – especially when the quest involved jumping! Still, in the end I got through, acquired my brand-new Super Special weapon, and a second Pet. I’d kept on telling my very favourite eldest daughter all along that I didn’t want – and wouldn’t use – a second Pet, and her mouth would turn down and she’d say “But it’s such a sad story, how you come to get her – and she’s really nice!”, making me feel like all sorts of a heel! Anyway, in the end part of the quest chain, you have to fight a really nasty (and extremely tough!) Vrykul (a half-giant) who’s stolen your brand-new weapon. Lucky you has a Titan and a Dwarf, plus their Pets, one of whom is a wolf called “Hati”, fighting with you. Long story short, after a really, really long and tough fight, you finally manage to kill off this Vrykul person and get your precioussss (cough!) your new gun back. Unfortunately, during the fight, Hati, the Titan’s Pet, takes a hit meant for you, and she’s dying… (I think!) you use your new magic weapon on her and she’s cured – or transformed – or whatever, and the Titan gives her to you to help you fight the evil Legion, and so you get your second Pet. Personally, I don’t like the “dog-type” pets (wolves, dogs, foxes, etc.) because they’re always stopping to sit down and scratch! It makes me feel as though I want to give them a good old scrub in a tub of Malaban, or go out and get them a ruddy flea collar! Anyway, I’ve just been reading that there’s a way to alter Hati’s appearance – I’ll let you know what transpires! 🙂

Wynterthyme usually plays with Mouselet, who’s a Shaman, but since Julian’s mothballed him because of the changes Blizzard have made to the Shaman Class, Wynterthyme is now playing with Demelza, she of the “Doing a Demelza” fame – that is, falling off things, and/or into things – usually fatally. Demelza is a Draenei Beast Master Hunter, and it’s quite strange to see us both running along, with both of us almost having twin Pets! 🙂 We played a bit more today, but I think the Expansion will see the return of Wynterthyme and Demelza every Sunday for the foreseeable future! 🙂

So, now you all know the reason why there was no blog last night! Priorities, right?! 😉 and I can now finally get onto all the “good” bits…

Food bits. Last night for dinner we had Outback Spirit Beef Sausages with Bush Tomato, with chips, steamed green beans, and our usual half a tomato, and for dessert I had the last of my yellow Nectarines – and not before time, either! It was just on the point of being too soft! With the Nectarine, I had one of the really nice Dark Chocolate Chia Pods – they’re really weird! They look “sloppy” and as though they’d splosh all over you if you joggled them too much – but they’re not! They’re actually quite viscous, but not at all sticky or gooey, and they have these funny little “bobbles” in them, like eating sago (not tapioca, tapioca is a lot bigger – sago!) It’s a bit like eating strong chocolaty, cool, sweetish, sloppy jelly, made with tiny, edible bubble-wrap! Julian brought home lunch today as he was out shopping later than usual – he got Sushi for himself, and I had a ham and cheese Danish Pastry, half a Jalapeno and tomato savoury roll, et la pièce de résistance, a Baker’s Delight fruit and white chocolate scone! Yumm-o! 😉 (I’ll pay for that when I get on the scales tomorrow morning!) Tonight we’re having Scotch Fillet steak – beef is quite expensive at the moment and Julian simply wasn’t willing to pay a huge premium for not really terribly good quality fillet steak. Scotch Fillet is usually very nice, not to mention tender, but I noticed that there wasn’t very much “marbling” in the meat, which unfortunately can mean a slightly tougher cut of meat I’ll let you know how it goes! I believe we’re having it with all the usual suspects – chips, steamed green beans, and half a tomato. For dessert I’ll have one of my “Eve” apples, if they’re still edible, and an Apple Le Rice.

Weigh-in yesterday morning. Actually, I’ll give you a re-cap of my last few day’s weigh-ins! Here ya go….
Sun: 64.5 kg
Mon: 64.6 kg
Tue (yesterday): 64.1 kg
Wed (today): 64.4 kg

So really, it’s been fairly consistently in the mid 64 kilo range, and I can live quite happily with that! 🙂 However, let’s see what tomorrow morning brings!

Flipper is well, as are Auric and Dapple. Julian’s made a concerted effort to bring the PH water levels up to where they should be, and… so far, so good… as with my weight – we’ll just have to play it by ear, and hope that everything’s doing what it’s supposed to do! We’re also keeping a stricter than usual eye on Auric, because of his strange little “fits of the mads”, and because despite changing their feed, and the water, and getting the PH level of the water to absolutely “spot on” – as well as all the other things that we’re doing to and for him, he’s still having the occasional mild bout of “floaties”! Julian has started having his morning walks again, despite still not having made an appointment to see his Physiotherapist, and I’m still doing my 20 minutes on the treadmill, every “after-lunch time”. I have a little radio now though, so I can listen to talk-back shows while I’m walking, to relieve the boredom a little bit. And that’s brought me pretty much full circle to tomorrow, where I have no idea whatsoever as to what’s happening! I guess you’re all just going to have to call in again tomorrow night to find out! 😉 Will my weight have gone back up again? Has Auric had any more “fits of the mads”, or “floaties”? How far have Wynterthyme and Demelza got in the new area that’s opened up with the Expansion? All these questions, and “many, many more”, will be answered for you, right here, tomorrow night! 🙂 However until then, do really try hard to bee good, don’t forget that we should give meaning to life, not wait for life to give us meaning, and remember to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm and dry, especially when the weather forecast says to expect showers, and possible storms – but most importantly, and above all, please – remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

05.30 pm

Well, I’m starting this a lot later than I usually do on a Sunday night, because we finished playing WoW a lot later than we usually do! Dulcineà and Tourbillon were in the middle of a very long and convoluted quest chain in the Eastern Plaguelands, and because the place where all of the questing was taking place is so difficult to get to – most of the time – we decided to finish it off before “dusting down”, and finished playing for the day. Still, we’ve now completed all of the quests associated with the Eastern Plaguelands, and next Sunday we’ll be heading off to the Badlands. We went up five levels today – from level 41 when we started, to level 46, by the time we finished playing – and neither of us died, not even once! I reckon that’s got to be some sort of a record! 😉 Anyway, I thought we did rather well today, and we certainly had a lot of fun, and I’m really looking forward to next week! Before we started playing this morning, we took a couple of minutes to have a look at Wynterthyme, on Quel’Dorei, to see if there was anything that I needed to do to upgrade my armor to bring me up to spec before next Tuesday – however my general “Item Level” is 695, which is pretty good, considering I’m not wearing any kind of Heirloom gear, and until next Tuesday, the item level is capped off at 700 – after Tuesday, we’ll get (or be given? I’m not sure about the “how’s” and “why’s” of that yet!) “special” weapons, which will be able to utilise “artifacts” (which I also don’t know much about!) and it’ll be a whole new ball game!

During our lunch break, I rolled another character (yeah – I know… I just can’t seem to help myself, sometimes… ) This one is a Gnome Warlock (Warlocks are cool! They get little demons, and Void Walkers, as their Pets!) and I’ve called her…. “Calamities”! 🙂 I really hope she’ll do well, because I absolutely love her name, and I’m pretty sure that she’s my fiftieth character on my Wynterthyme account, and you’re only allowed to have fifty characters per account!

Oh, and I did do my walk after lunch! I didn’t quite do my full 20 minutes, as I felt it would have taken too big a chunk out of our remaining game time, so I compromised, and did 18! 🙂

And that’s really been our day today! Tomorrow morning our cleaning lady will be here, and in the afternoon, Josh will be back… and for the rest of the day, I guess I’ll either be leveling Zelenka or Calamities up! I might stick with Zelenka tomorrow, as she’s level 20 now, and although I’m keen to start working with Calamities, I’m really not all that keen on the Gnome starting area – and the fact that there seems to be an awful lot of Invasion activity around there at the moment! I might leave Calamities until after the full Expansion goes live, and see what happens with all the Invasion events!

Anyway, I’ll now get on with all the “good bits”! 🙂

Food stuffs. Last night we had the pan-fried marinated chicken breasts on a bed of plain steamed rice with some finely chopped spring onions in it – they really are deliciously tasty, and the chicken stays really tender and juicy! For dessert I had one of my yellow nectarines – it was ripe enough to eat – and one of my new favourites, a Vaalia Lemon Creme yoghurt! Today for lunch we had ham, cheese and tomato Toasties, which were extra, extra nice! For starters, Julian had got some more of that yummy whole-meal bread with the sesame seeds in the crust, and it really is nicer that “plain” whole-meal bread because the sesame seeds give it a lovely “nutty” flavour! Also, not being able to get our usual Cheddar cheese, he bought a different one, and it was even nicer than the original type of Cheddar – actually, I think it was more of a “Tasty” cheese than a straight “Cheddar”, as it had quite a bit of tangy “bite” to it, so lunch was “double yummy” today! Tonight, being Sunday night, of course we’ll be having our “Sunday Omelets”! I’m not quite sure what’ll be going into it, but there’ll probably be bacon (which I think he’s cooking right now, as well as frying up the onion that we usually seem to have in our omelets!) You might all have to wait until tomorrow night to find out what was in our omelets! 😉 For dessert I think I’d better have another nectarine – the one I had last night was quite ripe, and as I like my fruit ripe, but still “firm”, I think if the nectarines are left much longer, they’ll be ripe and “soft”, too! I’ll also have an Apple Le Rice with that…

Weigh-in this morning. Well, under the circumstances, and all other things considered (like what I had for lunch yesterday) I thought this morning’s trip to the scales wasn’t too bad… I went from 64.5 kg… to 64.5 kg… In other words, I stayed the same! Don’t worry though – my sinful gluttony will catch up with me tomorrow morning, fer sure, and I’ll be right up again… 😦 Still, all we can do is weight and sea…

And that brings me around to tomorrow again – which as I did last night, I’ve already told you about! Yes, it’s a pretty short blog tonight, but as we’ve both been heads down, tails up, playing WoW all day, there’s not really that much to tell you all! So, I’m afraid that that’s about “it” from me for this evening – but do drop in again tomorrow night to find out how my weight panned out, which character I decided to work with, and how Dapple, Auric, and Flipper are getting on – Yanno, sometimes I think that Dapple and Auric have a better memory than Flipper does, as every week when Julian strips down the bed to wash the bedding, Flipper nearly has a fit of the vapours! “Where’s My Bed!”, “You’ve destroyed My Nest! It took me ages to twist that doona into a Nest what was “Just Right”!” “What have you done with My Doona, and where’s My Nest wot I made in it? Bring it back!” – etc., etc… She doesn’t seem to remember that this is a regular occurrence, poor old girl! Crikey, even Dapple and Auric only took a couple of days to learn that “when funny faces approach the side of the tank, making weird noises, it’s time for food!” and come swimming up for it, opening and closing their little mouths above the water for it, even before we start feeding them! Oh well… anyway, until tomorrow night, do please try to bee good, remember that one day your life may flash before your eyes, so make sure it’s worth watching, and don’t forget to always drive carefully, to keep warm and dry, whatever the weather, and to look after yourselves… but above all, please – don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

04.40 pm

Yes, here I am, back at this particular Template – again! Well, it’s not bad, and it does have the widest text column that I’ve been able to find – to date, anyway, and all I really had to do to “adapt” it was create the new header, which was already “mostly done”, and just needed a bit of tweaking. It’s actually been a bit of a “strange” day, really – mostly normal this morning – got up, got weighed, had breakfast – all that sort of thing – and then I played WoW, as per usual. I re-rolled Zelenka – remember her? I created her the other night because as I had two of everything else, I thought that perhaps I should have two Mages… then this morning I decided that as I’d tried a Priest (two Priests, or Priestesses, in fact!) and two Mages, what about a third “Clothie” … a Warlock?! So I re-rolled Zelenka as a Warlock – and thanks to the lucky miracle of “Invasions”, she’s now level 18! These “Invasions” are pre-Expansion occurrences of the Legion beginning their invasion of Azeroth, and will presumably end on Tuesday, when the Expansion will be officially released – well, that’s what most people are saying, anyway – but surely the invasion won’t be over by then, will it? I mean… they haven’t even managed to take Kharanos yet! I should know – that’s where I did most of my very rapid leveling up this morning, fighting and dying – multiple times – to keep the Legion out of Kharanos (and out of Gadgetzan last night, with Silverhands!) So, who really knows what’s going to happen next Tuesday! I guess we’ll find out soon enough!

Anyway, that was my morning. I was fully planning on going for my twenty minute walk-a-thon after lunch, and then either getting back to Zelenka, or maybe doing some graphics – or whatever… and then Julian said “as soon as the Clothes Dryer finishes, I’m taking you up to Vermont South, we’ll have some lunch there at one of the little coffee shoppes, then we’ll go and get the planter tubs for the herbs!” – so that’s what we did… but the Clothes Dryer took for-evah to finish, so we had a slightly later luncheon than we’d planned… then I went and looked in Coles to see what other sort of fruit they had available, seeing as they don’t have any of the “bald-kiwi-fruit-brown” skinned Nashi pears anymore (they have the pale yellow skinned ones, but they’re not nearly as nice) As I suspected, the “stone” fruit is just starting to come into season, and the “pome” fruits (i.e. fruits that have a “core” of several small seeds, like apples, pears, and a few others) are just ending theirs 😦 I dunno – they have apples all year round – why can’t they have pears too?! Actually, I suppose they sort-of do – as you’ll usually be able to find the Beurre Bosc (they’re the brown ones – we used to call them “cooking” or “stewing” pears when I was little) the Williams (yellow skin when ripe) and the Packham (green skin, even when ripe) pears pretty much all the time – they just don’t have the ones that I like all year, like the Corella and the (brown-skinned) Nashi, or “Asian” pear. They did, however, have some of the yellow-skinned Nashi pears, but I opted for some yellow Nectarines instead. I’m not sure if they’re really ripe enough to eat, but I’ll try one tonight anyway. The main trouble with stone fruit is that if you get them when they’re “just right” to eat, and you get, say, half a dozen of them, most of them will be over-ripe by the time you get to them! Mum used to buy up lots of stone fruit at a time – nectarines, peaches, apricots… and before they got a chance to bruise or get over-ripe, she’d stew them! She’d package up the stewed fruit into individual serving tubs, and freeze them – so that she had nice stewed fruit all winter! She did the same with rhubarb, too… and it was me, years before I ever thought of trying to lose weight, who put her onto a good low-calorie way of stewing fruit! Instead of using water and sugar, one small can of diet lemonade is enough to stew a small saucepan full of prepared fruit – depending on how much “juice” you like or want.

After our little stroll through the fruit section of the supermarket, we headed off to Bunnies, to look for planter pots for the herbs… There were some plain, undecorated, boring and ordinary, concrete pots, about the right size and shape, but they wanted $80 each for them! We kept looking… There were some rather nice ones at reasonable prices, and in the end we got three fairly plain, rectangular terracotta pots, which were about $25 each (and they sure were a lot prettier than the boring concrete ones!) We also bought four bags of potting soil, then came home… Two of the tubs of herbs have been put along the outside edge of the back deck, with the third sitting on the path in front of them, so that not too much of the pathway is taken up by herbs – they look quite good there, and will be easy enough to get to for picking, even when it’s raining. “Plant Herbs – √ tick!”

While Julian was busy with the herbs, I was busy with Zelenka again! It’s hard to believe just how many areas/zones she’s bypassed but leveling up so quickly (yes, she is wearing the Heirloom gear!) I certainly don’t mind, and it’s not as though I haven’t covered those missing areas in great detail, many times over in the past. Anyway, that was my day today – and once again, I didn’t manage to get my walking in (does this mean I have to do a double walk, tomorrow? 😦 ) Oh well – but now onto something more enjoyable! The “good” bits!

Food stuffs. Last night for dinner we had some lovely little Pork loin steaks, pan-fried with a little home-grown rosemary, half a tomato, chips, and some Brussels sprouts – and it was an absolutely terrifict dinner! I really don’t know why we don’t have pork more often! For dessert I had one of my Corella pears, and an Apple Le Rice. Today for lunch up at the Vermont South shopping centre, I had a piece of only-just warmed up Spanakopita (it could have been a lot hotter!) with some over-dressed salad (which Julian ate for me! 😉 ) and one of those lovely, yummy, gooey, thick and sticky chocolate caramel slices, with a long black (coffee) and a small jug of skinny milk on the side. Tonight we’re having the pan-fried ultra delicious “marinated chicken”, on a bed of plain steamed rice and finely chopped spring onions, and for dessert I’ll try one of the (new) yellow Nectarines – hopefully it’ll be ripe enough to eat (if it’s not, I’ll have an apple!) and one of the Vaalia Lemon Creme yoghurts.

Weigh-in this morning. Well, that’ll larn me to go without my “walkies”! I went from 64.3 kg to 64.5 kg – in other words, up two whole points, and I really dread to think what I’ll see on the scales tomorrow morning, after another “missed walkies” day! Never mind, what’s done is done, and cannot be undone! Tomorrow though, is Sunday, and our last couple of days to level gear and ourselves up before Tuesday. My Daily Dose of Walking will be performed after lunch, which I’ll try to eat as fast as possible so as not to waste too much time. Tomorrow, Azeroth will have to wait for fifteen minutes!

And once again, that brings me up to tomorrow – which I’ve already told you about! 🙂 On Monday, I’m supposed to be having my next Warfarin blood test – but the cleaning lady will be here, and if I have my blood test done after about 12 noon, I don’t get the results until very late that evening… so I’m putting the blood test off for a day (and one day either side of the “due” date doesn’t matter all that much) because we’ll be over near the blood test place on Tuesday, picking up my very favourite eldest daughter who’ll be coming over – nice and early, so I should get the results before dinner time! And that’s really about “it” from me again for this evening! Do drop in again tomorrow night to find out if I did get my walkies in, and what my weight had to say about not doing “Tha Walk” for two whole days, in the morning, what we got up to in Azeroth (though we’re not really counting how many times we die this Sunday, because of all the Invasions!) and what else happened around this neck of the woods in general! Until then though, please try to bee good, don’t forget that those who will not read are no better off than those who cannot read, and remember to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm and dry, especially on the coldest and wettest of days… but above all… please remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

05.36 pm

Gosh, I’m starting very late tonight, considering it’s a Friday – but my very favourite eldest daughter has been over here all day, arriving just before 10 this morning, and only leaving here about half an hour ago! She had her hair coloured this morning, and it looks absolutely fantastic! Josh is a truly great artist, who uses people’s hair as his canvas – I know he always does a superb job on my hair, but I think he surpassed himself today on Lee’s hair! Her hair is very short, and I think I mentioned the other night that she was having “blue and purple”? Well, it’s just gorgeous! Blue, shading down to barely there on her short back and sides, and the top, which is a little longer, has been coloured and cut to give it more “texture”, again in a somewhat shaded blue, with mauve and purple highlights! (I’m jealous! *pout* (no, I’m not really! 😉 )) And it just looks… marvelous! It took a long time though – Josh started on her hair just after 10, and it was finally done around half past one! We’re already having preliminary thoughts on what to do with mine next time – I’d absolutely love to have the same blues and purple as Lee, but it wouldn’t last very long in my hair – so I’m thinking of three or four tones, in dark red, “bronze” (a sort-of a dark, reddish-brown?), a gold-ish or strawberry blond, and something to blend it all together – but there’s plenty of time to think about that before I have it done again.

Julian was out for most of the morning, picking up Dry Cleaning, doing a bit of shopping, and collecting mail, and he brought home lunch… my favourite “take-away” lunch at the moment is either a savoury roll or Danish, with one of the Baker’s Delight fruit and white chocolate scones! Julian had sushi, and Lee had an Optifast Bar. After lunch Lee and I watched alternating episodes of “Arrow” and “The Flash” until it was time for her to go home. Both the shows are starting to get very “dark”, with lots of “not nice” things happening all over the place, and I’m sorta glad that we’re watching them alternately, as “The Flash” is a lot less “bleak and dark” than “Arrow”, so you get a chance to catch your breath and calm down a bit in between the really nasty bits in “Arrow”, where people seem to be dropping like flies – only then it turns out that they’re not really dead at all – just pretending to be… except for Oliver’s sister… maybe… but I’m pretty sure she’s going to be coming back again too 🙂

And really, that’s about all that’s happened here today! So far, anyway – so I guess I can now get on to the “good” bits?

Food stuffs. Last night we had the last of the left-over “One-pot Spanish Chicken and Rice” for dinner, and yes, I really do think it should have had a bit more liquid in it than the recipe specified – but it was really very nice and tasty. For dessert I had the last of my “bald-kiwi-fruit-brown” skinned Nashi pears (unless we can find some more somewhere!) and one of the Vaalia Lemon Creme yoghurts – they really are very delicious! As I mentioned above, today for lunch I had a savoury ham and cheese Danish, and a Baker’s Delight fruit and white chocolate scone, with just a hint of butter on it. Tonight we’re having pan-fried Pork Loin Steaks, with a little bit of home-grown rosemary, chips, half a tomato, and steamed Brussels sprouts, and for dessert I’ll have one of my Corella pears and an Apple Le Rice.

Weigh-in this morning. Well, what did I say yesterday, hmm? Didn’t I mention something about “Swings and Roundabouts”, and also that “what goes down must always go back up”? I went from 63.8 kg yesterday, to 64.3 kg again – exactly where I was on Tuesday! Oh well, here we go on the yo-yo circuit again, and what’s worse is that I didn’t get to do my walk at all today! I was going to do my walk this morning, before breakfast, but ran out of time… so then I was going to do it after lunch, and get my very favourite eldest daughter to come in and talk to me for twenty minutes, so that I wouldn’t miss any of her visit, but somehow or other we sort-of started watching “Arrow” straight after lunch, so the “walkies” never actually eventuated! (mea culpa, mea maxima culpa! – it’s always my fault, anyway… *shakes head in mock despair*) So… you should all expect my weight to skyrocket a bit more tomorrow, as I’m expecting it to!

And that brings us around to tomorrow – Saturday! Julian says if the weather’s good enough, he wants to plant out the herb garden… We bought a lot of herbs when we bought the vegetables, all those weeks ago, but although the vegetables have been planted (some of them twice, like the carrots, after a snap frost got to them!) and are doing very well – except for the Bok Choy – but so far, we haven’t planted out the herbs – they’re still sitting around in their little plastic nursery pots! The main reason we haven’t planted them out is because we’re not really sure where we should put them! We want them close enough to the house for Julian to be able to just dart out and pick whatever he wants while he’s cooking, without having to make a long trek down to the back of the garden (especially if it’s raining!) But we also know that they need lots of sunshine, so we can’t really keep them on the back deck – but much further away than that, and we tend to forget to water them! Well, if he’s thinking of planting them tomorrow, weather permitting, then he must have decided on the best place for them, so… like my weight, we’ll just “weight and sea”! 🙂 And that’s really about “it” from me again for tonight – but do call in again tomorrow night, to find out how my weight’s going, whether we managed to get the herbs planted, as well as where we ended up putting them if we did, and to see if Dapple’s still nibbling on Auric’s tail (I haven’t seen him do it at all today, but then… I haven’t really been watching him!) In the meantime though, do try to bee good, remember that you will never be like the ‘Little Engine That Could’ if you sit around on your caboose, and don’t forget to always drive carefully, to keep warm and dry this weekend, and to look after yourselves… but most importantly, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

03.40 pm

Well, here I am – sorry about last night, but by the time I’d finished watching the two episodes of “Australian Survivor” (I’m still not sure whether it’s “Australian Survivor”, or “Survivor Australia”!) it was almost dinner time, and I’d run out of time – so all you lucky people out there get to read two day’s worth of my trivia, instead of just one day’s worth! (Ah! I just went and looked it up – it’s “Australian Survivor”! Yayy me! 🙂 ) As usual – it seems to have begun to be my usual practice now, anyway – I now seem to play WoW in the morning, do my treadmilling after lunch, then either work on one of my millions of current projects, do something graphical (as I did today! I made a rather stunning new Bookmarks wallpapery-thingy!) or catch up with a show that neither Julian or my very favourite eldest daughter are interested in (f’rinstance, “Australian Survivor”) until it’s time to start writing this. As I think I mentioned the other day – I was going to watch “Australian Survivor” on Tuesday afternoon, because my very favourite eldest daughter wasn’t going to be over (she’s coming tomorrow!) but the blog Template and Header that I’d only made the day before – in a hurry – were just sooo atrocious that I decided to fix that instead, and watch “Australian Survivor” on Wednesday (yesterday) instead – which is what I did. So… after nearly three hours solid of “Australian Survivor”, what did I think of it? Well, for starters I can tell you all that the person sent off by Melbourne’s newest Tabloid, “The Age”, to write up a revue on it, was either having a very bad day, was bored stupid, had just had a debilitating fight with his/her girl/boyfriend, or simply didn’t understand the mechanics of that sort of show in the first place – I mean, no-one expects the participants to be totally truthful with eachother, or to make alliances that they intend to keep, the whole way through the show! They’re there for one reason, and one reason only – scratch that – they’re actually there for two reasons, the main one being to win a lot of money – the other, of course, is that they enjoy pitting themselves, physically as well as mentally, against other players – and I like watching them do so, and observing the sneaky, and sometimes (alright, very often!) downright dishonest things they’ll say and do to advance their own cause! They help eachother and co-operate with their “Tribe”, just enough to get by, but if they think that they might win themselves some “brownie points” by being extra helpful, or extra nice to someone, then that’s what they’ll do. It’s a fairly complicated game, but I just love watching their maneuverings and manipulations to stay in the game for yet another day! Personally, the thought of exhausting myself on a daily basis, participating in physically challenging (and sometimes even dangerous!) contests of stamina and strength, existing on a diet largely made up of very small amounts of rice, beans, and any crabs or minute tropical fish they’ve managed to catch in the surf just off their beach “camp”, fills me with absolute and utter horror! “Camp”? Ha! What “camp”! No proper shelter from the heat during the day, or the freezing temperatures during the night, sitting around in the pouring, tropical rain until all their skin turns “pruney” – plus lots of other privations, far too numerous to list here – for what?!  A measly $500,000 AUD! At least the American Survivor’s Grand Prize is $1,000,000 US, and I suppose that’s almost worth playing for… almost, but it’d take three or four – or even ten times that much, to even get the momentary thought of participating to enter my mind, let alone cross it!

But (to me) it’s trashy, amusing, astounding (to see what some people will do, and the lengths that they’ll go to!) so I think I’ll keep on watching it! 🙂 Roll on next Sunday and Monday night! 😉

As you all know, I’ve been playing with my new-ish Mage, Silverhands, and she’s getting on relatively well – she’s now level 45! However, both Julian and I had one more “Free Boost to Level 100” available… Julian still has his… It took me a while to decide, but in the end it boiled down to a choice of either having to import one of my level 100 characters from Quel’Dorei, or rolling another character on Saurfang and instantly boosting them up to level 100. Importing a character costs real-life $$, so…. I rolled my last character for my Wynterthyme account (until I kill someone off, of course!) Again, it took me a while to decide what Class to roll… I’ve been doing quite well with Piubella, my level 24 Shadow Priest, and even better with Silverhands – but for such an important “jump”, in the end I decided that rather than having to grapple with new, high-level spells that I was totally unfamiliar with, I’d probably be better off rolling a Class that I was familiar with – a Beast Master Hunter – and bring my Priest and my Mage up the old-fashioned way, step by step, and level by level… so last night I rolled Nehanda (yes! Another name with no “funny letters” or strange accents! 😉 ) and boosted her up to level 100! As they say in all the best Classics, “so far, so good!” 🙂

And that’s what I’ve been up to for the past two days! Now, having cleared all of that up for you, I can now get onto the “good” bits! 😉

Food stuffs. For lunch yesterday we had a ham, cheese, and tomato Toastie (which are just sooo delicious! Mmmm!) and for dinner last night we had some rather “different-looking” sausages – or at least the packaging was different. It was terribly “nothing to see here – move along!” plain and boring, and the brand is called “Farm Foods” – when you Google them, it’s quite interesting to see that (a) they appear to be a re-branded “Home Brand” type of sausage, (b) they’re a Coles and/or an IGA line, and (c) they also encompass lots of other so-called “brands”, like “Heston Blumenthal”, and “Outback Spirit” – which you’ve all heard me mention by “name” more than once or twice before! Well, these particular sausages are “Farm Foods Beef, Pepper, & Barossa Valley Shiraz Sausages”, and as I said before, they were absolutely delicious! Really, really yummy! We had them with chips, steamed green beans, and our usual half a tomato… for dessert I had one of my Corella pears, and while it was quite nice, it’s becoming extremely obvious that the end of the pear season – both the Corella and the Nashi, anyway – is about to end. I also had one of my Vaalia Lemon Creme yoghurts… Lunch today was a sandwich made with the new “I got the wrong loaf!” whole-meal bread (without all of those nice sesame seeds in the crust! 😦 ) with the usual basil-pesto hummus butter substitute, sandwich-sliced chicken, and some freshly sliced red capsicum – I tell you, using that basil-pesto hummus as a butter substitute makes so much difference to the taste of sandwiches, it’s a wonder people are still using butter! Tonight for dinner we’re having the leftovers from Monday night’s “One-pot Spanish Chicken and Rice”, which I’m really looking forward to, and for dessert I’ll probably have one of the Apple Le Rice thingies…

Weigh-in yesterday morning. Wasn’t very good at all! I was very disappointed 😦 On Monday, I was 64.6 kg, and on Tuesday, I went down to 64.3 kg – which was terrific! Then yesterday, my body decided that Tuesday hadn’t happened at all – it was just a fragment of my fevered imagination, and I went back to good-old 64.6 kg! 😦 Not fair!! I really hate it when my body teases me like that! The weight gain – overnight (*glare*) was too much to even be said to be “within the margin of error”, either 😦

Weigh-in this morning. Will wonders never cease?! This morning, when I reluctantly and gloomily stepped up onto the scales, guess what I saw! No, you’d never be able to guess – I’d better tell you… I’d gone from 64.6 kg…. to 63.8 kg! I’d gone down 8 points! Almost a whole kilo! Overnight! Now, anyone would think that I’d be pleased, wouldn’t they – anyone would be pleased with results like that, right? So, am I pleased about going down so much overnight? In actual fact though, the answer is “No!” (gasp, shock, horror!) “Why ever not!”, I hear you all yelling… Well, you see, in a sort-of a way I am pleased that I’ve gone down so much, but by the same token, I know that a drop like that is going to produce a correspondingly big jump back up again, either tomorrow or the next day! Remember what I said about “Swings and Roundabouts”? Oh well, we shall just have to weight and sea…

This morning when I got up I went into the loungeroom to pull up the blind, turn on the Fish House light, and to check on Dapple and Auric. Usually, first thing in the morning, they’re pretty much still asleep, and only swim fish-zombie-like around with no real rhyme or reason. When they open their eyes (yes, I know their eyes are always open!) and spot me, they immediately think “Food!” and come swimming over to see if I have anything for them to eat – which I usually don’t, because Julian’s the one who feeds them in the morning! Anyway, they swam over this morning, hoping for food, and I stood there for a bit, chatting to them and giving them their morning “pat” behind the glass, and Dapple, my dear, sweet little Dapple! My cute and friendly little boy, started biting the tip of Auric’s tail! Auric “jumped”, and hastily moved out of the way. Dapple followed him, and nipped him on the tail again! Auric was getting a trifle agitated, and Dapple wouldn’t leave him alone! This went on for a bit – I called Julian, who thought that if he fed them, it might distract Dapple, and I hastened off to the bathroom. When I came back into the bedroom to get weighed, Julian had changed his mind about feeding them to distract Dapple from eating all of Auric’s long, floaty tail, and he said they were behaving… This afternoon, after I’d finished my daily treadmilling, I went in to see how they were doing, and as usual, they were half dozing, half swimmering around (I caught them having an afternoon nap yesterday, too!) but, also as usual, as soon as they saw me, they came over – probably expecting food (yes, Julian did give them their breakfast this morning) and when that food wasn’t forthcoming, Dapple started nibbling Auric’s tail again! I told him off, and gave him a lecture about eating Auric’s tail, but just like a naughty little boy, he took absolutely no notice of me, so I “humphed” in annoyance at them, and came in here to finish off my lovely new Bookmarks-wallpapery-thingy! I have no idea why Dapple’s taken to nibbling Auric’s tail – but we’ll have to keep a close eye on them – I don’t want any injuries, and I definitely don’t want to have to separate them! They’ve always got on so well together, too…

And that brings me almost full circle to tomorrow, which should be a good day – my very favourite eldest daughter is coming over, and Josh is coming over to colour her hair for her, and then no doubt, we’ll sit and watch some more episodes of “Arrow”, “Flash”, and I think we have some episodes of “Agent Carter” – but I might be wrong about that… anyway, that’s about “it” from me for this evening! Do call in again tomorrow night, to find out how Lee’s hair turned out (she’s having purple and blue!) what my weight did, or didn’t do, and whether Dapple is still into biting Auric’s tail! Until then though, please try very hard to bee good, don’t forget that it is the trouble that never comes that causes the loss of sleep, and remember to look after yourselves, to keep warm and dry, even when the weather forecast says it’s going to be fine, and to always drive carefully… but above all, please remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

04.44 pm

Well, here I am, late again (or should I perhaps say “as usual!”) but never mind – at least I’ve managed to get rid of that ghastly, horrible Template set-up that I thought I’d “fixed” last night! It was a horrible, “nothing”, sort-of pink…ish colour that simply looked revolting! However, I did play Wow this morning – Silverhands is really going well, and as she’s now level 42, she has the ability to cast “Portals”, through which she’ll be able to transport friends and group members, to any capital city on Azeroth! That is, she will have the ability to do that, once she gets to her local, friendly Portal Instructor who will then teach her how to cast Portals! I had seriously intended to go and sit down and watch the two episodes of Channel 10’s attempt at creating a creditable Season of “Survivor Australia”, that I’d recorded on Sunday night, and last night (remember that many years ago, both Channel 9 and Channel 7 tried making an Ozzie version of the show, and failed most miserably!) but with the blog Template looking as utterly revolting as it did, I decided that it might be a better idea to go and fix that, instead! So I did, and I’ll watch those two episodes of Survivor Australia tomorrow! What do you think of the new-look Template, anyway?! I went hunting patterns this afternoon, and found quite a lot, including this one – it’s my new “grunge” look, and I think it’s quite nice, in a rather “grubby” sort-of way! Oh, and I also tidied up all my squillions of magazines this morning, too! I must say that I’m feeling very virtuous about that – I’d been putting the task off for so long that it was quite a Herculean task! I threw out quite a lot of them, however there are some “duplications” of the extremely beautiful “Delicious” magazines – mainly due to a fumble with mailing addresses when we moved – and an awful lot of very nice, but not quite “me” anymore “Country Style” magazines (so I won’t be renewing my subscription) that I really feel awful throwing away! All these magazines are in pristine condition, and all 2016 issues – so if anyone would like them, just let me know! The rest of the magazines – the ones I’ve kept, are all nice and neatly arranged in six rather large magazine holders, according to the type of magazine, and the issue date… most of them have little pieces of paper sticking up out of them, indicating recipes that I’d liked the sound of, but that I haven’t got around to transcribing yet, or even printing them out and letting Julian have a go at making them. Well, I have no excuses left now – they’re all sitting there in their almost matching magazine holders, in a neat little row along the back of my “return”, staring accusingly at me for playing WoW, instead of getting on with my transcribing and printing!

Yesterday we fed Auric and Dapple a couple of peeled and roughly chopped peas for their breakfast in the morning, and for their dinner last night, and it worked a treat! Last night, for about the first time in ages, Auric didn’t have any “floaties” at all! At breakfast yesterday morning, when Julian gave them their pea bitz, they came up, expecting “breakfast as usual”, then hovered there, watching nonplussed as the little pieces of chopped pea drifted downwards, and, as Julian put it, they looked at him as if to say “Right, well that was fun – now, where’s our breakfast!” But when he went back to check on them about fifteen minutes later, they were swimming around as usual, and there were no signs of the pea pieces in the floor of the tank, so we guessed that those two clever little fishies must have found them… 😉 They were the same last night – expecting “dinner as usual”, but getting pea pieces instead – and this just goes to show you that fish aren’t as dumb as most people think! They’d been given chopped up bits of pea for breakfast, and had managed to find and eat them from the floor of the tank. At dinner time, they watched as the pea pieces were dropped in, and after a very short pause, they swam off after them, mostly gulping them down before they reached the gravel! So it seems that overfeeding, if not the only reason, was at least a part of the reason, for their nightly “floaties”! Last night after Julian changed their water, vacuumed the tank, and washed their plastic plants for them, they seemed as happy as Larry, and Auric, I kid you not – even had a short “fit of the mads”, just like a cat! You know how cats can be minding their own business, just… doing nothing much in particular, when totally without warning, and for no discernible reason, they’ll suddenly go off prancing sideways, leaping and dashing around in a frenzy, galloping from one end of the house to the other, as if all the demons of hell were after their tail! I don’t know about your nomenclature, but we call it “having a fit of the mads” – and that’s exactly what Auric did! He was swimming lazily around with Dapple, then all of a sudden, for no reason, he took off like a little orange bullet, dashed around for about two and a half seconds, then just went on swimming lazily and nonchalantly, as though nothing at all had happened! 🙂 They got chopped up pea for breakfast again this morning, and this afternoon Julian went out to see if he could get them some different food, mainly just to give them a bit of variety, and to try and increase their protein intake. The spirulina pellets we’ve been giving them float on the water – they don’t sink – so Julian’s got them some different spirulina pellets, which do sink, and also some different flakes, which also sink (and should be kept in the fridge, apparently!) I’ve read that you can also feed them some finely chopped up melon pieces, too, but we don’t have any melon on hand at the moment, not are we likely to, at least until next summer, anyway – so we’ll keep on with the pellets, flakes, and chopped up peas…

Anyway, that was pretty much my day today, so I can now get onto all the “good” bits! 😉

Food stuffs. Last night for dinner we had a recipe that came in my morning “foodie” email batch – it sounded really nice, and easy enough to make, so when Julian went out to check the PO Box for mail, he bought – or thought he bought – all the ingredients for this dish, which is called “One-pot Spanish Chicken and Rice“, and it was delicious! Yup, another “Keeper”, and I’ll get around to transcribing it for you all as soon as possible! Unfortunately, he’d thought that we had Balsamic vinegar – I thought so too, but we couldn’t find it, so he had to take off for the supermarket in order to get some, and dinner was consequentially a little later than we’d planned – but it was really yummy! If any of you are thinking of making this for yourselves, there is a slight modification that Julian made, and just as well he did, too! Apart from the unspecified amount of water in which you soak the Basmati rice, the tomato passata, and an extra 125 ml of water as mentioned in the “Method” section, no other liquid is specified. Julian didn’t think that was enough though, and added at least another cup of water – and he plans to add more than just that extra cup of water next time (because there most definitely will be a next time!) As it was, the rice caught a bit on the bottom of the pan, because it got a bit too dry, but a bit more liquid should prevent that from happening next time! For dessert I had one of my “bald-kiwi-fruit-brown” skinned Nashi pears – alas, the Nashi pear season seems to be over, because Julian has been unable to find any in either supermarkets or Greengrocers, so I’ll have to find another fruit to eat! 😦 However, the one that I had last night was truly delicious, and with it I had an Apple Le Rice. Today for lunch I had a sandwich with chicken sandwich chunks, some sliced tomato, and our usual butter substitute of basil-pesto hummus – made from different bread this time! Julian had meant to get the same whole-meal bread with the sesame seeds in the crust, but picked this one up by mistake instead. It was a very nice sandwich, and I thoroughly enjoyed it, but I did miss my sesame seeds in the crust… Tonight for dinner we’re having the last of the Shepherd’s Pie with Garlic Mash that we had the other night, and for dessert I’ll have a Corella pear, and one of the very delicious Vaalia Lemon Creme yoghurt.

Weigh-in this morning. Wasn’t too bad, for a change! I went from 64.6 kg to 64.3 kg – down three points (and about time, too!) Who knows what tomorrow will bring – hopefully I’ll go down a bit more, but it’s probably “my turn” to go back up again – so we’ll just have to weight and sea…

And that about brings me around full circle to tomorrow! I’ll probably do tomorrow what I was intending to do today – that is, WoW in the morning, walk for 20 minutes after lunch, and then sit down to watch Channel 10’s attempt to make a decent “Survivor Australia”, set somewhere in Samoa, from memory! But no doubt I’ll get sidetracked again by something – I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow night though, as that’s about “it” from me for this evening! Do call in again tomorrow night to find out how Auric and Dapple are getting on with their new food(s), what my weight is doing – or not doing – and whether or not I actually did get to watch “Survivor Australia”, and what I thought of it, if I did! Until then though, do try hard to bee good, remember that wearing a mask wears you out; faking it is fatiguing, and the most exhausting activity is pretending to be what you know you aren’t, and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm and dry in this mercurial Melbourne weather… but most importantly, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

05.25 pm

Well, here I am again after another exciting and exhilarating day romping through Azeroth, and – I’m happy to be able to tell you all – Dulcineà and Tourbillon went up seven levels, and didn’t die once! 😀 Dulcineà started this morning at level 33, and just before we logged off, she turned level 41! At level 40 she earned herself a faster riding speed too, which will be a big help in getting around, but… oh, for level 60! All mounts, whether of the flying, running, and/or swimming persuasion, are Account Bound, and you can learn to ride the flying mounts when you reach level 60. Well, I’ve managed to collect quite an extensive “stable” of flying mounts to choose from when the time comes, but at the moment I’m using the Imperial Quilen for most of my characters, as it can double as both a “land” mount, or a “flying” mount – and all of my girls have a little motor scooter too, which has a sidecar that can carry a passenger – unfortunately it doesn’t fly (except for straight down very steep cliffs, sometimes! 😉 ) We started off in the Hinterlands this morning, by lunch time we’d been sent off to the Western Plaguelands, and about an hour before we finished off for the day we were sent to the Eastern Plaguelands! A rather impressive demonstration of the perks of wearing Heirloom gear, I thought! 🙂 But… (and you just knew there had to be a “but…” tucked in there somewhere, didn’t you!) but… it was far too easy! Yes… far too easy! The Heirloom gear, which automatically adjusts to your level as you level up, does give you slightly higher attributes than the armor that you’d normally be wearing – armor that you received as quest rewards, for instance (though you can get some really nice, non-Heirloom gear from the Auction House – if you don’t mind spending ridiculous sums of gold for something you’re going to “outgrow” in a couple of levels! “Swings and roundabouts”!) however, despite all the advantages of Heirloom gear, you still shouldn’t be able to “one-shot” mobs that are one or two levels higher than yourself, and especially not a “Silver Special”! Quite often, one of us would come across one of those “Silver Specials”, and really, whoever saw it first usually manged to kill it before the other person (usually me!) could get there to help! (a”Silver Special” is an Elite mob with a silver portrait frame rather than a gold one – they’re supposed to be reasonably difficult to bring down, and to drop “pretty good loot”… HA!) A lot of the time by the time I’d finished skinning or looting something, and caught up to Julian, everything was already dead, and waiting to be looted and skinned! Being that easy rather spoils the game a bit for me…

Anyway, we had a very good day today, and went up seven levels – I’m not sure where we go after the Plaguelands, but I doubt that we’ll be there for very much longer, at the rate we’re climbing the ladder! And that’s pretty much been our day today – I did a shortened walk at lunchtime today, but tomorrow it’ll be back to the 20 minute slog before breakfast (I really don’t mind the walking itself – in fact I quite enjoy it – I just wish it wasn’t so damned boring!) and the rest of tomorrow threatens to be pretty much the same as yesterday, and the day before – WoW in the morning, and “something else” in the afternoon – usually to do with graphics, most of the time! I’m most interested in Channel 10 tonight! I won’t be watching it tonight, but I will be recording it, because they’re doing a Season of “Australian Survivor”! Channel 9 did one Season years and years ago, and I believe Channel 7 did one too, though they never really caught on the way that the American “Survivor” shows did. Anyway, Channel 10 have decided to have a stab at it, and it starts this evening – but as I said, I won’t be watching it tonight, I’ll be recording it, so that when I do watch it I’ll be able to fast-forward through all the ads, otherwise I think it would be totally unbearable! I might even watch it tomorrow – if I do, I’ll tell you all about it, and whether I think it’ll be worth continuing to watch – tomorrow night!

And having filled you all in on the days doings, I can now tell you all about the “good” bits! 😉

Food stuffs. For dinner last night we had a most delicious little piece of fillet steak, with chips, half a tomato, and steamed green beans, and for dessert I had one of my Corella pears, and for a change, one of the Apple Le Rice. Today for lunch we had a very yummy ham, cheese, and tomato Toastie, using the Cheddar cheese rather than the Swiss (cheese) in between slices of that really nice and tasty whole-meal bread, with the sesame seeds in the crust. Tonight of course we’re having our usual “Sunday night omelets” for dinner. I’m presuming it’ll have all the usual suspects in it, including bacon, Halloumi cheese (or maybe Julian’ll use Cheddar tonight? Chi sà? (actually, as it turned out, he used what was left of the Swiss cheese, as he’d used up all the Halloumi and Cheddar cheese in other things!)) tomato, fried onion, maybe some diced capsicum…? I’ll let you know tomorrow! And for dessert tonight it’ll be back to one of the smaller, “Royal Gala” apples, and another of those extremely nice Vaalia Lemon Creme yoghurts 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. I’m still “dithering” within that so-called “margin of error”! I went from 65.1 kg to 64.9 kg. My graph is starting to look like that broken-toothed saw again! Oh well, let’s see what happens tomorrow – although long-suffering experience tells me that I’ll be up, yet again… 😦

And that brings me just about full-circle back to tomorrow! I’m not expecting anything out of the ordinary tomorrow – Josh will be over in the afternoon, and during the day I’m sort-of expecting a parcel in the mail, because I got an email about the order I’d placed with this particular firm, telling me that it had been upgraded to “Express” post, at no extra cost! Innit nice when something like that happens, right out of the blue! Well, I’ve never bought anything from this crowd before, but if it turns out to be any good, and they’re nice enough to upgrade me like that, chances are I’ll be buying from them again in the future!  And that’s about “it” from me for tonight! Do call in again tomorrow night, to find out if my mysterious parcel did arrive, whether or not I watched Channel 10’s version of “Australian Survivor” (eek! my omelet is calling me!) and what I thought of it, and how my weight let me up – or down, depending on your viewpoint! Until tomorrow however, please try to bee very good, remember always to count your blessings, not your troubles, and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to keep warm and dry in this ultra changeable weather, and to always drive carefully… but above all, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

 

05.08 pm

I think I like this one a lot much more betterer! 🙂 And the other one did last for almost 24 hours, honestly! 😯 (← Winter’s very best, wide-eyed, innocent look!) Anyway, ’tis done now – I know Julian liked last night’s Template, so I’ve included most of its elements in this one – same colours, same patterns… so it’s almost the same – but not quite! And just as an aside, this is yet another of the older Templates that I periodically come back to…

This will possibly be a much shorter blog than usual, because there’s really not all that much to tell you all! This morning was a bit different from usual though – in that I didn’t go for my usual walk before breakfast! I hope I’m not coming down with something, because I ached all over this morning, and just couldn’t dredge up the energy to do my usual treadmilling. I did do it later though – before lunch – and I felt a lot better for not having forced myself to do my walk first thing this morning! I played WoW this morning, as per usual though, so Silverhands is now almost level 35, and on her way to Feralis! I probably could have got her up to level 36 by lunch time today, if I’d got Julian to fly me down to Feralis, but I thought it was an excellent opportunity for me to gain “exploration experience points”, so I hopped on my little motor-scooter and clattered, klunked, and rattled my way south from Astraanar, picking up Flight Points as I drove along the road, and filling in blank bits of map as I went! It was good actually – all I needed was a picnic hamper and a thermos of hot coffee! It’s a long, long, long way from Astraanar to Feralis! All the way through Ashenvale, the Stonetalon Mountains, and Desolace, all completely un-mapped territory, so you pretty much have to guess your way (or try to remember it from the last time you were there, when you were playing someone else!) Mind you, the Flight Points are sort-of marked with little “wing symbols”, so basically I just point myself towards the next Flight Point, cross my fingers (and occasionally my toes as well!) and try to head that-a-ways! At the moment I’m in the middle of the Stonetalon Mountains, so I still have quite a long way to go!

So I had my morning treadmilling at around about one o’clock, which was really almost agreeable – and I think that from now on, I might try to vary my walking times a bit – say, walk in the early mornings four days a week, and at lunch time, three days a week – or something along those lines, anyway. After that, Julian had brought some nice lunch home with him, so we gobbled that all up, and I started sifting through the Templates – again – found this one, and decided to experiment with a header for it, and here it is! And that, Ladies and Gentlepersons, is the sum total of my daily doin’s – so far, anyway – and I shall forthwith get on to all the fascinatingly “good” bits! 😉

Food stuffs. Last night we had the Lamb and Rosemary Shepherd’s Pies with Roasted Garlic Mash for dinner, so… “was it any good?” I hear you all asking! “Will it become another “Keeper”?!” Well, I can truthfully answer “Yes!” to both those questions – it was extremely delicious, though Julian did say that it was a trifle “fiddly” to make, though now he’s made it once, it shouldn’t be quite so fiddly next time, n’est ce pas? You’ll find the recipe here, and I promise that I’ll try to get it written up on my “Recipes…” page, as soon as possible! In the end, we did end up using all the garlic that the recipe called for, even though it did sound like an awful lot! However because it was roasted first – which tends to break down quite a lot of the pungency and strong flavour (just as well, too!) we did use it, and found that it wasn’t too much, after all! There was a fair bit left over too – enough for one more meal, anyway – which we’ve put in the freezer, so again, it’s a fairly economical recipe – unless you have a family for five or more – but it would be plenty for a family of four. For dessert I had one of my new, smaller “Royal Gala” apples, which was very nice – quite sweet, but with enough tartness to them to make them pleasant eating, and after that I had another of my new-found Vaalia Lemon Creme yoghurts. Today for lunch today Julian brought home a savoury Danish (ham, cheese and pineapple), and a savoury roll, both of which were cut in half, and we had half each. He also brought back a couple of the extra delicious Baker’s Delight fruit and white chocolate scones, and we had one each, with just a small smear of butter in them. Tonight we’re having pan-fried fillet steak, with chips, steamed green beans, and half a tomato, and for dessert I’ll have one of my Corella pears, and this time I’ll have an Apple Le Rice.

Weigh-in this morning. *sigh* What can I say? “Within the margin of error”? I went from 65.2 kg to 65.1 kg – down the one point that I went up yesterday! I did mean it yesterday you know – I will eat what I want, and when I want – within reason, naturally – and I’ll continue to weigh myself on a daily basis – but I’m rapidly coming to the conclusion that if you don’t enjoy your life, you might as well not be living, and I’ll be buggered if I end up too afraid to eat this, that, or the other, because of what it might do to my weight! However, those bloody little pills are a different matter entirely! They should ruddy well be banned – as far as my body is concerned, anyway – and come next March I’ll be doing my damnedest to talk Dr. Y. out of prescribing any more for me (as long as there’s a viable alternative, because I’m not a very good candidate for surgery while I’m on Warfarin – which is likely to be for the rest of my life!)

And once again, that pretty much brings me full circle to tomorrow again! Yes, it’s a Sunday, so that means that Dulcineà and Tourbillon will be having their first adventures in their new Realm, Saurfang! Not that it’ll be any different to Quel’Dorei, only slightly less crowded, and with not as much “competition” for the mobs and quests! I know that all my “girls” have been enjoying the relative peace and quiet on Saurfang – it’s very reminiscent of Quel’Dorei, all those years ago when we first moved there from a very busy and somewhat overcrowded Scarlet Crusade. So it’ll be a good day tomorrow, and a good evening, too, as being a Sunday night, we’ll be having Julian’s delicious omelets for dinner! 🙂 And that’s really about “it” from me for this evening! Oh, one last thing! We still have some correspondence with the people we bought this place from, and Julian asked Mrs. A. how long the goldfish had been here – so we could have some idea of how old they were, you see – and she said that they’d had them for four years… and we’ve been here for almost a year, so Auric and Dapple are approximately about five years old! Ah, so next question, how long to goldfish live? According to Google, anywhere between 5 and 30 years, depending on the water condition. Well, now that they live inside, we take extremely good care of the water, so hopefully we’ll have them for many years to come – in fact, by “Survivor” standards, they’d well and truly out-swim – but hopefully not outlast, or outwit me! 😉 So anyway, do call in again tomorrow night, to find out how Dulcineà and Tourbillon fared in their adventures, and whether they died or not, how my weight is behaving (or not behaving, which is the more likely of the two!) and what other things we got up to during the day! Until then though, do try to bee good, remember to always be a little kinder than necessary, and don’t forget to keep warm and dry while you’re out having fun in the snow, to look after yourselves, and to always drive carefully… but most importantly, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

04.26 pm

Yes, I’ve changed it yet again! OK, so I’ll try and live with this one for at least 24 hours – no promises though! I dunno – the last Template I used (last night) is “alright“, I suppose, but you see, that’s the problem! It’s just… “alright“! Not good, not really good, not “this is the One!” – just… “alright“… *sigh* I’m not really happy with the underlining on this one – you all know me, I like to use a lot of italics and underlining – I write the way I talk, and really, the underlining on this Template doesn’t so much empathise a word, as make it look like a semi-trailer has left a whole lot of ruddy skid-marks under it! Anyway…

This morning I worked diligently on my young Mage, Silverhands, who is now almost level 31, and is happily swanning around the Cape of Stranglethorn, doing some minor questing there for the Explorer’s League! I left her near the Banking Chambers and the Neutral Auction House in beautiful Downtown Booty Bay, shortly after lunch time, where no doubt I’ll be meeting up with her again this evening (if I get this finished in time!) I had expected to have a lot more trouble playing “Clothies”, because I’ve always played Beast Master Hunters, who of course have their faithful Pet to go in and do the Tanking for them, whilst all I have to do is stand back and twang arrows, or bang bullets, at the nasty mobs… but so far, I haven’t had any troubles at all, with my Shadow Priest and my Frost Mage! I’m still wary though – basically I’m putting it down to my low level so far, and the fact that the mobs I’m encountering are also low-level and therefore not too hard to put down. I expect the going will get a lot tougher as I rise slowly up the ranks and start meeting up with higher level, and therefore much tougher, mobs – which is one of the reasons why I’m quite happy to choof-off to the next “zone” before finishing off the one I’m in! I don’t know if it’s the way Blizzard have planned it, but by the time I pass the “half-way” mark on my Experience bar, the mobs seem to either get weaker and weaker – or else I seem to be getting quicker and quicker, using less “shots” in my “shot-rotation” line-up to bring the mobs down – and so I’m usually only too happy to be moved on to something with a bit more meat on its bones, so to speak!

I went and counted up the characters on my Wynterthyme account last night, and it seems I have another three characters that I can roll… Hmm… so far I have 3 Beast Master Hunters on Saurfang: two Gnome “players”, Ellevienne, and Dulcineà (whom I play with Julian’s Frost Mage, Tourbillon and who is also a Gnome!) plus one “spare”, the Guild Mistress and Auctionator, a Night Elf Beast Master Hunter who stays in Darnassus and organises all the Banking and Auctioning. Then I have my two Shadow Priests (or rather “Priestesses”) Piubella, a Night Elf, and Viverra, a Draenei. So far though, I only have the one Frost Mage, Silverhands, who’s a Night Elf, so… maybe I’m a little unbalanced… (Oi! I heard that! …I much prefer the term “eccentric”, thank you!) I meant, that with only one Mage, when I have two of everything else, that perhaps I should – even things up a little? by creating another Frost Mage? that’s all… (Oo-er! I must start thinking of clever names with no accents or strange characters in them! I think I’ll make her a Gnome… or maybe a Blood Elf…)

This afternoon I started “sifting” through these wretched Templates again – trying this one… and that one… and another one that I’d almost forgotten about (so many Templates, so little time!) and this one drew the short straw – that is, I was running out of time! So as I said, I’ll try and live with this one for at least the next 24 hours – after that? *shrug* Chi sà? I really do wish I could alter the parameters of some of these Templates! Some of them are very nice, they just need a wee bit of “tweaking”, here and there! With this one, f’rinstance, I’d make the text column a lot wider, and make the underlining less… obtrusive! Because apart from those two rather glaring flaws, I’d probably be reasonably happy with this Template!

Anyway, that’s about the extent of my exertions today, so I suppose I should really get on to all the “good” bits! 😉

Food stuffs. Last night for dinner we had pan-fried lamb backstraps on a bed of rice that had some spring onions finely chopped mixed through it, and as a side dish, Julian surprised me with a plate of papadums, and a small dish of a really nice, spicy Lime Pickle! Very delicious! (for the record, I had two papadums, and about two teaspoons of the Lime Pickle!) For dessert I had an absolutely delicious “bald-kiwi-fruit” brown skinned Nashi pear, and one of my new favourites, the Vaalia Lemon Creme yoghurt! For lunch today we had wraps – with basil-pesto hummus, tomato, Halloumi cheese, ham, and yellow capsicum batons (this time I did manage to drop a rather large piece of Halloumi and basil-pesto hummus on the plate! Clumsy me!) Tonight we’re having one of our “experimental” recipes – Lamb and Rosemary Shepherd’s Pies with Roasted Garlic Mash from “taste.com.au magazine” wot I get… I’ll let you know what it’s like tomorrow night, but I can tell you that it smells wonderful! For dessert tonight I’ll be having an apple (Julian got some new, smaller apples this afternoon, but I’m not sure what kind they are – I’ll let you all know that tomorrow night, too!) and another of the Vaalia Lemon Creme yoghurts.

Weigh-in this morning. Was another bitter disappointment! Why??!! I haven’t eaten or drunk, or nibbled, or partaken, of anything that I shouldn’t have – and for goodness sake, if two ruddy little papadums and two teaspoons of spicy Lime Pickles is going to make such a difference, then I bloody-well give up! I’m not going to live on bread and water for the rest of my life to avoid a rise of one point in my weight! I went from 65.1 kg to 65.2 kg this morning (and that’s after going from 64.4 kg to 65.1 kg, the day after eating a peculiarly fat-free roast beef dinner the night before!) Gaaah! I’ve had it! I’ve absolutely had it! I’m truly sick to death of all of this! Bugger my weight! I’ll eat what I want, when I want, and damn the torpedoes – er, consequences!

And that brings me round to tomorrow again. I’m not really sure what’s happening tomorrow – knowing us, probably more of the same! Flipper is currently being her usual noisy self because Julian is in the kitchen cooking, but she wants him in here, on the couch, patting her! 🙂 But she’s been a good girl, and eaten most of her dinner, so I’ve given her back her bowl of pussy biscuits (kibble) Dinner is very important for Flipper because it’s the only way we can get her to take all her medication! For some strange reason, where most cats will run away very fast from anything that they even vaguely suspect contains “foreign bodies”, like drops, or medicine, Flipper actually loves it! (Once upon a time, many centuries ago, I tried to “drown out” the taste of a teeny-weeny little pill in a whole tin of mushed up sardines, and the damn cat wouldn’t go near it! Hmm.. or maybe the cat just didn’t like sardines…) Anyway, Flipper loves her medicated food (and gets suspicious of it if it isn’t medicated!) but occasionally she’ll have a fit of the “Vera-Vague’s” and forgets why she’s in the Library with a big bowl of… er… something that isn’t water? and so she doesn’t eat her dinner (even though she’s been walking around wailing dolefully that “I’m hungry! Where’s my dinner!”) when that happens of course, she doesn’t get her medication, and ends up in a pretty bad way without her anti-arthritis tablets and blood pressure pill – so we take her bowl of pussy biscuits (kibble) away (because she tends to go and fill up on those instead of her dinner!) until she’s had enough of her dinner… And really, that’s about “it” from me for tonight – do drop in again tomorrow night – if only to see if I’ve changed the blog Template again! Of course you’ll also find out about lots of other things, too, like what my weight did, what the Lamb and Rosemary Shepherd’s Pie was like, and whether or not it’ll be a “Keeper” – and what we got up to during the day! Until then though, do try very hard to bee good, remember that the greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes, and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm and dry in this sudden cold snap… but above all, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

03.38 pm

Here we go again – same graphics, different Template… it’s actually the same Template I was using a few weeks ago, which I’ve decided to go back to, as Word Press don’t seem to be putting up any new ones… which strikes me as being a little strange! As well as all the Foodie e-zines and emails that I subscribe to, I also subscribe to quite a few graphic, font, and elements newsletters (elements are bits and pieces that you use in your graphics – they can be anything from cute little water-colour flower prints to big decorative labels) Anyway, one or two of these sites also feature Word Press Templates, which I’d love to look at and possibly use – but I can’t, because this Word Press doesn’t allow the use of “Third Party” Anythings! This is Word Press.com – The Word Press that these “Third Party” templates are for is Word Press.org! They’re exactly the same – identical, even! This Word Press, however, actually Hosts the blog(s) and does all the hard work and organisation for you, from supplying the Templates, to backups, maintenance, and publishing. All you have to do is choose your Template, and start writing – you don’t even have to do any graphics, if you can’t, or don’t want to. If you use Word Press.org though, you can get your Template from just about anywhere you like (as long as it’s Word Press compatible!) but you have to find and organise a Host for it, you’re the one responsible for blog maintenance, backups, any programming changes that need to be made, and publishing, so it’s a really big ask for someone who’s not terribly computer literate, or who doesn’t have the time, or who can’t afford a really good Host. Julian and I have discussed this many times – we know that our Web Hosting Provider, who host our personal web sites, also provide blog hosting, and I’ve lost count of the times we’ve thought that perhaps we should go our own way – but we simply balk at the amount of hard work that we’d then be lumbered with (yes, we’re lazy!) plus the fact that neither of us knows very much about CSS. Julian could certainly learn it – he seems to soak things like that up like a dry sponge – and I can, at a very small and weak pinch, work my way through fairly basic HTML – but as I said – we’re both reluctant to take the plunge… there are just so many other things we’d rather be playing – I mean doing…. However, the main point that I was very slowly meandering my way towards, was the fact that there are an awful lot of “Third Party” Word Press Templates available – some of which look really good – but there aren’t very many new ones appearing on Word Press.com, and I just find it a trifle strange…

This morning, as usual, I played WoW, and Silverhands, my Mage, is now level 25 and questing away in Ashenvale, having bypassed about 85% of the Darkshore content! I’m leveling up very quickly, thanks to my Heirloom gear, and this has both good, and bad points! In a way it’s good that I can bypass so much of the content, because I’ve done all of these areas and their quests so many times that I often find myself running off to the next quest giver before I’ve been told to! I’m just so familiar with it all – being able to bypass large chunks does relieve the boredom quite a lot, I can tell you! The bad part about leveling up so fast is if you’re using Heirloom gear, but have never played the game, or been through those areas before, you’re going to miss out on a lot of very important back-story and Lore, which in effect turns the game into just another First Person Shoot-em-Up game, with no rhyme nor reason, and no real “raison d’être”, which I think is a real shame and a great pity, because in fact it’s not just a “good game”, it’s a damn good story as well! I was running (galloping, now that I can ride! 😉 ) through Darkshore and parts of Ashenvale this morning, thinking things like “Should I stop and do that quest?” as I sped past heaps of Quest Giver’s yellow exclamation points – and then I’d think something along the lines of “Nah… that’s the Twilight’s Hammer one – I can’t be bothered doing that – it’s too easy!” and keep on going! I did die once this morning though – at one point I was given a cape of invisibility, and told to sneak past a whole lot of Horde Bullies to get a Holy Hammer and a Prayer Book. As a Frost Mage, I have a Water Elemental as a sort of “Pet” – he (or she) stands with me and hurls balls of freezing water at whatever I’m attacking, and I wasn’t sure if this cape would shield both of us, or whether the Horde Bullies would see the two of us together. I rather thought they would see us, but I thought I’d give it a go, anyway. Well, they did see us, and it was “stacks on the mill” as they say in Footy broadcasts, and I was killed. Luckily I managed to run into the Tower that I had to get into for the Prayer Book, so that when I did make the run back from the Graveyard for my body, I was able to get half way up the spiral ramp before re-claiming my body and re-using the invisibility cape – this time without my Elemental “Pet”, and I was able to complete the quest! Anyway, I think I’m doing quite well at the moment, though it looks like I’ve already finished with Ashenvale, even though I’ve just got there, because it seems I’ve been ordered off to the Stonetalon Mountains tomorrow (or this evening – whichever comes first! 😉 )

After lunch today I re-worked the Blog’s header, and stuffed around with other graphics for a bit, then started this early, as you can see from the time stamp above, and that’s about all I’ve been doing today – so now I shall move on to the “good” bits!

Food stuffs. Last night for dinner we had a very, very nice, small roast beef! It had been in some sort of marinade (but Julian had thrown out the packaging and couldn’t remember what sort if had been!) and was really tasty! With the beef we had roast potatoes, roast pumpkin, half a tomato, and steamed Brussels sprouts! So scrumptious! The meat was so tender you hardly had to cut it, and the potatoes and pumpkin were “just right”! Of course there was a lot left over, and in fact Julian had made extra roast potatoes and roast pumpkin, so that we could have it for lunch today (and probably tomorrow as well!) For dessert I had one of my Corella pears, and an Apple Le Rice. Today for lunch I had a sandwich, made from that nice whole-meal bread that we both like so much – the one that has all the sesame seeds in the crust – with cold roast potato and cold roast pumpkin mished up a bit to act as butter, and sliced cold roast beef, and plenty of salt and pepper! It was really yummy, and I hope there’s still enough left over for lunch tomorrow! Tonight we’re having pan-fried lamb backstrap for dinner, probably with chips, steamed green beans (or peas) and our usual half a tomato, and for dessert I’ll have another of the “bald-kiwi-fruit” brown skinned Nashi pears, and one of the very yummy Vaalia Lemon Creme yoghurts.

Weigh-in this morning. Was terrible! How can one, very nicely cooked, and with no added fattening material in it, roast dinner, put on so much weight overnight! Mind you, the fluid is still “pooling” in my feet again… and while they do rather resemble medium-sized “toed” balloons, at least they’re acting like the water bombs that they currently are (hence my excess weight!) and not gas filled balloons, otherwise Julian would have to tie a string to my wrist so that he could rescue me from the ceiling!  So despite two anti-fluid pills per day, and my walking for the full 30 minutes every morning, the fluid doesn’t seem to want to shift. If it doesn’t start moving soon, maybe I could cut a little hole in my ankle, so that it could drain out faster… I went from yesterday’s fabulous 64.4 kg to…. 65.1 kg! To say that I’m bitterly disappointed would be the understatement of the millennium! 😦

And once again, this about brings me around to tomorrow! I have no idea what’s happening tomorrow – no doubt I’ll be playing with my young Mage, Silverhands, and with a little bit of luck, I might even get her up to level 30, which would be très cool! Flipper is well, but seems to be getting even more vague – if that’s even possible – but as long as she can enjoy her Daddy pats, and sleeping on the bed at night (even if she does try to steal all my doona!) she seems quite happy, which is the main thing! Auric and Dapple are their usually cute little selves – in the mornings, when I go in to pull up the blind and turn on their Tank light, little Dapple swims around as though he really needs his cup of coffee, yawning! I kid you not! I know fish can’t close their eyes, coz they don’t have eyelids, and I don’t really think that he actually yawns, but it sure looks like it! He’ll swim very slowly towards me with his eyes looking as though they’re half shut, then all of a sudden, he’ll open his little mouth really, really wide, just as though he’s yawning, and then close it again! It makes me laugh out loud, every time! 🙂 I wonder if fish ever try to imitate people? Maybe he looks at me every morning, with my eyes half shut, and yawning widely at him, and he’s just trying to copy me? (no, I know fish don’t try to imitate people! I wuz just sayin‘…”what if?”) Anyway, that’s about “it” from me for tonight, but do drop in again tomorrow night, and find out if I’ve located the plug that’s been keeping my excess fluid from escaping, and how Silverhands is getting along in the Stonetalon Mountains – as well as anything else that’s been going down around these ‘ere parts! Until then however, please try to bee good, don’t forget that any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain but it takes character and self control to be understanding and forgiving, and remember to always drive carefully, to look after yourselves, and to keep warm and dry, because tonight the weather’s supposed to turn wet and cold again – but most importantly, please remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂