04.49 pm

So I’m starting a bit later this afternoon – I’ve been working on a header to go with this background (expect it to be temporary!) but I haven’t done a marvelous job – I ran out of time! I actually spent most of the day trying to level Phoenìx up, but it’s been a really slow slog, since I reached level 60 and got my wings! (I think I already told you all that I hate Hellfire Peninsula, didn’t I? Yeah… thought so…) So there I sat, going “bang, bang, you’re dead… NEXT!” and it wasn’t until Julian came in to see how I was doing, and I grizzled about leveling up so slowly… He came into the Den and looked over my shoulder – “You should be in Terokkar Forest by now, shouldn’t you?” to which I replied “Doesn’t Zangarmarsh come first?” – which it does, but Julian thought I’d probably be able to handle Terokkar Forest, or if not now, then in about another level… but I sorta like Zangarmarsh, so I thought I’d go there. Actually, I was a bit niggled that I hadn’t received any breadcrumbs for it, and that “the game” still seemed perfectly happy for me to be in rotten old Hellfire Peninsula, when all along it’s been moving me out of areas pretty smartly – but wouldn’t ya know it, as soon as I thought – “yeah! I will go on to Zangarmarsh – I’ll just turn in these two finished quests before heading out that way!”, lo and behold, I got my breadcrumb to the almighty Marsh! It’s really weird – or maybe it’s just me that’s weird… I know I’m playing a game, right? The characters I interact with in the game are not really characters, they’re pixels on my screen, and basically a lot of 1’s and 0’s in the program… so why is it that I feel really guilty when they try to get me to do a quest for them, like “Oh, please, won’t you help my dear old granny across the road? I’m too busy handing out quests to do it myself!” and I politely “Decline” their request because I’m heading out to greener pastures, so to speak! I just slink off feeling awful! It’s stupid! They’re not people I’ve turned down… are they? Anyway, I slunk off and ran away to Zangarmarsh – picked up a whole heap of their quests, flew off to Telredor, the “capital” of Zangarmarsh – where I promptly died! I ‘m pretty sure I mentioned all the Giant Mushrooms in Zangarmarsh, and although Telredor is not a Giant Mushroom, it is built in amongst quite a few of them, and its architecture is just plain crazy – or maybe it’s just that it was built by the Draenei (hmm.. interesting conjecture, there!) Anyway, it’s on lots of different levels, with balconies and ledges, seemingly stuck onto the building’s central “stem” at random intervals. There’s also a lift (“elevator”, to any Americans reading this) that takes non-flying visitors up to the Flight Point on the top deck. This lift, or elevator, doesn’t just go up and down! No, it starts a few yards out from the building, slides horizontally in to the edge of the bottom deck, waits a few seconds while passengers get on, then slides out again to its “starting” point. Then it rises vertically up to the top deck, where (and this is where I died!) it slides back in again, to join up with the top deck so that passengers can get off. Only I “forgot” that it still had to slide in to the top deck, and I exited the lift (or elevator) too soon – and did a “Demelza” – as one does, when one plunges suddenly from a very great height, onto an uncomfortably hard and unforgiving ground! But I got better 🙂 At that point I Hearthed back to Shattrath, dusted myself off, banked what loot I could, and sent the rest off to Ambermyst, our trusty Banker and the stalwart keeper of The Great Guild Bank Overflow Deposit Box (i.e. her own personal Bank slots, generously donated to the cause, shall we say…) and that was about where I left the delightfully short-sighted Phoenìx, and the long-suffering Ambermyst for the day!

After that, I had a bit of a fiddle with the blog’s background and header, decided I wasn’t really doing anything terribly constructive, and started writing – as I still am… Earlier this afternoon, Julian went out and harvested the leeks and some absolutely darling little dark green capsicums, and turned over the garden beds, preparing them for the winter’s crop to come. There were quite a few leeks, which were carefully washed and sliced, blanched in boiling water, then plunged into ice-cold water to stop them from cooking any further. When they’d cooled sufficiently, they were patted dry, put into sealed zip-lock bags, and stored in the freezer for future stews and dinners. However, I’m not sure what’s the best way of storing and preserving capsicums – I fear we shall just have to eat them… I suppose we could always make peperonata, but I have yet to find an authentic enough recipe – I think there may be one in my “famous-for-always-getting-lost” recipe book – I’ll look, later! Basically, it’s bell peppers, onion, and tomatoes, sort-of fried in olive oil – it keeps for a week or so in the fridge, and is used a bit like chutney, or pickles… If I ever do find the recipe, I’ll put it up on my “Recipes…” page… Anyway, it’s just as well that Julian went out when he did, because the weather here has really fallen apart! It’s been raining very heavily, and it’s terribly windy – sitting in here in the Den with the curtains drawn, I can hear it, and believe me, it doesn’t sound nice! And that, as they say in the classics, was about my day! So I suppose I can move onto the good bits, now? 😉

Food stuff. Last night we had lamb backstraps in a Greek “marinade” – they tasted nice, that’s for sure, but they were a little disappointing! The two lamb backstraps were small enough to begin with, but in cooking them, they shrank to about half their original size – if we get them again – and we might, because they did taste nice – we’ll have to get double the quantity! With them we had chips, peas, and our usual half a tomato. For dessert, I didn’t have my usual Corella pear, I had an apple instead, and then I had my usual, delicious Coles-brand, very low-calorie Rice pudding 🙂 For lunch today I had another sandwich made with the lovely tasty whole-meal bread that has the sesame-seed crust, basil-pesto hummus, and perri-perri chicken sandwich chunks – it was absolutely deliciously yummy! 🙂 Tonight we’re “sampling” some butcher’s shoppe lamb sausages, with all the usual accompaniments – chips, beans (or maybe peas again), and our usual half a tomato. For dessert tonight, I’ll have one of my Corella pears, and my very excellent Coles-brand, very low-calorie, delicious Rice Pudding 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. Wasn’t too bad – and certainly a lot better than I deserved, or was expecting, that’s fer sure! I went from 64.5kg to 64.6kg – only up one point! I don’t expect it to last, though – I’m sure to go up a bit more tomorrow – after all, one can’t get away with eating all the guff that I ate on Tuesday at the movies, and yesterday, with that yummy white chocolate and fruit scone without paying some sort of price… can one? 😉 We’ll see what happens tomorrow morning, I guess…

And that once again brings me to tomorrow, which I rather suspect will be a carbon-copy of today, apart from me having to have my next Warfarin blood test in the morning – which probably means that we’ll be lunching out – so I guess it won’t be a carbon-copy of today, after all! Never mind, whatever happens tomorrow, you’ll all get to hear about it later in the evening! 🙂 The fur-fin kids are still well and happy, Julian is slowly recovering from his dreaded lurgi, and me… I’m just muddling along, as usual! 🙂 And that’s about “it” from me again for this evening! Don’t forget to call in again tomorrow night, to see how my blood test went, and if I’ve had the results back, what my weight decided to do to surprise me this time, and whether we made a “shopping day” out of the trip to get my blood test done. I’m sure there’ll be heaps to tell you all, so don’t miss out! But until then, don’t forget to bee very good, remember that “discovery” consists of seeing what everybody else has seen, and thinking what nobody else has thought, and don’t forget to keep warm and dry in this atrocious weather, to look after yourselves, and to always drive carefully – but above all, please don’t forget to stay safe!:) ciao, all! 🙂

04.30 pm

Here I am – on time for a change! 🙂 Well, not much at all has been happening today – Julian, as usual, has been busy, but lazy old me has spent most of the day in Hellfire Peninsula, and getting Phoenìx up to level 60! Yes, she hit level 60 just after lunch! And you know, as much as I absolutely hate Hellfire Peninsula, it was all a pretty tame and uneventful leveling up – there weren’t even any of those shudderingly horrible Fell Reavers to scare the life out of me! At one point, I had to “borrow” a bird to fly me over some – whatevers – in order to “bomb them to rubble” (well, that’s what my orders said!) I wasn’t even sure what it was that I was supposed to be bombing, so just to be on the safe side, I bombed everything that looked as though it could possibly be reduced to “rubble”! Anyway, I succeeded – even though I still don’t know what it was I was supposed to be rubbling! And so it went on! I’m sure Blizzard have dumbed things down a bit too much, as I remember it being lots harder when I first did that area, once upon a time, many, many years ago! When I was doing that bombing run today, I wasn’t even level 59, although I was close to it – and I was knocking off level 62 mobs with only about three shots! It was sort-of a matter of “ho-hum!” [bang, bang, bang] you’re dead… Next!”, which one has to admit, wasn’t exactly challenging! As for the Fell Reavers, which used to – and still do – strike terror to my heart – I did see one yesterday morning (and ran for my life!) but I didn’t even hear their “shrieking metal” sound in the distance today! Maybe they’re on “Stomp Holiday”, or something! Have any of you ever seen a bad car accident, and heard the sound of the twisting car metal “shrieking”? (shudder) It’s a most horrible sound! It sounds like the metal is screaming in agony as it gets pulled and twisted by the force of the collision – well, Fell Reavers are about as tall as a three-story building, and that’s the sound they make! They will also pursue you, no matter where you try to run to, in order to stomp you into the nasty rust-red soil of Hellfire Peninsula…

However, now that I’m level 60, and I’ve finally got my “flying licence”, so to speak, I’ll be able to fly out of their way, if any of them heave to over my horizon – and they’re only in Hellfire Peninsula anyway, and I’m not sure how much longer I’ll be there – the game usually moves me on pretty smartly whenever I reach a level “milestone”! I think Zangarmarsh is next… it’s quite a pretty place, really – it is a marsh, as its name suggests, and it’s full of Giant Mushrooms, great, tall, spindly legged creatures that just love to sneak up behind you to clobber you, Ogres, Naga, and all manner of nasty critters whose sole aim in life is ending yours! I quite like Zangarmarsh, actually, and from memory, it’s fairly easy (though if I’m now thinking of Hellfire Peninsula as being “easy”, I’ll probably want to skip Zangarmarsh completely, as being “too easy”! )

Tomorrow I may give Phoenìx a rest, and do a bit of work on my brand new Horde “Dedicated Banker” character, Jadzìa – yes, another Hunter character, just in case I ever decide to play her full-time – she’s currently level 8 – I’d like to get her up to at least level 10, so that she can (a) get a better pet, and (b) have some proper control over said “better pet”! 🙂 But we’ll see… depending on the weather, we may be going off to a Nursery to look for the winter veggies on our “To Plant” list – if Julian is able to harvest the rest of the leeks and capsicums that are still good, so that he can prepare the two beds for this – so far, mythical – winter crop! But anyway, that’s about all the newsworthy news from this end, so I can now get on with the “good bits”! 😉

Food stuffs. Last night we had an extremely early dinner at the Century City Gold Class cinema – “Gold Class Hot Dogs”, which were normal (read: “large”!) sized Saveloys in a sort-of Brioche-type roll, or bun. In case you’re not familiar with the term Brioche, it’s a type of French bread – typically made into small, often plaited, loaves, but just as often it’s made into light, sweet buns or rolls made with eggs, yeast, and butter – so it’s not exactly “slimming fare”, if you get my meaning (but it is delicious!) However while I’ll even go out of my way to have Brioche, I’m usually not all that keen on Saveloys – they tend to be a little on the tough side, especially their “skins”, or casings, and they’re a bit too thick, too – by the time you get a Saveloy into a nice hot-dog bun or roll, I have difficulty biting into them, as they just won’t fit into my mouth! So eating this “Gold Class Hot Dog” that I had was… umm… “interesting”? Firstly, there was nothing wrong or bad about it – it tasted very nice, but as the name implies, it was hot! Not only was it hot, it also had a very artfully drawn wiggly line of extremely nice mayo down its middle – and the Brioche roll was very thick and yeasty – quite delicious, actually. So there you are, reclining in the semi-dark, watching a very good movie – and you’re handed this very large, thick, hot Hot-Dog! Luckily it had been cut in half, otherwise I would have worn it, right down my front! As it was I almost wore it – when I tried to bite into the Saveloy, it immediately decided to dribble out a trickle of boiling water that had been trapped under its skin… thank heavens for the extra-large serviettes that we’d been given! Next, I couldn’t get my mouth past the roll, to actually bite the Saveloy – so I nibbled away most of the roll until I could actually get my teeth into the sausage – which squirted some more hot water at me, and by this time, with my teeth firmly planted in the sausage, I couldn’t disengage them because the sausage skin – or casing – simply wouldn’t tear, break, or give way! The hot water was burning my fingers and my mouth (yes, it was that hot!) my teeth were jammed into titanium-like sausage skin, and interesting things that I wanted to watch were happening on the screen! So, as I said… eating that hot-dog was… interesting! Eventually I did manage to eat one half of it, without having to walk out of the theatre wearing a combination of Saveloy water and tasty mustard coloured mayo – but that’s all I could eat! I was full! Well, I had eaten some popcorn, and I did eat a bit (read: “quite a lot, actually!”) of the lovely, fresh,  warm, Turkish Bread with the dips that we’d had before we went into the theatre – and I had to leave room for dessert, didn’t I! 😉  So for dessert I had the Pear and Pistachio Cake – an average cup-cake size confection with a slightly dry, dense texture (it was hard to cut with the spoon it came with – being an oval, egg-shaped sort of cake, it tended to roll around on the plate more than allow itself be broken into bite size pieces with the spoon) with about half an inch (1.2cm) of very smooth, very sweet frosting on top of it. It was tough going, but in the end I managed to get it all eaten! 😎 😉 For lunch today I had two halves of different savoury rolls from the Baker’s Delight shop up at Vermont South, and another of those oh-so-very-yummy fruit and white chocolate scones. I hope my scales don’t break tomorrow morning! Tonight we’re having pan-fried lamb backstrap, with half a tomato, chips, and steamed beans (or peas?) and I’ll be back to my usual dessert of one of my Corella pears, followed by a small bowl of the delicious Coles-brand, ultra low-calorie Rice Pudding! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. Really surprised me! I was sure I’d be w-a-y over 65kg this time! However I guess that’ll happen tomorrow morning instead, after my lunch today (which was really very yummy!) This morning I went from a disgraceful 64.9kg yesterday, to a very surprising 64.5kg today! Go figure! Down four points! But… it’ll be back up again tomorrow, just you all weight and sea!

Which finally brings me to tomorrow – which I’ve already told you about, and I’m quite sure none of you really wants me to scrape and copy and paste that section again in here? No? Good – I couldn’t be bothered doing that anyway! 😉 The fur-fins are all well – Julian changed out 30% of the Fish House water yesterday, and completely changed over Flipper’s Kitty Litter. He had more or less recovered from his dreaded lurgi, so has gone back to his morning walks and he’s been hard at work all day today, shopping, setting up a new back-up system for our network, etc., etc. *sigh* I told him to start slow and easy, that he wasn’t completely over his dreaded lurgi, but no, no, he was fine, he could cope… now he tells me that I was right (I always am, I might add! Mothers are like that with their kids you know, and it’s the same with their husbands!) and now he feels all flu-y again! *rolls eyes* Maybe he won’t be doing the veggie beds tomorrow, after all, especially if it’s raining! Anyway, that’s about “it” from me again this evening, do drop in again tomorrow night though, and find out how Julian’s feeling, and whether or not he disobeyed me and went veggie-bedding in the rain, whether my weight did go skyrocketing or not, and whatever other adventures and escapades we might have had! But until then, don’t forget to start where you are, use what you have, and do what you can, and remember to always drive carefully, to look after yourselves, and to keep warm and dry in this inclement weather… but most importantly, please – remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

09.51 pm

‘Evenin’ all! 🙂 Yes, I finally made it back to my desk – it’s been a great day, and there’s lots to tell… which, having said that, this’ll probably be a rather short episode tonight, as it’s starting to get very late. I didn’t put up anything last night because by the time I’d had my hair done, and Josh had departed, it was dinner time (more on that later though! 😉 ) and as you all know by now, I really hate having to sit down and write, after a nice dinner and an evening of television – and besides, I wanted to take Xãnthe off to the “baby” Dungeon, Blackfathom Deeps, to get her the same sort of spiny Turtle Pet that Phoenìx has! So, off I trotted – being level 89 I didn’t need an escort, but I did need someone to “jump me over the bridge” to get to the spiny Turtle part. I’m pretty hopeless at jumping – as I think I’ve probably said on more than one occasion – both in real life and in games, so Julian always does the “jumping bits” for me (in games, not in real life!) then off I went again, and there was my Turtle, waiting to be Tamed. This time everything went off without a hitch, and I got my Turtle, Ghamoo-Ra – but wait! This time there was another Turtle in there! A little more “lumpy” and not as “pretty” (if a spiny Turtle could be said to be “pretty”!) as my shiny new spiny Pet, called “Pahboo-Ra, son of Ghamoo-Ra”! Oh my! I had to have him, too! So, crossing all my fingers that I wouldn’t lose my new Turtle in the process, I “Dismissed” him (i.e. I sent him off to play on his own for a bit) and set about Taming his son! I accomplished that with no problems, and hastily Hearthed, to find the nearest Stable Master so that I could put them all in a nice comfy stall, and just choose one of them to be my “Pet du jour”, so to speak. So at the moment, Xãnthe is playing with the lumpy one… but I think next time I take Xãnthe out, I’ll switch to his spiny “Daddy”, because he looks nicer… So that’s what I did last night, instead of writing a blog!

This morning I mucked around taking Phoenìx from the Blasted Lands, into Hell Fire Peninsula (another one of my most un-favourite spots!) and dragging her up another couple of levels to level 58. It was a bit of a muddle this morning though, and I found it a trifle hard to concentrate on what I was doing – we were going to see the movie “Warcraft” this afternoon, but we had to leave early, as we’d had a phone call from our old “back-door neighbour” (currently my favourite eldest daughter and her husband’s “back-door” neighbour!) She was concerned that there’s been some earth movement occurring around her garage, and she wondered if Julian could have a look at it for her, as she’s on her own. We said we’d pop in and have a look for her today, on our way to the movie (which was at Century City Gold Class) so she left her keys with my favourite eldest daughter, and we went over before the movie to see if we could spot the problem. Luckily the problem was fairly easy to spot – it wasn’t earth subsidence or anything so drastic, it was simply that the garage’s plaster-board ceiling, which hadn’t been put in properly, had half fallen off onto the garage door, preventing it from opening properly. Julian had another chat with her this evening – apparently she was very much relieved to find that it was nothing major – and Julian will look for a Plasterer for her on the morrow. Of course, by the time Julian had looked at the problem, removed the broken piece of plaster so that she could open the garage door again, and we’d gone on to the cinema, we were nearly an hour early! In hindsight, we should probably have descended upon my favourite eldest daughter’s doorstep, seeing we were right there at the time, demanding a cup of coffee, but – ain’t hindsight wonderful? We didn’t think of it at the time! (*rolls eyes!*) We arrived upstairs at the Gold Class cafe-bar-thingy, and ordered some assorted dips with Turkish Bread, and some drinks while we were waiting for the movie to start at 3.30 pm… Our cunning plan had been that we’d have an early lunch at home, head off to look at this garage business, go on to the movie where we’d order an early dinner to be served about half way through the show – and then not have anything when we got home, apart from a cup of coffee. It sounded like a good plan at the time, anyway. Then Julian remembered that he’d been using the Hot Glue Gun this morning, and hadn’t turned it off. Ooops! So, after having ordered the dips with the Turkish Bread, and the drinks, off he raced to save the house from becoming a pile of ash and embers, leaving me to sit there – alone with my Kindle (I never leave home without it! One never knows when one is going to be left sitting all alone with nothing but one’s thumbs to twiddle… and a rather large platter of four different dips, and some extremely delicious, fresh-baked-and-still-warm-from-the-oven, Turkish Bread!) Naturally I drank my by then only warm drink… and of course, I did nibble – just a little bit (well, maybe about half of it) on the fresh-baked-and-still-warm-from-the-oven, Turkish Bread. Julian got back with about five minutes to spare, glubbed down his drink, ate what was left of the “snack”, and grabbed some popcorn before we went in to see this much-anticipated show…

Well… What can I say! It. Was. Brilliant! When I read the rather disparaging revue of “Warcraft” in The Age after it had opened, my first impression, just from the way the reporter wrote, was that he (or she) knew absolutely nothing whatsoever about Blizzard, “Warcraft” (and “World of Warcraft”) or even the ruddy genre! (to quote a semi-famous line: “You know noothing, reporter-type-Snow!”) About the only thing that I had a bit of trouble with were the oh-so terribly obviously fake teeny-weeny little fangs/tusks of the rather gorgeous could-have-been-a-great-romantic-lead Orc girl – but alas – this wasn’t “Game of Thrones”, and there was no hanky-panky at all in the movie – well, maybe a small amount of implied hanky-panky, except that I think our rather good-looking hero was a bit too under the weather to have been up for it. The movie had maybe a bit of a shaky start – if you weren’t familiar with the story-line, you might have been a bit confused at first, but it was pretty easy to work out, even if you’d never heard of Blizzard, and “World of Warcraft”, the game! But you know what I thought was the best thing about the movie? It filled you in on so much of the back-story and Lore! So many of the familiar names from the game appeared in this movie, but where the game itself never really explains exactly who they were, or their raison d’être, or why they were either loved or hated so much – this movie did! On a scale of one to ten, with one being “very poor”, and ten being “fantastic!” – I’d rate it at eleven! Dearest favourite eldest daughter – if you’re reading this, go and see “Warcraft” – I can guarantee that you’ll really regret it if you miss out! The scenery was great, they created Stormwind, Ironforge, Menethal, and the Swamp of Sorrows almost exactly like the game – only looking real, instead of cartoonish! Fabulous! And the Griffin (bird) and Wolf mounts – spectacular! (I want one of those Griffin mounts, in real life!) Honestly, it was a really great movie, and we both loved it! When it’s available on DVD, I want to get it!

So, now on to the good bits! 🙂

Food stuff. Last night for dinner we had the last of the left-over “Slow Cooker Hawaiian Chicken” – the one with the pineapple slices and mandarin segments that we had the other night – on steamed rice – and again, it was probably nicer the second time around, as the fruit flavours had mingled into everything a lot more! Another definite “keeper” – I’ll try to get the recipe for this, and the Chicken and Leek one, up on my “Recipes…” page as soon as possible. For dessert I had one of my Corella pears, and a small bowl of the excellent, Coles-brand, very low-calorie Rice Pudding. Today for our early lunch we had really delicious sandwiches, made with the very tasty whole-meal bread with the sesame seed crust, sliced corned beef, cheddar cheese, some rather nice red-pepper chutney, and our usual favourite butter alternative, basil-pesto hummus. At the cinema, we started out with the platter of four different dips – guacamole, beetroot, hummus, and tzatziki (I think that’s how you spell it!) and the ultra-nice fresh-baked-and-still-warm-from-the-oven Turkish Bread, and I had a Hot Chocolate, made with skinny milk. For our ultra-early dinner during the movie, I had a – I think it was called a “Gold Class Hot Dog”, or something – which was a normal sized (i.e. fairly large!) Saveloy sausage, with the thickest, toughest skin I’ve ever had to try to bite through – hey! Maybe it was Orc skin! you couldn’t tell what colour it was in the darkened cinema! (I ended up nearly wearing the damn thing, trying to bite through it!) It had a thin squiggle of rather nice mayo squirted across the top of it, and it came in a sweet-ish hot-dog roll. I could only eat half, there was so much of it (plus the fact that I was rather wary of this strangely sweet roll, and I’m not overly fond of saveloys anyway) For dessert I had a “pear and pecan cake” – it was about the size and shape of your ordinary or garden-variety cup-cake, with a pile of very yummy icing on the top – so lord knows what the scales are going to tell me tomorrow morning! Probably something along the lines of “don’t eat dinner at Gold Class cinemas, ever, ever again!” – but hey! Ya gotta live! 🙂 Oh, and we did have a cup of coffee with dinner, too – I had a long black, with my obligatory tiny jug of skinny milk to put in it – only it came in first, before the hot dog thingy – and of course, it had a delicious Lindt chocolate ball on the saucer, which I had to rescue from becoming melted! But as we normally have one chocolate each after dinner at night, we just went without when we got home and had our “proper” coffee! 😀

Weigh-in yesterday morning. Was really good! In fact, I couldn’t believe my eyes! I went from 64.8kg to 64.3kg! Wow! Amazing! And then…

Weigh-in this morning. Were the scales trying to tell me something? Were they warning me, perhaps? I was aghast! Crushed! Humiliated! (well, not humiliated, perhaps, but certainly downcast!) I went from my brilliant 64.3kg…. to (Gasp! Shock! Horror!) 64.9kg! And I hadn’t even sighted a piece of popcorn yet! So… you can see why I’m more than a trifle worried about the message the scales are going to give me tomorrow morning! If you never hear from me again, it’ll be because I’ve died of fright when I clamber onto the scales in the morning!

And that, gentle readers, is finally “it” from me for tonight – or should I say this morning! It’s a quarter after midnight… so I shall leave you all with the news that Flipper, Auric and Dapple are all well, I have no idea what we’ll be doing tomorrow – I mean today, but please do drop in again this evening to see what happened with my weight (I really dread to think!) and what we got up to for the rest of the day. Until then though, do try to bee good, remember that the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing, and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm and dry on these cold, blustery days… but above all, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

05.23 pm

Well, ’tis Sunday evening, and Xãnthe and Jemimah have had a rip-roarin’ day prancing around Pandaria! We did die a couple of times (I only died twice, but Julian/Jemimah died three times) and at least two of those deaths were due to “Player Stupidity”, like when we were trundling along in Julian/Jemimah’s very cute little motorbike, and I thought we were getting just a bit too close to the edge of a very, very high cliff! I half turned to Julian as I said with some small amount of alarm: “Careful not to get too close to the… Aaaarrrggghhh!!”, as we executed a lazily graceful swallow dive over the rocks – and plummeted to our doom! And there was silly me, thinking that surely he must have out-grown his propensity for doing “Demelzas*” by now! 😉 😀

However, we did go up two levels, we’re level 89 now, and only one more level away from flying! Well, actually, half a level, in my case, coz I’m just this much <-> away from half way through the level! 🙂 Once again, we’d just settled in for a good long slog through Pandaria, when we leveled the second time this afternoon, and got our little “exclamation mark” down on our Action Bar, “notifying” us that we were “needed elsewhere” – so what else could we do? (apologetic shrug to the Pandarians who were relying on us to save their collective bacons!) Remind me to Abandon all those old quests please, Julian! While we were dusting down this afternoon, I realised that (a) Xãnthe has picked up quite a lot of rather nice “Bind on Equip” cloth or leather gear that she can’t use (she wears Mail gear now) and which she’d like to see if she can sell on the Auction House, however, (b) Now that they’re Hearthed in Pandaria, it means two trips each way to get to, and back from, the Auction House, which because of the Portals in Pandaria (doesn’t that have a nice ring to it! 🙂 “Portals in Pandaria” – It almost sounds good enough to be a movie or a song title, or the title of a Best Selling novel!) …isn’t all that hard… but it is a hassle, especially when you’re in the middle of a complicated quest chain, so you can’t really spend the time to go back to Orgrimmar, but your bags are getting full, and your bank is full! It’s much more easier to just mail it all to a specialist “Banker” character, whom you’ve created expressly for such a purpose, right? Which brings me to (c) I have three other Horde characters on Quel’Dorei that I could use as a specialist Banker – two Blood Elves and a Goblin. One of the two Blood Elves is sort-of a “name place holder” for a Gnome Hunter, on August 30th, when the new Expansion goes live (i.e. I’ve created a temporary character, “holding” the name I want to use for my little Gnome Hunter – so that no-one else can sneak in ahead of me and grab the name – and no, I can’t tell you what that name is – yet! 😉 ) I’m debating with myself whether or not to keep the Goblin character, and all three of them are only about level 4 or 5 – so I guess I have some tough decisions ahead of me! I either compel Xãnthe to go all the way back to Orgrimmar to sell stuff on the Auction House all the time, even when it’s totally inconvenient, or use one of the three remaining Horde characters as a Banker, in which case whoever I choose will have to be all set up for it, with a lot of very big and expen$ive bags, money… and a nice, comfortable place to call home! *sigh* Decisions, decisions… Oh well, I’m sure it’ll be all right on the night, or whatever! 😉

Anyway, that was about all we did today – we slept in maybe even a bit later than we usually do on a Sunday, thanks to the fuddled state our brains were in last night with this miserable lurgi. This morning, Julian couldn’t find his mobile, and in the end he had to ring it, to find out where it was! And guess what! Somehow, in his lurgi-induced befuddlement, he’d managed to “swap” it for my phone! My phone was shivering on his desk, and his phone was happily keeping warm in my handbag! So anyway, I guess it’s now time for me to get to the good bits!

Food stuff. Last night we had the last of the left-over Lamb and Harissa Lasagne that we had in the freezer – and once again, it was absolutely delicious! Every time we’ve had that (and the three extra “left-over” meals that it gives us!) I find myself swallowing the last mouthful and wondering how long I should wait before asking Julian to make it again! For dessert I had one of my Corella pears, but I couldn’t have my usual, delicious Coles-brand, very low-calorie Rice Pudding, because there wasn’t any left – I had to rough it was a small tub of low-fat strawberry yoghurt! At lunch time today Julian discovered that he didn’t have anything suitable for my lunch! He could have smoked salmon, but I’m allergic to anything that lives and breathes in either fresh or salt water – so he had to go up the street early, and not only did he bring home things for lunch, but he also brought home some more of my very, very favourite Coles-brand, very low-calorie Rice Pudding, so that I’d have some for tonight! He’s very thoughtful like that… 🙂 Anyway, for lunch we had wraps, with the lovely basil-pesto hummus butter substitute, corned beef, cucumber, Halloumi cheese, and a nice little green capsicum that had been picked, brought in and washed, mere seconds before it went into the wrap! Now, you can’t get much fresher than that! 🙂 Dinner tonight of course will be an omelet – I’m not sure what’ll be in it – but at a guess, Halloumi cheese, capsicum, leeks or spring onion from the garden, and I believe, some of the diced up corned beef! I don’t think I’ve ever had corned beef in an omelet before, but it was very tasty in the wrap, so I expect that it’ll be just as nice in the omelet! I’ll let you know… And of course I’ll have one of my Corella pears and a small bowl of my delicious Coles-brand, very low-calorie Rice Pudding for dessert! 🙂 Oh, here’s a “P.S.” regarding the omelet for dinner tonight, with the corned beef in it… All I can say is – people should use corned beef in omelets much more often! It was terrific! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. Wasn’t the best, but it’s hardly surprising, I suppose – (Winter puts on a posh voice with a plummy accent) “We shall hope for better things on the morrow!” (and exits stage left with her nose in the air) The scales must have decided that they’d got it right the first time, yesterday, and then erred on the side of caution and got it wrong, because this morning they went very quickly and deliberately up a point, from 64.7kg to 64.8kg. Oh, the shame of it all! 😳 I hope it’ll start going down again soon

So there it is – “our Sunday” – and a good day it was too! Auric and Dapple are doing well (so far so good, regarding Auric’s floaties!) Flipper seems to be teaching herself new tricks all the time – she’s now experimenting with walking across the new lounge suite – up onto the first armchair, then across a small table to the first two-seater couch where Julian usually sits, then across a narrow gap to my arm-chair… but she hasn’t quite got the hang of getting from my arm-chair to the second two-seater couch, because the gap’s just a bit too wide for her old bones to make the jump – or so she thinks at the moment. Eventually she’ll work out that if she can jump up onto our bed, she can jump from my arm-chair to the couch. 🙂 Who knows what she’ll be doing tomorrow! 😉 And that, I’m afraid, is about it from me for this evening! Do call in again tomorrow night though, and find out if Flipper has worked out how to get from my chair to the two-seater couch, what my weight shot up to in the morning (oh pretty please! Don’t let it be more than half a kilo – in fact, please don’t let it be more than two points!) and what other excitement and adventures we had during the course of the day. But until then, please try extra hard to bee good, remember that time is nature’s way of keeping everything from happening at once, and don’t forget to always drive carefully, to keep warm and dry, no matter how cold and wet it is, and to look after yourselves… but most importantly, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

 *“doing a Demelza” – generally means inexplicably falling from a great height – usually fatally – Julian does it a lot…

03.54 pm

Well, here I am at last – once again, apologies for yesterday – we went over to Doncaster, even though Julian was feeling like death warmed up, and to be honest, I wasn’t feeling all that much better! But… we needed to get coffee, or else go without our favourite blend… and I think we’d both prefer to walk barefooted over an acre of broken glass, than to do without our favourite caffeine fix! The Dry Cleaning had to be picked up too, so moaning and groaning, we bundled ourselves into the car, and off we went… Oh, and in case any of you are wondering why I went along too, if I was really feeling so poorly… well, Julian must have been feeling bad enough that he felt he needed the moral support (he was a lot sicker than I was then) and he told me that it would “do me good to get out of the house!” – we could have lunch over at Doncaster, and I’d get to see the newly re-furbished Priceline shop (it’s been “under re-construction” for weeks, and I’ve been dying to see their new lay-out!) so, I tottered into the bathroom and put on some makeup, struggled into my torture devices shoes, and staggered out to the car. Well, we were out a hell of a lot longer than we’d thought we’d be, or had planned on, and by the time we got home, around 3.45 pm. – about thirty minutes before I should have started writing – I was so totally exhausted and dejected that I just couldn’t write. Normally the first thing we do when we get back from shopping trips like that one is have a cup of coffee, but yesterday afternoon we were both so completely spent that neither of us had enough energy to go into the kitchen and make two measly little cups of ruddy coffee! Talk about an acre of broken glass! Anyway, I was too bushed to write anything yesterday, and you know what?! You’re lucky to be getting this today, because I think you could now say that I have Officially contracted Julian’s dreaded lurgi! To quote my very favourite youngest daughter, when she gets ill, “I-feel-like-a-duck-that-is-dying!” 😦 But we must have done quite a bit of running around over at Doncaster – I know we went to lots of different places, and I was doing a lot of just “standing around”, which really aggravates my lower back – because this morning on the treadmill, I was getting pains in my lower spine! That has never happened on the treadmill before! Sure, the blisters on my feet hurt on the treadmill, my arms ache a lot on the treadmill, and even my arthriticky fingers holding the treadmill’s handles ache, but never my lower spine! That usually reserves itself for when I’m, ahh… free-walking – around a shopping centre with nothing to hang onto like I do on the treadmill, if you see what I mean… Oh well, we’ll see how it goes tomorrow – it’s probably all just part and parcel of this dreaded lurgi of Julian’s that I’ve caught, and I’ll be better tomorrow! 🙂 One thing though, while I was meandering around the new and improved Priceline (and it is very much a “new and improved” Priceline, too!) a nice young woman bounced up to me and said “Oh, I love your hair! It’s a fantastic colour and it looks fabulous! I’m a hairdresser, you see, and I keep an eye out for good hair!”, and with a friendly wave of her hand, she bounced off again! It left me smiling 🙂 So Josh, if you’re reading this, your work is still being noticed and admired,  wherever I go – and I won’t even charge you commission for being a walking advertisement for you! 😉 (but maybe you should get some business cards made up!)

Today has been pretty much a nothing sort of day – neither of us felt like taking Xãnthe and Jemimah out – our brains were too fuzzy for that, though we both played a bit of half-hearted WoW – and I got Phoenìx up another couple of levels, and I went and wrote down every single character in the Wynterthyme Account, and every single character on the Tinselfluff Account, and I’ve been putting them in a big chart. I’m not exactly sure why I’m doing this – I delete and create characters pretty much at the drop of a hat – but this time I really want to keep track of how many character each Account has – you’re allowed 50 characters per account – and the Wynterthyme account is going to need at least one or two character slots for when the new Expansion goes live, in August or September, I think – because for the first time you’ll be able to create Gnome Hunters, and I want to make a couple! 🙂 At the moment, the Wynterthyme Account has 44 characters in total, and the Tinselfluff Account has 19 characters, so unless I go completely overboard with character creation between now and when the Expansion goes live, I should have plenty of room to create a couple of Gnomish Hunters! 🙂

And that’s really about all that’s happened to us over the last couple of days, so I can now get on to all the “good bits”! 😉

Food stuff: yesterday we had lunch at the Shingle Inn in Doncaster – it seems to have changed hands, but the food is still as good as it was the last time we were there. I had my usual BLT on Sourdough, but instead of my usual two small éclair-type thingies, I had a chocolate and caramel slice – the same sort as Julian had when we ate at the Shingle Inn at The Glen the other day – and it was really, really delicious! Last night for dinner we had some more of the Three Island Beef sausages, with chips, our usual half a tomato, and peas! Peas! We haven’t had peas for (quite literally!) years! Too much starch/carbohydrate in them, or something… And for dessert, I had my usual – a Corella pear, and a small bowl of that really divine Coles-brand, very low-calorie, Rice Pudding. Today for lunch we had another sandwich made with the very tasty whole-meal bread, this time with real butter (instead of our usual butter substitute of basil-pesto hummus) some very nice sliced sandwich ham, tomato, and cheddar cheese – all very nice indeed! Tonight we’re having the last of the frozen left-over Lamb and Harissa Lasagne, as Julian’s feeling too debilitated to want to stand around messing up the stove, and cooking a proper meat and three veg. dinner – and the Lamb and Harissa Lasagne suits me just fine too, as I feel too debilitated to sit around eating a proper meat and three veg. dinner! And for dessert, I’ll have another of my Corella pears, but I won’t be able to have my usual Coles-brand, very low-calorie, scrumptious Rice Pudding, as I ate the last of it last night 😥 and I’ll have to rough it with a small tub of low-fat yoghurt instead! 😥 Hopefully we’ll be well enough to rectify that situation by tomorrow! 😉

Weigh-in yesterday morning. Well, it could have been worse, I suppose… I have been doing a lot of “eating out”, so to speak… I went from 64.6kg to 64.7kg. Up one point… and, after yesterday at Doncaster…

Weigh-in this morning. Was a bit surprising, for two reasons! The first being, of course, that I had the BLT on Sourdough, which was cut fairly large, actually, and then I had that yummy chocolate and caramel slice, which was just the way I like my slices – thick, and gooey, and rich! And then I had sausages and chips and peas for dinner! The second surprising thing this morning was that when I got on the scales, fully expecting to have gone up at least about half a kilo, they dithered around a bit, as though they couldn’t make up their mind about how harshly to judge my gluttony of the day before, and they finally settled on… 64.8kg. I was a bit surprised – I thought that I would have gone up more than just one point, and I was just about to hop off the scales, when all of a sudden, they suddenly changed their mind and went… back to 64.7kg, the same as yesterday! I clambered off, and then hopped back on again. This time they went straight to 64.7kg, with no dithering or shilly-shallying – so it was either this dreaded lurgi of Julian’s that melted the poundage off the big lunch that I’d eaten, or it was all the walking and standing about that wrecked my back yesterday that kept the poundage off! Hey! Maybe that’s the secret to weight loss, and I should do a bit more walking and standing about, and making my back hurt abominably! 😉 Anyway, this morning I was boring again, and went from 64.7kg to 64.7kg, so that’s good, isn’t it! 🙂

There’s really not all that much to tell you – Julian has managed to get us tickets to go and see the Warcraft movie next Tuesday at 3.30 pm at Century City Gold Class, which I’m really looking forward to, Flipper has been sulking down at the foot of the bed, instead of up between our heads, for reasons known only to her dear little self, 30% of the Fish House water was changed over this afternoon, and Auric and Dapple seem fine. Julian and I aren’t fine – but I’m quite sure we’ll both be all better by tomorrow – and that’s about it from me again for this evening! Do call in again tomorrow night to see what we’ve been up to, and whether or not we were well enough to have our usual Sunday in Draenor, or Azeroth, or wherever, if my weight went up or down or stayed the same (heaven forbid!) and what other adventures, if any, that we found ourselves embroiled in – but until then, please do try very hard to bee good, remember that freedom is not overcoming what you think stands in your way, it is understanding that what is in your way is part of the way… and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm and dry, especially in this ultra changeable weather… but above all… please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

05.36 pm

Julian has just taken off to drive my very favourite eldest daughter home, and I’m just sitting down to fill you all in of what’s been happening around this neck of the woods today. Julian spotted something this morning that neither of us have seen since we’ve been here (since last August!) unfortunately, I was on the treadmill at the time – and I think Flipper was probably still asleep on the bed, but Julian saw a very large, very fluffy, grey cat, prowling around our back deck! Imagine! the absolute gall of the creature! Parading around on our back deck, completely uninvited! Or maybe it was… Flipper has become a lot more “vocal” lately, sometimes almost to the point of yowling non-stop, especially when Julian’s not around! But Flipper is 22 years old – almost 23 years old now – very arthritic-y and crotchety, and very occasionally, seems to suffer from what could only be described as a mild form of feline Alzheimer’s – so I very much doubt that she’s “calling” for a mate! However, this large, strange, fluffy cat may have come to investigate what all the noise was about, or perhaps it just “misunderstood” Flipper’s message – if there even was a message in her caterwauling to be misunderstood! We don’t even know if it’s male, female, or neuter, so  next time – if there is a next time – I’ll ask Julian to call me before it disappears over the back fence, so that I can see what it looks like… I certainly hope that this large, strange, fluffy cat hasn’t come a-callin’ in response to Flipper’s rather loud “Where’s my Daddy!” yowls, every time he leaves the house!

Before my favourite eldest daughter arrived this morning, once again I went mooching through the Themes and Templates again, just picking things at random as I went through, looking for I don’t-really-know-what – and found this one! Unfortunately, it does have a Widget Sidebar, more’s the pity, but I decided to try it anyway. If anything, I think I like this background better than the other, much more “Art Deco” one that I used last night – what do you all think? This time I promise that I’ll try to just stick with this one for a few days at least, instead of rushing off and changing it at the very first opportunity!

As my very favourite eldest daughter was over today, we rather quickly repaired to the lounge room to watch “Orphan Black” which we only had one episode of, unfortunately, and then we started on a new show – one that’s apparently based on a comic book, called “Wynonna Earp” (yup, a direct descendant of the (in)famous Wyatt Earp!) We watched about four episodes, and I think it’ll be a show that the actors will settle into, as they go along. As with all shows of this ilk, it’s terribly far-fetched, and requires an enormous amount of “suspension of belief” – but hey! We watch shows like this for entertainment, don’t we, and not as “just another Reality show” (which I reckon are also pretty hard to take as being in any way shape or form “real”, or as being even vaguely “realistic”!) So, sit back, enjoy the ride, and prepare to be “Entertained”, with a capital “E” – and don’t look for realism, logic, or seriousness! 🙂 After lunch we watched two episodes of “Person of Interest” with Julian – it’s getting very close now to the “showdown” between the two machines, and the final dénouement, and I must say that I’ll be very sad to see the show finish – I’ve enjoyed it very much, despite it’s complete implausibility! 🙂 We should have another “Orphan Black” episode by next week – I hope we do, anyway – and of course we have tons of “Arrow”, “Flash”, and “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D” if we run out of the others! 😉

And seeing as that’s about all that happened here today, I can now get on to the “good bits”!

Food stuff. Last night we had a really dee-licious piece of Three Island fillet steak – Julian doesn’t think it’s as nice as the King Island steak, but I think it’s definitely on a par with it! I honestly don’t think we could have had a nicer piece of steak, last night! With it we had our usual half a tomato, chips, and some very nice Brussels sprouts, just as an “And now for something completely different” occasion. For dessert I had my usual – one of my Corella pears, and a small bowl full of my favourite Coles-brand, very low-calorie, delicious Rice Pudding. For lunch today I had a sandwich made with some very tasty whole-meal bread, our favourite butter substitute, the basil-pesto hummus, and some rather nice BBQ chicken sandwich chunks. Really nice… For dinner tonight, as Julian’s still feeling very seedy with this dreaded lurgi, we’re having the left-over chicken and leek “bake” that we had the other night, with steamed rice. And once again, I’ll have my usual Corella pear, and small bowl of delicious, Coles-brand, very low-calorie, Rice Pudding for dessert.

Weigh-in this morning. Could have been worse, I suppose – though it’ll probably be up even higher tomorrow! I went from 64.4kg to 64.6kg – up two points, though dare I say it? Still within the “margin of error”. Tomorrow it’ll be a bit higher, as I’ve really just “lazed the day away” in front of the television! But, “Say lar Vee”, as the French are wont to say! 😉

And that brings me to tomorrow, as the fur-fin kids are all well – Flipper is walking up and down the corridor complaining to anyone who’ll listen (let’s hope that the large, fluffy, grey cat is scoffing his dinner in his own kitchen or laundry, and can’t hear her over the noise of his chomping!) Julian changed out 30% of the Fish House water last night, and I gave Auric and Dapple their dinner before I came in here to write this evening, so all’s well in Winter’s household! And that’s about it from me again for this evening – as I said earlier, not much has happened here today for me to be able to tell you all about! Do drop in again tomorrow night though, to find out what my weight skyrocketed up to, whether I managed to actually log into WoW for a change, and what else has been going on chez nous! Until then though, please try really hard to bee good, remember that while not everything that is faced can be changed, nothing can be changed until it is faced, and don’t forget to always drive carefully, to keep warm and dry in this nasty cold weather, and to look after yourselves… but above all, please, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

04.20 pm

Here I am – sorry about yesterday, but Josh was a bit late due to finding a nail in one of his tyres, and dinner was a bit late due to a slight altercation over a recipe – and by the time we’d had dinner and what-not, it was too late for me to start writing! What do you think of this background, by the way? I’ve been absolutely itching to find a use for it ever since I found it! (it’s one of Word Press’s backgrounds) It’s so “Art Deco”, but I didn’t know how it would go with a great big solid header over it, and it was too busy and colourful to just write over – and then I thought… I could try making an invisible background! I don’t often make invisible backgrounds because – and I hate to have to admit this – but I occasionally hold my mouth the wrong way when I’m saving them, and they end up not working. This time, it did. I’m still not quite sure that it’s what I wanted, but I was starting to run out of time, so I’ve left it like this for now.

This morning I had to go up and have my blood pressure checked again – I’d been taken off one lot of blood pressure pills completely, and reduced to only a half-dosage on the other one, so this morning was more or less to see if I still had to stay on the half-dosage one, or come off that one too. Dr. B. has decided that I should keep on with the current regimen, at least for now. We were going to come home via The Glen, and have lunch there, but because Julian has a bad case of the dreaded lurgi, I decided that it’d probably be better if we just came straight home… but we didn’t do that, either! We stopped off at Vermont South Shopping Centre – ostensibly to check our PO Box there, but also because I wanted to see the very comprehensive and extensive Pet Barn that’s right next door to Aldi’s! I also wanted to see the Continental Delicatessen that’s in the Shopping Centre, which I did after lunch… Anyway, Julian was really feeling pretty rotten, and he thought that getting our lunch up there at the Shopping Centre would be easier than us coming home, whereupon he’d have to turn around and start making our lunches. He did have a point, so we looked around the Pet Barn, bought a couple of things, then we left the Pet Barn, and had our lunch at one of Vermont South’s little snack and coffee shoppes – more on that later! 😉 After we’d eaten, I sent Julian off to check the PO Box, whilst I had a look around the Continental Delicatessen, and it does look very good indeed! It looks like the sort of Continental Delicatessen that would probably stock such items as Motta Panettone, and Panforte, around Christmas time – I shall definitely be keeping my eye on them! 🙂 And after snooping around in the Delicatessen, we went back to the car and came home!

Actually, there’s not much to tell about today! I didn’t even log into WoW this morning, because although we didn’t have to leave until eleven-ish, I hate just getting into things and then having to get up and go, so I just played Solitaire, had a bit of a giggle over at Bored Panda, and that was about it! I haven’t been on WoW this afternoon, either, as I badly wanted to play around with that background what’sit, and that’s about all I’ve had time for! At the Pet Barn this morning, we bought some pretty blue sand for me to use in my bathroom incense bowl, and a packet of some sort of “kangaroo bits” – which, if you ask me, look far more like those ultra, ultra strong, Irish Moss throat lozenges, called “Fisherman’s Friend” than anything even vaguely “kangaroo-ish”! Erm… we actually bought them for Flipper, not for ourselves, even though Julian and I both know that she’ll most likely turn her nose up at them – well, she hasn’t liked any of the other “treats” we’ve bought for her in the past, so there’s really no reason to suppose that she’ll be any different about these [and if Flipper could speak “human”, this is what she’d call them – so imagine, if you will, an elderly, crotchety, and scratchy old voice, with a very broad cat brogue, saying:] “new-fangled kangaroo thingies!”

And so, now on to the “good” bits! 😉

Food stuff: Yesterday for lunch we had wraps, with ham, home-grown capsicum, Halloumi cheese, the last of the pickled mushrooms, and our very favourite butter substitute, basil-pesto hummus. I do wish there was a way of wrapping up wraps so that they weren’t quite so messy to eat – however, it was really delicious! For our late-ish dinner last night, we had what was erroneously called a chicken and leek “bake”, and this, it turned out, was the subject of the slight altercation between Julian and I. He’d wanted me to find him some recipes containing leeks, as we have quite a lot of leeks ready to be harvested in our veggie garden. I found him about six or seven, and printed them out for his perusal. Well, he went through them all, and chose this “Chicken and Leek Bake”, which on the surface, sounded easy enough, and which looked very nice – he even went as far as writing down all the ingredients, so that he could go off and get anything that we didn’t have in the pantry. Just before he was going to start cooking, he actually read the recipe, and decided that it wasn’t what it said it was! A “bake”! The only time the oven was even indicated was to put this concoction under the griller, to brown it on top! The kilo of chicken was supposed to be cut into cubes, cooked in a frying pan, along with the sliced leeks, on the stove for five minutes (we both looked more than a little askance at this – five minutes? To cook – or even just lightly brown – a whole kilo of chicken?? Plus four leeks?? Can you really set your stove top to fry things at 1 million °C?!) Then you were supposed to use another stove-top utensil – a saucepan this time, and make some white sauce, so which you added half of the grated cheese the recipe called for. I said “let me read the recipe” – I read it, and it was quite wrong in its instructions, and I told Julian exactly how it needed to be cooked, and why. No, he didn’t want to do that, and it wasn’t a “bake”, it was a lot of hard work. So – we had a few words – and then Josh arrived, and while he was doing my hair, Julian made the Chicken and Leek “Bake” anyway – and it was actually very, very nice! Yes, it’s a bit messy and “utensil-heavy” in its construction; you do have to cook the chicken quite a bit longer than the recipe says, you do need to use more than just four leeks, especially home-grown ones, as they tend to be smaller, and you do need to make more white sauce (or to be more technically correct, “cheese sauce”!) than the recipe specifies, and it’s definitely not a “bake”, per se. However, you could certainly make this a day ahead, keeping it (covered, of course) in the fridge for dinner the next night, then pop it in the oven, and yes, bake it, in order to heat it through, and to brown the top nicely – bugger the use of the specified griller, it doesn’t need one! The oven will brown the top very nicely, thank-you-very-much! If we do make this again, I’ll re-write the recipe (“next time – my way!”) the way it should have been written in the first place, and I’ll add more leeks and more white (cheese) sauce to it. We had it with steamed rice, and it really was lovely! For dessert, I had my usual – one of my Corella pears, and a small bowl of the scrumptious Coles-brand, very low-calorie, Rice Pudding. Today for lunch I had a very nice little square of (supposedly) “home-made” spanakopita, with a rather limp and a little oily-looking side salad (which, as usual, I didn’t eat! I much prefer my salads naked!) The spanakopita was nice enough that it may very well have actually been “home-made”! 🙂 I also had a very nice little slice of some sort of “Jaffa” cake – it was orange cake on the bottom – complete with small pieces of orange rind – and a layer of chocolate cake on top – which had very much appreciated tiny chunks of dark chocolate in it – and there was a very nice butter-cream frosting on top. The whole thing was quite small, really – about 2.5″ (6.3cm) long, about 1″ (2.5cm) wide, and about 3″ (7.6cm) high (it sounds an awful lot bigger when you say it in centimeters! I think I much prefer inches…) Tonight we’re having steak for dinner, with chips, our usual half a tomato, and probably some steamed green beans. For dessert, I’ll have my usual Corella pear, and a small bowl of the really yummy Coles-brand, very low-calorie, Rice Pudding!

Weigh-in yesterday morning. What was I saying the other day about my weight fluctuations not being “boring”? Well, yesterday they were! I went from 64.5kg to 64.5kg! I stayed the same! *sigh* as soon as I say something about my weight, my body has to go and make a liar out of me! Sorry about that one, chief(s)! I suppose you could call that weigh-in as being “within the margin of error”, n’est ce pas? 😉

Weigh-in this morning. Well, still within that “margin of error”, but at least there was a small bit of movement at the station – I went from 6.5kg to 64.4kg – down one point! Never mind though – it’ll definitely be up again tomorrow! Oh well… at least it’s starting to get “non-boring” again 🙂

Julian changed out another 30% of the water in the Fish House again last night! The Ammonia count had been nicely on the way down, but last night it was back up again, and Auric was back to his old trick of floating up and sitting looking harassed on the surface… I told him to stop it immediately, but as usual, he took absolutely no notice of me! Hopefully tonight will be a bit better! I do worry about that little fish… Tomorrow my very favourite eldest daughter will be over, which will be good fun – and although I won’t get a chance to do anything with Phoenìx, we’ll be able to catch up on some of our favourite shows, which quite frankly, is much more enjoyable! 😉 And that’s pretty much “it” from me again for tonight! Feel free to drop in again tomorrow night, and find out what malicious tricks my body decided to play on me, weight-wise, and what my very favourite eldest daughter and I watched on television – whether Auric had another attack of the floaties last night, and whether Flipper deigned to consume any of her new “kangaroo bits” treats! Until then though, do try hard to bee good, do remember that “stressed” spelled backwards is “desserts”, and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm and dry in this very changeable weather… but most importantly, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

04.07 pm

Well, it looks like I’m remarkably early today, even though I’ve been quite busy – for me on a Public Holiday, anyway! 😉 Yes indeedy, I’ve been very industrious – as has Julian – I played WoW nearly all morning, and took Phoenìx up another two levels, to level 54 – only another four levels before I’ll be able to fly! 🙂 I seem to be racing up the levels, too, with all this Heirloom gear I’m wearing, and it’s a bit of a mixed blessing, to tell you the truth – yes, I’m racing up levels, which is good! I love it that I’m progressing so quickly! On the other hand, I no sooner move into a quest zone and pick up half a dozen quests – and zap! I’m “gently prodded along” to the next quest zone! First, I was prompted to go to the Badlands, and that was OK, I’m reasonably familiar with the area and the questing is fairly straightforward there – but I’d only just started on one particular, very sad quest, when – zap! I had to head off to Searing Gorge! So, off I went to Searing Gorge, completed maybe three quests? And  zap! Again! I was sent off to the Burning Steppes! Once more, I settled in, completed the first quest chain, picked up the next lot of quests and – you guessed it! Zap! Report to [unpronounceable] in the Swamp of Sorrows! Rolling my eyes somewhat, I Abandoned all the new quests I’d just picked up, and set off for the Swamp of Horrors Sorrows – which is only the other side of the country – but never mind that, it was a good excuse to pick up some new Flight Points along the way, wasn’t it! 😉 Well, the Swamp of Sorrows was pretty much a Swamp of Horrors for me! For some reason the place was literally crawling with other players (Julian said it was because it was Sunday night over in the States, which I suppose could have had something to do with the fact that it was sooo busy that the game was almost unplayable, here in Australia!) It was so bad, in fact, that I considered giving up and logging out several times, but I’d just taken a very rare-and-hard-to-get-these-days “water breathing potion”, and I didn’t want to waste it (true! I wasn’t being facetious, I really didn’t want to waste it!) so I sat there under the water and twiddled my thumbs while I waited, and waited, and waited, for the mobs I had to kill to re-spawn. The thing is, being here in Australia, there’s a bit of a lag between what you do here, and when it actually registers in the game over there – so if you’re about to shoot something, or pick something up, or whatever, you can get there three seconds or more before your counterpart in the States does, and you can shoot something, or pick something up, while your counterpart over in the States is still running towards whatever it is that you’re doing – and your shooting or picking up action has actually finished – you have the – “whatever-it-was” – in your hot little paw, so to speak… and as you’re standing there gloating, because you have the “whatever-it-was”, and there’s your counterpart, starting to go through all the same motions that you’ve just finished… and they walk away with the “whatever-it-was”, not you! That’s how bad that little time lag is, and it’s a constant. Don’t bother trying to get something first, coz it ain’t never gunna happen! It makes me sooo mad! 👿 Really, about the only thing you can do is go off and pick herbs, or mine nodes, or kill things and skin them (depending on your Professions!) until everyone else has what they wanted, everything they killed in order to get what they wanted has nicely re-spawned, and you can finally have a go at completing your quest. However, as many people will attest – I’m not best known for my patience, and I’m afraid that my tether is at the end of elsewhere – every day, and every evening here seems to be either Sunday evening, or the middle of the weekend, over in the States! I shall have another bit of a play-around on Nagrand, which is based in Sydney, and see if the situation there is a little better – in a way, I hope not – because I do not want any justification for moving everything – lock, stock, and barrel – from Quel’Dorei to Nagrand! Anyway, I managed as best I could in the Swamp of Sorrows – but when I dinged level 54, I saw the dreaded little “exclamation mark” down on my Action Bar… and yup, sure enough, I’m being zapped out of the quest zone again, and being sent off to The Blasted Lands! I hate The Blasted Lands! Dunno why – I just don’t like it there… Oh well, if things continue the way they have been lately, I’ll be moved on pretty smartly…

I finished playing WoW early today, because I’ve been promising myself that I’d get Julian to find me an empty box, and that I’d go through my bathroom, packing up things that I didn’t want to throw out, but that I hardly ever used, and store them up on the shelf in the walk-in-wardrobe. Julian found me the box, but I was having a cup of coffee – I’d start on the bathroom as soon as I’d finished my coffee, I told myself… However, while I was drinking my coffee, I accidentally went to see if Word Press had any new Themes/Templates available – they didn’t, but I spotted this one (Winter points at the screen) which I’d been using for quite some time, up until a couple of days ago, when I went on my latest little Template constructing “binge”. Sipping my almost too hot to drink coffee, I idly wondered why I’d stopped using this particular Template, so I opened it up as a “Preview” – just to see why I didn’t like it any more, you see – but I did – like it, that is – though I didn’t like the colours I’d chosen. Still sipping my coffee, I tried a few other colours… and then I tried making another Header, only it didn’t look as good as I knew it could – by now I’d finished my coffee, but the Header still needed work… “I’ll go and do the bathroom as soon as I’ve finished this!”, I blithely informed Julian “I have plenty of time to do the bathroom, and start my blog on time!” And so I did. I finished the Header (I still think I can find better colours though! Is there anybody out there, with a suggestion for a good colour to use?) I sifted through three drawers in the bathroom (mutter-mutter damn drawers! I wish I’d stuck with the cupboards that I originally wanted!) and as you can all see, from the time stamp on the top of this “episode”, I still managed to start writing – if anything, a little earlier than I normally do! 😎

And having said all of that, it’s now time for the good bits! 🙂

Food stuff: Last night being Sunday night, we had our traditional Omelet Night – these ones had bacon, onion,  Halloumi cheese, little mini-red capsicums, and semi-dried basil flakes (the sort that I used to have in my Optifast soups!) My omelet really was absolutely delicious, and once again, I had to tell Julian that it had to be “one of the best he’d ever made”! For dessert, seeing that he’d gone out on a “mercy dash” for me, to get me more Corella pears, and some more of the utterly fantastic Coles-brand, very low-calorie, yummy Rice Pudding, I was able to have my usual dessert… Today Julian had to go out again – this time to Doncaster for coffee, Dry Cleaning, and a few other things, and he brought a very nice – but very naughty – lunch home with him, so for lunch I had something that I haven’t had for eons! (well, it felt like eons when I saw, and tasted it, anyway!) I had a Ham Danish (drool!) and another of my ultra-favourite Baker’s Delight fruit and white chocolate scones! Expect my weight to sky-rocket tomorrow, everyone! 😉  For dinner tonight we’re having the next “parcels” of the left-over Lamb and Harissa Lasagne, which Julian’s had thawing in the fridge over night, but after dinner tonight, I think there might only be one more meal left from the delicious Lamb and Harissa left-overs 😦 For dessert I’ll have my usual – one of my Corella pears, and a small bowl of that Coles-brand, very low-calorie, delicious Rice Pudding that I like so much!

Weigh-in this morning. Regular as clockwork – well almost – my weight’s now going up again… I went up another two points – from 64.3kg to 64.5kg – today, but as I said last night, that seems to be what my body likes to do – it goes up a bit, and it comes down a bit – up quite a lot, and then down quite a lot – the only thing is, we have no idea why it happens, or even when it’s most likely to happen! Still, at least it’s not boring! 😉

Last night Auric went through another of his weird little “I’m gunna sit around on the top of the water tonight – why? Because I can! 😛 ” so Julian changed 30% of the water out this morning, and we’ll see what happens with cheeky little Auric tonight! And this of course brings me to tomorrow! Now, my very favourite eldest daughter won’t be over tomorrow, because their new washing machine is being delivered, but a very reliable source has given me to understand that we will be seeing her on Wednesday instead, and we’ll be able to catch up on all our favourite TV shows again (bother “The 100” being on hiatus at the moment! I wanna know what happens next!) Josh will be over tomorrow, and Julian and I are hoping to get a little WoW-ing in seeing as we didn’t get a chance to do anything today – besides, the Dungeon we haven’t finished yet re-sets on Tuesday, so I’ll cross my fingers for that! We’re not really sure, but we think that the new Warcraft movie opens in Australia tomorrow, so with luck we may be able to get tickets – I want to get them as soon as we can, actually – I wonder if it’ll be shown in Gold Class?! I sure hope so! 🙂 And there you go! Once again, that’s about it from me for this evening! However, drop in again tomorrow night, to find out how much my weight went up, after I ate the Ham Danish and the fruit and white chocolate scone for lunch today, if we managed to score tickets for the Warcraft movie, and if I managed to find a good recipe for the leeks which Julian harvested this afternoon, whilst preparing the veggie bed for the new winter crop that we hope to be planting soon! But until then, please do your very best to bee good, remember that you have to do your own growing, no matter how tall your grandfather was, and don’t forget to keep warm and dry in this changeable winter weather, to look after yourselves, and to always drive carefully… but most importantly, please, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

05.05 pm

Yes, it’s yet another Template – I can’t remember the name of it, off the top of my head, but it is one that I bought some time ago, and I have used it before… quite a bit, actually… and now I’m using it again – I hope you all like it! Well, today was our WoW day, and so we did – only we didn’t take  Xãnthe and Jemimah out – we may do that tomorrow, as tomorrow’s a Public Holiday – but today we took Wynterthyme and Mouselet out to do the “short” Dungeon that we’d handled so hopelessly and atrociously with Xãnthe and Jemimah the other day. Needless to say, Mouselet and Wynterthyme sailed effortlessly through it – pretty much one-shotting anything that even turned to watch us, skipping and laughing our way through the scenario! However, it was not a “short” Dungeon, or whatever it was, as that one Dungeon led to another one, which led to another, after another, and so forth – seemingly ad infinitum! Mouselet had already done a bit of a run through most of it on his own, to see how difficult it was – but we got to bits that he hadn’t done, and eventually we got ourselves into a part that we couldn’t get through on our own – we had to remove three pieces of armor plating from the back of a very angry dragon – and it goes something like this: jump on said dragon, and start attacking him. He spawns several (three? more? dunno…) snaky-arm-tentacle-things. Dragon then sends in nasty little blood globules to attack you. Kill at least three of the snaky-arm-tentacle-things. When the nasty little blood globules stack up to nine (yes, you have to count them!) another mob spawns, which attacks the globules (supposedly!) After it’s killed the globules for you, you then have to lure it to where one of the plates that you have to retrieve is, and kill it. Apparently it then explodes, blasting off most of the armor plate that you need, leaving it only attached by a tendon, which you then attack, to collect your plate. Meanwhile, the dragon isn’t just flying calmly along, ohhh no! He’s ducking and weaving through the air, and rolling over (as dragons do, dontcha know!) and that’s where we died – we fell off him when he rolled left! However you are notified that the dragon is going to roll, and which way he’s going to roll – if you have time to read – or even notice – the words suddenly popping up in the middle of your screen! Apparently you’re supposed to drop everything and run around screaming – no! you’re supposed to get into one of the holes left behind by one of the snaky-arm-tentacle-things that you’d killed earlier, so that you can hang on while he’s rolling around in a fit of pique – but we didn’t know that at the time, so we both plummeted to our death! So, yeah… we think we’ll leave this one for a bit, while we have second and third thinks about it! Julian, as “Sir Mouselet the Brave”, is going to have a shot at it on his own (perhaps we should make that “Sir Mouselet the Brave-But-Foolish”!) and then depending on how he goes, we’ll do it again – only properly, this time (we hope!) By the time we’d done all of the other Dungeons attached to the first one (which we thought was going to be nice and short!) and talked about this “rolling dragon” part, and Julian had done all his research, it was lunch time – so we took a brief break. After lunch, we came back to try to finish off one of the Dungeons we’d started, but never finished, several weeks ago – Ahn’Qiraj, remember me telling you about that one? There’s lots of things you have to pick up in that particular Dungeon, and it’s really not possible to do it all on the one run, so to speak, because unlike ordinary questing, where any Specials or Elites that you kill usually re-spawn in a fairly short length of time – but in a Dungeon, what you kill stays killed – only the body disappears to protect the unwary! Anyway, the point I’m making is that you kill mobs to get the items you need – and in a Dungeon, once you’ve killed all the mobs, but haven’t collected everything you need to complete a particular quest, you have to come back later – usually in a week, when the Dungeon has “re-set” itself – and then, off you go and fight your way through it, all over again – hoping that this time you’ll pick up the missing items that you didn’t get last time. Well, we did get a few more bits this time round, but we’re both still missing a few things, so it’s back again we’ll go – possibly on Tuesday, if we’re lucky…

So we finished playing a little earlier than usual, and I thought it’d be a good idea to start writing a bit earlier too – but then I remembered this Template, and wondered why it was that I’d left it, and I got to playing around with it a bit, and… well, I didn’t start writing quite as soon as I’d intended… but I’ve decided that I still like the Template, so I’ll use it until I forget what it was about it that I liked… I suppose… 😉

And now on to the good bits! 🙂

Food stuff: Last night we had the Beef, Garlic and Herb sausages for dinner, and they were very nice indeed! With them we had chips, Brussels sprouts, and our usual half a tomato, and for dessert, I had my usual Corella pear, and a small bowl of the delicious Coles-brand, very low-calorie Rice Custard. I’ll just add here that (a) it was my last Corella pear, and (b) it turned out that it was also the last of my lovely Coles-brand, very low-calorie Rice Custard! However Julian, as always, came to the rescue this afternoon while I was fiddling with the Template, and made a “mercy-dash” up to the shops to get more of both those items, and if I’m having a complete and full meal tonight, it’s all thanks to Julian – so, “thank you very much, sweetheart!” 🙂 For lunch today we had a slightly different sort of sandwich – made once again with the very tasty sesame and poppy-seed crusted whole grain bread, with basil-pesto hummus instead of butter, sandwich chicken chunks, Swiss cheese, and tomato. Very, very nice – but if I may say so – almost as messy to eat as a wrap, but it went down a real treat! 🙂 Tonight, of course, is “Omelet” night, which I’m really looking forward to, and for dessert, once again I’ll be able to have my Corella pear, and my small bowl of my favourite Coles-brand, very low-calorie, delicious Rice Pudding! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. Wasn’t too bad, considering that on Saturdays and Sundays I only walk one kilometer on the treadmill, instead of my usual one and a half kilometers (I usually walk by “time” rather than “distance”, and as it takes me just short of 30 minutes to walk 1.5 km, that’s how far I walk these days!) Anyway, this morning I went from 64.1kg to 64.3kg – up two points – almost within the “margin of error”, one could say! I dare say that I’ll be up a little tomorrow, too – but then knowing my body, it’s just as likely to be up half a kilo, or down another couple of points – so, who knows!

And that almost brings me to tomorrow – Julian tested the water in the Fish House yesterday, and the Ammonia is the lowest it’s been since Auric and Dapple came inside to become “Indoor Fishies” after their tough life outside in the cold, and the heat, and the yukky water they lived in. Although Auric did start off with some very serious flotation problems in the beginning, he seems to have mostly overcome them – especially now that the Ammonia level in the water is dropping (it means that the tame bacteria in the filter pump are starting to do their job!) However both Auric and Dapple come up to the top of the tank, every evening, no matter what they’ve eaten or not eaten, and always around 09.00 pm – and they just mooch around there – it seems to have become part of their daily routine – so although we keep a close eye on Auric, we’re becoming used to seeing up there, gulping air, going down and blowing bubbles, and then swimming up to bite the bubbles, and then do the whole thing all over again – usually for about fifteen minutes or so!

Tomorrow being the Queen’s Birthday Public Holiday (Happy Birthday, Liz!) we’ll have another Sunday – sleep in a bit, and spend a fair amount of time WoW-ing! If the weather is good enough, we may head off to a Nursery to talk to someone about Fig Trees, or to Hardly Normal to look for side tables – but whatever we do it’ll be leisurely and fun! And that’s really about it from me again for this evening – but do call in again tomorrow night, to find out what my weight did, whether we got any more Dungeons done, of if we played with Xãnthe and Jemimah, to get them a little closer to Draenor, and what other adventures we got up to! Until then though, do try to bee good, remember that when someone tells you, “you can’t” they really mean, “I can’t”, and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm and dry, because it may be sunny, but that doesn’t mean it’s not cold – but above all, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

04.35 pm

Here I am – just about starting on time for a change, after a most productive day! 🙂 I even managed to get Phoenìx up another two levels, to level 51 this afternoon, so how’s that for productive, eh? 😉  This morning I had a look at another couple of Themes/Templates that had been bugging me – remember the one I was telling you about that was so nice, etc., etc., but that I couldn’t get it to display the Header? Yeah, well I did manage to get it to display the Header – more by good luck and accident, than anything else, really! I was fiddling around with backgrounds and colours – vainly trying to find an acceptable way for the Template to display its own icky old text header, as apparently it had decided that it simply wasn’t going to have a bar of mine! Anyway, I got all muddied up in backgrounds that wouldn’t tile properly, colours, and lines where there shouldn’t have been any. It seems that the Template felt that there was a pressing need to underline its own “text header”, and I kept trying to get rid of it, as I didn’t want the header to be underlined, so we ended up having a bit of an argument over that, until I set it back to the “default” background (i.e. plain, boring old white!) Lo and behold, as soon as I’d done that, suddenly, there was my Header, in all its colourful glory! I changed the background colour. My Header vanished. I re-set the default, and bingo – my Header re-appeared! I felt a bit like that part in Winnie the Pooh, where it’s Eeyore’s Birthday, and Pooh has a jar of honey for him, which of course he has to test, to make sure there’s honey all the way down to the bottom of the jar. He ends up eating the whole lot, so all he has left is the empty jar! Meanwhile, back at Piglet’s house, Piglet has a nice blue balloon for Eeyore. He sets out for Eeyore’s place, hurrying anxiously lest he be late. He ends up running, but tripping over and bursting his nice blue balloon that was to be Eeyore’s Birthday present. Long story short, as Pooh and Piglet set out for home after Eeyore’s Birthday Bash, we see Eeyore sitting there with his empty jar and his broken balloon, happily putting the piece of burst balloon into the empty jar, and taking it out again… over and over. It can get quite mesmerising, really – setting the background back to default, and watching my Header appear, then changing the colour of the background, and watching my Header suddenly disappear again… “They” say that “small things amuse small minds”, so I’m not sure how tiny my mind must be, because I must have sat there doing that about half a dozen times! I’d almost got to the point where I was thinking “Damn it all! I like the Template – I’ll just have to put up with everything except the text being [censored] white!” Almost! And then I noticed that the right hand side of the screen looked… a bit… grubby? Well, I did a bit more fiddling around with colours and so forth, and found that the right hand side of the screen wasn’t grubby at all, it was the ruddy Template that had a built-in gradient applied across it, making everything look darker on the right hand side! It was at this point that I threw my hands up in the air in disgust, declared loudly to an empty room that I’d had it up to “here” with this Template, and that I didn’t like it very much, after all! Then I metaphorically stomped off to play WoW!

So, I played WoW for a bit, broke for lunch, then went back to WoW again where I’m trying to organise upgrades for my two remaining Heirloom items, as they’ll stop working at level 60 – only another eight levels to go, now! 🙂  However, I’m very pleased to have managed to get Phoenìx up to level 51 today – at this rate, she may even beat Xãnthe and Jemimah to Draenor, though I doubt it! 😉 Then I came back from WoW to start writing, and decided that there was w-a-y too much blue on this Template, so I quickly (?!) set about choosing new colours, and re-making the Header in the new colours! What do you all think of this new look?

Julian had to go off looking for a new washing machine this afternoon, to replace the – now twelve years old – one that we’d left in our old house in Glen Waverley when my very favourite eldest daughter and her partner moved in – yesterday, after about twelve years of sterling service, it sprang a leak, necessitating a great deal of mopping up, and a replacement machine organised… It will be delivered some time next Tuesday, which means that I’ll not be seeing my very favourite eldest daughter on Tuesday as I usually do, as she’s going to have to be home to take delivery of the new washing machine.

And now, on to the good bits! 😉

Food stuff: Last night we tried out a new recipe – the “Crock-Pot Hawaiian Chicken” that I was telling you about yesterday, remember? Well, it was excellent! It could have perhaps had just a little more lemon juice in it, but the chicken was tender and succulent, and the tinned fruit – pineapple slices and mandarin segments – didn’t make it sweet at all! It’s a definite keeper – Julian is going to laminate the recipe that I printed out, and I’ll transcribe it for you and put in on my “Recipes…” page for all of you, so that you can try it. It’s really terribly easy – the type of “no mess, no fuss” recipe that you can set up in your slow cooker in the morning before you leave for work, and when you get home, all you have to do is cook the rice! So that’s what we had for dinner last night, and there was enough left over to cool, and store in the freezer for a second meal some time next week! 🙂 For dessert I had another Corella pear (oh dear – I only have one left for tonight!) and yet another small bowl of the delicious Coles-brand, very low-calorie Rice Pudding. For lunch today we had wraps – as usual, terribly messy to eat, but scrumptious! The wrap consisted of ham, one of our own home-grown green capsicums, Halloumi cheese, pickled button mushrooms, sun-dried tomato, and our usual butter substitute of basil-pesto hummus. As I said – very “Yumm!” but also very messy… Tonight we’re having Beef, Garlic and Herb sausages, probably with chips (mashed potato would be nice for a change though!) Brussels sprouts, and our usual half a tomato – and I’ll be reprising last night’s dessert of the last of my Corella pears, and a very small bowl of the decidedly yummy Coles-brand, very low-calorie Rice Pudding.

Weigh-in this morning. Once again, better! Surprisingly so! I went from 64.5kg to 64.1kg – down four points today – but I don’t expect that to last – no doubt I’ll be up again like a yo-yo tomorrow! Oh well, at least weight loss and weight maintenance aren’t boring around here! It’s always a surprise in the morning to see what I’ve either gone up to, or come down to – it’s not often even boringly the same for more than a couple of days at a time! I wonder what I’ll be up to tomorrow morning… 😉

Which finally brings me to tomorrow – and for once I can’t say that I have no idea what’s happening, because it’s our WoW-ing Day, or should I perhaps say our “Pandemonium in Pandaria” Day! I’d like to see if we can get ourselves to the “Shrine of Seven Stars” – a very handy Inn in “central Pandaria”, as it has Portals to all the main cities of Azeroth and beyond, so it’s a very good place to Hearth oneself! The trouble is, it’s a bit hard  – not to mention dangerous – to get to, if you haven’t learnt to fly in Pandaria yet – and we haven’t! It’s also exorbitantly expensive to learn to fly in Pandaria! Oh well, we shall see – I have a vague feeling that once Wynterthyme had learnt to fly in Pandaria, when Arisnoë and Sylvänas got there, they found that they were able to fly too – but I might be misremembering! Anyway, whatever happens in Pandaria tomorrow, it’s sure to be entertaining, and fun! And once again, gentle readers, that’s about it from me or this evening! However, do call in again tomorrow night to find out which way my weight decided to bounce, how Auric and Dapple are getting on – Julian tested their tank water earlier, and the Ammonia level is starting to get nicely low, which is excellent news! 🙂 I’ll also be able to let you all know how Xãnthe and Jemimah fared in Pandaria, and whether they can fly there yet (from memory you can’t fly in Pandaria until you’re level 90 – just when you’re leaving for Draenor, which is a real shame!) But until tomorrow night, please do your best to bee good, don’t forget that information is not knowledge, and remember to always drive carefully, to look after yourselves, and to keep warm and dry on these wintry days… but most importantly, please remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂