05.25 pm

Well, here I am again after another exciting and exhilarating day romping through Azeroth, and – I’m happy to be able to tell you all – Dulcineà and Tourbillon went up seven levels, and didn’t die once! 😀 Dulcineà started this morning at level 33, and just before we logged off, she turned level 41! At level 40 she earned herself a faster riding speed too, which will be a big help in getting around, but… oh, for level 60! All mounts, whether of the flying, running, and/or swimming persuasion, are Account Bound, and you can learn to ride the flying mounts when you reach level 60. Well, I’ve managed to collect quite an extensive “stable” of flying mounts to choose from when the time comes, but at the moment I’m using the Imperial Quilen for most of my characters, as it can double as both a “land” mount, or a “flying” mount – and all of my girls have a little motor scooter too, which has a sidecar that can carry a passenger – unfortunately it doesn’t fly (except for straight down very steep cliffs, sometimes! 😉 ) We started off in the Hinterlands this morning, by lunch time we’d been sent off to the Western Plaguelands, and about an hour before we finished off for the day we were sent to the Eastern Plaguelands! A rather impressive demonstration of the perks of wearing Heirloom gear, I thought! 🙂 But… (and you just knew there had to be a “but…” tucked in there somewhere, didn’t you!) but… it was far too easy! Yes… far too easy! The Heirloom gear, which automatically adjusts to your level as you level up, does give you slightly higher attributes than the armor that you’d normally be wearing – armor that you received as quest rewards, for instance (though you can get some really nice, non-Heirloom gear from the Auction House – if you don’t mind spending ridiculous sums of gold for something you’re going to “outgrow” in a couple of levels! “Swings and roundabouts”!) however, despite all the advantages of Heirloom gear, you still shouldn’t be able to “one-shot” mobs that are one or two levels higher than yourself, and especially not a “Silver Special”! Quite often, one of us would come across one of those “Silver Specials”, and really, whoever saw it first usually manged to kill it before the other person (usually me!) could get there to help! (a”Silver Special” is an Elite mob with a silver portrait frame rather than a gold one – they’re supposed to be reasonably difficult to bring down, and to drop “pretty good loot”… HA!) A lot of the time by the time I’d finished skinning or looting something, and caught up to Julian, everything was already dead, and waiting to be looted and skinned! Being that easy rather spoils the game a bit for me…

Anyway, we had a very good day today, and went up seven levels – I’m not sure where we go after the Plaguelands, but I doubt that we’ll be there for very much longer, at the rate we’re climbing the ladder! And that’s pretty much been our day today – I did a shortened walk at lunchtime today, but tomorrow it’ll be back to the 20 minute slog before breakfast (I really don’t mind the walking itself – in fact I quite enjoy it – I just wish it wasn’t so damned boring!) and the rest of tomorrow threatens to be pretty much the same as yesterday, and the day before – WoW in the morning, and “something else” in the afternoon – usually to do with graphics, most of the time! I’m most interested in Channel 10 tonight! I won’t be watching it tonight, but I will be recording it, because they’re doing a Season of “Australian Survivor”! Channel 9 did one Season years and years ago, and I believe Channel 7 did one too, though they never really caught on the way that the American “Survivor” shows did. Anyway, Channel 10 have decided to have a stab at it, and it starts this evening – but as I said, I won’t be watching it tonight, I’ll be recording it, so that when I do watch it I’ll be able to fast-forward through all the ads, otherwise I think it would be totally unbearable! I might even watch it tomorrow – if I do, I’ll tell you all about it, and whether I think it’ll be worth continuing to watch – tomorrow night!

And having filled you all in on the days doings, I can now tell you all about the “good” bits! 😉

Food stuffs. For dinner last night we had a most delicious little piece of fillet steak, with chips, half a tomato, and steamed green beans, and for dessert I had one of my Corella pears, and for a change, one of the Apple Le Rice. Today for lunch we had a very yummy ham, cheese, and tomato Toastie, using the Cheddar cheese rather than the Swiss (cheese) in between slices of that really nice and tasty whole-meal bread, with the sesame seeds in the crust. Tonight of course we’re having our usual “Sunday night omelets” for dinner. I’m presuming it’ll have all the usual suspects in it, including bacon, Halloumi cheese (or maybe Julian’ll use Cheddar tonight? Chi sà? (actually, as it turned out, he used what was left of the Swiss cheese, as he’d used up all the Halloumi and Cheddar cheese in other things!)) tomato, fried onion, maybe some diced capsicum…? I’ll let you know tomorrow! And for dessert tonight it’ll be back to one of the smaller, “Royal Gala” apples, and another of those extremely nice Vaalia Lemon Creme yoghurts 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. I’m still “dithering” within that so-called “margin of error”! I went from 65.1 kg to 64.9 kg. My graph is starting to look like that broken-toothed saw again! Oh well, let’s see what happens tomorrow – although long-suffering experience tells me that I’ll be up, yet again… 😦

And that brings me just about full-circle back to tomorrow! I’m not expecting anything out of the ordinary tomorrow – Josh will be over in the afternoon, and during the day I’m sort-of expecting a parcel in the mail, because I got an email about the order I’d placed with this particular firm, telling me that it had been upgraded to “Express” post, at no extra cost! Innit nice when something like that happens, right out of the blue! Well, I’ve never bought anything from this crowd before, but if it turns out to be any good, and they’re nice enough to upgrade me like that, chances are I’ll be buying from them again in the future!  And that’s about “it” from me for tonight! Do call in again tomorrow night, to find out if my mysterious parcel did arrive, whether or not I watched Channel 10’s version of “Australian Survivor” (eek! my omelet is calling me!) and what I thought of it, and how my weight let me up – or down, depending on your viewpoint! Until tomorrow however, please try to bee very good, remember always to count your blessings, not your troubles, and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to keep warm and dry in this ultra changeable weather, and to always drive carefully… but above all, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

 

05.08 pm

I think I like this one a lot much more betterer! 🙂 And the other one did last for almost 24 hours, honestly! 😯 (← Winter’s very best, wide-eyed, innocent look!) Anyway, ’tis done now – I know Julian liked last night’s Template, so I’ve included most of its elements in this one – same colours, same patterns… so it’s almost the same – but not quite! And just as an aside, this is yet another of the older Templates that I periodically come back to…

This will possibly be a much shorter blog than usual, because there’s really not all that much to tell you all! This morning was a bit different from usual though – in that I didn’t go for my usual walk before breakfast! I hope I’m not coming down with something, because I ached all over this morning, and just couldn’t dredge up the energy to do my usual treadmilling. I did do it later though – before lunch – and I felt a lot better for not having forced myself to do my walk first thing this morning! I played WoW this morning, as per usual though, so Silverhands is now almost level 35, and on her way to Feralis! I probably could have got her up to level 36 by lunch time today, if I’d got Julian to fly me down to Feralis, but I thought it was an excellent opportunity for me to gain “exploration experience points”, so I hopped on my little motor-scooter and clattered, klunked, and rattled my way south from Astraanar, picking up Flight Points as I drove along the road, and filling in blank bits of map as I went! It was good actually – all I needed was a picnic hamper and a thermos of hot coffee! It’s a long, long, long way from Astraanar to Feralis! All the way through Ashenvale, the Stonetalon Mountains, and Desolace, all completely un-mapped territory, so you pretty much have to guess your way (or try to remember it from the last time you were there, when you were playing someone else!) Mind you, the Flight Points are sort-of marked with little “wing symbols”, so basically I just point myself towards the next Flight Point, cross my fingers (and occasionally my toes as well!) and try to head that-a-ways! At the moment I’m in the middle of the Stonetalon Mountains, so I still have quite a long way to go!

So I had my morning treadmilling at around about one o’clock, which was really almost agreeable – and I think that from now on, I might try to vary my walking times a bit – say, walk in the early mornings four days a week, and at lunch time, three days a week – or something along those lines, anyway. After that, Julian had brought some nice lunch home with him, so we gobbled that all up, and I started sifting through the Templates – again – found this one, and decided to experiment with a header for it, and here it is! And that, Ladies and Gentlepersons, is the sum total of my daily doin’s – so far, anyway – and I shall forthwith get on to all the fascinatingly “good” bits! 😉

Food stuffs. Last night we had the Lamb and Rosemary Shepherd’s Pies with Roasted Garlic Mash for dinner, so… “was it any good?” I hear you all asking! “Will it become another “Keeper”?!” Well, I can truthfully answer “Yes!” to both those questions – it was extremely delicious, though Julian did say that it was a trifle “fiddly” to make, though now he’s made it once, it shouldn’t be quite so fiddly next time, n’est ce pas? You’ll find the recipe here, and I promise that I’ll try to get it written up on my “Recipes…” page, as soon as possible! In the end, we did end up using all the garlic that the recipe called for, even though it did sound like an awful lot! However because it was roasted first – which tends to break down quite a lot of the pungency and strong flavour (just as well, too!) we did use it, and found that it wasn’t too much, after all! There was a fair bit left over too – enough for one more meal, anyway – which we’ve put in the freezer, so again, it’s a fairly economical recipe – unless you have a family for five or more – but it would be plenty for a family of four. For dessert I had one of my new, smaller “Royal Gala” apples, which was very nice – quite sweet, but with enough tartness to them to make them pleasant eating, and after that I had another of my new-found Vaalia Lemon Creme yoghurts. Today for lunch today Julian brought home a savoury Danish (ham, cheese and pineapple), and a savoury roll, both of which were cut in half, and we had half each. He also brought back a couple of the extra delicious Baker’s Delight fruit and white chocolate scones, and we had one each, with just a small smear of butter in them. Tonight we’re having pan-fried fillet steak, with chips, steamed green beans, and half a tomato, and for dessert I’ll have one of my Corella pears, and this time I’ll have an Apple Le Rice.

Weigh-in this morning. *sigh* What can I say? “Within the margin of error”? I went from 65.2 kg to 65.1 kg – down the one point that I went up yesterday! I did mean it yesterday you know – I will eat what I want, and when I want – within reason, naturally – and I’ll continue to weigh myself on a daily basis – but I’m rapidly coming to the conclusion that if you don’t enjoy your life, you might as well not be living, and I’ll be buggered if I end up too afraid to eat this, that, or the other, because of what it might do to my weight! However, those bloody little pills are a different matter entirely! They should ruddy well be banned – as far as my body is concerned, anyway – and come next March I’ll be doing my damnedest to talk Dr. Y. out of prescribing any more for me (as long as there’s a viable alternative, because I’m not a very good candidate for surgery while I’m on Warfarin – which is likely to be for the rest of my life!)

And once again, that pretty much brings me full circle to tomorrow again! Yes, it’s a Sunday, so that means that Dulcineà and Tourbillon will be having their first adventures in their new Realm, Saurfang! Not that it’ll be any different to Quel’Dorei, only slightly less crowded, and with not as much “competition” for the mobs and quests! I know that all my “girls” have been enjoying the relative peace and quiet on Saurfang – it’s very reminiscent of Quel’Dorei, all those years ago when we first moved there from a very busy and somewhat overcrowded Scarlet Crusade. So it’ll be a good day tomorrow, and a good evening, too, as being a Sunday night, we’ll be having Julian’s delicious omelets for dinner! 🙂 And that’s really about “it” from me for this evening! Oh, one last thing! We still have some correspondence with the people we bought this place from, and Julian asked Mrs. A. how long the goldfish had been here – so we could have some idea of how old they were, you see – and she said that they’d had them for four years… and we’ve been here for almost a year, so Auric and Dapple are approximately about five years old! Ah, so next question, how long to goldfish live? According to Google, anywhere between 5 and 30 years, depending on the water condition. Well, now that they live inside, we take extremely good care of the water, so hopefully we’ll have them for many years to come – in fact, by “Survivor” standards, they’d well and truly out-swim – but hopefully not outlast, or outwit me! 😉 So anyway, do call in again tomorrow night, to find out how Dulcineà and Tourbillon fared in their adventures, and whether they died or not, how my weight is behaving (or not behaving, which is the more likely of the two!) and what other things we got up to during the day! Until then though, do try to bee good, remember to always be a little kinder than necessary, and don’t forget to keep warm and dry while you’re out having fun in the snow, to look after yourselves, and to always drive carefully… but most importantly, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

04.26 pm

Yes, I’ve changed it yet again! OK, so I’ll try and live with this one for at least 24 hours – no promises though! I dunno – the last Template I used (last night) is “alright“, I suppose, but you see, that’s the problem! It’s just… “alright“! Not good, not really good, not “this is the One!” – just… “alright“… *sigh* I’m not really happy with the underlining on this one – you all know me, I like to use a lot of italics and underlining – I write the way I talk, and really, the underlining on this Template doesn’t so much empathise a word, as make it look like a semi-trailer has left a whole lot of ruddy skid-marks under it! Anyway…

This morning I worked diligently on my young Mage, Silverhands, who is now almost level 31, and is happily swanning around the Cape of Stranglethorn, doing some minor questing there for the Explorer’s League! I left her near the Banking Chambers and the Neutral Auction House in beautiful Downtown Booty Bay, shortly after lunch time, where no doubt I’ll be meeting up with her again this evening (if I get this finished in time!) I had expected to have a lot more trouble playing “Clothies”, because I’ve always played Beast Master Hunters, who of course have their faithful Pet to go in and do the Tanking for them, whilst all I have to do is stand back and twang arrows, or bang bullets, at the nasty mobs… but so far, I haven’t had any troubles at all, with my Shadow Priest and my Frost Mage! I’m still wary though – basically I’m putting it down to my low level so far, and the fact that the mobs I’m encountering are also low-level and therefore not too hard to put down. I expect the going will get a lot tougher as I rise slowly up the ranks and start meeting up with higher level, and therefore much tougher, mobs – which is one of the reasons why I’m quite happy to choof-off to the next “zone” before finishing off the one I’m in! I don’t know if it’s the way Blizzard have planned it, but by the time I pass the “half-way” mark on my Experience bar, the mobs seem to either get weaker and weaker – or else I seem to be getting quicker and quicker, using less “shots” in my “shot-rotation” line-up to bring the mobs down – and so I’m usually only too happy to be moved on to something with a bit more meat on its bones, so to speak!

I went and counted up the characters on my Wynterthyme account last night, and it seems I have another three characters that I can roll… Hmm… so far I have 3 Beast Master Hunters on Saurfang: two Gnome “players”, Ellevienne, and Dulcineà (whom I play with Julian’s Frost Mage, Tourbillon and who is also a Gnome!) plus one “spare”, the Guild Mistress and Auctionator, a Night Elf Beast Master Hunter who stays in Darnassus and organises all the Banking and Auctioning. Then I have my two Shadow Priests (or rather “Priestesses”) Piubella, a Night Elf, and Viverra, a Draenei. So far though, I only have the one Frost Mage, Silverhands, who’s a Night Elf, so… maybe I’m a little unbalanced… (Oi! I heard that! …I much prefer the term “eccentric”, thank you!) I meant, that with only one Mage, when I have two of everything else, that perhaps I should – even things up a little? by creating another Frost Mage? that’s all… (Oo-er! I must start thinking of clever names with no accents or strange characters in them! I think I’ll make her a Gnome… or maybe a Blood Elf…)

This afternoon I started “sifting” through these wretched Templates again – trying this one… and that one… and another one that I’d almost forgotten about (so many Templates, so little time!) and this one drew the short straw – that is, I was running out of time! So as I said, I’ll try and live with this one for at least the next 24 hours – after that? *shrug* Chi sà? I really do wish I could alter the parameters of some of these Templates! Some of them are very nice, they just need a wee bit of “tweaking”, here and there! With this one, f’rinstance, I’d make the text column a lot wider, and make the underlining less… obtrusive! Because apart from those two rather glaring flaws, I’d probably be reasonably happy with this Template!

Anyway, that’s about the extent of my exertions today, so I suppose I should really get on to all the “good” bits! 😉

Food stuffs. Last night for dinner we had pan-fried lamb backstraps on a bed of rice that had some spring onions finely chopped mixed through it, and as a side dish, Julian surprised me with a plate of papadums, and a small dish of a really nice, spicy Lime Pickle! Very delicious! (for the record, I had two papadums, and about two teaspoons of the Lime Pickle!) For dessert I had an absolutely delicious “bald-kiwi-fruit” brown skinned Nashi pear, and one of my new favourites, the Vaalia Lemon Creme yoghurt! For lunch today we had wraps – with basil-pesto hummus, tomato, Halloumi cheese, ham, and yellow capsicum batons (this time I did manage to drop a rather large piece of Halloumi and basil-pesto hummus on the plate! Clumsy me!) Tonight we’re having one of our “experimental” recipes – Lamb and Rosemary Shepherd’s Pies with Roasted Garlic Mash from “taste.com.au magazine” wot I get… I’ll let you know what it’s like tomorrow night, but I can tell you that it smells wonderful! For dessert tonight I’ll be having an apple (Julian got some new, smaller apples this afternoon, but I’m not sure what kind they are – I’ll let you all know that tomorrow night, too!) and another of the Vaalia Lemon Creme yoghurts.

Weigh-in this morning. Was another bitter disappointment! Why??!! I haven’t eaten or drunk, or nibbled, or partaken, of anything that I shouldn’t have – and for goodness sake, if two ruddy little papadums and two teaspoons of spicy Lime Pickles is going to make such a difference, then I bloody-well give up! I’m not going to live on bread and water for the rest of my life to avoid a rise of one point in my weight! I went from 65.1 kg to 65.2 kg this morning (and that’s after going from 64.4 kg to 65.1 kg, the day after eating a peculiarly fat-free roast beef dinner the night before!) Gaaah! I’ve had it! I’ve absolutely had it! I’m truly sick to death of all of this! Bugger my weight! I’ll eat what I want, when I want, and damn the torpedoes – er, consequences!

And that brings me round to tomorrow again. I’m not really sure what’s happening tomorrow – knowing us, probably more of the same! Flipper is currently being her usual noisy self because Julian is in the kitchen cooking, but she wants him in here, on the couch, patting her! 🙂 But she’s been a good girl, and eaten most of her dinner, so I’ve given her back her bowl of pussy biscuits (kibble) Dinner is very important for Flipper because it’s the only way we can get her to take all her medication! For some strange reason, where most cats will run away very fast from anything that they even vaguely suspect contains “foreign bodies”, like drops, or medicine, Flipper actually loves it! (Once upon a time, many centuries ago, I tried to “drown out” the taste of a teeny-weeny little pill in a whole tin of mushed up sardines, and the damn cat wouldn’t go near it! Hmm.. or maybe the cat just didn’t like sardines…) Anyway, Flipper loves her medicated food (and gets suspicious of it if it isn’t medicated!) but occasionally she’ll have a fit of the “Vera-Vague’s” and forgets why she’s in the Library with a big bowl of… er… something that isn’t water? and so she doesn’t eat her dinner (even though she’s been walking around wailing dolefully that “I’m hungry! Where’s my dinner!”) when that happens of course, she doesn’t get her medication, and ends up in a pretty bad way without her anti-arthritis tablets and blood pressure pill – so we take her bowl of pussy biscuits (kibble) away (because she tends to go and fill up on those instead of her dinner!) until she’s had enough of her dinner… And really, that’s about “it” from me for tonight – do drop in again tomorrow night – if only to see if I’ve changed the blog Template again! Of course you’ll also find out about lots of other things, too, like what my weight did, what the Lamb and Rosemary Shepherd’s Pie was like, and whether or not it’ll be a “Keeper” – and what we got up to during the day! Until then though, do try very hard to bee good, remember that the greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes, and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm and dry in this sudden cold snap… but above all, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

03.38 pm

Here we go again – same graphics, different Template… it’s actually the same Template I was using a few weeks ago, which I’ve decided to go back to, as Word Press don’t seem to be putting up any new ones… which strikes me as being a little strange! As well as all the Foodie e-zines and emails that I subscribe to, I also subscribe to quite a few graphic, font, and elements newsletters (elements are bits and pieces that you use in your graphics – they can be anything from cute little water-colour flower prints to big decorative labels) Anyway, one or two of these sites also feature Word Press Templates, which I’d love to look at and possibly use – but I can’t, because this Word Press doesn’t allow the use of “Third Party” Anythings! This is Word Press.com – The Word Press that these “Third Party” templates are for is Word Press.org! They’re exactly the same – identical, even! This Word Press, however, actually Hosts the blog(s) and does all the hard work and organisation for you, from supplying the Templates, to backups, maintenance, and publishing. All you have to do is choose your Template, and start writing – you don’t even have to do any graphics, if you can’t, or don’t want to. If you use Word Press.org though, you can get your Template from just about anywhere you like (as long as it’s Word Press compatible!) but you have to find and organise a Host for it, you’re the one responsible for blog maintenance, backups, any programming changes that need to be made, and publishing, so it’s a really big ask for someone who’s not terribly computer literate, or who doesn’t have the time, or who can’t afford a really good Host. Julian and I have discussed this many times – we know that our Web Hosting Provider, who host our personal web sites, also provide blog hosting, and I’ve lost count of the times we’ve thought that perhaps we should go our own way – but we simply balk at the amount of hard work that we’d then be lumbered with (yes, we’re lazy!) plus the fact that neither of us knows very much about CSS. Julian could certainly learn it – he seems to soak things like that up like a dry sponge – and I can, at a very small and weak pinch, work my way through fairly basic HTML – but as I said – we’re both reluctant to take the plunge… there are just so many other things we’d rather be playing – I mean doing…. However, the main point that I was very slowly meandering my way towards, was the fact that there are an awful lot of “Third Party” Word Press Templates available – some of which look really good – but there aren’t very many new ones appearing on Word Press.com, and I just find it a trifle strange…

This morning, as usual, I played WoW, and Silverhands, my Mage, is now level 25 and questing away in Ashenvale, having bypassed about 85% of the Darkshore content! I’m leveling up very quickly, thanks to my Heirloom gear, and this has both good, and bad points! In a way it’s good that I can bypass so much of the content, because I’ve done all of these areas and their quests so many times that I often find myself running off to the next quest giver before I’ve been told to! I’m just so familiar with it all – being able to bypass large chunks does relieve the boredom quite a lot, I can tell you! The bad part about leveling up so fast is if you’re using Heirloom gear, but have never played the game, or been through those areas before, you’re going to miss out on a lot of very important back-story and Lore, which in effect turns the game into just another First Person Shoot-em-Up game, with no rhyme nor reason, and no real “raison d’être”, which I think is a real shame and a great pity, because in fact it’s not just a “good game”, it’s a damn good story as well! I was running (galloping, now that I can ride! 😉 ) through Darkshore and parts of Ashenvale this morning, thinking things like “Should I stop and do that quest?” as I sped past heaps of Quest Giver’s yellow exclamation points – and then I’d think something along the lines of “Nah… that’s the Twilight’s Hammer one – I can’t be bothered doing that – it’s too easy!” and keep on going! I did die once this morning though – at one point I was given a cape of invisibility, and told to sneak past a whole lot of Horde Bullies to get a Holy Hammer and a Prayer Book. As a Frost Mage, I have a Water Elemental as a sort of “Pet” – he (or she) stands with me and hurls balls of freezing water at whatever I’m attacking, and I wasn’t sure if this cape would shield both of us, or whether the Horde Bullies would see the two of us together. I rather thought they would see us, but I thought I’d give it a go, anyway. Well, they did see us, and it was “stacks on the mill” as they say in Footy broadcasts, and I was killed. Luckily I managed to run into the Tower that I had to get into for the Prayer Book, so that when I did make the run back from the Graveyard for my body, I was able to get half way up the spiral ramp before re-claiming my body and re-using the invisibility cape – this time without my Elemental “Pet”, and I was able to complete the quest! Anyway, I think I’m doing quite well at the moment, though it looks like I’ve already finished with Ashenvale, even though I’ve just got there, because it seems I’ve been ordered off to the Stonetalon Mountains tomorrow (or this evening – whichever comes first! 😉 )

After lunch today I re-worked the Blog’s header, and stuffed around with other graphics for a bit, then started this early, as you can see from the time stamp above, and that’s about all I’ve been doing today – so now I shall move on to the “good” bits!

Food stuffs. Last night for dinner we had a very, very nice, small roast beef! It had been in some sort of marinade (but Julian had thrown out the packaging and couldn’t remember what sort if had been!) and was really tasty! With the beef we had roast potatoes, roast pumpkin, half a tomato, and steamed Brussels sprouts! So scrumptious! The meat was so tender you hardly had to cut it, and the potatoes and pumpkin were “just right”! Of course there was a lot left over, and in fact Julian had made extra roast potatoes and roast pumpkin, so that we could have it for lunch today (and probably tomorrow as well!) For dessert I had one of my Corella pears, and an Apple Le Rice. Today for lunch I had a sandwich, made from that nice whole-meal bread that we both like so much – the one that has all the sesame seeds in the crust – with cold roast potato and cold roast pumpkin mished up a bit to act as butter, and sliced cold roast beef, and plenty of salt and pepper! It was really yummy, and I hope there’s still enough left over for lunch tomorrow! Tonight we’re having pan-fried lamb backstrap for dinner, probably with chips, steamed green beans (or peas) and our usual half a tomato, and for dessert I’ll have another of the “bald-kiwi-fruit” brown skinned Nashi pears, and one of the very yummy Vaalia Lemon Creme yoghurts.

Weigh-in this morning. Was terrible! How can one, very nicely cooked, and with no added fattening material in it, roast dinner, put on so much weight overnight! Mind you, the fluid is still “pooling” in my feet again… and while they do rather resemble medium-sized “toed” balloons, at least they’re acting like the water bombs that they currently are (hence my excess weight!) and not gas filled balloons, otherwise Julian would have to tie a string to my wrist so that he could rescue me from the ceiling!  So despite two anti-fluid pills per day, and my walking for the full 30 minutes every morning, the fluid doesn’t seem to want to shift. If it doesn’t start moving soon, maybe I could cut a little hole in my ankle, so that it could drain out faster… I went from yesterday’s fabulous 64.4 kg to…. 65.1 kg! To say that I’m bitterly disappointed would be the understatement of the millennium! 😦

And once again, this about brings me around to tomorrow! I have no idea what’s happening tomorrow – no doubt I’ll be playing with my young Mage, Silverhands, and with a little bit of luck, I might even get her up to level 30, which would be très cool! Flipper is well, but seems to be getting even more vague – if that’s even possible – but as long as she can enjoy her Daddy pats, and sleeping on the bed at night (even if she does try to steal all my doona!) she seems quite happy, which is the main thing! Auric and Dapple are their usually cute little selves – in the mornings, when I go in to pull up the blind and turn on their Tank light, little Dapple swims around as though he really needs his cup of coffee, yawning! I kid you not! I know fish can’t close their eyes, coz they don’t have eyelids, and I don’t really think that he actually yawns, but it sure looks like it! He’ll swim very slowly towards me with his eyes looking as though they’re half shut, then all of a sudden, he’ll open his little mouth really, really wide, just as though he’s yawning, and then close it again! It makes me laugh out loud, every time! 🙂 I wonder if fish ever try to imitate people? Maybe he looks at me every morning, with my eyes half shut, and yawning widely at him, and he’s just trying to copy me? (no, I know fish don’t try to imitate people! I wuz just sayin‘…”what if?”) Anyway, that’s about “it” from me for tonight, but do drop in again tomorrow night, and find out if I’ve located the plug that’s been keeping my excess fluid from escaping, and how Silverhands is getting along in the Stonetalon Mountains – as well as anything else that’s been going down around these ‘ere parts! Until then however, please try to bee good, don’t forget that any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain but it takes character and self control to be understanding and forgiving, and remember to always drive carefully, to look after yourselves, and to keep warm and dry, because tonight the weather’s supposed to turn wet and cold again – but most importantly, please remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

04.14 pm

Would you look at the date?! It’s half way through August already! There’s blossom on the trees outside! What happened to winter? Where’d it go?! I want my nice, cold, wet, dank, and dreary winter back! I want my seasonal share of rain, and storms, and sleet and hail! It’s not fair! What did I do, blink and miss it, or something?! 😦 (← Winter folds her arms and puts on her very best “Grumpy Cat” face)

*sigh* Spring and summer seem to be getting earlier and earlier, every year! To quote someone reasonably famous, “Why is it so?!” Still, I guess it doesn’t matter all that much – I rarely set foot outside the front door anyway… So, what’s bin happenin’ around these here parts today!? Not all that much – I think I spent most of the morning playing WoW, and my Mage, Silverhands, is now level 20, and has just got her “riding licence”! She’s really very easy to play – at least so far! She has numerous “freezing spells” which work very nicely, and “blink”, where you suddenly disappear, and pop up again, “x” feet ahead – which can be very handy, but I don’t think you move far enough! Julian says that later on, Mages get an “enhancement” that allows them to do a sort-of a “double blink”, so that you can get further ahead. I can also turn people into sheep – temporarily. It’s also quite a handy spell to have! Mages are fairly fragile little creatures because they can only wear cloth armor (which as you can imagine, isn’t terribly versatile or strong!) so when you’re attacked by multiple mobs, sometimes it’s handy to be able to “neutralise” at least one of them by turning them into a sheep, while you take care of their “friend”… As a matter of fact, I had to use it today… I was escorting a Night Elf Scout to a “safe place”, and somehow managed to end up fighting about three big, tough, Horde Enforcers who’d jumped us on our way to the safe route home – so I turned one of them into a sheep – which promptly ran off in a fright! By the time I’d dealt with the other two Enforcers, “Mr. Sheep” had turned back into a Horde Enforcer again, and I was able to dispose of him, too 🙂   I think I like being a Mage! Oh, and I’ve just learnt how to make “Portals”! I can now open up a Portal to nearly all the major Alliance cities in Azeroth, which is going to be more than useful! Instead of having to gallop off to a port and catch a ship, or run off to find the nearest Flight Point and fly to wherever I have to go, all I have to do now is wiggle my hands a bit, and step through the handy-dandy little Portal to wherever it is I have to go! I can even take grouped friends with me! How neat is that! I reckon it’s even much more betterer than Star Trek’s Transporters! 🙂

This afternoon I worked on the header for this Template, and I also tried out a few new techniques that I invented – if you look really closely at the background, you should be able to see a very faint “cross-hatch” pattern… but don’t expect it to last, cos I’ve decided that I don’t really like this Template as much as I though I did… so expect something different again tomorrow! 😉

And as that pretty much sums up my day today, I can now move on to the “good” bits! 🙂

Food stuffs. Last night for dinner we had plain, un-marinated, pan-fried chicken breast, on a bed of plain, steamed rice which had some finely chopped spring onion mixed into it. I love chicken cooked like that – I reckon that the marinated version is a bit tastier, but it’s all yummy! For dessert I had 3/4 of a “Jazz” apple (a full “Jazz” apple is far too big for me eat in the one “sitting”, so Julian cut it into quarters – he ate one quarter, and I ate the other three) and I also had a small tub of the new Vaalia Lemon Creme yoghurt that I’ve recently discovered, and which I seem to have taken such a liking to… because suddenly, I find that I’m not missing that delicious Coles-brand, very low-calorie Rice Pudding so much! For lunch today we had ham, tomato, and Swiss cheese Toasties. And I have to tell you all that although the Swiss cheese went very well in the Toasties, and while they were totally delicious, Julian and I have both came to the conclusion that Cheddar cheese is the best cheese to put into a Toastie, as it really seems to “compliment” the ham and tomato best. Tonight we’re having a small roast beef, with (I think!) roast potatoes, roast pumpkin, half a tomato, and steamed green beans or peas. Tonight for dessert I’ll have one of my Corella pears, and maybe for a change tonight, either a Chocolate Chia Pod or one of the Le Rice tubs.

Weigh-in. It just goes to show exactly how much mental and spiritual damage those [censored] little fluid and weight retaining pills cause! It’s stupid, I know, but I just can’t help it! I know they’re going to make me gain weight, I know my feet are going to turn into balloons (sometimes it’s all I can do to get my shoes on, if we’re going out somewhere!) but for some reason I just can’t be sanguine about it – it really, really distresses and depresses me. All my feelings of self-worth vanish completely, and I feel such a failure… But there you go – I got on the scales this morning to a happy surprise! I went from 64.8 kg to 64.4 kg – which I suppose is what you could pretty much call “normal” for me now…

And that brings me full circle to tomorrow again! Julian has some banking to do (which he probably should have done today, but he played WoW instead) I have some folding to do because Julian also did the washing today, and a plethora of magazines to sort out into both monthly and alphabetical order – seeing as I now have some magazine holders for them! Auric and Dapple are both well and behaving themselves nicely, and (Julian doesn’t know this yet!) I’m thinking that I’d like to get them some more “decorations” for their Fish House. Actually, not “decorations” per se – I don’t want anything too kitsch – but I would like to get them a nice “hollow rock”, or whatever – something that they can actually swim into, and hide themselves away, if they want to. At the moment, all they’ve got are some very plastic-looking plants, and a rather daggy looking “brown” rock that just has absolutely nothing at all going for it in either the “decorative”, or the “useful” stakes!

Oh, breaking news! 🙂 Months (and months and months!) ago, Julian and I ordered some incense online, as the sort we wanted to get didn’t exist here any more (I think it was some sort of Christmas “special” that we bought about a year ago at the Reject Shop!) Anyway, we liked it, and we managed to find it online – as well as a couple of other ones that looked relatively interesting – so we ordered them. Weeks later we’re told that (a) some of them had to come from a different retailer, and (b) some of the retailers wouldn’t sell outside the USA. (why have some American retailers got this really weird attitude to Australians, that they won’t ship stuff to us? I had the same problem with – would you believe – a kindle e-book! “Not able to sell to your country”! an e-book!!) As we’ve had this problem before, Julian has organised a “Forward Shipping Company” in the States – you give the recalcitrant merchant their address instead of your Australian one, because they’ll happily ship the goods to anywhere that’s in the USA, and the Forward Shipping Company send the goods on to us, because that’s what they’re for – the retailers are happy because they’re sending their goods within the USA – the Forward Shipping Company are happy, because they get paid twice, more or less, and we’re sort-of happy because we finally get to receive our goods, even if we have had to pay for them twice! Anyway, we’d ordered this incense absolutely ages ago, and this afternoon, despite numerous hold-ups and problems along the way, it’s finally arrived! We’re actually trying out one of the new, “interesting” looking ones that we bought “experimentally” – the incense itself is in a very tight little “coil” – a bit like a mosquito coil that you can get to burn at summer BBQs, only a lot smaller, and the little holder that comes with it is in the shape of a bird – I think it’s a Heron, or a Crane? No, sorry, not a Crane – Cranes have longer legs… anyway, it’s holding its head up, with its beak open, and you wedge the inside part of the incense coil into the open beak, and light the outside of the coil… It’s supposed to burn for 45 minutes, I think… it’s actually quite nice, and is called “Osmanthus“

So I think I’d better call it quits here, and say that’s about “it” from me for tonight! Do call in again tomorrow night though, to find out if my weight’s still behaving, how far I’ve got with my new Mage Silverhands, and how we enjoyed the new incense! But until then, please try to bee extra good, remember that a moment of gratitude makes a difference in your attitude, and don’t forget to always drive carefully, to keep warm and dry, even if the weather does look fine, because this is Melbourne, and to look after yourselves… but above all (and most importantly!) please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

05.09 pm

Here I am, rudely writing while Julian and my very favourite eldest daughter chat together behind me, with me listening with half an ear (or should that be a quarter of an ear, as my stupid left ear is still bunged up! Perhaps I had better bite the bullet and see the Eye, Ear, and Nose people… 😦 ) Strangely, I’m not getting terribly much actual writing done! Oh well – shoes are being put on… and… they’rerrroff to the garage! 🙂

Now, where was I! Oh yes, that’s right, trying to write this blog! I didn’t get a chance to write anything yesterday – we were pretty flat-out all day, to tell you all the truth! The oven repair man, who was supposed to be arriving between 8 and 8.30 am, arrived at about 8.15, our cleaning lady turned up at her usual time of 9.30, and didn’t leave until noon, so the morning was filled with vacuum cleaner noises, and loud protests from Flipper, who for some weird reason really hates vacuum cleaner noises. The oven repair man was very quick – he replaced the burnt-out oven element, cleaned up what little mess he’d made, and was gone before 8.30! so at last we can have properly cooked chips again, which is the main thing! 😉

Pretty much as soon as K. (the cleaning lady) left, we left too – we went off to The Glen so that I could exchange the incorrectly sized jumper – which I did, however we had lunch at The Shingle Inn there first, before repairing upstairs to Suzanne Grae where they didn’t have exactly the same style of jumper in the correct size and colour, so they said I could exchange it for any other top. I ended up getting a rather nice mottled cream, brown, and maroon “chunky-knitted” cowl-neck jumper with a fringed hem (très Boho, don’tcha know, which really took me back to my teens!) It’s really chunky and warm, and I wish that winter wasn’t almost over so that I could wear it a lot more than I’m probably going to be able to this year! I also got another black jumper, almost the same as the one which I was exchanging, but with small, fake brass buttons, or studs (little round do-dads!) down one shoulder… very chic! We did a bit more shopping, and then headed home, stopping off at two Vets on the way – once at a new Vet that we found in Vermont South Shopping Centre, to get some more pussy biscuits (kibble) for Flipper (because our regular Vet no longer stocks that brand) and once at our regular Vet for some more Norvasc, Flipper’s blood pressure medication. We didn’t get home until 4.15, and about half an hour later, Josh arrived! So as I said – we were pretty flat-out yesterday, and by the time we’d had dinner I was simply too worn out to feel much like writing anything! However, Julian and I did manage to finally get the new Guild, called “Altar of Alts”, with its associated Guild Bank, sorted out on Saurfang! Julian started off Tourbillon’s Realm Transfer, which was completed by this morning, and I, as Dulcineà, disbanded what was left of “Altar of Alts” on Quel’Dorei, and started off my own Realm Transfer to Saurfang. Then finally, we got all the other characters on Saurfang into the Guild last night and this morning! Tutto fatto¹ – fait accompli² – all done, at long last! 🙂

Today, as I mentioned before, I had my very favourite eldest daughter over for the day – she didn’t come at all last week, so we made up for it today by talking a lot – she’s going to some sort of meeting next week to do with applying to do an Honours Course at uni next year, and we spoke about the short story (novella?) that’s she’s doing as a project for this semester. We also watched multiple episodes of “The Flash”, where lots of bad things happened, and multiple episodes of “Arrow” where even more bad things happened, so next week’s viewing promises to be very exciting!

And now, having regaled you all with the last two day’s worth of our adventures, hopefully I can now get onto the “good” bits?

Food stuffs. Yesterday for lunch we were at The Shingle Inn at The Glen, where I had all my usuals – a BLT on Sourdough bread, an ooey-gooey, thick and chunky, scrumptious chocolate caramel slice, and a long black with a small jug of skinny milk on the side. Most delicious! For dinner last night we had another of the extremely nice Three Island Beef and (something-or-other?) sausages, chips (cooked properly in the oven this time!) half a tomato, and steamed green beans. For dessert I one of my “bald-kiwi-fruit” brown skinned Nashi pears, and one of the new Vaalia low-fat lemon creme yoghurts wot we got yesterday – and it was so, sooo nice! I think I might just have found a new favourite dessert! It was dee-licious! I can highly recommend it!  Today for lunch we had wraps, with our favourite basil-pesto hummus, Halloumi cheese, de-seeded tomato, some yellow capsicum batons, and ham – all very yummy – and once again (maybe I’m finally getting the hang of eating them! 😉 ) I managed to eat it all without dropping, or spilling, chunks of this or that, all over myself, or the recliner chair I was sitting in! Tonight for dinner we’re having pan-fried chicken breast on a bed of steamed rice, with finely chopped spring onions mixed through it (because Julian forgot to get any more tomatoes while he was out today!) Dessert tonight will probably be one of the enormous “Jazz” apples, but this time I don’t think I’ll try to eat all of it – they’re just too big! And… perhaps I might have another of those really yummy Vaalia lemon creme yoghurts, too… 😉

Weigh-in yesterday. Well, it’s improving… a bit… I went from 65.7 kg to 65.4 kg… Not all that wonderful, but certainly a lot better than going up again, anyway!

Weigh-in this morning. Again, a small improvement, though my feet are still terribly swollen, despite the anti-fluid tablets This morning I went from 65.4 kg to (finally!) 64.8 kg. I’m getting back to my 30 minute treadmillings, but my feet are really paying the price. I’ve already split the callous under the ball of my left foot, and the toe nail on my left big toe has also split a bit, which bled quite a bit – but that’s what happens when you’re on Warfarin (the bleeding, I mean, not the toenail splitting! It’s also why I end up with so many blood blisters on my toes ) Let’s hope I manage to go down a bit more tomorrow…

And that brings me back to tomorrow, once more! Auric and Dapple are well, and had their Fish House nicely scrubbed and polished last night – they’re so sweet and friendly! I know most of it is greed, and that they’re only hoping to get fed when you come over to say hello to them – but they’re cute! I love ’em, anyway! 🙂 Tomorrow I’m hoping to “practice” a bit more with my Mage “Silverhands” (look Ma! No funny accents or characters in the name!) on Saurfang, but apart from that, I have no idea what’s happening! And that, I’m afraid, is about “it” from me for tonight, but why don’t you all call back again tomorrow night to find out what did happen, with my weight, my Blog Project, and everything else that we got up to! Until then though, please try very hard to bee good, don’t forget that we are not here to make believe, we are here to believe we can make it, and remember to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm and dry in the last of the wintry weather… but most importantly, please… remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

¹ tutto fatto – Italian – all done!

² fait accompli – French – all done!

05.17 pm

Well, as usual, Julian and I had an excellent time in World of Warcraft today! 🙂 We did die a couple of times, but we also covered an awful lot of ground! We started off by taking Wynterthyme and Mouselet out of mothballs, and sent them off to do the pre-Expansion “Scenarios”. These are not-quite quests, and not-quite part of the game either, at this stage – because they’re there to “set the scene” for everything that will be happening after the Expansion – to tell the backstory, and to lay the foundations for the story arc after the Legion Invasion. It’s a little complicated, because we did these Scenarios twice! First with Wynterthyme and Mouselet, and of course saw things from the Alliance side of the fence… and then we did it all over again with our Horde characters, Xãnthe and Jemimah (who also died a few times!) and so saw it from the Horde perspective.

The Alliance side: King Varian Wrynn summons all fighters to help repel the Legion, led by the totally evil Gul’Dan, so off we all go. By the time we arrive at the invasion beachhead, we’re part of a massive Raid Party (of other players) and it all gets terribly chaotic and messy. It seems that a couple? one other? important Alliance NPC character(s) was “missing” (I couldn’t quite follow it all – as I said – it was terribly chaotic!) and we had to find him… which we do. He’s being held prisoner by none other than Gul’Dan himself, but it’s a trap! Meanwhile, over on the other side of a vast lake of vicious neon green goop (“Fel”, or something) Vol’jin the War Leader of the Horde, and Sylvanas, the (rather gorgeous) leader of the Undead, are gathering to assist the Alliance. King Varian, Vol’jin, and Sylvanas have realised that none of them can overcome the Legion on their own – their only hope is to join together to fight this new, common enemy. Going back to the Alliance and the sneaky trap. Seeing the Horde over on the other side of the lake of goop, King Varian is relieved to see that help is on the way – but then all of a sudden they hear Sylvanas’ battle horn sounding a retreat, and thinking that they’ve been betrayed, Varian orders his people back onto their (flying) battleship. In the confusion, King Varian slips, and his friend (sorry, can’t remember his name!) holds out his hand to help him aboard the ship. Varian knows that he can’t escape, his people need to escape, and he’s holding things up – so instead of his hand, he puts a scroll into his friend’s hand saying “Take this to my son!” His friend nods, Varian falls, still fighting the Legion demons that are surrounding him. He fights his way almost to Gul’Dan, but sneering and laughing, Gul’Dan kills him, shattering his body with Fel power.

The Horde Side. Sylvanas, Vol’jin, and Thrall are also looking for the same “missing persons” that the Alliance are looking for (why, I’m not too sure!) They too go through the same chaotic fighting as their Alliance counterparts, and in the same way, discover this “missing person”, only from the other side of the lake of green goop. Sylvanas realises that it had been too easy – that it was a trap! Now, I’m terribly sorry, but I can’t remember how it happened, but Vol’jin is fatally wounded, and orders Sylvanas to get the Horde to safety. Sylvanas realises that she’ll be abandoning the Alliance, and she really doesn’t want to break her word – but Vol’jin has left the Horde in her hands. She sounds the retreat, and takes the Horde, and the dying Vol’jin back to Orgrimmar. Goodness only knows where Thrall was, or what he was doing all this time! (Thrall had once been the War Leader of the Horde, but had given it all up to follow his Path and become a Druid (?) – he’s immensely powerful and strong, so you’d think he could have done something to help save the day!) Huddled together in their Meeting Hall in Orgrimmar, the dying Vol’jin officially hands over the leadership of the Horde to Sylvanas… and breathes his last breath. Sylvanas rallies the Horde, who are none too happy about having the undead Banshee Queen as their new leader, but when she declares “Who wants to follow me to get revenge on the Legion for Vol’jin’s death!!” they decide that she’s maybe not too bad after all, and (apparently!) agree to her leadership.

Meanwhile, back in Stormwind, Anduin, Varian’s son – and now King Anduin – hears of his father’s death. He, like his father, realises that they’re going to need the help of the Horde – and the Illidari – to fight the Legion. Only two dissenting voices are raised – how can they possibly trust the Horde again, after the way they betrayed them when Varian was killed? They storm off in disgust – they’ll fight with them – grudgingly, says Lady Jaina Proudmore, but she will never let them into her city!

I found it strange that the Alliance members had that discussion about the Illidari and the Horde, but at the discussion between Sylvanas and the Horde, after Vol’jin’s death, only the Illidari were mentioned… does Sylvanas feel too ashamed for having broken her word to the Alliance that she feels they’ll no longer trust her? Did I miss an important part of the conversation while I blew my nose, or something? I have no idea – hopefully all will be made clear in time! 😉

Now, I’m quite aware that most of you aren’t even remotely interested in all of the above, but I thought I owed it to posterity to bring you all up-to-date with just why Julian and I are running these pre-Expansion “Scenarios” – apart from the fact that you can get some really “Fat Loot” from them.

So after we finished fighting and dying as both Alliance and Horde this afternoon, we then picked up Dulcineà and Tourbillon, for their final romp around The Hinterlands before they move to another Realm – so as you can all see, we had an amazingly interesting and exciting day today! 🙂

And now on to the “good” bits! 🙂

Food stuff. Last night for dinner we had the most delicious little piece of fillet steak, with chips, half a tomato, and steamed green beans. For dessert I had a “bald-kiwi-fruit” brown skinned Nashi pear, and one of those really weir textured but still very yummy Chocolate Chia Pods. Today for lunch we had ham, cheese and tomato toasties, made from that tasty whole-meal bread with tons of sesame seeds in the crust, and of course tonight’s traditional Sunday dinner was omelets, with bacon, cheese, tomato, fried onion, and some chopped up green capsicum in them. I know I say it every Sunday night, but this time I think Julian really surpassed himself – my omelet really was one of the best I’ve ever eaten! And for dessert I had an “Eve” apple (because it was slightly smaller than the gigantic “Jazz” apples in our fruit bowl!) and an Apple Le Rice.

Weigh-in this morning. Tomorrow morning, I’ll probably go up a couple of points, because this morning I went down 6! I went from 66.3 kg yesterday to 65.7 kg. Well, at least it’s a start, because looking at the state of my swollen feet, there’s still plenty of fluid to shift!

And that brings me back again to tomorrow, which looks like it’s going to be a pretty busy day – just for a change! 😉 The oven repair-man will be here tomorrow morning between 8 and 8.30, and our cleaning lady will be here around 9.30-ish. Josh will be here tomorrow afternoon, and in the middle, we have to go out so that I can change over a jumper I bought because it’s the wrong size (don’t blame me if half the clothes I buy are size 14 and the other half are size “S” – and sometimes, even though they all either say “14” or “S”, some are too big, and some are too small! Go figure! I really wish there was some way to make, or even to force, manufacturers to standardise sizes!) I must also do my homework too, and look for some reasonably priced towels. The last time we went towel shopping, I only bought two towels, and two hand towels, because they’re really too expensive for what they are! Yes, they are good quality, about the right thickness, and a pleasing colour, without too much of that fancy hemming and/or pattern (that always shrinks, the very first time you wash the damn thing, pulling the towel horribly out of shape!) but they’re not made from spun gold, for crying out loud! Sheesh, talk about the Emperor’s New “Terry-Towelling” Tracky-Dacks Clothes! Anyway, two towels and two hand towels just aren’t enough, so I’m going to try Amazon, and see if I can find anything cheaper online! Mind you, I’d only buy one first, to see what it was like in real life – what looks like a nice pale blue online might turn out to be some hideous shade of cyan in the bathroom – and besides, you can’t feel what they’re like – they might be all scratchy and horrible! I also need to get a whole lot more magazine holders – at the moment my desk and my side cabinets are acting as “proxy magazine holders”, and I’m rapidly running out of room for my cups of coffee! Anyway, that’s about enough from me for this evening – do call back again tomorrow night – to find out if the oven got fixed, or if the repair-man gave it the last rites and told us to get a new stove, and whether I managed to change over my jumper or not (we still have the receipt though!) I’m sure you’ll all be anxious to know how much my weight went up, seeing as it came down today, and you’ll probably also want to know if I found any suitable towels to order, or if I managed to lose myself in WoW again, instead. But until then, do try hard to bee good, remember that there is no greater loan than a sympathetic ear, and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm and dry, because even when you don’t think it’s going to be cold or wet, remember that this is Melbourne… but above all, please… don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

04.46 pm

And here we go again! I’ve played WoW for most of the day – this morning I don’t think I had my screen “grabbed” once, but it’s happened twice this afternoon. Neither of us have any real idea as to why it’s happening, or what’s causing it, so I suppose, like everything else, I’m just going to have to learn to live with it. Anyway, my new Priest (or Priestess) Piubella has made it to level 22 – and I really must get her back to Stormwind and the Transmogrifier, if for no other reason than to change the appearance of her head-gear! Do any of you remember what the Evil Queen in Snow White looked like, with the big, high collar sticking up behind her head? Kinda “Elizabethan”, but without the frilly bit in the front? Well, that’s what the Heirloom “Tattered Dreadmist Mask” helm looks like on my two Priests (Priestesses) Piubella and Viverra, and they really do look a little… er… strange, with two little purple-ish, red-ish, “eyes” peering out from under the hood of a helm with a very ornate and high-backed collar! …The term “weird” doesn’t even begin to cover the way they look, actually! Piubella has now reached Astranaar, although she died on the way there… she stopped off to do the quests at Bathran’s Haunt, and at one point might have become just a trifle overconfident, and so managed to get herself attacked by three level 20 Forsaken (all with their Poison Grenades in-hand!) and a level 20 Wolf-riding Orc! Of course, with no Guild or Guild Bank over there on Saurfang yet, all Piubella had on her were a couple of little, baby level 5, healing potions, which weren’t even good enough to be used as grubby, second-hand band-aids! (and let that be a lesson to you Viverra, don’t make the same mistake as Piubella did, when it’s your turn to do those quests!) I tell you, it’s a ruddy long way from the Graveyard, to have to run back for your body, even in Wisp form! However, she made it, got her body back, and finished off the quests, then she was sent on her way to Maestra’s Post – which she ran straight past! At that stage, it was starting to get a bit late, and I really wanted to get to Astranaar quickly, to grab the Flight Point there, and to dust down at the Inn before logging off for the afternoon.

I’m not quite sure what we’ll be doing tomorrow in WoW – whether we’ll pick up again with Dulcineà and Tourbillon, and muddle along as usual with them, or whether we’ll dig Wynterthyme and Bobranda out of mothballs and attempt some of the new content “Pre-Expansion Events”, because I don’t really think Wynterthyme is capable of doing them on her own – as nearly all of Julian’s characters have done!

The Podiatrist did turn up – on time, too – this afternoon, and my poor, swollen feet do look and feel quite a bit better. Once more I’m in the position of having to choose the lesser of three evils, and it’s really a hard choice to make! Choice 1. Lengthen my morning walk back to 30 minutes again – resulting in more injuries to my feet. Choice 2. Consider the welfare of my feet, keep my walk short, but do two of them – and chop an extra half hour or more off my day. Choice 3. say “stuff it! I’m sick of this crap!”, keep on with my current walking routine, and slowly but steadily work my way back to 134 kg. Personally, I don’t like any of the available choices – what I want to do is never, ever (ever!) have to set eyes on those bloody (pardon my French!) pills again as long as I live, let alone swallow any more of them!

And having filled you all in on the day’s doings, I can now get onto the good bits!

Food stuffs. Last night we had well-trimmed pork chops, pan-fried with a little home-grown rosemary, with chips – yes, the broken oven handled last night’s chips very nicely, thank you – the repair man is coming to fix it somewhere between eight and eight-thirty on Monday morning… and interestingly, this place – or should I say, this stove – is already “on their books”, as the people we bought the house from last year had also called them out with for some sort of stove/oven problem! So, where was I? Ah yes – we had the pan-fried pork chops, with chips, our usual half a tomato, and peas. For dessert I had one of my Corella pears, and an Apple Le Rice. Today for lunch we had wraps, with basil-pesto hummus, cheddar cheese, ham, de-seeded tomato, green capsicum batons, and roughly chopped spring onions – very delicious! 🙂 Tonight we’re having fillet steak for dinner, with chips, our perennial half a tomato, and beans, and for dessert I’ll be having a “bald-kiwi-fruit-brown” skinned Nashi pear, and a Chocolate Chia Pod.

Weigh-in this morning. At least I didn’t go up again – that’ll happen tomorrow, no doubt, as this damned fluid doesn’t appear to be in a hurry to go anywhere – listen! I can hear my weight and all my retained fluid talking together in the background:
—
My Weight: “We leave on the morning tide!”
My Retained Fluid: “Nah – I can’t be bothered! I’m nice and warm and comfy, right here where I am! I’m sleeping “in” tomorrow!”
—
However, I went from a totally disgraceful 66.5 kg to an almost as disgraceful 66.2 kg this morning – but at least I didn’t go up again!

Oh, I must tell you all – since I took over my “experimental” blog for this big Blog Project of mine, I’ve been frustrated and stymied at just about every turn because I now no longer have an “experimental” blog where I can try things out – like the wonderful idea I had yesterday that I was telling you all about. So, I started up “Yet Another Blog” to act as my experimental blog laboratory. This afternoon I did briefly try out my wonderful idea, and… it doesn’t work! It seems that when you “scrape and paste” something from Word, into a Word Press blog page, the “scraped and pasted” stuff loses all of the attributes that you “scraped and pasted” it for in the first place! All because Word Press won’t let me do what I want to (do) which is to create a basic table in the middle of the page. No, I mean I can do that – “scrape and paste” a table into Word Press – I just can’t put the text inside the table where I need it to be (because the table has lost all the attributes I put in!) *sigh* Oh well…

And that brings me around to tomorrow again – and as I said before – we’re not sure yet exactly what or who we’ll be playing, but I can assure you all that whatever or whoever we play, we’ll have great fun lopping the heads off Demons and Monsters of all creeds, colours, and persuasions! This evening I might try a bit more experimentation in my newest blog – I still have a few Mad-Hatter ideas to try out (they probably won’t work, but hey! Ya gotta be innit ta winnit!) Auric and Dapple are both frolicking around in their Fish House – although they’re probably starting to get impatient for “Mummy” to come and give them their dinner! Flipper has already had her dinner and is happily asleep in her “cat-cave” again. Last night we started watching “Merlin” on Netflix – we only saw the first episode, but as there’s not really much on tonight, we might watch another one… Froth and Bubble and no deep and meaningful plot lines are entertaining and relaxing, some of the time! And that, once again, is about “it” from me for tonight! Do call in again tomorrow night to see if I was right about my weight going up again (and I’m always right, too – didn’t you all know that! 😉 ) and how we fared in Azeroth, or wherever we ended up – but until then, do try hard to bee good, remember to open your arms to change, but don’t let go of your values, and don’t forget to stay warm and dry this weekend, to always drive carefully, and to look after yourselves… but most importantly, please… don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

04.25 pm

Here I am again – around-about on time, I suppose… Actually, the Podiatrist should be here – right about now (give or take a few minutes, as she’s usually running late) but alas and alack – she can’t come today as she has a bad cold… but I’ve been told that she’ll be here tomorrow afternoon, about 1-ish! (and I just remembered something I was going to try out today, but forgot about until about two seconds ago! Typical me!*) I do hope her cold isn’t contagious any more, as I’ve already got one of those, happily living in my nose, and I’d never be so greedy as to accept another one, when there are – quite literally – hundreds of people out there, all waiting to catch someone else’s cold! 😛 Anyway, I suddenly find myself with a free afternoon, so I thought to myself “Well, Winter, why don’t you write a Blog, for a change, this afternoon!” so, here I am!

Remember last night how I was going on about something grabbing the screen away from me while I was playing WoW? And how I said that Julian (and I) were going to look into the possibility/probability of it being the Anti-virus software we’re using? Well, once again we seem to have mislaid our round tuit, so I just played as per usual this morning. You know what? I think it must have been the Anti-virus program! Because now that it realises we’re onto it, it’s laying low and behaving itself! I played all morning, with everything turned on for once, and the screen didn’t get grabbed away from me – not even once! But of course, now that I’ve gone and said that, I’m probably going to get the wretched screen snatched away from me every five minutes! So… maybe the problem is fixed, and maybe it isn’t, but I did get a good morning’s worth of uninterrupted play, which was rather nice! We’ve finally been able to get a bit of money over to Saurfang, at long last, though Julian had to get one of his “spare” characters to “ferry” it over, as I’m still waiting to be able to shift the new Guild over from Quel’Dorei – hopefully by Monday the seven days wait will be over! So, with the arrival of some much-needed cash over on Saurfang, I’ve been able to purchase some nice matching luggage for all the girls  – and at 14 gold each, Netherweave Bags are the cheapest, medium-sized bags you can get, so I bought ten of them! I also managed to buy some “clothie” Heirloom gear for us “Priests” (or Priestesses) so now any of my girls who aren’t Hunters (I think I have two Priests, and two Warlocks!) will get a 30% boost to their experience gains!

The other thing that we managed to get done today was to install my email upgrade – which so far, seems to be performing admirably! 🙂 However, the proof of the pudding, and all that! 😉

And that’s about all that’s transpired today so far, so I guess I should probably get on with all the good bits (depending on one’s point of view, naturally! )

Food bits. Last night for dinner we had two of the Three Island Beef sausages (one each) which, as usual, were extremely nice. There was one small fly in the ointment though – for some reason, the oven picked last night to misbehave, so we weren’t able to have chips, after all! Luckily we had some real, live potatoes on hand, which Julian thought we’d have mashed, but I thought that just having plain-old boiled potatoes would be nice for a change, so we had boiled spuds, baby Brussels sprouts, and our usual half a tomato with our Three Island sausage, and it was a lovely meal! There were no Chocolate Chia Pods, as we’d eaten them all, and neither were there any more of the Le Rices, Apple or not, and I didn’t think that the Corella pears were really ripe enough to eat – so I was reduced to having a “Jazz” apple, and a strawberry low-fat yoghurt for dessert! For lunch today Julian made sandwiches, using the same tasty whole-meal bread with the sesame seeds in the crust that I like so much, with basil-pesto hummus as a butter substitute, and sandwich-chunks of turkey, and it really made for a most delicious lunch! Tonight we’re having pork, pan-fried with a little home-grown rosemary, chips (apparently we can still use the oven, as it’s only the element that works with the “fan-forced” part that’s gone bung – the rest of it works fine, so with a bit of “adjustment”, we should be able to have our chips – and eat them too!) our usual half a tomato, and peas. For dessert tonight I think I’ll actually try one of the Corella pears, and as Julian’s just come home from doing the shopping, I’d say at a guess that I’ll be having either a Chocolate (or other flavoured!) Chia Pod, or some sort of Le Rice.

Weigh-in this morning. Silly me thought that it couldn’t get much worse than it was yesterday! Well, I was wrong! It was a lot worse than it was yesterday! I don’t know what’s going on, I truly don’t. Nothing has changed. We’re eating exactly the same things as I’ve been having since I hit maintenance last September, and I’m walking every day on the treadmill, just as I have been since we got it late last year. Yes! we did go out for a lunch and a dinner during this last week – but I also survived Christmas, Easter, and several Birthdays since last September with no ill effects! As for those terrifying little pills, I’ve been taking those wretched things for ten days, every third month, and by now, everyone who knows me is painfully aware of what they do to me! (sorry!) So… Q: what’s changed? A: nothing! Q: why is this happening now, after nearly a year?! A: I don’t know, and I wish I did, because I’d change whatever was causing it! Maybe “They’re” right, and people who do successfully lose a lot of weight do put it all straight back on again, or something! Julian says it’s fluid – but if so, why is it so much fluid this time! This has never happened to me before, and it really is scaring me! Yesterday I was horrified to find I’d gone up to 66.2kg – definitely the heaviest I’ve been since I reached Maintenance last September… but you know what I saw when I got onto the scales this morning? I’d gone UP ANOTHER 3 POINTS to 66.5 kg!

I don’t know what to do any more.

Anyway, that’s about “it” from me for this evening – I really don’t feel like writing any more… Call in again tomorrow night if want to – even if only to point and laugh at how much more my bloody weight has gone up. I’m afraid that I know a hell of a lot of people who are going to get their jollies saying “See? I knew she couldn’t do it!” – and obviously, I can’t! They were right, I was wrong. Fishes are well, Flipper’s well, Julian is well, and I’m just fat and depressed. Do try to bee good, and I guess we’ll see what tomorrow brings. In the meantime, don’t forget that chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit, and remember to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm and dry in this squally weather… but most importantly, please, remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

*Why is it that I’ll suddenly think of something really clever – like how to get columns to work properly on Word Press, f’rinstance – right when I’m really busy boring myself to insanity on the treadmill – like this morning, for instance? I’m going [trundle, trundle, trundle] “I’m bored…” [trundle…] then all of a sudden, and right out of the blue, I’ll think to myself “Yes! That would work! Gosh! Why didn’t I think of that ages ago! I’ll try that out later this morning…” Then fast-forward to a few minutes ago, and all of a sudden – I’ll remember! Grrr!

03.15 pm

Well, here I am again – a lot earlier this time, as Julian’s in Adelaide, but will be on his way to the airport soon-ish (it’s “wheel’s up” at 04.05 pm, Adelaide time! – err… I think!) so I thought it might be best to start writing early, in the hopes of being finished – or close to finished, by the time he strolls in the garage door – “Honey! I’m home!” – otherwise I’ll be trying to listen to him, and trying to write this, and all that will happen is that I’ll get confused, and all of you (Julian included) will get annoyed with me for not paying attention! So, I’m starting early (for a change)

So how have I been amusing myself all day, I hear you all asking. Well, I played WoW for the most part – leveling up Piubella, my new Priest on Saurfang – and not making a bad fist of it, either! I’m quite impressed with the Priest Class – mind you, I’m only level 16, so I’m still pretty much a “baby” Priest, but I’m getting there… It’s terribly hard though, we need the Guild and the Guild Bank money over on Saurfang, and I can’t do anything about it for another four or five days, curse Blizzard for being so security conscious! 😉 I’m also having weird problems with something on my machine! Something – as yet unknown (though I think I may have nailed the culprit!) keeps grabbing the focus away from WoW and plonking me back at my desktop. The screen just goes black for the space of about two heart-beats, and then I find myself staring at my pretty desktop wallpaper, instead of at the nasty monster I was just hitting with a Shadow Spell! *blink* and I have to quickly click on the WoW icon, and about another two heart-beats later, I’m back again – I’ve cast the spell (while I was busy looking at my pretty desktop wallpaper!) and because I wasn’t there to immediately cast another spell, I’m now being bashed around by this totally inconsiderate monster! So far, I’ve been lucky – but I came very close to getting killed a couple of times today, because of this ruddy screen-grabbing program (or whatever it is) We’ve been trying to work out what’s causing it by a process of elimination, but even with absolutely everything except the game turned off – including the Blizzard loading screen – it’s still happening… There is one thing, however, that never gets turned off… and that’s our Anti-virus and security program! I told Julian about it last time he rang me, and he actually said that it was possible! Apparently this new version of the Anti-virus software, which I think he installed about a week and a half ago? Maybe? (I think it was sort-of around about the time I first started having these problems – I think! I could very easily be completely wrong though!) anyhoo, this new version of the Anti-virus software is apparently a bit “fussy”, as he’s already had to turn part of it off because I use WindowBlinds, and for some unknown reason, if WindowBlinds is running, it won’t! (Julian hates and detests WindowBlinds, and I won’t use my computer at all, without it! – it’s a long story, which you’re better off not knowing!) So anyway, it might be the Anti-virus stuff, and we’ll look into it later on… Oh, Julian just rang from the Adelaide airport – he’ll be boarding in about fifteen minutes, he says – so I’d better start hurrying! 🙂

After lunch I couldn’t be bothered playing WoW, so I dithered around a bit… I should have been hard at work on my wonderful Blog Project, but you all know how it is – you have plenty of time to do something you know you should be doing, but you just… want to do something else! Anything else! …So I did. You’re looking at the results of my “something else” right now! Yes, I fiddled around with Themes and Headers and stuff, instead of writing diligently in my Blog Project! Oh well… all in good time! 😉

And that’s about been my day today! Flipper, bless her little heart and soul, has been surprisingly good and well-behaved today – usually whenever Julian’s not here – even if he’s only gone up to the shops – she parades around, weeping, wailing, and wringing her (virtual!) hands in grief: “Daddy’s gone! (waaaa!) I’ll never see Daddy again! (mrrrowwer!) Where’s daddy! (yowlll) Bring him back! (mmwwwaaaaowl!) Where have you hidden him, you evil, wicked Mummy! (waaaa!)” Today though, she’s spent most of it asleep on the bed, though she’s got up twice to raid the bowl of pussy biscuits (kibble) in here – and apart from a couple of short whinges, she’s been quite quiet! It kinda makes me want to say: “Who’s that strange cat lying on our bed! Where’s Flipper, and what have you done with her!” Anyway, by the time she wakes up to the fact that he’s really not “just in the other room”, he’ll be home again anyway. And now, on to the good bits! 😉

Food stuffs. Last night for dinner we had lamb backstraps marinated in the Feta Slurry stuff, and then pan-fried, on a nice bed of rice which had some finely sliced spring onions in it, and for dessert, I had one of my “bald-kiwi-fruit skin” brown Nashi pears, and some more rice, in the form of an Apple Le Rice. Very simple meal, but trust me – meat cooked like that is really lovely – and so tender and juicy! For lunch today Julian made me a sandwich this morning before he left – he wrapped it up and put it in the fridge for me, and I was supposed to take it out to warm up to room temperature about 20 minutes before I was going to eat it… Only I forgot, and I ate it straight out of the fridge – it still tasted yummy! It was made from that really tasty whole-meal bread with all the sesame seeds in the crust, with ham, Swiss cheese, and a dab of Beerenberg Tomato Chutney – very delicious! 🙂 Unfortunately I have absolutely no idea what we’re having for dinner tonight, so you’ll just have to wait until tomorrow night to find out! However, I can tell you that for dessert I’ll be having one of my Corella pears, and a chocolate Chia Pod! (even I need a break from rice custard, every now and then! 😉 )

Weigh-in this morning. Was totally disgusting! I haven’t weighed this much for over a year! Thank all the Powers-That-Be that I took the last of those absolutely despicably dreadful little fluid-hugging and weight-grabbing pills yesterday morning! Now all I have to do is try to undo all the bloody damage they’ve done to my body, before it’s time to start taking them again! I don’t see Dr. Y until March next year, but honestly, there just has to be a better way! I really don’t know if I can keep going through the heartbreak of seeing everything I’ve been striving so hard for just completely ripped away back to square one again, every three months! And each time I take those damn pills, I put on more fluid and more weight than I did the time before when I was taking them, and each time it gets harder and harder to get rid of all the excess! It might sound childish or petulant, but believe me, when you get on the scales in the morning and you see you’ve completely gone “off the chart” for the first time in over a year – all you want to do is cry! I thought going up almost a full kilo to 65.9 kg over night was bad enough… that was the very, very top line of my weight chart – I haven’t been there for over a year… this morning? Oh, those miserable little pills really, really love me! I’ll just have to write the figures in – there’s no room left on the chart… 66.2 kg. You know what? If I go up any more tomorrow, I’m going to go out and buy myself the biggest box of Belgian chocolates that I can find, and I’m going to sit down and eat the whole lot of them! And no Julian, I won’t share – you’ll have to get your own box! And I’m going to eat like a complete pig, for a week. Then I’ll go back onto the Optifast until next March, and we’re going to figure out what I can do, because I just can’t go through this again!

And that brings me – finally – back to tomorrow! I have the Podiatrist coming over in the afternoon, and a new version of my mail program for Julian to install. Apart from those two items, I don’t think there’s anything terribly vital on our agenda for tomorrow, though hopefully we’ll have been able to work out for once and for all what’s grabbing my screen’s attention at the most inopportune times, and I’ll be able to safely get back to leveling up my new little (well, she’s not really that “little”, she’s quite tall, actually, because she’s a Night Elf!) Priest… hmm.. or should that be “Priestess”, I wonder? Anyway, once again that’s about “it” from me for tonight – but do drop in again tomorrow night – to find out whether or not I’m going to need that box of chocolates, or whether Flipper finally realised that Daddy wasn’t lost, or being hidden somewhere, and if we solved the riddle of the mysterious screen grabbing! Until then though, please bee very good, don’t forget that it’s not the load that breaks you down, it’s the way you carry it, and remember to keep warm and dry in this strange but normal weather for Melbourne, to always drive carefully, and to look after yourselves… but above all (and most importantly!) please remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂