03.46 pm

Well, here I am, and to catch you all up on what’s been happening in this neck of the woods, I’m going to ask for your suspension of disbelief for the moment, and pretend that I’m actually H. G. Wells in disguise, and that I’ve just written a story about a Time Machine… the story goes something like this:

It was Sunday morning, and Winter and Julian were getting ready for their weekly game of World of Warcraft, where Winter played a forthright and formidable Night Elf Hunter called, very imaginatively, “Wynterthyme”, and Julian played a very pretty – but very klutzy – Draenei Hunter called “Demelza”. Once a week (occasionally during a slow week they’d manage to squeeze in a bit more gameplay, but they usually only played once a week) they’d start playing pretty much as soon as they’d finished their breakfast, break for lunch around noon, after which Winter would head off for her daily twenty minutes of brisk, if somewhat mindless, walking on the treadmill.  When Winter returned to the Den, they’d resume playing until about half past four in the afternoon, so that Winter would have time to write her daily account of her day, or blog, before it was time for dinner. This routine usually worked fairly well – they had fun playing their game, Winter had just enough time to write her blog and get it online before their usual delicious Sunday night dinner of omelets, and all was well in the home… except for this particular Sunday!

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Yes, well we started playing as usual, broke for lunch, as usual, and I went for my walkies… also as usual – and that’s where “usual” stopped, and events overtook us. We were questing in the new Broken Islands area, where it was a matter of ride along for a minute or so (only side-tracking for Herbs, lumps of Ore, and killing any monsters either in our way, or on our “to kill for quest” list) before stopping to consult the map as to which way to go – rinse and repeat, many, many times! Because this area only became available with the latest Expansion at the end of August, we’re totally unfamiliar with it, and we have no idea where Flight Points are, or hidden Portals might be – so we’re out questing in the middle of no-where’s-ville, and it’s starting to get late! We had done a fair amount of exploring, and had filled in quite a lot of the blank spaces on the map – and fighting tooth and nail just about every inch of the way – but had found no handy-dandy Flight Points, or any reasonably quick and easy way of getting back to where we were – if we Hearthed then, and had to come back to finish off the quest chain, we’d be in the same position next time! That is, that by the time we’d fought, kicked, scratched, and clawed our way back to the place we’d managed to get up to, it’d be time to Hearth back home again, creating our very own little Groundhog Day scenario! We decided to press on – surely it couldn’t be much further that we had to go to finish off this ruddy quest chain! It was. We didn’t finish the quest chain and get back to hand the wretched thing in until after five thirty, and by the time we’d dusted down and quit out of the game, Julian had had to pause the News on ABC1 – thank heavens for Foxtel set-top boxes!

As I made it a rule, a couple of months ago, not to start writing after dinner and two hours of television watching after dinner (if I’ve already started writing the blog before dinner, I’ll finish it when I get back to the Den – but only if I’d almost finished it before!) on Sunday night I didn’t write anything – hoping that I’d have time on Monday night to write something. I usually don’t have time on Mondays, so I’m not quite sure why I was vaguely optimistic about getting anything written last night – for crying out loud, I was having my hair coloured, so I was going to have even less time – but I’m sure you all know the old saying – “hope springs eternal“, and all that… and of course, I didn’t have any time last night either – so nothing got written then, either! Sorry…

However, to re-cap: Julian and I had a great day on Sunday, even if we did have a late dinner! We both went up two levels, and we both died a couple of times… but death in WoW is fleeting, and your only “hurt” is forking out the Guild Bank’s gold for repairs to your armor and weapons (luckily Wynterthyme and Demelza are on Quel’Dorei, where the Guild Bank is very “comfortably well off”!) At one point of this remarkably long quest chain, we’d finished talking to a stone head that was lying just outside a rather grandiose underground “vault”, and we could see quite a few skeletons, just inside the entrance. We remarked on this, thinking that the presence of so many skeletons didn’t bode well for us – and without reading the quest through properly, we darted on in… and promptly died, adding our pathetic little skeletons to the rest! If we’d bothered to read the rest of the quest – which we then did, after we’d died – we’d have seen that the stone head we’d been speaking to had told us not to enter the vault until we’d completed the part of the quest where we had to find his arms and feet! Talk about a “duh!” moment! 🙂

Yesterday was also a good day – we didn’t have our cleaning lady – she comes next week – so I had just about all day to twiddle around with Mychal, my Warlock – who’s now level 33 and questing away in Desolace, and I also got lonesome for a Beast Master Hunter, so I made one of those too – her name’s “Aphra”, and she’s now level 10, and doing very well for herself! Josh came around at his usual time, only this time he did my hair colour… It’s totally fantastic! I am so pleased with it (and so is Julian!) This time I have three different colours instead of just two – the bright, vibrant, red that I usually have, which has a slightly blue-ish tint (?) because there’s a bit of violet in it, to keep it a “cooler” red,  the second is a sort of a beer-bottle brown (actually it’s more like the colour of my Jurlique “Clarity” liquid soap and hand lotion bottles!) and lastly, a light, slightly ash blond, to get the other two colours to tie in with my “natural” faded hair colour. Josh is a really remarkable young man – he’s a real artist, a great hair colourist, and a wonderful stylist! Thank you so my Josh – Winter is really back! 🙂 My hair’s looking a little messy at the moment as there’s not much hair spray or “product” to keep it in place, and it keeps falling in my eyes all the time, or I’d get Julian to take a photo to put up so that you can all see it – but never fear, you’ll see it as soon as I can persuade it to sit still, with a bit of water on my comb! 🙂 No, I won’t use any hairspray – not yet, anyway… unless I get really desperate when I get my Passport photos done again tomorrow morning, and then I’ll only comb a bit through…

Which finally brings me up to today! This morning I spent the day getting Mychal to Desolace, and picking up the odd Flight Point along the way (I think I only missed one!) As I think I said before – she’s level 33 now, and doing very well indeed! I might do some work with Aphra tomorrow – I’ll see how I feel after I get back from having those Passport photos re-done up at the Vermont South Post Office this time! (Julian did the last ones…they were really hideous! I looked so washed out and pale!) And that’s about everything of note that’s been happening around here, so I shall get on with the “good” bits! 🙂

Food stuffs. Dinner on Sunday was, of course, omelets – and maybe tomatoes are the answer?! We didn’t have any tomatoes on Sunday night – Julian had forgotten to get any when he did the shopping the day before (he also forgot to get bananas, so we had to have “tinned in a plastic bottle” sliced peaches on our cereal this morning, which was actually a nice change!) and the omelets on Sunday were really yummy! There was cheese, pre-cooked bacon, and pre-fried onion, and it was really delicious! The cheese was just so melt-y and tasty, and I didn’t miss the tomato at all! For dessert I had one of my Corella pears, which was actually about “right” for eating, for once, and an Apple Le Rice. Yesterday for lunch I had half a jalapeno savoury roll, and one of the Baker’s Delight fruit and white chocolate scones – only they seem to have run out of the white chocolate icing-drizzle stuff or something, because there wasn’t any, which was very disappointing! 😦 If there’s none next time I have one, I shall complain long and loudly! Last night for dinner, which was very late because of me getting my hair coloured, we had the last of our four left-over meals from the last Lamb and Harissa Lasagne with Feta & Oregano – Julian will have to make it again early next week, because it’s all eaten up now 😦 For dessert I had one of my nice, new yellow Nectarines, which was tasty and succulent – but I think I’m going to have to eat the rest of them over the next few nights, otherwise I think they might get over-ripe and ikky – and I also had one of my Vaalia Lemon Creme yoghurts (they’re really, really nice! you should all try some, truly!) Today for lunch I had two pieces of sourdough bread with some of the Cocoa and almond spread that we got the other day – I had a tiny taste the other day, and it was so nice that I decided to have it for lunch today for a change from meat and salad sandwiches. No butter or anything, just smallish, thin slices of sourdough bread with a smearing of this paste/spread/whatever. It’s ever so much more nicer than silly old Nutella, which isn’t chocolate anyway, it’s Hazelnut – and It was really nice to have for a change – but not terribly “satisfying”! There’s a lot more in a ham or roast beef, cheese, chutney and lettuce sandwich than there is in two small, thin slices of bread with a smearing of this Cocoa and almond spread – even if it is real chocolate! Tonight we’re having grilled chicken sausages, with chips, and probably steamed green beans and steamed carrots, as I don’t think we have any tomatoes yet… For dessert I’ll have a look at the yellow Nectarines, and if I think they’ll last a bit longer without dying of old age, I’ll probably have an apple – otherwise I’ll have another Nectarine – the one last night was really nice – and I’ll also have one of the Apple Le Rice.

Weigh-in Sunday morning: Wasn’t too bad – I was down a bit on Saturday’s weigh-in! I went from 65.8 kg on Saturday to 65.6 kg – down two points…

Weigh-in Monday (yesterday) Not happy! I went up one point! From 65.6 kg on Sunday to 65.7 kg. Bother, said Pooh, as he ate the last of his honey (which reminds me! I must put Leatherwood Honey on the shopping list! I’ll go and do that now! Uno momento!) Done! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. For some strange reason, having my hair done always seems to make me lose weight! (Hey! Maybe I should have my hair done every day! 😉 Only kidding! 🙂 ) I went from 65.7 kg yesterday to 65.3 kg this morning – down four points! Excellent! But you can bet your bottom dollar that I’ll be back up again tomorrow… swings and roundabouts… *sigh*

And once again that brings me up to tomorrow! I’m not sure what’s happening tomorrow, apart from the fact that I’ll be going up to the Post Office at Vermont South to have my Passport photos re-done – so I shall probably spend the best part of the day WoW-ing, as usual. Flipper has eaten nearly all of her dinner, Auric and Dapple are getting bigger every day – though I was a little concerned to see that Dapple had a slight case of the “floaties” last night – it’s usually Auric who gets the “floaties”, not Dapple! He’s usually a good little boy, and swims around properly! I might give them just a little less dinner tonight and see how they go tonight… But that’s really about “it” from me for tonight – do drop in again tomorrow night to find out how my Passport photos went, if my weight did indeed go back up (it’s sure to!) and what we got up to during the day. Until then though, please do try to bee good, don’t forget that it’s not what you do once in a while; it’s what you do day in and day out that makes the difference, and remember to look after yourselves, to keep warm and dry when the weather is inclement, and to always drive carefully… but above all, please remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂