04.46 pm

Well here I am again, at long last – but goodness gracious! Where to start?! I suppose the beginning would be a good place, but I’m afraid you’d get quite bored, hearing all about my childhood… so I’ll compromise, and start off with Monday morning, and the sad departure of little Pyramus, who only survived his (or her) companion, Thisbe, by about twelve hours. Yes, when we got up on Monday morning, Pyramus was lying head-in-the-gravel, and “unresponsive” – which I think is the term commonly used these days to say “It’s worse than that, he’s dead, Jim!” We really have no idea why they died – we keep on testing the water, to see if we might have missed some vital clue as to their sudden demise, but honestly, the water couldn’t be any more “fish-ideal” if it had been tailor-made, specifically for them! So… at this point in time, all we can do is presume that they must have been suffering from some fishy illness when we got them, and brought them home! And as Julian said a short while ago – just as well we had the smaller tank set up for them, because it acted as a quarantine tank, so at least Auric and Dapple won’t be able to catch whatever-it-was that Pyramus and Thisbe were apparently suffering from!

Let’s see… what came next… Tuesday! Tuesdays are usually when my very favourite eldest daughter comes over to spend the day with me, while we sit there in the lounge room watching episodes of our favourite TV shows, but she didn’t come over yesterday because her husband Neale, who was “between jobs” for less than a week, has found gainful employment again, and starts next Monday, and she wanted to spend as much time with him as possible before then. Besides, World of Warcraft’s new Character Class, “Demon Hunters”, went live yesterday morning – but of course she wasn’t really terribly interested in that! 😉 So I had a nice, quiet, relaxing day, pottering around Azeroth on our soon-to-be new Realm (read: Server) called Saurfang, and happily leveling up yet another Gnome Hunter…

Now, I’m not sure if you remember or not, but a short while ago (give or take a few weeks!) I think I mentioned to all of you that Julian was extremely unhappy about the severe “nerfing” that Shamen had received during Blizzard’s pre-Expansion patch, and how he now felt that Mouselet, one of his best and strongest characters – as well as Wynterthyme’s long-time Protector and Team-Mate – was no longer playable! 😦 So I was thinking about that, and wondering if there was anything to be done, or perhaps any other Class of character, with basically the same sorts of both “Damage” and “Healing” capabilities, that he could play instead. After looking at the Monk character Class, as well as the Priest Class, I came to the conclusion that the Monk Class wasn’t even vaguely suitable  – they’re basically Melee fighters, and as neither of us are the “up close and personal” type of players, I ditched that thought and turned to Priests. I vaguely remembered that Neale, my very favourite eldest daughter’s spouse, quite often played a Priest… Reading up on them a bit, I found that – depending on what Talent you pursued – they can be very handy to have in your party! They can heal – up to a point, anyway, they can remove the effects of poison, they can shield people, and they can dish out quite a bit of damage! So, having told Julian all of this, guess what I did! Go on, I bet you can’t! 🙂 Oh… I see that you all know me too well, after all! But, you’re right! I did! I rolled a Priest, just to see what they were like! She wasn’t going to be permanent, mind you, this was just to get a “feel” for them, so to speak – I didn’t even give her a proper, sensible name! (I called her “Hownotto”, as in “How not to”) At first, it was very strange, playing without a Pet, but I surprised myself by managing quite well anyway, and I got her up to level 10, which is really where playing a Priest starts to get interesting, as you get your initial choice of Talent – I chose “Shadow Priest”, because they’re the ones who do the most damage – the other two dealt mainly with Healing and Protection. So… guess what I did then? No clue? Oh, alright then, I rolled another Priest! I gave this one a proper name (so far, all of my brand-new characters on Saurfang have proper names, with no weird accents on any of the letters, which absolutely has to be a record, for me!) This particular name, however, should have an “ù” in it, but for ease of contact I’ve left it as just a plain “u” – and her name is “Piubella”. It means “more beautiful”, or “prettier”, in Italian, and it should be spelt “Più bella” – but as WoW doesn’t allow spaces in names, or even punctuation, I’ve run the two words together, and left off the accent. Which means… that she’ll probably become permanent! Tomorrow, I’ll tidy up all of “Hownotto’s” loose ends, sell up all her worldly goods, and delete her. Then all I have to do is wait another six? or is it five now? days until I can move my newly formed Guild and Guild Bank over from Quel’Dorei! (grrr!)

And that’s really about all that’s been happening over this neck of the woods! So far, Auric and Dapple are both well – they’re such dear little fishies! They’re so used to us now, patting them gently through the glass of the tank, that they actually come up and seem to enjoy it! Well, Dapple always did that, but Auric used to get a fright, and quickly swim off, if he saw a hand approaching the glass – but now the two of them swim backward and forwards along the side, getting “patted” through the glass… they seem really happy, too – and they’ve both grown so much! I think they’ve almost doubled in size! Maybe it’s a mistake to think of putting other fishes in there with them… Flipper is well too – though we think – we can’t really tell though – that last night when we went out for dinner, she showed her displeasure at being left all alone (we fed her before we left!) by… spraying on a small section of wall just outside the Den. Julian only noticed it this afternoon, and it was “slightly” damp, but there was no evidence of big puddles (and when Flipper “puddles”, they’re BIG puddles, as her kidneys are starting to fail, which means that she drinks a lot of water, which has to go… well, usually into the litter box!) Many, many, many years ago, when she was young and charming, she did have a problem with crystals in her bladder, which did cause “inappropriate wetting”, but she outgrew that a long time ago, there’s no possibility of the problem recurring – and besides, they were all “squat and puddle”, not “stand and spray”, so at the moment all we can do is watch her very carefully… and maybe just not go out for dinner again!

And now for the good bits! 🙂

Food stuffs. Yesterday for lunch I had a very delicious wrap, with Halloumi cheese, ham, basil-pesto hummus, green capsicum batons, and tomato – and I managed to eat it all without spilling it down my front, or onto my keyboard – though I will admit to dropping a bit of green capsicum, and a small piece of Halloumi cheese smeared with the basil-pesto hummus, onto my plate! Now, the reason I couldn’t write anything last night – we went out for dinner! Julian’s sister was in Melbourne to hear a couple of cases, and we met her at her Hotel in the city, and had dinner with her in the Hotel’s very pleasant restaurant there, called “Allegro”. It was a lovely meal, and should have been quite alright – except that I’m still on those utterly unspeakable little pills. As we had the “A La Carte Dinner” menu, you can even have a look at the Menu to see what we had! For the Entrée, we all had what was called the Spinach and Kale superfood salad – the only “fattening” part of which may have been the dressing! Curses that I’m not as quick on the pick-up as Melissa is – she very cleverly asked if she could have her dressing “on the side” – but by the time I thought “Oh, that’s a good idea!”, the waiter had gone, and I had my salad dressed – but there really wasn’t terribly much dressing on it, and I only found one small bit of Avocado in it, which I gave to Julian… but as “superfood” food items go, it really was very, very nice! If I ever have it again (and I most definitely would order it again if I could!) I’ll ask to have the dressing “on the side”! For Mains, I had the 200 gm Tenderloin From The Grill – I ordered it “Medium Rare”, but it was a lot more “Medium” than “Rare”, so next time, I’ll just ask for “Rare”! Needless to say, I didn’t (couldn’t!) eat the full 200 gm! The side dishes I ordered were the Olive Oil tossed Broccoli (that’s odd! I didn’t notice even a trace of Olive Oil! Oh well…) and the Steak Fries with truffle salt – but we all shared those two side dishes… For dessert, I umm’d and ahhh’d between the Chocolate and Salted Caramel Tart, with green-tea ice-cream and… er… something else wot I fergit – and the Rice Pudding – sorry, they’re not listed on the menu, but they were there last night, I promise you, because I opted for the Rice Pudding, for two reasons… first reason: I love rice! especially in rice pudding! and second reason: it came with a fig compote! (stewed figs!) and I absolutely adore figs! I then had a long black (coffee) with a small jug of skinny milk on the side – and that was my dinner last night! I had a martini before dinner, and I learnt a very valuable lesson from it, which I will tell you all, in due course! and I had half a glass of dry white wine with dinner… Today for lunch we were very naughty – yes, we were both naughty, because Julian bought it, and I ate it! We had our usual lunch for when Julian’s been out shopping, and if he comes home a bit later than usual and then has to turn around and make lunch when he gets home, it’ll be dinner time before we get lunch, so he brings back two savoury rolls, which we cut in half and have two halves each (no butter though!) and two of those deliciously scrumptious Baker’s Delight fruit and white chocolate scones, which we do have with butter! And tonight we’re having the marinated in the Feta Slurry lamb backstraps, on rice (I think) and for dessert I’ll have one of my “bald-kiwi-fruit-brown” skinned Nashi pears, and (lord help me, more rice!) another Apple Le Rice.

Weigh-in yesterday. Was pretty good! It was my second-last day on those terrible pills – I went from 65.1 kg to 65.1 kg! Remember, it takes between three and five days until those horrible little pills are completely out of my system again, so I was pretty chuffed to see that I was the same as I was on Monday! 65.1 kg isn’t too bad to have to whittle back from! I stupidly thought!

Weigh-in this morning. After my dinner out last night! I should have known that those wretched, hideous little pills were going to have their Last Hurrah! 😦 This morning when I clambered onto the scales, I could almost hear them: (Winter puts on her very best Texan nasal drawl) “Ye’all ain’t-a-gunna git away fr’m us thet easy, lil’lady! This’ere es jest a lil’ ree-mindah orf what’cha gunna git ina cuppla months time! Yee-hehehehe! (← evil, sadistic laugh!) 😥 Oh, it was terrible, alright! Shocking, even! How can someone put on that much weight just from eating a teaspoon or three of reasonably decent salad dressing, and a bowl (alright, it was quite a large bowl!) of Rice Pudding!? I went from…. (wait for it!) 65.1 kg ….. to…. (oh dear, I can hardly bear to type it in! Do I really have to?!) 65.9 kg (Winter types terribly quickly, in the hopes that if she types fast enough, maybe it either won’t sound so bad, or that people won’t notice it, between the two sets of parentheses!) And then of course, that very nice lunch I had today… so I guess I might as well be hung as a sheep for a lamb – thank heavens though – today I took the last of my wretched little weight-gaining pills for another two months – and then “we start all over again” 😦

Which – finally, and at long, long last – brings me back to tomorrow! Julian will be in Adelaide for the day, so I’ll have to rough it on my own, and make my own cups of coffee, and read my kindle if WoW or the internet stuff up… still, he’ll be home in time for dinner, so that’s not too bad 🙂 And that’s about it from me for tonight (well, you had two days without my amazingly erudite and scintillating gossip, so I had to make up for lost time! 😉 ) but for now, that’s enough! Do call back again tomorrow night, for a hopefully shorter, and not quite so long-winded, description of the day’s doin’s! Until then though, do try to bee good, remember that success is neither magical nor mysterious – success is simply the natural consequence of consistently applying basic fundamentals… and don’t forget to always drive carefully, to look after yourselves, and to keep warm and dry, especially after the somewhat heavy little downpour that we’ve just had… but most importantly – please – don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

03.09 pm

Apologies to all of you – due to time restraints, there was no blog last night, and there won’t be one tonight, either! Julian’s sister will be in Melbourne tonight (she’s a Federal Court Judge who lives in Sydney) and we don’t often get a chance to catch up with her. This is one of those ultra-rare times, so we’re heading into the city this evening to have dinner with her! 🙂 I’ll fill you all in tomorrow night – I promise! 😉

In the meantime, do try very hard to bee good, always remember that our differences are policies; our agreements, principles, and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm and dry, because this is Melbourne, and just when you think the weather looks fine, it’ll start to storm, sleet, snow and hail – all at the same time… but whatever you do, above all, and most importantly, please… don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

04.56 pm

…and we’d been having such a good day, too! 😥

We finished playing WoW about ten minutes ago, and Julian went into the kitchen to organise some coffee while I started getting ready to write… and he called out “Oh no! We’ve had our first fatality!” I went in… and there was poor little Thisbe, lying upside down with her head on the gravel, at the bottom of the tank! Julian said that she hadn’t seemed terribly happy this morning when he gave them their breakfast, and now she’s… gone! 😦 Poor little thing! Julian checked, and changed, some of their water last night, even though it didn’t really need it, but after fishing Thisbe out, he’s now checking it again. The test results show that the PH is good enough to be called “perfect”, and the Ammonia level, while not 100% right, is certainly well within the “safety” margin. Thisbe was the one who wouldn’t swim up to the surface to eat the spirulina pellets – she’d get all excited, and swim rapidly backwards and forwards, but she’d never swim up… so this morning Julian fed them some of the “flaked” wafers/whatever they’re called – and which will have to be vacuumed up off the gravel because they’re just lying there untouched. Oh dear, I’m quite shocked, and very sad – she was a very pretty little orange and white fishie – we’re both rather overcome by this event! 😦 We were thinking of moving them into the big tank with Auric and Dapple either later this evening, or some time tomorrow – but under the circumstances, I think we’ll leave Pyramus in the small tank for another day or two – just to be on the safe side! (i.e. if Thisbe was “ill”, the chances are that Pyramus is ill too, and I don’t want him to come into contact with Auric and Dapple for a couple of days, just in case whatever-it-was that killed Thisbe is contagious!) I don’t even want to get another little fishie yet – certainly not until we’ve made sure that Pyramus is completely well and healthy, anyway!

World of Warcraft today… as I started to say at the beginning – we’d been having such a good day! Dulcineà and Tourbillon went from level 17, to level 30! Thirteen levels! That’s astounding! Neither of us died today – though Julian’s character Tourbillon came very close! He said he was “channeling Demelza” at the time, and fell off a very high cliff (and quite frankly, I’m surprised that he survived it!) For those of you reading this who are unfamiliar with the term “channeling Demelza”: One of Julian’s first characters, Demelza, has a very unfortunate penchant for walking far too close to the edges of extremely high, steep places – ones which even a bird would think twice about approaching without a safety-net strung out below them – and her desire to see “what’s down there” nearly always terminated with a sudden and usually fatal stop upon reaching the bottom. Anyway, today he was very lucky – he didn’t die! (for a change!) One thing about our game today though, really did convince me that Quel’dorei has had its day – the whole place was crawling with other players – the Inn in Thelsamar, for instance, a “quiet little backwater” if ever there was one – honestly had to be seen to be believed – you literally couldn’t move for all the people milling around in there – and while it doesn’t seem to bother Julian terribly much, I’ve about had it up to “here” (Winter indicates a line in the air with her hands, somewhere between her chin and her eyes) with hanging about, waiting for my turn to finish a quest, or waiting for the items and mobs needed for the quest to re-spawn! As I said the other night, I’ve been playing a bit on another Realm (Server!) called Saurfang, which doesn’t seem to be as over-populated as Quel’Dorei – so what I’m proposing to do is get one of my Characters – a level 21 Night Elf Hunter called Calypsõ – to leave our Guild, and start up a new one of her own – I haven’t thought of a good name for it yet – She’ll also take a bit more than half the gold from the Guild Bank, and anything else that she thinks might be “useful” in a new Realm. Five of our characters will also quit our current Guild, “Grumpy Old Farts”, so that they can sign the Charter for the new Guild – whatever its name ends up being. Once the new Guild is established, they’ll leave the new Guild and go back to their original Guild (“Grumpy Old Farts”), and Calypsõ will have a brand new Guild, complete with sufficient Bank Vaults, plus a few lower-level materials, to get things started with. Characters wishing to move to Saurfang* will sign up with the new Guild, so that when Calypsõ, as the Guild Mistress, takes the Guild with her when she moves to Saurfang, existing members will automatically become Guild Members if and when they move to Saurfang too. It’s a good plan, and also the cheapest way of doing it – so I’ll be working on that shortly!

And that’s about all the daily news, so now, on with the good bits! 😉

Food stuffs. Last night we had a lovely little piece of steak, with chips, our usual half a tomato, and some more of those delicious little Baby Brussels sprouts. For dessert I had one of my “brown-skinned-bald- kiwi-fruit” Nashi pears, and a chocolate Chia Pod. For lunch today we had ham, cheese and tomato toasties, which were absolutely dee-licious! They were made with the lovely whole meal bread that has all the sesame seeds in the crust, and it really toasts up perfectly! 🙂 Tonight, being Sunday night, we’ve got omelets for dinner! I can’t tell you exactly what will be in them, but I’m pretty sure there’ll be fried cheese, tomato, some sort of ham or bacon (probably!) red or yellow (or both!) capsicum, and either onion or spring onion (probably!) I’ll let you all know tomorrow night, anyway! 😉 For dessert tonight I’ll have a Corella pear, if they’re ripe enough – if not, I’ll have an apple – and an Apple Le Rice.

Weigh-in this morning. Wasn’t too bad, considering I’m still taking those horrible little pills! I went from 65.7 kg to 65.4 kg – down three points, for a change – but don’t worry, it’ll go up again tomorrow – it always does, while I’m on these wretched pills… 😦

And that once again brings me to tomorrow! I’m not sure what’s happening – I know I have my next Warfarin blood test in the morning, and I know Josh is coming over in the afternoon – but apart from that, I’ll either be working on my new Guild thingy for the Saurfang move, or working on a bit more of my Blog Project, so that I can get it up for you all – so I’m sure to be busy, as usual… 😉 In the meantime, do call in again tomorrow night to find out if Pyramus is still with us, how much my weight went up (because it’s sure to!) and what I decided to call the new Guild – as well as the results of the blood test, and all sorts of other bits and pieces about what we did during the day. Until then though, please try to bee good, don’t forget that the difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra, and remember to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm and dry in this changeable weather… but above all, please remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

*Moving to Saurfang – moving a character between Realms (read: Servers) costs $27 – doing the move this way will be the cheapest, as really only three characters need to be moved – Calypsõ, the Guild Mistress, Dulcineà, and Tourbillon. Anyone else we decide to move to Saurfang can be moved across later…

04.49 pm

Yayyy! We have our (proper) internet back! Not that Julian’s wifi set-up didn’t work brilliantly, but I guess I’ve just been spoilt over the years – I’ve come to think of it as just “normal, run-of-the-mill, everyday stuff” to be able to pause TV shows if you need to go and make a cup of coffee or something, and then to be able to fast-forward-like-mad through all the boring sports and stuff when you come back with your freshly brewed cup of coffee – especially now, with the ruddy Olympics just starting! 😉 Only one night without it (last night!) and I was going through severe withdrawal symptoms! At least I was able to play WoW though – with which I’m having a very peculiar problem at the moment! It’s been doing this for about a week (give or take a fortnight here or there!) and it’s most annoying! So far, I haven’t come to any harm when it’s happened, but if it does it while I’m in the middle of a Boss fight or something, my goose won’t just be cooked, it’ll be burnt to a cinder! What happens is this: I’m walking along, or whatever, and all of a sudden, the screen will go black, and then I’ll find myself staring at my desktop! I’ve not been kicked out of the game, or lost carrier, it’s as though the screen gets minimised (it doesn’t, but that’s the easiest way to describe it!) because if I click on the WoW icon, I go straight back into the game, as though I’d never left (which is why I said that if I’d been in the middle of a Boss fight, my goose would have been well and truly overcooked!) Something – and we don’t know what or why yet – is grabbing the screen away from WoW. So, now I’m going through the process of elimination – I close down everything that I usually have running in the background, and just play WoW. This morning, after an hour and a half with no problems, I started up Chrome. After about twenty minutes or so, I found myself staring at my desktop. Hmm! Chrome shouldn’t be doing that – let’s try again! And then my very favourite youngest daughter arrived, and we retired to the lounge room to chat, and have lunch. We don’t see nearly enough of her – she works full time, and has a husband, and a house full of cats, rabbits and a dog to take care of when she’s not at work – so today was a real treat for us and we made the most of it! 🙂

Later this evening, I’ll pick up my elimination testing again – this time I’ll leave Chrome turned off, then one by one, I’ll start up the things I usually have running in the background, like eM-Client (my mail program) Word, Photoshop, and an address book. If everything works properly, and I don’t get dumped back to my desktop, I’ll turn Chrome back on, and see what happens… if it dumps me again, well, I suppose I’ll just have to switch to Firefox or something!

Apart from all of that, nothing terribly exciting or interesting has been happening around here – Auric and Dapple have settled down after their traumatic encounter with the Golden Comet Piranhas, and Pyramus and Thisbe have been quietly getting used to their temporary Holding Tank. I fed them last night, and they didn’t really know what to do! I think they knew I’d sprinkled food in the tank, because they got all excited and milled expectantly about, but made no move to swim up to the top of the tank, where their little pellets were floating on top of the water. I stayed and watched them for a bit, but eventually I had to concede defeat, and walk away, hoping that they’d eventually “get the message” – and their dinner! When I went back about half an hour later, they were still down in the bottom section of the Holding Tank, but there were no pellets still left on the surface of the water, so either they’d swum up to get it, or the food had sunk deep enough for them to find, and eat it. I’ll see how they go tonight! 🙂 We’ll try moving them in with Auric and Dapple, either tomorrow night, or maybe sometime on Monday. This time we’ll only move one of them across at a time, to see how Auric and Dapple react to the introduction of a new fish – if they react badly to one new fish in their Fish House, then I think we’ll just have to accept the fact that Auric and Dapple don’t want “company”, and get used to the idea of moving Pyramus and Thisbe into the Den (here!) and making the small Holding Tank into a “Little Fish-House on the Prairie in the Den”, and becoming a “Two Tank” family!

And now, on to the good bits! 😉

Food stuffs. Last night we had some Coles-brand Beef sausages for dinner – which were actually very nice! and at least on a par with the Heston Blumenthal sausages that we usually get, although not quite as good (in my opinion, anyway) as the Outback Spirit sausages we sometimes get as well. We didn’t have chips with that, we had mashed potatoes, which was lovely for a change, and we had our usual half a tomato, and baby Brussels sprouts. For dessert, I had one of my “Eve” apples, and a small tub of Apple Le Rice. Today for lunch we had wraps, with basil-pesto hummus as the butter substitute, red capsicum batons, Halloumi cheese, sliced spring onions, and sandwich-sliced smoked ham, and for dinner tonight we’re having steak, with chips, half a tomato, and some more of the baby Brussels sprouts (I love Brussels sprouts! 🙂 ) For dessert tonight I’ll have one of my “bald-kiwi-fruit-brown” skinned Nashi pears (because I don’t think the Corella pears we got yesterday are ripe enough to eat yet!) and a chocolate Chia Pod.

Weigh-in this morning. Again. Horrible. I feel like an immensely fat pig! I went from 65.6 kg to 65.7 kg – up another point! Only four more days to go on those evil, twisted, malicious and sadistic pills 👿 (and another five days after that, to get them out of my system!)

And then we come to tomorrow, and our Sunday of leisurely leveling up in Lock Modan with Dulcineà and Tourbillon – hopefully not dying too many times! And also hopefully by then, we’ll have worked out, and fixed, the reason that my screen keeps getting snatched away! It really is most annoying! And we might – or we might not – try moving either Pyramus or Thisbe in with Auric and Dapple! If that single move works out, we’ll move the other one across too – but this time we’ll do the whole move a lot more slowly! And once again, that’s about “it” from me for this evening! Drop in again tomorrow night though, to find out how our day in Azeroth panned out, if we died at all, and how far we progressed during our sojourn there… You’ll also be able to catch up on how much more my weight has skyrocketed (bloody pills!) if we moved one or both of our new fishes in with Auric and Dapple, and whether we solved the riddle of my vanishing WoW screen! But until then, do try very hard to bee good, remember that when you know what you want, and you want it bad enough, you’ll find a way to get it, and don’t forget to always drive carefully, to look after yourselves, and to keep warm and dry, even when it’s raining cats and dogs outside, and it’s freezing cold… but above all, and most importantly, please, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

04.22 pm

What a mixed-up sort of day it’s been here! We’ve been without the internet/Foxtel since we got up this morning, and it’s still not fixed! We’ve managed to find out a little bit about what’s going on through a friend of ours – it seems that something went “*BANG!*” at Tally Ho, sometime before 08.00 am (presumably – that’s just when we got out of bed this morning and found that “thingz weren’t werking no more!”) According to Foxtel, this whatever-it-is won’t be fixed until Monday (!!) though according to our friend, it was an electrical outage that caused the “*BANG!*” at Tally Ho, and that the power company responsible was hurrying over to Tally Ho this morning, around 11.30 am, to fix it! Now, either the “*BANG!*” at Tally Ho was a lot worse than was first thought, and it hasn’t been fixed yet, or else the “*BANG!*” at Tally Ho has been fixed, but Foxtel aren’t going to give up their weekend to fix their side of the problem – until Monday! Tel$tra says that the connection problem has been fixed – however, proving beyond any reasonable doubt that Foxtel is honest and truthful (*rolls eyes*) we still have no Foxtel cable, and going on what they told us this morning, not likely to have one until Monday, full stop, end of sentence, begin new paragraph, etc! This puts us in a bit of a bind though, because we rely on our Foxtel cable for just about everything, apart from our fixed land-line! (I think!) Julian has been able to jury-rig “an internet connection” via his mobile phone and our wifi, and at a pinch, we can even play WoW! But we can’t watch Television – well we could watch “Free to Air”, if Julian sets up an antenna, but I’m sorry, I’d rather read my kindle than watch a semi-decent show mangled to death by ads! What a lovely weekend we have ahead of us! Thank you for your consideration, Foxtel! (*snarl!*)

This morning we bagged up Lemon and Butter and took them back to the Pet Shop barn-thingy, and we discussed – at some length – whether we should procure another two Golden Comets, another two different types of fish, or none at all. The “none at all” option didn’t even get my vote, and I asked the nice Fish Man we were talking to what sort of memory goldfish had – apparently the “three-second memory” theory has now been debunked – and the upshot of that conversation was that – because none of us had a clue as to exactly how long a couple of little goldfish remembered traumatic events, or even how badly Auric and Dapple had been bitten and harassed by Butter and Lemon, it wasn’t really worth risking their health and safety by getting another two Golden Comets. We umm’d and ahhh’d a bit, and finally decided to get two smaller, and very different looking playmates for them. One thing we saw up there in the aquarium section of the Pet Shop barn-thingy that both horrified and amused us, was a half-eaten small fish, drifting gently downwards in one of the tanks that had both smallish goldfish, and a “cloud” of teeny little “schooling” fishes, proving that goldfish, no matter how pretty and sweet they look, are omnivores, and will (quote) eat anything they can fit in their mouths! (unquote) including one of the teeny little “schooling” fish! Oh dear… Anyway, the two that we got… they’re known as “Red and White Comets”, they’re about an inch and a half long (about 3.5 to 4 cm long?) They’re bright orange on top, mottling down to a dazzling white underneath. Again, I have no idea whether they’re male or female (silly me! I should have asked, shouldn’t I!?) but I’ve called them Pyramus and Thisbe, after two characters in Shakespeare’s  comedy, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”. This time it’s quite easy to tell them apart – Pyramus has a short, angular bar of bright orange in his top fin, and an all-white face, whereas Thisbe is wearing orange and black “lipstick”! 🙂 Hopefully Auric and Dapple won’t have a fit of hysteria when we introduce them to eachother in a day or so…

I did play a little bit of WoW today, but it was fairly half-hearted, and I soon gave up and “went home to mother” – I really am getting totally fed up with standing in line, waiting for my “turn” to complete a quest, and having to stand around doing nothing whilst waiting for quest mobs or items to re-spawn!

And that’s really about all that’s been happening today, so I guess I can now get onto the good bits, yes?

Food stuffs. Last night we didn’t have any dinner! None at all! We had a cup of coffee and one chocolate each at around about 08.45 pm, and a cup of tea at around 10.30 pm – and that was it! Today for lunch we had a reprise of the turkey sandwich we had the other day, made from the tasty whole-meal bread with all the sesame seeds in the crust, Sumac and Sesame hummus instead of butter, sandwich-sliced turkey breast, and a little bit of the Beerenberg Tomato Chutney – totally delicious! 🙂 Tonight we’re having Coles-brand, “Finest Australian Angus Beef with Garlic and Parsley” sausages – probably with chips, half a tomato, and (hopefully!) baby Brussels sprouts. For dessert I’ll have one of my “Eve” apples, and a small tub of Le Rice.

Weigh-in this morning. Was woeful! Shocking! Horrible! Tragic, even! This is the heaviest I’ve weighed since I hit maintenance last September! It’s those revolting little pills – every time, they do this to me, every time! I went from 65.1 kg to 65.6 kg! That’s disgusting, and even allowing for lunch yesterday, there’s no way that the food I ate yesterday could have caused such a massive weight gain overnight! Unfortunately, while I’m on these unspeakable little pills, I’m going to be storing so much damn fluid (and you should see how swollen my ruddy feet are! Actually, it’s probably best that you don’t see them – you’d faint with shock!) that I doubt there’ll be much in the way of rising sea levels until I come off them again! 😦 I knew something like this was going to happen, I was expecting it, and I know I said I was going to ignore all this fluid-caused weight-gain until at least the 15th of the month (which includes 5 days of getting them out of my system) but… it’s very emotionally devastating and draining… 😦

And that brings us around to tomorrow! Tomorrow, we’re expecting a visit from my very favourite youngest daughter and her husband. That’ll probably be quite an emotional event too, as they lost one of their cats a couple of nights ago. They have (or had!) three cats, one dog, and numerous rabbits. The cats are all “indoors” cats, but one of them, Parsnip, manged to get out the other day, and went missing. They drove all over the suburb looking for him, and not finding him, Terry rang around several Vets. He’d been hit by a car, but the woman who hit him took him to the nearest emergency animal hospital, where they gave him some pain relief, but he’d apparently broken his spine and there was nothing they could do, so they put him to sleep.  Kate and Terry were both devastated – and I know exactly how they feel – I lost a very dear little cat the same way, many, many years ago – and one of the worst things about it was that I found his collar in the bathroom – almost as though he’d left it there for me to find, with a note saying “Here you are Mum, I won’t be needing this any more – keep it to remember me by!” – as if I’d need a collar to remind me of our sweet little Cecil, who loved the colour red so much that he’d go to extraordinary lengths to find something red to sit or lie on! 🙂 Anyway, once again, that’s about “it” from me for this evening, but do drop in again tomorrow night, to find out how much more my [censored] weight went up, how Pyramus and Thisbe are getting on, and whether or not they’ve been introduced to Auric and Dapple yet – and if our internet/Foxtel cable-thingy are fixed yet! However, until then, do try extra hard to bee good, be aware that sometimes problems don’t require a solution to solve them; instead they require the maturity to outgrow them, and don’t forget to keep warm and dry, especially when it’s wet and cold outside, to look after yourselves, and to always drive carefully… but above all, please, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

04.58 pm

It feels as though today’s been as long as a century, and I don’t mind telling you, all I really want to do at the moment is curl up and go to sleep! Anyway, all I had time for this morning was to have my usual walk on the treadmill, eat breakfast, and play a couple of games of Solitaire, before I had to head back to the bathroom to get ready! Then at around about 11.15 am, off we went to the RACV Country Club in Healesville for lunch today, and it’s quite a drive – you know, I’ve never been able to work out why it always seems to take longer to go somewhere, than it takes to get home again afterwards! Still, the weather was kind to us, and there wasn’t too much traffic – at least, not after we got out into the middle of all the vineyards and wineries, out there in the Yarra Valley! And then… there it was! The RACV Healesville Country Club! Well, it’s not what I’d ever call an “attractive” place, or a beautiful place, or even, for that matter, anything that you’d even guess was a “Country Club”! Architecturally, it was almost “brutalist” – very severe and “industrial”! If you’d told me it was a metal-working facility, or an import/export warehouse, I wouldn’t have been at all surprised – apart from all the surrounding golf courses, that is! 😉 Inside it was little better – “plain and functional”, with lots of quietly neutral colours, and “interesting”, but not too “over-the-top” abstract landscapes on the walls. As we’re Members, we didn’t have to sign-in, but went straight through to the Terrace Bistro, where we were given a lovely table by the window, overlooking the nearby mountains. It was a stunning view, and judging by the vast number of winter-clad trees (i.e. leafless!) it would have been particularly breathtaking at the height of autumn! (Note to self: we must remember to go back there again next year, in autumn, to see if I’m right about that!) The service was quite good, and the food was served in good time, the waitresses pleasant and accommodating. After lunch, on our way out, we had a browse around the Gift Shop in the foyer, where Julian was able to pick up some “Cade” shower gel by L’Occitane – he tried to get some from the L’Occitane shop at Doncaster yesterday, but they were closed! Anyway, he got it today (it’s his favourite!) and I managed to find myself a rather lovely two-tone purple leather wallet – so we both came away from the Healesville RACV Country Club with nice full tummies, and very happy with our “spur of the moment” purchases! 🙂

As I mentioned above – for some strange reason, we seemed to arrive home a lot more quickly than we got to Healesville – even though we took exactly the same route – and if anything, the traffic was slightly heavier on the way home! Of course, the first thing we did when we came through the front door was head off for a cup of coffee (I didn’t, I took my shoes off first! That’s always the first thing I do when I’ve been out – take of my [heavily-censored] shoes!) We had been thinking of taking Lemon and Butter back to the Pet Shop barn-thingy this morning, but just as well we didn’t – we wouldn’t have had time – so they’ll go back tomorrow morning. I’m still a bit “iffy” about getting another two Golden Comets – I just have this weird feeling that if Dapple and Auric see another two sleek, shiny, silvery-yellow fish suddenly appearing in their Fish House, they’re going to freak right out, thinking that it’s Lemon and Butter coming back to terrorise them all over again! I’m now thinking that perhaps we’d be better off getting another couple of “ordinary” goldfish instead… or maybe a couple of mottled white and orange? I’d like a couple of black ones, but I wish they had black goldfish without the “goggle” eyes… Anyway, I think I’ll go with Julian when he takes Butter and Lemon back tomorrow morning (I caught them biting eachother this afternoon!) and we’ll see what happens! And seeing that that’s about all that’s happened here today, now I suppose I can get on with the “good bits”! 😉

Food stuffs. Last night we had plain-old pan-fried chicken breast, on plain-old steamed rice which had a bit of finely chopped spring onion mixed through it (so it wasn’t really “plain-old” steamed rice at all, was it! 😉 ) and for dessert I had a “bald-kiwi-fruit-brown” skinned Nashi pear, and the very weird “bubble-wrap-pop”, but delicious anyway, chocolate Chia Pod. Today for lunch – what can I do but give you all a link to the Terrace Bistro menu, and tell you what I had from it! 🙂 For my Entrée (at least they call it an Entrée there, and not “Starters” as a lot of restaurants seem to be doing these days!) I had the “Chick pea salad, crispy haloumi, harissa yogurt”, which was really lovely – there were maybe a few too many chick peas, but I didn’t eat them all – I did, however, eat all of the crispy haloumi and the harissa yogurt! 🙂 For my Main Course, I had the “Chicken tagine, cous cous, skordalia, jumbo olives, preserved lemon”, which was also very nice. Actually, I had a bit of a problem finding the chicken pieces in all the (very yummy!) sauce that it was swimming in! Luckily, I’d ordered the Side Dish of “Grilled ciabatta” which was exactly the right sort of thing with which to sog up all the lovely sauce! Of the chicken: there was one chicken leg, and one chicken thigh – skin on – hard to find in all the sauce, and extremely hard to cut the flesh from the bones in the bowl-type dish it came in. Of the cous cous: it was really weird! It was so enormous, that at first I thought it was baby corn! But size notwithstanding, cous cous is cous cous – ’nuff said! Of the skordalia: I’m not sure what its “base” was, and after about one or two mouthfuls of hard-won chicken, the skordalia was pretty-much all mushed into everything else – but I did get the impression that it was pretty yummy too! 🙂  Of the jumbo olives: there were only two of them (I’m not surprised!) and they were “pitted” (so they had a great big round hole going through the middle of them) and boy, they sure were “jumbo”, with a capital “J’, “U”, “M”, “B”, and “O”! Of the preserved lemon: there wasn’t really terribly much of that – just a few “skirls” of preserved zest, artfully arranged, here and there over the plate. The main ingredient in the whole dish appeared to be tomatoes, and tomato passata (tomato puree) But the whole thing was very nice, and the platter of Grilled ciabatta, which I shared with Julian, was really great for mopping up the sauce! For dessert, I had the “Citrus almond cake, blood orange Bavarian cream” – and this had to be one of the strangest desserts I’ve had for quite a while! I’d imagined a sort of cup-cake or friand-sized slice of cake made with almond meal (and liberally doused in almond essence!) accompanied by some sort of zesty orange cream – or something of that nature, anyway. What they brought me was a tall-ish “leaning tower of Pisa” water-glass of what looked like a pale, orangy-pink mousse, with a bit of whipped cream on top! Somewhat incredulously, I said to the waitress and she put it down in front of me, “That’s an almond cake?!?” She smiled and said happily “There’s cake inside it!”, before she whisked off elsewhere… I tackled my leaning tower of pink mousse… digging in deeply down one side to see if I could discover this miraculous buried “almond cake” treasure! Well, what can I say! Yes, it was nice. Was it what I was expecting? No. Would I order it again? No. Was I disappointed? Yes, very. It was more like a weird sort of trifle, where a layer of sponge, or more usually slices of Swiss Roll, are used to line a glass bowl. Sherry is liberally sprinkled on the sponge (or Swiss Roll) and about two inches of custard is poured into the bowl, on top of the sponge (or Swiss Roll) and allowed to set. Cream is then whipped until it forms soft peaks, and is smoothed over the set custard, and finally, a red jelly – usually Raspberry or Port Wine jelly – is mashed and crumbled with a fork, and very carefully applied to the top of the whipped cream, so that it resembles red jewels on white ermine (or something fancy like that, anyway!) Well, this dessert today was exactly like that – only the sponge (or Swiss Roll) was bits of almond cake (minus the sherry – or the almond essence!) the custard was way too much citrus mousse, they skimped on the (Bavarian) cream, and there was no jelly on top! All in all, I’d give them 8 out of 10 for the Entrée and the Mail Course, and about 1.5 out of 10 for the Dessert. We both had a short black, which came with a small, round, un-iced chocolate biscuit, and I would have given those two items at least and 8.5 out of 10! So that was lunch today, and I do very much want to go back there again.

We’re not having any dinner tonight – just coffee! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. What can I say? I’m ignoring all of this until August 15th! (i.e. five days after I finish taking these pills – it takes a few days to get them out of your system!) I went from 64.7 kg to 65.1 kg – and tomorrow it’ll be even more, especially after all the carbs I ate today – but I don’t care! Fact: I’m on those horrible pills, Fact: ya gotta enjoy life, and Fact: it’ll all come off again, once I finish with these hideous little discs of water retention! 😛

And that brings me to tomorrow – I think we’ll probably be having a fairly quiet day, after we’ve swapped over Butter and Lemon (I should have called them “Piranha 1” and “Piranha 2”, not “Butter” and “Lemon”!! 😛 ) Anyway, that’s about “it” from me for tonight – but do drop in again tomorrow night to find out how the fish-swap went, and what we ended up with, and how much more my weight went up (because it will, you know!) as well as all the news and hot gossip from this neck of the woods! Until then though, please try to bee good, remember that it isn’t the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out, it’s the pebble in your shoe – and don’t forget to always drive carefully, to look after yourselves, and to keep warm and dry when it’s wet and cold… but most importantly, please, whatever else that you do, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

05.18 pm

Well, I’ve been out most of the day – I didn’t even get a chance to log onto WoW! However, a lot was accomplished! We went over to Doncaster to get some more coffee and to pick up the Dry Cleaning… I also wanted to pay a visit to the Howard’s Storage World that’s just opened up at Doncaster Shoppingtown – damn them! Why couldn’t they have opened their shop there before we moved! I really like Howard’s Storage shops – they always seem to have something in there that, as soon as I set eyes on it, I instinctively know that I just can’t live without that particular item! Oh well, maybe it’s just as well that we moved away before they opened… However, I digress! Today I was going with two particular objectives… one: I needed some sort of stool or small table that I could put my clothes on when I’m having a shower or changing, and that had room for a small laundry basket underneath or inside it… I do/did have a laundry basket in there, but it’s not the sort of laundry basket that you can “put things on top of”, if you know what I mean. And two: even with all the meticulous planning and designing that went into this new bathroom of mine, it still has a really major storage space problem – or should I say, lack of storage space problem! In the end, it was my ultimate choice, so the buck stops with me. I wanted cupboards with adjustable height, and pull-out shelves, but I stupidly allowed Clarke to talk me into having drawers instead – which turned out to be a very bad mistake on my part, because the finished drawers aren’t deep enough for anything over about 4″, or 10 cm high (if that!) As for things like cans of hair spray and deodorant, forget it, Freddie! I only have two very narrow drawers that are deep enough for things like that, but honestly, the drawers become too crowded to really be useful if you put more than three things in each one! I shall rue that stupid decision of mine until the day I move out of here in a coffin! So anyway, as I was saying, space is a real hassle in my lovely new bathroom (but at least I’m not tripping over an unused and unwanted bath tub every time I turn around!) so the other thing I was looking for in Howard’s Storage was for some sort of a free-standing perspex or chrome “corner stand” – something along the lines of one of those corner shower caddies that hang over your shower head… only a lot nicer, and without the little “hanging up” loop at the top of it. Well, I was lucky enough to find both items – within minutes, really – of us walking in the door! We waited longer for them to bring one of the “hollow wheelie-stool” thingies up from downstairs than we did in finding what we wanted! So that was good… Of course, the little hollow table-thingy on wheels (for putting clothes on, and laundry in) was a flat-pack, but Julian’s getting quite good at assembling those sorts of things, and it’s already done, and waiting in my bathroom for me! 🙂 And I imagine that the little chrome corner stand thingy is also sitting in the bathroom, awaiting my ministrations (after I’ve finished this!)

I had also wanted to go to David Jones and have a look at a new Estée Lauder product (products, actually!) as I’ve had two emails from Estée Lauder about them, over the last two weeks! The Nice Young Estée Lauder Lady in D.J’s had never heard of them – the same as the Nice Young Estée Lauder Lady over at The Glen, last week, so she rang up about it… and it turns out – we’re actually talking about three new make-up products here, not just one or two – it turns out that they’re going to end up being “on-line only”, though for a short time, one of the three new products will be available at a shop at Melbourne Central, in the city! Now really, I ask you! How many women will spend $90 for cosmetics that they can only see online? The Lipstick only comes in two shades – which both look so similar online that it’s almost impossible to tell which one is which! What about whether that shade will suit their skin colouring? What if it’s too oily, or too dry, or too something else, that can’t be determined from viewing pixels on a screen?! How gullible do they think we are?! Don’t answer that!! So… although I’m usually a real sucker for new cosmetics, that was one “itch” I just had to walk away from…

On our way home from Doncaster Shoppingtown we stopped off at Vermont South Shopping Centre, as Julian wanted to have a word with the guy at the Pet Shop barn-thingy where we got Butter and Lemon, about their behaviour and attitude. As I said last night, we introduced them to Auric and Dapple yesterday afternoon, with somewhat disturbing results! I had fully expected Auric to want to dominate the new littler fish, but the reverse was true! The two Golden Comets ganged up on Auric and Dapple, and by about 8.30 pm we had to separate them, or run the risk of losing Auric, and possibly Dapple too, to fear and stress! It was a really sorry mess! Even after we’d removed Butter and Lemon and put them back in their holding tank, both Auric and Dapple remained in a very high state of distress for some hours – especially Auric – though Dapple was a bit more knocked around than Auric (some of his scales looked half dislodged!) Now they’re on opposite sides of the room – Auric and Dapple in their big Fish House, and still in the process of calming down, more than 24 hours after their unhappy encounter with Butter and Lemon. Butter and Lemon are back in their little holding tank over on the sideboard, and it’s interesting to note that occasionally, they’ll even have a go at eachother! The guy at the Pet Sho barn-thingy said to bring them back, and he’d swap them over, which was very good of him – but at this stage I’m not sure if I want to subject Auric and Dapple to more trauma, because as soon as they see (or smell? do goldfish have a sense of smell?) new fishes, especially if they’re Golden Comets, like Butter and Lemon – they’ll immediately react badly, thinking that we’ve brought their two assailants back, and get stressed out again. I think this requires a bit of “think” music for a few days…

And now on to the good bits! 🙂

Food stuffs. last night we had the very last of the Lamb and Harissa Lasagne left-overs that we still had in the freezer – and I have to say, it was just as nice as if it had been freshly made! It’s really delicious, and if you haven’t tried it yet (the recipe is there for you all on my “Recipes…” page!) well, all I can say is “You don’t know what you’re missing!” – truly! 🙂 For dessert I had one of my Corella pears, and a small tub of Apple Le Rice. Today we had lunch at The Shingle Inn, and I had my “usual” – a BLT on Sourdough bread (actually it was toast!) a long black (coffee) with a small side jug of skinny milk, and a sinful, wicked, bad, and extremely delicious and luscious, chocolate caramel slice! 😳 Tonight for dinner we’re having pan-fried chicken breast (again – because Julian forgot that he didn’t have any mustard left?!? Please Explain?!?) with steamed rice, and finely chopped spring onions mixed through it. For dessert tonight I’m having one of my “bald-kiwi-fruit-brown” skinned Nashi pears, and one of those utterly weird, but very nice, chocolate Chia Pods.

Weigh-in this morning. Was, I suppose, within that nebulous “margin of error” – I went from 64.6 kg to 64.7 kg – up one point – hardly surprising, as this is my third day (out of 10) of those dreadful little fluid loving and retaining pills! I did my normal walk this morning, and I spent the better part of the afternoon “grating” the skin off my insteps. You know, I get so cross with the people who make my shoes! I’m… “XX” years old. My feet are the way they are, and no amount of “extra support” that they seem to insist that I really, really need, is going to make any difference whatsoever, except to make me uncomfortable, make me waddle like a duck, hurt my feet, and give me blisters! I only ever wear shoes when I leave the house anyway – and that isn’t often – which also means that if I have to walk around for too long, this “extra support” that’s been forced on me against my will, makes my foot “roll” against the extremely uncomfortable raised instep, which results in me “grating” the skin off my instep. Yes, just like rubbing my instep against a vegetable grater! By the time I got home this afternoon I was in quite a lot of pain, so I guess that once again, I’m going to have to “bandage up” fairly heavily again when we go out for lunch tomorrow. Grrr! Why won’t they listen to me!

And that brings me around to tomorrow which, shoes notwithstanding, I’m really looking forward to! I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow night! 🙂 And as my dinner is almost ready, I’ll call it quits, and tell you all that that’s about “it” from me for tonight! 🙂 Do drop in again tomorrow night, to find out how our lunch went, whether Auric and Dapple have recovered from their traumatic meeting with Butter and Lemon yet, and what else has been happening chez nous! Until then though, try to bee good for a change 😉 don’t forget that a goal is a dream… with a deadline! and remember to always drive carefully, to keep warm and dry as much as possible, and to look after yourselves… but above all, please remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

04.30 pm

Yesterday I worked on graphics for most of the day – I wanted to play WoW, but I had a few ideas for Backgrounds and Headers that I wanted to try out, so of course, that’s what I did – and while a lot of them turned out not to be suitable, the ones that were (suitable) turned out pretty well – and the next thing I knew, Josh was here, and then it was dinner time, an’ all, and now it’s today! 🙂 And here it is, my second day into my horrible pills! …Only another eight to go… (thank heavens!) Usually on a Tuesday my very favourite eldest daughter is over here, but not today! 🙂 Her husband is “between jobs”, and they’ve gone to the movies! 🙂 So Julian and I slept in a bit, and had a relatively lazy day! We were going to go out for lunch today, to the RACV Club in the City – but we decided to go to their other venue, the Healesville Country Club instead, because we’ve never been there. Julian was about to ring and book, when we thought “Hnag on, it’s supposed to be raining on Tuesday, and it won’t be much fun driving around on country roads that we’re not familiar with, in the pouring rain!” So we looked up the forecast for the rest of the week, and decided that maybe Thursday would be a better day to make our first visit to the Healesville Country Club Bistro – so we’re booked in for Thursday lunch! Well, today’s been fairly fine, after all, so what’s the bet that it’ll be raining cats and dogs on Thursday?! I hope my hair-do lasts until Thursday night…

Anyway, so I spent most of the morning playing WoW (well, what else would you have expected?!) and Phaédra is now level 43! Still stuffing around in Feralas, which I have now decided is really my most un-favourite zone in the entirety of World of Warcraft, and just before I started writing this I was trying to think of ways and means of getting out of the benighted place! I’d pretty much  already left Feralas for Thousand Needles anyway, where I’d just finished off most of those quests too, and the main quest giver, who didn’t want to know me at this stage, was standing around with a greyed out exclamation mark over his head (a greyed out exclamation mark over a quest giver’s head means that he does have a quest for you, but you’re not a high enough level yet for him to give it to you!) so I suddenly remembered that there were still a couple of quests in Feralas that I hadn’t done yet, and besides, I wanted to visit the Ruins of Mathystra, to see if I could acquire for myself the Ghost Saber Tooth Pet, and I also wanted to see if I could Tame the “Special” Turtle in the Dungeon “Black Fathom Deeps”. Looking on it all as a bit of a “holiday”, I flew all the way back, and went up to The Ruins of Mathystra. I was only level 42 then, but even so, everything else up there was only level 17 – so all I had to do was run around looking for Cat Figurines to tap, to see if they contained the almost mythical Ghost Saber Tooth Cat. Really, the only thing I had to worry about were the handful of other, level 21 Hunters who were also running all over the place, trying to find the right Cat Figurine to tap! Well, I don’t know about all the other Hunters who were out there looking for their GST Pet, but I found, and finally Tamed, my Ghost Saber Tooth on my 14th Cat Figurine (and just so as you all know, Cat Figurines are about as rare as hen’s teeth – only rarer!)

I Hearthed back to Darnassus, where I “Stabled” my brand-new pussy cat Pet, and went back in search of my Turtle. As I hadn’t done any quests over in Darkshore, I didn’t have any of the Flight Points, so I had to gallop all the way down to the Dungeon on my Imperial Quilen, but I stopped along the way and picked myself up a “temporary”, or “sacrificial” Pet, just so I’d have some protection (not that I really needed any!) and that I could “Abandon” as soon as I got to the Turtle. I eventually arrived, and for once actually found the entrance to the Dungeon first pop! In I went… and I’m ashamed to say that when it got to the “jumping” bit, I had to get Julian to “jump me across”, because if there’s one thing I simply can’t do without lots of help, it’s leaping gaily and gazelle-like from rock to rock, or from ledge to ledge. Once across to the other side, I quickly and easily got myself to the Turtle part, and Tamed my Turtle, whom I have named “Bliss” – and please don’t ask me why I called him (or her!) “Bliss” – I think it just seemed like a good idea at the time, I suppose! Back to Darnassus again, where I got myself ready and girded my loins to go and flounder around in Feralas again. The main problem I have with Feralas is that there are only about three or four Alliance Flight Points there, and they’re all pretty much on the western coast. There’s one more Alliance Flight Point, out near the middle of Feralas, but to get there you have to go through so much hostile territory, that by the time you do get to it, you’re almost on the verge of screaming “Stuff it, this isn’t worth it! I’m going home!” There were a few quests there waiting for me, and apart from having to go the ultra–long way around to complete these quests – because this is all smack-bang, right in the middle of the Horde’s section of Feralas, and I’m afraid that they don’t take very kindly at all, to having Alliance adventurers traipsing through their territory!

Still, I eventually completed the quests, went up the necessary level, and high-tailed it back to the dreadful “Speed Barge” in the middle of Thousand Needles, where the main quest giver was now only too happy to give me the quest… which was to leave Thousand Needles, and go off to Gadgetzan, in Tanaris! Well, I suppose that as Tanaris is pretty much all flat desert, at the very least I should be able to see where I’m going… 😉

After lunch today, at 02.30 pm, Julian and I moved Lemon and Butter (still temporary names only – er… I think!) in with Auric and Dapple, and what a surprise that turned out to be! I was fully expecting Auric and Dapple to perhaps be a little hostile towards the two new, and quite a bit smaller, fishies! But the little Golden Comets pretty much terrorised Auric and Dapple! Auric was panic-stricken, and poor little Dapple tried to turn himself inside-out to get away from them. They’re quite intelligent fish, you know – Lemon and Butter very quickly worked out that (a) they had no problem at all, herding Auric and Dapple down to one end of the tank and keeping them there, but that was quickly getting a bit “old”, so they (b) split up,! Lemon (or was it Butter?) herded Auric off in one direction, while Butter (or was it Lemon?) kept Dapple cornered down the other end of the tank! I’ve never seen Auric and Dapple behave this way! The poor little boys (or girls!) were actually shaking, they were so upset! My poor little Dapple kept waggling his head, as though he was saying “No, Mummy! No! What have you done!”* Anyway, it’s 06.15 pm now and I’ve just been down to see how they’re all going. So far so good, I guess Butter and Lemon showed Auric and Dapple who was going to be Boss, and now they’re swimming back and forth, and I think they’re all looking forward to dinner! Auric and Dapple, while I don’t think they’re really frantic, or upset anymore, I’m also pretty sure that they’re not entirely happy, either. We haven’t emptied out Butter and Lemon’s smaller tank, so if the worst comes to the worst, and Auric and Dapple don’t settle down, they might have to live in separate Houses.

And now on to the good bits! 😉

Food stuffs. Last night we had the “Easy Grilled Dijon Chicken” for dinner, and although Julian didn’t marinate it for as long as he did the first time he made it, it was long enough (actually, the “recipe” doesn’t even say to marinate it, it just says to dip the chicken in the mixture and grill it – we just like to do things our own way!) and the chicken was superb! So tender and succulent and tasty! Once again we had it with plain steamed rice, to which some finely chopped spring onions had been added. For dessert, I had a “Jazz” apple (the last of the “Jazz” apples, I think! the rest are “Eve” apples…) and another Apple Le Rice. Julian went out around lunch time to get some milk and a few other things, and brought home some rolls and other goodies for our lunch, so for lunch today I had two halves of different types of rolls, and one of Baker’s Delight scrumptious fruit and while chocolate scones – after all, life is for living, not cowering in fear, in case eating something delicious is going to blow you up like a ten ton blimp! 😛 I must say that I’m really looking forwards to dinner tonight – we’re having the very last of the frozen left-over Lamb and Harissa Lasagna with Feta and Oregano (see my “Recipes…” page for how to make this delicious and economical dish!) And for dessert tonight I’ll have one of my Corella pears, and another small tub of Le Rice.

Weigh-in yesterday morning. Wasn’t good! What a marvelous way to boost my confidence as I start into my ten days of taking fluid-loving and fluid-retaining medication, NOT! I went from 64.5 kg to 64.9 kg! Terrible! However, I did go for my walk – much good it did me – so I just have to grit my teeth and “suck it up”, as they say in the classics – but I’ll be mightily relieved when August 11th rolls around!

Weigh-in this morning. Hmm… maybe a little bit betterer than yesterday! I went from 64.9 kg to 64.6 kg – just one point off what I’d been the day before yesterday, but at least it was down, and not up again! But… Who knows what it’ll be tomorrow morning! Most likely up again, especially after my somewhat naughty lunch today! 😉

And that brings me to tomorrow! Tomorrow we’re going over to Doncaster to pick up the Dry Cleaning, and to go to Howard’s Storage Shed, which has just opened up over there – it’s a shame they didn’t get there before we moved! Never mind, I have some “storage” ideas for my bathroom (which, even as carefully planned as it was, it’s still lacking adequate storage space!) but I need to go and see exactly what they have there. And really, that’s about “it” from me for this evening! Do call in again tomorrow night, to find out how Auric, Dapple, Butter, and Lemon are all getting on together, or whether we feel that they should be separated. No doubt you’ll be wondering which way my weight went, up or down, and whether or not I found any answers to my bathroom storage woes – but until then, please try hard to bee good, remember, never let inexperience get in the way of ambition, and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm and dry in this sometimes suddenly changeable weather… but most importantly, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

*To my very favourite eldest daughter, if you’re reading this – “Yes dear, I’m well aware of the fact that I’m anthropomorphising, but that’s exactly what poor little Dapple looked like he was saying!” 😛

05.00 pm

Oh dear – I cowered when I put the date in up there! It’s the end of the month… and tomorrow (shudder) I have to start taking those horrible pills again – what’s even worse is that my spiteful, turn-coat body seems to be already gearing up for the inevitable weight gain that will occur when those wretched pills start “conserving” every single drop of liquid that passes my lips, be it tea, coffee, or just plain water! *sigh* Still, it’s only for ten days (but a veritable lifetime for someone trying hard to keep the weight off!) and I’m going to try, very hard, to ignore the slowly rising graph line from my daily weigh-ins… but it’s not going to be easy! However, on a happier note, Julian and I had a great time in Dun Morogh (where Ironforge, the Dwarven Capital is) and Loch Modan (the area immediately north-east of Dun Morogh) Gnomes start out very close to the Dwarven starting area and share quite a few of the early quests, especially the “beginner” ones! Last week, when we first created Dulcineà (me) and Tourbillon (Julian) we didn’t really get very far, what with all the setting up of each character, organising bags, healing potions, money, and what-not, as well as getting ourselves into our Guild, “Grumpy Old Farts” – so we only made it to level 5 last week! However I’m very happy to report that we made up for last week’s very slow start today, going up a very cool 12 levels, to level 17, and we even managed to keep pretty much even with eachother, too, which is a big bonus!

Unfortunately, we did die once today, and as many times as I’ve done this particular quest (which I have to admit is only about ten times, as I don’t often roll Dwarves or Gnomes!) I’ve always died! Personally, I think it’s a very badly written and constructed quest, especially considering that it’s the last one you do in the pretty much “No Kill” Baby area! You have your Grand Illustrious Leader-type person, sitting astride a mechanical emu, or ostrich, or whatever, and he gives this big, long-winded speech about getting back the Gnome Capital City, Gnomeregan from some sort of Mad Scientist (I think!) and off we’re all supposed to charge. Which we do, across a frozen lake, to an island where this Mad Scientist and all his Insane Leper Gnomes (hereinafter referred to as “Hench People”!) are waiting for you. But you can’t fight them yet, no, you have to wait through some more terribly long-winded exchanges between the two Leaders, then, when you’re distracted with boredom, the two sides finally get it on. Now, this is what kills me, every time, and it killed the two of us today too. According to the Unwritten Rules of fighting Boss mobs in WoW, you take down the Hench People first, then you work on the Boss – it makes sense, you take out the distractions that are going to hit you, and try to kill you, while you’re smacking their Boss around, right? And it nearly always works too, because in Boss fights, the Hench People you’ve taken out generally don’t re-spawn – or not terribly quickly, anyway. However, in this particular Boss fight, (a) he was extraordinarily tough! (far too tough for a Starting Area Boss, in my opinion, anyway!) Even with both Julian and I – and my Pet – fighting him, we were hardly making a dent in his armor! In fact, it was taking so damn long to even tickle him that all his Hench People re-spawned… and started killing us! We had two options, neither of them very workable! (1) We could stop fighting the Boss, and try to take down his Hench People again, during which time the Boss would be able to kill us at his leisure. Or, (2) We could try to ignore all the newly re-spawned Hench People and keep on doing our best to take down the Boss – who, after all this time, was only just under half health – before all these newly re-spawned Hench People of his polished us off! In other words, you’re damned if you do, and damned if you don’t. I’m not quite sure which option Julian chose, but I chose option #2, which is the way I usually tackle these types of fights, but I dunno, maybe I should have tried option #1 in this case, because my usual choice of option #2 – in this particular fight, anyway – always ends up with me getting rather deaded! So there we were, both dead, running back from the local Graveyard, to reclaim our bodies, when Mr. Kingpin on the mechanical emu (or ostrich, or whatever!) suddenly rallies, kills the Mad Scientist, and wins the day! Now, normally in a Boss fight, if something like this happens and you end up dead, the Boss returns to full health, and you’ve “failed” the particular quest which demanded that you kill this Boss – and you have to keep doing the whole thing over and over, until you get it right! In this fight though, it almost seems as though the Kingpin, perched on his robotic bird, had simply been waiting for us to die, so that he could start his rally, and win the day! I mean, it took literally for-evah to get the Mad Scientist down to half health, but only seconds after we’d died, Kingpin and his men kill the Boss, in one foul swoop? What’s more, we didn’t “fail” the quest (even though, technically speaking, we did!) we’re treated as true heroes, as in being immediately sent off to somewhere else to kill more monsters for other quest givers!

But it was a fun day – we really achieved an awful lot – and next Sunday should be even betterer! 🙂

So, now on to the good bits! 😉

Food stuffs. Last night we had the Outback Spirit Beef and Bush Tomato sausages for dinner, with our usual chips, steamed green beans, and half a tomato, and for dessert I had a “bald-kiwifruit-brown” skinned Nashi pear, and another Apple Le Rice. For lunch we had a “different” type of wrap, with some of the Sesame and Sumac hummus, sandwich-sliced turkey, red capsicum batons, Beerenberg Tomato Chutney, and some Nimbin “elbo-style” cheese (yes, it is spelt “elbo”, and it was quite delicious!) and – this seems to be becoming a bit of a habit – once again I managed to devour it all without getting sauce all over my fingers, or spilling half of it down my front, or onto the keyboard! 🙂 Tonight, because it’s Sunday night, we’re having omelets! I can’t tell you what’s going to be in it yet, coz I don’t know – you’ll have to wait for tomorrow night to find that out! 😉 For dessert I’ll probably be having one of my Corella pears, and one of the Le Rice tubs.

Weigh-in this morning. Was horrible, and a snide omen of the week to come, no doubt! I went from 64.0 kg to 64.5 kg 😦  Mind you, it was probably mostly the yummy lunch I had yesterday, with the fruit and white chocolate scone, so “mea culpa” and all that, but I was not happy about this morning’s weigh-in at all! So, in a fit of pique, I decided not to do my morning walk! *pout* Well, it was late, coz we’d slept in (being Sunday!) and I didn’t want to get too late a start with WoW – so it’s (quite literally!) back to the treadmill tomorrow morning, sore foot be damned!

And once again, this brings me back to tomorrow! Tomorrow morning our cleaning lady will be here, and once more I’ll be on my own because Julian has a doctor’s appointment at 10.30 am. I’ll probably be working with Phaédra a bit, as well as working on my Blog Project, and Josh will be here in the afternoon – so a full day for me! 🙂 Oh, remember I said that Julian changed the fish’s water over yesterday, and set up the small tank for Lemon and Butter (temporary names only, at this stage!) Well, he tested the water today, around lunch time, and it was awful! The PH level was far too high, and so was the Ammonia – so he hastily changed about 30% of the water in there, and he’ll test it again after dinner, to see if we can work out what’s going wrong… We’re wondering if maybe it was the water that they arrived in that was the problem, because a couple of hours after Julian changed out the water this afternoon, it was a lot better. When we got them, the Pet Barn place person half filled up a large-ish plastic bag (complete with logos and colourful printing on the outside of it, and probably who-knows-what sort of chemical residue on the inside of it) from an (empty of fish) tank above the one that Butter and Lemon were in, scooped the two fish up in a net, deposited them into the bag, then blew into the bag a bit, folded the top up tightly, and secured it with an elastic band… and we finally brought them home, sloshing around in their bag of water every time the car went over a bump, or turned a corner. Once home, we balanced their bag of water inside their new (temporary) home for about half an hour, then cut open their bag, depositing them, and the water that they came home in, into the small holding tank that was more than half full of water from Auric and Dapple’s Fish House. Hopefully, by the time they’re ready to go into the Fish House with Auric and Dapple, the two lots of water should be pretty much the same, chemically. I’m not sure when we’ll move them all in together… and as they say in the Classics, “but that’s a story for another night!” 😉 And now it’s time for me to say goodnight, and that’s about “it” from me this evening! Why not call in again tomorrow night, to find out more about “The Great Saga Of The Fishies and What They Did Next”(or “what Auric and Dapple thought of their new playmates”) what my weight has been up to (or hopefully – but not very optimistically – down to) how Julian’s visit to the doctor’s went, and what the outcome of his tests were… but until then, do try very hard to bee good, don’t forget that if you obey all the rules, you’ll miss all the fun, and remember to keep warm and dry in this highly changeable weather, to look after yourselves, and to always drive carefully… but above all, please, remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

04.22 pm

Goodness gracious! I don’t know what can have come over me – I’m not starting late today! Today’s been rather interesting, actually – this morning Julian was going to change over the usual 30% of the water in Auric and Dapple’s Fish House, but as we were going to be getting another couple of fishies for Auric and Dapple to play with, he was also going to set up the little “holding tank” for the new fishies as a sort-of “quarantine station”, until they settled in. It was the one that we’d had for Auric and Dapple, when we first brought them inside, and it didn’t need much to get it ready, as we already had a filter pump for it, and some plastic plants – all we needed was some gravel for the bottom of the tank, and of course, the new fishies, which we thought we might get on Monday. So before changing over 30% of Auric and Dapple’s water, he went up to the nice big Pet Barn place (next door to Aldi, up at Vermont South) to get some more Fish Tank Gravel. When he came back with the gravel, he told me that the Pet Barn place had some more of the fishes that we wanted to get, “Golden Comets” (last time we’d looked for them they appeared to have sold out!) Then he looked at me and said “And I suppose you’re going to want me to take you up there this afternoon, so that we can get them!” I was a trifle surprised at that, because I’d thought it would take a bit longer than a couple of hours to get the water right for new fishies! But he said no, it wouldn’t take long – he’d do all the preparation, and change over Auric and Dapple’s water, and then test both tanks after lunch. Which he did, and apparently the water was fine, so we jumped in the car, and came home with two pretty little Golden Comets, temporarily being called “Lemon” and “Butter”, until I can think of better names for them. They’re a lovely, very slightly greenish “new lemon” colour (“new lemon” in that they’re a very pale yellow, not the almost “dark yellowish/brownish orange” of old lemons, that you’ve left in the fruit bowl for too long!) though if you look straight down on them in the water, the tops of their heads have a very slight orange tinge to them – which I hope won’t darken up too much as they get older and bigger! We’ll keep them in the holding tank for about a week, then we’ll introduce them to Auric and Dapple – I hope they’ll like eachother and get on well – all of the people at the aquariums we’ve been to have told us that goldfish get on fine with new ones, unless they’re very small, in which case they’ll try and eat them! Goldfish, I’ve been told, will eat anything they can fit in their mouths, and as they don’t have stomachs, everything just goes straight through them, which is why you shouldn’t feed them too much because they can easily get a blockage, so now when I feed them in the evenings, I only give them about six or seven teeny little pellets of spirulina (each one is slightly smaller than a sesame seed, and slightly larger than a poppy-seed!) The trouble is, Auric is bigger, much more agile, and a great deal faster than poor little Dapple (who’s growing at a rate of knots, I might add!) and he’s so greedy! Naughty little Auric always manages to get the lion’s share of the little pellets, and it’s hard not to feel sorry for Dapple, and feed them a bit more, so that he’ll get some dinner too…

So, we have our new little fishies! 🙂

I bought another six new fonts today – so made yet another header for my Blog Project – I haven’t put it up yet, but might do so tonight… I’ve done a bit more work to the “body” of it, and it should be ready to go Public by about the middle of next week – I’ll keep you all posted! 🙂

I’ve actually spent most of today with Phaédra – who is now level 40 – and still in Feralas, though I’m not sure for how much longer – I’m already starting to “one-shot” most mobs, which is a real bore! I do hope Blizzard are taking serious note of the number of, and types of, complaints that I’m quite sure are pouring in, especially in regards to Shamen – the Demon Hunters are going to be available for creation and play on August 9th, and of course the entire “Legion” Expansion goes live at the end of August, which starts on Monday! August starts on Monday, I meant – and for me, Monday is also “Weep and Despair” Day for me! I go back on those horrible, evil, nasty, despicable, cruel and unnatural, fluid loving and retaining pills again! Arrggghhh! And my foot still hasn’t recovered fully! I did a short “weekend” walk of 20 minutes today, and I know I said I wouldn’t do it again, but I had to! I hadn’t quite got to the ten minute mark, when my damn left foot started acting up. I ignored it, and started limping a bit (believe it or not, it’s quite difficult to limp on a treadmill!) so I did manage to complete my twenty minute “weekend” walk – but it wasn’t fun! Going back on those damn pills again, even if it is only for ten days, means that I should probably lengthen my walk every morning, not scale it back! Oh well, I’ll just have to see how I go…

And now, once again it’s time for the good bits!

Food stuffs. Last night we had a nice little piece of steak for dinner – at least, I thought mine was nice, Julian wasn’t all that happy with his, as he found a bit of gristle in it. The trouble is, the supermarket shelves are all but empty, thanks to the strike – and apparently there were hardly any fresh vegetables at all left at Coles in Vermont South! We had steamed green beans, chips, and the ubiquitous half a tomato with that, and for dessert, I had an “Eve” apple, plus that Jalna “Cafe Latte” pot-set yoghurt that I was telling you all about last night- which, I must tell you, was very, very nice! It had quite a nice, strong coffee flavour, though… somehow it’s difficult to reconcile the slightly “sour” yoghurt taste, with the creamy, slightly sweet, coffee flavour! But in spite of that anomaly,  I really did like it, and I do hope that it’s going to be a “permanent” on-shelf product at the supermarket, not just a special, “limited edition” type of “here today, gone tomorrow” item! Because he was up at the shops this morning getting the gravel for the bottom of the small fish tank, amongst a bit of other shopping, and knowing that he’d be pretty busy getting the holding tank ready for the new fish when he got back with everything, Julian also brought home some very nice savoury Danish’s for our lunch, plus a couple of those delicious fruit and white chocolate scones, so I had a small “ham and cheese Danish” for lunch, and the fruit and white chocolate scone – unfortunately, when the fruit for the scones was being handed out to the Bakers, my Baker must have been hiding behind the door or something, because I think there might have been one, or perhaps two, small pieces of fruit in mine… but it still tasted delicious! 🙂 Tonight for dinner we’re having a reprise of the Outback Spirit Beef and Bush Tomato sausages – with our usual half a tomato, chips, and steamed green beans – and for dessert I’ll have a “bald-kiwifruit-brown” skinned Nashi pear, and a Vanilla Le Rice.

Weigh-in this morning. Was very interesting, and I almost can’t wait to see what I weight tomorrow! I went from 63.9 kg to 64.0 kg – up one point! I wonder if I’ll stay on that tomorrow too, as I’ve been staying on each weight for two days at a time for the past week! I doubt it though – a combination of not being able to do my proper length walks every morning, and the nice but “not really good for me” lunch that I had today will make quite sure of that, unfortunately! Then of course, come Monday and those ‘orrible little pills, I’m going to start having veritable King “fluid” Tides for a while! 😦

And that brings me around to tomorrow, Sunday, which as everybody knows, is our day for gallivanting around Azeroth, walloping nasty creatures, and playing the “Cousin Guido” game for quest-givers¹ – not that we mind all that much, especially if we get decent quest rewards! Hopefully we won’t die too often, though death is but a fleeting thing, in World of Warcraft, and we always have a good time! 🙂 And that, I’m afraid, ladies and gentlepersons, is about “it” from me for this evening! Do call in again tomorrow night though, to find out how we went in WoW, and whether we died or not, what my weight did, how all the little fishies are, and how Flipper is, as well as all the other fascinating and exciting things that filled our day… but until then, please try hard to bee good, remember that a sure way to lose happiness is to want it at the expense of everything else, and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm and dry in this contrary Melbourne weather… but above all, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

¹“Cousin Guido” – A typical “Cousin Guido” scenario plays out something like this:

Cousin Guido [enters stage left] “You called for me, Boss?”

Boss: “Yeah… that lousy rat, Stinky LeRue, owes me big time! I want youta go around there and measure him up for a bespoke pair of concrete shoes… and book him aboard a nice sea cruise while you’re there too… one-way ticket! Bwahahahaha!”

Cousin Guido: “Yeah Boss, consider it done!” [Cousin Guido grins evilly, and exits stage left, cracking his knuckles…]