04.45 pm

And… here I am again, to regale you all with tall tales and true of the legendary day… er, sorry about that one guys, I was thinking of the wrong show – as well as showing you all just how old I really am! I doubt that there are many of you out there who can actually remember those intro words from a very famous show in the late 50’s! Every Wednesday afternoon when I got home from school I used to walk all the way over to my Aunt’s place in the next suburb, just to watch it! 🙂 Anyway, it’s been a fairly quiet day today – we both played a bit of WoW this morning – not grouped, as we do on Sundays, just solo. Ellrevienne is now level 31, and as I predicted, running around the Cape of Stranglethorn, killing Zombies! Julian went off to try to get some more Flipper food, but no-one seems to stock it any more, so she’s still having to put up with her second favourite dinner – which might even be a part of the reason that she’s not quite so keen on eating her dinner – but I remembered to pick up and hide her pussy biscuit bowl earlier on this afternoon, so maybe tonight she’ll be nice and hungry! It’s also been pretty warm this afternoon, so we’ve opened up as many windows as we can, to get a bit of fresh air through the house!

As I said, Julian went out to try to get some Flipper food, and a few other sundries – you know, we do make a shopping list, on a really cool little ap, imaginatively called “OurGroceries“, that you can sync to your tablet and/or phone, so we’ve never got any reason to excuse to ever forget anything again – but we always do! So anyway, he went off fairly late this morning to get Flipper’s dinner – and a few of the other things that we’d forgotten to get yesterday! He also brought back some of my very favourite luncheon items, which we ate pretty much as soon as he got home, because he had a full afternoon scheduled with the very important “Fish House Redecoration Project!” Until he was ready to start, I poked around with a few graphicky things – like the new Header which you see at the top of the page! 🙂 (I hate this warm, balmy weather! It’s making me go to sleep! Every time I stop to re-read what I’ve just written, I find my eyes closing, and my mind… drifting away into slumber!)

When Julian had emptied out a third of the water from the Fish House, I dragged a chair over to the aquarium, to “supervise” and direct the placement of the new Fish House “furniture”. We kept some of the old decor, and threw out quite a lot of the plastic plants that Auric and Dapple had munched into hair-like filaments. I think the new “Purple Palace Rock” might be intimidating the two little fishies a bit because they both seem to be studiously avoiding it! You know, they say that goldfish don’t have a very good memory – even if the old “8 second memory” theory has been thoroughly debunked – but I reckon that goldfish are a lot smarter than we give them credit for, and I’m absolutely positive that there’s not too much wrong with their memories! When we were putting all the things back in their tank, we started off with the big “PPR” (“Purple Palace Rock”) and then tried to arrange the new plastic plants artistically and artfully around it – Auric and Dapple eyed us suspiciously from one end of the tank… then Julian gave the old plants that we were going to keep, a good scrub (to get all the bits of algae off them) and put them in too, in new positions on the floor of the tank. Auric and Dapple immediately made a bee-line for the old, clean and now de-algae-fied plants! They’d obviously recognised them – and congregated around them because the “old and familiar shapes” probably made them feel “safe”! Clever little fishies! 🙂 Anyway, as semi-promised last night, here are some “Before“¹ and “After“² piccies of Auric and Dapple’s “New and Improved Fish House”! 🙂

And that’s about all we’ve been up to today, so I suppose I can get on with the “good” bits, now? 🙂

Food stuffs. Last night we had the Beak & Sons Gourmet Chicken with Mushroom sausages – pan-fried this time, not grilled, and they turned out a lot more betterer! I feel that it’s safe to say that un-squashed sausages cut a lot better than squished ones! With them we had a few (very few!) chips, steamed green beans, half a tomato each, and mashed butternut pumpkin. For dessert I had one “white” peach, and one nectarine (and because they were both very small, I had one of each) I’d been under the impression that the nectarines were supposed to be “yellow” ones – I’m almost positive sure that the bin I got them from had a label on it saying “Yellow Nectarines” – but anyway, the one I had last night was about as yellow as an unburnt Briquette! With the fruit I also had the raspberry CHOBANI yoghurt, and it was all delicious! Today for lunch we had our usual “Home from the Shopping” lunch of half a piece of the two savoury rolls from Baker’s Delight,  and one of their absolutely scrumptious fruit and white chocolate fruit scones (which – as impossible as it may be to believe – was bigger, “fatter”, and yummier than ever! It was the nicest one I’ve had for a very long, long time! They must have a new Baker working there!) Tonight we’re having a fairly “plain” meal – pan-fried chicken breast on a bed of rice cooked with finely chopped spring onions – and for dessert I’ll be having a medium-sized apple, and a Vaalia Lemon Creme yoghurt.

Weigh-in this morning. *sigh* Well, it looks like those hideous little pills are going to get a running start at getting more fluid stored up in my cells! This morning I went from 67.3 kg to…. 67.3 kg! i.e. no change. Bum! (*sorry!*) I was hoping to shed at least a couple of points before Tuesday  morning, but that doesn’t look very likely now, from this end of the long, dark tunnel! 😦 Oh well, November 12th will dawn soon enough, I suppose…

Tomorrow, of course, is Sunday, and we’ll be having our usual romp and whack-em in the Broken Isles, though we’ll probably be finishing a little earlier than usual, because we’re going to be feeding Julian’s very favourite sister, who’ll be in Melbourne overnight. We thought of taking her out somewhere, but then decided against it, as she’ll probably be tired and just want to relax. We’ll be having our usual omelets for dinner, because (a) they really are very, very good, and (b) Melissa is a Vegetarian, and it’s easier to make a Vegetarian omelet than to find a really good restaurant which caters for Omnivores as well as Vegetarians! So I’m afraid that there will be no blog tomorrow night – and probably none on Monday night either (because there never is!) – but – look on the bright side! At least you’ll all have the comfort of knowing that there’ll be an extra long blog, on either Tuesday night or Wednesday night, to make up for it! 🙂 And that, gentle readers, is about “it” from me for this evening! Do call in again tomorrow night – just to see if I did manage to get a “place-holder” paragraph in, to keep you all up to date with what’s been happening over this way! But until next time, don’t forget that achievement is largely the product of steadily raising one’s level of aspiration and expectation – and remember to always drive carefully, to look after yourselves…and to keep warm and dry, even when it is warm and dry, because this is Melbourne, and subject to sudden abrupt weather changes – but above all, please remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

¹In this “Before” shot, Auric is on the far right, and Dapple is right behind him…

²In this “After” shot, it’s Dapple on the extreme right, and Auric who is almost “centre stage”!

05.00 pm

Gosh, golly, crikey, and gee-whiz! Here I am, pretty much almost on time again – well, maybe a little bit later than I would have liked, because we went out to that “scungy aquarium shoppe” that Julian had found yesterday while he was Taxi Driving for my very favourite eldest daughter. I looked at the photos last night, and the artificial rocks in the photos definitely looked promising (we’ve been looking for a nice rock with sort-of cave-type holes in it, so that Auric and Dapple could play hide-and-seek) The shoppe is in Mont Albert, near the corner of Whitehorse Road and Union Road, and it isn’t really “scungy” at all! Its name is Nature Aquariums and Watergardens, and while it might be just a teeny bit “cluttered”, it’s very big, and an absolutely fascinating place – well worth a look-in, even if you’re not particularly “into” fish. They have lots of live coral, lots of live plants (only a very few artificial ones) and a lot of fish – cold fresh water fish, warm fresh water fish, and marine fish and plants – there are fish tanks and aquariums as far as the eye can see, and just about every possible pond or aquarium accessory that the human mind can conceive of! A fascinating place! There was one little stand of plants, apparently for terraria, in tiny little cylindrical containers, that had a special hose dispensing a very evocative fog, or mist, over them, and there were rows and rows of shelves of real wooden logs, plastic or resin wooden logs, real rocks, artificial rocks, aquarium sized plastic ship wrecks, statues – in short, everything you can possibly think of for a fish or lizard tank, or a terrarium – with one happy exception! They didn’t have any of those terrible, ugly, revolting, “Disney”, or “Disney-esque” tank decorations! So anyway, after I’d walked up and down every aisle in the easily tennis court sized shop – twice – we chose a very pretty, and rather large, lavender-cum-mauve coloured artificial rock, with a few hidey-holes in it for Auric and Dapple to play in – and now I’m worried that they might swim into the holes and get stuck!

This morning though, I played WoW, where Ellrevienne is now level 28, and coming along quite nicely – she’d been running around in Duskwood, but around mid-morning she was sent off to Northern Stranglethorn, though I don’t expect to be there for very long either, before I’m moved along to the southern Cape of Stranglethorn, with its beautiful downtown Booty Bay! Anyway, while I was busily slaughtering Worgen and Dire Wolves in Duskwood, before being sent off to Northern Stranglethorn, Julian worked up in the Office, getting all of the relevant Tax “stuffs” ready for our Accountant. He would have liked to have kept working after lunch, too, but he wants to redecorate the Fish House tomorrow, so he decided that it might be a good idea if we went out and got our “feature rock” this afternoon, so that he could soak it, and all the other things that arrived the other day, in a bucket of water overnight, to “rinse out” any residual dust, dirt, or harmful chemicals that might still have been on them, before putting them into the Fish House.

We stopped off at Vermont South shopping centre on our way home from the Aquarium shoppe, to check our PO Box, and to – finally – get some much missed tomatoes! We also discovered that there were a “few” other things that we needed, like milk, bananas, beans, spring onions, frozen chips, meat, mineral water – along with a few other sundries – so we arrived home just a wee bit (and all the rest!) later than we had anticipated! Naturally, the very first thing that happened when we walked in through the front door was that I took off my torture devices (shoes) and flung them under the hall table, and the second was that we made a bee-line for the coffee machine, and got ourselves a much-needed cup of coffee… and that’s really about the sum total of our adventures today!

So, now I’ll get on to the “good” bits! 😉

Food stuffs. Last night for dinner we had a very nice piece of pan-fried rump steak – a little tougher than the fillet steak we usually have, but delicious flavour! With it was had steamed green beans, steamed home-grown and organic carrots (yumm!) and chips. For dessert I had one of my Corella pears, which despite the way it felt to a gentle hand squeeze (very hard!) was perfectly ripe and ready to be eaten, and I also had an Apple Le Rice. For lunch today we had ham and cheese Toasties, made with ordinary sourdough bread (i.e. not the delicious seeded sourdough loaf!) a smudge of the mysterious and mythical “Baxters Fig, Date & Balsamic Chutney”, some very nice sliced ham, and some of my very favourite Cheddar/Tasty cheese – and really, it was a most scrumptious Toastie! Tonight for dinner we’re having some more of the Beak & Sons Gourmet Chicken with Mushroom sausages – pan-fried this time, not done in the griller, because last time the griller really squashed them a bit too much! For dessert I’ll have another of the peaches that we got the other day up in the Fresh Food Market at Knox City, and as I was able to also find another raspberry CHOBANI yoghurt this afternoon, I’ll have that too.

Weigh-in this morning. I suppose I shouldn’t be too surprised – although I’ve been very good and dutiful for the past couple of days, my feet have been utterly unbearable! They are both so swollen, I had to get Julian to let the top buckle of my shoes out one notch this afternoon, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to get them on! So anyway, I know it’s fluid, but it doesn’t stop me from getting a tad upset about it – not least because my feet are really not having a fun time! Anyway, with the knowledge that I’m going through an “excessive water conservation” stage at the moment anyway, and knowing that come Tuesday morning, I have to start taking those excessively horrible little water-loving and retaining pills for a whole ten days of mental torture, because of the weight I know they’re going to make me put on, I was not particularly ecstatic when we gazed down at the readout on the scales this morning. Julian immediately said “*snort* It’s fluid retention!” I nodded mutely. Over night, for no apparent reason, I’d suddenly gone from 66.6 kg to 67.3 kg. This sort of thing is rapidly losing any comedic appeal that it might once upon a time have had, and I am no longer amused! Yes, I know it’ll go down – as will my poor, swollen feet – eventually! In the meantime, I have to grin and bear it, whilst feeling like a gross fat whale!

So, here it is, the top end of the day, and dinner’s nearly ready! Flipper has been fed, and according to her report card “Has eaten about half her dinner. Can do better! Flipper needs daily practice opening and closing her mouth with food inside it, and not with “meows for Daddy Pats”! 😉 Auric and Dapple haven’t had their dinner yet, because Mummy has been too busy in here writing her blog! Oh, I saw a little fishy today that looked exactly like Auric, only maybe a bit smaller? I tried to find one that looked like Dapple, and while there were some that looked a bit like him, their tails were all too small! Dapple has a very luxurious and fluffy “four-finned” tail! Anyway, once again, that’s about “it” from me for this evening! Do call in again tomorrow night to find out if Flipper did go back and eat a bit more of her dinner, whether my weight subsided or not, and if the Fish House was successfully redecorated – with luck, there might be a few “before” and “after” photos – but I won’t make promises that I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep! But until tomorrow evening, please do your very best to bee good, remember that sometimes people are beautiful – not in looks, not in what they say, just in what they are – and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm and dry in this mercurial weather… but above all, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

04.17 pm

Look at this! Will wonders ever cease?! I’m starting early today! …well… maybe not early, but – certainly “on time“, for a change! But before I get started, I just want to have a quick little grizzle to you all about subscription renewals, and the manner in which nearly all of these renewals are brought to our attention! Whether they be magazines, email notifications, online shopping venues, or blog-hosting sites – they all start clamouring and pestering at least two months before the subscription renewal is due! All of my magazine subscriptions, for both the “online” and the “print” versions of my foodie magazines, the National Geographic, all of the online services and software sites I’m subscribed to… newspapers, like The Age – all of them! About two, to two and a half months before my subscription is due for renewal, I start getting deluged with frantic and almost panicked streams of emails (and in the case of the “print” magazines, actual letters in my letterbox!) screaming at me “Your subscription is about to run out on [insert date at least a month and a half ahead]! Renew now, before it’s too late!” They even go so far as to try to tempt you with offers of a free new cookbook, or a free “extra” magazine “For the same, low “special” (just for you!) price (which “must end on Sunday night” – or something equally as unconvincing!) Honestly, it’s really starting to annoy me! I actually nearly fell for one of them today! I’d been fending off all of these panicky “Quick! Quick! Renew now!” messages for over a week now… and this morning I got an email from Word Press… my Premium subscription for this blog (I have several, you see) would be running out “soon” – so did I want to renew it now, to avoid having ads peppering my writing, as well as being able to continue using all these nice, pretty (read: “expensive”) Premium Templates?! It only took a little bit of searching to find out that my subscription doesn’t expire until November 27th – a whole ‘nother month away! I just sighed resignedly and marked the email “read” and moved it into the Word Press email folder. This afternoon, I received yet another one from Word Press. Oh Noes! My subscription was about to expire! But I could still renew it if I went to [insert link to go to for renewing my subscription] now!

The thing that threw me so that I almost fell for it this afternoon was that – under normal circumstances – none of these places actually give you the subscription expiry date – they make you go looking for it… I suppose they do that in the hopes that when you do find the date, you’re more likely to think “Oh well, it’s not due for another month, but I’m here now, so I might as well get it over with!” But this afternoon, they did put in the expiry date – November 27th – right in the middle of a paragraph of “tight” text! So all I registered – at that point in time – was a “month-word”, followed by a date – the 27th. And it was the second “announcement” from them in the one day! Could I have misread the one this morning? It’s the 27th today – so I re-read the second email. Yes, it definitely said “November 27th!” Today! Arrgghh, NO! Sudden visions swam through my mind of all of you being confronted with a churlish, undecorated and “plain jane” blog Template, not of my choosing, and with cheap ads peppered everywhere through my text! I immediately raced off to the Word Press renewal page, and I’d almost started to fill in their (rather scanty!) renewal form, when… my mind finally slowed down enough for me to catch on! This month wasn’t November, it was still October! I can tell you, I was not amused, and I closed my way out of their wretched renewal pages! Why do all these places do this sort of thing? Why do they try to convince you that you might “miss out” on something if you don’t renew your subscription a whole month early – and you know you won’t get that “extra magazine” that they always seem to promise you, because after all, it’s just all part and parcel of your yearly subscription! Grrr! 😡

So, having got that off my chest, what did I do today, while Julian was out playing Taxi Driver for my very favourite eldest daughter? Well, I didn’t watch any of my “Survivor Australia” episodes, I played WoW! 🙂 Typical, eh? I got my Draenei Marksman Hunter, Ellrevienne, up to level 20, and then had to get her all the way back from Darkshire, in the Eastern Kingdoms, to the Exodar, over in Kalimdor, so that she could learn to ride! By the time I’d done that, it was getting pretty close to “knock-off time”, so I logged off and had a bit of a fiddle around with a new font, and some of the very pretty and interesting PNG images that I got this morning. As you can see, I used the font, and one of the graphics in the header – what do you think of them? 🙂 I didn’t have very much time, but I didn’t think I did too badly in the twenty minutes or so that I had…

And now I guess it’s time to move on to the “good” bits, once again! 😉

Food stuffs. We had a fairly early lunch today because Julian had to head off straight after lunch to pick up my very favourite eldest daughter and get her to the dentist by half past one, so we had a very yummy sandwich, made from absolutely delicious “seeded” sourdough bread, with a smidge of butter, then ham, cold smoked chicken chunks, chopped lettuce, and a fairly modest smear of the totally imaginary (it must be, as I can’t find any reference to it online!) “Baxters Fig, Date & Balsamic Chutney”. It was really nice – I could very easily have eaten a second sandwich! Tonight for dinner we’re having pan-fried rump steak, chips, steamed green beans, and because Julian forgot – again! – to get tomatoes, we’ll have carrots again – maybe even our own home-grown, fully organic, curly carrots, this time! Tonight for dessert I’m going to take a punt that the Corella pears are ripe enough to eat, and have one of those, and I’ll also have an Apple Le Rice.

Weigh-in this morning. Well, I told you I’d probably go up today, especially after that (drool) delicious chocolate caramel slice (dribble) wot I had after my BLT at the Shingle Inn yesterday… So it came as no surprise to me that I went up today, from 66.4 kg yesterday, and back to “the number of the beast”, 66.6 kg this morning! Who knows what it’ll be tomorrow – knowing me, it could go either way, but I’m sort-of betting that it’ll go up again…

I’m not sure what’s happening tomorrow – Julian will be up in the Office, working on our Tax, which means that I’ll probably be doing my usual “thing” and playing WoW again – or, I might actually sit down and watch as much as I can of “Survivor Australia”, as we’re starting to fill up the poor old Foxtel Set Top Box-thingy, and if I don’t watch it soon, I’ll have to erase it – as it was me who made the new “rule” about stored shows – and that is, if we don’t watch something within two weeks, we erase it – and we’re already cheating on that stipulation! Flipper did go back and eat a bit more of her dinner last night, but it’s too early for her dinner tonight – however I did remember to take her pussy biscuits away early this evening, so maybe she’ll eat her dinner tonight – or maybe, she won’t! She is a cat, after all! 😉 Auric and Dapple’s new Fish House furniture arrived today (finally!) and Julian found a rather scungy-looking aquarium shoppe this afternoon while he was out, which actually had some nice looking tank “decor” items, so he took a whole heap of photos – which I haven’t seen yet! I’m to have a look at the photos, and if I think it’s going to be worthwhile, we might paddle down there either some time tomorrow, or maybe on Saturday, to see what else we can get to make our little fishie’s lives more entertaining and amusing for them. And that’s really about “it” from me for this evening, but do drop in again tomorrow night, to see which way my weight swung, what I thought of the aquarium photos that Julian took this afternoon, and if there’s anything I think is worth getting from them, and what I did end up doing during the day. Until then though, just try to bee good, don’t forget that to do two things at once is to do neither, and remember to always drive carefully, to keep warm and dry, even if it doesn’t look like it’s going to rain, and to look after yourselves… but most importantly – please remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

04.24 pm

Yes, I am still here… though you could be excused for thinking that I seemed to have fallen off the edge of the planet… er… world… giant tortoise?… whatever it is this week! 😉 I know I’ve not written anything since Saturday night, but I’ve sort-of been a bit busy… and also a bit lazy. However, shall I start off with Sunday, and our fun day of “Wynterthyme and Demelzae Break Heads in the Broken Isles”?

We had a good day – Saurfang is definitely a much more betterer place for going around and breaking heads in than Quel’Dorei! Much less competition! We got through a fair bit, and picked up a fair amount of loot, although we did die… several times, in fact! The first occasion , and the true highlight of the day, was totally inexcusable, and completely our own fault! You see, we had to do a certain number of things in an extremely hostile area – the first time we entered it we very nearly got creamed, and had to beat a very hasty retreat – then, after a conversation with our handy-dandy quest giver, we were given a very clever disguise, and so were able to just waltz on in and get whatever-it-was that we had to get. A few of the guards in there had devices that enabled them to see through our disguises, but as long as we avoided them, we were free to just go about our questionable questing business unmolested… until we saw a Silver Special Boss mob! “Shall we?” said Julian/Demelzae, with a devilish gleam in his/her eye “Why not!? What could possibly go wrong?” grinned Winter/Wynterthyme. We knew that the minute we attacked this mob (any mob within that area, actually!) that our disguises would be rendered null and void, but as this mob was in the middle of a small island in the middle of an ornamental pond, we thought that we should be safe enough – as long as we didn’t use any AOE (Area Of Effect) attacks, like “Barrage”, which sprays bullets (or arrows) every which-way, and which might, just possibly, and entirely accidentally, hit one of the mobs currently neutral to us because of our disguises! In fact, we’d spent most of our time in that area, constantly reminding eachother not to use “Barrage”, or “Multi-Shot” (two of a Hunter’s most potent attacks against multiple mobs, I might add!) So, being all too aware of the possible consequences of our actions, we sauntered benignly over to the small island in the middle of the ornamental pond. “Well, hello there, what can I do for you?” smiled the Silver Special Boss mob, completely taken in by our disguises. “Snarl!” said our Pets as we attacked him – and then all hell broke loose because (a) the small island was a lot closer to one side of the ornamental pond than we’d realised, and (b) when one of the other mobs who was close enough to the island to be affected by our sudden attack on his “boss”, and came to his assistance, we both panicked and forgot about our “do NOT use Barrage in here!” rule, and went in, all guns blazing! Bullets flew every which-where, numerous previously neutral mobs rushed in to the attack, and we were both taken down in very short order. “Well!” said Julian/Demelzae “we could have handled that a lot better, couldn’t we!” I nodded mutely. In fact, if we’d just kept our collective heads and proceeded with our original plan to take the Silver Special Boss mob down, we could have easily handled him, as well as his “too close for our comfort” assistant! You know, we might even have been able to get away with it if only one of us had used “Barrage”, though it would have been very hairy, but with both of us – and from different sides of the two mobs – using “Barrage”, we pretty much hit every mob between us and next year, completely “shredding” our disguises, and very rapidly getting us “deaded”! We ran back and collected our bodies, re-arranged our disguises, recalled our Pets, healed up, and had another shot (pardon the pun!) at the Silver Special Boss. Successfully, this time, and we didn’t even draw the attention of the near-by mob who’d come to his Boss’s assistance the first time! We cobbled our disguises together again, and triumphantly rode off, hand-in-hand, into the sunset (metaphorically speaking), with both of us waving a happy goodbye to all the once again neutral mobs on the way out. 🙂

Sunday “good” bits:

Food stuffs. For lunch we had my new invention, BCTs (Bacon, Cheese, and Tomato! 😉 ) on sourdough bread (toasted!) and I can officially declare them a rip-roaring success! I have a feeling we’ll be having them quite often, from now on! 🙂 Dinner was, of course, our “traditional” Sunday night omelets – which once again were totally delicious! There was tomato, more of my favourite Cheddar/Tasty cheese, green capsicum, pre-fried chopped onions and bacon in them, and yes, I suppose I did have a fair amount of bacon that day, but – it’s yummy, you know? For dessert I had two of my white Nectarines, and a Vaalia Lemon Creme yoghurt.

Weigh-in on Sunday morning. Was a bit better than Saturday’s weigh-in, I can tell you! I went from 66.7 kg (Saturday) to 66.4 kg (Sunday)

Monday was another WoW day for me – our cleaning lady was here in the morning, so I sat at home and soothed poor Flipper when the vacuum cleaner threatened to gobble her up (she’s terrified of two things – neither of which has ever hurt her or done anything nasty to her – going to the Vet, and the vacuum cleaner – not necessarily in that order! She also hates people whistling… I think it hurts her ears) Julian went out and did some shopping, but other than that, it was a very quiet day! Josh was over in the afternoon, and thanks to his expertise, my hair is still looking pretty good even though it’s now Wednesday!

Monday “good” bits:

Food stuffs. As Julian went out “around lunch time” because the cleaning lady was over, he brought lunch back with him – so I had a half of two different types of savoury rolls, and one of the totally scrumptious Baker’s Delight fruit and white chocolate scones. For dinner Julian cooked a recipe I’d found in a “New Idea” magazine (of all places!) that I’d bought as a magazine equivalent of “Junk Food”, however I thought that this particular recipe looked pretty good! It’s called “Dijon and Lemon Pork Steaks with Pumpkin Mash”, and let me tell you that it’s most definitely a “keeper”! It was delicious! The recipe called for 4 x pork scotch fillets, but scotch fillets can be very “fatty” – especially pork ones, so I’d told Julian to get the straight pork fillets instead. He bought two (pork fillets) cutting each fillet in half, then “butterflied” each half – that is, he cut them horizontally, but not all the way through – just enough for each piece to open up, a bit like a book? Anyway, the method paid off, and they were really nice! If you’re very good little Readers, I might even bung the recipe up for you all on my “Recipe” page! It was a little “odd” to be having mashed butternut pumpkin instead of any sort of potatoes, but it went well – and as I said, it’s a definite “keeper” recipe! For dessert I had one of my Corella pears and a dark cherry CHOBANI yoghurt.

Weigh-in Monday morning. Quelle surprise! Despite all the bacon on Sunday, I’d gone from 66.4 kg to 66.2 kg. Of course – I didn’t expect it to last…

Tuesday was a fun day, as my very favourite eldest daughter came over! As usual, after sitting in here and discussing the world’s problems for an hour or so before retiring to the lounge room and the television, we once again came to the conclusion that really and truly, everything should be left to us to sort out – we’d make a much better job of things than our current crop of no-hopers world politicians (well, it’d be damn hard not to do a better job, wouldn’t it! *Winter scowls at all current world politicians*) I tell you what – we’re both hoping that the new season’s of our favourite shows will be starting up again soon – because as much as we like “Arrow”, and “The Flash”, it’s starting to get to the “and it’s lovely Rice Pudding for dinner again!” stage… But we had a lovely day – unfortunately though, by the time she went home, I didn’t really have enough time to write anything!

And so on to Tuesday’s “good” bits! 🙂

Food stuffs. For lunch we had wraps, with Cheddar/Tasty cheese, chopped lettuce, red capsicum, ham, and our favourite butter substitute, basil-pesto hummus – very yummy, if a little “messy” to eat! For dinner last night we had Beak & Sons Wagyu Beef Sausages – unfortunately they haven’t updated their site, because I could only find a link to their “traditional” beef sausages, so you’ll just have to take my word for it – but they were very nice indeed – a little more “dense” than normal sausages, and they were easier to cut without “tearing”, too! With those we had a mixture of steamed (frozen) peas and (frozen) home-grown and totally organic leeks from our last “harvest”, chips, and because we’d run out of tomatoes, we had steamed carrots instead (not our home-grown and fully organic ones, though there’s still a lot of them still in the veggie garden!) For dessert I had my last two white Nectarines, and an Apple Le Rice.

And so to today! Last night the latest WoW Patch went “live”, so I was quite interested to see how it would pan out – as it was, I spent most of the morning updating all my Add-Ons! (extra programs to enhance some of the “default” WoW functions, which usually leave a lot to be desired!) Oh well, I’ll have to wait until tomorrow, to give the new Patch a really good “go”! As most of you know, we’ve been trying to get hold of some new “decor” for Auric and Dapple’s Fish House, as they’ve nibbled their current plastic plants down to, in some cases, long, thin filaments, which makes them look horribly “hairy”! Anyway, we’ve ordered some more, and they should be arriving “soon” – but the main rock formation piece with fish hidey-holes in it that I wanted for the centre-piece wasn’t available from the place we’d ordered the other items from, so I went hunting to see if it was available elsewhere… Google informed me that the Pet Stock store up at Knox City had them – so we went all the way up there to get one. They didn’t have any, and couldn’t (or wouldn’t?) get one in. They did, however, have a very nice alternative “log”, with plants on it…. for $84.00! Now, as I’m sure you all realise – we love little Auric and Dapple a lot – but even so, $84.00 is just a wee bit too much to pay for a plastic fake log, with plastic fake sword-fern fronds hanging off it! *sigh* Back to the drawing board! We did get a pretty deep red leafy plant (plastic, of course) and a fake plastic “rock” decoration thingy, that should hold the air hose to the aerator rock down better than the lumpy piece of white quartz that’s currently doing the job – it’s slightly smaller (alright, it’s a lot smaller!) than the nice, big, frond encrusted $84.00 fake plastic log that we wanted to get, but… that’s the way the cookie crumbles, sometimes!

Dinner’s calling to me in dulcet tones… Back soon…

09.29 pm

Well, it’s not exactly “soon”, but I’m back anyway! 🙂 We had lunch at the Shingle Inn at Knox City, and by the time we’d finished, and done a few other small errands and arrived home – it was almost time to start writing this! So much for today, so now I’ll get on with the latest “good” bits! 🙂

Food stuffs. Today, as I mentioned above, we had lunch at the Shingle Inn at Knox City. I had my usual – a BLT on sourdough, a yummy, gummy, gooey chocolate caramel slice, with a lovely almost crunchy biscuit base, almost a whole inch (2 to 3 cm?) of thick, luscious, creamy caramel, and almost a full ¼ of an inch (at least 4 mm) thick “slab” of milk chocolate on top! A really-truly “Slimming Biscuit”, from the days of yore! All that washed down with my usual “long black with a small jug of skinny milk on the side”!  Julian had a chicken and avocado “french pancake”, complete with every restaurant’s excuse for a “side salad” these days, and a rather nice looking wedge of New York Cheesecake, with a tall mug cappuccino to wash it down. Needless to say, neither of us was terribly hungry tonight, so we shared a light-ish dinner of a single pan-fried chicken breast, on a “cot” (a whimsical euphemism for “bed”!) of steamed rice in which some finely chopped spring onion had been mixed. While we were up at Knox City, I went shopping for some “proper fruit”, which I found at the fresh food market. I bought some very nice looking peaches, some yellow Nectarines (at long last!) 2 loquats – one for Julian to try, because I don’t think he’s ever had one, and one for me, because I haven’t tasted one since I was about eleven years old, and I wanted to see if they were still as nice as I remember them being. Lastly, I bought two – only two, because they were so big – brown Nashi pears. Tonight for dessert I had one of the peaches, and it was really, really nice – just at the right stage of ripeness for eating, and a Vaalia Lemon Creme yoghurt.

Weigh-in this morning. Well, all things considered, I was fairly pleased with my weigh-in this morning! I went from 66.4 kg yesterday morning… to 66.4 kg this morning! I stayed the same – however I’m sure to be up again tomorrow after my somewhat heavy “dessert” at the Shingle Inn today!

And now I’ve caught you all up to date! Tomorrow will probably be fairly quiet – my very favourite eldest daughter has a double dental appointment, and Julian will be chief Taxi Driver, so I’ll either spend the day WoW-ing, or catching up on my Survivor Australia episodes. Once again tonight, Flipper hasn’t eaten very much of her dinner (but then I was a little tardy in removing her beloved pussy biscuits!) but hopefully she’ll eat a bit more of her dinner before we go to bed tonight… Auric and Dapple are getting all excited about their new furniture, and are frolicking around, demanding to know when it’s going to arrive – and really, you know what? That’s about “it” from me for this evening! Do call back again tomorrow night to catch up on all the news – like: did my weight go up a lot, or only a bit? Whether or not I WoW’d or watched Survivor Australia, and how my very favourite eldest daughter fared at her dental appointments. Until then though, please try hard to bee good, remember that by swallowing nasty words unsaid, no one has ever harmed his (or her) stomach, and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm and dry – especially if you’re going to the Melbourne Cup – take an umbrella – but above all, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

04.07 pm

Well, I’m “fashionably early”, you could say – seeing that this is about the earliest I’ve started writing for a long time! It’s been totally miserable weather today – I’m just sooo glad that I’m not into the racing scene! It would have been absolutely dire out there at Moonee Valley for the Cox Plate! Brr! Julian’s lucky that he doesn’t seem to feel the cold, because for most of the morning he was outside in the cold – plus the occasional extremely heavy downpours – cleaning out our ex-fish puddle and its Water Feature fountain. He’s been trying to get to it for days now, but there always seemed to be something else that was either “more important” that got in the way, or else the weather was just too atrocious to be standing outside cleaning out a Water Feature puddle-pond! Things like …inadvertently missing my Warfarin blood test by a couple of days, so that became a “must do now!” thing, followed the very next day by his dental appointment, which very neatly bisected the day, and really didn’t leave enough room either before or after it for the cleaning of Water Features and fountains! In fact, he wasn’t home until late afternoon anyway, because he had to go out hunting for Flipper Food (which we’ve still been unable to find!) So… like sands through the hour glass, so were the days of last week – and he didn’t get the Water Feature and the fountain cleaned! This morning, however, he was absolutely bound and determined to clean the damn thing! It rained. It poured! Finally, during a brief lull in the deluge, he decided to do it anyway – so I’ll probably be visiting him in hospital, when he comes down with double pneumonia! At least he had the sense to have a nice, hot shower as soon as he finished with the cleaning, and came back inside! Actually, it was probably just as well that he did do the fountain cleaning this morning, and not waited to see if it cleared up this afternoon – because it’s absolutely vile outside at the moment – it’s freezing, it’s ferociously windy, and the rain is bucketing down as though everyone had a nice big Ark sitting in their back yards to escape on, as the antediluvian flood-gates appear to have been opened!

By the time he’d finished with the Water Feature and fountain, and had his nice, hot shower, it was lunch time, and guess what he’s doing right now?! He’s changing over 30% of the water, cleaning the glass, and vacuuming the gravel in Auric and Dapple’s domicile! Though, at least that’s inside (and almost directly underneath one of the outlet vents for the air conditioner!) Talk about a glutton for punishment!

And what was I doing, while he was wearing his fingers to the bone, outside in the freezing cold and the bucketing rain, cleaning up the Water Feature and the fountain this morning? Why, where else would I be but here, in front of my screen, running Sharmena around the Arathi Highlands, leveling her up and killing lots of Raptors, Gigantic spiders as big as a house (alright, as big as a cubby house then!) and Trolls… and Orcs… (she hasn’t got to the Ogres – yet – but they are next on her “To Do” list! 😉 ) I’m quite pleased with her actually – she’s now level 26, and she can heal, raise the dead, remove curses, and walk on water – amongst other things, like hurl chain lightning and bursts of lava – quite a talented young lady! 🙂 I also decided to give you all something new to look at whilst you’re reading – a new background and Header – though don’t worry, I know a lot of you really liked the old one – so to put your minds at ease, I can assure you all that they’re still there in my Word Press uploads, and they can be reinstated at any time!

Tomorrow, of course, is Sunday, and Wynterthyme and Demelzae’s day for riding around the Broken Isles, completing quests (ha! where possible, that is!) and biting their fingernails down to the quick, wondering and worrying about what’s in store for them come the next Patch, on Tuesday! But for tomorrow, no doubt we’ll die a lot, and get better a lot, and generally have a good time – unless Blizzard pull another swiftie and split our group up again – all in an effort to make the game much more fun for us, of course! *glower* So, we shall see what we shall see, and you can expect a full, blow-by-blow account of all our adventures and misadventures tomorrow night – unless we finish late again and I don’t have time to write them up for you! 😉 Then you’ll probably have to wait until Tuesday night…

And now having filled you all in on today’s doin’s, I shall hasten to get on to all the “good” bits! 🙂

Food stuffs. Last night we had some lovely Beak & Sons Chicken with Mushroom sausages – 100% Australian chicken with mushrooms, garlic and parsley. Pan-fried, as we’ve found that sausages – in general – don’t seem to cook as well in the griller, which is a sort-of a press, as they do in a frying pan (or maybe we’re just not using the griller correctly) With the sausages we had our usual half a tomato, chips, and steamed green beans, sautéed in a little light olive oil and toasted slivered almonds. Delicious! For dessert I had my last peach, which was very nice, though still a little crunchy (but I find that I actually don’t mind my fruit being a teeny bit on the crunchy side!) and a tub of CHOBANI dark cherry yoghurt. For lunch today we had ham, cheese (that lovely Cheddar/Tasty cheese that I like so much!) and tomato Toasties, which as usual were very yummy. I said to Julian that we could probably try making BCT’s next time, and he agreed with me, so maybe we can try that tomorrow. And yes, that is a deliberate “C”, and not an “L” in the middle of “BCT” above – because instead of Lettuce, he could put Cheese! That would make them “Bacon, Cheese and Tomato” Toasties, and I reckon they’d be a real winner! 🙂 Tonight for dinner we’re having grilled steak, mashed potatoes (though hopefully a little less than I had last time!) our usual half a tomato, and (probably) more steamed green beans. For dessert I’ll have one of my – hopefully ripe by now – Corella pears, and an Apple Le Rice.

Weigh-in this morning. Was not too bad (for a change!) I went from a “disgustingly fat” 67.0 kg to a simply “fat” 66.7 kg. I still have no idea why my body behaves this way – up and down like a yo-yo – I wish I did, then I could do something about it! Oh well, let’s see which way the leaden cookie crumbles tomorrow!

I started writing so early this afternoon that Flipper hasn’t even been fed yet, so I can’t tell you how she went with her dinner tonight! However, she did go back and eat some of her dinner last night, and she also came back and ate a bit more of it for breakfast this morning! She’s not here in the Den at the moment – I’m presuming that she’s asleep on our bed – so I’ve snuck over and stolen her pussy biscuits, so that she can’t wake up and come in to have a small snackerel before dinner! Auric and Dapple are probably wondering where I am, and why their tummies are thinking that their throats have been slit with a blunt and rusty knife (goldfish don’t actually have stomachs – they just have a very long gut!) but I shall go in and feed them once I get this online for you all (thereby making all of you the ones guilty of making my little fishies hungry! 😉 ) Anyway, that’s really about “it” from me for this evening! Do drop in again tomorrow night though, to see if I’ve had time to write anything – which really depends on what time we finish playing – and if I can, I’ll fill you all in on what happened, and what didn’t happen to us, and whether my weight disgraced itself again or not. But until then, do try very hard to bee good, don’t forget that success is a state of mind – if you want success, start thinking of yourself as a success, and remember to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm and dry in this horrible cold and wet weather… but most importantly, please remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

04.27 pm

Here I am again – what a strange, wet day it’s been! Actually, I’ve been out most of today – late last night during the course of a conversation with Julian about what we were going to be doing today, I idly said “When’s my next Warfarin test due?”, and Julian said “Good question…” and looked it up on his phone (Julian gets all the Dorevitch text messages about my Warfarin test results and when my next test is due, because although I do have a phone, for reasons of my own, it’s almost never turned on!) Then he said…. “It’s due on… [longish pause] the day before yesterday!” followed immediately with an indignant “How did we manage to miss that?!” “Probably because I forgot to write it in my calendar with a reminder!” I said… Oh well, that certainly solved the question of what we were going to do today! We had sort-of decided to go to Doncaster today, so that I could continue my long and – so-far fruitless – chase for the new MAC “Retro Matte Liquid Lipstick“* that I’ve been trying to track down! It was supposedly available at David Jones at The Glen, but they’d told me “Oh no, only the major David Jones stores have it – try Chadstone, or the city store!” Anyway, when I got home I Googled it again, and managed to find it at Myer, over at Doncaster Shoppingtown. Well, we had to go to Doncaster today anyway, to get more coffee (we do seem to go through a lot of coffee… probably because we keep on drinking it! But we needed tea, too…so…) We also needed more Flipper Food, because her “preferred” brand is a Woolworths only one – but as there’s only a Coles or an Aldi at Vermont South, the Woolworths store at The Glen had run out, and we had to get coffee and tea (and drop off some Dry Cleaning!) so… yet another reason to go traipsing all the way over to Doncaster! (again!) All we really had to decide was – where to get my blood tested! Two choices… drive to Glen Waverley, and the collection centre we’ve been going to since we moved, and then go on to Doncaster – or go straight to Doncaster Shoppingtown, and the collection centre in the Tower there, where we used to go when we lived just across the road! No contest! Naturally, we went to Glen Waverley! NO! I’m kidding! I’m kidding! 🙂 We went to Doncaster, I had my blood test done (we haven’t got the results yet though) dropped off the Dry Cleaning, and I finally pounced upon my lipstick with glee at Myer 🙂 Then we had lunch at The Shingle Inn, did our bit of shopping – the Woolworths at Doncaster didn’t have Flipper’s favourite food either, which is a bit of a worry! I hope they’re not thinking of discontinuing it! (she won’t go hungry – we have some of her second favourite food – but it’s annoying, because like me, she’s old… and set in her ways! 😉 ) and then we came home, to a most welcome cup of coffee… and about ten tons of ruddy email from that author’s list I’ve subscribed to! Ironically, when I received the first lot of emails, acknowledging my registration with a rather perfunctory “thank you for registering” note, they all – with no exceptions – said “I don’t send out many emails…”, or “I’ll only notify you when I’m offering another free book” – and now, the very next day, I’m getting anxious messages from most of them: “Did you manage to download my book alright?” and “I know I said that… [blah, blah, blah] but I couldn’t help myself, and here’s another free book for you… [blah, blah, blah]” Arrggghhh! I haven’t actually downloaded any of them yet! My “To Read” list is already as long as a century – Amazon, bless their little hearts and souls, sends me a daily (and sometimes twice daily!) list of book recommendations, and I’m such a sucker for an interesting title and synopsis that it seems I’m always clicking on a “Buy with one click” button… or stupidly clicking on a “Subscribe to This List for Free Books!”, where only some of the titles sound interesting enough for me to want to read, anyway! I’ve bookmarked all of the authors on the list, and if they promote anything that sounds really good, I’ll go fetch from Amazon or wherever! (I did try to download a couple of those “free” books, and the download procedure was so awkward and torturous that I finally decided it was more trouble than it was worth, and gave up!) And that’s all I’ve done all day! Given up my blood, walked the length and breadth of Shoppingtown, acquired a new lipstick, ate too much, read a lot of emails, got annoyed trying to download “free” ebooks from said emails, and… here I am, grizzling about it to all you nice readers out there! 😉 I haven’t even had time to check my WoW Auctions yet! Oh, yeah, and a new WoW “Patch” goes live next Tuesday, so Julian and I are expecting a lot of game down-time for a couple of days next week, while they fix all the messes that the new Patch caused!

And now on with all the “good” bits!

Food stuffs. Last night we had the beef-turned-into-chicken stew thingy that I’d told Julian to try. It didn’t turn out the way I’d hoped, but it did open up all sorts of avenues and ideas to try to “make it so”. Apparently I’d managed to confuse Julian when I said to add a tin of crushed tomatoes to it, because there was already vegetable stock in there and the added tomatoes made the stew a bit runny – what I’d meant for him to do was to add the tin of tomatoes – but to adjust the amount of stock in the recipe to compensate! Next time I’ll try be a little more explicit – or maybe a lot more explicit… in fact, it might be best if I just re-write the recipe… He also left the stew glubbing on the stove for a few minutes, and unfortunately it “caught” a bit on the bottom, so there were a few “burnt” bits in it (Warfarin results have just come in – INR 2.3, dosage 2.5 mg, which is the same as last time – next test on November 18th) back to the stew… we had it on a bed of plain, steamed rice – and despite the fact that it didn’t turn out the way I was hoping it would – and was expecting it to, and despite the fact that is was a bit runny, it still tasted delicious, and I hope there’s a lot left over and waiting, packaged up in the freezer, for a few more meals! For dessert I had one of my new peaches, which could have been a bit riper than it wasn’t (it was actually very nice, if a wee bit “crunchy”) and a Vaalia Lemon Creme yoghurt. Today we had lunch at the Shingle Inn over at Doncaster, where I had my “usual” – a BLT on sourdough bread, a yummy, gooey, slurpy caramel slice, and a long black with a side jug of skinny milk – I shudder to think what the scales are going to tell me tomorrow morning! Tonight we’re having Gourmet Chicken with Mushroom Sausages, by the same people who make the excellent Tuscan Pork sausages we had the other night. With the sausages we’ll be having our usual chips, steamed green beans, and half a tomato. For dessert I might try one of the white Nectarines that Julian got yesterday (I doubt that they can be any less ripe than the peach last night was, and it was fine!) and a Cherry CHOBANI yoghurt.

Weigh-in this morning. Was depressing and distressing, and I’m quite unsure as to how to proceed at the moment – the doctor doesn’t seem to have any ideas as to why my weight’s been going up, though she’s ordered some more blood tests (which have to be done “fasting”, so I didn’t have them done this morning with my Warfarin blood test) surely it can’t all be due to the fact that I’m not treadmilling at the moment – though that’s probably part of it, I suppose… and I do know that a lot of it is fluid retention – this morning when I got up my feet were already looking like balloons 😦 Apart from not treadmilling because I don’t want to aggravate my ankle any more than I have to – I’m not doing, or eating, anything that I haven’t been eating, or doing since I went on Maintenance, just over a year ago – but now, all of a sudden, within the last month, my weight has been steadily going up! And what’s even worse is that on the first of November I have to go back on those horrible, wretched little fluid-loving pills again, for ten days! (*resentfully*) As if I’m not carrying enough excess fluid at the moment anyway! This morning, I went from 66.6 kg – the number of the beast – to a truly disgraceful 67.0 kg. Not. Good! 😥

I put Flipper’s pussy biscuits away as soon as we got home this afternoon, but she hasn’t eaten her dinner yet this evening – she’s still asleep in the bedroom – warming up my side of the bed, for a change – Auric and Dapple are fine though – they’re funny little fishies! When I went in this morning to pull up the blind and turn on their “little suns in bottles” (a strip of led’s inside the aquarium hood) they were both awake and swimming around (they’re usually still asleep!) I said “good morning” to them, as I pulled up the blind, and told them how cute they were, etc., etc… Then I told them to close their eyes, because I was going to turn on their lights (yeah, yeah, I know they (a) can’t hear me, (b) wouldn’t be able to understand me even if they could hear me, and (c) aren’t capable of closing their eyes, anyway!) And then I turned on their aquarium lights… well, as I said, they’re usually still down at the bottom of the tank, “sleeping” when I come in in the morning, and when I turn on their lights, they just sort of wriggle away to another part of the bottom of the tank, and keep on “sleeping” for a few minutes, slowly waking up and moving around – but this morning they were already awake, and swimming around the top half of the tank – probably hoping to get an early breakfast or something, when I turned on their lights… Well! They both jumped in fright, darted around a bit, and immediately swam down to the bottom of the tank, to where I usually see them sleeping first thing in the mornings, and where they seemed to be “pretending” to be asleep, almost as though they felt guilty at having been “caught” swimming happily around looking for breakfast, when I’d expected to find them still fast asleep! As I said – funny little fishies – because after the usual amount of time they usually take to wake up once I’ve turned their lights on, they “woke up” and started swimming around again, as though nothing unusual had happened! And that’s really about “it” from me for this evening! As usual, I have absolutely no idea what’s happening tomorrow, so you’ll all just have to call in again to see what we’ve been up to – what my weight has gone up to, whether Flipper ever got around to eating her dinner, and whether I’ve got Shamena up another couple of levels or not. Until tomorrow night though, do try hard to bee good, remember (and you know I’ve said this before!) stressed spelled backwards is desserts, and don’t forget to always drive carefully, to keep warm and dry, especially during this nasty little cold, wet, spell, and to look after yourselves… but above all… please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

*Retro Matte Liquid Lipstick – the colour shown in the link, “Back In Vogue”, is actually the colour that I ended up buying!

04.32 pm

You know those days where you just can’t seem to get started on anything, you feel really blah, where you can barely find the energy to keep your eyes open – and all you really want to do is curl up and sleep? Well, that’s what I’ve been like all day – not ill or depressed, not tired, or even genuinely sleepy just… “blah!” So I haven’t really done anything today – oh, I twiddled around in WoW for a bit, and then decided that I couldn’t be bothered with that, and that maybe a bit of graphicing might perk me up a bit, so I sort-of puddled around with that for a while but ended up giving that away too – I couldn’t get no inspiration – if you know what I mean! 😉 (actually, that sounds like it might make a good song – lessee… “dum da da dum da… I can’t get no… inspiration… if ya know whateye mean…da da daaa…” – oh, it’s already been done!? Damn! *sigh* There goes another great idea! *sigh*) Anyway, I reckon it’s the weather that’s stuffing around with our physical and mental energies! One day it’s cold and pouring with rain, and the perfect day for staying inside and keeping warm – then the next day, it’s sunny and bright and far too warm for a cosy winter jumper and a big mug of steaming hot chocolate, and I find myself forced into a low necked, 3/4 sleeved summer top before I’m ready, caterpillar-like, to emerge from my snug and cosy winter cocoon! The Clerk of the Weather certainly has a lot to answer for! *scowl*

As I said, I twiddled around in WoW for a bit, but didn’t have the energy to really do much with Shamena, so I did what I always do when I can’t decide which character to play – I started a new one! Well, actually I didn’t so much start a new character, it was more that I re-rolled an older character. I counted up all my girls on Saurfang, and found that – in my opinion anyway – I had one too many Gnome Hunters – so I re-rolled Ellevienne (colloquially, “She comes”) one of my Gnome Hunters, as Ellrevienne (colloquially, “She returns”) a Draenei Hunter! I set her up, and immediately ran her off to Stormwind, to visit the Transmogrifier, and after that I took her down to Northshire Abbey, so that she could grow up questing in a Human environment. She’d just finished the first two baby quests when Julian arrived home from his visit to the Dentist, bringing our lunch with him – so I logged out, and I haven’t been back since, because after lunch I thought I’d do a bit of graphical doodling. Now he’s gone out again, because he ran out of onions to use in the stew he’s making for our dinner tonight – and I don’t have any fruit to have as part of my dessert tonight, because it seems that the only fruit available in both the supermarkets and the greengrocers, are apples, bananas, a few mangy pears, and a couple of kiwi fruit and mandarins! He’s just arrived home again, bearing onions for the stew, and I’m enormously pleased, because he also managed to find some “ready-to-eat-now” peaches, plus some “ready-to-eat-in-a-few-days” white nectarines! Thank you, sweetheart! 🙂

So what else did I do today? Lessee… I renewed my subscriptions to both Taste magazine, and Delicious magazine – and if you scroll right down to the bottom of the Delicious link (above) you’ll see that I’ll also be getting – as part of the “new subscription” deal – a copy of their new (hardcover) Cookbook, “At Our Table” – which I saw advertised as a “special” in a QBD email I got this morning, and was planning on getting for Julian as a surprise Christmas present from Flipper! Small world! And just as a little aside here – if you mostly read “real” books, and not just ebooks, QBD is a fantastic bookshop! They have all the latest titles in just about every genre you can imagine, and their prices are extremely reasonable! I used to practically live over at QBD in Doncaster Shoppingtown – before I got my kindle, and when I was over there every couple of days – and I don’t think I ever left empty-handed! Their gift vouchers make excellent gifts, too, especially if the person you’re thinking of reads a lot, and you have no idea what they might have already read! Just sayin’!…. 😉

Anyway, that’s brought you all up-to-date with my day, so I’d best get on with the “good” bits! 🙂

Food stuffs. Last night we had the marinated “Lamb Eye of Loin”, which was just as good this time as it was the first time we had it! Absolutely delicious! Once again we had it on a bed of plain, steamed rice that Julian had mixed with some finely chopped spring onion, and it was so tender, and so full of flavour… a really lovely meal! For dessert I had one of my Corella pears – which if anything was on the verge of getting a little too soft and ripe (but it still tasted lovely!) and one of the new (to us!) Guava and Blood Orange CHOBANI yoghurts – which was actually a little disappointing! I don’t know if the guava toned the taste of the blood orange down too much, or if there simply wasn’t enough flavour in the guava and blood orange to counter the sharp yoghurt “tang”, but as I said, I was disappointed, and I won’t be getting that flavour again. The best one of the CHOBANI yoghurts that I’ve had has been their cherry one, and luckily I was able to get a few more of them yesterday! Today for lunch was a “Baker’s Delight” one – we had one half of two different savoury rolls each, and one, lightly buttered, fruit and white chocolate scone each. Absolutely wonderful! I can hear the scales rubbing their tiny little paws together in glee, at the thought of teasing me tomorrow morning when I go for my weigh-in! Tonight we’re having a reprise of the yummy beef stew we had the other night – only this time we’re using chicken instead of beef, and I’ve told Julian to try adding a tin of crushed tomatoes to the mixture, to make a sort-of a modified “chicken cacciatore-slash-beef stracotto” (as I remember beef stracotto from my childhood, only tonight we’re using chicken, instead of beef!) I’ll let you know what it was like tomorrow night! 🙂 For dessert I’ll be having one of my new peaches wot Julian was able to find for me this afternoon, and a Vaalia Lemon Creme yoghurt.

Weigh-in this morning. Gave me a real sense of déjà vu, and also a bit of a shudder up my spine! Once again, I went from 66.5 kg yesterday, to 66.6 kg this morning! Back to the number of the beast! 😯 I hope my body isn’t trying to tell me something! 😉 Oh well, after that naughty lunch today, and what I hope will be a truly scrumptious dinner tonight, I’ll be more than a little surprised if I’m not up over the 67 kg mark tomorrow morning!

Flipper has just been fed, and allowed out of her dining room – and has hardly touched her dinner Still, we’ve removed her pussy biscuits, and we’ll shut her in with her dinner again for about half an hour later this evening – she seems to eat a bit more then. Auric and Dapple are both good little fishlets, and – that’s really about “it” from me for this evening! As usual, I have absolutely no idea what’s happening tomorrow, so you’ll all just have to drop in again tomorrow night to find out what we’ve been up to over here! I’m sure you’re all anxious to know whether Flipper ate her dinner later on tonight, how the “Strange Stew” turned out, and just how much my weight went up after all the carbs and sugars I managed to ingest today! Until tomorrow night though, please try to bee good, don’t forget that if it’s good, well, that’s wonderful; If it’s bad, well, that’s experience – and remember to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm and dry, because you never know when a cold change is coming… but most importantly, please remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

 

04.49 pm

Well, I might not be early today, but at least I am here! 🙂 It’s been a fairly quiet day – Julian worked in the office a bit this morning, and I WoW’d (well, what else was there to do?!) and then we went off to The Glen – I wanted to chase up that [heavily censored] lipstick that was  – according to their website – supposed to be available in the DJ’s store there. Nope! Only in their “main” stores, like the city… and Chadstone… and maybe a few others (the girl really didn’t seem to know much! You can tell, you know, by the way they nervously say “Umm” between every word… sometimes even twice between every word!, like this girl did!) Unfortunately, Julian refuses point-blank to go to Chadstone – for any reason – and we never go into the city… So I gritted my teeth, and shopped around for another largish bottle of body lotion. I mainly use it on my face, truth be told, and I usually get the Jurlique “Clarity” body lotion because it not only smells nice, it’s also non-greasy and my skin seems to like it – but I just wanted a bit of a change. So we were wandering around, looking at this, that, and the other, when we were approached by a second young lady, who offered her help – but she seemed to know even less about the products on show than the first girl did! When we left DJ’s, Julian and I were talking about our experience there – and we discovered that the second woman, for some reason, annoyed both of us greatly, though neither of us could quite put our finger on why she’d annoyed us so much! (Winter shakes her head in perplexity) Anyway, I spotted a body lotion that looked promising, but this young woman (a) couldn’t find one that she could sell us – there was only the three-quarters empty tester bottle on the shelf, and she was unable to find out where the rest of the stock was kept, and (b) on going over to her POS, was also unable to find the price of said product on her computer! I told her “never mind” – I’d keep looking – indicating politely, I thought, that from now on we’d manage on our own, thank you – but she stuck to us, like a burr to a long-haired cat, until almost in desperation I grabbed a big bottle of body lotion with a snazzy-sounding name and said “This looks quite good – I’ll have this one!” So she triumphantly headed over to her POS with Julian in tow, while I cowered behind the shelves looking at other products… This would have been a very good idea of mine, cowering behind the shelves, except for one particular product which struck my eye! There was a new-comer to the world of facial products, and heavens above and glory-be if they weren’t offering a…  lord, you’ll never guess it – I’ll have to tell you all! “Tooth Mousse”!! Tooth Mousse?! Tooth Mousse? It’s a fancy way of saying “toothpaste”, but I picked it up in utter astonishment to have a look at this brand-new wonder product! No one in the facial cream industry side of things makes toothpaste! Not even Burt’s Bees – and they do make quite a lot of pretty incredible products! The brand that I’d picked up is called “Divine“, by Therese Kerr – and they make all sorts of stuff – but this “Tooth Mousse” really got to me! There are two sorts, “Peppermint and Chamomile”, and “Lemon Myrtle and Chamomile” – I bought a tube of the latter one, as I’m sick to death of all toothpaste insisting on being “minty”! I’ll let you know what it’s like tomorrow night! Meanwhile, Julian was over at the POS with the annoying woman, having just finished paying for the large bottle of “Grown Alchemist” Body Cream with Mandarin & Rosemary Leaf that I’d grabbed, when I hurried over, brandishing my new-found tube of “exotique” Tooth Mousse, saying happily “I’ll have this too! How much is it?”

And then we went for lunch, which we had upstairs. We were going to have lunch downstairs, at the Shingle Inn, but seeing as we were upstairs anyway (DJ’s cosmetic section is upstairs at The Glen) and we were going along to Woolworths – which is also upstairs – after lunch, and we were right in front of a semi-decent-looking little coffee-lunch place, we decided to eat there. I’m sorry, but I can’t remember the name of the place (yes, it was that memorable!) just that it started with a “D” – hopefully some of you may be able to recognise the place from those clues and know what I’m talking about. After lunch we went on to Woolworths – mainly to see if they had any of Flipper’s favourite tinned food, which they didn’t, and to see if they had any decent fruit that I wanted – but they didn’t have any of that, either. We did a bit of other shopping there, and came back to the car via the Newsagents, where I got some very pretty “thicker than paper, but not quite as thick as cardboard” sheets to try out as a mouse mat (I have terrible trouble with mouse mats! They’re either too small, and my mouse keeps falling off them, or too big, and they stretch and buckle, or to “sticky”, or too slippery, and I can’t just use the desktop because it’s glass, and the optical mouse doesn’t work properly on it) And then we came home.

Upon our arrival, and after being screeched at, Banshee-like, in welcome by Flipper, we partook of a very much needed cup of coffee, and I got straight back on to pulling Shamena up by her bootstraps to level 20, and her riding licence. Not that she really needs to be able to ride, because she can now turn herself into a proper “doggy” type of wolf, where she can run along on all fours, a lot faster than she can jog, and wearing nothing but her shaggy wolf coat (so it’s a lot much more betterer than Worgen, running along in their Sunday Best human clothes, I can tell you!) And once I got her up to level 20, and got my riding licence, I logged off, checked my email, and started writing…

So now that you’ve been given a blow-by-blow description of “My Day”, by Winter P. I suppose I’d better hurry up and get onto all the “good” bits! 😉

Food stuffs. Last night, as you all know, we had the lovely Tuscan Pork Gourmet sausages, with mashed potatoes, half a tomato, and some extremely nice steamed green beans, sautéed with some slightly toasted almond slivers, and for dessert I had my last Nashi pear and an Apple Le Rice. Today for lunch at the coffee shop place at The Glen, I had a middling-nice piece of spanakopita – which miracle of miracles, didn’t come with the usual serving of sad, limp salad, drowned in its own dressing! The spanakopita really was much more nicer on its own! And I also had a rather delicious – and therefore terribly sinful – chocolate hedgehog slice. Tonight for dinner we’re reprising that absolutely wonderfully delicious marinated lamb backstrap – the “Woolworths Gold” Australian Lamb Eye of Loin, with Caramelised Onion – Succulent, hand seasoned lamb with cumin, fennel & fresh coriander (well, that’s what it says on the packet!) We’ll do what we did last time, and have it on a bed of plain steamed rice, to which some finely chopped spring onion will be added. For dessert tonight, I’ll have one of my Corella pears, and for a change, a Guava and Blood Orange CHOBANI yoghurt. I’ll let you all know what everything was like tomorrow night! 😉

Weigh-in this morning. Strangely enough, I was absolutely positive that I’d have gone up again today, but my body either decided to be kind (?? …..Nahhh! It’d never happen!) or thought it would play a huge practical joke on me! The practical joke won out, I think, because I went from 66.8 kg yesterday, to 66.5 kg this morning! Down three points! I’ll be back up again tomorrow though, so I wouldn’t get too excited about this morning’s weigh-in if I were you!

And that’s about where my day’s at, at the moment! Flipper has been fed, but it remains to be seen whether she’s eaten her dinner or not when Julian lets her out of her dining room… Ahh… she’s out, and he says she’s eaten “a bit over half”, which is pretty good – for her – and it means that she’s probably ingested most of her medication – for once! But I’m not going to give her back her pussy biscuits just yet, because without them she might go back and eat a bit more of her dinner. I’ll give them back to her before we go to bed tonight…. Auric and Dapple are both being good little Vegemite Sushies – and… that’s about “it” from me for this evening! Do drop in again tomorrow night though, to find out just how much my weight went back up, how our lovely piece of lamb turned out, and what that fancy-smantzy “Tooth Mousse” was like! Until then however, please try to bee very good, remember not to live down to expectations, but to go out there and do something remarkable, and don’t forget to stay warm and dry, even if the weather looks fine, to always drive carefully, and to look after yourselves… but above all, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

05.47 pm

Here I am finally – Julian has just come back from taking my very favourite eldest daughter home, and I’ve just finished ploughing through all my email… I made the probably rather silly decision the other day, to sign up for a fantasy/science fiction author’s list… They’re all ambitious young (and some not so young!) authors, mostly “self-published” via Amazon, I think –  and perhaps the best way for them to become “household names” is for them to offer “free monthly books” to everyone who signs up for the list! They’re hoping to get people curious and excited after reading a free “Book 1” of a planned trilogy, or just one book from a themed series! And I tell you what – there’s no better way to get a true bookworm hooked than to dangle the prospect of a free book once a month under their noses! Well, I said that it was probably a “rather silly decision” of mine to sign up for all these free books – my “To Read” list, on my computer here, my “To Read Next” list on Amazon, and a similar list on Goodreads is now longer than I probably even have to live (and I’m hoping against hope that George R. R. Martin will hurry up and finishes off his Game of Thrones series before either of us dies from old age!) Anyway, the email started pouring in today – all the “Thank You for subscribing to my list” notes from all the authors, and their instructions as to where to download all these ruddy free books! I’m starting to feel just a trifle swamped! (or perhaps “drowned” would be a better way of putting it!) Of course, I can always “unsubscribe” from the authors individually, or from the list in general – but this is books we’re talking about here! To me, books occupy the same level of emotion as a basket full of cute little kittens – I want them all!

Anyway, I’ll try to remember everything that’s happened over the past couple of days. Sunday, of course, was our first day of playing Wynterthyme and Demelzae from Saurfang. It was a good day all round, even though I eventually lost count of how many times we died! It was very tough going – that’s fer sure – and three times (three times!) we died when Demelzae lived up to her old name and did a “Demelza” in truth, jumping us – Thelma and Louise style – from a very, very high cliff, into what looked like a nice, deep river at the bottom! The first time, there were more rocks at the bottom of the cliff than we’d noticed at first… we hit the rocks, and died. The second time, well, the water looked deep – but it wasn’t, and… we died. The third time, the water was deep enough, only we hadn’t jumped out far enough, missed the deep water, and ended up on rocks in the shallows… where we died. We didn’t go up at all – at level 110 we’ve finished with all of that sort of baby stuff, and our object now – I think! – is to scrabble for Artifacts that will boost the potency of our special Hunter’s Weapon! It’s a bit complicated, but your weapon can now score points and abilities which improve your overall attributes… One thing I do have to say for the Broken Isles is that the quest chains are very long, very convoluted, and extremely onerous, and it’s no longer a matter of just saying “Well, I think we’ll finish off here and go back home to dust down and quit!” – because where the “go back home” is always extremely easy to do – just use your Hearthstone – it’s not an easy matter to get back to where you finished your questing for the day, without having to do everything except the original quest content, all over again – and by the time you do that of course, it’s time to head home, dust down, and quit – all over again – a vicious circle! There are very few Flight Points, and we can’t fly in the Broken Isles (Blizzard’s weird idea of getting us  to have more “fun”) so everything has to be done via “shank’s pony” – time consuming, and a true invitation to the state of rigor mortis! Oh, and another little “fun idea” of Blizzard’s! Split groups up, and make them do the full bloody quest solo! That particular little trick really made us mad on Sunday! We play as a group for a specific reason! We have more fun that way, we can both get the quests done in “a timely manner”, and without having to spend all the money in the Guild Bank on repairs, because we’ve died so many times that our armor is ruined! For some people, having to play solo like that is a damn good way to make them quit playing the game altogether, because they’re not fast enough, brave enough, or stupid enough to attempt some of the scenarios that we were forced to participate in on their own. A couple of times, Julian had to do the quests twice, because I wasn’t fast enough to get through them in the time allowed for it! You can’t even say “well, I think I’ll give this quest a miss – I can’t handle it on my own” – and just go on to the next quest – because you can’t get the next quest until you’ve finished the one before it! Anyway, apart from Blizzard’s idiocy – or perhaps in spite of Blizzard’s idiocy – we had a good time, and we’re both looking forward to next Sunday!

Yesterday, Monday… no doubt some of you will recognise the name “Mouselet”, Julian’s once super-powerful Draenei Shaman? Well, the changes that came in with “Legions” decimated his powers to the point where Julian retired him completely. I’ve never played a Shaman – I’ve played Hunters, Priests, Mages, Warlocks, Rogues – even a Warrior and a Druid! But never a Shaman! So yesterday I decided to try one – just for a change. Would you believe, I actually managed to get the name “Shamena”! I was amazed! Anyway, I didn’t get as long to play with her as I would have liked, so she’s only level 14 at the moment – but… so far, so good! I’ll let you know how she goes! 🙂

Today my very favourite eldest daughter was over – and we watched alternating episodes of “Arrow”, and “The Flash”, and a couple of episodes of “Legends of Tomorrow“, incorporating a few of the characters we’ve grown to love in “The Flash” 🙂

Sorry, dinner’s yelling at me – back later! 🙂

09.37 pm

It’s later, and I’m back… again!

“Legends of Tomorrow” – looks like being a reasonably good show – as I said earlier, it incorporates quite a few of the characters from “The Flash”, and also stars Arthur Darvill, who played “Rory Williams” to Karen Gillan‘s “Amy (Amelia) Pond”, as the Doctor’s Companions in the 5th Dr. Who series. It’s about time travel, and altering the time lines and what can happen when you do, so I’m looking forward to seeing more of it, maybe next week.

And that’s been my “last couple of days” – so now I expect that you’ll all be wanting me to get on with all the “good” bits, right?! 😉

Food stuffs. For dinner on Sunday night of course we had omelets – delicious as always, with yummy Cheddar/Tasty cheese, almost (but not quite!) melted in the frying pan before the rest of the ingredients were added – eggs (duh!) diced tomato, diced red capsicum, and some pieces of very nice smoked bacon along with some diced onion (both of which Julian pre-cooked before adding them to the rest of the filling) For dessert I had one of my Corella pears and an Apple Le Rice. Lunch on Monday was a sandwich made with sourdough bread, a leetle bit of butter, sandwich-sliced processed corned beef, Beerenberg Hot Tomato chutney, Halloumi cheese, and chopped lettuce – yummy! For dinner on Monday night we had pan-fried Veal steaks, chips, broccolini, and our usual half a tomato, and for dessert I had my last peach, and a Vaalia Lemon Creme yoghurt. Today for lunch we had wraps – basil-pesto hummus, sandwich-sliced processed roast beef, Cheddar/Tasty cheese, red capsicum batons, and chopped lettuce. Messy to eat, as usual with wraps, but very delicious! For dinner tonight we had some more of the “Tuscan Pork *Gourmet Pork Sausages* -gluten free- 100% Australian Pork with Fennel, Parsley and Parmesan Cheese”, with mashed potatoes, our usual half a tomato, tonight with a tiny bit of peri-peri spice sprinkled on it, and delicious steamed green beans, tossed with almond slivers that had been toasted with a teeny amount of olive oil to prevent them from burning or scorching – an absolutely fantastic meal! (thought there might have been just a wee bit too much mashed potato) Almonds go so well with beans – if you haven’t tried them, you really should! For dessert I had the last of my Nashi pears, and an Apple Le Rice.

Weigh-in on Sunday morning:  a bit better, though the same as Saturday – 66.3 kg
Weigh-in on Monday morning: aarrgghhhh! back up to 66.8 kg again! WHY??!! I didn’t do, or eat, anything different!
Weigh-in on Tuesday morning: reprise “aarrgghhhh!” I stayed the same as yesterday! 66.8 kg! For various reasons wot I shall not divulge here, I should have gone down, but I didn’t… and neither did my balloons feet! 😦 I are not a Happy Little Vegemite! 😦 (and neither are my balloons feet!)

We’re very worried about Flipper – she’s not eating her dinner properly, and as a result of not getting the right amount of medication, is getting very stiff, sore, and unhappy – we also think she’s getting a tad dehydrated. We’ve both “pilled” lots of cats in the past and we’re quite expert at it, but there’s no way known we’d attempt it with Flipper – it would be a blood-bath! She hates being held, struggles like mad when you do (and her claws are extremely sharp!) I think she’d rather struggle enough to snap her own neck, than let anyone poke a pill down her throat We know her kidneys are pretty bad, and we suspect they’re getting a lot worse. We’re just taking it a day at a time, and doing our best to keep her happy and as comfortable as possible… Auric and Dapple are both well, and their new aquarium “decor” has been ordered – although there’s been a small hiccup about that – but hopefully it should arrive some time early next week. And that’s about “it” from me for this evening! Do drop in again tomorrow night to catch up on all the latest – how Flipper is, what my stupid weight has gone up to, and how I’m coping with my new Shaman! Until then though, do try to bee good, don’t forget to never let yourself be limited by other people’s limited imaginations, and remember to always drive carefully, to look after yourselves, and to keep warm and dry in this uncertain Melbourne weather… but most importantly, please remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

04.59 pm

I’m sorry about last night, but as you all know, my very favourite eldest daughter was over for the day, and because her husband works in Geelong now instead of “locally”, he has a much longer, but far more scenic route home from work, and my very favourite eldest daughter doesn’t have to leave as early as she used to – hence, it was far too late to start writing before dinner, so I didn’t – but I’ll try to make up for that tonight, how does that sound?! 😉

Anyway, as I predicted, we watched alternating episodes of “Arrow” and “The Flash”, as well as having long, in-depth analytical discussions on the state of current world politics, and current American politics in particular. Believe me, you really don’t want to know the conclusions that we came to, apart from the fact that we both felt that the two of us would make excellent stern, but benevolent, world dictators!! Honestly, do any of you out there in Reader Land really believe that there are any politicians – with enough power to make one jot of difference – anywhere at all in the world – who actually do put the needs of the people that they supposedly represent before their own power and position?! Hint: the answer you’re looking for is “Of course not!” 🙄

I played WoW for most of today – I was bemoaning the fact to my very favourite eldest daughter yesterday that out of the only four races I usually play – Night Elf, Draenei or Gnome, if I’m playing Alliance, or Blood Elf – and the occasional Undead, if I’m playing Horde – I can’t roll a Night Elf or Draenei Warlock! It’s not fair – they’re the two “prettiest” races, and as you all know, I like “pretty” characters! 🙂 Anyway, we were going through all the races, and she mentioned Worgen – the “wolf-human” race (it’s a long story!) Now, Julian and I have usually avoided playing either an Undead or a Worgen – we’ve never really “taken” to them, you could say – and me with my “must have pretty”, well it wasn’t until only a relatively short time ago that I realised I could roll a reasonably “pretty” Undead! So I have quite a few of them, scattered amongst the Realms. But Worgen? I always vowed that I’d never roll one because of the absolutely revolting way they ran – on all fours, like a wolf, but with all their “human” clothes on! Truly horrible! Long gowns dragging in the dust, galloping along! No way! And then my very favourite eldest daughter told me that… they didn’t have to run like that – they could actually run upright, or even ride one of the many different mounts available! Naturally, I had to try it out, but I don’t think “Cresilda”, my newest Worgen Warlock, will be around for much longer. I’ve got her up to level 15 – but the scenarios are “buggy”, there’s no access to banks, flight points, or letterboxes (so you can’t even mail your character items like larger bags etc!) and perhaps worst of all – not much access to Vendors, so that you can at least sell off your rubbish to make room in your one, pitiful backpack! Yes, you can run “upright” – but it’s s-l-o-w, you can’t ride anything until you get to level 20, and at level 15, I’ve just learnt how to revert to my “human” form again – but what’s the point? As soon as you start fighting something – and you’re always fighting something, it’s just the nature of the game – you turn back into your Worgen form! The last big quest chain that I haven’t been able to finish because it’s still bugged – the person you’re supposed to follow to complete the quest simply doesn’t turn up – about called it for me – I don’t think I’ll persevere with Cresilda… shame – if the quests weren’t quite so “buggy” I might have been more inclined to see what I could do with her… Oh well, Say Lar Vee, as the French are wont to say! 😉

Well, the die is cast, and the move is made – well actually, the move is “Pending” at the moment, but Demelza and Wynterthyme have started on their long trek from Quel’Dorei to Saurfang – we’ll check a bit later on to see if they’ve arrived or not – I just hope I don’t have to change Wynterthyme’s name when I get there! We moved them this afternoon, so that they’d be over their jet-lag and well rested to start off in their new Realm tomorrow morning! Of course, it doesn’t really work like that, but it sounds “plausible”, even if it really isn’t! So, we’ve both logged on to check up on our travelers, and yes, they both arrived on Saurfang safely! Wynterthyme was able to keep her name fully intact, but Demelza had to change hers – just a bit – to Demelzae, so it’s not too different! I’ll have to go back later and go through all of my “set-up” routines – everything moved across correctly – except for my Action Bars! Oh well – it shouldn’t take long… (Winter crosses her fingers and her eyes…) And that’s about everything that’s been going on for the past two days, so I should really get on with the “good” bits! 😉

Food stuffs. Yesterday for lunch we had wraps, very delicious, our favourite butter substitute, basil-pesto hummus, and ham, Halloumi cheese, spring onions and red capsicum – and for dinner last night we had pasta “spirali” (spiral pasta) with tomato sauce and grated parmesan cheese. For dessert I had one of my Nashi pears, and an Apple Le Rice. Today for lunch we had a really yummy sourdough sandwich, with sandwich-sliced cold roast beef Halloumi cheese, tomato, a few capers, and chopped lettuce – it was really delicious! 🙂 Tonight for dinner we’re having grilled chicken breasts on a bed of plain steamed rice with some spring onion finely sliced mixed through it, and for dessert I’ll be having one of the peaches that Julian got today, and a Vaalia Lemon Creme yoghurt.

Weigh-in yesterday morning. Was quite spooky, really! I actually came down two points, from 66.8 kg to 66.6 kg – “666”, the number of the beast! 😯
Weigh-in this morning. Wasn’t quite so “beastly”, for a change! I came down again – another three points! Yayyy me! I went from 66.6 kg (or “beastly” me!) to 66.3 kg – or where I was on Wednesday! However I’ll be back up to something like 66.9 kg tomorrow, no doubt!

And that brings me around to the end of the day, and almost the beginning of another one! Flipper slept almost all day on our bed, and has eaten a smallish amount of dinner tonight – we both hoping that she’ll buck-up a little soon, as we really don’t want to put her through the stress of taking her to the Vet – we shall see how she is tomorrow… on the finny side, Auric and Dapple are both being good little fishies, eating their dinner, and generally just having fun cruising up and down their Fish House – and that’s really about all I have to tell you this evening – so there you go! Do drop in again tomorrow night, to find out if Flipper finished the rest of her dinner or not, what my weight decided it was going to be, come morning, and how our first day in the Saurfang “Broken Isles” went! Until then though, please continue to bee as good as you possibly can, don’t forget that all things are difficult before they are easy, and remember to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm and dry, even if you don’t really think you have to… but above all, please remember to always stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂