05.07 pm

Crikey, I’m all puffed out after having raced around Dalaran before I logged out and came here! I’d been looking up a brand new cooking recipe wot I learned in the Broken Isles today, so that I could make Demelza and Wynterthyme some fitting food to sustain us in our new and somewhat confusing quest chains! Er… it was a recipe for (*shudder!*) “Dried Mackerel” (and thank all the powers that be that I don’t have to actually eat the hideous sounding stuff! *shudder!*) and required Silver Mackerel x 5 (per portion) and a Cooking Fire. The Cooking Fire I had, the Silver Mackerel I didn’t have, so I quickly switched out of Wynterthyme to become Ambermyst, our Auctionator and Banker in Stormwind, ran across from the Banking Chambers to the Auction House (without checking to see how much gold I had on me first! Typical Ambermyst…) But… were there any Silver Mackerel to be had on the Auction House!? Luckily for Demelza and Wynterthyme, there were – tons of them! Seeing that these Silver Mackerel cost between 7 and 10 gold each, and because she hadn’t checked to see how much gold she had on her, Ambermyst only bought one stack of twenty, which she then posted off to Wynterthyme in Dalaran, and logged out. Wynterthyme logged on and ran for the Hotel Kitchen to do her cooking. “Dang!” exclaimed Wynterthyme “Why can’t I make Dried Mackerel, now that I have the… oh!” Yes, that’s right Wynterthyme, the recipe works a lot better when you remember to collect the fish from the – now terribly smelly – letterbox! So she collected the fish, and without even wiping the letterbox out, raced back to the kitchen. She constructed twenty pieces of Dried Mackerel, put ten of them into the Guild Bank (which now smells suspiciously like the letterbox!) for Demelza to collect, and put the other ten into her Magickal Fridge of Holding* in her backpack, logged out, turned back into me, and started writing! So that’s why I’m just a trifle hot, sweaty, and puffed out! 😉

However, I digress! We had a very good day in the Broken Isles today – I went up two levels, to level 102, and collected lots of nice new Herbs, and Julian (Demelza) went up one level, because she already went up to level 101 yesterday – and today she went up to level 102, so we’re both about even now… Demelza died twice, I died once, our poor Pets died multiple times, and we both gave our “Feign Death” abilities a good, solid work-out! I must remember to turn up my gamma settings though – I keep forgetting to, so when it’s dark, and there’s a lot going on around me, with special effects flickering and pulsing all over the place, and lots of people running this way and that – all I can see is a dark, smudgy blur! But we had a good time and accomplished a lot today, and no doubt we’ll sneak in a few hours of playing here or there during the week, while we wait impatiently for next Sunday! 🙂 Oh, I learned today that we can’t get hold of the elusive Essence Swapping whatever-it-is, to change Hati’s (our new wolf Pet) appearance, until we reach the level “cap” at level 110! I also had a bit of a quick squiz at some of the other players who were flying breezily past – they all seemed to be level 105 or higher, so in another three levels (or hopefully sooner!) we too should be able to earn our wings and fly again! 🙂

And that’s really about all there is to tell you about our day in the Broken Isles today! We scored some fairly good quest rewards, managed to knock over a lot of the smaller quest chains, and learnt a fair bit about the Lore of the new Expansion – so now I can get onto all the “good” bits! 😉

Food stuffs. Last night for dinner Julian made one of our favourite dishes – the Lamb and Harissa Lasagna with Feta and Oregano! As I think I mentioned last night, the new brand of Harissa that we’re using is just a touch hotter and spicier than the older brand, and it was just enough to give the lasagna a decent bit of a kick! I’m not a great fan of overly spicy food, but this was “bang-smack, spot on” – and extremely yummy and delicious! After dinner, Julian divided the leftover lasagna into individual portions, in individual containers, to cool down enough to put in the freezer – and there’s enough left over for four meals! It really is very economical, as well as being so delicious! For dessert I had one of my just-ripe-enough-to-eat yellow Nectarines, and one of my Vaalia Lemon Creme yoghurts. Today for lunch I had another sandwich made from the whole-meal bread with the sesame seed crust, with a different type of chicken chunks in it, chopped lettuce, and basil-pesto hummus as a butter substitute – unfortunately Julian forgot the Lemon Herb Dukkah (so I’m going to demand a double lot tomorrow! 😉 ) but even so, it was still an extremely delicious sandwich! Tonight being Sunday night, we’ll be having omelets for dinner. I’m not sure what Julian’s planning on putting in it tonight, but no doubt it will have crispy bacon, some of the cheese that he used last week that went so well in the omelet, fried onion, tomato, diced capsicum or maybe even some of the char-grilled peppers that he used in the lasagna last night – but never fear, I’ll fill you all in on what was in the omelet tomorrow night. Tonight for dessert I think I’ll have one of my Corella pears, and an Apple Le Rice.

Weigh-in this morning. Was still not a very pretty sight, but at least I didn’t go up again (that’ll probably happen tomorrow! 😦 ) I went from 65.5 kg to 65.5 kg – I stayed the same, which I suppose (says she grudgingly) is better than going up another three to five points! 😦 Oh well, we’ll see what tomorrow brings, won’t we!

Which pretty much brings me up to tomorrow – as it was Father’s Day today, Julian got a card and a very nice George Foreman “The Champ All In One Grill”, which (apparently!) Sears, Bakes and Grills, and which he can hardly wait to experiment with tomorrow night! 🙂 Next Sunday, he says he wants to be lazy, so the whole family’ll be going out for lunch – all Julian has to do is make up his mind where he wants to go! Our cleaning lady won’t be here this week because she was here last week (she comes fortnightly) so I should be able to get a good run-in with either Silverhands or Zelenka – I might actually stick with Silverhands tomorrow – she’s only got a few more levels before she’ll be able to fly in Azeroth, and at the moment it’s becoming quite important that she learn to do so as soon as possible! Josh will be here in the afternoon, which will be great – but that’s about all that I’m sure of about tomorrow! Auric, Dapple and Flipper are all chugging along quite nicely, as is what I can see of the garden and the veggie beds (I really need some sort of foot covering that isn’t my shoes (because I hate them so much) that I can wear when I go outside!) and really, that’s about “it” from me for tonight! However do drop in again tomorrow night, even if only to find out if my weight did go up again, or if it’s starting to calm down a little (“down” being the operative word there!) and whether Julian and I got to play with Wynterthyme and Demelza again, or if it was a totally Silverhands and Zelenka sort-of day. But until then, please do try to bee good, don’t forget to stop seeking out the storms and enjoy more fully the sunlight, and remember to always drive carefully, to keep warm and dry, especially when it’s cold and wet, and to look after yourselves… but above all… please remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

*Magickal Fridges of Holding – are very handy little devices that come, free, with every pouch, bag, or backpack in World of Warcraft (which is probably why they’re all so danged expensive!) They weigh about as much as a butterfly’s antennae, and are physically smaller than a dried pea – but they can contain anything and everything from *shudder* Dried Mackerel, to Haunch of Mammoth, or even feasts for a Raiding Party of 40 or more! …and don’t you just wish that they existed in Real Life?! 😉

04.57 pm

So I thought I’d give you all a treat, and subject you to viewing my choices of possible backgrounds for this Template, one at a time. This first one is actually the second of the two backgrounds I was telling you about, and is probably the most colourful of the two, and with luck, will remain unchanged until some time Monday, as I doubt that I’ll have time to make any more graphical changes until then…

This morning, of course, I played WoW – and actually went back to my level 50 Frost Mage, Silverhands, to try and level her up a bit more. At the moment she’s questing in a place called “Un’Goro Crater“, which looks like something out of the old “B-Grade” movie, “The Land that Time Forgot” (or whatever it was called!) full of prehistoric dinosaurs, pterodactyls, strange glowing crystals, and even a giant, really, really nasty, high-level Elite, T-Rex! I tell you, you can run… but you can’t hide! He’ll git’ya fer sure! One stomp, and you’re suddenly running back to re-claim your body! Oh, and there are also nasty big gorillas to watch out for! I didn’t play for as long as I’d planned though, because I got totally fed up with not being able to find a path up to a rim-plateau that I had to get to. I know I’m always saying that the game is far too easy – and it is! As far as killing things is concerned, but the game stops being fun for me when I find myself not leveling up, and not gaining experience points, because I’m too busy running around in fruitless little circles looking for something – like a path up a steep mountain side! So listen up, Blizzard, I don’t want easy-peasy bubsey kills, I just want a do-able, playable game! I’ll try going back there again tonight and maybe turn my gamma up a bit – I think part of my problem is that I just can’t see a lot on the screen, when everything from the lichen growing on the rocks, to the heavy shading from the surrounding trees, both blend so well into the rock face that for the life of me, I can’t find a path! I’ve run backwards and forwards, more than half a dozen times, around more than half of the ruddy crater where the path is supposed to be – I’ve even managed to get half way up the cliff – I actually got the text in the middle of the screen saying that I’d “discovered” the particular section of the mountain where I was supposed to be! Then the so-called “path” turned into a perpendicular rock-face again, and once more, jump, run, you name it, I still couldn’t get up there! As I said before… I don’t want “easy”, I just want “playable”!

Tomorrow, as I’m sure you’re all aware, is Father’s Day – so we, as the curious creatures that we are, have decided that our Father’s Day will be next Sunday, and not tomorrow! After lunch today I headed off to do my treadmilling, and then we went out again to pick up some more medicine for Flipper, and to get Julian his prezzie for tomorrow – and you’ll all find out what it was then, because if I tell you now, it’ll spoil the surprise for him tomorrow morning! 😉 Next Sunday though, I think we’ll probably go out for lunch somewhere, and Julian will get his presents from my two very favourite daughters (or his two very favourite step-daughters!) then – but tomorrow he’ll get his present and a card from me, before we start running Wynterthyme and Demelza around the Broken Isles!  And that’s really all we’ve been up to today, so now I can get on to telling you all the “good” bits! 😉

Food stuffs. Last night, because of the somewhat large-ish lunch that we’d consumed, we had plain old pan-fried chicken on a bed of plain old steamed rice with some plain old finely chopped spring onion mixed through it, and for dessert, I had one of those brown Beurre Bosc pears (in other words, I had a raw, stewing pear!) and a Raspberry Vaalia “whipped” yoghurt – which although I quite liked it, I won’t bother getting them again!. Lunch today was another delicious sandwich – made with the same sort of whole-meal bread that has all the sesame seeds in the crust – with some sort of chicken sandwich chunks, chopped lettuce, the delicious butter substitute we nearly always use – the basil-pesto hummus – and a small sprinkling of the Lemon and herb Dukkah that we had the other day – and it was most delicious! 🙂 Tonight for dinner Julian is making the Lamb & Harissa Lasagna with Feta and Oregano that we love so much – I’ve just been out to the kitchen, following all the delicious cooking smells wafting through the house, and had a teeny little taste-test of the lamb and harissa mixture – this brand of harissa has just a wee bit more of a “bite” to it, so I think it’s going to be just about perfect! …I can’t wait for dinner… 😉 For dessert I’ll be having one of my new yellow Nectarines, and a Vaalia Lemon Creme yoghurt.

Weigh-in this morning. Well, I said it wasn’t going to be pleasant, and it wasn’t. I went up from 65.0 kg to 65.5 kg, which is fair enough, after our lunch yesterday (though I really can’t see how there could have been a whole five points worth of weight in those few chips and the very thin-ish slice of Orange-Clementine!) Anyway, that’s where I’m at now, and it’s going to have to come off again. It will have to – or I’ll have to go back on the Optifast diet, which I’d really, really prefer not to have to do! I guess that – just like me – you’re all just going to have to weight and sea…

And here we are again – back full circle to tomorrow again! Flipper is still “nesting” in the doona, and leaving copious amounts of grey “fluff” all over the bed! Seems that “Sumer Is Icumen In” – or spring is, anyway – and Flipper is very happily exchanging her nice, heavy winter fur coat for her nice, light and airy summer one – and what’s more, she’s very generously letting us take care of the debris! It took absolutely ages last night to dust the doona down before we could go to bed! I’m wondering if it would be worth pinning an old flat sheet to the top of the doona – we’d have to un-pin it from the doona every night, and carefully fold it (and all the loose fur in it) up – for shaking outdoors the following morning, before re-pinning it to the doona – but at least I wouldn’t be running around the bedroom at one thirty in the morning, chasing random drifts of fluff that have fallen off the doona whilst I was brushing it down! Mmm… it does sound like a lot of extra work though, doesn’t it… I think I’ll think about it some more… Auric and Dapple are still behaving themselves – thank heavens fish don’t shed their scales all over the place at the change of the seasons… or maybe they do, and we just don’t notice it, because they fall to the gravel at the bottom of the tank and sort of – bio-degrade? Anyway, that’s about “it” from me for tonight! Do drop in again tomorrow night, to find out if we did decide to try out the “sheet solution”, how we went in WoW, and whether we died or not, and what further punishments my body decided to inflict on me for my truly gluttonous behaviour yesterday – or in other words, how much more did I go up! Until then however, please at least try to bee good, remember to live out of your imagination, not your history, and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm and dry, even when you don’t think it’s going to rain… but most importantly, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

05.16 pm

Here I am again – and depending on if and when you dropped by earlier, you might – or might not – have seen the background tile that I’d been searching so frantically for yesterday! As you can now see, however, it’s not there… Yes, I do still like it, just as much as I did yesterday, and no, I’m not using it – yet – because I’ve found another background that I like, almost as much as the first one – and once again, depending on if, and when, you dropped by before, you might – or might not – have seen that one, either instead of, or as well as, the first one… So are you all confused and muddled about that yet? Good! 🙂 That means that I have achieved my goal of confusing you all, yet again! 😉 No… I found the original pattern I wanted later last night – and this time I saved the wretched thing before I used it! I put up the new background quite late last night – either just before, or just after midnight, I think – and it was there until about forty-five minutes ago, while I was doing some “reviews” of the layout here, and I found the other background… which I not only saved, but also extracted a copy of the colours used in it. I then swapped the background tiles, saved, and published it – and as it was up (i.e. online and visible to all) for all of about twenty minutes, before I changed back to this dull, boring, plain palette of colours that you’re now seeing (as of the time stamp at the beginning of the blog!) By this time tomorrow I should have finally decided on which background to use – if not, it’ll still be looking like this! 😉 On the other hand, I could use the two backgrounds on alternate days! Wouldn’t that be fun (…and a lot more work for me! Hmm… maybe I won’t do that, after all!)

I WoW-d for most of this morning – I was going to take Wynterthyme out Herbing, to try and catch up level-wise with Demelza, but when I logged on and saw where I was – in the middle of some strange Tauren building – I chickened out… because if Demelza is notorious for falling off, and/or into dangerous places, well, I’m even worse (if that’s even possible!) when it comes to directions, reading maps, and finding my way around my own Garrison – in other words, I get lost, every time, and all the time, even if I’m in familiar surroundings! It took me nearly a week after we moved in here, to remember that when exiting from this room (the Den) I had to turn left to go to the front door, and turn right to go to the kitchen and lounge room! *sigh* So anyway, I looked at myself standing there in this great big Tauren Hall, and decided that maybe I’d go Herbing “later on“, when Julian would be around to lead me back to …wherever that place was/is… and I went back to Saurfang, to Zelenka, my extremely promising young Warlock. She was still questing around in the Southern Barrens, and really, the mobs there were really far too easy to knock over, including mobs that were at least two levels higher than I was, and as I’d said last night, I didn’t really expect to be there much longer! Sure enough, a very short time later I noticed movement at the station, for the word had passed around That the colt my Action Bar – a nice big “!” on my Heroes-Board-thingy, telling me in no uncertain terms, that King Varian Wrynn needed me urgently in Feralis, and to go there with all haste, and “toot sweet”, as the French say, where I was to report to someone-or-other, whose name escapes me at this particular point in time! So off I trundled – again! I had to fly back to Astranaar, and once more run from there – this time down through the Stonetalon Mountains, to Feralis – via Desolace! I’d pretty much just arrived in Feralis when Julian announced that he was going to do the shopping at The Glen… and as there were a couple of things I… er… wanted to pick up too, I offered to go along with him…. so we went shopping, and that was the end of my WoW-ing for the day! 😉

I picked up a couple of rather nice “rice bowl” type dishes for putting sand in… and in which we stand our incense sticks, when we light one. They work a lot better than those narrow wooden incense holders, and if you stir the incense ashes back into the sand it makes the sand smell nice and when you’re not burning the incense, the perfumed sand acts as a sort-of a “potpourri” 🙂 I also picked up some more “fluffy” soap – the sort of soap that comes out of the dispenser as a foam – hence my appellation of “fluffy”! I use it to wash my glasses as there’s nothing harsh or abrasive in the foam and it seems to work extremely well. It’s getting harder to get the non-antibacterial hand wash these days, goodness knows why – most people I’ve talked to don’t like it at all – they all say that it’s far too harsh on their hands, to the point that they get peeling skin and rashes from it! We generally get the Palmolive foaming soap – Dettol make one too, but all of theirs are the antibacterial ones – however, I did notice one other “fluffy” or foaming hand soap today – made by “Organic Care”, the makers of the shampoo that I use! (Josh actually recommended it, and it’s really good!) there were two different “flavours” on the shelf there, but there was only one that wasn’t [censored!] “antibacterial”, so I got one of those to try, too. By the time we’d had lunch and done all our shopping we arrived home fairly late – well after three thirty – and then Julian took my passport photo (please don’t ask! It’s truly terrible!! I nearly fainted when I saw it!) What gets me is that you have to have your glasses off for your passport photo – never mind that you can’t even see which direction the camera is in without them – you just have to rely on occasionally dubious voice directions! “Turn you head a little to the left… your left… no, a bit further… stop! That’s too far – turn to your right a teeny bit… No, I said right! Right! (*eye roll*) The hand you ‘write‘ with, OK?!” The passport papers say that the passport photo won’t end up looking at all like the photo, to which I can only say “Thank heavens!” But… as I said – it seems strange that you need to remove your glasses (if you wear them) for the photo – why?! People can look completely different without them, so what better way to disguise yourself than to don a fake pair of glasses (with window glass or whatever in them) and just waltz on through Immigration with a fake passport!? I dunno… Still, ’tis done now, for good or ill, and we’ll get the paperwork signed, sealed, and ready to be delivered next week – then, if we want to, we’ll be able to go overseas, at long last (but definitely not while Flipper is still with us – it would break her heart if we left her for more than an hour or two! Who’d give her her Daddy Pats?)

And that was about all that’s happened here today – so I can now move on to the “good” bits! 🙂

Food stuffs. Last night for dinner we had the very last of the “One-pot Spanish Chicken and Rice” left-overs, which once again, was extremely nice (though I’ll admit that the rice was starting to get just a trifle mushy by now!) For dessert I had one of my Corella pears, and a Vaalia Lemon Creme yoghurt. Because of my atrocious weigh-in this morning (see below!) I did what I usually do, and had an extremely defiant lunch – as a metaphorical way of “flipping the finger” at my stupid and illogical body! (yeah, I know it doesn’t work that way – in fact it probably only makes my weight go up further, but it makes me feel better, displaying defiance like that, right? I’m human, and I can be surprisingly stupid like that sometimes! 😛 ) Anyway, we didn’t go to the Shingle Inn this time – we entered The Glen up at the David Jones end and decided to have lunch at The Arena, just outside DJ’s, for a change, and just to be different, this time I had a BLT 😉 I also had a reasonably medium sized slice of “Orange Clementine”, a very dense and moist “gluten-free” (I think they really meant “flourless”!) orange cake, and my usual “long black” with the little jug of skinny milk on the side. When we go to the Shingle Inn, I always have the BLT, and one of their divinely gooey and gloriously sugary chocolate caramel slices, and although Julian was a little aghast at the Orange Clementine cake, calorie for calorie, and kilojoule for kilojoule, I’d actually say that the caramel slice and the orange cake were pretty evenly matched, “diet-wise” – in fact if I was a betting girl, which I’m not, I’d put the caramel slice ever-so slightly ahead of the cake, in terms of “raw fat-making power”. Still, it won’t do tomorrow’s weigh-in any favours! Uhhh… I forgot to mention that Julian was going to have the Calamari rings, which came with chips, and the ubiquitous limp salad that these places like to dish up because it “looks healthy”, even though it’s always smothered in dressing. Anyway, I asked him if I could have a few of his chips, and he told me that I could have two – two and a half, if they were small chips – so me being me, and sailing in my full defiant glory, counter-ordered a side serve of shoestring chips! yes I did, and what’s more, I ate nearly all of them! So yeah – weigh-in isn’t going to be pleasant for the next couple of days! (*sigh*) Why am I always so ornery and perverse?! So because of our rather large-ish luncheon today, for dinner tonight we just had plain-old pan-fried chicken on a bed of steamed rice with some finely chopped spring onions mixed through it. For dessert I’d bought some Vaalia raspberry “Whipped” yoghurt, which was even lower in kilojoules than their Lemon Creme yoghurt. I didn’t mind it, but it was quite weird – like a yoghurt pretending to me a mousse, and not quite succeeding, if you know what I mean. We only bought two tubs of it to try, and while yes, I will eat the other one (unless Julian wants to try it) I don’t think I’ll get it again – it seemed to be… too lacking in “body” somehow? I also bought some more yellow Nectarines, and some of what we used to call “Stewing pears” when I was little – they’re called “Beurre Bosc” these days 😉 and I had one of those tonight, too. It was nice enough, but I think it would probably taste nicer stewed… 😥 I want my brown-skinned Nashi pears back!

Weigh-in this morning. Was “Not Nice”! I’ve been doing everything right! I’ve been religiously doing my treadmilling, I’ve not been eating anything naughty, and this is what I get thrown in my face!? I went from 64.7 kg yesterday to bloody 65.0 kg today! How’s that for trying very hard to do everything right, and to not eat any of the wrong things! Well, stuff you, body! And that’s exactly what I did today! I stuffed it with cake and chips, and I didn’t do my treadmilling! (though I did walk the length and breadth of The Glen – twice!) It’s just not fair! 😥

Anyway, that brings me pretty much full circle back to tomorrow again! I’m not sure what’s happening – I don’t think we’ll be going out – we did all our shopping today – so I guess I’ll be doing my usual… WoW in the morning, with a little bit more WoW-ing in the afternoon, or maybe a bit of graphic-ing – whichever comes first… Auric’s been good – I haven’t actually seen him have a “fit of the mads” for a couple of days, which is good, nor have I seen any sign of “floaties”, which is even better! Dapple seems to have stopped trying to nibble the ends of Auric’s tail, and Flipper is becoming very adept at creating little “caves” for herself in the doona, for her daily sleeping exercises! You should see the one she made for herself this evening! Somehow she’s managed to flip over the bottom corner of the doona (Julian said that he didn’t flip it over, and I know that I didn’t do it!) and she’s managed to “insert” herself neatly under it, like a letter into an envelope! I tell you, she works very hard indeed at her sleeping exercises! 🙂 Anyway, that’s really about “it” from me for tonight! Do drop in again tomorrow night, to see what other changes I might have made to this poor Template, how harshly my weight had decided to punish me for my eating transgressions today, and how we managed to while away the time today at chez nous! Until then though, do try hard to bee good, remember, in all of living, have much fun and laughter – life is to be enjoyed, not just endured, and don’t forget to always drive carefully, to look after yourselves, and to keep warm and dry when the weather gets cold and wet… but above all, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

05.25 pm

“With a pinch and a punch for the first of the month – pass it on, and no returns!”

Well, here I am again – with yet another new Template – do you all like it? While I was “testing it”, I found a very nice background – but silly me didn’t save it! So, hours and hours later (quite literally, actually!) and still unable to find the wretched thing again, I made my own. It’s not as nice as the other one, which had quite a pretty flower pattern in it, but it’ll suffice until I do find it again – maybe next century, or something! This morning, however, I played WoW – part of the time playing with Wynterthyme and Demelza, the rest of the time I concentrated on my Warlock Zelenka, who at level 36 is currently questing in the Southern Barrens, and coping very well indeed – almost too well, really, and I expect I’ll be moved along again fairly rapidly. I could have gone to the Cape of Stranglethorn instead, but I chose the Southern Barrens because I’ve Tangled with Stranglethorn lots of times recently, but it’s been many, many years since I ventured into this part of Azeroth –  pretty much not since Cataclysm broke the Barrens into two halves, way back in 2010! 😯 I could have had myself either flown or Portal’d  in by Nyabinghi (Julian’s level 100 Mage) instead I decided to do some “leveling up via exploration”, caught the Ship from Stormwind to Darnassus, flew over to the mainland, and then “ran” from there, picking up Flight Points as I went. I’d actually managed, unscathed, to get myself all the way to the border between the Northern and the Southern Barrens, and then I discovered that the “border” is actually a very deep volcanic chasm, with a “floor” of lethally hot lava – there’s also no way down, apart from falling down – and if the fall didn’t kill you, the hot lava would – and no way back up either of the sides, once you’d run back to get your body, so it then became a matter of “Oh, Jooolian! I think I might take you up on your very kind offer of a lift, please…” and so Nyabinghi came and flew me over the border to my destination, just the other side of the impassable chasm! So near, and yet so far! Wynterthyme and Demelza also did quite well for themselves – Demelza gained a level – 101 – but unfortunately Wynterthyme didn’t – I think I’d better take her out to gather a few herbs this evening, to catch her up a bit!

I’ve found out that we have to have something called an “Essence Swapper” to change the appearance of our new second Pet(s), Hati. Exactly what it is, what it looks like, and how or where you get one, I haven’t been able to find out yet – I don’t know if it’s a quest reward, a “lucky drop” from a Mob that you’ve killed, or if they’re sold by a particular Vendor that you have to locate. I think “Legion” is probably still too new for players to have had a chance to write things like this up anywhere, so I shall keep looking (I’ll also ask my very favourite eldest daughter – having been a Beta Tester, she should know, if anyone does! “Watch this space”! 😉 )

I did my treadmilling after lunch today – or perhaps I ought to say “I did my treadmilling at almost afternoon tea time today”, which would be closer to the mark – I got so caught up in looking for that dratted background! Still, I got the Template up in the end, and I can always add the background later – that is if I decide that I really do like it, after all this chasing around for it! 😡 Julian used the treadmill this afternoon, too! He usually goes for a walk every morning before breakfast, but this morning he didn’t quite trust the weather, and as I’m always saying to him “Why don’t you use the treadmill? You won’t get wet if it does rain, and if your foot gets too sore, well, you’re already home so you won’t have to limp back from wherever you got to, especially if it is raining!” So today, after nearly a year of saying he didn’t want to walk on the treadmill, he finally gave it a go! I always have the treadmill set at an angle of 10°, the highest it’ll go, and I walk at 4 kilometers per hour – Julian set it to an angle of 4°, and he walked at something like 6 kilometers an hour for a bit over four kilometers! Ye ghods and little fishes, I’d have to run flat-out to keep that speed, with my little short legs! (Just call me “Stumpy”! And to think I used to be considered “tall”, at five foot seven and three-quarters in stockinged feet! I’m now just a trifle under five feet tall – and rapidly turning into one of those “little old women” you hear so much about! 😥 ) I think I could, at a pinch, up my speed to 4.5 kilometers per hour – especially if I dropped the height angle down a couple of notches… I’m used to walking at a 10° – to me it’s no different from walking on a flat surface – but at a 4° angle, Julian found that when he got off the treadmill he felt as though he was still walking, leaning over backwards, as though he were going up a steep hill! Weird…. 😕

Auric and Dapple are both well, as is Flipper, although it took me ages to get to sleep last night because of her! She likes to nestle in between the two of us, with her back curved into my back, and her paws wrapped around one of Julian’s hands, or his arm. This is all well and good, as long as I make sure that there’s enough doona on my side, so that it’s not all rucked up under her, with not enough left over to cover me when I lie down – as was the case last night! I couldn’t even turn over properly, let alone keep warm under the measly amount of doona left on my side of the cat! Julian said “just move her!”, but I can’t… I don’t have the heart to disturb her – she’s old and arthriticky, and she was all warm and snug and comfortable… so I lay there and shivered uncomfortably until she decided to get up to go and visit the litter box, whereupon I grabbed as much doona as I could, without stealing all of Julian’s, and got myself properly comfortable (and warmly covered!) before she got back… you know? I don’t think she even noticed that I’d moved!

And that’s really about all that’s even remotely newsworthy, so I can get on with the “good” bits!

Food stuffs. Last night for dinner we had the pan-fried scotch fillet that I was telling you about – so what was it like?! Well, it wasn’t quite as deliciously tender as the steak we usually get, but it was very nice. There were two fairly large pieces of scotch fillet in the meat packet and Julian wasn’t sure if one would be enough for the two of us or not. I advised him to cook both of them, eat as much as we needed for dinner, and save the other one for our sandwiches today – which he did. For dessert I had an apple – actually it wasn’t an “Eve” apple, it was one of the rather large “Jazz” apples – instead of cutting it into quarters, Julian cut it into five smaller “quarters” (I’ll bet none of you knew that five small quarters equals one apple! 😉 ) I had four of them, and he had one, and I also had an Apple Le Rice. For lunch today there was enough of the left-over scotch fillet for one sandwich, which I had – Julian had smoked salmon (*shudder*) The sandwich was made with that lovely tasty whole-meal bread with all the sesame seeds in the crust, a little butter, sliced up cold scotch fillet, chopped lettuce, and a small sprinkling of “Table of Plenty” lemon and herb Dukkah, which was absolutely delicious! 🙂 So, the overall verdict on the scotch fillet: a very nice steak dinner last night, even if it wasn’t quite the same quality as our usual steak, with chips, our usual half a tomato, and fresh steamed green beans, and the cold sliced left-over steak in my sandwich today was really, really good! Julian tasted a bit as he was making my sandwich, and we’re both of the opinion that it was better cold and in a sandwich than it was hot, for dinner last night! Tonight for dinner we had the very last of our left-over “One-pot Spanish Chicken and Rice”, and I had one of my Corella pears and a Vaalia Lemon Creme yoghurt for dessert. Very, very yummy! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. See-sawing again! This morning I went from 64.4 kg yesterday to 64.7 kg – up another three points! No rhyme nor reason for it, it just is what it is! However! Maybe some good news! My stomach has been gurgling a lot today – so once again the fluid seems to be on the move! Let’s hope it’s on its way out, and not gurgling out of the way to make room for more fluid to accumulate! We shall weight and sea…

And that brings me full circle to tomorrow again! I’m not sure what’s happening – no doubt I’ll be WoW-ing again, and maybe doing a bit more with Wynterthyme and Demelza, and of course I shall continue my hunt for the elusive background to use with this Template – but apart from that? Chi sà? 🙂 So, that’s about it from me for tonight, but do call in again tomorrow night, to find out which weigh my weight went (hopefully, down!) whether or not I found my pretty background tile (and maybe it wasn’t quite as nice as it’s grown in my memory since I haven’t been able to find it!) as well as whatever else we might have been up to during the day! Until then though, please try to bee extra good, remember that the most important things in life aren’t things, and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to keep warm and dry even when you think the weather’s fine, because after all, this is Melbourne, and to always drive carefully… but above all, please, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

04.42 pm

Ladies and gentlepersons – at 05.00 pm last night, the much talked about, eagerly awaited, and feverishly anticipated, World of Warcraft Expansion, “Legion”, went live! Understandably, of course, I was online waiting for it to happen!

My very favourite eldest daughter was over for the day, as she usually is on a Tuesday. We sit in the lounge room and watch Dapple and Auric swimming lazily around as we catch up on the pre-recorded episodes from our favourite television series – and a good time is had by all. We usually watch these shows until it’s time for Julian to drive her home, anywhere from five o’clock to about five thirty – but last night, we finished watching our last episode at around four forty-four-ish, but didn’t start another – instead, we made our way back to the Den, where I logged into World of Warcraft, and my very favourite eldest daughter started to make nervous little moves towards the garage door. Gentle readers, perhaps it is at this point that I should remind you all, that it was she who first introduced me to World of Warcraft, back in 2006. I used to sit next to her and watch her play – day in, day out – and in about 2007 I eventually worked up the courage to start playing myself. Whenever a new Expansion is announced, my favourite eldest daughter is always one of the first to put her hand up to become part of the Beta Testing team (and I have been known on several occasions to do likewise!) and she always gets one or more of the “Collector’s Editions” of the game (this time she managed to acquire three of them, for some unknown reason!) so it was fairly understandable that she started making nervous moves towards the garage door as soon as I’d logged into the game. Julian took the hint, and took her home, while I metaphorically sat on my toey Frostsaber Mount in the main square of Stormwind’s Trade Centre, along with a crowd of other anxious players, as we waited for the Big Count Down! “Bong!”… “Bong!”… “Bong!”… “Bong!”… “Bong!”… went the clock in the square, and all over the map of Azeroth, the Invasion points blinked out. There was silence for a whole point seven five of a second, then everyone exploded out of the square, heading out to do their quests to get them all started in “Legion”! Er… including me, playing as Wynterthyme. The initial quest chain was a trifle complicated, so I won’t go into too many details – suffice to say that Julian had to come to my rescue a couple of times – especially when the quest involved jumping! Still, in the end I got through, acquired my brand-new Super Special weapon, and a second Pet. I’d kept on telling my very favourite eldest daughter all along that I didn’t want – and wouldn’t use – a second Pet, and her mouth would turn down and she’d say “But it’s such a sad story, how you come to get her – and she’s really nice!”, making me feel like all sorts of a heel! Anyway, in the end part of the quest chain, you have to fight a really nasty (and extremely tough!) Vrykul (a half-giant) who’s stolen your brand-new weapon. Lucky you has a Titan and a Dwarf, plus their Pets, one of whom is a wolf called “Hati”, fighting with you. Long story short, after a really, really long and tough fight, you finally manage to kill off this Vrykul person and get your precioussss (cough!) your new gun back. Unfortunately, during the fight, Hati, the Titan’s Pet, takes a hit meant for you, and she’s dying… (I think!) you use your new magic weapon on her and she’s cured – or transformed – or whatever, and the Titan gives her to you to help you fight the evil Legion, and so you get your second Pet. Personally, I don’t like the “dog-type” pets (wolves, dogs, foxes, etc.) because they’re always stopping to sit down and scratch! It makes me feel as though I want to give them a good old scrub in a tub of Malaban, or go out and get them a ruddy flea collar! Anyway, I’ve just been reading that there’s a way to alter Hati’s appearance – I’ll let you know what transpires! 🙂

Wynterthyme usually plays with Mouselet, who’s a Shaman, but since Julian’s mothballed him because of the changes Blizzard have made to the Shaman Class, Wynterthyme is now playing with Demelza, she of the “Doing a Demelza” fame – that is, falling off things, and/or into things – usually fatally. Demelza is a Draenei Beast Master Hunter, and it’s quite strange to see us both running along, with both of us almost having twin Pets! 🙂 We played a bit more today, but I think the Expansion will see the return of Wynterthyme and Demelza every Sunday for the foreseeable future! 🙂

So, now you all know the reason why there was no blog last night! Priorities, right?! 😉 and I can now finally get onto all the “good” bits…

Food bits. Last night for dinner we had Outback Spirit Beef Sausages with Bush Tomato, with chips, steamed green beans, and our usual half a tomato, and for dessert I had the last of my yellow Nectarines – and not before time, either! It was just on the point of being too soft! With the Nectarine, I had one of the really nice Dark Chocolate Chia Pods – they’re really weird! They look “sloppy” and as though they’d splosh all over you if you joggled them too much – but they’re not! They’re actually quite viscous, but not at all sticky or gooey, and they have these funny little “bobbles” in them, like eating sago (not tapioca, tapioca is a lot bigger – sago!) It’s a bit like eating strong chocolaty, cool, sweetish, sloppy jelly, made with tiny, edible bubble-wrap! Julian brought home lunch today as he was out shopping later than usual – he got Sushi for himself, and I had a ham and cheese Danish Pastry, half a Jalapeno and tomato savoury roll, et la pièce de résistance, a Baker’s Delight fruit and white chocolate scone! Yumm-o! 😉 (I’ll pay for that when I get on the scales tomorrow morning!) Tonight we’re having Scotch Fillet steak – beef is quite expensive at the moment and Julian simply wasn’t willing to pay a huge premium for not really terribly good quality fillet steak. Scotch Fillet is usually very nice, not to mention tender, but I noticed that there wasn’t very much “marbling” in the meat, which unfortunately can mean a slightly tougher cut of meat I’ll let you know how it goes! I believe we’re having it with all the usual suspects – chips, steamed green beans, and half a tomato. For dessert I’ll have one of my “Eve” apples, if they’re still edible, and an Apple Le Rice.

Weigh-in yesterday morning. Actually, I’ll give you a re-cap of my last few day’s weigh-ins! Here ya go….
Sun: 64.5 kg
Mon: 64.6 kg
Tue (yesterday): 64.1 kg
Wed (today): 64.4 kg

So really, it’s been fairly consistently in the mid 64 kilo range, and I can live quite happily with that! 🙂 However, let’s see what tomorrow morning brings!

Flipper is well, as are Auric and Dapple. Julian’s made a concerted effort to bring the PH water levels up to where they should be, and… so far, so good… as with my weight – we’ll just have to play it by ear, and hope that everything’s doing what it’s supposed to do! We’re also keeping a stricter than usual eye on Auric, because of his strange little “fits of the mads”, and because despite changing their feed, and the water, and getting the PH level of the water to absolutely “spot on” – as well as all the other things that we’re doing to and for him, he’s still having the occasional mild bout of “floaties”! Julian has started having his morning walks again, despite still not having made an appointment to see his Physiotherapist, and I’m still doing my 20 minutes on the treadmill, every “after-lunch time”. I have a little radio now though, so I can listen to talk-back shows while I’m walking, to relieve the boredom a little bit. And that’s brought me pretty much full circle to tomorrow, where I have no idea whatsoever as to what’s happening! I guess you’re all just going to have to call in again tomorrow night to find out! 😉 Will my weight have gone back up again? Has Auric had any more “fits of the mads”, or “floaties”? How far have Wynterthyme and Demelza got in the new area that’s opened up with the Expansion? All these questions, and “many, many more”, will be answered for you, right here, tomorrow night! 🙂 However until then, do really try hard to bee good, don’t forget that we should give meaning to life, not wait for life to give us meaning, and remember to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm and dry, especially when the weather forecast says to expect showers, and possible storms – but most importantly, and above all, please – remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

05.30 pm

Well, I’m starting this a lot later than I usually do on a Sunday night, because we finished playing WoW a lot later than we usually do! Dulcineà and Tourbillon were in the middle of a very long and convoluted quest chain in the Eastern Plaguelands, and because the place where all of the questing was taking place is so difficult to get to – most of the time – we decided to finish it off before “dusting down”, and finished playing for the day. Still, we’ve now completed all of the quests associated with the Eastern Plaguelands, and next Sunday we’ll be heading off to the Badlands. We went up five levels today – from level 41 when we started, to level 46, by the time we finished playing – and neither of us died, not even once! I reckon that’s got to be some sort of a record! 😉 Anyway, I thought we did rather well today, and we certainly had a lot of fun, and I’m really looking forward to next week! Before we started playing this morning, we took a couple of minutes to have a look at Wynterthyme, on Quel’Dorei, to see if there was anything that I needed to do to upgrade my armor to bring me up to spec before next Tuesday – however my general “Item Level” is 695, which is pretty good, considering I’m not wearing any kind of Heirloom gear, and until next Tuesday, the item level is capped off at 700 – after Tuesday, we’ll get (or be given? I’m not sure about the “how’s” and “why’s” of that yet!) “special” weapons, which will be able to utilise “artifacts” (which I also don’t know much about!) and it’ll be a whole new ball game!

During our lunch break, I rolled another character (yeah – I know… I just can’t seem to help myself, sometimes… ) This one is a Gnome Warlock (Warlocks are cool! They get little demons, and Void Walkers, as their Pets!) and I’ve called her…. “Calamities”! 🙂 I really hope she’ll do well, because I absolutely love her name, and I’m pretty sure that she’s my fiftieth character on my Wynterthyme account, and you’re only allowed to have fifty characters per account!

Oh, and I did do my walk after lunch! I didn’t quite do my full 20 minutes, as I felt it would have taken too big a chunk out of our remaining game time, so I compromised, and did 18! 🙂

And that’s really been our day today! Tomorrow morning our cleaning lady will be here, and in the afternoon, Josh will be back… and for the rest of the day, I guess I’ll either be leveling Zelenka or Calamities up! I might stick with Zelenka tomorrow, as she’s level 20 now, and although I’m keen to start working with Calamities, I’m really not all that keen on the Gnome starting area – and the fact that there seems to be an awful lot of Invasion activity around there at the moment! I might leave Calamities until after the full Expansion goes live, and see what happens with all the Invasion events!

Anyway, I’ll now get on with all the “good bits”! 🙂

Food stuffs. Last night we had the pan-fried marinated chicken breasts on a bed of plain steamed rice with some finely chopped spring onions in it – they really are deliciously tasty, and the chicken stays really tender and juicy! For dessert I had one of my yellow nectarines – it was ripe enough to eat – and one of my new favourites, a Vaalia Lemon Creme yoghurt! Today for lunch we had ham, cheese and tomato Toasties, which were extra, extra nice! For starters, Julian had got some more of that yummy whole-meal bread with the sesame seeds in the crust, and it really is nicer that “plain” whole-meal bread because the sesame seeds give it a lovely “nutty” flavour! Also, not being able to get our usual Cheddar cheese, he bought a different one, and it was even nicer than the original type of Cheddar – actually, I think it was more of a “Tasty” cheese than a straight “Cheddar”, as it had quite a bit of tangy “bite” to it, so lunch was “double yummy” today! Tonight, being Sunday night, of course we’ll be having our “Sunday Omelets”! I’m not quite sure what’ll be going into it, but there’ll probably be bacon (which I think he’s cooking right now, as well as frying up the onion that we usually seem to have in our omelets!) You might all have to wait until tomorrow night to find out what was in our omelets! 😉 For dessert I think I’d better have another nectarine – the one I had last night was quite ripe, and as I like my fruit ripe, but still “firm”, I think if the nectarines are left much longer, they’ll be ripe and “soft”, too! I’ll also have an Apple Le Rice with that…

Weigh-in this morning. Well, under the circumstances, and all other things considered (like what I had for lunch yesterday) I thought this morning’s trip to the scales wasn’t too bad… I went from 64.5 kg… to 64.5 kg… In other words, I stayed the same! Don’t worry though – my sinful gluttony will catch up with me tomorrow morning, fer sure, and I’ll be right up again… 😦 Still, all we can do is weight and sea…

And that brings me around to tomorrow again – which as I did last night, I’ve already told you about! Yes, it’s a pretty short blog tonight, but as we’ve both been heads down, tails up, playing WoW all day, there’s not really that much to tell you all! So, I’m afraid that that’s about “it” from me for this evening – but do drop in again tomorrow night to find out how my weight panned out, which character I decided to work with, and how Dapple, Auric, and Flipper are getting on – Yanno, sometimes I think that Dapple and Auric have a better memory than Flipper does, as every week when Julian strips down the bed to wash the bedding, Flipper nearly has a fit of the vapours! “Where’s My Bed!”, “You’ve destroyed My Nest! It took me ages to twist that doona into a Nest what was “Just Right”!” “What have you done with My Doona, and where’s My Nest wot I made in it? Bring it back!” – etc., etc… She doesn’t seem to remember that this is a regular occurrence, poor old girl! Crikey, even Dapple and Auric only took a couple of days to learn that “when funny faces approach the side of the tank, making weird noises, it’s time for food!” and come swimming up for it, opening and closing their little mouths above the water for it, even before we start feeding them! Oh well… anyway, until tomorrow night, do please try to bee 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 warm and dry, whatever the weather, and to look after yourselves… but above all, please – don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

04.40 pm

Yes, here I am, back at this particular Template – again! Well, it’s not bad, and it does have the widest text column that I’ve been able to find – to date, anyway, and all I really had to do to “adapt” it was create the new header, which was already “mostly done”, and just needed a bit of tweaking. It’s actually been a bit of a “strange” day, really – mostly normal this morning – got up, got weighed, had breakfast – all that sort of thing – and then I played WoW, as per usual. I re-rolled Zelenka – remember her? I created her the other night because as I had two of everything else, I thought that perhaps I should have two Mages… then this morning I decided that as I’d tried a Priest (two Priests, or Priestesses, in fact!) and two Mages, what about a third “Clothie” … a Warlock?! So I re-rolled Zelenka as a Warlock – and thanks to the lucky miracle of “Invasions”, she’s now level 18! These “Invasions” are pre-Expansion occurrences of the Legion beginning their invasion of Azeroth, and will presumably end on Tuesday, when the Expansion will be officially released – well, that’s what most people are saying, anyway – but surely the invasion won’t be over by then, will it? I mean… they haven’t even managed to take Kharanos yet! I should know – that’s where I did most of my very rapid leveling up this morning, fighting and dying – multiple times – to keep the Legion out of Kharanos (and out of Gadgetzan last night, with Silverhands!) So, who really knows what’s going to happen next Tuesday! I guess we’ll find out soon enough!

Anyway, that was my morning. I was fully planning on going for my twenty minute walk-a-thon after lunch, and then either getting back to Zelenka, or maybe doing some graphics – or whatever… and then Julian said “as soon as the Clothes Dryer finishes, I’m taking you up to Vermont South, we’ll have some lunch there at one of the little coffee shoppes, then we’ll go and get the planter tubs for the herbs!” – so that’s what we did… but the Clothes Dryer took for-evah to finish, so we had a slightly later luncheon than we’d planned… then I went and looked in Coles to see what other sort of fruit they had available, seeing as they don’t have any of the “bald-kiwi-fruit-brown” skinned Nashi pears anymore (they have the pale yellow skinned ones, but they’re not nearly as nice) As I suspected, the “stone” fruit is just starting to come into season, and the “pome” fruits (i.e. fruits that have a “core” of several small seeds, like apples, pears, and a few others) are just ending theirs 😦 I dunno – they have apples all year round – why can’t they have pears too?! Actually, I suppose they sort-of do – as you’ll usually be able to find the Beurre Bosc (they’re the brown ones – we used to call them “cooking” or “stewing” pears when I was little) the Williams (yellow skin when ripe) and the Packham (green skin, even when ripe) pears pretty much all the time – they just don’t have the ones that I like all year, like the Corella and the (brown-skinned) Nashi, or “Asian” pear. They did, however, have some of the yellow-skinned Nashi pears, but I opted for some yellow Nectarines instead. I’m not sure if they’re really ripe enough to eat, but I’ll try one tonight anyway. The main trouble with stone fruit is that if you get them when they’re “just right” to eat, and you get, say, half a dozen of them, most of them will be over-ripe by the time you get to them! Mum used to buy up lots of stone fruit at a time – nectarines, peaches, apricots… and before they got a chance to bruise or get over-ripe, she’d stew them! She’d package up the stewed fruit into individual serving tubs, and freeze them – so that she had nice stewed fruit all winter! She did the same with rhubarb, too… and it was me, years before I ever thought of trying to lose weight, who put her onto a good low-calorie way of stewing fruit! Instead of using water and sugar, one small can of diet lemonade is enough to stew a small saucepan full of prepared fruit – depending on how much “juice” you like or want.

After our little stroll through the fruit section of the supermarket, we headed off to Bunnies, to look for planter pots for the herbs… There were some plain, undecorated, boring and ordinary, concrete pots, about the right size and shape, but they wanted $80 each for them! We kept looking… There were some rather nice ones at reasonable prices, and in the end we got three fairly plain, rectangular terracotta pots, which were about $25 each (and they sure were a lot prettier than the boring concrete ones!) We also bought four bags of potting soil, then came home… Two of the tubs of herbs have been put along the outside edge of the back deck, with the third sitting on the path in front of them, so that not too much of the pathway is taken up by herbs – they look quite good there, and will be easy enough to get to for picking, even when it’s raining. “Plant Herbs – √ tick!”

While Julian was busy with the herbs, I was busy with Zelenka again! It’s hard to believe just how many areas/zones she’s bypassed but leveling up so quickly (yes, she is wearing the Heirloom gear!) I certainly don’t mind, and it’s not as though I haven’t covered those missing areas in great detail, many times over in the past. Anyway, that was my day today – and once again, I didn’t manage to get my walking in (does this mean I have to do a double walk, tomorrow? 😦 ) Oh well – but now onto something more enjoyable! The “good” bits!

Food stuffs. Last night for dinner we had some lovely little Pork loin steaks, pan-fried with a little home-grown rosemary, half a tomato, chips, and some Brussels sprouts – and it was an absolutely terrifict dinner! I really don’t know why we don’t have pork more often! For dessert I had one of my Corella pears, and an Apple Le Rice. Today for lunch up at the Vermont South shopping centre, I had a piece of only-just warmed up Spanakopita (it could have been a lot hotter!) with some over-dressed salad (which Julian ate for me! 😉 ) and one of those lovely, yummy, gooey, thick and sticky chocolate caramel slices, with a long black (coffee) and a small jug of skinny milk on the side. Tonight we’re having the pan-fried ultra delicious “marinated chicken”, on a bed of plain steamed rice and finely chopped spring onions, and for dessert I’ll try one of the (new) yellow Nectarines – hopefully it’ll be ripe enough to eat (if it’s not, I’ll have an apple!) and one of the Vaalia Lemon Creme yoghurts.

Weigh-in this morning. Well, that’ll larn me to go without my “walkies”! I went from 64.3 kg to 64.5 kg – in other words, up two whole points, and I really dread to think what I’ll see on the scales tomorrow morning, after another “missed walkies” day! Never mind, what’s done is done, and cannot be undone! Tomorrow though, is Sunday, and our last couple of days to level gear and ourselves up before Tuesday. My Daily Dose of Walking will be performed after lunch, which I’ll try to eat as fast as possible so as not to waste too much time. Tomorrow, Azeroth will have to wait for fifteen minutes!

And once again, that brings me up to tomorrow – which I’ve already told you about! 🙂 On Monday, I’m supposed to be having my next Warfarin blood test – but the cleaning lady will be here, and if I have my blood test done after about 12 noon, I don’t get the results until very late that evening… so I’m putting the blood test off for a day (and one day either side of the “due” date doesn’t matter all that much) because we’ll be over near the blood test place on Tuesday, picking up my very favourite eldest daughter who’ll be coming over – nice and early, so I should get the results before dinner time! And that’s really about “it” from me again for this evening! Do drop in again tomorrow night to find out if I did get my walkies in, and what my weight had to say about not doing “Tha Walk” for two whole days, in the morning, what we got up to in Azeroth (though we’re not really counting how many times we die this Sunday, because of all the Invasions!) and what else happened around this neck of the woods in general! Until then though, please try to bee good, don’t forget that those who will not read are no better off than those who cannot read, and remember to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm and dry, especially on the coldest and wettest of days… but above all… please remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

05.36 pm

Gosh, I’m starting very late tonight, considering it’s a Friday – but my very favourite eldest daughter has been over here all day, arriving just before 10 this morning, and only leaving here about half an hour ago! She had her hair coloured this morning, and it looks absolutely fantastic! Josh is a truly great artist, who uses people’s hair as his canvas – I know he always does a superb job on my hair, but I think he surpassed himself today on Lee’s hair! Her hair is very short, and I think I mentioned the other night that she was having “blue and purple”? Well, it’s just gorgeous! Blue, shading down to barely there on her short back and sides, and the top, which is a little longer, has been coloured and cut to give it more “texture”, again in a somewhat shaded blue, with mauve and purple highlights! (I’m jealous! *pout* (no, I’m not really! 😉 )) And it just looks… marvelous! It took a long time though – Josh started on her hair just after 10, and it was finally done around half past one! We’re already having preliminary thoughts on what to do with mine next time – I’d absolutely love to have the same blues and purple as Lee, but it wouldn’t last very long in my hair – so I’m thinking of three or four tones, in dark red, “bronze” (a sort-of a dark, reddish-brown?), a gold-ish or strawberry blond, and something to blend it all together – but there’s plenty of time to think about that before I have it done again.

Julian was out for most of the morning, picking up Dry Cleaning, doing a bit of shopping, and collecting mail, and he brought home lunch… my favourite “take-away” lunch at the moment is either a savoury roll or Danish, with one of the Baker’s Delight fruit and white chocolate scones! Julian had sushi, and Lee had an Optifast Bar. After lunch Lee and I watched alternating episodes of “Arrow” and “The Flash” until it was time for her to go home. Both the shows are starting to get very “dark”, with lots of “not nice” things happening all over the place, and I’m sorta glad that we’re watching them alternately, as “The Flash” is a lot less “bleak and dark” than “Arrow”, so you get a chance to catch your breath and calm down a bit in between the really nasty bits in “Arrow”, where people seem to be dropping like flies – only then it turns out that they’re not really dead at all – just pretending to be… except for Oliver’s sister… maybe… but I’m pretty sure she’s going to be coming back again too 🙂

And really, that’s about all that’s happened here today! So far, anyway – so I guess I can now get on to the “good” bits?

Food stuffs. Last night we had the last of the left-over “One-pot Spanish Chicken and Rice” for dinner, and yes, I really do think it should have had a bit more liquid in it than the recipe specified – but it was really very nice and tasty. For dessert I had the last of my “bald-kiwi-fruit-brown” skinned Nashi pears (unless we can find some more somewhere!) and one of the Vaalia Lemon Creme yoghurts – they really are very delicious! As I mentioned above, today for lunch I had a savoury ham and cheese Danish, and a Baker’s Delight fruit and white chocolate scone, with just a hint of butter on it. Tonight we’re having pan-fried Pork Loin Steaks, with a little bit of home-grown rosemary, chips, half a tomato, and steamed Brussels sprouts, and for dessert I’ll have one of my Corella pears and an Apple Le Rice.

Weigh-in this morning. Well, what did I say yesterday, hmm? Didn’t I mention something about “Swings and Roundabouts”, and also that “what goes down must always go back up”? I went from 63.8 kg yesterday, to 64.3 kg again – exactly where I was on Tuesday! Oh well, here we go on the yo-yo circuit again, and what’s worse is that I didn’t get to do my walk at all today! I was going to do my walk this morning, before breakfast, but ran out of time… so then I was going to do it after lunch, and get my very favourite eldest daughter to come in and talk to me for twenty minutes, so that I wouldn’t miss any of her visit, but somehow or other we sort-of started watching “Arrow” straight after lunch, so the “walkies” never actually eventuated! (mea culpa, mea maxima culpa! – it’s always my fault, anyway… *shakes head in mock despair*) So… you should all expect my weight to skyrocket a bit more tomorrow, as I’m expecting it to!

And that brings us around to tomorrow – Saturday! Julian says if the weather’s good enough, he wants to plant out the herb garden… We bought a lot of herbs when we bought the vegetables, all those weeks ago, but although the vegetables have been planted (some of them twice, like the carrots, after a snap frost got to them!) and are doing very well – except for the Bok Choy – but so far, we haven’t planted out the herbs – they’re still sitting around in their little plastic nursery pots! The main reason we haven’t planted them out is because we’re not really sure where we should put them! We want them close enough to the house for Julian to be able to just dart out and pick whatever he wants while he’s cooking, without having to make a long trek down to the back of the garden (especially if it’s raining!) But we also know that they need lots of sunshine, so we can’t really keep them on the back deck – but much further away than that, and we tend to forget to water them! Well, if he’s thinking of planting them tomorrow, weather permitting, then he must have decided on the best place for them, so… like my weight, we’ll just “weight and sea”! 🙂 And that’s really about “it” from me again for tonight – but do call in again tomorrow night, to find out how my weight’s going, whether we managed to get the herbs planted, as well as where we ended up putting them if we did, and to see if Dapple’s still nibbling on Auric’s tail (I haven’t seen him do it at all today, but then… I haven’t really been watching him!) In the meantime though, do try to bee good, remember that you will never be like the ‘Little Engine That Could’ if you sit around on your caboose, and don’t forget to always drive carefully, to keep warm and dry this weekend, and to look after yourselves… but most importantly, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

03.40 pm

Well, here I am – sorry about last night, but by the time I’d finished watching the two episodes of “Australian Survivor” (I’m still not sure whether it’s “Australian Survivor”, or “Survivor Australia”!) it was almost dinner time, and I’d run out of time – so all you lucky people out there get to read two day’s worth of my trivia, instead of just one day’s worth! (Ah! I just went and looked it up – it’s “Australian Survivor”! Yayy me! 🙂 ) As usual – it seems to have begun to be my usual practice now, anyway – I now seem to play WoW in the morning, do my treadmilling after lunch, then either work on one of my millions of current projects, do something graphical (as I did today! I made a rather stunning new Bookmarks wallpapery-thingy!) or catch up with a show that neither Julian or my very favourite eldest daughter are interested in (f’rinstance, “Australian Survivor”) until it’s time to start writing this. As I think I mentioned the other day – I was going to watch “Australian Survivor” on Tuesday afternoon, because my very favourite eldest daughter wasn’t going to be over (she’s coming tomorrow!) but the blog Template and Header that I’d only made the day before – in a hurry – were just sooo atrocious that I decided to fix that instead, and watch “Australian Survivor” on Wednesday (yesterday) instead – which is what I did. So… after nearly three hours solid of “Australian Survivor”, what did I think of it? Well, for starters I can tell you all that the person sent off by Melbourne’s newest Tabloid, “The Age”, to write up a revue on it, was either having a very bad day, was bored stupid, had just had a debilitating fight with his/her girl/boyfriend, or simply didn’t understand the mechanics of that sort of show in the first place – I mean, no-one expects the participants to be totally truthful with eachother, or to make alliances that they intend to keep, the whole way through the show! They’re there for one reason, and one reason only – scratch that – they’re actually there for two reasons, the main one being to win a lot of money – the other, of course, is that they enjoy pitting themselves, physically as well as mentally, against other players – and I like watching them do so, and observing the sneaky, and sometimes (alright, very often!) downright dishonest things they’ll say and do to advance their own cause! They help eachother and co-operate with their “Tribe”, just enough to get by, but if they think that they might win themselves some “brownie points” by being extra helpful, or extra nice to someone, then that’s what they’ll do. It’s a fairly complicated game, but I just love watching their maneuverings and manipulations to stay in the game for yet another day! Personally, the thought of exhausting myself on a daily basis, participating in physically challenging (and sometimes even dangerous!) contests of stamina and strength, existing on a diet largely made up of very small amounts of rice, beans, and any crabs or minute tropical fish they’ve managed to catch in the surf just off their beach “camp”, fills me with absolute and utter horror! “Camp”? Ha! What “camp”! No proper shelter from the heat during the day, or the freezing temperatures during the night, sitting around in the pouring, tropical rain until all their skin turns “pruney” – plus lots of other privations, far too numerous to list here – for what?!  A measly $500,000 AUD! At least the American Survivor’s Grand Prize is $1,000,000 US, and I suppose that’s almost worth playing for… almost, but it’d take three or four – or even ten times that much, to even get the momentary thought of participating to enter my mind, let alone cross it!

But (to me) it’s trashy, amusing, astounding (to see what some people will do, and the lengths that they’ll go to!) so I think I’ll keep on watching it! 🙂 Roll on next Sunday and Monday night! 😉

As you all know, I’ve been playing with my new-ish Mage, Silverhands, and she’s getting on relatively well – she’s now level 45! However, both Julian and I had one more “Free Boost to Level 100” available… Julian still has his… It took me a while to decide, but in the end it boiled down to a choice of either having to import one of my level 100 characters from Quel’Dorei, or rolling another character on Saurfang and instantly boosting them up to level 100. Importing a character costs real-life $$, so…. I rolled my last character for my Wynterthyme account (until I kill someone off, of course!) Again, it took me a while to decide what Class to roll… I’ve been doing quite well with Piubella, my level 24 Shadow Priest, and even better with Silverhands – but for such an important “jump”, in the end I decided that rather than having to grapple with new, high-level spells that I was totally unfamiliar with, I’d probably be better off rolling a Class that I was familiar with – a Beast Master Hunter – and bring my Priest and my Mage up the old-fashioned way, step by step, and level by level… so last night I rolled Nehanda (yes! Another name with no “funny letters” or strange accents! 😉 ) and boosted her up to level 100! As they say in all the best Classics, “so far, so good!” 🙂

And that’s what I’ve been up to for the past two days! Now, having cleared all of that up for you, I can now get onto the “good” bits! 😉

Food stuffs. For lunch yesterday we had a ham, cheese, and tomato Toastie (which are just sooo delicious! Mmmm!) and for dinner last night we had some rather “different-looking” sausages – or at least the packaging was different. It was terribly “nothing to see here – move along!” plain and boring, and the brand is called “Farm Foods” – when you Google them, it’s quite interesting to see that (a) they appear to be a re-branded “Home Brand” type of sausage, (b) they’re a Coles and/or an IGA line, and (c) they also encompass lots of other so-called “brands”, like “Heston Blumenthal”, and “Outback Spirit” – which you’ve all heard me mention by “name” more than once or twice before! Well, these particular sausages are “Farm Foods Beef, Pepper, & Barossa Valley Shiraz Sausages”, and as I said before, they were absolutely delicious! Really, really yummy! We had them with chips, steamed green beans, and our usual half a tomato… for dessert I had one of my Corella pears, and while it was quite nice, it’s becoming extremely obvious that the end of the pear season – both the Corella and the Nashi, anyway – is about to end. I also had one of my Vaalia Lemon Creme yoghurts… Lunch today was a sandwich made with the new “I got the wrong loaf!” whole-meal bread (without all of those nice sesame seeds in the crust! 😦 ) with the usual basil-pesto hummus butter substitute, sandwich-sliced chicken, and some freshly sliced red capsicum – I tell you, using that basil-pesto hummus as a butter substitute makes so much difference to the taste of sandwiches, it’s a wonder people are still using butter! Tonight for dinner we’re having the leftovers from Monday night’s “One-pot Spanish Chicken and Rice”, which I’m really looking forward to, and for dessert I’ll probably have one of the Apple Le Rice thingies…

Weigh-in yesterday morning. Wasn’t very good at all! I was very disappointed 😦 On Monday, I was 64.6 kg, and on Tuesday, I went down to 64.3 kg – which was terrific! Then yesterday, my body decided that Tuesday hadn’t happened at all – it was just a fragment of my fevered imagination, and I went back to good-old 64.6 kg! 😦 Not fair!! I really hate it when my body teases me like that! The weight gain – overnight (*glare*) was too much to even be said to be “within the margin of error”, either 😦

Weigh-in this morning. Will wonders never cease?! This morning, when I reluctantly and gloomily stepped up onto the scales, guess what I saw! No, you’d never be able to guess – I’d better tell you… I’d gone from 64.6 kg…. to 63.8 kg! I’d gone down 8 points! Almost a whole kilo! Overnight! Now, anyone would think that I’d be pleased, wouldn’t they – anyone would be pleased with results like that, right? So, am I pleased about going down so much overnight? In actual fact though, the answer is “No!” (gasp, shock, horror!) “Why ever not!”, I hear you all yelling… Well, you see, in a sort-of a way I am pleased that I’ve gone down so much, but by the same token, I know that a drop like that is going to produce a correspondingly big jump back up again, either tomorrow or the next day! Remember what I said about “Swings and Roundabouts”? Oh well, we shall just have to weight and sea…

This morning when I got up I went into the loungeroom to pull up the blind, turn on the Fish House light, and to check on Dapple and Auric. Usually, first thing in the morning, they’re pretty much still asleep, and only swim fish-zombie-like around with no real rhyme or reason. When they open their eyes (yes, I know their eyes are always open!) and spot me, they immediately think “Food!” and come swimming over to see if I have anything for them to eat – which I usually don’t, because Julian’s the one who feeds them in the morning! Anyway, they swam over this morning, hoping for food, and I stood there for a bit, chatting to them and giving them their morning “pat” behind the glass, and Dapple, my dear, sweet little Dapple! My cute and friendly little boy, started biting the tip of Auric’s tail! Auric “jumped”, and hastily moved out of the way. Dapple followed him, and nipped him on the tail again! Auric was getting a trifle agitated, and Dapple wouldn’t leave him alone! This went on for a bit – I called Julian, who thought that if he fed them, it might distract Dapple, and I hastened off to the bathroom. When I came back into the bedroom to get weighed, Julian had changed his mind about feeding them to distract Dapple from eating all of Auric’s long, floaty tail, and he said they were behaving… This afternoon, after I’d finished my daily treadmilling, I went in to see how they were doing, and as usual, they were half dozing, half swimmering around (I caught them having an afternoon nap yesterday, too!) but, also as usual, as soon as they saw me, they came over – probably expecting food (yes, Julian did give them their breakfast this morning) and when that food wasn’t forthcoming, Dapple started nibbling Auric’s tail again! I told him off, and gave him a lecture about eating Auric’s tail, but just like a naughty little boy, he took absolutely no notice of me, so I “humphed” in annoyance at them, and came in here to finish off my lovely new Bookmarks-wallpapery-thingy! I have no idea why Dapple’s taken to nibbling Auric’s tail – but we’ll have to keep a close eye on them – I don’t want any injuries, and I definitely don’t want to have to separate them! They’ve always got on so well together, too…

And that brings me almost full circle to tomorrow, which should be a good day – my very favourite eldest daughter is coming over, and Josh is coming over to colour her hair for her, and then no doubt, we’ll sit and watch some more episodes of “Arrow”, “Flash”, and I think we have some episodes of “Agent Carter” – but I might be wrong about that… anyway, that’s about “it” from me for this evening! Do call in again tomorrow night, to find out how Lee’s hair turned out (she’s having purple and blue!) what my weight did, or didn’t do, and whether Dapple is still into biting Auric’s tail! Until then though, please try very hard to bee good, don’t forget that it is the trouble that never comes that causes the loss of sleep, and remember to look after yourselves, to keep warm and dry, even when the weather forecast says it’s going to be fine, and to always drive carefully… but above all, please remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

04.44 pm

Well, here I am, late again (or should I perhaps say “as usual!”) but never mind – at least I’ve managed to get rid of that ghastly, horrible Template set-up that I thought I’d “fixed” last night! It was a horrible, “nothing”, sort-of pink…ish colour that simply looked revolting! However, I did play Wow this morning – Silverhands is really going well, and as she’s now level 42, she has the ability to cast “Portals”, through which she’ll be able to transport friends and group members, to any capital city on Azeroth! That is, she will have the ability to do that, once she gets to her local, friendly Portal Instructor who will then teach her how to cast Portals! I had seriously intended to go and sit down and watch the two episodes of Channel 10’s attempt at creating a creditable Season of “Survivor Australia”, that I’d recorded on Sunday night, and last night (remember that many years ago, both Channel 9 and Channel 7 tried making an Ozzie version of the show, and failed most miserably!) but with the blog Template looking as utterly revolting as it did, I decided that it might be a better idea to go and fix that, instead! So I did, and I’ll watch those two episodes of Survivor Australia tomorrow! What do you think of the new-look Template, anyway?! I went hunting patterns this afternoon, and found quite a lot, including this one – it’s my new “grunge” look, and I think it’s quite nice, in a rather “grubby” sort-of way! Oh, and I also tidied up all my squillions of magazines this morning, too! I must say that I’m feeling very virtuous about that – I’d been putting the task off for so long that it was quite a Herculean task! I threw out quite a lot of them, however there are some “duplications” of the extremely beautiful “Delicious” magazines – mainly due to a fumble with mailing addresses when we moved – and an awful lot of very nice, but not quite “me” anymore “Country Style” magazines (so I won’t be renewing my subscription) that I really feel awful throwing away! All these magazines are in pristine condition, and all 2016 issues – so if anyone would like them, just let me know! The rest of the magazines – the ones I’ve kept, are all nice and neatly arranged in six rather large magazine holders, according to the type of magazine, and the issue date… most of them have little pieces of paper sticking up out of them, indicating recipes that I’d liked the sound of, but that I haven’t got around to transcribing yet, or even printing them out and letting Julian have a go at making them. Well, I have no excuses left now – they’re all sitting there in their almost matching magazine holders, in a neat little row along the back of my “return”, staring accusingly at me for playing WoW, instead of getting on with my transcribing and printing!

Yesterday we fed Auric and Dapple a couple of peeled and roughly chopped peas for their breakfast in the morning, and for their dinner last night, and it worked a treat! Last night, for about the first time in ages, Auric didn’t have any “floaties” at all! At breakfast yesterday morning, when Julian gave them their pea bitz, they came up, expecting “breakfast as usual”, then hovered there, watching nonplussed as the little pieces of chopped pea drifted downwards, and, as Julian put it, they looked at him as if to say “Right, well that was fun – now, where’s our breakfast!” But when he went back to check on them about fifteen minutes later, they were swimming around as usual, and there were no signs of the pea pieces in the floor of the tank, so we guessed that those two clever little fishies must have found them… 😉 They were the same last night – expecting “dinner as usual”, but getting pea pieces instead – and this just goes to show you that fish aren’t as dumb as most people think! They’d been given chopped up bits of pea for breakfast, and had managed to find and eat them from the floor of the tank. At dinner time, they watched as the pea pieces were dropped in, and after a very short pause, they swam off after them, mostly gulping them down before they reached the gravel! So it seems that overfeeding, if not the only reason, was at least a part of the reason, for their nightly “floaties”! Last night after Julian changed their water, vacuumed the tank, and washed their plastic plants for them, they seemed as happy as Larry, and Auric, I kid you not – even had a short “fit of the mads”, just like a cat! You know how cats can be minding their own business, just… doing nothing much in particular, when totally without warning, and for no discernible reason, they’ll suddenly go off prancing sideways, leaping and dashing around in a frenzy, galloping from one end of the house to the other, as if all the demons of hell were after their tail! I don’t know about your nomenclature, but we call it “having a fit of the mads” – and that’s exactly what Auric did! He was swimming lazily around with Dapple, then all of a sudden, for no reason, he took off like a little orange bullet, dashed around for about two and a half seconds, then just went on swimming lazily and nonchalantly, as though nothing at all had happened! 🙂 They got chopped up pea for breakfast again this morning, and this afternoon Julian went out to see if he could get them some different food, mainly just to give them a bit of variety, and to try and increase their protein intake. The spirulina pellets we’ve been giving them float on the water – they don’t sink – so Julian’s got them some different spirulina pellets, which do sink, and also some different flakes, which also sink (and should be kept in the fridge, apparently!) I’ve read that you can also feed them some finely chopped up melon pieces, too, but we don’t have any melon on hand at the moment, not are we likely to, at least until next summer, anyway – so we’ll keep on with the pellets, flakes, and chopped up peas…

Anyway, that was pretty much my day today, so I can now get onto all the “good” bits! 😉

Food stuffs. Last night for dinner we had a recipe that came in my morning “foodie” email batch – it sounded really nice, and easy enough to make, so when Julian went out to check the PO Box for mail, he bought – or thought he bought – all the ingredients for this dish, which is called “One-pot Spanish Chicken and Rice“, and it was delicious! Yup, another “Keeper”, and I’ll get around to transcribing it for you all as soon as possible! Unfortunately, he’d thought that we had Balsamic vinegar – I thought so too, but we couldn’t find it, so he had to take off for the supermarket in order to get some, and dinner was consequentially a little later than we’d planned – but it was really yummy! If any of you are thinking of making this for yourselves, there is a slight modification that Julian made, and just as well he did, too! Apart from the unspecified amount of water in which you soak the Basmati rice, the tomato passata, and an extra 125 ml of water as mentioned in the “Method” section, no other liquid is specified. Julian didn’t think that was enough though, and added at least another cup of water – and he plans to add more than just that extra cup of water next time (because there most definitely will be a next time!) As it was, the rice caught a bit on the bottom of the pan, because it got a bit too dry, but a bit more liquid should prevent that from happening next time! For dessert I had one of my “bald-kiwi-fruit-brown” skinned Nashi pears – alas, the Nashi pear season seems to be over, because Julian has been unable to find any in either supermarkets or Greengrocers, so I’ll have to find another fruit to eat! 😦 However, the one that I had last night was truly delicious, and with it I had an Apple Le Rice. Today for lunch I had a sandwich with chicken sandwich chunks, some sliced tomato, and our usual butter substitute of basil-pesto hummus – made from different bread this time! Julian had meant to get the same whole-meal bread with the sesame seeds in the crust, but picked this one up by mistake instead. It was a very nice sandwich, and I thoroughly enjoyed it, but I did miss my sesame seeds in the crust… Tonight for dinner we’re having the last of the Shepherd’s Pie with Garlic Mash that we had the other night, and for dessert I’ll have a Corella pear, and one of the very delicious Vaalia Lemon Creme yoghurt.

Weigh-in this morning. Wasn’t too bad, for a change! I went from 64.6 kg to 64.3 kg – down three points (and about time, too!) Who knows what tomorrow will bring – hopefully I’ll go down a bit more, but it’s probably “my turn” to go back up again – so we’ll just have to weight and sea…

And that about brings me around full circle to tomorrow! I’ll probably do tomorrow what I was intending to do today – that is, WoW in the morning, walk for 20 minutes after lunch, and then sit down to watch Channel 10’s attempt to make a decent “Survivor Australia”, set somewhere in Samoa, from memory! But no doubt I’ll get sidetracked again by something – I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow night though, as that’s about “it” from me for this evening! Do call in again tomorrow night to find out how Auric and Dapple are getting on with their new food(s), what my weight is doing – or not doing – and whether or not I actually did get to watch “Survivor Australia”, and what I thought of it, if I did! Until then though, do try hard to bee good, remember that wearing a mask wears you out; faking it is fatiguing, and the most exhausting activity is pretending to be what you know you aren’t, and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm and dry in this mercurial Melbourne weather… but most importantly, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂