Winter’s log, earthdate 201611.11

04.37 pm

OK, here I am a little later than I usually like to start – but I’ve been doing a bit of fiddling with some of the new fonts I got the other day – and no, I haven’t changed the Header yet, so don’t go looking to see if it seems at all different! It isn’t! Trust me on that one! Yes, I fiddled with some of the fonts, and have found a very interesting one. It’s “hollow”, you see, and it doesn’t look very good against a dark-ish blue background (like this one) because although you can change the colour and style of the outline, it’s a very thin outline, so it doesn’t really stand out well… Anyhoo, I’ve found a really easy way of “filling in” the blank area inside the outlined font – and that’s what I’ve been doing, “experimenting” with different fill-in colours, patterns and styles! And I would have had a new Header up to show you all except for the fact that I’ve found so many nice, pretty, clever, dark, patterned, pastel – you name it – “fill-ins”, that I just can’t decide on which one to use! 😥 “Spoilt for choice”, it’s called… Never mind – I’m sure I’ll have picked one or two to use – even if only “temporarily” – by the end of the weekend! 😉

This morning I played WoW – this time I played with Ellrevienne, who’s now level 43, and happily questing away in the Eastern Plaguelands, travelling along with Fiona, towards Light’s Hope Chapel. I’ve actually left her out in the open, because Julian had been working outside in the garden this morning, and he came in saying “Winter, can I have your attention for a moment!”, so I logged out, got thoroughly distracted by the gardening and Flipper, and this, that, and the other, and haven’t been back since! Poor Ellrevienne! I just hope that I’m in a safe enough place that I won’t be jumped by half a dozen blood thirsty (or brain thirsty?) Zombies, when I go back to collect her! (Ahhh! Coffee! (slurrrp!) That Nespresso Christmas Special Variety “Linzer Torte” is just sooo yummy and delicious!) ← sorry, I got distracted again – but then, coffee does tend to do that to me, especially if it’s extra nice coffee…. where was I? Oh yes, Zombies… I’ll probably go back and rescue her this evening, after dinner and television, and try to level up Aliriah or (the new and improved!) Viverra tomorrow… because on Sunday, Wynterthyme and Demelzae get to change the appearance of their constantly scratching and howling mutts!

Just briefly: with the advent of the new Legion expansion, once characters reach level 100, each Class gets a chance to go on a special quest to receive a brand new, never-before-seen, Class-specific weapon. All Classes are broken up into sub-Classes, and each sub-Class receives a different version of their special, Class-specific weapon. Both Wynterthyme and Demelzae are Beastmaster Hunters – our Class-specific weapon is a fancy-schmantzy gun called “Titanstrike”, which comes with its own special “extra Pet” – a wolf named “Hati“. Beastmaster Hunters always have a Pet who fights with them – which is why I’ve normally always played Beastmaster Hunters – but now you not only have a fancy-schmantzy gun, the magical abilities of which you can “boost” by collecting special “artifacts”, but you also have a magical second Pet, to aid and assist your original Pet with the fighting. I think there must have been a lot of complaints about the appearance of Hati – wolves make excellent fighting Pets, but they have two extremely annoying (to me, anyway!) traits, and those are that they’re constantly sitting down and howling, or sitting down and scratching themselves, as though they have fleas – even in the middle of battle! And people wanted “matching” Pets, too, so that both Pets would look the same (honestly, we Gamers are never satisfied with what we’re given!) So now, at level 110 (the highest level possible – so far!) we can go on another “special” quest, to gather the ingredients to create a magical formula that will change Hati’s appearance, for once and for all! Wynterthyme and Demelzae have just completed this quest! They have all their ingredients, now all they have to do is decide which of their many Pets they want Hati to look like! I don’t know how many Pets Demelzae has, but I have about 25 (I think!) and I can’t decide if I’d like to end up having two identical Spirit Bears, because Bears are traditionally very strong and robust and can take a lot of punishment – and Spirit beasts can heal themselves – to a certain extent, anyway – or whether I’d rather end up with two identical Spirit Cats – mainly because I think that the Spirit Cats look really, really cool! Ahhh Decisions! Decisions! I’ll let you all know what we decided to turn our Hati’s into on Sunday – if I have time to write anything next Sunday, that is! 😉

And that’s been pretty much the sum of my day! Julian, as I said, has been out working in the garden, and has almost completely cleared out one of the two veggie beds, so as to be able to get it ready for all the tomatoes we want to put in. Last year’s tomatoes turned out so well – especially for garden newbies – that this year we want to plant twice as many as we did last time! Unfortunately our cauliflowers didn’t turn out so well – does anyone reading this know why our cauliflower heads are starting to turn a nice shade of mauve, and whether they’re safe to eat? We didn’t do too well with our celery, either! For some reason, they all grew up with great, fat, thick stalks (more like a small tree!) in the middle, and what looked like normal celery stalks on the outside, only terribly skinny, floppy, and “weedy” looking! There’s no way you could use them as “celery”! The broad beans did well though, as did our green beans – but all the peas we planted, from sugar-snap to “normal”, were a dismal failure, and the carrots, although edible and quite nice, weren’t really…. “carroty”? Still and all, it was our very first attempt at growing our own vegetables, and we do have a bit of a reputation for killing plants, just by looking at them…

Anyway, I shall now get on to the “good” bits! 😉

Food stuffs. Last night for dinner we had the second lot of our frozen left-over Lamb and Harissa Lasagna with Feta and Oregano (only one more left-over meal of that left now! Julian will have to make another batch, “toot sweet”, as the French say!) and for dessert I had one of my Corella pears, and a Vaalia Lemon Creme yoghurt. Julian went out to check the PO Box this morning, and came back with lunch from Baker’s Delight – so I had two halves of two different savoury rolls, and a yummy, delicious, “simply to-die-for” fruit and white chocolate scone. He also came back with some bread-making flour! Sourdough bread-making flour! I’m really looking forward to being able to make our very own sourdough bread! (Winter bounces up and down in her chair, clapping with delight!) For dinner tonight, Julian is making home-made hamburgers, only with minced pork, instead of minced beef – because they’re supposed to be “ham” burgers, aren’t they? So why are they always made with beef? (it was my suggestion to try making them with minced pork – I hope they turn out as well as I’m hoping they will!) With them we’ll be having some boiled potatoes, some of our own, home-grown, fully organic broad beans, and our usual half a tomato. For dessert I’ll probably have an ordinary old apple, and an Apple Le Rice.

Weigh-in this morning. Wasn’t too bad, actually – especially after all that pure, liquid sugar that I ate yesterday – and it was only yesterday that I took my last little “deplorable” pill – but I went from 68.6 kg yesterday, to… 68.6 kg again today! Yayyy! (Winter goes to jump up and down, decides that she doesn’t quite trust her ankles, and decides to sit down again instead) Anyway, today I managed to do the lying-down exercise that Polly set for me the other day – yesterday, my thigh muscles were still too sore from my visit to her on Tuesday to be able to manage it – the other exercises are really pretty easy – and I did my treadmilling again today – even though she told me to do it every second day 🙂

And that just about brings me round full circle, to tomorrow! As I said, I’ll probably do a bit more work on my young-uns in WoW, and Julian will probably be out doing some more work in the garden. We’ve had an idea as to how we can get some of Flipper’s medication into her, seeing that she doesn’t really seem terribly interested in her dinner these days. Loxicom is a liquid – she usually has three drops mushed into her dinner at night, and she takes – should be taking – ¼ of a Norvasc tablet for her blood pressure. Julian usually grinds this up and puts it in her dinner, too. Norvasc tablets are pretty small anyway, so I reckon we could grind the tiny ¼ up, and incorporate that with her Loxicom in this “alternative” dosage form. Her potassium tablet is really big though, and while we can grind that up and put it in her dinner, we’re just going to have to keep doing that, and if she gets it, she gets it – if she doesn’t – she goes without. The “alternative” dosage form is a syringe – minus the needle, naturally! No, if Julian sits on the couch in the Den here and keeps her happy with Daddy Pats, Nasty Mummy can come up to give her a pat too, then, before she’s aware of what we’re up to, gently put the syringe into the corner of her mouth, a quick press on the plunger, and I think she’ll get more of her medication than she isn’t at the moment! Now, is that sneaky, or is that sneaky? 😉  I’ve had to medicate cats like that before, and while you do lose a bit of the dosage, the cat usually gets the bulk of it inside them. We do have a syringe like that here, somewhere – we just can’t find it at the moment! Hmm… we might have to ask the Vet for another one… Auric and Dapple are both well, and getting really adept at disappearing inside their Big Purple Rock – and that’s… really about “it” from me for this evening! 🙂 Do call in again tomorrow night to find out if we’ve managed to find the syringe, and if we’ve medicated Flipper successfully that way yet, what my weight decided to do to me this time, and what other types of fun and excitement we’ve been up to! Until then though, please bee very, very good, remember that one day your life may flash before your eyes, so make sure it’s worth watching, and don’t forget to always drive carefully, to keep cool or warm, depending on your temperature preferences, and to look after yourselves… but above all… please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂