05.29 pm

Well, I hate to be so harsh, but…  “Malcolm Turnbull. You are the Weakest Link – it’s time for you to go!” – So many people had such high hopes for Mr. Turnbull – he looked the part, with his well-cut suits and urbane smile, and he sounded, so very much like the Statesman that the Liberals hoped he’d be… but unfortunately he gave us all a glimpse of the “real” Malcolm Turnbull, way back in 2009, with the unfortunate “Utegate” affair – and really, we should all have been warned then. At the time Utegate occurred, I’m pretty sure that most Liberal supporters – like me – thought that Malcolm Turnbull had to have provable hard evidence against Mr. Rudd and Mr. Swan, before going so public with his pretty shocking allegations. But he didn’t. All he had was the “word” of a Treasury official called Godwin Grech that anything untoward had happened. But, as it turned out, nothing untoward had happened! Mr. Rudd and Mr. Swan had not acted dishonourably and lied to the Parliament (they had, and they did though, many times, and about many things, but not, as it turned out, in this particular case!) and all too soon it was found out that Godwin Grech was a fraud. Mr. Turnbull had acted hastily, without due thought or investigation, and, to coin a phrase, he “came a cropper“!

But, time passed, and people tend to forget political events all too quickly – and besides, everyone deserves a second chance, don’t they?! Alarmed at Tony Abbot’s often stupid and foolish decisions, Caucus decided to offer the leadership to Mr. Turnbull again – certain moves were orchestrated, by certain shadowy individuals, and when Mr. Turnbull took the Prime Ministership away from Tony Abbot, just about the whole of Australia heaved a great sigh of relief! I was dubious about this move – after Utegate, I’m afraid that I still didn’t completely trust Mr. Turnbull… and it seems I was right to be wary of his abilities as a Prime Minister! He made the Australian people an awful lot of promises, leading the trusting people, Pied Piper-like down the garden path, and reneged on all of his promises – most likely to please the powers-that-be who’d handed him his lofty position… “sold” to him for a price higher than most people would have been willing to pay – his integrity!

So, here we are. Mr. Turnbull wanted a Mandate, he said, so he pulled the Double Dissolution – or should that be “Disillusionment”?! Now, thanks to his arrogance and ineptitude, he’s worse off than he was before the election, as far as a Mandate is concerned, and so are we! One almost feels like writing Mr. Abbot a note: “Dear Tony – all is forgiven, please come back (as Prime Minister)!” So who knows what’s going to happen now? For once, I think Andrew Bolt is right – Mr. Turnbull should apologise, most abjectly, to all Australians, resign from the Parliament, the Liberal Party, and politics, altogether! One wonders – where do we go from here?!

Well, I can tell you where we went! We went to Draenor! 🙂 We had a good go today – I died once, and Julian died twice – in the middle of a Garrison “invasion”. It’s one of the “set” Garrison quests where the Garrison is due to be invaded, and you have to help fight for your new home. The quest itself isn’t actually all that hard, and I have done this particular quest solo, twice… in Alliance Garrisons, where you don’t get extraneous flying beasts swooping in and chomping on your head! So that we wouldn’t have to do the quest twice – once for my Garrison, and once for Julian’s, we had the bright idea that I could “visit” his Garrison, earn a “Garrison Buddy” Achievement by doing so, and stay there and help him fight off the invasion – which would hopefully count for both of us! (it did, luckily!) So, we’re fighting away, fighting… fighting… and all of a sudden a notice flashes across the screen: “A Rylak has been attracted by the noise of the fight”, or words to that effect, so you have to go along and help kill the Rylak, whilst still being clobbered by the invading army! It was actually the Rylak that killed us both – they’re really vicious big beasties! Still, we both went up a level – we’re both level 92 now, and we’ve pulled our Garrisons up to Stage or Tier 2, have extra buildings in it, and a much nicer “Town Hall”. We’re both looking forward to next Sunday, and getting back into the thick of things! 🙂 All good fun! 🙂

Auric and Dapple seem well – the water is now good, except for the PH level, which we’ve bought a special piece of stone (or you can use coral, if you know where to get it!) to nutralise the acid from the dissolving carbon dioxide from the air bubbles. The “Goldfish Experts” that Julian’s been speaking to are divided about the use of the stone – some say “don’t use it, the bacteria in the filter may fix the problem – give it a month!”, and the others say “The stone is a good idea – you should try it!” so, I think Julian’s intending to put, not the whole stone into the tank, but a piece of it… I’ll let you all know how this somewhat fysh-brained scheme works out! 😉

And now it’s on to the good bits! 🙂

Food stuffs. Last night for dinner we had the first lot of the Lamb and Harissa Lasagna leftovers from the freezer (re-heated, of course!) and it was just as nice, if not nicer, than it had been the other night, as all the different flavours had been given a chance to blend in together properly. Then I had one of my Fuji apples, which again was extremely nice, and a small bowl of my delicious Coles-brand, very low-calorie, Rice Pudding for dessert. We had wraps for lunch today, which were made with the basil-pesto hummus, sliced Roma tomato, some of our home-grown dark green capsicums sliced into batons, ham, sliced spring onions, and Halloumi cheese. Very delicious, but as Julian warned me, very messy to eat because they were stuffed rather full with all those yummy bits and pieces, which kept on trying to escape! Thank goodness for the “5 second rule!”¹ Tonight, being Sunday night, we had omelets for dinner. I’m not sure what Julian did differently, apart from using cheddar cheese instead of the usual Halloumi cheese, but the outside of the omelet tonight was deliciously crispy and even a bit crunchy, without being in the slightest bit burnt, just a lovely golden brown all over! There was Roma tomato, onion, ham, cheddar cheese, and the very last of our home-grown dark green capsicum in this particular omelet, which has to have been the best omelet ever! For dessert tonight I had a pale golden-yellow Nashi pear (they seem to come in either a dull brown, the colour you’d expect a bald kiwi fruit to be, or this pale golden-yellow colour – currently we have a couple of each) which was sooo juicy that I probably should have sat in a bath to eat it, except that we don’t have a bath anymore, so I couldn’t have, even if I’d wanted to! I don’t think we’ll get any more of the pale golden-yellow Nashi pears again – it was a bit bland and insipid, too… and I followed that up with a small bowl of my favourite Coles-brand, very low-calorie yummy Rice Pudding.

Weigh-in this morning. Was actually good, for a change! I went from 64.3 kg to 64.1 kg – down two points, which is good, because I know it’ll be up tomorrow. How do I know it’ll be up tomorrow? Because I didn’t do my walk this morning! At the moment, the stupid blood blister on my right toe is so bad that I can hardly walk up and down the hallway with it, let alone walk on a speeding treadmill for half an hour! I mean, I can walk on it, sort-of, as long as I concentrate on (a) limping, and (b) trying not to let my toes touch the floor! If it’s not a lot better tomorrow, I’ll just have to try adding a few more band-aids…

My ear is still bung… I’m being brave, and putting up with my ear-drops, but oh, I really, really hate them! 😦 This time last night I thought my ear was a bit better, but tonight it’s quite sore again , especially when I chew on anything 😦 *sigh* Oh well… this time next week will come, and it’ll be all better and I won’t have to have the drops, ever, ever again!

And all of this brings me to tomorrow 🙂 Our cleaning lady will be here in the morning – I must remember to ask her to open the treadmillery window and to dust, or vacuum the bottom of the fly-wire screen – I think there’s a spider’s egg-nest-thingy on it, and as I always have the window open when I’m walking, I would hate for the little baby spiders to hatch out while I was in the middle of my walk – I might step on one… and I believe that baby spider’s venom is just as bad as the adult’s, and I don’t want to be raced off to hospital with a deadly spider bite, even if it is only a baby one! Josh will be over in the afternoon, and that’s about all that I know is happening! We do have to go back to the Nursery to get a very large planter, but the forecast is for rain, so we might have to wait until Wednesday for that. So, all in all, that’s about “it” from me again for tonight! 🙂 Do call in again tomorrow night to see how much my weight went up because I didn’t do my walk this morning, whether or not the spider-egg-thingy is still on the fly-wire screen, if Julian put “the stone“, or part of “the stone” in the Fish House, and whatever other fun stuff we might have got up to! However until then, please try to bee good, remember that thinking too much about a problem won’t make it any easier to solve, and don’t forget to always drive carefully, to keep warm and dry on cold, wet winter days, and to look after yourselves… but please, above all, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

¹ The “5 second rule” states that anything edible which falls to the ground is fine to pick up, dust off, and eat, if it hasn’t been on the ground for more than 5 seconds, because the germs won’t have had a chance to make it go bad in that small amount of time. This rule can, and usually is, lengthened, in proportion to how badly you really wanted to eat that piece of dropped food.

04.15 pm

I wonder how the election is going? Not that the outcome is going to make very much difference to anybody – you are aware, aren’t you, that if voting really could change anything, then voting would immediately be declared illegal? F’rinstance – marriage equality… Plebiscite or not, do any of you think that even if 99 and 3/4 of the Australian population voted in favour of it, that the Christian hard right MPs would allow it to go ahead? Ditto euthanasia, becoming a Republic, and many other things that the people want, but that the politicians, the authoritarian rulers of this wonderful sunburnt country, won’t let us have – because they don’t want to give up their power and prestige … All this stupid, expensive “voting” business (which we pay for, by the way) is just a huge waste of everyone’s time, and a very clever con game to make us think that we actually have a say in how the country is run! Oh well – as I said – it doesn’t really matter who gets in, nothing will change, but it’ll be interesting to see who’s lies were swallowed the easiest.

Although I was hoping to beat the eager crowds to the Polling place this morning, we didn’t leave until around eleven-ish. It was interesting to note some changes in the placement and numbers of the people handing out their party’s “How to Vote” leaflets! While we lived in Doncaster, we used to send in Postal Votes, as being easier than carting me and my wheelchair around, especially if it was wet and miserable outside, so it’s been quite a while since we actually fronted up to a School or Scout hall – however I do remember voting at the local Primary School when we lived in Glen Waverley. People stood around then handing out their “How to Vote for the “XYZ” Party” pamphlets – but they were all mixed in together – Liberals, Labor, Greens, the little Independents – never in great big clumps of one particular party, as they were today. Everywhere we walked, there’d be a contingent of about six to eight (and sometimes a lot more!) of “a” particular Party – it was like running a gauntlet! They’d be there in a group in front of you, and you’d walk towards them. Like the Red Sea, they’d part down the middle before us, each of them stretching out a hand clutching one of their leaflets, and waving them in our faces. We’d hurry through, with a somewhat stiff smile and a hastily muttered “No, thanks!” Then there’d be a bit of a gap until we got to the next big group, all from the same party – and the original scene would be repeated – the parting, the leaflet waving, the muttered “No, thanks!”, and we’d be through, for another short breather, before the next gauntlet, and the next, and the next… They seemed to be – when I dared to raise my eyes to actually look them in the eye – mainly from the Christian hard right? I think! It was really hard to tell, but I don’t recall seeing any Labor or Liberal groups there, though I’m quite sure they were (Julian might have spotted them, but I didn’t) I think I saw a motley group of Greens, but, you know, they were all wearing completely anonymous jeans and Tee-shirts, with no “House Colours” or badges to show which Party they were representing! And if they were wearing badges, or a coloured ribbon, or something, they can’t have been very eye-catching or remarkable, because I didn’t see them  – at this point, I should probably point out that I marched in, wearing jeans, a dark rust jumper hidden underneath a smart black cape… which had a large, round, white “button” pin, proudly displaying the Australian Sex Party logo! I’m pretty sure that none of the “gauntleteers” missed it – because I got a combination of smirks, annoyed looks, and looks of sheer disbelief, as I shouldered my way through the waving leaflets. But that’s the sort of thing that they should have been wearing! Something that shouted out to the passer-by “Look at me! I’m with the Greens!”, or “Look at me! I’m with the Family First Party!” Perhaps I might have been more interested in their silly leaflets if I’d known what party they were for! Actually, I probably wouldn’t have been – but you never know, I might have!

And so we made our way into the hall – I think it was a Gym Hall, actually – presented ourselves, and were given our papers. I finished mine first and put them in the boxes, and turned around to see Julian sitting with an official, getting a new big white voting thingy! He’d managed to muck his first one up! Oh, and if you’re thinking that I might have put in a “Donkey Vote” because of my disparaging remarks about this election, and elections in general, well, I didn’t! I do believe in voting, even though I’m cynical enough to think that it doesn’t really achieve anything – and I believe it’s every citizen’s duty to vote, because if you don’t vote, the chances of anything ever changing diminishes, with every invalid ballot paper pulled out of the boxes.

Anyway, we voted, came home, had a most welcome cup of coffee… and then Julian gave me the first two of my (shudder!) ear drops 😮 When I’d recovered sufficiently from that harrowing ordeal, we had lunch. The weather was still holding together moderately well, so Julian went out to plant some of our new little vegetables – and guess what! He ran out of garden bed! We’re going to have to go back to the Nursery to get a large planter, in which to put the rest of them! Not tomorrow, of course, because that’s Sunday, and we’ll be busy continuing to set up our Garrisons in Draenor! We’re putting in potatoes, too, and apparently you have to cut the seed potatoes before you plant them, so that they can “heal” themselves (across the cut) before you plant them – I think it’s to stop them getting any diseases from the soil? Summat along those lines, anyway! Anyway, we ordered some interesting looking “Potato Bags“, so we won’t be cutting and planting the potatoes until those arrive, sometime next week, we hope. Julian’s also planted my Fig Tree, so now I just have to go out and talk to it every day, to encourage it to grow quickly, so I can have some yummy fresh figs next year! 🙂

While Julian was outside busily planting things, I stayed inside, getting Phoenìx into the swing of things in Netherstorm! So far, so good – I did die once though – I made the mistake of getting myself caught under a piece of machinery while I was waiting to get the machine’s “heart”, but I was being attacked on all sides, and I couldn’t see where these attackers were, as everything (including me!) was hidden under this great big piece of machinery! So I got myself all better again, and sorted that out, and finally got the “heart” of the machine. I didn’t go up a full level, but I managed just over half a level before it was time to stop playing, and start writing! 🙂 And now I’ve got this far, it’s time to get onto the good bits! 😉

Food stuffs. Last night we had chicken breast with dukkah, on a bed of plain steamed rice with finely chopped spring onion mixed through it. What Julian did was cut the chicken breast in half, and drop it in a plastic zip-lock bag with the dukkah, then tossed it around and massaged it all together a bit – then he simply pan-fried it! It was absolutely delicious! We’re starting to experiment a bit with rubs and marinades, and I’m starting a file of “interesting sounding” spice and herb rubs and mixes – they’re usually dry, so they keep fairly well in little air-tight jars and tins! For dessert I didn’t have one of my Fuji apples, I had a Corella pear, which was exactly at the right “ripeness” (?) to eat, and it was lovely – but not quite as lovely as what I had after it – a small bowl of my favourite Coles-brand, very low-calorie Rice Pudding! Today for lunch we had a ham, cheese and tomato Toastie, again made with the really yummy whole-meal bread with the sesame and poppy seeded crust, and with a bit of butter, as we don’t think that the basil-pesto hummus would work terribly well toasted! Tonight, because it’s election night, and we wanted something quick, easy and mess-less, we’re having one of the Lamb and Harissa Lasagne frozen left-over meals, and for dessert tonight I will have one of the Fuji apples, before my small bowl of the delicious and yummy Coles-brand, very low-calorie Rice Pudding.

Weigh-in this morning. Wasn’t too bad – in fact, not much change at all! I went from 64.4 kg to 64.3 kg, back down one point, to where I was on Thursday! However, I’m still within that narrow “margin of error”, so just as in voting, everything’s still more-or-less the same! It’ll be interesting to see what my weight decides to do tomorrow – on the one hand, I did have a Toastie for lunch, with butter and cheese in it – but on the other hand, I did walk a fair way to the Polling Booth from where we’d parked, and then I stood around for quite a bit… So we’ll see what the scales thought of them little red apples in the morning! 🙂

Which brings me to tomorrow, and our “Day Doing Draenor”, or the “Definitive Dancing Duo Do Draenor” – whatever! I’m looking forward to doing some more work on Xãnthe’s Garrison, as well as handling the Draenor quests – the last time I did this with a Horde character (Arisnoë, before she changed Factions) I was doing it solo, and it really wasn’t much fun! I think I really prefer playing with Julian – it’s much more fun ganging up on nasty monsters! 😉  And once again, that’s about “it” from me for tonight! 🙂 Do drop in again tomorrow night though, to see what my weight did, how Xãnthe and Jemimah fared with their Garrisons, and whether they died while questing or not – and what else all of us, including Flipper, Auric and Dapple, have been up to! Until then though, please bee good, don’t forget that courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that sometimes, something else is more important than fear – and remember to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm and dry during this bleak mid-winter – but most importantly, please remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

04.15 pm

Here I am – pretty much on time, for once! 🙂 It’s been a pretty quiet day for the 1st of the month, though – we went out fairly early this morning to pick up my very favourite eldest daughter so that we could go up and collect our repeat prescriptions. While we were there I had the Doctor peer into my left ear, too, coz it’s still all bunged up, and actually starting to hurt a bit when I chew anything – and I really hate having to try to listen to people, music, or whatever, with everything sounding as though one ear was full of water! I also hate having anything put in my ear, almost to the point of paranoia – anything, from a drop of shower water (scream! shudder! gag!) to one of those Star Trek-looking blue-tooth thingies – the mere thought of something being plonked into my ear makes my stomach churn – so by the time I’d sat there making small-talk with the Doctor, and psyched myself up to ask her to have a look at my ear, I was absolutely terrified! 😦 This extreme phobia of mine is the main reason I can’t swim properly – I can only dog-paddle, with my head sticking out of the water… (I’m the same way about spiders, too – no matter how small or harmless they are!)

Anyway, the nice Doctor gave my ear a look, and said it was quite clear (i.e. there was no wax blocking it up) and that the ear-drum looked fine, though the ear canal looked a bit red and inflamed, which was probably all part and parcel of the dreaded lurgi I’d had, but which is still affecting my sinuses a bit – and apparently my ear too – so guess what! 😥 I’m to have ear drops! Two of them, twice a day – for five days! 😥 I’ve been telling my ear “Get better quickly! Get better quickly!” – but it’s all bunged up and I don’t think it can hear me properly! 😦 I’m sure I’ll survive it (the ear drops, not the sore ear!) but I’m not going to be a very happy little Vegemite for the next five days, so roll on, next Thursday!

I also asked the Doctor whether or not I could take Sudafed, now that I’m off my blood pressure medication – although I’m still on a half-dosage of the beta blocker. I’d been under the impression that the pseudoephedrine (try saying that six times quickly after you’ve had a few drinks!) in the Sudafed had a bad reaction to some of the blood pressure medications, and that was why you weren’t supposed to mix the two, but the Doctor enlightened me on that score 🙂 Pseudoephedrine raises blood pressure, so it makes no sense to take anything with pseudoephedrine in it if you’re taking medication to lower your blood pressure – they just cancel eachother out, and depending on your particular reason for being on one or t’other, fatalities have been known to occur – in other words, it’s just best not to tempt fate! Taking Sudafed for a couple of days to try to dry my sinuses out a bit would be fine – and would have been fine while I was on the blood pressure medication too, as it’s not a very high dose, and I wouldn’t have been taking it for long – but apparently Telfast would be just as good, why, she didn’t say – perhaps it doesn’t contain pseudoephedrine or something? (but I might be wrong! It’s more expensive though – I think!) Well, I just went and checked – apparently Telfast does contain pseudoephedrine – and the Doctor didn’t actually say that it didn’t. Basically, when in doubt, ask your own doctor, not me – I’m not a doctor!

Where was I? I got totally sidetracked, going and looking up all that stuff! Oh yes… I have to have ear drops! I wish I hadn’t remembered that, now!

After being to the Doctor’s, we dropped my very favourite eldest daughter off at her place, came home, and had some lunch – then Julian took off again to go and pick up a few things from the supermarket, and to pick up the Dry Cleaning.

Well, today might have been fairly quiet, but last night certainly wasn’t! As you all know, Flipper absolutely loves Julian – I’m not even a poor second-best, when it comes to Flipper’s preferences in human slaves, and if she calls for Julian, Julian had better drop what he’s doing and go and tend to her needs, otherwise we both cop the full force of her very loud, insistent, caterwauling (the neighbours on both sides probably cop it too!) So, last night she was caterwauling away, demanding her dinner, nearly two hours before it was her dinner time. Eventually, for the sake of household (and neighbourhood!) harmony, Julian did give in, and got her dinner for her… unfortunately though, she was in one of her all too frequent “Vera Vague” phases, and had to be carried into the Library and shut in with her dinner, because she’d forgotten that she’d been demanding it. Needless to say, she didn’t eat it – she’d completely forgotten that it was there, and she just did her usual evening mooching around – that is, she went to sleep on our bed. Time passed… she snored on, and – didn’t eat her dinner. Our bed time came, and she still hadn’t eaten. She curled up, as usual, around Julian’s right arm, and went to sleep. We went to sleep, even though I was freezing cold because I was missing half my share of the doona which was all rucked up underneath Flipper! At about two thirty we were rudely awakened by Flipper, throwing up on Julian’s face, pillow, sheets, and doona! Julian was not best pleased, and made his somewhat irate mood amply known to both Flipper and myself, as he set about cleaning things up as best he could – at two thirty in the morning, and with a wife who wasn’t inclined to get out of bed because she was cold! Flipper fled, probably still feeling queasy, and in abject terror of Julian’s quite warranted wrath! After things had calmed down again, we went back to sleep. I still didn’t have all my doona – I could have pulled a bit more over my way, but I didn’t want to disturb Julian anymore than I had to, and also because I didn’t know which bits of the doona cover were clean enough to drape over my person – so neither of us really got a good night’s sleep, and we were feeling just a wee bit testy this morning when we got up. Meanwhile, Flipper had finally eaten her dinner…

This afternoon I got back into WoW, and Phoenìx has turned level 67, and finally has her “breadcrumb” quests to bother Shadowmoon Valley and Area 52 in Netherstorm. I think I’ll go to Netherstorm… Probably after we’ve gone out and voted tomorrow – honestly, I am soooo tempted to scrawl “I Hate ALL Of You Liars” in very large letters, over the enormous white paper! I won’t, of course, but I’m very tempted…

And now on to the good bits! 😉

Food stuff: Last night Julian made another Lamb and Harissa Lasagne with Oregano and Feta, and as usual, it was absolutely delicious! Plus there’s four more “dinners” from the leftovers in the freezer! 🙂 For dessert I had, for the first time ever, a Nashi Pear, which was rather nice – sweet, but with a certain amount of tartness to it, fairly juicy, firm, crisp, and crunchy! I also had (I bet you all guessed already! 😉 ) a small bowl of my very favourite Coles-brand, very low-calorie, delicious Rice Pudding. For lunch today I had a really nice sandwich, made from the tasty whole-meal bread, with the poppy-seed and sesame-seed crust, basil-pesto hummus as a butter substitute, and “tandoori” chicken sandwich chunks. I really wish those sandwiches were just a teeny bit bigger Tonight we’re having plain old-fashioned pan-fried chicken breasts, with chips, steamed green beans, and half a tomato. For dessert, tonight I’ll have one of the new Fuji apples, and another small bowl of my very yummy Coles-brand, very low-calorie Rice Pudding.

Weigh-in this morning. Was alright, I suppose… I went from 64.3 kg yesterday, to 64.4 kg today – up one point, but still well within the so-called “margin of error”. I’ll probably be up a bit more again tomorrow, but I should start going down again after that – I hope!

Which once again brings me to tomorrow… and, of course, voting. Personally, I’d like to get there as the polls open, and get it over and done with as soon as possible, so that we can get back here and barricade ourselves into a nice, warm, dry house where there’s lots of coffee! 😉 But, as usual, we’ll see… Apart from the voting chore, I’m not really sure what’s happening – I guess I’ll be doing a bit more WoW-ing, and if the weather clears up any (who am I kidding! This is Melbourne!) we might be able to get the baby vegetables planted! However, all that is in the lap of the ghods! 🙂 Auric and Dapple are well, and seem to really be enjoying the new air-stone that sends up a small area of small, medium, and large bubbles – Dapple especially seems to like swimming into it, biting the bigger bubbles, and then squiggling out again (and “squiggling” is about the best word I can think of to describe his wriggle action to get out of the bubbles!) Their new diet of spirulina pellets seems to be agreeing with them both, and (touch wood!) Dapple seems to have got over his desire to sit in a corner, moping down on the floor of the tank. And that’s really about “it” from me for this evening! Don’t forget to drop in again tomorrow night to find out how much more my weight went up, what time we actually got out to vote, if Flipper was sick again in the wee small hours of the morning (and if so, who copped the brunt of it this time!) and what else we managed to get up to during the day. Until then though, please try to bee good, don’t forget that hope is the dream of a man awake, and remember to keep warm and dry when you go out to vote tomorrow, to always drive carefully, and to look after yourselves… but, above all… please remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

04.31 pm

Look! Look! (Winter points excitedly up at the menu bar) I’ve done it! I’ve done it! See the nice, neat (in my latest new font, to match the Header!) “Home” button-thingy? That’s actually where a “logo” should go – and I did try it with a winter kanji graphic, and it looked sort-of OK, but then I thought “No, that’s silly! I already have one of those on the Header, and besides, unless I keep telling people, every time I post a new “episode”, that it’s the way back here from all the other Pages, no-one will know to use it! So in the end I thought “why not just try making a graphic of the word “Home” instead, and using that as a logo!?” So I did, and it worked! (it worked! it worked!) Remember how I said last night that most other Templates had either a proper “Home” button, or that clicking inside the Header would get you back to the “start” Page, but this one didn’t have either of those two functions? Yeah! Well, I nearly drove myself nuts, yesterday afternoon, trying to find a way to make it all work – but no matter what I did, or what I tried, it just wouldn’t work! Now, some of you out there in Reader Land who know me, know that I can be extremely stubborn on very rare occasions, 🙂 in fact, some people have even remarked that I could probably even out-stubborn a cat, and that ain’t easy, I can assure you! 😉 So stubborn old me was fretting and fussing and worrying at this conundrum, and I was thinking, this morning while I was doing my extra painful walk on the treadmill (more on that later!) that… maybe it wasn’t the Header itself that people clicked on, but rather the Header function! You see, without exception, all of the Templates come with a sort of “self-header”, because not everyone can, or wants, to make themselves a Custom Header – so the Template itself will insert the name of your blog, plus, in some cases, a tag line for the header, using the same font as the Title. A lot of the more generous Templates also include space for a logo, too, however I never use the self-headers or the logos, as I prefer to make my own Custom Headers, and I feel that the logos are only of benefit if you’re running some sort of business. So I tried it out, and actually entered a small amount of text in the self-header field. Usually, if I leave text in that field, it over-writes my Custom Header and makes it look awful (which is why I usually leave the self-header field blank!) and just for fun, I put in a logo too, just to see where the Template would put it, and what it would look like… and the result really surprised me! Instead of over-writing the Custom Header by inserting the text and logo in the middle of the Custom Header, as most Templates do, this Template inserted them into the Menu field! Now, I dare say that if I had a lot of Pages in the Menu area, it might well have looked rather untidy and messy, but I don’t, and it all sat over on the left hand side of the Menu area, and… didn’t look too bad at all! So I experimented with it – yes, no matter which Menu item I clicked on, the prototype self-header text brought me back here! I’d solved the problem! Er, yeah… but how was I going to make it clear to people that it was what they should use to get back to this main page? I tried having the “self-header” saying “Click this to get back”, but the text was the same size as the Title, and it looked stupid. Then, by experimenting a bit more, I found that clicking on the logo worked too! So once again, I deleted all the “self-header” text, and just left the logo. It still worked! However, I thought it looked a little… clumsy, having two winter kanji characters within an inch or so of eachother, one tiny one for the logo, and one larger one in the Custom Header. So what could I use… (insert “think-music” here!) Oh! You don’t have to use a symbol for a logo, do you! Some companies don’t have a symbol for their logo, they have a word! I could use a word too! I could use the words… “click here”! Nah… that simply didn’t look right… so… how about… how about the word “Home“! I made my graphic, and crossed my fingers! I knew that the Template would adjust the size of the graphic to fit in its allocated space (which, of course, you’re not told!) and I was a bit worried that it might make it too small to be properly legible – but I don’t think it’s too small – do you? Let me know if you think it’s too small to read, otherwise, my main problem with this Template has been solved, and my last remaining doubts about it have been laid to rest! 🙂

I did manage to get some WoW-ing in this morning – not as much as I would have liked, but I was still mulling over the Template problem at the time and I couldn’t quite settle to questing… but I think I’m almost finished in Nagrand – I’m not sure where I go off to after that, but I guess I’ll find out – probably sooner rather than later! Wynterthyme hasn’t been able to find that Rare Spirit Tiger, although she’s not really trying all that hard! I take her around his (or her!) spawning circuit several times a day, but haven’t had any luck yet – still, maybe this evening… I’ll let you all know if and when I do find her (or him!) 😉

I mentioned earlier about an extra painful walk on the treadmill this morning – and this time I can tell you, for a certain-sure fact, that it is possible to limp, quite heavily, on a treadmill set at a slope of 10°, and walking at 4 kilometers an hour! I have stupid feet. They never sweat, not even in high summer, they get hot, which they hate with a passion, but they love being cold. They get blisters if you look at them, and blood-blisters if you glare at them – well, they don’t really, but they are extremely sensitive, and because I’m on Warfarin they tend to bruise very easily – if I so much as stub my toe on a piece of furniture (which I do often, because they’re quite deformed from eleven years of classical ballet, and the chronic osteoarthritis from which I now suffer) I get large blood blisters. There’s no way you could get these feet of mine into sneakers of any kind, so when I walk on the treadmill, I use two pairs of very thick hiking or walking socks to protect my feet. Mostly those two pairs of socks keep my feet reasonably safe on the treadmill belt, but I go through periods where I’ll “blister-up”, no matter what I’m doing, or where I’m doing it. Usually my right foot is better than my left foot, but this time – ironically right after the visit from the Podiatrist, I started out with three enormous blood blisters on my left foot (one I got from accidentally banging my foot against a chair leg, so I don’t count that one – the other two are treadmill related though) when my right foot decided it wanted some sympathy too, and yesterday, although I knew a blister was starting, I didn’t bandage up as I usually do. Very stupidly, I didn’t bandage up this morning, either – so by the time I got about quarter of the way through my walk this morning, I could hardly bear to put my right foot down – but you know me, stubborn to a fault, and I kept going. It was – and still is – extremely painful. I will be bandaging up tomorrow! (talk about shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted! )

Julian has removed one of the two filters in the Fish House – now that we’ve got the new air-stone it’s not strictly needed any more, and besides, Dapple liked to go and hide behind it, and several times he almost got stuck between it and the side of the tank. The other night I think he actually hurt himself a bit getting out – that was when he seemed to be spending so much time just sitting listlessly in a corner on the floor of the tank, poor little boy (I’m sure he’s a boy!) He seems to have recovered now (I just know I’m going to regret saying that! ) and all the Ammonia is finally out of the water. The Ph level could be better though, so that’s the next thing to be worked on – and once we get the water right, we can think of getting a new friend for them to play with! I’m so glad we brought them inside and decided to keep them as “indoor fishes” instead of putting them back outside once we’d cleaned out their mud-puddle – it’s so cold out there, I’m sure they’d be most miserable! In fact, apart from yesterday, the weather’s still horrid – we didn’t even get to plant our new vegetables today, as hail was predicted, and we didn’t want to subject the little seedlings to that sort of treatment, the same day they got planted! Anyway, we did give them a good watering this morning, but they’re still sitting, nicely protected from the worst of the weather, on the back deck. If the weather’s not too bad tomorrow, and no more hail is predicted, we may be able to get them into the veggie beds…

And now it’s time to get onto the good bits! 😉

Food stuff. Last night we had a delicious piece of fillet steak for dinner, with mashed potatoes, steamed green beans, and half a Roma tomato. All scrumptious! For dessert I had one of my Fuji apples, which was very sweet and juicy, and a lot nicer than I thought it’d be, plus a small bowl of my very favourite Coles-brand, very low-calorie Rice Pudding. For lunch today – well, we’ve been running late all day today, because we inadvertently slept in quite a lot – so when Julian went up to do the shopping around lunchtime, he brought back some savoury rolls and some of those wonderful fruit and white chocolate scones from Baker’s Delight, which we greedily gobbled for lunch 😳 Tonight for dinner (which will be late!) Julian’s making that delicious Lamb and Harissa Lasagne with Oregano and Feta again (drool!) And for dessert, tonight I’ll have a Nashi pear (which really looks more like an apple!) to see what they’re like, as well as my usual small bowl of really yummy Coles-brand, very low-calorie Rice Pudding.

Weigh-in this morning. Ya gotta laugh! Talk about swings and roundabouts! I went from the exciting and optimistic 63.8 kg yesterday … back to the day before yesterday’s 64.3 kg! Half a kilo off overnight… and half a kilo back on again, over night! Ya just never know, with my weight, do you! I didn’t eat anything “naughty” yesterday, like I did today – in fact I did a lot more exercise yesterday than I normally do, with my usual 30 minute’s walk in the morning, plus all the walking and standing around at the Nursery! Today, because of my blistered right foot, I only walked for 24 minutes, instead of my usual 30 – and I had the rolls and the fruit and white chocolate scone for lunch – do any of you reckon I’ll go up another half kilo overnight? Let’s just say – I wouldn’t be at all surprised if I did!

Which brings me now to… tomorrow! I’ll be seeing my very favourite eldest daughter very briefly tomorrow morning, as we both have to go up to the Doctor to get more repeat prescriptions, after which we’ll drop her off at her place on our way home. If the weather looks promising enough, we’ll be able to get those vegetables planted – if not, I’ll make use of the time to try to get Phoenìx up another level or two – and that’s about all I can think of to tell you this evening! So once more, that’s about “it” from me for this evening, but do call in again tomorrow night to find out how much my weight did go up, whether we got the veggies planted, and what else we got up to during the day… But until then, please try to bee good, remember that if you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading, and don’t forget to always drive carefully, to keep warm and dry no matter how bad the weather gets, and to look after yourselves… but above all, please, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

05.26 pm

Well, I’m quite a bit later than I wanted to be, but that’s because (a) we went vegetable seedling shopping, and (b) because I really should have been born blonde! I’m desperately trying to work out how to get this first “posting” page set up to be accessed as “Home” on the Menu, but everything I try falls flat on its nose! With some Templates, all you have to do is click on the ruddy Header, and it’ll bring you back to this page – but other Templates, like this one, don’t! With this Template, there’s nothing at all to click on in the Header area – meaning that the only way to get back to this particular page is to bang on your Browser’s back button in annoyance – several times sometimes, if you’ve surfed through all the other Pages listed in the Menu! What I want to do is have the blog set up like this: Access the blog, and you come directly to this page. √ Click on “Cats”, and go to the “Cat” page √ yup, that works – there’s not that much there at the moment, is there, and you’ve probably read it already? Right, click on “Recipes…”, to go to the “Recipe…” page. √ yup, that works fine too – so we can see that we can get from this page, to any other page, and from any other page, to any other page… except this one! Well, as I said before, with some, and in fact with most Templates, you can just click anywhere within the Header area at the top of the page, and it’ll bring you back to this main blog page… except with this one! Honestly, I’ve wasted hours trying to work out how to do it – which is why I said that I really should have been born blonde (Winter whispers a heartfelt and guilty “Sorry!” to all the super-intelligent and clever blondes who might happen to be reading this!) So – I dunno – should I just give up, and just let everyone muddle their own way back to this page? Start looking for a decent Template (again!) that has a clickable Header? Post a “sticky” message at the top of every page to let people know that if they want to get back to the main blog or posting page, they have to use the “back” button on their Browsers to do so? I am most put out! 😡

All that aside, this morning I played WoW, as usual, and I’ve managed to get Phoenìx up to level 65! I’m currently questing in Nagrand, which is supposed to be for levels 64 to 67, but I’m hoping to get moved along soon as it’s all just too stupidly easy! I’ll see what happens tomorrow though – maybe I’ll get my marching orders once I’ve handed all my completed quests in… Julian was working up in the Office this morning, sending a query off to our Accountant/Tax worker-outer-person – not for us, for his brother who’s over in Israel – only to find that our clever little Accountant/Tax worker-outer-person is away on leave! “Bother, said Pooh, when he found that his Accountant had gone off on a holiday!”, and then our lawn-mowing man called to see if we wanted him to do anything today, which for once we did – because you should have seen all the leaves and twigs all over the front and back garden this morning! The place looked as though a Tornado had hit it, honestly! So he came around and cleaned the place up a bit while we had lunch, and after he’d been, and we’d finished lunch, we took off for the Pinewood Nursery, which is right near the Monash Freeway on-ramp, on Blackburn Road in Glen Waverley. Over the years we’ve been to lots of Nurseries, and this is one of the best that we’ve been to – it’s well laid out, is very well stocked, it’s easy to get around, and every “section” is well labelled, so it’s easy to find what you want. The staff there are very friendly and helpful, too 🙂 Well, it was absolutely freezing cold, and I wished I’d brought a scarf and borrowed Julian’s morning-walk gloves! Plus it was quite windy, so I guess that the wind-chill factor played a part in me nearly freezing to death, and by that time of the afternoon, the weather was starting to look quite threatening – as though it was trying really, really hard to squeeze a few drops of rain out onto us, but luckily for me, it didn’t succeed! We did buy a lot of plants though, as well as cane for trellises, a few more large but shallow pots (with little “feet” to stand them on) for herbs, which we’ve decided to start from scratch again – I think we “overcrowded” them last time, and nothing really flourished, if you know what I mean! Here’s a list of the seedlings that we got: Garlic, Carrots, Pak Choy, Red Spanish Onions, Potatoes (Dutch Cream) Rhubarb Crowns, Peas, Broccoli, Cauliflower, and Broad Beans – and the Herb seedlings: Olive herb, Basil, Italian (flat leaf) Parsley, Oregano, Sage, and Thyme. I also got my Fig Tree! (Winter jumps up and down with joy and excitement) I asked one of the nice Nurserymen there if the roots would be a problem so close to the house (that was Julian’s main reason for not wanting to get a Fig Tree! He thought that the roots might wreck our plumbing!) Anyway, we were told that a “fruiting” fig tree wouldn’t be a problem (as opposed to an ornamental Moreton Bay Fig Tree, which would!) and I told him the sort of fig I liked – dark red and “jammy” on the inside, so he recommended a type of Fig Tree called a “Brown Turkey” (for goodness sake, why Turkey?! It hasn’t got any feathers! Mind you, it doesn’t have any leaves, either – maybe it’ll grow feathers (or leaves) in the spring…? 😉 ) So that’s what we got – a fairly tall “stick” with minute proto-buds up and down it, which we’ll plant close to the corner of the flower bed and the shed, as soon as possible. I’m sure we got a lot more this afternoon, but that’s about all that Julian and I could remember!

And now it’s on to the “good” bits! 😉

Food stuff. Last night we had pan-fried lamb backstrap, with chips, steamed green beans, and our usual half a tomato – a simple but delicious and hearty meal – and for dessert I had my last Pink Lady apple, and a small bowl of really yummy Coles-brand, very low-calorie delicious Rice Pudding. Today for lunch we had wraps, with our favourite butter substitute, basil-pesto hummus, Feta cheese, one of our small dark green capsicum, chopped into batons, strips of preserved roasted red capsicum, sandwich sliced roast beef, and tomato. Terribly messy to eat, but utterly scrumptious! Julian said he actually rinsed off the preserved roasted red capsicum first, because he’d tasted it and found it to be a little too vinegar-y, however, I thought that it gave the wrap just gave the right amount of “tangieness” – probably because it’d been rinsed! 🙂 Tonight we’re having steak again (yumm! I love steak!) with half a Roma Tomato, steamed green beans, and mashed potatoes. Tonight for dessert I’ll have one of the new Fuji Apples that we got the other day, and a small bowl of my favourite Coles-brand, very low-calorie delicious Rice Pudding. 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. Was both very good, and very surprising! I went from 64.3 kg to 63.8 kg! Half a kilo! Overnight! See? Miracles really do happen, after all! 😉 But don’t worry too much – it’ll be back up again tomorrow morning, I bet’cha! 🙂

And that brings us around to tomorrow again – if the weather is co-operative, Julian will be putting seedlings in the ground, pointy end up – if the weather proves to be recalcitrant, he says he’ll be giving them a watering “where they are”, which is sitting quietly and patiently on the back deck. I hope they weather will be good though, because the nice Nurseryman said that I should be able to get my first crop of figs by next year, so I figure the sooner the little fig tree gets planted, the sooner I’ll get my figs! 😉 As for moi tomorrow, I’ll probably be taking Phoenìx out again for another run at getting her as close as possible to level 90 before the end of August, although I’m also attempting to get Wynterthyme another Spirit Beast Pet, wot I just heard about the other day. It’s name is Gondria, and it’s a semi-transparent, or translucent, lavender-purple Spirit Tiger, which does look terribly fetching in battle. It comes from a place called Zul’Drak, which is near Grizzly Hills in Northrend, and it’s a Rare, so it’s very hard to come by. I have the five places that it can spawn all mapped out, and I fly Wynterthyme around the circuit about two or three times a day in the hopes of finding it – but so far, no luck! I’ll try to post a screenie of him/her/it, if I ever manage to find and Tame it! 🙂 And once again, that’s about “it” from me for this evening! Do call in again tomorrow night to find out which way my weight bounced, whether or not we got any of our new plants planted – with photos, if applicable – and what else we got up to during the day… but until then, don’t forget to bee as good as you can, remember that no matter what the situation, remind yourself “I have a choice”, and don’t forget to keep warm and dry, especially on cold and rainy days, to always drive carefully, and to look after yourselves… but most importantly, please, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

05.11 pm

Here I am – a bit late, and really, being very rude, because my very favourite eldest daughter is still here, and I’m sitting here typing away! Julian will be taking her home soon, so I’ve taken the liberty of hopping on and writing. I’m sorry that you didn’t get a proper blog episode last night, but by the time we’d had dinner, and watched an hour of television, all I had time to do was set up those two and a bit recipes that I’ve been promising for so long. Did you like them? 🙂 Next time I’ll put up an excellent recipe for a very old – maybe even antique – recipe for Australian Shortbread, made with – would you believe – Corn Flakes! They’re very yummy, terribly easy to make (it was one of the only recipes my mother trusted me to be able to make on my own without slicing and dicing myself with a sharp knife, or spilling boiling water all over myself, or something!) and they’ll keep for up to two weeks in an air-tight container – if they last that long, which they probably won’t!

Well, yesterday was a bit exciting! I told you that Julian had to go to the Dentist yesterday afternoon, but I didn’t tell you – because I didn’t know myself until I was brushing my teeth before bed on Sunday night – that I was going to have to go to the Dentist, too! As you all know, I have full dental implants, top and bottom – basically, they’re made from resin and porcelain, and are screwed onto a titanium bridge, supported by titanium posts embedded in my jaws. I’ve had them for around about ten years, and in all that time I’ve never had any problems, except once, when I broke a back molar! Anyway, I have them seen to once a year when they’re unscrewed, de-scaled (just like normal teeth) and cleaned properly – and then screwed back in. Unfortunately, on Sunday night I discovered that one of my screws had come loose (I had a screw loose! 😉 ) so on Monday morning I rang up my Dentist (Prosthodontist, actually) and was able to get someone there to screw the wretched thing back in again. I wasn’t able to see my usual Dentist, Dr. N. except to say a quick “Hello” and “How are you” as he dashed through the foyer to a different part of the Clinic, but I had a rather luscious Middle Eastern or Indian Dentist by the name of “Kareem”, who not only tightened the miscreant screw, but also made sure that none of the other ones were getting loose as well! It took all of about four minutes! 🙂 Then we came home and had lunch, and Julian headed off to his Dentist. After the mandatory nerve-jangling twenty-minute wait in the waiting room, the Dentist gave his tooth a fairly lengthy examination, and the conclusion was reached that it hadn’t been the tooth that had been acting up, but sinus problems due to his protracted bout of dreaded lurgi. The x-rays showed that the tip of the root (of the tooth that had had the root canal filling) came very, very close to a part of the sinus cavity, and he was able to come home again without the indignity of having to have Novocaine for a filling or an extraction! Well, he did have the dreaded lurgi for a lot longer than I did, and he was much sicker, though he tried to pretend that he wasn’t – but I’ve still got a blocked up left ear! I told him I’d swap with him – I’d have the sore tooth, if he took my blocked up ear – but he declined my ultra-kind offer! (funny, that! 😉 )

So apart from the two dental visits, yesterday passed fairly quietly. Josh arrived, and we chatted while he did my hair, I put up one of the recipes, and almost got the other one done before dinner time – and the rest, as they say in the classics, was history!

Today as I mentioned earlier, my very favourite eldest daughter came over. I’d had a call from the Receptionist at the Podiatry Clinic asking me if it was alright if the Podiatrist came at 12.30 pm rather than 02.30 pm – and of course I didn’t let on that I’d had no idea that she was coming today, but said, rather meekly, that sure, 12.30 pm was fine! (that’ll teach me to write these things down properly in my Calendar, rather than just jot them down in my sort-of shorthand “squiggle” in my desktop notebook! ) Besides, I thought it’d be better if she came early, before we’d really had a chance to get stuck into watching our TV shows – and so it was! However, we were also expecting Mr. Nice Man to come and service my treadmill, and Julian was expecting a package. Julian, though, had gone off to do some shopping before lunch – and all three of those events – the package, the treadmill service, and the Podiatrist, all arrived within minutes of eachother! My very favourite eldest daughter and I were running around like chooks with their heads cut off! I rather felt that there should have been some of that “rushing madly around” music that they used to play in the old Silent Movie cinemas during “chase” scenes, playing in the background! It all got sorted out in the end though, and Julian got home, and all’s well that end’s well!

We watched about two or three episodes of “Wynonna Earp”, then we had lunch, and while Julian fiddled around installing the air stone, and the new and quieter pump for the Fish House – which had been the contents of the package that had been delivered right in the middle of everything else – we watched some more “Wynonna Earp”, and then the three of us watched two episodes of “Person of Interest” (which were so sad! Elias died – for real, this time, and Root, one of the main characters, died too – but our “Good” machine took her voice for its own, which was nice! *sniffle* 😥 )

Julian then got back to whatever it was that he’d been doing, and we watched an episode of “Flash” – then it was almost time for Lee to go home, and I came in here and started writing! Such was my day today! 🙂 Little Dapple is still skulking around on the bottom of the tank – or at least he does, until he gets distracted by the new Bubble Making Machine that’s now operating in the Fish House, whereupon the swims around like crazy, playing with the bubbles, until he gets a bit tired, when he goes and sits on the bottom again. This morning, Julian peeled them a pea, which he gave to the two fish – unfortunately I wasn’t present at the time, and Julian almost immediately went off to pick up my very favourite eldest daughter, so I think that Auric got the lion’s share of the pea (well, he is the bigger of the two, and a lot more “pushy”!) but amongst the shopping, Julian brought home some new type of Fish Food, which we’ll try them on tonight, or we might give them another peeled pea – I’m not sure, yet… and we’ll see how Dapple seems tomorrow…

And now on to the good bits! 🙂

Food stuff: Last night we had the Heston Blumenthal sausages, with chips, Brussels sprouts, and our usual half a tomato. For dessert, I had one of my Corella pears – actually I had two, but Julian threw the first one out because it was very over-ripe, and I also had my small bowl of the terrific Coles-brand, very low-calorie delicious Rice Pudding. Today for lunch I had a sandwich made with the very tasty whole-meal bread with sesame seed crusts, basil-pesto hummus instead of butter, and some very nice tandoori sandwich chicken chunks – very delicious! Tonight we’re having a fairly plain and unadorned dinner of pan-fried lamb backstraps, with steamed green beans, chips, and half a tomato, and for dessert, I’ll be having a Fuji Apple, followed by a small bowl of delicious Coles-brand, very low-calorie Rice Pudding.

Weigh-in yesterday. Was fairly good, for a change! I went from 64.6kg to 64.4kg – down two points! I was quite pleased with that!

Weigh-in today. Was even a bit better! I went from 64.4kg to 64.3kg – only down one point, but definitely better than going up! I have, however, noticed a rather disturbing trend in my weight! If I go out and have lunch, or eat way too much, or whatever, I go up. This is both anticipated and expected beforehand, of course – and then, in the normal progression of such things, I start going down again – also anticipated and expected. But! Every time I go up, I seem to creep just a little higher than I did the time before, and every time I go down again, I never seem to go down quite as far as I did before – in other words, there seems to be a definite “upwards” trend, which if I’m not careful, could see me slowly but surely heading back to where I was before. This is not good, and will not be allowed to happen! I’m thinking of going back on the Optifast for a month, to get things into reverse gear, so to speak – but we’ll see… I’ll give it until the end of July, and try to eat less in the meantime!

And that brings me full circle to tomorrow, where if the weather cooperates, we’ll be going Nursery-hopping, looking for our winter crop to plant (and asking meaningful questions about fig trees!) I might have to borrow Julian’s gloves, if it’s too cold! 🙂 Oh, and I did ask Mr. Nice Man about the angle of the treadmill – the “10” is apparently “10 degrees” – which really means nothing to me, as I have no idea how big 10° actually is! Oh, I can see how much it is on the treadmill, it’s about this “|” high off the ground! It looks a lot to me, but I don’t know if it’s a lot of a “hill”, or only a little “mole-hill”, if you understand what I mean! Anyway, that’s about it from me for this evening – please drop in again tomorrow night to see what my weight does (it’ll probably go up, I suppose!) how young Dapple is, and if we came home with any vegetable seedlings (or a fig tree!) But until then, keep on doing your best to bee good, remember that when people say you can’t do it ― that it’s impossible ― never lose hope! just because they couldn’t doesn’t mean you can’t, and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm and dry on these cold, wet, miserable days, but above all… please, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

09.37 pm

Hi y’all! In view of the lateness of the hour, there won’t be a regular episode this evening (Awwww…) however there are three new recipes, as promised, on the “Recipes…” page for all of you – “Crock Pot Hawaiian Chicken”, “Chicken, Leek and Cheddar Bake”, and the recipe (if you can call it that!) for the Feta Marinade for the chicken dish we had the other night! 🙂

Please try hard to bee good, remember that a limit on what you will do, puts a limit on what you can do, and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to stay warm and dry, even in this terrible Melbourne weather, and to always drive carefully… but most importantly, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

Enjoy!

05.05 pm

Here I am, fresh from Xãnthe’s new Garrison! 🙂 Yes, we made it to level 90, right on schedule, and then, with rather an unseemly haste, we proceeded to ditch all the brand-new Pandarian quests we’d just accepted, and high-tailed it back to Orgrimmar, to take the rather handy-dandy Portal there through to the Blasted Lands, and our passage to Draenor! Yayyy! Once you actually pass through the Dark Portal, the quests that take you from the Blasted Lands all the way through to Draenor are the same for both the Alliance and the Horde, but once there, things suddenly become very, very different! Having done quite a few “passages to Draenor”, with both Alliance and Horde characters, I think I can safely tell you that the Horde experiences and quests are a lot harder and more fraught than their equivalent Alliance experiences and quests – no doubt about it! Anyway, there we were, just setting up our brand new Garrisons, when we got sent out on dozens of quests – well, it felt like dozens of quests, anyway – while our Little Fortress in the Wilds was being set up and organised for us. Being able to fly from the get-go this time was a true blessing! When Arisnoë first arrived in Draenor, flying wasn’t available to any of my characters – Wynterthyme still had all the fancy Reputation Requirements to get, and all the convoluted quest hoops to jump through, before flying around became more than just a glint in our collective eyes! But this time? If we needed to hack and slash our way through bands of bloodthirsty savages to get to the top of a mountain, in order to pick up a book of poetry for some quest giver? No problemo! We could just fly over all the bloodthirsty savages, and almost land right on top of the book of poetry! Easy-peasy! 🙂 (Note: there was no book of poetry to fetch down from a mountain top, I simply used that totally fictitious scenario as an example of how much easier questing is when you can fly!) We both leveled up a bit more – we’re now level 91, and nearly 3/4 of the way through to level 92, and I’m really looking forward to next week’s little bash! 🙂 Julian died once, in the middle of a very tough (a recommended three-man quest!) Boss fight that we’d picked up from a “Wanted” Poster, but immediately self-rezed and continued fighting, and eventually we did get that particular Boss down… And I also died once! Not my fault though (well, maybe it was – I didn’t have to let Jemimah fly me back to the Garrison!) We were flying back to our respective Garrisons on Julian’s passenger-carrying dragon, and I’d said to him (Jemimah) “Fly low, because I’ll probably get jettisoned as soon as we cross into Garrison air space!”, and sure enough, I was! All would have been well, but the point at which I got jettisoned was on the edge of a very, very, high cliff! Julian thought he was low enough, and had enough space between us and the edge of the cliff – however flying tandem like that, I’m further back on the dragon’s neck, and when I was jettisoned, I fell, just barely missing the edge of the cliff, and of course I just continued plummeting, down… down… down… all the way to the bottom of the cliff, whereupon… I fell over, and died! But that’s alright – I got better! 😉

We slept in this morning – the only day of the week where we give ourselves an extra half hour of nice warm doona – and when we got up, the sun was shining, and it looked as though it was going to be a beautiful day – so there was a bit of discussion as to whether we’d sacrifice our WoW Day, and go Nursery-hopping to get things to plant in our veggie beds, and so forth – but WoW won the day, and if the weather isn’t too terrible, we’ll go and do our plant shopping on Wednesday morning – so please cross your fingers for us, and if all goes well on Wednesday, we shall be forever grateful to you all! 😉

Julian has to go to the Dentist again tomorrow… He had a root canal filling done about a year and half ago, and that tooth has never really settled down again since – though he says (trying to sound as hopeful as possible!) that “perhaps it’s the tooth next to the one that had the root canal!” Well, we’ll see, but in the meantime, he has to go to the Dentist again tomorrow afternoon, and see what’s up with that part of his mouth! On Tuesday, my very favourite eldest daughter will be over, and the Nice Man who owns my Treadmill is coming over to give it a quick service, as it’s been here for a bit more than ten months! (I can hardly believe it! Me! Lazy old Winter! Has walked 2 kilometers a day, at 4 kilometers an hour, on a treadmill, for a bit over ten months! Whoever would have thunk it! I certainly wouldn’t!!) Actually, to be perfectly truthful, when I first got the treadmill, I was walking on a flat treadmill for twelve minutes a day, at about 2 kilometers an hour – and as I started getting a bit fitter, I started increasing the slope of the treadmill (it’s an adjustable one) the speed at which I walked, and the length of time that I walked. The treadmill is now as steep as it will go (on setting “10” – but please don’t ask me what the angle is, coz I don’t know! Actually, I’ll ask Mr. Nice Man when he comes on Tuesday, and tell you all on Wednesday, how does that sound? 😉 ) The treadmill is set at its steepest angle, and I’ve been walking at 4 kilometers an hour for months, now… Mondays to Fridays, I do 2 kilometers. On Saturdays and Sundays I do slightly less – I do 1.55 kilometers, just as a bit of a break. Flipper, Auric and Dapple all seem to be well, and apart from a ruddy blocked up left ear as a legacy of my brand of the dreaded lurgi, Julian and I have largely recovered from our rather miserable head colds. I wonder if I can take Sudafed now that I’m not taking blood pressure medication? (apparently “they don’t mix well” for the patient!) I must remember to ask Dr. B. next time I see her! And that’s about all the news for now, so I’ll get on to the good bits, shall I? 🙂

Food stuffs: Last night we had the chicken that Julian had marinated in the “Feta Brine” over night. We had it on plain steamed rice (which had a bit of very finely chopped spring onion mixed through it) and yes, the Feta-Brined Chicken is most definitely a “Keeper” recipe! It was absolutely fantastic! Next time we’ll have it with proper vegetables, but we wanted to see what it was like, just “plain”, with nothing else to distract from the way it tasted. I’ll try to get that, and all the other recipes I’ve promised you, up on my “Recipes…” page as soon as possible, I promise! For dessert I had one of my Corella pears – again, a trifle over-ripe, but still very edible, and a small bowl of the scrumptious, Coles-brand, very low-calorie, Rice Pudding. Today we had wraps for lunch, with basil-pesto hummus, Halloumi cheese, (commercial) sandwich-slices of roast beef, small dark green capsicum from our veggie garden, sliced into batons, and roughly chopped, bought spring onions (at least I think they were bought!) It’s very strange, you know – sometimes wraps are very hard to eat without making a mess everywhere, and sometimes they’re perfectly behaved, and don’t spill out all over the plate (or floor!) Today’s wrap was one of the former… and I fear that I “spring onioned” on the floor, a bit… 😳 Tonight being Sunday night, it’s Omelet night – I love omelet nights – they’re always different, and they always taste great! 🙂 Dessert will probably be the same as last night’s, with a Corella pear, and a small bowl of the Coles-brand, very low-calorie, yummy Rice Pudding.

Weigh-in this morning. Was good, for a change! 🙂 I hate it that I’m probably going to die of old age without ever finding out why my body does what it does with my weight – and the fact that there never seems to be any rhyme nor reason for the way it fluctuates! (*Winter gives an exasperated “huff!”*) Anyway, this morning I went from 64.9kg to 64.6kg – down three points! But don’t worry, it’ll probably be back over 65kg again tomorrow!

And that brings me once again to tomorrow – with Josh coming over in the afternoon, and Julian having to go off to the Dentist again 😦 However, apart from those two things, I have absolutely no idea what’s happening tomorrow – I’ve been working hard with Phoenìx, but tomorrow I think I’d better spend a bit of time with Jadzìa, my new Horde “Dedicated Banker” – she’s got a lot of hard work ahead of her to get things set up properly, but we’ll see how we go, because I still want to get Phoenìx to level 90, and properly Garrisoned, before the new Expansion on August 30th! And that’s really about “it” from me again for this evening! 🙂 Do call in again tomorrow night to find out whether my weight went up or down, if I worked with Jadzìa or Phoenìx, and how Julian got on at the Dentist! But until then, please continue to bee good, remember to never ruin an apology with an excuse, and don’t forget to always drive carefully, to look after yourselves, and to keep warm and dry, even on the coldest and wettest days… but above all, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

04.24 pm

Oh well, I’m not quite as early as I was yesterday, but never mind, I should still get this finished before dinner time (I hope! It all depends on how many things that I have to research (to make sure that I haven’t got me facts muddled!) and how many words I need to look up in the Dictionary, if I don’t know how to spell them!) So then – what transpired today at chez nous? I can almost hear you all wondering… well, a fair bit actually – though at the same time, not terribly much! Confused? Well, this is a confusing time we’re all living in, and me, well I’m both confusing and confused at the best of times, so I guess it’s only to be expected! 😉 Hey, fancy Britain actually going ahead and exiting the EU! Frankly, I never thought it would happen! I was very surprised – I really thought that the “Stay’s” would win the vote! But as I said to Julian in the car yesterday, Britain has been “invaded” by various peoples, tribes, and conquerors since pre-history, and they’ve always fought – and died – fiercely for their island and their independence. It’s a bit complicated, so bear with me for a bit… In view of the “strife” (read: “war”) in the Middle East, and the absolute floods of refugees pouring into Europe (not to mention the thousands of people who just wanted to get themselves and their families away from the fighting) and the fact that Britain are – or rather were – a part of a large conglomerate, the EU, with certain agreements and conditions that they were obliged to abide by – I think that a great many British people were starting to get a bit jittery about the fact that they might have to accede to EU demands, and take on more than they felt their country could cope with, both financially and emotionally. In fact, I think that such a body as the European Union is a very good idea – and hopefully, at some time in the future, it won’t be just a “European” Union, but some kind of “World Federation”, or “Universal Union”! …but I don’t think humanity is ready for that just yet… But maybe, just maybe, when we all grow up, in another century or so, if the Middle East has calmed down, if certain countries recognise that some gun control is way better than no gun control, if people can be truly free for both men and women to receive the same wages for the same work, to be able to marry whoever they wish, to worship whichever god they please without being persecuted in some way for it, if drugs were solely for the treatment of illnesses, if people cared as much for their neighbours as they did for their pets and their gardens, and jihadi terrorism merely a horror story that children told eachother around campfires at Halloween – then we might be ready for a “World Federation”, or a “Universal Union”… maybe! 😉

So, apart from being surprised by “Brexit” this morning, what else was newsworthy? Well, I got the results of my Warfarin blood test back last night – everything is pretty hunky-dory, and pretty much the same – my INR is 2.6, I’m to stay on the same dose as I’m currently on, 4.5mg of Warfarin, and they want me to have another blood test in two weeks – on July 8th. Julian changed out 30% of the Fish House water this afternoon, even though he didn’t really have to – the Ammonia is still present, but it’s so much less than it was – little Auric hasn’t had a case of the “floaties” for almost a week now (and having said that, wanna bet that he’ll probably work very hard at swallowing air all afternoon, in order to make a liar out of me tonight?! …wretched little rabbit! 😆 ) We also received confirmation last night that the new “stuff” for the Fish House has been “dispatched” (it’s coming from Queensland) so we should get it sometime reasonably early next week – a new and much quieter pump (I think!) an “air stone” that will sit at the back of the Fish House under the gravel and send up a gentle “curtain of air bubbles”, and from memory, he’s also getting a little magnetic cleaning pad for the glass walls. One half sits inside the tank, against the wall, and the other half sits on the outside of the tank – the two halves are held together with a reasonably strong magnet – the glass gets cleaned by moving the outside half around! What’s more, if the two halves do get pulled apart, the inside bit is designed to float, so it’s easy to get it out and re-attach it.

This morning I started working on Phoenìx again where she’s gallivanting around Terokkar Forrest, trying to get quests done – “trying” being the operative word! Honestly, there are so many other people playing, sometimes it really is a matter of standing in a queue, and waiting (impatiently!) for your turn to kill the whatever-it-is-that-you’re-supposed-to-kill to re-spawn after the last player [censored] killed it! At the moment she’s about six bubbles away from level 64 – not good enough, if I’m going to get her to level 90 before the new Expansion! Oh well… I stuck with her all this morning, then after lunch I went and changed my Bookmarks Wallpaper-y thingy! It’s pretty much the same as the blog’s current Template – I liked the paisley background I used here so much I thought I’d like to see it on my desktop too! So I did! 🙂 And I must say, it looks very impressive, even if I did make it myself! 🙂 Surprisingly, it worked first pop! I didn’t have to go fiddling with anything, or move things around much – so I went back and worked with Phoenìx a bit more! And that’s pretty much what we’ve been doing all day – so now, on to the good bits, eh?! 😉

Food stuffs: Last night we had a really, really nice little piece of fillet steak for dinner, with Brussels sprouts, chips, and our usual half a tomato – plain and simple fare, maybe, but truly delicious! For dessert I had another of my Corella pears, and a small bowl of the yummy Coles-brand, very low-calorie Rice Pudding. For lunch today I had another sandwich made with the very tasty whole-meal bread with the sesame seed crust, together with our favourite butter substitute of basil-pesto hummus, as well as sandwich ham, hand-sliced cheddar cheese, and tomato, with plenty of freshly ground pepper – it was most delicious! 🙂 Tonight for dinner we’re doing something completely different! I’ve been reading a lot about “brining” different types of meat, and there was one recipe for chicken, which has to be brined in Feta Cheese brine – and if you can’t get hold of the “brine” that the Feta usually sits in, you can make your own – by dissolving some Feta Cheese in water (yes, they do tell you how!) Then you put the home-made Feta brine and the chicken into a zip-lock bag, massage the chicken about in it for a bit, then shove the still zip-locked bag into the fridge overnight. We’re having it just with plain steamed rice tonight, but as the chicken gets pan-fried, you could just about have any vegetables you wanted with it – I’ll let you know how it goes – and if it was any good I’ll try to get a round tuit, and write it up on my “Recipes…” page, along with all the other recipes I said I’d write up for you all!

Weigh-in this morning. Was a bit better, which was a great relief, I can tell you! 🙂 I went from 65.1kg to 64.9kg – down two points – which is a lot much more betterer that being over my “Start Maintenance” weight of 65kg! I really hate going over that – I sort-of feel that I’ve “failed” 😦 Hopefully it’ll be down a bit more tomorrow – but we’ll just have to weight and sea, won’t we! 😉

And that brings us about back to tomorrow, and our traditional “Pandamonium in Pandaria” Day! 🙂 With Xãnthe and Jemimah both sitting half-way through level 89, it won’t be very long at all before we ditch Pandaria and head off, Garrison-bound! The last time I attempted to set up a Horde Garrison, with Arisnoë (before I changed her Faction – she’s now Alliance!) I hated it! It was cold, grubby, miserable, snowing most of the time which made visibility difficult, to say the least – and I was on my own! I just couldn’t get my head around it all – that’s why I changed Factions! This time should be better, I hope! Although Jemimah and I won’t be sharing a Garrison, we will be able to help eachother out with any fighting that has to be done, either in, or outside of the Garrison itself, much like Wynterthyme and Mouselet did 🙂 So I’m really looking forward to tomorrow! I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow night! And that’s once again about “it” from me for this evening! Do drop in again tomorrow night to find out how our “brined” chicken went tonight, and whether it was good enough to be a “keeper”, whether my weight has continued going down – even if terribly slowly, how we fared in “Pandaria, And Beyond”, and how many times we died getting there! 😉 But until then, please try hard to bee very good, and don’t forget that if you can’t MAKE IT BETTER, you can laugh at it… remember to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm and dry, especially when it’s cold and wet outside… but most of all, please remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

02.34 pm

Oh! You noticed the different Template, did you?! It’s the one I used before the last one – which apparently had one major flaw! There was no “leave a comment” form, or whatever it’s called! Or at least, Julian couldn’t find one, and if he couldn’t find one, you can bet your sweet bippy that there isn’t one! I couldn’t find one either, but that’s not quite so surprising, as I often can’t find things – especially things that I’ve deliberately put in “a safe place” so that I’ll be able to find them again… but that’s fairly typical of me! Anyway, so I switched back to this one, which I knew did have a “comment” thingy! What do you think of the background? I rather like it – it is one of Word Press’s, but it’s one that I nicked from another of their Free Templates that I’d never use in a pink fit – it was one of those totally annoying Templates that gives you about two lines of blog, and then very helpfully says “read more?” or whatever! Sometimes you can turn that [censored] annoying function off, and I thought I’d found the command line to do this… so I bought (at enormous expense!) an extremely nice Template that I absolutely loved… I didn’t, however, love it quite so much when I found that I couldn’t turn the wretched function off after all, and I was not in the slightest way amused! I think a Template’s CSS’s can over-rule the basic or default customisation commands or something – and alas, I don’t know anyone who speaks CSS to come and look at it for me, and make it turn that [censored] function off! So I’ve just had to put that Template down to an expensive but valuable lesson. I went to the author of that Template’s blog, to see if I could message him with my problem in the hopes that he or she could help me – to find the damn thing was all in Portuguese! Well, my Portuguese is about as good as my Sanskrit, which is to say “nil”, and that, gentle readers, was where I vowed never, ever to buy a Word Press Template – ever again – in fact, I only ever look at their Free ones now – plus the ones I’ve already bought, of course – as there’s no point in wasting them (except for the one or two that don’t work the way they should!)

Amazingly, we actually did head off early this morning to get my Warfarin blood test done! Usually in the morning we both go for our walkies, have breakfast, shower, dress, have a cup of coffee, and roll out the door closer to eleven o’clock than nine forty-five! But we were good this morning, and I had my blood test done nice and early – then Julian dropped me back at home (well, he did come in too, and had a cup of coffee with me before he went off to do the shopping! As I always say – “ya gotta get yer priorities right!” 😉 ) and I got stuck into WoW… I’m enjoying being in Zangarmarsh again, but I’m finding it terribly easy! All the monsters I used to cringe from in terror are now just another “ho-hum, bang, bang, you’re dead… NEXT!” – so maybe I should be heading off to Terokkar Forest after all, as I’m still not leveling up as fast as I should be! I’m aiming at getting myself to level 90, and being well and truly ensconced in my Garrison before August 30th, and the release of the new Expansion! I’m pretty sure I’ll make it – after all, I have all of July and all of August – about two months to get there! But still… I’d be a lot happier if I were going up just a little bit faster, yaknow?

Poor Julian has to go out yet again this afternoon! One of the File Server’s external back-up drives has died – there are two drives that mirror eachother, so if one of them fails, the other is there to keep things going until the one that’s failed can be repaired or replaced – actually, that’s not quite correct – it’s a lot more complicated than that, however for those who know and understand about these things, suffice to say that it’s Raid set up, and leave it at that, K? If you want, or need to know any more, feel free to ask Julian, cos “He da man!” 😉

Anyway, having told you of our “doin’s in the ruins”, it’s now time to move on the good bits!

Food stuffs: Last night we had sausages for dinner – no fancy-schmantzy sausages this time, just good old-fashioned “butcher’s” pork sausages! They were quite nice, as far as taste and texture were concerned, and I particularly liked the way they “burnt” on the outside, even though they were “pan-fried” on the stove – which made them almost look as though they’d been BBQ’d (my preferred way of eating sausages, I must confess!) But I don’t think we’ll be having them again in a hurry, even though I liked them – Julian said that they shrank a lot, and what’s more, they had so much water in them that they almost literally gave the whole stove a bath in sausage fat – which Julian had to clean up afterwards! With the sausages we had yummy mashed potatoes, steamed green beans, and our usual half a tomato. For dessert, I had one of my Corella pears, which I hate to say are getting just a bit beyond their “best by” date, as the one I’d had was a trifle soft, over-ripe, and “floury”! It still tasted nice, and I’ll have another tonight – if it’s the same, I’ll switch to apples of some sort… anyway, last night I had the Corella pear, and a small bowl of my very favourite and delicious Coles-brand, very low-calorie, Rice Pudding. Today for lunch we had wraps, made with our very favourite butter substitute, the basil-pesto hummus, some sandwich-sliced cold roast beef, Halloumi cheese, and batons of our very own, home-grown, darling little dark green capsicums, and for some unknown reason, this wrap wasn’t as messy to eat as most of them usually are! Anyway, it was extremely nice! 🙂 Tonight for dinner we’re having pan-fried fillet steak, chips, steamed green beans, and half a tomato. Not a terribly remarkable or unusual dinner, but a good stand-by and favourite, nonetheless! 🙂 For dessert I’ll try another of my Corella pears – if this one ends up being over-ripe too, I might have to wave goodbye to the last two in the fruit bowl, and switch to apples of some sort instead! 😦 And of course I’ll also have a small bowl of my favourite Coles-brand, very low-calorie, Rice Pudding.

Weigh-in this morning. Was horrible! I’m afraid my Gold Class Tuesday has caught up with me, at long last! I’m not at all happy about it, even though I did do it to myself, didn’t I! But by the same token, I’m not too worried about it, as I should be able to shed the excess fairly easily, if I’m relatively careful. I went from 64.6kg to 65.1kg, half a kilo, over night, which was just awful! I know I had a big lunch on Tuesday (but then I didn’t have any dinner!), and I did have the equivalent of a medium-sized bread roll, plus an absolutely delicious fruit and white chocolate scone for lunch the very next day (last Wednesday) so I acknowledge the fact that I do deserve to put on some weight – but – that much?! 😥 Hopefully it’ll have gone down a little by tomorrow – if not I’ll cry again! 😥

And that brings me back to tomorrow, and I don’t have a clue as to what’s happening! I think the Weather Bureau is threatening to serve us up much the same weather as we’ve had today (Julian has just returned from Office Works with the new hard drive… 5 terabytes, in a little black box about the same size as an old-fashioned video cassette! If anyone had told us, even ten years ago, that we’d have these nice little boxes, we’d probably have laughed in your faces and told you that you were dreaming! 🙂 ) So, given that I doubt we’ll have what one could call “ideal gardening weather”, in which to plant our planned winter vegetable crop, I imagine that I’ll be able to do a bit more work with Phoenìx in Zangarmarsh and Terokkar Forrest! The Fur-Fins are all well – and regarding the Fin part of the Fur-Fins, when I get up in the morning, it’s my job to go into the Den, pull up the blind on the folding doors that go out to the back deck, and to turn on the Fish House lights, and say “good morning” to Auric and Dapple. Auric just sort of swims about looking a little bored, but little Dapple comes swimming over to the front of the tank, and if I rest my finger along the side of the glass, and move it backwards and forwards, he follows it, keeping as close to the glass as he can! Isn’t that sweet? Of course, the logical part of my brain says “it’s just co-incidence”, or “he’s just hoping to get breakfast early!” – but the part of my brain that anthropomorphizes things (as we all do, from time to time!) says “Aww! Isn’t he sweet! He wants pats, and I’m sort-of patting him through the glass!” 😎 So anyway, that’s about “it” from me again – for this evening, anyway – but do feel free to call in again tomorrow night, to find out what my weight’s doing, whether I got the results back from my Warfarin blood test and if they were good or bad, and what we got up to during the day… until then though, do try hard to bee good, don’t forget that all the so-called secrets of success will not work unless you do, and remember to keep warm and dry in this horrible weather, to always drive carefully, and to look after yourselves – but please, above all, always remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂