04.46 pm
Well here I am again, at long last – but goodness gracious! Where to start?! I suppose the beginning would be a good place, but I’m afraid you’d get quite bored, hearing all about my childhood… so I’ll compromise, and start off with Monday morning, and the sad departure of little Pyramus, who only survived his (or her) companion, Thisbe, by about twelve hours. Yes, when we got up on Monday morning, Pyramus was lying head-in-the-gravel, and “unresponsive” – which I think is the term commonly used these days to say “It’s worse than that, he’s dead, Jim!” We really have no idea why they died – we keep on testing the water, to see if we might have missed some vital clue as to their sudden demise, but honestly, the water couldn’t be any more “fish-ideal” if it had been tailor-made, specifically for them! So… at this point in time, all we can do is presume that they must have been suffering from some fishy illness when we got them, and brought them home! And as Julian said a short while ago – just as well we had the smaller tank set up for them, because it acted as a quarantine tank, so at least Auric and Dapple won’t be able to catch whatever-it-was that Pyramus and Thisbe were apparently suffering from!
Let’s see… what came next… Tuesday! Tuesdays are usually when my very favourite eldest daughter comes over to spend the day with me, while we sit there in the lounge room watching episodes of our favourite TV shows, but she didn’t come over yesterday because her husband Neale, who was “between jobs” for less than a week, has found gainful employment again, and starts next Monday, and she wanted to spend as much time with him as possible before then. Besides, World of Warcraft’s new Character Class, “Demon Hunters”, went live yesterday morning – but of course she wasn’t really terribly interested in that! 😉 So I had a nice, quiet, relaxing day, pottering around Azeroth on our soon-to-be new Realm (read: Server) called Saurfang, and happily leveling up yet another Gnome Hunter…
Now, I’m not sure if you remember or not, but a short while ago (give or take a few weeks!) I think I mentioned to all of you that Julian was extremely unhappy about the severe “nerfing” that Shamen had received during Blizzard’s pre-Expansion patch, and how he now felt that Mouselet, one of his best and strongest characters – as well as Wynterthyme’s long-time Protector and Team-Mate – was no longer playable! 😦 So I was thinking about that, and wondering if there was anything to be done, or perhaps any other Class of character, with basically the same sorts of both “Damage” and “Healing” capabilities, that he could play instead. After looking at the Monk character Class, as well as the Priest Class, I came to the conclusion that the Monk Class wasn’t even vaguely suitable – they’re basically Melee fighters, and as neither of us are the “up close and personal” type of players, I ditched that thought and turned to Priests. I vaguely remembered that Neale, my very favourite eldest daughter’s spouse, quite often played a Priest… Reading up on them a bit, I found that – depending on what Talent you pursued – they can be very handy to have in your party! They can heal – up to a point, anyway, they can remove the effects of poison, they can shield people, and they can dish out quite a bit of damage! So, having told Julian all of this, guess what I did! Go on, I bet you can’t! 🙂 Oh… I see that you all know me too well, after all! 
But, you’re right! I did! I rolled a Priest, just to see what they were like! She wasn’t going to be permanent, mind you, this was just to get a “feel” for them, so to speak – I didn’t even give her a proper, sensible name! (I called her “Hownotto”, as in “How not to”) At first, it was very strange, playing without a Pet, but I surprised myself by managing quite well anyway, and I got her up to level 10, which is really where playing a Priest starts to get interesting, as you get your initial choice of Talent – I chose “Shadow Priest”, because they’re the ones who do the most damage – the other two dealt mainly with Healing and Protection. So… guess what I did then? No clue? Oh, alright then, I rolled another Priest! I gave this one a proper name (so far, all of my brand-new characters on Saurfang have proper names, with no weird accents on any of the letters, which absolutely has to be a record, for me!) This particular name, however, should have an “ù” in it, but for ease of contact I’ve left it as just a plain “u” – and her name is “Piubella”. It means “more beautiful”, or “prettier”, in Italian, and it should be spelt “Più bella” – but as WoW doesn’t allow spaces in names, or even punctuation, I’ve run the two words together, and left off the accent. Which means… that she’ll probably become permanent! Tomorrow, I’ll tidy up all of “Hownotto’s” loose ends, sell up all her worldly goods, and delete her. Then all I have to do is wait another six? or is it five now? days until I can move my newly formed Guild and Guild Bank over from Quel’Dorei! (grrr!)
And that’s really about all that’s been happening over this neck of the woods! So far, Auric and Dapple are both well – they’re such dear little fishies! They’re so used to us now, patting them gently through the glass of the tank, that they actually come up and seem to enjoy it! Well, Dapple always did that, but Auric used to get a fright, and quickly swim off, if he saw a hand approaching the glass – but now the two of them swim backward and forwards along the side, getting “patted” through the glass… they seem really happy, too – and they’ve both grown so much! I think they’ve almost doubled in size! Maybe it’s a mistake to think of putting other fishes in there with them… Flipper is well too – though we think – we can’t really tell though – that last night when we went out for dinner, she showed her displeasure at being left all alone (we fed her before we left!) by… spraying on a small section of wall just outside the Den. Julian only noticed it this afternoon, and it was “slightly” damp, but there was no evidence of big puddles (and when Flipper “puddles”, they’re BIG puddles, as her kidneys are starting to fail, which means that she drinks a lot of water, which has to go… well, usually into the litter box!) Many, many, many years ago, when she was young and charming, she did have a problem with crystals in her bladder, which did cause “inappropriate wetting”, but she outgrew that a long time ago, there’s no possibility of the problem recurring – and besides, they were all “squat and puddle”, not “stand and spray”, so at the moment all we can do is watch her very carefully… and maybe just not go out for dinner again!
And now for the good bits! 🙂
Food stuffs. Yesterday for lunch I had a very delicious wrap, with Halloumi cheese, ham, basil-pesto hummus, green capsicum batons, and tomato – and I managed to eat it all without spilling it down my front, or onto my keyboard – though I will admit to dropping a bit of green capsicum, and a small piece of Halloumi cheese smeared with the basil-pesto hummus, onto my plate! Now, the reason I couldn’t write anything last night – we went out for dinner! Julian’s sister was in Melbourne to hear a couple of cases, and we met her at her Hotel in the city, and had dinner with her in the Hotel’s very pleasant restaurant there, called “Allegro”. It was a lovely meal, and should have been quite alright – except that I’m still on those utterly unspeakable little pills. As we had the “A La Carte Dinner” menu, you can even have a look at the Menu to see what we had! For the Entrée, we all had what was called the Spinach and Kale superfood salad – the only “fattening” part of which may have been the dressing! Curses that I’m not as quick on the pick-up as Melissa is – she very cleverly asked if she could have her dressing “on the side” – but by the time I thought “Oh, that’s a good idea!”, the waiter had gone, and I had my salad dressed – but there really wasn’t terribly much dressing on it, and I only found one small bit of Avocado in it, which I gave to Julian… but as “superfood” food items go, it really was very, very nice! If I ever have it again (and I most definitely would order it again if I could!) I’ll ask to have the dressing “on the side”! For Mains, I had the 200 gm Tenderloin From The Grill – I ordered it “Medium Rare”, but it was a lot more “Medium” than “Rare”, so next time, I’ll just ask for “Rare”! Needless to say, I didn’t (couldn’t!) eat the full 200 gm! The side dishes I ordered were the Olive Oil tossed Broccoli (that’s odd! I didn’t notice even a trace of Olive Oil! Oh well…) and the Steak Fries with truffle salt – but we all shared those two side dishes… For dessert, I umm’d and ahhh’d between the Chocolate and Salted Caramel Tart, with green-tea ice-cream and… er… something else wot I fergit – and the Rice Pudding – sorry, they’re not listed on the menu, but they were there last night, I promise you, because I opted for the Rice Pudding, for two reasons… first reason: I love rice! especially in rice pudding! and second reason: it came with a fig compote! (stewed figs!) and I absolutely adore figs! I then had a long black (coffee) with a small jug of skinny milk on the side – and that was my dinner last night! I had a martini before dinner, and I learnt a very valuable lesson from it, which I will tell you all, in due course! and I had half a glass of dry white wine with dinner… Today for lunch we were very naughty – yes, we were both naughty, because Julian bought it, and I ate it! We had our usual lunch for when Julian’s been out shopping, and if he comes home a bit later than usual and then has to turn around and make lunch when he gets home, it’ll be dinner time before we get lunch, so he brings back two savoury rolls, which we cut in half and have two halves each (no butter though!) and two of those deliciously scrumptious Baker’s Delight fruit and white chocolate scones, which we do have with butter! And tonight we’re having the marinated in the Feta Slurry lamb backstraps, on rice (I think) and for dessert I’ll have one of my “bald-kiwi-fruit-brown” skinned Nashi pears, and (lord help me, more rice!) another Apple Le Rice.
Weigh-in yesterday. Was pretty good! It was my second-last day on those terrible pills – I went from 65.1 kg to 65.1 kg! Remember, it takes between three and five days until those horrible little pills are completely out of my system again, so I was pretty chuffed to see that I was the same as I was on Monday! 65.1 kg isn’t too bad to have to whittle back from! I stupidly thought!
Weigh-in this morning. After my dinner out last night! I should have known that those wretched, hideous little pills were going to have their Last Hurrah! 😦 This morning when I clambered onto the scales, I could almost hear them: (Winter puts on her very best Texan nasal drawl) “Ye’all ain’t-a-gunna git away fr’m us thet easy, lil’lady! This’ere es jest a lil’ ree-mindah orf what’cha gunna git ina cuppla months time! Yee-hehehehe! (← evil, sadistic laugh!) 😥 Oh, it was terrible, alright! Shocking, even! How can someone put on that much weight just from eating a teaspoon or three of reasonably decent salad dressing, and a bowl (alright, it was quite a large bowl!) of Rice Pudding!? I went from…. (wait for it!) 65.1 kg ….. to…. (oh dear, I can hardly bear to type it in! Do I really have to?!) 65.9 kg (Winter types terribly quickly, in the hopes that if she types fast enough, maybe it either won’t sound so bad, or that people won’t notice it, between the two sets of parentheses!) And then of course, that very nice lunch I had today… so I guess I might as well be hung as a sheep for a lamb – thank heavens though – today I took the last of my wretched little weight-gaining pills for another two months – and then “we start all over again” 😦
Which – finally, and at long, long last – brings me back to tomorrow! Julian will be in Adelaide for the day, so I’ll have to rough it on my own, and make my own cups of coffee, and read my kindle if WoW or the internet stuff up… still, he’ll be home in time for dinner, so that’s not too bad 🙂 And that’s about it from me for tonight (well, you had two days without my amazingly erudite and scintillating gossip, so I had to make up for lost time! 😉 ) but for now, that’s enough! Do call back again tomorrow night, for a hopefully shorter, and not quite so long-winded, description of the day’s doin’s! Until then though, do try to bee good, remember that success is neither magical nor mysterious – success is simply the natural consequence of consistently applying basic fundamentals… and don’t forget to always drive carefully, to look after yourselves, and to keep warm and dry, especially after the somewhat heavy little downpour that we’ve just had… but most importantly – please – don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂
My Word! 