04.55 pm
I’m baaa-aack!! Actually, I’ve had a couple of very busy days – Sunday having been taken up by one of my worst ever days playing WoW, and as a consequence, finishing very late, once again in an effort to make up some playing time – let’s hope that next Sunday is a little better than this one wasn’t! All Blizzard’s fault… (*glower*) Yesterday was really a pretty good day – our cleaning lady was here in the morning, and this time made a much more betterer job of my bathroom than she did the last time she was here (which, let’s face it, wouldn’t have been too hard to do!) and in the afternoon Josh was here, so now my hair is saying to me “Take us out and show us off!”, so I may just have to do that! The colour is really brilliant (and I don’t just mean that it’s “bright”, although it is that, too!) so I shall have to think really hard and come up with a plausible excuse for going up to The Glen tomorrow (or Knox City, or Forest Hill Chase) I’m actually expecting a delivery up at Forest Hill Chase – I bought a “lace-up” shirt online from Katies, and it’s a free delivery if you spend over $60, or when you order by what I think they call “Click and Collect”, where instead of delivering it to you, personally, they deliver it to either your nearest Katies store, or another Katies store which you’ve nominated, and when it arrives there, they SMS you and you go and pick it up – très “civilised” and clever, saving a host of problems and mix-ups to do with delivery times and instructions. Well, the shirt was “On Sale” (30% off!) and a hell of a lot less than the “Free Delivery if you spend over $60” stipulation; Julian prefers most of our mail items to go to our PO Box, but for various reasons I don’t really like items of clothing being sent there – so the shirt is being sent to the Katies store at Forest Hill Chase, and we’ll pick it up from there – the only trouble is I have no idea when it’ll be arriving – hopefully some time this week – but as an excuse to go out and show off my hair, I’m afraid that it’s nowhere near my usual extremely high standard of “Good Excuses For…” – so I shall have to think of something else…
Now, the reason for my displeasure and indeed, acute distress on Sunday… I’m sure that all of you can recall the many, many times that I’ve grizzled and complained about the ease and simplicity of the majority of World of Warcraft’s quests – and it’s true! The majority of the quests are almost embarrassingly easy – and the game does get boring, to the point where I often find that I’m starting to fall asleep at the keyboard! On the other hand, some of the quests are either just too hard – or too bugged – to complete! Well, you can finish them, if you’re extraordinarily lucky, or if you have abnormally lightning-quick reflexes. Most regular gamers don’t have either, no matter how often they’ve played the game, or how well they play. Julian and I team up on Sundays because I’m not as fast as he is, and I tend to suffer from “Fluster Lock”. Mostly I can hold my own – if I can play methodically at my own speed. On Sunday however, we struck two quests, one after the other, of which one was horribly long, and our team was arbitrarily split up – we each had to do this particular quest on our own. As a team, we would have romped it in, but it was a very long quest, and a very “busy” quest (lots of things going on at the same time, with lots of fancy-schmantzy special effects whizzing around everywhere, camouflaging my cursor!) with a horrible ending… so Julian did it first, with me watching, to see what had to be done. I probably could have managed it on my own, but in the end, after doing the wretched quest with Demelza, we then decided that to save (our) time, and (my) nerve frazzlement, it would be best if he then logged on as Wynterthyme and did mine too. I was not happy! So far, all I’d been doing all day was sitting twiddling my thumbs, and watching! We’d no sooner finished (Julian had no sooner finished!) with that stupid quest, when we hit the next one. Now, this particular quest we could have done together, if the timing hadn’t been so impossibly tight! It was hopelessly bugged, too! (there were about eight separate threads in the Forums – and probably a lot more that we didn’t bother checking – complaining about this particular quest!) First, we had to go out and (a) find a cut-downable tree for wood. That wasn’t too hard… (there were still plenty of trees around then!) (b) find and kill three piglets to get some meat (you even got time to skin them, too, at that stage!) (c) race back down the trail to the camp fire, light a fire with the wood you got from the tree you’d “chopped” down, cook and eat your meat. Sounds simple, doesn’t it! (sarcasm mode: ON) I actually managed to do that much on my own… (sarcasm mode: OFF) The next part of the quest was the bugged bit. You were then put on a timer – you had to “prove” yourself to a High Level Tracker – you had 90 seconds to two minutes (more or less) to do all of what I described above. For starters – we both had heaps of meat in our bags from all the hostile piglets we’d already killed… and as soon as you accepted the quest, all that meat vanished (for good!) and you had to go out looking for the piglets – which all seemed to have vanished too! It was a matter of hunting them. Once we’d found and killed a piglet and got the meat, we couldn’t share it – though in most quests of this ilk we could – if we did try to give eachother the meat, the quest failed and we had to start again. So, we had to – individually – hunt for – and kill three piglets (which weren’t as easy to find by now- no time for skinning this time!) and take their meat. Then we had to find a tree, which were hard enough to find in the first place – you had to run all over the mountain – waving your cursor over any tree you could find – hoping to see the little brass “gear” wheel that meant you could use it! Unfortunately, the ruddy trees weren’t re-spawning! Not just taking a long time to re-spawn, mind you, just not re-spawning at all! So, no trees? You failed the quest and had to start again. If you were lucky enough to get your three pieces of meat, and your tree, and get back to the campfire within the time limit, you had to cook, and eat the meat… one. piece. at. a. time.! Make a mistake, and cook, or eat it all at once? Quest failed – start again! Julian did manage to “squeak” it in – by the skin of his teeth. I didn’t. I was furious! I was ropable! I still am. We were playing as a team – a group! Whatever quests he did, I did too – whatever quests I did, he did too – or we did the quest together and took joint quest completion rewards together. Always! Except this time. He’s done it – I haven’t – and none of you have any idea of how that rankles with me! Yes, I’m a sore, and obviously a bad – loser! I don’t care! I resent the fact that he was able to do it, but by the time I was trying to do it? There were no trees, and no piglets left – what’s more, I’d spent literally hours, of my game time, sitting, watching, and doing absolutely nothing! I’m still hurt, and resentful – and if that makes me a bad, or a stupid person – well, so be it!
No… Sunday wasn’t really a fun day for me…
Today I’ve spent leveling up another two – or is it three – new characters – a Warlock and a Mage – as well as getting Zelenka, my Human Warlock, up to level 38 – I think that’s probably the highest I’ve ever managed to get a non-Hunter character! Of the other two – one is Viverra, who was a low-level Priest, but I’ve re-rolled her as a Gnome Warlock, and the other, Aliriah is a Night Elf Mage. Her name was supposed to be “Liri” – but for some reason I couldn’t use that – so I tried “Aliri” – nah – apparently it was already being used – so “Aliriah” it became.
Now for the good bits – after dinner and television! 😉
Food stuffs. For lunch on Sunday I had a seeded sourdough sandwich with ham, cheese, and some Beerenberg Hot Tomato Chutney – very delicious! Sourdough bread is sooo tasty! Sunday night, of course, was our omelet night – although it very nearly wasn’t! Julian went to start getting all the “stuffs” ready for the omelet, and… we didn’t have any eggs! …And as everyone knows, ye canna’ have an omelet without breekin’ a few eggs, now, canye! So poor old Julian bravely put on his shoes and his socks, and his jacket, and drove off to replenish our egg supply, and we got our omelets. I’ve just been given a blow-by-blow description of what went into the omelet and how it was prepared, however it comes under the Official and Top Secret “Julian’s Secret Recipes for Omelets” department, so I can’t tell you eggs-actly how much of anything was used, or how it was prepared (besides, it would take too long!) I can only tell you what was in it: diced onion… and chopped spring onions, roughly sliced thick-cut smoked bacon, chopped tomato, diced red capsicum, and large-ish squares of that yummy Cheddar/Tasty cheese that I like so much – oh, and eggs. Needless to say, it was another extra-nice, delicious omelet! For dessert I had my very last yellow Nectarine, and a Vaalia Lemon Creme yoghurt. On Monday I had another sourdough sandwich, with sandwich chicken chunks, cheese, and some Baxters Fire Roasted Tomato & Smoky Chipotle Relish (sorry, I can’t give you a link to see what it looks like – according to Google and Baxters, it doesn’t exist – here, in Australia, or anywhere else in the world – even though the jar is sitting right in front of me on my desk! Go figure!) Anyway, the sandwich was really nice, though at a pinch, I’d say that the Beerenberg Hot Tomato Chutney was the better of the two relishes. Last night we had grilled steak for dinner – done in the griller! Quelle surprise! – with our usual half a tomato, chips, and our very own home-grown, fully organic (and just a teeny bit earwig-munched, until we learned how to control them!) steamed bok choy! It was really nice to be able to eat our own produce again! We’re both looking eagerly forward to planting tomatoes again – the ones we had last summer were absolutely wonderful, so this time we’re going to be putting in twice as many! For dessert last night I had one of my new, and very tasty Corella pears and an Apple Le Rice. Today for lunch I had – yes, another seeded sourdough sandwich – as a Toastie, this time – with that yummy Cheddar/Tasty cheese (it melts really well, too!) ham, tomato, and a thin smear of the apparently non-existent Baxters Fire Roasted Tomato & Smoky Chipotle Relish – though I must say it certainly tasted real! Finally, for dinner tonight we had our delicious marinated chicken, pan-fried, on a bed of steamed rice with finely chopped spring onions mixed through it, and for dessert I had a very nice and juicy mandarin, and a Vaalia Lemon Creme yoghurt.
Weigh in Sunday: Disaster! Absolute disaster! I went up far too much… I went from 65.7 kg on Saturday, to…. 66.2 kg on Sunday. This is not good…
Weigh-in Monday: Not that much better, I’m afraid 😦 I went down one point – from 66.2 kg to 66.1 kg… I think it was the rather large carbohydrate filled lunch on Friday (was it Friday? I fergit…) followed by a rather large helping of the Lamb Korma with saffron rice… Not. Happy. Jan…
Weigh-in this morning: Well, at least I didn’t go up! My feet are though – like great big balloons 
I stayed the same this morning – I went from 66.1 kg to 66.1 kg… Here’s hoping it’ll be a bit down tomorrow – though I don’t much like me chances… 😦
And there you go folks! Pretty much a blow-by-blow account of my last three days! Flipper is her usual Vera-Vague self, and Apple and Dapple have a new air-stone burbling bubbles into their Fish House 🙂 The bubbles are much bigger than the ones made by the old air-stone, and at first I was a bit worried that they might be a intimidated or frightened by the bigger bubbles – but no! They seem to love them, and they’ve been swimming backwards and forwards through them! They’re so cute! 🙂 And now luckily for all of you out there, that’s about “it” from me for tonight – do call in again tomorrow night for a much shorter (much, much shorter, I promise!) “episode” in “The Life and Times of Winter P”! 🙂 Until then though, please try to bee good, remember that the best way to pay for a lovely moment is to enjoy it, and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm and dry now that it’s starting to get cold and wet again… but most importantly, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂
My Word! 