04.53 pm
Oo-er! I really shouldn’t-a, hadn’t-a, oughtn’t-a done that! 😳 Before I started writing this afternoon, I picked up my brand-new, just-arrived-in-the-mail-this-afternoon, “Donna Hay Birthday Issue” magazine – just to have a quick glance at, you understand, while I drank my mandatory “Necessary for Inspiration” pre-writing coffee. Well, three-quarters of an hour, and a third of a cup of almost-cold coffee, forlorn and forgotten in the bottom of my cup later, I realised my mistake! I shouldn’t-a stuck mah nose inside of them-thar covers… 
So, now I’m late, which means that I probably won’t finish this before dinner, and I’ll pay the price by having to finish this later tonight, after dinner and television, which I really hate doing! 😦
My very favourite eldest daughter usually comes over on Tuesdays, but she was busy today so she’s coming tomorrow instead, and I’ve had most of the early part of the day to work on yet another new Mage in WoW. Yes, another one! “But, Winter, why??!!!” I hear you all calling out, in dutiful Greek Chorus unison “Why yet another character!?” Well, because I want to try a Fire Mage this time! And after that I want to try an Arcane Mage, too! …and if Jordana, my new Fire Mage works out, as I suspect she will, I may turn one of my two Frost mages into an Arcane Mage, which I believe you can do without upsetting too many apple-carts, or having to roll another character. Jordana is only level 12 so far, and I’m extremely impressed with the calibre of the spells she’s got so far! Some of those Fire spells are really nifty! 🙂 Silverhands, who is a Frost Mage (she hurls freezing spells and kills largely by hypothermic means) is now level 55, and getting to be quite strong, but at level 12, Jordana with her Fire spells is almost as good already! I almost can’t wait to try out an Arcane Mage! 😉 “Watch this space!” Yeah, so that’s what I did with my morning! A gentleman from Shadewell Awnings and Blinds arrived fairly early this morning to talk to us about shade blinds for some of our west-facing windows, and as the price and the blind fabric were about right, we should have some semi-see-through awnings installed in about a month. The blinds, which are mainly to keep the heat out of rooms with west-facing windows (like our bedroom, the en-suite, and this room, the Den!) are 99% opaque, so you can sort-of see through them – a bit – this, of course, will please me, because honestly, I get so tired of only ever seeing drawn curtains, and/or blinds! Sometimes I even wonder why the hell we bother having windows at all! Flipper, who adores sitting in a patch of sunlight, will be pleased too! 🙂 This morning there was a teeny bit of sunlight trying to weasel its way through our drawn (as usual!) blinds in here, and Flipper went and sat very deliberately and primly in front of where she sensed the sunlight was, and just stared at us until we finally got the message… Julian pulled the blind up just enough for her to have a small patch of sunlight in which to sit, and then he went and got her her favourite mohair rug from the couch for her to curl up on, least she bruise her fragile old bones on the harsh and unforgiving carpet! Poor old girl – she doesn’t have too many pleasures left – how can we deny her the pleasure of sitting in a patch of sunlight, or a nice, warm, comfy bed to snuggle up next to her two slaves on at night, or plenty of “Daddy Pats on demand”, whenever she feels the need! 🙂
That Donna Hay magazine wot I oughtn’t-a gone and looked through before has some really yummy-sounding recipes in it – unfortunately an awful lot of it is fish, or seafood of some sort, which of course I can’t eat because I’m allergic to all of it – but there’s enough in there that I can “recommend” trying to Julian – like the roast butterflied chicken and all its variations, which sound really “healthy”, and easy to make, especially now that the warmer weather is creeping stealthily up on us… There are also some really nice recipes for fancy-schmantzy “make-em-yerself” icy-poles, like: dark chocolate turkish delight ice-cream, dark chocolate and coconut ice-cream, candied almond ice-cream, white chocolate and raspberry ripple ice-creams, with real-live (as well as frozen!) raspberries, fairy floss marshmallow ice-creams – and the list goes on! I have no doubt that if we did make any of those delicious sounding ice-creams they’d end up looking nothing at all like the pictures in the magazine (i.e. smooth, glossy, “professional”, and straight out of a Magnum packet from the supermarket freezer!) but I bet they’d taste absolutely wonderful! especially the salted caramel one, wot I didn’t put on the list 🙂 We bought a really good ice-cream making machine several years ago, but of course we haven’t used it since I went on my diet back in August 2014 – but we could now, and although the recipes don’t say to use an ice-cream machine, it does make the mixing and churning of all the “bits” (like all the raspberries, f’rinstance) a lot easier! “Food for thought”! 😉
Anyway, that’s about all I’ve been up to today, so I guess I can go and get onto all the good bits now?
Food stuffs. Last night for dinner Julian used his new George Foreman Grill for the first time! He cooked some filet steak on it, which we had with steamed Brussels sprouts, chips, and our usual half a tomato. At this stage of course, he’s still getting used to the Grill, and although the steak was very, very nice, tasty, and reasonably well caramelized on the outside, it was maybe a bit too overcooked for our liking on the inside… Julian says that the Grill needs to be hotter, and have a shorter cooking time – which he’s going to try tonight, with some Sirloin Steak. For dessert I had an Apple Le Rice, and one of my yellow Nectarines, which was still a little “crunchy” on the inside – I might give the rest of them another couple of days to ripen up a bit more… it’s a bit strange, really, as the nectarines are reasonably “soft” to touch… Oh well, it tasted really nice though, and I don’t mind them being a bit “crunchy”… For lunch today, Julian had to go out to get some papers signed, so he stopped and picked up lunch – pretty much the same as yesterday’s actually – half a ham danish, and half of a cheese and pineapple savoury roll, with one of the scrumptious Baker’s Delight white chocolate and fruit scones afterwards. Totally delicious! 🙂 Tonight as I said earlier, we’re having steak again – a different cut of steak, but still steak. This time Julian will wait until the Grill gets quite a bit hotter than he let it get last night, and he’ll cook the meat a little longer than he didn’t last night, too – and we’ll see how that goes! With the steak I think we’ll probably be having steamed green beans, chips, and out usual half a tomato each. For dessert I’ll be having a dark chocolate Chia Pod and one of the brown “Stewing” Bosc pears…
Weigh-in yesterday morning. Was relatively good, considering that I seem to be going through a fairly “heavy” patch at the moment (sort-of, anyway! And of course it has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with what I’ve been eating! 😉 ) Anyway, I went from 65.5 kg to 65.3 kg… As I said – not too bad at the moment…
Weigh-in this morning. Wasn’t so good. I’m see-sawing and yo-yo-ing up and down enough to make a seasoned sailor sea-sick! This morning I went back the other way – from 65.3 kg, back to 65.5 kg again. Ghod knows what it’ll be tomorrow – after my lunch today, it’ll probably go up to something like 65.9 and three-quarter kilograms! Erk! I don’t think I even want to think about it – if you know what I mean!
And once again that brings me around to tomorrow, when my very favourite eldest daughter will be over! 🙂 naturally we’ll sit and watch episodes of “Arrow” and “The Flash”, and of course I’ll want to talk to her about her latest uni writing project which she brought over the other day for me to read… Auric and Dapple are both well – Auric’s “floaties” definitely seems to have something to do with how much he eats – but it’s very difficult to judge how much each fish gets to eat – it largely depends on who grabs the lion’s share! Sometimes it’s Dapple, but mostly it’s Auric, cos he’s bigger, pushier, and faster than little Dapple (he’s also got a bigger mouth on him, the greedy sod!) and it’s not as though I can feed him in the kitchen, and Dapple in the laundry, like you can with cats! Oh well, and on that whimsical note, that’s about “it” from me for this evening! Make sure you call in again tomorrow night, to see what my weight did this time, what my very favourite eldest daughter and I watched during the day, and how I’m going with all those Mages of mine in WoW 🙂 Until then though, please try to bee good, remember that even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it (so why bother to try?!) look before they cross the road, and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm and dry whenever possible… but most importantly, please – don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂
My Word! 