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! 🙂