04.14 pm

Would you look at the date?! It’s half way through August already! There’s blossom on the trees outside! What happened to winter? Where’d it go?! I want my nice, cold, wet, dank, and dreary winter back! I want my seasonal share of rain, and storms, and sleet and hail! It’s not fair! What did I do, blink and miss it, or something?! 😦 (← Winter folds her arms and puts on her very best “Grumpy Cat” face)

*sigh* Spring and summer seem to be getting earlier and earlier, every year! To quote someone reasonably famous, “Why is it so?!” Still, I guess it doesn’t matter all that much – I rarely set foot outside the front door anyway… So, what’s bin happenin’ around these here parts today!? Not all that much – I think I spent most of the morning playing WoW, and my Mage, Silverhands, is now level 20, and has just got her “riding licence”! She’s really very easy to play – at least so far! She has numerous “freezing spells” which work very nicely, and “blink”, where you suddenly disappear, and pop up again, “x” feet ahead – which can be very handy, but I don’t think you move far enough! Julian says that later on, Mages get an “enhancement” that allows them to do a sort-of a “double blink”, so that you can get further ahead. I can also turn people into sheep – temporarily. It’s also quite a handy spell to have! Mages are fairly fragile little creatures because they can only wear cloth armor (which as you can imagine, isn’t terribly versatile or strong!) so when you’re attacked by multiple mobs, sometimes it’s handy to be able to “neutralise” at least one of them by turning them into a sheep, while you take care of their “friend”… As a matter of fact, I had to use it today… I was escorting a Night Elf Scout to a “safe place”, and somehow managed to end up fighting about three big, tough, Horde Enforcers who’d jumped us on our way to the safe route home – so I turned one of them into a sheep – which promptly ran off in a fright! By the time I’d dealt with the other two Enforcers, “Mr. Sheep” had turned back into a Horde Enforcer again, and I was able to dispose of him, too 🙂   I think I like being a Mage! Oh, and I’ve just learnt how to make “Portals”! I can now open up a Portal to nearly all the major Alliance cities in Azeroth, which is going to be more than useful! Instead of having to gallop off to a port and catch a ship, or run off to find the nearest Flight Point and fly to wherever I have to go, all I have to do now is wiggle my hands a bit, and step through the handy-dandy little Portal to wherever it is I have to go! I can even take grouped friends with me! How neat is that! I reckon it’s even much more betterer than Star Trek’s Transporters! 🙂

This afternoon I worked on the header for this Template, and I also tried out a few new techniques that I invented – if you look really closely at the background, you should be able to see a very faint “cross-hatch” pattern… but don’t expect it to last, cos I’ve decided that I don’t really like this Template as much as I though I did… so expect something different again tomorrow! 😉

And as that pretty much sums up my day today, I can now move on to the “good” bits! 🙂

Food stuffs. Last night for dinner we had plain, un-marinated, pan-fried chicken breast, on a bed of plain, steamed rice which had some finely chopped spring onion mixed into it. I love chicken cooked like that – I reckon that the marinated version is a bit tastier, but it’s all yummy! For dessert I had 3/4 of a “Jazz” apple (a full “Jazz” apple is far too big for me eat in the one “sitting”, so Julian cut it into quarters – he ate one quarter, and I ate the other three) and I also had a small tub of the new Vaalia Lemon Creme yoghurt that I’ve recently discovered, and which I seem to have taken such a liking to… because suddenly, I find that I’m not missing that delicious Coles-brand, very low-calorie Rice Pudding so much! For lunch today we had ham, tomato, and Swiss cheese Toasties. And I have to tell you all that although the Swiss cheese went very well in the Toasties, and while they were totally delicious, Julian and I have both came to the conclusion that Cheddar cheese is the best cheese to put into a Toastie, as it really seems to “compliment” the ham and tomato best. Tonight we’re having a small roast beef, with (I think!) roast potatoes, roast pumpkin, half a tomato, and steamed green beans or peas. Tonight for dessert I’ll have one of my Corella pears, and maybe for a change tonight, either a Chocolate Chia Pod or one of the Le Rice tubs.

Weigh-in. It just goes to show exactly how much mental and spiritual damage those [censored] little fluid and weight retaining pills cause! It’s stupid, I know, but I just can’t help it! I know they’re going to make me gain weight, I know my feet are going to turn into balloons (sometimes it’s all I can do to get my shoes on, if we’re going out somewhere!) but for some reason I just can’t be sanguine about it – it really, really distresses and depresses me. All my feelings of self-worth vanish completely, and I feel such a failure… But there you go – I got on the scales this morning to a happy surprise! I went from 64.8 kg to 64.4 kg – which I suppose is what you could pretty much call “normal” for me now…

And that brings me full circle to tomorrow again! Julian has some banking to do (which he probably should have done today, but he played WoW instead) I have some folding to do because Julian also did the washing today, and a plethora of magazines to sort out into both monthly and alphabetical order – seeing as I now have some magazine holders for them! Auric and Dapple are both well and behaving themselves nicely, and (Julian doesn’t know this yet!) I’m thinking that I’d like to get them some more “decorations” for their Fish House. Actually, not “decorations” per se – I don’t want anything too kitsch – but I would like to get them a nice “hollow rock”, or whatever – something that they can actually swim into, and hide themselves away, if they want to. At the moment, all they’ve got are some very plastic-looking plants, and a rather daggy looking “brown” rock that just has absolutely nothing at all going for it in either the “decorative”, or the “useful” stakes!

Oh, breaking news! 🙂 Months (and months and months!) ago, Julian and I ordered some incense online, as the sort we wanted to get didn’t exist here any more (I think it was some sort of Christmas “special” that we bought about a year ago at the Reject Shop!) Anyway, we liked it, and we managed to find it online – as well as a couple of other ones that looked relatively interesting – so we ordered them. Weeks later we’re told that (a) some of them had to come from a different retailer, and (b) some of the retailers wouldn’t sell outside the USA. (why have some American retailers got this really weird attitude to Australians, that they won’t ship stuff to us? I had the same problem with – would you believe – a kindle e-book! “Not able to sell to your country”! an e-book!!) As we’ve had this problem before, Julian has organised a “Forward Shipping Company” in the States – you give the recalcitrant merchant their address instead of your Australian one, because they’ll happily ship the goods to anywhere that’s in the USA, and the Forward Shipping Company send the goods on to us, because that’s what they’re for – the retailers are happy because they’re sending their goods within the USA – the Forward Shipping Company are happy, because they get paid twice, more or less, and we’re sort-of happy because we finally get to receive our goods, even if we have had to pay for them twice! Anyway, we’d ordered this incense absolutely ages ago, and this afternoon, despite numerous hold-ups and problems along the way, it’s finally arrived! We’re actually trying out one of the new, “interesting” looking ones that we bought “experimentally” – the incense itself is in a very tight little “coil” – a bit like a mosquito coil that you can get to burn at summer BBQs, only a lot smaller, and the little holder that comes with it is in the shape of a bird – I think it’s a Heron, or a Crane? No, sorry, not a Crane – Cranes have longer legs… anyway, it’s holding its head up, with its beak open, and you wedge the inside part of the incense coil into the open beak, and light the outside of the coil… It’s supposed to burn for 45 minutes, I think… it’s actually quite nice, and is called “Osmanthus“

So I think I’d better call it quits here, and say that’s about “it” from me for tonight! Do call in again tomorrow night though, to find out if my weight’s still behaving, how far I’ve got with my new Mage Silverhands, and how we enjoyed the new incense! But until then, please try to bee extra good, remember that a moment of gratitude makes a difference in your attitude, and don’t forget to always drive carefully, to keep warm and dry, even if the weather does look fine, because this is Melbourne, and to look after yourselves… but above all (and most importantly!) please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

05.09 pm

Here I am, rudely writing while Julian and my very favourite eldest daughter chat together behind me, with me listening with half an ear (or should that be a quarter of an ear, as my stupid left ear is still bunged up! Perhaps I had better bite the bullet and see the Eye, Ear, and Nose people… 😦 ) Strangely, I’m not getting terribly much actual writing done! Oh well – shoes are being put on… and… they’rerrroff to the garage! 🙂

Now, where was I! Oh yes, that’s right, trying to write this blog! I didn’t get a chance to write anything yesterday – we were pretty flat-out all day, to tell you all the truth! The oven repair man, who was supposed to be arriving between 8 and 8.30 am, arrived at about 8.15, our cleaning lady turned up at her usual time of 9.30, and didn’t leave until noon, so the morning was filled with vacuum cleaner noises, and loud protests from Flipper, who for some weird reason really hates vacuum cleaner noises. The oven repair man was very quick – he replaced the burnt-out oven element, cleaned up what little mess he’d made, and was gone before 8.30! so at last we can have properly cooked chips again, which is the main thing! 😉

Pretty much as soon as K. (the cleaning lady) left, we left too – we went off to The Glen so that I could exchange the incorrectly sized jumper – which I did, however we had lunch at The Shingle Inn there first, before repairing upstairs to Suzanne Grae where they didn’t have exactly the same style of jumper in the correct size and colour, so they said I could exchange it for any other top. I ended up getting a rather nice mottled cream, brown, and maroon “chunky-knitted” cowl-neck jumper with a fringed hem (très Boho, don’tcha know, which really took me back to my teens!) It’s really chunky and warm, and I wish that winter wasn’t almost over so that I could wear it a lot more than I’m probably going to be able to this year! I also got another black jumper, almost the same as the one which I was exchanging, but with small, fake brass buttons, or studs (little round do-dads!) down one shoulder… very chic! We did a bit more shopping, and then headed home, stopping off at two Vets on the way – once at a new Vet that we found in Vermont South Shopping Centre, to get some more pussy biscuits (kibble) for Flipper (because our regular Vet no longer stocks that brand) and once at our regular Vet for some more Norvasc, Flipper’s blood pressure medication. We didn’t get home until 4.15, and about half an hour later, Josh arrived! So as I said – we were pretty flat-out yesterday, and by the time we’d had dinner I was simply too worn out to feel much like writing anything! However, Julian and I did manage to finally get the new Guild, called “Altar of Alts”, with its associated Guild Bank, sorted out on Saurfang! Julian started off Tourbillon’s Realm Transfer, which was completed by this morning, and I, as Dulcineà, disbanded what was left of “Altar of Alts” on Quel’Dorei, and started off my own Realm Transfer to Saurfang. Then finally, we got all the other characters on Saurfang into the Guild last night and this morning! Tutto fatto¹ – fait accompli² – all done, at long last! 🙂

Today, as I mentioned before, I had my very favourite eldest daughter over for the day – she didn’t come at all last week, so we made up for it today by talking a lot – she’s going to some sort of meeting next week to do with applying to do an Honours Course at uni next year, and we spoke about the short story (novella?) that’s she’s doing as a project for this semester. We also watched multiple episodes of “The Flash”, where lots of bad things happened, and multiple episodes of “Arrow” where even more bad things happened, so next week’s viewing promises to be very exciting!

And now, having regaled you all with the last two day’s worth of our adventures, hopefully I can now get onto the “good” bits?

Food stuffs. Yesterday for lunch we were at The Shingle Inn at The Glen, where I had all my usuals – a BLT on Sourdough bread, an ooey-gooey, thick and chunky, scrumptious chocolate caramel slice, and a long black with a small jug of skinny milk on the side. Most delicious! For dinner last night we had another of the extremely nice Three Island Beef and (something-or-other?) sausages, chips (cooked properly in the oven this time!) half a tomato, and steamed green beans. For dessert I one of my “bald-kiwi-fruit” brown skinned Nashi pears, and one of the new Vaalia low-fat lemon creme yoghurts wot we got yesterday – and it was so, sooo nice! I think I might just have found a new favourite dessert! It was dee-licious! I can highly recommend it!  Today for lunch we had wraps, with our favourite basil-pesto hummus, Halloumi cheese, de-seeded tomato, some yellow capsicum batons, and ham – all very yummy – and once again (maybe I’m finally getting the hang of eating them! 😉 ) I managed to eat it all without dropping, or spilling, chunks of this or that, all over myself, or the recliner chair I was sitting in! Tonight for dinner we’re having pan-fried chicken breast on a bed of steamed rice, with finely chopped spring onions mixed through it (because Julian forgot to get any more tomatoes while he was out today!) Dessert tonight will probably be one of the enormous “Jazz” apples, but this time I don’t think I’ll try to eat all of it – they’re just too big! And… perhaps I might have another of those really yummy Vaalia lemon creme yoghurts, too… 😉

Weigh-in yesterday. Well, it’s improving… a bit… I went from 65.7 kg to 65.4 kg… Not all that wonderful, but certainly a lot better than going up again, anyway!

Weigh-in this morning. Again, a small improvement, though my feet are still terribly swollen, despite the anti-fluid tablets This morning I went from 65.4 kg to (finally!) 64.8 kg. I’m getting back to my 30 minute treadmillings, but my feet are really paying the price. I’ve already split the callous under the ball of my left foot, and the toe nail on my left big toe has also split a bit, which bled quite a bit – but that’s what happens when you’re on Warfarin (the bleeding, I mean, not the toenail splitting! It’s also why I end up with so many blood blisters on my toes ) Let’s hope I manage to go down a bit more tomorrow…

And that brings me back to tomorrow, once more! Auric and Dapple are well, and had their Fish House nicely scrubbed and polished last night – they’re so sweet and friendly! I know most of it is greed, and that they’re only hoping to get fed when you come over to say hello to them – but they’re cute! I love ’em, anyway! 🙂 Tomorrow I’m hoping to “practice” a bit more with my Mage “Silverhands” (look Ma! No funny accents or characters in the name!) on Saurfang, but apart from that, I have no idea what’s happening! And that, I’m afraid, is about “it” from me for tonight, but why don’t you all call back again tomorrow night to find out what did happen, with my weight, my Blog Project, and everything else that we got up to! Until then though, please try very hard to bee good, don’t forget that we are not here to make believe, we are here to believe we can make it, and remember to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm and dry in the last of the wintry weather… but most importantly, please… remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

¹ tutto fatto – Italian – all done!

² fait accompli – French – all done!

05.17 pm

Well, as usual, Julian and I had an excellent time in World of Warcraft today! 🙂 We did die a couple of times, but we also covered an awful lot of ground! We started off by taking Wynterthyme and Mouselet out of mothballs, and sent them off to do the pre-Expansion “Scenarios”. These are not-quite quests, and not-quite part of the game either, at this stage – because they’re there to “set the scene” for everything that will be happening after the Expansion – to tell the backstory, and to lay the foundations for the story arc after the Legion Invasion. It’s a little complicated, because we did these Scenarios twice! First with Wynterthyme and Mouselet, and of course saw things from the Alliance side of the fence… and then we did it all over again with our Horde characters, Xãnthe and Jemimah (who also died a few times!) and so saw it from the Horde perspective.

The Alliance side: King Varian Wrynn summons all fighters to help repel the Legion, led by the totally evil Gul’Dan, so off we all go. By the time we arrive at the invasion beachhead, we’re part of a massive Raid Party (of other players) and it all gets terribly chaotic and messy. It seems that a couple? one other? important Alliance NPC character(s) was “missing” (I couldn’t quite follow it all – as I said – it was terribly chaotic!) and we had to find him… which we do. He’s being held prisoner by none other than Gul’Dan himself, but it’s a trap! Meanwhile, over on the other side of a vast lake of vicious neon green goop (“Fel”, or something) Vol’jin the War Leader of the Horde, and Sylvanas, the (rather gorgeous) leader of the Undead, are gathering to assist the Alliance. King Varian, Vol’jin, and Sylvanas have realised that none of them can overcome the Legion on their own – their only hope is to join together to fight this new, common enemy. Going back to the Alliance and the sneaky trap. Seeing the Horde over on the other side of the lake of goop, King Varian is relieved to see that help is on the way – but then all of a sudden they hear Sylvanas’ battle horn sounding a retreat, and thinking that they’ve been betrayed, Varian orders his people back onto their (flying) battleship. In the confusion, King Varian slips, and his friend (sorry, can’t remember his name!) holds out his hand to help him aboard the ship. Varian knows that he can’t escape, his people need to escape, and he’s holding things up – so instead of his hand, he puts a scroll into his friend’s hand saying “Take this to my son!” His friend nods, Varian falls, still fighting the Legion demons that are surrounding him. He fights his way almost to Gul’Dan, but sneering and laughing, Gul’Dan kills him, shattering his body with Fel power.

The Horde Side. Sylvanas, Vol’jin, and Thrall are also looking for the same “missing persons” that the Alliance are looking for (why, I’m not too sure!) They too go through the same chaotic fighting as their Alliance counterparts, and in the same way, discover this “missing person”, only from the other side of the lake of green goop. Sylvanas realises that it had been too easy – that it was a trap! Now, I’m terribly sorry, but I can’t remember how it happened, but Vol’jin is fatally wounded, and orders Sylvanas to get the Horde to safety. Sylvanas realises that she’ll be abandoning the Alliance, and she really doesn’t want to break her word – but Vol’jin has left the Horde in her hands. She sounds the retreat, and takes the Horde, and the dying Vol’jin back to Orgrimmar. Goodness only knows where Thrall was, or what he was doing all this time! (Thrall had once been the War Leader of the Horde, but had given it all up to follow his Path and become a Druid (?) – he’s immensely powerful and strong, so you’d think he could have done something to help save the day!) Huddled together in their Meeting Hall in Orgrimmar, the dying Vol’jin officially hands over the leadership of the Horde to Sylvanas… and breathes his last breath. Sylvanas rallies the Horde, who are none too happy about having the undead Banshee Queen as their new leader, but when she declares “Who wants to follow me to get revenge on the Legion for Vol’jin’s death!!” they decide that she’s maybe not too bad after all, and (apparently!) agree to her leadership.

Meanwhile, back in Stormwind, Anduin, Varian’s son – and now King Anduin – hears of his father’s death. He, like his father, realises that they’re going to need the help of the Horde – and the Illidari – to fight the Legion. Only two dissenting voices are raised – how can they possibly trust the Horde again, after the way they betrayed them when Varian was killed? They storm off in disgust – they’ll fight with them – grudgingly, says Lady Jaina Proudmore, but she will never let them into her city!

I found it strange that the Alliance members had that discussion about the Illidari and the Horde, but at the discussion between Sylvanas and the Horde, after Vol’jin’s death, only the Illidari were mentioned… does Sylvanas feel too ashamed for having broken her word to the Alliance that she feels they’ll no longer trust her? Did I miss an important part of the conversation while I blew my nose, or something? I have no idea – hopefully all will be made clear in time! 😉

Now, I’m quite aware that most of you aren’t even remotely interested in all of the above, but I thought I owed it to posterity to bring you all up-to-date with just why Julian and I are running these pre-Expansion “Scenarios” – apart from the fact that you can get some really “Fat Loot” from them.

So after we finished fighting and dying as both Alliance and Horde this afternoon, we then picked up Dulcineà and Tourbillon, for their final romp around The Hinterlands before they move to another Realm – so as you can all see, we had an amazingly interesting and exciting day today! 🙂

And now on to the “good” bits! 🙂

Food stuff. Last night for dinner we had the most delicious little piece of fillet steak, with chips, half a tomato, and steamed green beans. For dessert I had a “bald-kiwi-fruit” brown skinned Nashi pear, and one of those really weir textured but still very yummy Chocolate Chia Pods. Today for lunch we had ham, cheese and tomato toasties, made from that tasty whole-meal bread with tons of sesame seeds in the crust, and of course tonight’s traditional Sunday dinner was omelets, with bacon, cheese, tomato, fried onion, and some chopped up green capsicum in them. I know I say it every Sunday night, but this time I think Julian really surpassed himself – my omelet really was one of the best I’ve ever eaten! And for dessert I had an “Eve” apple (because it was slightly smaller than the gigantic “Jazz” apples in our fruit bowl!) and an Apple Le Rice.

Weigh-in this morning. Tomorrow morning, I’ll probably go up a couple of points, because this morning I went down 6! I went from 66.3 kg yesterday to 65.7 kg. Well, at least it’s a start, because looking at the state of my swollen feet, there’s still plenty of fluid to shift!

And that brings me back again to tomorrow, which looks like it’s going to be a pretty busy day – just for a change! 😉 The oven repair-man will be here tomorrow morning between 8 and 8.30, and our cleaning lady will be here around 9.30-ish. Josh will be here tomorrow afternoon, and in the middle, we have to go out so that I can change over a jumper I bought because it’s the wrong size (don’t blame me if half the clothes I buy are size 14 and the other half are size “S” – and sometimes, even though they all either say “14” or “S”, some are too big, and some are too small! Go figure! I really wish there was some way to make, or even to force, manufacturers to standardise sizes!) I must also do my homework too, and look for some reasonably priced towels. The last time we went towel shopping, I only bought two towels, and two hand towels, because they’re really too expensive for what they are! Yes, they are good quality, about the right thickness, and a pleasing colour, without too much of that fancy hemming and/or pattern (that always shrinks, the very first time you wash the damn thing, pulling the towel horribly out of shape!) but they’re not made from spun gold, for crying out loud! Sheesh, talk about the Emperor’s New “Terry-Towelling” Tracky-Dacks Clothes! Anyway, two towels and two hand towels just aren’t enough, so I’m going to try Amazon, and see if I can find anything cheaper online! Mind you, I’d only buy one first, to see what it was like in real life – what looks like a nice pale blue online might turn out to be some hideous shade of cyan in the bathroom – and besides, you can’t feel what they’re like – they might be all scratchy and horrible! I also need to get a whole lot more magazine holders – at the moment my desk and my side cabinets are acting as “proxy magazine holders”, and I’m rapidly running out of room for my cups of coffee! Anyway, that’s about enough from me for this evening – do call back again tomorrow night – to find out if the oven got fixed, or if the repair-man gave it the last rites and told us to get a new stove, and whether I managed to change over my jumper or not (we still have the receipt though!) I’m sure you’ll all be anxious to know how much my weight went up, seeing as it came down today, and you’ll probably also want to know if I found any suitable towels to order, or if I managed to lose myself in WoW again, instead. But until then, do try hard to bee good, remember that there is no greater loan than a sympathetic ear, and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm and dry, because even when you don’t think it’s going to be cold or wet, remember that this is Melbourne… but above all, please… don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

04.46 pm

And here we go again! I’ve played WoW for most of the day – this morning I don’t think I had my screen “grabbed” once, but it’s happened twice this afternoon. Neither of us have any real idea as to why it’s happening, or what’s causing it, so I suppose, like everything else, I’m just going to have to learn to live with it. Anyway, my new Priest (or Priestess) Piubella has made it to level 22 – and I really must get her back to Stormwind and the Transmogrifier, if for no other reason than to change the appearance of her head-gear! Do any of you remember what the Evil Queen in Snow White looked like, with the big, high collar sticking up behind her head? Kinda “Elizabethan”, but without the frilly bit in the front? Well, that’s what the Heirloom “Tattered Dreadmist Mask” helm looks like on my two Priests (Priestesses) Piubella and Viverra, and they really do look a little… er… strange, with two little purple-ish, red-ish, “eyes” peering out from under the hood of a helm with a very ornate and high-backed collar! …The term “weird” doesn’t even begin to cover the way they look, actually! Piubella has now reached Astranaar, although she died on the way there… she stopped off to do the quests at Bathran’s Haunt, and at one point might have become just a trifle overconfident, and so managed to get herself attacked by three level 20 Forsaken (all with their Poison Grenades in-hand!) and a level 20 Wolf-riding Orc! Of course, with no Guild or Guild Bank over there on Saurfang yet, all Piubella had on her were a couple of little, baby level 5, healing potions, which weren’t even good enough to be used as grubby, second-hand band-aids! (and let that be a lesson to you Viverra, don’t make the same mistake as Piubella did, when it’s your turn to do those quests!) I tell you, it’s a ruddy long way from the Graveyard, to have to run back for your body, even in Wisp form! However, she made it, got her body back, and finished off the quests, then she was sent on her way to Maestra’s Post – which she ran straight past! At that stage, it was starting to get a bit late, and I really wanted to get to Astranaar quickly, to grab the Flight Point there, and to dust down at the Inn before logging off for the afternoon.

I’m not quite sure what we’ll be doing tomorrow in WoW – whether we’ll pick up again with Dulcineà and Tourbillon, and muddle along as usual with them, or whether we’ll dig Wynterthyme and Bobranda out of mothballs and attempt some of the new content “Pre-Expansion Events”, because I don’t really think Wynterthyme is capable of doing them on her own – as nearly all of Julian’s characters have done!

The Podiatrist did turn up – on time, too – this afternoon, and my poor, swollen feet do look and feel quite a bit better. Once more I’m in the position of having to choose the lesser of three evils, and it’s really a hard choice to make! Choice 1. Lengthen my morning walk back to 30 minutes again – resulting in more injuries to my feet. Choice 2. Consider the welfare of my feet, keep my walk short, but do two of them – and chop an extra half hour or more off my day. Choice 3. say “stuff it! I’m sick of this crap!”, keep on with my current walking routine, and slowly but steadily work my way back to 134 kg. Personally, I don’t like any of the available choices – what I want to do is never, ever (ever!) have to set eyes on those bloody (pardon my French!) pills again as long as I live, let alone swallow any more of them!

And having filled you all in on the day’s doings, I can now get onto the good bits!

Food stuffs. Last night we had well-trimmed pork chops, pan-fried with a little home-grown rosemary, with chips – yes, the broken oven handled last night’s chips very nicely, thank you – the repair man is coming to fix it somewhere between eight and eight-thirty on Monday morning… and interestingly, this place – or should I say, this stove – is already “on their books”, as the people we bought the house from last year had also called them out with for some sort of stove/oven problem! So, where was I? Ah yes – we had the pan-fried pork chops, with chips, our usual half a tomato, and peas. For dessert I had one of my Corella pears, and an Apple Le Rice. Today for lunch we had wraps, with basil-pesto hummus, cheddar cheese, ham, de-seeded tomato, green capsicum batons, and roughly chopped spring onions – very delicious! 🙂 Tonight we’re having fillet steak for dinner, with chips, our perennial half a tomato, and beans, and for dessert I’ll be having a “bald-kiwi-fruit-brown” skinned Nashi pear, and a Chocolate Chia Pod.

Weigh-in this morning. At least I didn’t go up again – that’ll happen tomorrow, no doubt, as this damned fluid doesn’t appear to be in a hurry to go anywhere – listen! I can hear my weight and all my retained fluid talking together in the background:
—
My Weight: “We leave on the morning tide!”
My Retained Fluid: “Nah – I can’t be bothered! I’m nice and warm and comfy, right here where I am! I’m sleeping “in” tomorrow!”
—
However, I went from a totally disgraceful 66.5 kg to an almost as disgraceful 66.2 kg this morning – but at least I didn’t go up again!

Oh, I must tell you all – since I took over my “experimental” blog for this big Blog Project of mine, I’ve been frustrated and stymied at just about every turn because I now no longer have an “experimental” blog where I can try things out – like the wonderful idea I had yesterday that I was telling you all about. So, I started up “Yet Another Blog” to act as my experimental blog laboratory. This afternoon I did briefly try out my wonderful idea, and… it doesn’t work! It seems that when you “scrape and paste” something from Word, into a Word Press blog page, the “scraped and pasted” stuff loses all of the attributes that you “scraped and pasted” it for in the first place! All because Word Press won’t let me do what I want to (do) which is to create a basic table in the middle of the page. No, I mean I can do that – “scrape and paste” a table into Word Press – I just can’t put the text inside the table where I need it to be (because the table has lost all the attributes I put in!) *sigh* Oh well…

And that brings me around to tomorrow again – and as I said before – we’re not sure yet exactly what or who we’ll be playing, but I can assure you all that whatever or whoever we play, we’ll have great fun lopping the heads off Demons and Monsters of all creeds, colours, and persuasions! This evening I might try a bit more experimentation in my newest blog – I still have a few Mad-Hatter ideas to try out (they probably won’t work, but hey! Ya gotta be innit ta winnit!) Auric and Dapple are both frolicking around in their Fish House – although they’re probably starting to get impatient for “Mummy” to come and give them their dinner! Flipper has already had her dinner and is happily asleep in her “cat-cave” again. Last night we started watching “Merlin” on Netflix – we only saw the first episode, but as there’s not really much on tonight, we might watch another one… Froth and Bubble and no deep and meaningful plot lines are entertaining and relaxing, some of the time! And that, once again, is about “it” from me for tonight! Do call in again tomorrow night to see if I was right about my weight going up again (and I’m always right, too – didn’t you all know that! 😉 ) and how we fared in Azeroth, or wherever we ended up – but until then, do try hard to bee good, remember to open your arms to change, but don’t let go of your values, and don’t forget to stay warm and dry this weekend, to always drive carefully, and to look after yourselves… but most importantly, please… don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

04.25 pm

Here I am again – around-about on time, I suppose… Actually, the Podiatrist should be here – right about now (give or take a few minutes, as she’s usually running late) but alas and alack – she can’t come today as she has a bad cold… but I’ve been told that she’ll be here tomorrow afternoon, about 1-ish! (and I just remembered something I was going to try out today, but forgot about until about two seconds ago! Typical me!*) I do hope her cold isn’t contagious any more, as I’ve already got one of those, happily living in my nose, and I’d never be so greedy as to accept another one, when there are – quite literally – hundreds of people out there, all waiting to catch someone else’s cold! 😛 Anyway, I suddenly find myself with a free afternoon, so I thought to myself “Well, Winter, why don’t you write a Blog, for a change, this afternoon!” so, here I am!

Remember last night how I was going on about something grabbing the screen away from me while I was playing WoW? And how I said that Julian (and I) were going to look into the possibility/probability of it being the Anti-virus software we’re using? Well, once again we seem to have mislaid our round tuit, so I just played as per usual this morning. You know what? I think it must have been the Anti-virus program! Because now that it realises we’re onto it, it’s laying low and behaving itself! I played all morning, with everything turned on for once, and the screen didn’t get grabbed away from me – not even once! But of course, now that I’ve gone and said that, I’m probably going to get the wretched screen snatched away from me every five minutes! So… maybe the problem is fixed, and maybe it isn’t, but I did get a good morning’s worth of uninterrupted play, which was rather nice! We’ve finally been able to get a bit of money over to Saurfang, at long last, though Julian had to get one of his “spare” characters to “ferry” it over, as I’m still waiting to be able to shift the new Guild over from Quel’Dorei – hopefully by Monday the seven days wait will be over! So, with the arrival of some much-needed cash over on Saurfang, I’ve been able to purchase some nice matching luggage for all the girls  – and at 14 gold each, Netherweave Bags are the cheapest, medium-sized bags you can get, so I bought ten of them! I also managed to buy some “clothie” Heirloom gear for us “Priests” (or Priestesses) so now any of my girls who aren’t Hunters (I think I have two Priests, and two Warlocks!) will get a 30% boost to their experience gains!

The other thing that we managed to get done today was to install my email upgrade – which so far, seems to be performing admirably! 🙂 However, the proof of the pudding, and all that! 😉

And that’s about all that’s transpired today so far, so I guess I should probably get on with all the good bits (depending on one’s point of view, naturally! )

Food bits. Last night for dinner we had two of the Three Island Beef sausages (one each) which, as usual, were extremely nice. There was one small fly in the ointment though – for some reason, the oven picked last night to misbehave, so we weren’t able to have chips, after all! Luckily we had some real, live potatoes on hand, which Julian thought we’d have mashed, but I thought that just having plain-old boiled potatoes would be nice for a change, so we had boiled spuds, baby Brussels sprouts, and our usual half a tomato with our Three Island sausage, and it was a lovely meal! There were no Chocolate Chia Pods, as we’d eaten them all, and neither were there any more of the Le Rices, Apple or not, and I didn’t think that the Corella pears were really ripe enough to eat – so I was reduced to having a “Jazz” apple, and a strawberry low-fat yoghurt for dessert! For lunch today Julian made sandwiches, using the same tasty whole-meal bread with the sesame seeds in the crust that I like so much, with basil-pesto hummus as a butter substitute, and sandwich-chunks of turkey, and it really made for a most delicious lunch! Tonight we’re having pork, pan-fried with a little home-grown rosemary, chips (apparently we can still use the oven, as it’s only the element that works with the “fan-forced” part that’s gone bung – the rest of it works fine, so with a bit of “adjustment”, we should be able to have our chips – and eat them too!) our usual half a tomato, and peas. For dessert tonight I think I’ll actually try one of the Corella pears, and as Julian’s just come home from doing the shopping, I’d say at a guess that I’ll be having either a Chocolate (or other flavoured!) Chia Pod, or some sort of Le Rice.

Weigh-in this morning. Silly me thought that it couldn’t get much worse than it was yesterday! Well, I was wrong! It was a lot worse than it was yesterday! I don’t know what’s going on, I truly don’t. Nothing has changed. We’re eating exactly the same things as I’ve been having since I hit maintenance last September, and I’m walking every day on the treadmill, just as I have been since we got it late last year. Yes! we did go out for a lunch and a dinner during this last week – but I also survived Christmas, Easter, and several Birthdays since last September with no ill effects! As for those terrifying little pills, I’ve been taking those wretched things for ten days, every third month, and by now, everyone who knows me is painfully aware of what they do to me! (sorry!) So… Q: what’s changed? A: nothing! Q: why is this happening now, after nearly a year?! A: I don’t know, and I wish I did, because I’d change whatever was causing it! Maybe “They’re” right, and people who do successfully lose a lot of weight do put it all straight back on again, or something! Julian says it’s fluid – but if so, why is it so much fluid this time! This has never happened to me before, and it really is scaring me! Yesterday I was horrified to find I’d gone up to 66.2kg – definitely the heaviest I’ve been since I reached Maintenance last September… but you know what I saw when I got onto the scales this morning? I’d gone UP ANOTHER 3 POINTS to 66.5 kg!

I don’t know what to do any more.

Anyway, that’s about “it” from me for this evening – I really don’t feel like writing any more… Call in again tomorrow night if want to – even if only to point and laugh at how much more my bloody weight has gone up. I’m afraid that I know a hell of a lot of people who are going to get their jollies saying “See? I knew she couldn’t do it!” – and obviously, I can’t! They were right, I was wrong. Fishes are well, Flipper’s well, Julian is well, and I’m just fat and depressed. Do try to bee good, and I guess we’ll see what tomorrow brings. In the meantime, don’t forget that chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit, and remember to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm and dry in this squally weather… but most importantly, please, remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

*Why is it that I’ll suddenly think of something really clever – like how to get columns to work properly on Word Press, f’rinstance – right when I’m really busy boring myself to insanity on the treadmill – like this morning, for instance? I’m going [trundle, trundle, trundle] “I’m bored…” [trundle…] then all of a sudden, and right out of the blue, I’ll think to myself “Yes! That would work! Gosh! Why didn’t I think of that ages ago! I’ll try that out later this morning…” Then fast-forward to a few minutes ago, and all of a sudden – I’ll remember! Grrr!

03.15 pm

Well, here I am again – a lot earlier this time, as Julian’s in Adelaide, but will be on his way to the airport soon-ish (it’s “wheel’s up” at 04.05 pm, Adelaide time! – err… I think!) so I thought it might be best to start writing early, in the hopes of being finished – or close to finished, by the time he strolls in the garage door – “Honey! I’m home!” – otherwise I’ll be trying to listen to him, and trying to write this, and all that will happen is that I’ll get confused, and all of you (Julian included) will get annoyed with me for not paying attention! So, I’m starting early (for a change)

So how have I been amusing myself all day, I hear you all asking. Well, I played WoW for the most part – leveling up Piubella, my new Priest on Saurfang – and not making a bad fist of it, either! I’m quite impressed with the Priest Class – mind you, I’m only level 16, so I’m still pretty much a “baby” Priest, but I’m getting there… It’s terribly hard though, we need the Guild and the Guild Bank money over on Saurfang, and I can’t do anything about it for another four or five days, curse Blizzard for being so security conscious! 😉 I’m also having weird problems with something on my machine! Something – as yet unknown (though I think I may have nailed the culprit!) keeps grabbing the focus away from WoW and plonking me back at my desktop. The screen just goes black for the space of about two heart-beats, and then I find myself staring at my pretty desktop wallpaper, instead of at the nasty monster I was just hitting with a Shadow Spell! *blink* and I have to quickly click on the WoW icon, and about another two heart-beats later, I’m back again – I’ve cast the spell (while I was busy looking at my pretty desktop wallpaper!) and because I wasn’t there to immediately cast another spell, I’m now being bashed around by this totally inconsiderate monster! So far, I’ve been lucky – but I came very close to getting killed a couple of times today, because of this ruddy screen-grabbing program (or whatever it is) We’ve been trying to work out what’s causing it by a process of elimination, but even with absolutely everything except the game turned off – including the Blizzard loading screen – it’s still happening… There is one thing, however, that never gets turned off… and that’s our Anti-virus and security program! I told Julian about it last time he rang me, and he actually said that it was possible! Apparently this new version of the Anti-virus software, which I think he installed about a week and a half ago? Maybe? (I think it was sort-of around about the time I first started having these problems – I think! I could very easily be completely wrong though!) anyhoo, this new version of the Anti-virus software is apparently a bit “fussy”, as he’s already had to turn part of it off because I use WindowBlinds, and for some unknown reason, if WindowBlinds is running, it won’t! (Julian hates and detests WindowBlinds, and I won’t use my computer at all, without it! – it’s a long story, which you’re better off not knowing!) So anyway, it might be the Anti-virus stuff, and we’ll look into it later on… Oh, Julian just rang from the Adelaide airport – he’ll be boarding in about fifteen minutes, he says – so I’d better start hurrying! 🙂

After lunch I couldn’t be bothered playing WoW, so I dithered around a bit… I should have been hard at work on my wonderful Blog Project, but you all know how it is – you have plenty of time to do something you know you should be doing, but you just… want to do something else! Anything else! …So I did. You’re looking at the results of my “something else” right now! Yes, I fiddled around with Themes and Headers and stuff, instead of writing diligently in my Blog Project! Oh well… all in good time! 😉

And that’s about been my day today! Flipper, bless her little heart and soul, has been surprisingly good and well-behaved today – usually whenever Julian’s not here – even if he’s only gone up to the shops – she parades around, weeping, wailing, and wringing her (virtual!) hands in grief: “Daddy’s gone! (waaaa!) I’ll never see Daddy again! (mrrrowwer!) Where’s daddy! (yowlll) Bring him back! (mmwwwaaaaowl!) Where have you hidden him, you evil, wicked Mummy! (waaaa!)” Today though, she’s spent most of it asleep on the bed, though she’s got up twice to raid the bowl of pussy biscuits (kibble) in here – and apart from a couple of short whinges, she’s been quite quiet! It kinda makes me want to say: “Who’s that strange cat lying on our bed! Where’s Flipper, and what have you done with her!” Anyway, by the time she wakes up to the fact that he’s really not “just in the other room”, he’ll be home again anyway. And now, on to the good bits! 😉

Food stuffs. Last night for dinner we had lamb backstraps marinated in the Feta Slurry stuff, and then pan-fried, on a nice bed of rice which had some finely sliced spring onions in it, and for dessert, I had one of my “bald-kiwi-fruit skin” brown Nashi pears, and some more rice, in the form of an Apple Le Rice. Very simple meal, but trust me – meat cooked like that is really lovely – and so tender and juicy! For lunch today Julian made me a sandwich this morning before he left – he wrapped it up and put it in the fridge for me, and I was supposed to take it out to warm up to room temperature about 20 minutes before I was going to eat it… Only I forgot, and I ate it straight out of the fridge – it still tasted yummy! It was made from that really tasty whole-meal bread with all the sesame seeds in the crust, with ham, Swiss cheese, and a dab of Beerenberg Tomato Chutney – very delicious! 🙂 Unfortunately I have absolutely no idea what we’re having for dinner tonight, so you’ll just have to wait until tomorrow night to find out! However, I can tell you that for dessert I’ll be having one of my Corella pears, and a chocolate Chia Pod! (even I need a break from rice custard, every now and then! 😉 )

Weigh-in this morning. Was totally disgusting! I haven’t weighed this much for over a year! Thank all the Powers-That-Be that I took the last of those absolutely despicably dreadful little fluid-hugging and weight-grabbing pills yesterday morning! Now all I have to do is try to undo all the bloody damage they’ve done to my body, before it’s time to start taking them again! I don’t see Dr. Y until March next year, but honestly, there just has to be a better way! I really don’t know if I can keep going through the heartbreak of seeing everything I’ve been striving so hard for just completely ripped away back to square one again, every three months! And each time I take those damn pills, I put on more fluid and more weight than I did the time before when I was taking them, and each time it gets harder and harder to get rid of all the excess! It might sound childish or petulant, but believe me, when you get on the scales in the morning and you see you’ve completely gone “off the chart” for the first time in over a year – all you want to do is cry! I thought going up almost a full kilo to 65.9 kg over night was bad enough… that was the very, very top line of my weight chart – I haven’t been there for over a year… this morning? Oh, those miserable little pills really, really love me! I’ll just have to write the figures in – there’s no room left on the chart… 66.2 kg. You know what? If I go up any more tomorrow, I’m going to go out and buy myself the biggest box of Belgian chocolates that I can find, and I’m going to sit down and eat the whole lot of them! And no Julian, I won’t share – you’ll have to get your own box! And I’m going to eat like a complete pig, for a week. Then I’ll go back onto the Optifast until next March, and we’re going to figure out what I can do, because I just can’t go through this again!

And that brings me – finally – back to tomorrow! I have the Podiatrist coming over in the afternoon, and a new version of my mail program for Julian to install. Apart from those two items, I don’t think there’s anything terribly vital on our agenda for tomorrow, though hopefully we’ll have been able to work out for once and for all what’s grabbing my screen’s attention at the most inopportune times, and I’ll be able to safely get back to leveling up my new little (well, she’s not really that “little”, she’s quite tall, actually, because she’s a Night Elf!) Priest… hmm.. or should that be “Priestess”, I wonder? Anyway, once again that’s about “it” from me for tonight – but do drop in again tomorrow night – to find out whether or not I’m going to need that box of chocolates, or whether Flipper finally realised that Daddy wasn’t lost, or being hidden somewhere, and if we solved the riddle of the mysterious screen grabbing! Until then though, please bee very good, don’t forget that it’s not the load that breaks you down, it’s the way you carry it, and remember to keep warm and dry in this strange but normal weather for Melbourne, to always drive carefully, and to look after yourselves… but above all (and most importantly!) please remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

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! 🙂

03.09 pm

Apologies to all of you – due to time restraints, there was no blog last night, and there won’t be one tonight, either! Julian’s sister will be in Melbourne tonight (she’s a Federal Court Judge who lives in Sydney) and we don’t often get a chance to catch up with her. This is one of those ultra-rare times, so we’re heading into the city this evening to have dinner with her! 🙂 I’ll fill you all in tomorrow night – I promise! 😉

In the meantime, do try very hard to bee good, always remember that our differences are policies; our agreements, principles, and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm and dry, because this is Melbourne, and just when you think the weather looks fine, it’ll start to storm, sleet, snow and hail – all at the same time… but whatever you do, above all, and most importantly, please… don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

04.56 pm

…and we’d been having such a good day, too! 😥

We finished playing WoW about ten minutes ago, and Julian went into the kitchen to organise some coffee while I started getting ready to write… and he called out “Oh no! We’ve had our first fatality!” I went in… and there was poor little Thisbe, lying upside down with her head on the gravel, at the bottom of the tank! Julian said that she hadn’t seemed terribly happy this morning when he gave them their breakfast, and now she’s… gone! 😦 Poor little thing! Julian checked, and changed, some of their water last night, even though it didn’t really need it, but after fishing Thisbe out, he’s now checking it again. The test results show that the PH is good enough to be called “perfect”, and the Ammonia level, while not 100% right, is certainly well within the “safety” margin. Thisbe was the one who wouldn’t swim up to the surface to eat the spirulina pellets – she’d get all excited, and swim rapidly backwards and forwards, but she’d never swim up… so this morning Julian fed them some of the “flaked” wafers/whatever they’re called – and which will have to be vacuumed up off the gravel because they’re just lying there untouched. Oh dear, I’m quite shocked, and very sad – she was a very pretty little orange and white fishie – we’re both rather overcome by this event! 😦 We were thinking of moving them into the big tank with Auric and Dapple either later this evening, or some time tomorrow – but under the circumstances, I think we’ll leave Pyramus in the small tank for another day or two – just to be on the safe side! (i.e. if Thisbe was “ill”, the chances are that Pyramus is ill too, and I don’t want him to come into contact with Auric and Dapple for a couple of days, just in case whatever-it-was that killed Thisbe is contagious!) I don’t even want to get another little fishie yet – certainly not until we’ve made sure that Pyramus is completely well and healthy, anyway!

World of Warcraft today… as I started to say at the beginning – we’d been having such a good day! Dulcineà and Tourbillon went from level 17, to level 30! Thirteen levels! That’s astounding! Neither of us died today – though Julian’s character Tourbillon came very close! He said he was “channeling Demelza” at the time, and fell off a very high cliff (and quite frankly, I’m surprised that he survived it!) For those of you reading this who are unfamiliar with the term “channeling Demelza”: One of Julian’s first characters, Demelza, has a very unfortunate penchant for walking far too close to the edges of extremely high, steep places – ones which even a bird would think twice about approaching without a safety-net strung out below them – and her desire to see “what’s down there” nearly always terminated with a sudden and usually fatal stop upon reaching the bottom. Anyway, today he was very lucky – he didn’t die! (for a change!) One thing about our game today though, really did convince me that Quel’dorei has had its day – the whole place was crawling with other players – the Inn in Thelsamar, for instance, a “quiet little backwater” if ever there was one – honestly had to be seen to be believed – you literally couldn’t move for all the people milling around in there – and while it doesn’t seem to bother Julian terribly much, I’ve about had it up to “here” (Winter indicates a line in the air with her hands, somewhere between her chin and her eyes) with hanging about, waiting for my turn to finish a quest, or waiting for the items and mobs needed for the quest to re-spawn! As I said the other night, I’ve been playing a bit on another Realm (Server!) called Saurfang, which doesn’t seem to be as over-populated as Quel’Dorei – so what I’m proposing to do is get one of my Characters – a level 21 Night Elf Hunter called Calypsõ – to leave our Guild, and start up a new one of her own – I haven’t thought of a good name for it yet – She’ll also take a bit more than half the gold from the Guild Bank, and anything else that she thinks might be “useful” in a new Realm. Five of our characters will also quit our current Guild, “Grumpy Old Farts”, so that they can sign the Charter for the new Guild – whatever its name ends up being. Once the new Guild is established, they’ll leave the new Guild and go back to their original Guild (“Grumpy Old Farts”), and Calypsõ will have a brand new Guild, complete with sufficient Bank Vaults, plus a few lower-level materials, to get things started with. Characters wishing to move to Saurfang* will sign up with the new Guild, so that when Calypsõ, as the Guild Mistress, takes the Guild with her when she moves to Saurfang, existing members will automatically become Guild Members if and when they move to Saurfang too. It’s a good plan, and also the cheapest way of doing it – so I’ll be working on that shortly!

And that’s about all the daily news, so now, on with the good bits! 😉

Food stuffs. Last night we had a lovely little piece of steak, with chips, our usual half a tomato, and some more of those delicious little Baby Brussels sprouts. For dessert I had one of my “brown-skinned-bald- kiwi-fruit” Nashi pears, and a chocolate Chia Pod. For lunch today we had ham, cheese and tomato toasties, which were absolutely dee-licious! They were made with the lovely whole meal bread that has all the sesame seeds in the crust, and it really toasts up perfectly! 🙂 Tonight, being Sunday night, we’ve got omelets for dinner! I can’t tell you exactly what will be in them, but I’m pretty sure there’ll be fried cheese, tomato, some sort of ham or bacon (probably!) red or yellow (or both!) capsicum, and either onion or spring onion (probably!) I’ll let you all know tomorrow night, anyway! 😉 For dessert tonight I’ll have a Corella pear, if they’re ripe enough – if not, I’ll have an apple – and an Apple Le Rice.

Weigh-in this morning. Wasn’t too bad, considering I’m still taking those horrible little pills! I went from 65.7 kg to 65.4 kg – down three points, for a change – but don’t worry, it’ll go up again tomorrow – it always does, while I’m on these wretched pills… 😦

And that once again brings me to tomorrow! I’m not sure what’s happening – I know I have my next Warfarin blood test in the morning, and I know Josh is coming over in the afternoon – but apart from that, I’ll either be working on my new Guild thingy for the Saurfang move, or working on a bit more of my Blog Project, so that I can get it up for you all – so I’m sure to be busy, as usual… 😉 In the meantime, do call in again tomorrow night to find out if Pyramus is still with us, how much my weight went up (because it’s sure to!) and what I decided to call the new Guild – as well as the results of the blood test, and all sorts of other bits and pieces about what we did during the day. Until then though, please try to bee good, don’t forget that the difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra, and remember to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm and dry in this changeable weather… but above all, please remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

*Moving to Saurfang – moving a character between Realms (read: Servers) costs $27 – doing the move this way will be the cheapest, as really only three characters need to be moved – Calypsõ, the Guild Mistress, Dulcineà, and Tourbillon. Anyone else we decide to move to Saurfang can be moved across later…

04.49 pm

Yayyy! We have our (proper) internet back! Not that Julian’s wifi set-up didn’t work brilliantly, but I guess I’ve just been spoilt over the years – I’ve come to think of it as just “normal, run-of-the-mill, everyday stuff” to be able to pause TV shows if you need to go and make a cup of coffee or something, and then to be able to fast-forward-like-mad through all the boring sports and stuff when you come back with your freshly brewed cup of coffee – especially now, with the ruddy Olympics just starting! 😉 Only one night without it (last night!) and I was going through severe withdrawal symptoms! At least I was able to play WoW though – with which I’m having a very peculiar problem at the moment! It’s been doing this for about a week (give or take a fortnight here or there!) and it’s most annoying! So far, I haven’t come to any harm when it’s happened, but if it does it while I’m in the middle of a Boss fight or something, my goose won’t just be cooked, it’ll be burnt to a cinder! What happens is this: I’m walking along, or whatever, and all of a sudden, the screen will go black, and then I’ll find myself staring at my desktop! I’ve not been kicked out of the game, or lost carrier, it’s as though the screen gets minimised (it doesn’t, but that’s the easiest way to describe it!) because if I click on the WoW icon, I go straight back into the game, as though I’d never left (which is why I said that if I’d been in the middle of a Boss fight, my goose would have been well and truly overcooked!) Something – and we don’t know what or why yet – is grabbing the screen away from WoW. So, now I’m going through the process of elimination – I close down everything that I usually have running in the background, and just play WoW. This morning, after an hour and a half with no problems, I started up Chrome. After about twenty minutes or so, I found myself staring at my desktop. Hmm! Chrome shouldn’t be doing that – let’s try again! And then my very favourite youngest daughter arrived, and we retired to the lounge room to chat, and have lunch. We don’t see nearly enough of her – she works full time, and has a husband, and a house full of cats, rabbits and a dog to take care of when she’s not at work – so today was a real treat for us and we made the most of it! 🙂

Later this evening, I’ll pick up my elimination testing again – this time I’ll leave Chrome turned off, then one by one, I’ll start up the things I usually have running in the background, like eM-Client (my mail program) Word, Photoshop, and an address book. If everything works properly, and I don’t get dumped back to my desktop, I’ll turn Chrome back on, and see what happens… if it dumps me again, well, I suppose I’ll just have to switch to Firefox or something!

Apart from all of that, nothing terribly exciting or interesting has been happening around here – Auric and Dapple have settled down after their traumatic encounter with the Golden Comet Piranhas, and Pyramus and Thisbe have been quietly getting used to their temporary Holding Tank. I fed them last night, and they didn’t really know what to do! I think they knew I’d sprinkled food in the tank, because they got all excited and milled expectantly about, but made no move to swim up to the top of the tank, where their little pellets were floating on top of the water. I stayed and watched them for a bit, but eventually I had to concede defeat, and walk away, hoping that they’d eventually “get the message” – and their dinner! When I went back about half an hour later, they were still down in the bottom section of the Holding Tank, but there were no pellets still left on the surface of the water, so either they’d swum up to get it, or the food had sunk deep enough for them to find, and eat it. I’ll see how they go tonight! 🙂 We’ll try moving them in with Auric and Dapple, either tomorrow night, or maybe sometime on Monday. This time we’ll only move one of them across at a time, to see how Auric and Dapple react to the introduction of a new fish – if they react badly to one new fish in their Fish House, then I think we’ll just have to accept the fact that Auric and Dapple don’t want “company”, and get used to the idea of moving Pyramus and Thisbe into the Den (here!) and making the small Holding Tank into a “Little Fish-House on the Prairie in the Den”, and becoming a “Two Tank” family!

And now, on to the good bits! 😉

Food stuffs. Last night we had some Coles-brand Beef sausages for dinner – which were actually very nice! and at least on a par with the Heston Blumenthal sausages that we usually get, although not quite as good (in my opinion, anyway) as the Outback Spirit sausages we sometimes get as well. We didn’t have chips with that, we had mashed potatoes, which was lovely for a change, and we had our usual half a tomato, and baby Brussels sprouts. For dessert, I had one of my “Eve” apples, and a small tub of Apple Le Rice. Today for lunch we had wraps, with basil-pesto hummus as the butter substitute, red capsicum batons, Halloumi cheese, sliced spring onions, and sandwich-sliced smoked ham, and for dinner tonight we’re having steak, with chips, half a tomato, and some more of the baby Brussels sprouts (I love Brussels sprouts! 🙂 ) For dessert tonight I’ll have one of my “bald-kiwi-fruit-brown” skinned Nashi pears (because I don’t think the Corella pears we got yesterday are ripe enough to eat yet!) and a chocolate Chia Pod.

Weigh-in this morning. Again. Horrible. I feel like an immensely fat pig! I went from 65.6 kg to 65.7 kg – up another point! Only four more days to go on those evil, twisted, malicious and sadistic pills 👿 (and another five days after that, to get them out of my system!)

And then we come to tomorrow, and our Sunday of leisurely leveling up in Lock Modan with Dulcineà and Tourbillon – hopefully not dying too many times! And also hopefully by then, we’ll have worked out, and fixed, the reason that my screen keeps getting snatched away! It really is most annoying! And we might – or we might not – try moving either Pyramus or Thisbe in with Auric and Dapple! If that single move works out, we’ll move the other one across too – but this time we’ll do the whole move a lot more slowly! And once again, that’s about “it” from me for this evening! Drop in again tomorrow night though, to find out how our day in Azeroth panned out, if we died at all, and how far we progressed during our sojourn there… You’ll also be able to catch up on how much more my weight has skyrocketed (bloody pills!) if we moved one or both of our new fishes in with Auric and Dapple, and whether we solved the riddle of my vanishing WoW screen! But until then, do try very hard to bee good, remember that when you know what you want, and you want it bad enough, you’ll find a way to get it, and don’t forget to always drive carefully, to look after yourselves, and to keep warm and dry, even when it’s raining cats and dogs outside, and it’s freezing cold… but above all, and most importantly, please, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂