05.35 pm

Daylight Savings Time… (grrr! whose ruddy stupid idea was Daylight Saving, anyway!) Yes, another late finish from our day in the Broken Isles, but I’ll try to give you all something to go on 🙂 We both died – multiple times – mostly from forgetting not to use our most favourite  “missile defence”, “Barrage”! If you’re fighting a really tough mob – and let’s face it, most of the mobs in the Broken Isles really are “really tough” – to get them down as quickly as possible – before any more mobs can arrive to swamp you – the temptation to use “Barrage” is almost overwhelming! You see, “Barrage” fires a spray of bullets (or arrows) out in front of you for approximately 2.7 seconds. A lot of these bullets (or arrows) actually do hit the mob you’re aiming at, making its demise a lot quicker – which is why you used “Barrage” in the first place – however most of the bullets (or arrows) spray out in all directions (except behind you!) damaging anything attackable, regardless of their status, and turning them hostile towards you… and you very quickly find yourself being attacked by not only your original target, but also by an awful lot of usually harmless, or even friendly animals, as well as neutral mobs who would have left you alone – except that you fired on them, didn’t you! A lot of the time we find ourselves in a position where we need to pass through a lot of hostile mobs to reach our objective, but if we’re quick and quiet – and don’t use “Barrage” – it’s usually not too hard. If, however, you’re spotted by a hostile mob who runs over to intercept you, woe betide you if you use that handy shot, “Barrage”! Many times today, when entering hostile forts, Julian would say to me – or I’d say to him, “don’t forget! Do not use Barrage in here!” – and then one or the other of us “forgets”, and does use it, quickly followed by the other of us using it too, because “well s/he used it, so I thought it would be safe!” Naturally, as the bullets (or arrows) spray all over the place, and multiple creatures get inadvertently hit by them (I think it’s called “Collateral Damage”!) all hell breaks loose, and we’d find ourselves totally surrounded by viciously attacking mobs, including the original targeted mob, and then suddenly – we’re dead! 😯 Still, we finished off lots of quests today – including one rather funny one where we got “scammed” by a couple of Goblin “entrepreneurs”, who sent us off to find three “valuable” items for them, and for which they were offering three glossy and shiny trinkets as quest rewards. Of course, when we turned up with the last of their quest items to hand in, they were long gone, but had left a note pinned to their erstwhile shack saying something along the lines of “So long suckers – it’s been fun watching you running stupidly around” – we even got an Achievement called “What A Rip Off!!” for that quest! 🙂 We knew it was a con job, actually – we watched someone else receive the Achievement, and looked it up, deciding that it looked like bit of fun, so we’d do it too! After all, it’s all XP (experience) and it looked like a bit of fun (which was all that it was meant to be!) We had a good day today – and we even went up a level, to level 108, and a good part of the way towards level 109!

And that’s really all we’ve done all day, so now I can get on to the good bits! 😉

Food stuffz. Last night for dinner we had a new recipe wot I found from one of my foodie emails – called “Spicy Buttermilk Fried Chicken“, and it was really very nice – we had it with mashed potatoes, our usual half a tomato, and steamed green beans. Now, the recipe was good – but seemed to be “missing” a few things – I have some ideas that I’ll talk over with Julian and maybe post my “Amended Spicy Buttermilk Fried Chicken” recipe on my “Recipes…” page… because… it really wasn’t very spicy… For dessert I had the last of my enormous, so-called “brown” Nashi pears, which once again was really nice – maybe I will get some more of them, after all – and the second of the CHOBANI yoghurts, the cherry one, which was absolutely delicious, and I will be getting some more of those! The “Spicy Buttermilk Fried Chicken” called for about a kilo and a half of chicken, so as you can imagine, there was quite a bit left over! We had some of the refrigerated left-over chicken pieces cut up in a sandwich for lunch today – the rest of the left-over chicken is, of course, in the freezer, for later consumption. The sandwich was made with the new and delicious sourdough loaf, with some of our favourite butter substitute, basil and pesto hummus, sliced up cold Spicy Buttermilk Fried Chicken, and a dash of the “Baxters Fire Roasted Tomato and Smoky Chipotle Relish” – the one I wasn’t able to find online, so I’m presuming that it must be just a figment of our collective imagination… 😉 Tonight, of course, is Sunday night and we’ll be having our traditional Sunday Night Omelet for dinner – more later!

09.40 pm

‘Tis now later… Our omelet tonight – again, it was a really, really good example of the species! It had all the usual suspects – diced tomato, diced red capsicum, pre-fried diced onion, pre-fried bacon, and squares of my very favourite Cheddar/Tasty cheese – plus Julian’s special, secret mix of herbs and spices. Most delicious! 🙂 For dessert I had one of the small, “kiddies lunchbox size” apples that Julian got the other day, because all the other ones were gi-normous (why is it, I wonder, that most fruit these days is either gigantic, or teensy-weensy? Whatever happened to “normal” sized fruit?) and an Apple Le Rice.

Weigh-in Saturday morning. [in a frustrated and harassed tone] It’s doing it again! For once, with no possible reason for doing so (that is, I hadn’t eaten any “lunches-that-I-maybe-shouldn’t-have-had”, or similar!) I shot right up again! I went from 66.0 kg to 66.4 kg – four whole bloody points, which I didn’t deserve! This is getting highly monotonous!

Weigh-in this morning. Was annoying. I went from 66.4 kg … to 66.4 kg! I stayed the bloody same! You know, I was thinking about how my weight has been going up… and up… and up… and once again, I’m going to say this – only this time, so help me, I really mean it – next March, when I see Dr. Y again, he’s going to cop a (very polite!) ear-full from me, about those wretched little pills I have to take every three months! Every time I take them, I go up nearly a kilogram… and every time I come off them, it takes me longer and longer to get my weight back down to what it was before… and this last time I took them, my weight hasn’t gone back down to anywhere near where it was before I took the damn things! This last time has been the worst – my weight shot up so much it went right off the damn graph sheet, and has barely come back to about half way to where it was before – if that! You know, I really don’t want to – but if it comes to the crunch I will (kicking and screaming all the way, because I already did it for a year and a half!) though if I really have to, I’ll go back onto the Optifast diet for at least a month, if not longer – but I’ll hold that possibility as  a “last resort tactic”!

And that brings me around to tomorrow again – I’m not really sure what’s happening – I know I have to ring up and make the appointment to have my right foot x-rayd and ultrasounded, and an appointment to go back to the doctor two days later to get the results of said x-ray and ultrasound – because the sooner I find out what’s wrong with my foot, the sooner I’ll be able to get something done about it, and the sooner I get it “fixed”, the sooner I’ll be able to get back to my treadmilling, which I haven’t been doing because the top of my foot is just too sore! (Winter sings, off key: “There’s a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza, the’s a hole in the bucket…” Julian throws scant bucket of water over Winter, who abruptly stops singing) Anyway, there it is – Flipper, Auric and Dapple are all well, and have all eaten their respective dinners – and that’s about “it” from me for this evening, because apart from my appointment making, off-key singing, and Josh’s visit tomorrow afternoon, I have absolutely no idea what’s happening tomorrow (I’d really like to get to Spotlight, or Harris Scarfe to look at bath towels though!) But call in again tomorrow night anyway, so that you can find out what my weight did, when I’m due to be x-ray’d and ultrasounded, and what level I’ve managed to get Zelenka up to, as well as all the other interesting and exciting things that I’ve been up to – or perhaps not been up to! Until then, please try hard to bee good, remember, all the answers you need are inside of you; you only have to become quiet enough to hear them – and don’t forget to always drive carefully, to keep warm and dry in this weird, thunder-threatening weather, and to look after yourselves… but most importantly, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂