05.02 pm

Well, I’m a bit later than I wanted to be, but it took me a little longer than I thought it would to get the new Header for this background working properly… I didn’t have the text lined up properly so I had to fix it, didn’t I! Ahhh… details, details…

I had a good morning, working on Mychal, who’s now level 26 and has now gone through the three different Specialisations of Warlockery (“Warlockery“?!? Oh well… you all know what I mean, I hope!) “Affliction” – destroying one’s enemies through pain, curses, hex’s, whatever – a master or mistress of shadow magic, who specialises in draining and damage-over-time spells; “Demonology” – using conjured Demons to destroy one’s enemies – a master (or mistress!) of demonic magic who transforms into a demon (oo-er! I didn’t know that! I haven’t turned into one yet, anyway!) and compels demonic powers to aid her/him… and last but not least, “Destruction” – calling down “damaging effects” – in other words, a master or mistress of chaos, who calls down fire to burn and demolish enemies – “sounds like fun!” 😉 At the moment, as well as working on my Warlock Mychal, I’m also working my way through the three Mage Specialisations with Avishag, Mercedez and Cersie (Fire, Frost, and Arcane) to find out which Specialisation I think is the best and easiest for me to manage. Unfortunately you have to wait until you get to level 10 before you can even choose a Specialisation, and then you want to give each Specialisation a few “trial” levels to see how it works out before you decide which one to stick with – and it took me ages to get my three Mages, first up to level 10, then picking one of the Specialisations for each of them, and trying it out for another few levels – so I decided to take a few “short-cuts” with Mychal, and just change her Specialisation after I felt that I’d had a fair test of each one. As I said earlier, she’s now level 26, and has tried “Affliction” and “Demonology” – she switched to being a Practitioner of the “Destruction” Specialisation right before I logged off at lunch time, so she really hasn’t had a chance to do much with that yet. I’m really wishing that I’d thought of switching Specialisations this way with my Mages – it would have saved me a heck of a lot of time (and gold, that I spent in getting the Mages set up properly! Grr!)

Anyway, that’s the way I spent my morning! 🙂 Not terribly productive, but I enjoyed it nonetheless 🙂 After lunch I had my “walkies” – and although this daily exercise has given me about 3000% more mobility in a lots of ways, what I want to know is, why aren’t I feeling the better for it! Yes, I can now get around shopping centres, and just about anywhere under my own steam now,  which is fantastic – even eight months ago I wouldn’t have been able to do it – but honestly, I ache everywhere! I still can’t stand up straight – I doubt that I’ll ever be able to do that again anyway, my spine is too bent – I get out of my chair, and it takes me a few seconds to even stand up, let alone hobble off somewhere – my knees creak, my ankles click – I constantly feel as though I’ve strained all the muscles in my upper arms (or what laughingly passes for “muscles” in my upper arms!) Mind you, once I am up and have finished creaking and groaning, I’m fine, and you can take me anywhere – especially if you don’t make me wear shoes! (and if you wave a piece of chocolate or a cup of coffee under my nose, I’m unstoppable! 😉 ) So after lunch I went for my “walkies”, then, just for a change, I took my kindle and went down to the lounge room to read for a bit. I’d almost finished the book I was reading last night, and I badly wanted to finish it to see how it all ended up – so I finished it, and was immediately asked (electronically) if I’d rate it before I “left”! I hate it when you’re pressed to give books you’ve just finished  a rating, with Stars, an’ all – sometimes you want to think about it a bit – you know, it might have been a good “yarn”, but was it well written? Did it leave you wanting to know more about the characters and what they did next? Did it have a satisfying ending? Now, I’m always telling people that if it’s a good story – a good “yarn” – I’m not too fussed if the author has inadvertently changed tenses or perspectives in the middle of a paragraph, misspelled, or made typos in common words – what I’m interested in is the story! I read for “entertainment”! (whereas Julian mostly reads for information and learning – which to him, is entertainment – so I suppose it really all boils down to the same thing, doesn’t it! The “entertainment”!) This book that I’d just finished was a good story – but it hadn’t been made clear when I bought it that it was part of a series! I wish it had been, because I would have waited until all the books were available before starting to read it! Now I’ve read the first book – and it was like watching the Season end of a good TV show! You’re left on a ruddy Cliffhanger! Goodness knows when this author will get the next book out, as from further digging, it appears that she has several “Book 1’s” of different stories out – one even has a “Book 2” – but there’s no mention anywhere of when the next book in this particular series can be expected! Arrggghh! So I’m afraid that she’ll get no “Star” rating from me at the moment, even if “Book 1” was a good “yarn”! 😛

So now that I’ve filled you in on all that, can I get on to the “good” bits? 😉

Food stuffs. Last night we had lamb backstraps for dinner, done in the griller – I must say that the griller does keep the meat it cooks very nice and juicy inside, which is a very big plus! With that we had chips, steamed green beans, and no – not our usual half a tomato, we’d run out of tomatoes and Julian forgot to pick up some more when he went out to pick up the Dry Cleaning – we had steamed carrots, with a “hint of honey” drizzled over them. I used to prepare carrots by cooking them in chicken stock, draining them, putting them back into the still-hot saucepan with a small knob of butter, freshly ground black pepper, and either a teaspoon full of Maple Syrup, or a small amount of honey (any sort of honey will do, but Leatherwood Honey is really the best!) and quickly sautéeing them before dishing them up. Most delicious! 🙂 For dessert I had an Apple Le Rice, and one of the gigantic, so-called “brown” Nashi pears. I think the Greengrocers were colourblind or something – they were no more “Brown” Nashi pears than I’m 18 years old! It wasn’t bad – very, very juicy, but crisp and crunchy at the same time – but really it was pretty tasteless, much like its “White” Nashi pear counterpart. I’ll eat the two that are left, but we won’t be getting them again. Luckily Julian was able to procure some more yellow Nectarines yesterday, so I’ll most likely have one of those tonight… For lunch today I had a Sourdough sandwich – not the yummy Seeded Sourdough which we finished off the other day – just plain yummy Sourdough – with sliced roast beef sandwich meat, that lovely yummy Tasty/Cheddar cheese that I really like, and which goes so darn well in omelets too, a smidgen of the Beerenberg Hot Tomato Chutney, and chopped lettuce… it was a really, really nice sandwich! I also had one of my three, languishing mandarins after my sandwich, just so that they wouldn’t feel “left out” 😉 For dinner tonight we’re having the second last of our four frozen left-over meals from the “Lamb and Harissa Lasagna with Feta & Oregano” (we’ll be having the last ones on Monday night, when I have my hair coloured, so we’ll want something quick and easy for dinner!) For dessert I’ll be having – probably – one of the new, yellow Nectarines, and one of the Vaalia Lemon Creme yoghurts.

Weigh-in this morning. My feet are swollen… and you know what that means! For some unknown reason, coz I’m not on those wretched pills at the moment – for some unknown reason, my body has suddenly decided to store fluid again! Bugger it! (pardon the French!) there’s absolutely no reason for my body to store fluid at the moment – unless it’s the warmer weather? Maybe my body thinks that it’d better store up some fluid for the Long, Hot, Summer which is about to burst forth upon us! Yeah, that’ll be it, fer shuuure! 😦 Anyway, I went from 65.7 kg yesterday morning to 65.8 kg this morning, which is actually well within that fabulous and mythical beastie, “The Margin of Error” – I guess we’ll just have to sit and weight it out…

Here I am again – I’ve just come back from having dinner (wot I told you about just above) watching “Agatha Raisin” (ABC1, Saturdays, 7.30 pm – quite a light and frothy little “Murder-Who-Dun-It”) an episode of “Merlin” on Netflix, and having a look at some photos of Julian’s old place in Adelaide, sent over by his sister who’s over there at the moment. When their mother died last year, the house was sold – amazingly very quickly – to friends of the family who lived in the same street! They’d taken in Jenny’s little dog Oscar, when she’d died, and now little Oscar has come full circle once again, and is back where he lived most of his life! Truth is indeed a lot stranger than fiction! 🙂 And I’m afraid that I must say here that as much as they love little Oscar, I’m quite sure that the friends of the family who bought the house did not do so for little Oscar’s sake, but because they knew the house and its history, and loved it, K? Anyway, Melissa, Julian’s sister, had taken some photos of the part of the house that’s been “re-decorated” – although “re-built” might be a better term there, so we were having a quick squiz at what’s been done… and if I didn’t know it before, I surely know now why I would not have made a good Architect! (which is what my father had always wanted me to be, even though I really sucked at Maths!) It seems that when it comes to house design I’m worse than pretty hopeless! It would never in a million years have occurred to me to knock down this wall, and put the kitchen here instead of there, and turn the entire end of the house into one very large kitchen, living, and entertainment area! Anyway, it’s not finished yet, but it’ll look really fantastic – and totally different – when it is! So now there’s me come full circle, filled you all in on every teeny little aspect of our lives today (well, not quite all! 😉 ) and up to tomorrow. Tomorrow, as I’m sure you’re all aware, is Sunday, and our “traditional” (should that have a capital “T”?) day Bashing Around the Broken Isles (it was “Them” wot broke them, not us, honest!) where we can run around, slaying monsters, acquiring Artifacts to strengthen our Special Legion Weapon (or whatever they’re calling it this week) Hopefully we won’t die too many times, but death is transient in World of Warcraft, and the only real damage that occurs is to your stash of gold, when you pay for “repairs”! And so that’s about “it” from me for this evening! Do call in again tomorrow night to find out if my weight exceeded that Mythical Margin of Error, how we fared in the Broken Isles, and whether we died or not – and if so, how many times, and what killed us… plus anything else interesting or exciting that might have impinged upon our daily doin’s… but until then, please try to bee good, remember that all too often we are given answers to remember, rather than problems to solve, and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm and dry on these cold, wet days… but most importantly, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂