09.43 am

I am so angry with Word Press that it almost defies belief – if I could find another semi-decent blog host I’d be outta here so fast they wouldn’t even be able to see my dust! When I wrote my blog on Monday night, everything was fine – no problems – all hunky-dory – but last night, when I went to write, I found that I couldn’t connect to Word Press – the page kept timing out – so I went and did something else for a while, thinking that everything would be back to normal in a few minutes. Half an hour later, nope, same problem. However, Julian could get to the site – and to my very favourite eldest daughter’s blog, and anywhere else to do with Word Press – it was only me that couldn’t – very strange! At first he thought it must be a “dns” problem (dns = domain name services – Google it, if you really want to know, but I’m too angry to fossick around for the information at the moment!) which does happen – though rarely – and is eminently fixable, but in this case, “fixing” it didn’t do anything – because the problem wasn’t the dns, it was [HEAVILY CENSORED] Word Press! We don’t know what they’ve done (their “Visit Counter” hasn’t been working properly for months!) but I can’t get to any part of Word Press at all, with anything other than Microsoft’s [censored] Explorer – which many years ago I vowed never to use again (it’s a long story for another time – maybe!) so not only have Word Press done something to prevent me from accessing my blog with any other browser than Microsoft’s Explorer, they’ve also made me break a vow, which is something that I will never forgive them for – ever!

Anyway, I just wanted to let you all know that yes, I am still alive, and no, I haven’t abandoned my nightly ramblings. We’re still working on the problem – I doubt that I’m the only blogger at Word Press suffering their latest debacle – and in the meantime, if any of you out there in Reader Land know of a decent blog host that has semi-decent themes and templates, or will let you design your own, please, please, let me know!

I’ll post this now, but will be back later this afternoon to fill you in on yesterday and today’s events! ciao for now – moi! 🙂

04.34 pm

This is just crazy! I’ve just tried to come back to add more to today’s writing, and once again, Word Press is being – is continuing to be – unresponsive and uncommunicative! It’s taking up to 45 seconds to locate my cursor, and over one minute to load the [censored] page! NOT good enough, Word Press! Today’s the last straw – I don’t really like Tumblr, but I went back to have another look at it this afternoon… and maybe… just maybe, it’ll be workable. It has free Themes as well as Premium ones (I wonder if they’re as expensive as the Premium Themes from Word Press!) When I do change my blog site (because now it’s not a matter of “if” I change my blog host, it’s a matter of “when” I move away from Word Press – I’m just fed up with them!) I’ll let you all know, OK?

Now, what’s been going on around here… yesterday, Tuesday, my very favourite eldest daughter came over, reasonably early, and we fairly quickly retired to the lounge room where we watched one episode of “Supergirl”, one episode of “The 100” (oooer! It’s getting really gruesome at the moment! The “bad” AI has taken over all the adults, another couple of favourites have been killed, and it’s not looking good for our young “tribe” of feisty adolescents!) another episode of “Orphan Black” (which is really an awesome show!) We had lunch, and then watched “Flash” and “Arrow” until Neale arrived to take Lee home – and by then it was dinner time, and that’s when I found out that Word Press had gone to live in la-la land and I got a little… upset with it.

After dinner (and television until 09.00 pm) Julian and I came back here to the Den, determined to start working really hard to get our Draenor Flying ability – and really, we’re doing terribly well! (well, so far, anyway!) There are five parts to it – the first is “Explore Draenor”, where you have to visit a certain number of places in each zone – we have completed this. Second, “Loremaster of Draenor”, in which you have to complete a series of quests in five of the seven zones (well, there’s Ashran as well, but I don’t think it’s a zone, per se.) – we’ve completed that, too! The third task is called “Securing Draenor”, in which you have to complete twelve “Assaults” on Enemy Strongholds around Draenor – we finished that off this morning 🙂 The fourth, which we’re two-thirds of the way through at time of writing, is called “Master Treasure Hunter”, which is in three parts: “Treasure Hunter”, where you have to find ten Treasures from around Draenor, except for the Tanaan Jungle (any Treasures will do – there are no “named” Treasures that you have to get in any of these three quests) “Expert Treasure Hunter”, where you have to find another 40 Treasures around Draenor (except the Tanaan Jungle) to make a total of 50 Treasures, because the first ten Treasures do count towards the total – they’re the “two-thirds” that we’ve completed. The last section is called “Master Treasure Hunter”, which is to collect 100 Treasures from around Draenor (once again, except for the Tanaan Jungle!) and again, the fifty Treasures that we’ve already collected count towards the total, so we only have another 50 to find! The fifth and final part of the grind to get our flying licences in Draenor, is called “Tanaan Diplomat”, and is the part that involves “Reputation”. You have to reach “Revered” status with three Tanaan Factions: The Saberstalkers, Order of the Awakened, and Hand of the Prophet… and as you all know, I finally reached “Exalted” with Hand of the Prophet, the day before yesterday, and was able to upgrade my Trading Post to level 3. Getting my Trading Post to level 3 means that I get an extra 20% to any Reputation that I earn in Draenor, and as I was already “Exalted” with Hand of the Prophet, that was one down, two to go (“Exalted” comes after “Revered”, you see 🙂 ) So we also worked on our Reputations today – so far I managed to tick off Hand of the Prophet, and I’m 71.4% through The Saberstalkers part, and 72.9% of the way through Order of the Awakened, so there’s not too much further to go before we can fly in Draenor! Not only that, but when Wynterthyme and Mouselet earn their wings, all of our other characters will be able to fly in Draenor too, without having to jump through all these hoops!

Anyway, on to the more important bits! 🙂

Food stuffz: yesterday for lunch I had a sandwich with basil-pesto hummus instead of butter, ham, low-fat Jarlsberg cheese, and tomato, made with the delicious Baker’s Delight whole-meal bread (did I ever mention that the crust is covered with sesame seeds? I love sesame seeds!) and for dinner we had re-heated left-over Lamb & Harissa Lasagne with Feta and Oregano, which was perhaps even nicer than it was when Julian first made it, because all the flavours had had a chance to permeate through everything! Delicious! 🙂 For dessert I had a small bowl of Coles-brand, very low-calorie, extremely delicious, Rice Pudding, with four little pieces of “peaches in natural juice”, and the very last piece of my cake (I’d though there was none left, but apparently I was mistaken! There was one piece still left over – not enough for both of us, but which Julian very generously allowed me to have last night – so “Thank you, Julian! T’was much appreciated!”) Lunch today was another ham sandwich – same type of bread – very tasty – with the basil-pesto hummus instead of butter, the ham, and this time the cheese was low-fat Halloumi, which I think is really one of the nicest cheeses you can get! Tonight we’re having chicken – I’m not sure how it’ll be cooked – probably pan-fried, with chips, beans, and the ubiquitous half a store-bought tomato. For dessert, I’ll have one of the Corella pears that Julian got yesterday, if they’re ripe enough, and either a low-fat fruit yoghurt, or some more sliced peaches on top of that yummy Rice Pudding. Julian didn’t make another cake today – we’ve been too busy working on our Draenor flying pre-requisites – but hopefully he’ll be able to make one tomorrow (otherwise I’ll have to make another one! 😉 )

Weigh-in yesterday morning. Was not good. I was most dejected… I went from 63.4kg to 63.7kg – up three points! I have absolutely no idea why – I haven’t done anything different, I haven’t eaten anything different – I guess my body suddenly just… felt like putting on three extra points of weight! I was not happy…

Weigh-in this morning. Was terrible! Well, it was partly my own fault, I suppose – when my very favourite eldest daughter is over, and we sit in the lounge room watching television, I don’t usually come into the Den until after she leaves in the evening, and yesterday was no different. And I forgot to take my second anti-fluid tablet at lunch time with quite disastrous results! I went from 63.7kg – which was bad enough – to 64.0kg! Another three points! Well, I most certainly remembered my second anti-fluid tablet today, but it’ll probably take a couple of days to get rid of the excess fluid that I retained by forgetting it – and what’s even more worser is the fact that I go onto those horrible little fluid-retaining pills again on Sunday morning! I’m not happy! 😦 What with the Word Press fiasco, and forgetting that [mutter] tablet yesterday, I’m in a definite “Oh! Woe is me!” mood! *scowl*

Which brings me, finally, to tomorrow… I’m not quite sure what’s happening tomorrow – probably a bit more of the same as today, but not too much, because I know that Julian has a great deal of office work to do, and I’m also hoping that he’ll have time to make a cake. There are a lot of Treasures lying around doing nothing in particular in Shadowmoon Valley, and should be easy enough to find and get on my own (we have a special Addon which shows where all the Treasures are! 😉 ) The main reason we’ve been going around and getting them together is because (a) Julian navigates a lot better than I don’t, and (b) we can both get them at the same time which means that neither of us gets ahead of the other. It’s a type of Farming, I guess, and I’ve never been terribly good at Farming (I very quickly get too bored with it!) while Julian is a real whizz at it – so if he’s going to be “office-ing” tomorrow, I might just mosey around Shadowmoon Valley looking for Treasures – at least until I get bored, anyway 🙂 And that’s about it from me for tonight – I think I’ve pretty much caught you all up to date on what’s been happening around here – but do drop in again tomorrow night and see what we’ve been up to – hopefully I’ll have been able to set something up on Tumblr (or maybe not – last time I tried to organize something on Tumblr I just managed to get totally confused – we’ll see, anyway – but I am, truly, sick to death of Word Press!) Find out if remembering to take my second anti-fluid tablet has whittled my weight down a bit or not, and how much further we have to go to get our Flying licences in Draenor! Anyway, until then, please do try to bee good, remember that any progress that occurs is because some people dare to be different, don’t forget to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm – or cool – depending on what part of the world you live in… but most importantly, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

09.37 am

Posted in a fury this morning for continuity’s sake. See above!

 

April 25th, 2016 – ANZAC Day – “Lest we forget…” (good one, channel 7! 😦 )

Only one more bubble to go! One more bubble to “Exalted” with Hand of the Prophet! I can hardly believe it! This time tomorrow, I might have my level three Trading Post! (Winter hums softly to herself: “One more bubble to ding… so shut up and grind (grind, grind, grind…)”) This morning Mouselet and Wynterthyme finished off the awful quest that they began last night – supposedly rescuing Arakkoa prisoners from Skettis. If this daily comes up again, I don’t think I’ll take it – it’s just too fraught! There are as many mobs as there are grains of sand on the beach – and as tightly packed – they’re lightning fast, and some of them attack in groups of five or more. They’re easy enough to kill – there’s no problem about getting them down, it’s just that there are so damn many of them! What you’re supposed to do is kill anything that has a red name plate over its head, and collect four keys from them. Then, you’re supposed to click on a very small round leg-iron ball at the end of a chain on four Arakkoa prisoners, who then join you in romping around a very small, already overcrowded and confusing area, freeing more “prisoners” – who also join you! Then you have to escort them across the compound to an NPC waiting outside, to complete the quest – all while fighting off the easy to kill, but frustratingly numerous mobs! The other fly in that quest’s ointment is the time you turn up to do it. The server, or realm, Quel’Dorei, is on the US West Coast, and because of the time difference between their PDT (Pacific Daylight Time) and our EST (on weekends and holidays especially!) it means that our evenings are usually their peak periods, and the place was not only crawling with hostile mobs, it was also overrun by other players! The keys that the mobs drop are not prolific – even the scrolls lying on the ground that we had to pick up this morning were as scarce as hen’s teeth – and it was often a matter of shooting at a whole lot of mobs that you really couldn’t handle in one foul swoop, but simply to “tag” them (so that no-one else could shoot it before you did!) We got ourselves into trouble quite often doing that – and don’t worry – all the other players were doing the same thing! The whole thing was a real nightmare! Picking up the scrolls this morning wasn’t too pleasant, either – same scenario, different objective – we did get through it, but there were a few very frayed tempers before we finished We worked on Dailies until lunchtime, when Julian went off to do a bit of real work, and muddled around a bit more with Wynterthyme, and completed another Fishing daily – I was going to go off and work with Arisnoë for a bit, but decided to start transcribing the Lamb and Harissa Lasagne recipe instead… but all that happened was that I got furiously fed up with Word, because it wouldn’t let me make “neat” fractions! You can get the ½, ¼, and ¾ ones, but you can’t make a 2/3, or 1/5, or any other fraction – and you can’t in Word Press, either! (*very annoyed look at screen*) I tried everything I could… you can sort-of kludge them by using Word’s Equations function, but they don’t line up properly with the other characters on your page, and they look clumsy and “not quite right”… so I went searching for a font that would give me all the fraction permutations I was after. Naaaah! Apparently no such animal – or font – exists! By this stage I was seething, hating and detesting Word from the bottom of my soul! Surely I can’t be – in fact I refuse point-blank to believe that I am the only person alive who wants to insert a “2/3 of a cup” that will match up with the “½ a cup” above it in the Ingredients list?! It shouldn’t be so hard! In this so-called enlightened and supposedly “educated” age, the “information” age, a program like Microsoft Word, that’s used all over the known world, should be able to create any fraction you can think of, just like that! (Winter snaps her fingers) I know that the world has largely turned decimal, but believe it or not, Microsoft, people do – every now and then – still use those archaic little anomalies called “fractions” – admittedly, not terribly often these days, but often enough to warrant inclusion in your oh-so-superior document creator, Word! So after a great deal of wasted time – wasted trying to find ways and means, or even a work-around, for inserting fractions into a recipe – I flung my hands up in the air in disgust, and downloaded LibreOffice Writer – which, by the way, is Free – and I’ll give that a go. It’s still not at all easy, putting in a fraction, it’s really only a modicum better than Microsoft’s stupid program – and it does take a bit of getting used to the way it looks (i.e. very “klunky” and “kludgy”) but… we’ll see how it goes… And that’s really about all I’ve had time to do today – so, on to the “important bits”, eh? 🙂

Food stuffz: Because last night was Sunday night, we had omelets for dinner – vegetarian ones this time, as we’d run out of ham and bacon, and I really didn’t think that cold roast sandwich beef would go all that well in an omelet… It had store-bought tomato in it, Halloumi cheese, home-grown spring onions, home-grown capsicum in it, and it was quite delicious! For dessert I had a slice of my cake, and a small bowl of the Coles-brand, very low-calorie, and extremely delicious Rice Pudding. Tonight we’re having chicken sausages, with mashed potatoes, half a store-bought tomato, and… home-grown green beans! Julian managed to eke another small bowl full of them this afternoon! For dessert, silly me forgot to ask Julian to get me some more Corella pears when he went shopping this afternoon, so I’ll just have to rough it with a last slice of my cake, and either a low-fat fruit yoghurt, or some more of the extra delicious Coles-brand Rice Pudding. Ah well, my very favourite eldest daughter will be over tomorrow – maybe Julian can pick me up some more pears then… (Winter thinks: “hmm… we have some peach slices in natural juice in the fridge now, thanks to my nagging – maybe I can have a few of those – with my Rice Pudding! Yeah! That’d go down a treat, I reckon!” 😉 )

Weigh-in this morning. Yet another surprise awaited me when I stepped onto the scales this morning! I went from 63.2kg… to 63.4kg! I went up two points! (down one point, up two – down two points, up one – bounce, bounce, bounce!) It’s almost as good as playing Snakes and Ladders, except without the rolling the dice, to see how far you move! No rhyme nor reason – just the luck of the snake scales, in this game of weight and see!

Which brings me to tomorrow, and the arrival of my very favourite eldest daughter! We should have some more of “The 100” to watch, plus at least one episode of “Supergirl”, and one of “Orphan Black”, as well as “Arrow” and “Flash”, so we should be kept well occupied in the loungeroom tomorrow! 🙂 The fishies, Auric and Dapple, are doing very well so far, and really, neither Julian nor I have the heart to put them back into the outside pool when it’s finally clean enough and ready, after all they’ve been through. The small pond out the front will get some plants, and some water snails to help keep it clean, and the larger pond that will be going in the back yard will get a fountain of sorts – possibly a waterfall one – some plants, and probably a few fish as well – if we do put fish in it we’ll put some sort of discrete netting over it so that the birds won’t be able to get at them – but Auric and Dapple will remain indoors with us – we’ll get them a nicer, bigger tank, with gravel in the bottom, some sort of rocks or whatever, so that they can play “hidey”, and some nice little plants. Anyway, that’s about it from me again tonight – don’t forget to call in again tomorrow night to find out what Lee and I watched, what tricks my weight played on me in the morning, and how Wynterthyme is going with her “Exalted” Reputation! 🙂 Until then, however, please try to bee good, remember not to strive to be a success, but rather strive to be of value, and don’t forget to keep warm – or cool – depending on whether you’re going to be indoors or outside, to look after yourselves, and to always drive carefully… but above all, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

05.24 pm

Well, I’m starting this a little earlier than I expected to be this afternoon, which is good – but it’ll probably still end up as a two-parter (in other words, I don’t think I’ll finish before dinner time!) We’ve had a good day today, both in “The Black Temple” – the 25-player Dungeon from the Burning Crusade expansion that we ran this morning – and in Draenor this afternoon, starting out on our own personal quests to achieve flying capabilities! Running around the countryside trying to farm minerals, trees, and herbs is a pain in the proverbial, from either Cat or Wolf-back, and running around enormous chains of mountains to find a way up is the absolute pits! We’re actually not too far away from completing the pre-requisite “tasks” for flying in Draenor (“tasks”, because they’re not really quests, per se.) First of all, we had to go through the six zones (areas) and thoroughly “Explore Draenor” [“tick!” √] Then we had to complete all the story-lines for five of these zones, to finish “Loremaster of Draenor” [“tick!” √] Next, we had to complete twelve “Bonus Objectives” – they’re sort-of quests, but they’re not given to you by a quest giver – they usually just pop up when you enter an area – usually an area where you do have a specific quest to complete (though not always!)  And they do actually “pop-up” at you! All of a sudden the words “Bonus Objective” will appear on the screen in front of you, with a very brief explanation of what it is you have to do (like “kill 25 Iron Horde Snake Charmers”, or whatever) and there’s a little bar graph thingy under it that shows you what percentage of the task you’ve completed. Anyway, we had twelve of those to do, and we’ve completed four of them – so no ticked box for that one yet! Only another eight to go… 😉 After that, there’s “Master Treasure Hunter”, in which you have to discover Draenor Treasure (excluding the Tanaan Jungle, for some reason!) The first one is just called “Treasure Hunter”, and you have to find five of them. The next is called “Expert Treasure Hunter”, and you have to find fifty of them, and lastly, “Master Treasure Hunter”, where you have to find one hundred treasures… now at time of writing, I don’t know whether it’s accumulative (find 10, you’re a Treasure Hunter, find another 40 (to make 50) and you’re an Expert, then another 50 to make 100, and you’ve finished the task) or whether you have to find ten, pretend you haven’t, and go out to find fifty, and then forget about them, and go looking for 100, making a total of 160 treasures. I dunno… anyway, at least I’ve done the first part, and found ten of the blighters, so I’ve done one-third of that particular “task”. Looking on the bright side though, you can get “treasure maps” – either from “drops”, or I think that you may be able to buy them (for a really exorbitant price, of course!) And last, but not least, you have to gain a “Revered” Reputation with three Tanaan Jungle factions. That should be pretty easy, really – I’m already “Revered” with “Hand of the Prophet”, and in fact only two and a bit bubbles away from “Exalted” with them, and I’m also extremely close to “Revered” with the other two, thanks to all the Dailies we’ve been doing there (and to think! I thought I was doing those Dailies for the 600 Barrels of Oil that I got from doing one of them! 😉 ) And according to the Guide, when we’ve done all of that, we should be able to fly! (I can’t wait!)

And that’s pretty much how we spent our day today – neither of us died, doing the Dungeon was really a lot of fun – it’s really sooo much more nicer, being able to waltz on in and actually see the Dungeon, instead of spending every second fighting for your life! When Burning Crusade was first released, it was the last Big End Battle, against the last Big Scary End Boss, Illidan Stormrage – later on, Blizzard added a secondary Dungeon after it, but it isn’t – or wasn’t – a twenty-five player Dungeon for levels 58 to 70, without good reason! Of course, all the big scary mobs were no match for us Big Scary Level 100’s 😉 and we mowed them down like nine-pins – even Illidan himself! And all of the loot – so precious at those lower levels – was useless to us, and it just goes against all your instincts to just…. Vendor it, as trash! Anyway, that’s another “old Dungeon” done and dusted, and under our belts – and fantastic to be able to see everything in them, untroubled by pesky little mobs trying to kill you all the time! 🙂 I’m not sure what we’ll be doing next Sunday, but there is one Dungeon I’d like to see the inside of – the Temple of Ahn’Qiraj! I’ve heard so much about it, and never even had a peek through the front door, so to speak! Maybe… anyway, I think I should have reached “Exalted” with Hand of the Prophet by then, which will allow me to upgrade my Trading Post to level 3, which in turn will allow me to get a bonus percentage on my Reputation points, so we can get through more of the pre-requisite Flying quests and Achievements!

Anyway – as I suspected before I started writing this afternoon, tonight’s blog will have to be a two-parter, as dinner is almost ready! Back soon! 🙂

09.48 pm

Right – back again, and it’s time to move on to the important bits of the day’s doin’s!

Food stuffz: last night we had Lamb & Harissa Lasagne with Feta and Oregano – a recipe wot I found in the latest “Delicious” magazine, on an Ardmona ad page, of all places! It was really delicious, and there was tons left over, which Julian put in the fridge overnight and has now carved up into portions which he put into the freezer this morning – there’s enough for at least another two meals out of it! I’m going to transcribe and print the recipe (it didn’t scan very clearly!) and we’ll laminate it, as the recipe is a definite “keeper”!  It does call for an awful lot of Harissa, which can be pretty fiery – but just like the Persian Lamb Pilaf, which called for so much cinnamon that we were a bit dubious that the Pilaf would be edible, there’s so much of everything else in the mixture that you really don’t notice it – in fact both the Pilaf and the Lasagne would have been pretty boring without it! Yes, it was a bit spicy, but not overly so – I really don’t like over-spiced food, but that Lasagne last night was just about perfect. For dessert last night I had a slice of my cake, and my last Corella pear, which as it turned out, did benefit from me leaving it to ripen for another day. I’ll have to get some more in on Tuesday, seeing as tomorrow is a Public Holiday! Today for lunch I had another sandwich made with Baker’s Delight whole-meal bread, this time with basil-pesto hummus instead of butter, tandoori chicken sandwich chunks, and slices of Halloumi cheese – most delicious! And of course, tonight being Sunday night, we had omelets for dinner – vegetarian ones this time, as we’d run out of ham and bacon, and I didn’t really think that sandwich sliced cold roast beef was really “omelet-y”! As a matter of fact, I thought that the plain, “vegetarian” version was maybe a bit nicer, with the taste of the Halloumi cheese a little more noticeable. For dessert, I had another slice of my cake, and a small dish of the totally yummy Coles-brand, very low-calorie Rice Pudding. Alas – there’s only enough cake left for a small slice each tomorrow night – and then it’s Julian’s turn to make the cake again, as I’ve made the last two! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. Was quite surprising! I was really quite worried as to how much weight I might have put on, after the caramel slice I’d eaten on Friday, and the Lasagne I’d consumed last night – so my eyebrows shot up a bit when I got on the scales this morning! I reiterate – I don’t seem to have any control over what my weight does anymore – I went from 63.3kg to 63.2kg – down one point! Not that I mind, of course, it’s just that I don’t understand it! So, here I am again, bobbing around in the choppy waters of the weight and see, in the bottom half of the 63kg zone… I wonder what it’ll be tomorrow morning!

Tomorrow should be a fairly quiet day – I’d like to get some more work done with Wynterthyme, but I suspect that Julian will want to take advantage of the Public Holiday and get a bit of  -hopefully uninterrupted, for once – office work completed – in which case, I shall continue to work on Arisnoë, and try to get her a bit closer to level 98. And that, gentle readers, is about it from me for this evening! 🙂 Do call in again tomorrow night to find out how our day went, and what my weight decided to do, as well as lots of other bits and pieces of both interesting and boring trivia! Until then though, please do try to bee good, remember that the most important things in life aren’t things, and don’t forget to always drive carefully, to keep warm – or cool – depending on your mood, and to look after yourselves… but above all, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

05.43 pm

Well, here I am, finally! Some family friends from Adelaide dropped in a while ago – mainly to drop off some boxes from the old house there – they didn’t stay long, only about ten minutes, but of course, not knowing how long they’d be here, we’d run around like chooks with their heads cut off, tidying the house and making sure it looked “nice”, and worrying that we didn’t have anything to offer them other than tea or coffee. Anyway, they’ve dropped off the boxes, filled us in a bit about the renovations that are currently taking place at Julian’s old place – it sounds most interesting! Apparently they’re making some really radical changes to the layout – but it sounds like it might be a huge improvement. Melissa, Julian’s sister, is keeping in touch with the new owners, so hopefully we may be able to learn a bit more from her. I’d really love to go and see it when they’ve finished, but… I doubt that we’ll be able to.

Now, the reason I didn’t get anything written last night is because my Podiatrist didn’t get here until about a quarter to six, and by the time she left, it was pretty late – just as well we were having the reasonably quick-cooking pan-fried chicken last night! We were out most of the day, too – I had to have my Warfarin blood test done – all is well in that department, my INR has gone down a bit from what it was last time, my dosage is staying the same (5mg Monday to Saturday, 4mg Sundays), and they want me to have another test in a fortnight. Ho-hum! After that we went off to Glen Waverley, to see if we could get my name changed on my Medicare card. That was quite straightforward, and we should get our new cards within a week or so. For some unknown reason, I’m on Julian’s Medicare card, and he’s on mine, so we’re both getting new cards! Then we went on to The Glen, to go through the same process at BUPA, and once again, we can expect our new cards within a week or so. Now all we have left to change my name on are my Passport, the Tax Department (for my Tax File Number) the Electoral Roll – ‘specially as it looks like we’ll be having a Federal Election within a few months and of course, a couple of Shares Registries… Anyway, by the time we’d finished with BUPA, and been to Target to get a pedestal fan – er… “why does she want a pedestal fan at the beginning of winter?” I hear you all muttering – well, it’s because when I’m doing my treadmilling in the morning, I get hot, even though I walk in my undergarments. Just uncomfortable hot, not sweaty hot, but before I turn the machine on, I hop up onto the belt, open the window, and turn on my remote control Dyson fan. Yes, on, off, temperature and speed, can all be controlled manually, or by remote control – I love it! 🙂 I originally got it for the bathroom over at Doncaster, which because it was in the middle of the apartment, got either blisteringly hot in summer, or freezingly cold in winter, and that fan was fantastic! When we moved here, it was the middle of winter, and once again, I relied on the fan to keep me warm in that dreadful old bathroom before all the renovations. However, by the time they were finished, it was high summer – the bathroom stayed fairly cool, but I desperately needed the fan in the Treadmillery, where my hands would get so slippery with sweat that I was afraid they’d slip off the treadmill’s handle bars, and I’d end up in a melted puddle on the floor. So we brought the fan in, and set it up so that when I started to get too hot, I could just touch the remote control and have a lovely, cool breeze blowing on my face. But now that it’s starting to get cold again, I need the fan back in the bathroom – so rather than buy another (rather expensive!) Dyson, we thought we’d get an el-cheapo pedestal fan from Target – on sale now that it’s no longer summer – and a third-party remote control with which to turn it on and off – alas, no speed or temperature controls on this one, but on and off is all I really need to keep me cool. So after BUPA, we went to Target, and got our fan for the vast sum of… $12.00! I then wanted to have “a quick look” in My Size, because I’d seen their new May Catalogue just that morning, and they had what looked like an extremely nice short knitted cape – with arm holes in it so that you didn’t have to fiddle with openings and what-nots. There was one in their window, so we went in to see what they were like close up – now, I’d received the email Catalogue earlier that morning. This was new stock – never before seen in My Size – and they only had two left, including the one in the window! I said I’d like to try it on, and the one in the window was the only “Small” one they had. I tried it on. It looked fabulous, so not only did I get it (and wore it!) but Julian said that seeing they were selling so quickly, I should order another one online when I got home (so I have!) A spare to wear when the other one’s at the Dry Cleaners! I actually wore it last night while we were watching Grantchester, and it was the first time I’ve been able to sit in the loungeroom in autumn (or spring, or winter!) without shivering with cold! It’s a lovely cape, and it looks really smart, too! 🙂 So by the time we’d done all of that and were coming down the escalator again, my knees were beginning to feel distinctly “rubbery”, and I decided that maybe I should sit down for a bit. Last time we went up to see the doctor – just to get a repeat script – she took my blood pressure and was a bit taken aback that it was very low! She told me that I should go back and have it tested again the following week, which of course we didn’t do. I had been intending to, but life sort of got in the way a bit, and then I forgot about it – until yesterday! I shall definitely go back next week to have it tested again. The doctor seemed to think that I’d lost so much weight that I probably didn’t need to be on blood pressure medication any more… so we’ll go and see what’s what – the “rubbery” knees may have been simply because I was in desperate need of a cup of coffee! 😉 Well, we were right in front of The Shingle Inn, so we decided to have lunch there as it was pretty close to lunch time. We’d just about finished eating, when an elderly lady came up to us (elderly? So what does that make me? She was probably only a couple of years older than me! ) She apologised, but wanted to know if I was of European descent – and so we got talking. I told her that I wasn’t, but my father was Italian – then there was a bit more conversation – quite a lot more conversation, actually – but the upshot of it was that (a) I looked Jewish (no, I don’t have a big nose!) (b) I was a truly “free spirit” (which I suppose I am, really…) and (c) (Josh, you should get a bit of a smile out of this!) she loved the red streaks in my hair – they really suited me, blah, blah, blah… I told her that they’d faded a lot, but that I was having them re-done next week 🙂 Then she said that she was running late to meet her cousin, and off she went, leaving Julian and I both feeling a little bemused by the encounter!

erm.. my dinner’s ready… back soon…

09.08 pm

Back again… Where was I? Oh yeah – the strange lady who came over and chatted to us. It’s truly amazing how many people like my hair colour! 🙂 Anyway, we had lunch, did a bit more shopping – my knees weren’t feeling “rubbery” any more, thank goodness – and we came home. I sat down at the computer, checked Wynterthyme’s Followers and her Fleet, quit, and started on some editing work for a sort of an “ye olde blog word lyste” type of thing (names, expressions, spelling, to save having to look things up all the time) I’d been meaning to do it for ages, and I was just getting stuck into it when Julian walked past the Den door saying “Don’t forget the Podiatrist will be here in about twenty minutes!” – well, of course I had, so I hastily saved all of that and thought “I’m so tired – I’m never going to get my blog written tonight!” – and sure enough, I didn’t! Sorry! mea culpa, mea maxima culpa, and all that… but better late than never, eh? 🙂 So, now to the important bits…

Food stuffz: yesterday for lunch at The Shingle Inn, I had my usual BLT on Sourdough bread (toast, really) a long black with a little juglet of skinny milk, and a gorgeous, sticky, gooey, delicious caramel slice – it’ll take me at least a fortnight on the treadmill to work it out of my system, but it was worth every single sinful and gluttonous bite! 🙂 Dinner last night was pan-fried chicken breast on a bed of steamed rice that was flavoured with finely chopped home-grown spring onions, and our usual half a tomato. For dessert I had a slice of my cake, and a low-fat strawberry yoghurt, instead of my Corella pear – I thought I’d give it one more day to ripen properly. Today for lunch I had a really delicious sandwich – rather a small one really, because the Baker’s Delight whole-meal bread loaf seemed to be quite a bit smaller than usual – with cold sliced roast beef (sandwich roast beef, that is, not really-truly roast beef!) with Beerenberg Tomato and Cracked Pepper Relish (which is really yummy!) and low-fat Halloumi cheese, and for dinner tonight, Julian made (for the first time ever!) a recipe I found in the latest “Delicious” magazine, called “Lamb & Harissa Lasagne with Feta and Oregano”. I saw it in the magazine, and although we both looked for the recipe online, we couldn’t find it – probably because it seemed to be part of an Ardmona ad! In the end he had to scan it to be able to print it out, but it’s not a very good scan so I’ll have to transcribe it, so that we can print it out properly and laminate it – this one is a definite keeper! It was totally scrumptious! That’s what we had for dinner, and because it freezes so well, there are three more small meals of it left, so it’s also damn good value for money! Once I’ve transcribed it I’ll put a link in the blog to wherever I put it, OK? It’s easy to make, too… And for dessert, I had my last Corella pear – I was quite right to have left it to ripen for another day – and another slice of my cake.

Weigh-in yesterday morning – Friday the 22nd. I went up two points, from 63.1kg on Thursday, to 63.3kg. This morning, Saturday the 23rd, I went from 63.3kg to 63.3kg – that is, I stayed the same… so it looks like I’m back to the gentle yo-yo bounce, up a couple, down a couple, up one, down two, bounce, bounce, bounce – as long as I don’t fluctuate up and down too drastically, I’ll stay happy! 🙂

And so to tomorrow, Sunday! Of course, being Sunday, it’s our “The Dashing Duo’s Day in Draenor”, or “The Daring Dungeon Duopoly” – or whatever else we decide to do tomorrow, for a change 😉  Whatever we decide to do though will be a lot of fun – however, the usual warning applies – “Warning! Blog contents may settle be a bit late” – depending on what time we finish! Julian has flushed out the small pond in the front garden, and it’s absolutely amazing what a difference it’s made! The water is actually clear, for a change, and you can see the bottom! He’s taken all the stones out – they’ll need to have a bit more of a thorough scrub, but not all of them will be put back – apparently there were far too many of them? He’s also put some “anti-fungal and anti-algae” stuff in the water, which is still going to have to be flushed and re-filled a few more times to get it really back to what a pond should be like, and because there used to be an underwater light in it (but which had sprung a leak and died) he’s put in a new one. I haven’t seen it at night yet – it’s supposed to be a blue light, but when I saw it inside, it looked to be different colours depending on what angle it was on! So it’s unusual, and pretty! 🙂 And that’s about it from me again this evening – sorry it’s so long, but there was a lot to tell you all! Don’t forget to drop in again tomorrow night for a much shorter missive – and find out what we did, what my weight did, what Auric and Dapple are up to, and whether Flipper has noticed them yet! Until then though, do try very hard to bee good, remember that the measure of who we are is what we do with what we have, and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep cool – or warm – depending on the weather… but most importantly, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

12.37 am

Sorry! I got caught up! Will tell all tomorrow – promise! (*cheesy grin*)

04.37 pm

I’ve only now come in from the kitchen, where I’ve just finished making my cake… with a few hiccups. I wanted to make this one a “citrus-y” one, with orange zest, mixed peel, and almond extract. I got everything ready, whizzed all the ingredients except the flour and the orange zest around in the food processor, sifted the flour into a bowl, and popped the orange zest in with it, to await the nice slurpy mixture from the food processor. I said to Julian “I’ll want the mixed peel in a minute,” and he said “What mixed peel? You should have told me earlier, and I would have had it ready!” So he went looking for the mixed peel. I looked for the mixed peel too. But despite me remembering that I’d put a packet of mixed peel in the trolley, the last time we went shopping together, it had apparently vanished, as completely as an iceberg about a week after it had floated into the tropical waters of the Bahamas! By this time I was a trifle put out! Julian seemed to think I was going senile or something, and I was equally as positive that I’d grabbed the packet of mixed peel off the supermarket shelf with a self-satisfied smirk, and put it in the shopping trolley – and in the meantime, the cake was rapidly going nowhere! Julian stomped off to drive up to the shops and get some mixed peel for me, and I fretted and fumed over the loss of the mixed peel. When he got back, I re-whizzed all the stuff that was still sitting forlornly in the food processor [small interlude: the kitchen timer just went off, telling us that the cake was probably ready – I dashed off to the kitchen, and guess what! We couldn’t find the skewer that we use to test cakes etc.! In the end, I had to use a small, sharp knife! The cake, however, wasn’t ready… the timer has been put on for another five minutes. We will now return you to your normal reading…] poured it into the flour and orange zest, and started mixing! When everything looked well combined, I poured half the mixture into the prepared cake tin, and scattered small handfuls of mixed peel over the top of the batter, trying hard not to get any on the sides of the tin, then we poured the rest of the mixture over the mixed peel. I say “we” because Julian had to help me by turning the cake tin around as I stood there pouring. The glass mixing bowl is quite heavy, and thanks to arthritis, my hands aren’t quite as flexible and as dexterous as they once were Anyway, the cake was finally ready to go in the oven! Naturally the kitchen timer went off again, just as I finished the small interlude above, and I had to dash off again to re-test the cake with the small, sharp knife. And Julian is indeed right! We do need more than one rather small skewer in the kitchen! I shall add them to the shopping list right now! Done! Well, the small, sharp knife came out clean this time, meaning that the cake was ready, so we tried to turn it out onto the cake rack… nope, it liked being in the tin. We gave it a bit of a sharp shake downwards, to loosen it, and tried again. The cake said “I’m comfortable where I am, thank you very much – I’ll stay in here where it’s nice and cosy and warm!” We shook it again – a little harder, this time. The cake said “Zzzzz…” from its nice, warm tin. Well, we gave it quite a hefty jolt downwards, almost slamming it down against the heavy chopping board that lives on the kitchen bench, and this time, Julian felt something “give” a little… He upended the cake tin a last time, and the cake slid free… leaving a healthy chunk of it behind in the tin. I guess I must have managed to get a bit of mixed peel against the side of the tin, after all! 😦 However using a bit of gentle persuasion, Julian managed to get the stuck part out in one piece, and it was duly placed over the “bald” bit, reunited with the rest of its cakey family. It actually doesn’t look too bad, and by the time it’s cooled, and had the icing sugar sifted over the top of it, I don’t think it’ll even be noticeable from a distance – of about three city blocks with skyscrapers in the way! 😉 Anyhoo – we’ll eat that part of the cake first, so no one will be able to see the broken bit!

This morning I played WoW again/as usual, and after settling Wynterthyme’s Followers and Fleet, I switched over to Arisnoë, and took her questing – I’m now in a hurry to get her to level 98, when she can upgrade her Trading Post to level 2 – Everything else is already level 2, but Blizzard seem to have this “thing” about the Trading Post, and not being able to upgrade it as quickly and as easily as all the other Buildings! Oh well, I’m just barely more than half way through level 96, so only two and a half more levels to go, or “This time next year… in Jerusalem”… With Arisnoë on her own though, questing is really hard – one forgets how spoilt one’s been, playing in tandem the way Wynterthyme and Mouselet have been – it sure is a lot easier and quicker with two of you, mowing down the Mobs! But, she’ll get there in the end…

And now on to the more important part of the blog! 🙂

Food stuffz: last night for dinner we had home-made hamburgers, which were really more like rissoles, or very tiny, individual meat loaves, or even very large meat balls – but whatever you want to call them, they were absolutely delicious! As it turned out, we didn’t have them with potatoes, boiled, mashed, or chips, we had them with steamed rice, flavoured with our very own home-grown spring onions (and a bit of Soy sauce) We didn’t even have our customary half a tomato! (gasp, shock, horror!) but there was, I think, tomato in the hamburgers. For dessert I had a small tub of low-fat strawberry yoghurt and a few pieces of tinned peaches (from a plastic jar! So should I be calling them “jarred peaches”, or “peaches in jars”?) I had a sandwich for lunch today, made from the extremely nice Baker’s Delight whole-meal bread. Julian used hummus with pine-nuts instead of butter, and the last two “hamburgers”, which were just as nice cold and crumbled up in a sandwich, as they were last night on a bed of rice! 🙂 Tonight we’re having King Island Beef sausages for dinner, with chips, half a tomato, and either green beans or Brussels sprouts (Julian hasn’t made up his mind yet! 😉 ) and of course for dessert, I’ll be having a slice of my new “citrus” cake (with no cream!) and one of the Corella pears, which should be ripe enough to eat tonight! I’ll let you all know tomorrow night what it was like (not the Corella pears, the cake!) 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. Maybe things are slowing down? I sure hope so… this morning I went from 63.1kg, to 63.1kg, so I stayed the same. This is a good thing, and a bad thing, I suppose, but definitely more good than bad, because at least I didn’t go up again – though I’ll probably do that tomorrow, especially after licking the spoon a few times when I was making the cake! 😉 It’s only bad because continuing “no worries” weight results can tend to make you complacent, and then you eat too much, and immediately feel guilty!

And so to tomorrow! I was thinking that I was going to be having a fairly free day tomorrow – I know my next Warfarin blood test is due, and I was thinking of getting it done in Glen Waverley, and then going along to the Medicare office up near the Library to change my name on my Medicare Card (no, we still haven’t gotten a round tuit yet – they are very rare, you know! It’s almost impossible to source a good one…*Winter shakes her head sadly*) And then, this afternoon I received a phone call from my Podiatrist’s Receptionist, to remind me that I had an appointment tomorrow afternoon, around 5 o’clock – and I saw my “free day” escaping through the Den window, even though it was shut at the time! This probably means that my blog will be late tomorrow night, as I doubt that I’ll have enough time to start writing before dinner – sorry! And really, that’s about it from me again for this evening! Do call in again tomorrow night though – fairly late, unfortunately – and find out what my “citrus” cake was like, whether my weight went up, or down, or stayed the same for a third day, and how Arisnoë is going with her attempts to get to level 98! But until then, please bee as good as you can, remember to keep in mind that neither success nor failure is ever final, and don’t forget to always drive carefully, to keep warm – or cool – depending on what the weather’s like, and to look after yourselves… but most importantly, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

 

03.45 pm

I think my weight is doing strange things to me, because my timing is yo-yo-ing, just like my weight! I’m early this afternoon… I was late yesterday, and late the day before, but early the before that! I wish I had more control over my life… but then, if I did have more control, I’d probably find myself wishing I had more excitement, and more random surprises – “the grass is always greenest”, etc. 😉 Well, let’s see… how did today go… I played WoW this morning – did all of Wynterthyme’s Follower bits and pieces, and sent another six ships off to their doom on their Missions, and then swapped over to Arisnoë, where I was very pleased to see that she only had two and a bit bubbles to go to level 96! So, off she trotted, to try to fill those two bubbles “toot sweet”, as the French say, and I’m not quite sure how I managed it, but I manged to pick the two most horrible, and hardest quests that I had! I died about four times, just trying to fight my way in to the quest giver, and then I died at least another three times, trying to finish off the rest of those ruddy quests – and I was only in Talador! Still, I did ding level 96 – right in the middle of a horrendous fight, where I was losing badly. I did try to do everything the right way, like sneaking around the edges of the fight, picking off demons one by one, and avoiding areas where I could easily get overwhelmed – but there were “portals” all over the place, and demons were – quite literally – streaming out of them, and I just didn’t stand a chance! I don’t recall Wynterthyme and Mouselet doing this particular quest chain, or if we did do it, we must have been quite a few levels higher than poor old Arisnoë, because I’m quite sure I’d have remembered how hard this part was, and I would have left it for a couple of weeks – however, I persevered, and I did get through those wretched quests, albeit with my armor in tatters, and my ego in rags… it cost me 69 gold for repairs, too, and that was with the Garrison discount!¹ Needless to say, after I’d finished those three [censored] quests, I Hearthed back to my Garrison before even turning them in – I had Building Upgrades to perform! (ya gotta get ya priorities right! 😉 ) Unfortunately, I can’t get my Trading Post upgraded to level 2 before I turn level 98, but I did get my Herb Garden – which I immediately upgraded to level 2, and at time of writing, I’d upgraded everything except the Trading Post to level 2! Even the Fishing Shack! (which even at level 3 doesn’t look any different to what it was when I first saw it! It just means that you can fish for bigger fishes, locally) I’m looking forward to logging in again later and seeing all my nice, new, upgraded buildings (everything (except the Fishing Shack) looks bigger and nicer when you upgrade your Buildings!) The “renovation” work takes an hour – I have no idea why – because the “freebie” Buildings, like the Mine, the Herb Garden, the Fishing Shack and the Town Hall, are all “instant makeovers”, and are pronounced “open for business” as soon as you walk outside. After I’d finished all of that, I flew back to my exceptionally patient quest givers, and handed the three quests in.

I also worked quite extensively on my re-modeled, re-named Sylvänas, buying her a whole new outfit to look nice in, and getting her set up as would befit the NPC Sylvanas Windrunner, so I spent quite a bit of time in the Stormwind Auction House, trying to make her look cool on a mini, mini-budget, and I like to think that I succeeded, too! 🙂 I’ll probably be working on her next, as she’s only level 94…

Tonight it’ll be back to Wynterthyme and Mouselet, as Wynterthyme s-l-o-w-l-y and painfully edges her way a bit closer to the “Exalted” Reputation with one of the three possible Factions that she’s already reached “Revered” with – they are (in no particular order!)  the Arakkoa Outcasts, the Council of Exarchs, and the Hand of the Prophet. I seem to have come to a bit of a hurdle with the Council of Exarchs – they’re based in Shadowmoon Valley, where the Garrison is, and really, it’s the “starting out point” for the Alliance. I’ve done all the quests that I can find², I’m slightly further than half way through “Revered” with them, but… there’s nothing left to do to make them “Exalt” me! Unless I’m missing something, somewhere along the line. The Arakkoa Outcasts have been a bit of a surprise entrant in Wynterthyme’s Reputation race! They have a small(ish) toe-hold in an outpost called Lion’s Watch, where Wynterthyme and Mouselet go every night to run their Daily “Oil” quests, which gives us Reputation points with the Hand of the Prophet, but we also pick up several Dailies from a couple of Arakkoa there, and we seem to be piling on quite a lot of Reputation points – Wynterthyme has already reached “Revered” with them, and their Reputation gauge is catching up fast to where she’s at on the Hand of the Prophet Reputation one (she’s almost two thirds of the way through the “Revered” gauge with the Hand of the Prophet) It’ll be interesting to see who “wins the day” for her! 🙂

And now on to the important, serious part of the blog! 😉

Food stuffz: last night we had another lovely little piece of fillet steak – just pan-fried, but really, I think that’s the best way to cook steak – it’s so easy to stuff things up when you try to do “fancy things” with it. My father used to get a large piece of rump steak – gigantic, to my child’s eyes – and lay it flat on a large dish. He’s pour copious quantities of good olive oil over it, the juice of at least two large lemons, and season it well with salt and pepper. Then he’d leave it, for a couple of hours… Once he thought it had marinated enough on that side, he’d go in, pick the piece of steak up with two forks, hold it up to drain most of the oil and lemon juice off into the plate, then turn the steak over, and put it back down into the marinade, for another hour or so (no, he didn’t put it in the fridge, this was all done on the kitchen bench!) When it was time to cook dinner, he’d heat up a large, strong frying pan (we didn’t have electric fry-pans back then) to really, really hot, pick up the plate, and slide everything from the plate into the frying pan. He taught me how to judge when the steak was ready to turn over – he’d point out the colour change creeping up the edge of the steak, from a dark, “meat” red, to grey, and then when the grey got half way up the side of the steak edge, and the bottom was starting to turn brown, he’d flip it over and do the same on the other side – you were supposed to make sure that there was a very thin “line” of dark, “meat” red running through the middle of the edge – and that was it! It would be put back on the now washed and clean large plate, and cut into portions – it was perfect every time (Dad was an exceptional cook!) and the caramelised juices on the bottom of the frying pan were simply heaven to scrape up with a crust of bread and devour, while the rest of the meal was being dished up. So Dad taught me how to cook steak, and he must have taught me well, because I taught Julian how to cook steak, and now he cooks it exceptionally well, too! 🙂 Anyway, we had steak last night, with chips, half a store-bought tomato, and some very nice steamed broccolini. For dessert, all I had was some low-fat yoghurt, as I hadn’t made another cake because Julian was in Adelaide, and the Corella pears he’d bought weren’t ripe enough for ingesting 😦 Tonight Julian’s making home-made hamburgers – actually, I don’t know why we call them “hamburgers”, because they’re nothing like hamburgers – except that they’re made with mince beef, onions, and a few other bits and pieces – but they’re really more like rissoles, or maybe large meat-balls – but we call ’em hamburgers, and they’re really delicious. We always put things like (raw) rice in the mixture (it cooks in the juices of everything in the hamburger while it’s cooking, and along with a beaten egg, helps to hold everything together so that it doesn’t crumble when you look at it) Sometimes we have them with mashed potatoes, and sometimes we have them with plain old boiled potatoes, and sometimes we have them with chips – so I don’t know what we’ll be having them with tonight (mashed potatoes would be good though!) and no doubt there’ll be the usual half a store-bought tomato and something green – probably beans… I’ll be having a reprise of last night’s dessert as Julian was out for a lot of today, so I didn’t get the chance to make another cake – besides, I needed the almond essence, which this time, did get bought – so we can look forward to a really nice slice of cake for dessert, tomorrow night! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. Was quite astounding, and neither of us were expecting it! I went from 63.8kg to 63.1kg – down seven points! I have no idea why – but it’s nice, all the same. I’ll most likely be up again tomorrow, so I’ll just put it down to another random event associated with my uncontrollable “Yo-yo” syndrome!

Tomorrow will probably be much like today – Julian has to play taxi-driver for my very favourite eldest daughter, who has a Dental appointment, right bang-smack in the middle of the day – nicely bisecting it – but at least we’re a lot closer to both her, and the Dentist, here in Vermont South, so I should have enough leeway to make a cake tomorrow afternoon. The rest of the time, no doubt I’ll be WoW-ing along, as usual – but that’s really about it from me again tonight! Don’t forget to call in again tomorrow night, to see if my weight did go up again – if I managed to get my cake made, and if Wynterthyme has managed to get any closer to her “Exalted” Reputation! Until then though, please try to bee good, don’t forget that life is just a phase you’re going through at the moment… but don’t worry, you’ll get over it 😉 and remember to keep warm – or cool – depending on where you are, to always drive carefully, and to look after yourselves… but most importantly, and above all, please – remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

¹“Garrison discount” – I’m pretty sure that there’s no such thing as a “Garrison discount” – not even for the Garrison Commander – that was just something I made up on the spur of the moment, mainly because (a) it sounded cute, and (b) because if there isn’t a “Garrison discount” for the Garrison Commander, well there jolly-well ought to be! 😛

²Of course… there’s always the Dailies, of which I think there are a few… (boor-ring! )

09.05 pm

Here I am – back to my old habits, late again! Well, we got up at 04.30 am this morning, and Julian was out the door and off to the airport about fifteen minutes after that… I sat around and did all my usual morning things, except for my “morning constitutional”, until Julian rang me to say that he was boarding the plane – then I went and hopped on my trusty treadmill (good grief! I almost wrote “windmill” instead of “treadmill” there, for some weird reason!) and walked for my daily two kilometers at the slightly faster speed of 4 kilometers per hour instead of only 3.8 kph. Then I had breakfast and a cup of coffee, and settled in to collect all my finished Work Orders, check on my Followers, and send them all off on new Missions. Then I went back to Arisnoë, who’s finally starting to make some decent headway towards level 96, and played with her until my very favourite eldest daughter arrived, around eleven o’clock. When I was bringing Arisnoë back to the Town Hall, I noticed that in the very lucrative little Herb Garden, where so far I haven’t even been able to talk to anyone, there’s now a greyed out exclamation point over one of the worker’s head… (a greyed out exclamation mark means that there will be a quest there for you eventually, but you’re still a bit too low level to be able to accept it. Conversely, a greyed out question mark means that you will have a quest to hand in there, but you can’t hand it in yet because you haven’t finished it) So… apparently when I reach level 96 I’ll be able to get that quest and open up the Herb Garden. Only another couple of bubbles to go…

My very favourite eldest daughter had emailed Julian a list of episodes from our favourite TV shows to download for us last night, so pretty much as soon as she arrived we migrated to the lounge room, made ourselves a cup of coffee, and sat down to mesmerise ourselves with such favourites as “Supergirl” (one episode) “The 100” (two episodes, with a lunch break between them) and the first of the new Season of “Orphan Black”, which was a sort-of “prequel” to the show, mainly consisting of a series of flash-backs, showing how the whole mystery of the cloned girls started, and what pushed the young Detective, Beth, to commit suicide in front of one of her clones (who didn’t realise that she was a clone, if you see what I mean) It’s quite a fascinating story line – very convoluted and complicated, as the clones all start to find out who and what they are, with the main issue becoming “Why?!” If any of you ever decide to start watching it, please try to see the series from the beginning, otherwise it simply won’t make any sense (a USB key is all you’d need 😉 ) After “Orphan Black”, we watched one episode of “Flash”, and one of “Arrow”, and then it was about time for my very favourite eldest daughter’s equal but more technical half to come and pick her up, as Julian was still on his way home from Adelaide.

Julian finally arrived home around 06.40 pm, after having stopped off to pick up some steak and a few vegetables for dinner tonight – and some bananas – because he totally forgot them when he was doing the shopping yesterday, and I had to have a banana-less breakfast this morning! I must make sure I put a couple of those jars of tinned fruit in Natural Juices on the shopping list (“jars” of “tinned” fruit??! Oh well, you all know what I mean – I hope!) they’re very handy to have in the fridge, for just such an occasion as this morning, with no bananas, and nothing to use in their place!

And so on to the “important bits”!

Food stuffz: last night we had pan-fried lamb backstraps, with half of our very last home-grown tomatoes each, steamed green beans (store-bought) and some very nice mashed potatoes. For dessert, I had the last slice of my cake (I’ll make another one tomorrow or Thursday!) and another of the dark cacao Chia Pods – very delicious! 🙂 For lunch today, I was going to have a couple of Ryvita crispbreads, with low-fat Ricotta, ham, and tomato (store-bought) but as I had to make them myself, I changed my mind at the last minute and made myself a wrap, instead. I spread some of the basil-pesto hummus over the flat-bread, then sliced up one piece of sandwich ham, one piece of (sandwich) low-fat Jarlsberg cheese, and about a quarter of a tomato, all of which I spread out neatly on the hummus-smeared flat-bread, and rolled it all up, whereupon it immediately proceeded to un-roll itself – much to my eldest daughter’s delight! I managed to get it more or less rolled up again (with the emphasis being on the word “less”!) and went over to the couch to eat it. It was alright – heck, it’s the first time in goodness knows how many years since I’ve made my own lunch! Needless to say, it wasn’t nearly as nice as the ones that Julian makes (probably because he’s had years of practice!) Tonight we had steak for dinner – pan-fried – with chips, steamed Broccolini, and half a (store-bought) tomato. For dessert, I had …no cake, as there wasn’t any left… a tub of low-fat strawberry yoghurt, and a long, yearning look at some of the new Corella pears that Julian brought home with him. Maybe one of them will be ripe enough to eat tomorrow…

Weigh-in this morning. Well, I don’t by any long stretch of the imagination think that anyone could possibly claim that this morning’s Weigh-in was “accurate”! I usually weigh myself at around 07.45 am – and this weigh-in was just after 04.30 am. The scales, however, read at 63.8kg – exactly the same as yesterday, which is why I didn’t think that it was a “true” reading… However I’m sure that “normalcy”, or what laughingly passes for normalcy around here, will return to the weigh-in scales tomorrow morning! 😉

And there we have it – “A Day in the Life Of” – so to speak! 🙂 I’m not quite sure what’s happening tomorrow – I do know that Julian has to head over to my very favourite youngest daughter’s place to help her with some car things, and if possible, I’d like to make a different sort of Babka! I have the orange, for the orange zest, I have the mixed peel for the centre of the cake, but what I don’t have is… almond essence! I don’t have to use almond essence, I just thought that it’d be nicer in this cake than the usual vanilla essence… and that, Gentle Readers, is once more about “it” from me for this evening! Methinks an early night is called for again, and I wouldn’t be too surprised to find us both sleeping in, just a little, tomorrow morning! However, do drop in again tomorrow night to find out just how accurate – or inaccurate – this morning’s weigh-in was (or wasn’t!) how Arisnoë is going on her personal quest to reach level 96, and if she’s managed to get there yet, and whether or not I’ve made another cake! Until then though, please try to bee good, remember that the purpose of a good education is to show you that there are three sides to a two-sided story, and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep cool – or warm – depending on your personal preference… but above all, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

03.37 pm

This is nice and early, isn’t it! 🙂 As there’s a lot to tell you about yesterday (Sunday) and our day in Draenor, I thought I’d better get a good run at it! We started off in the morning catching up on a lot of our Dailies and Reputation farming quests – they’re a bore, and a chore, but we’re getting into quite a good routine with them so that we get through them all pretty quickly – but I’m still only half way to that wretched “Exalted” Reputation I have to get before I can upgrade my Trading Post – and “win” the right to earn 20% extra Reputation points in Draenor… which is about the same as shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted, because Reputations only go up to “Exalted”, and neither Julian nor I really go in for Reputation gathering, any more than we go in for PvP or Group Dungeons! *sheesh!* All I want to do is be able to upgrade my ruddy Trading Post so that I can go after the mechanical parts with which to build myself an Auctioneer for the Garrison! Anyhoo, we spent the morning doing that, had lunch, and then decided to go off and do a Dungeon neither of us had done before called “Ulduar“, a Dungeon for character levels 80 to 83 (which, if you all remember, I mentioned a few episodes ago?) Because there was a chance for the “25 Man Raid Party” to score a “special” Mount out of it, us two cocky, and vastly over-confident level 100’s decided to do a 25 Man Run… on our own! Because… what could possibly go wrong, hmm?! Well, the first part of it was a breeze! We pretty-much one-shotted everything, including the minor Bosses! It was like taking candy from a baby – so to speak… until we got to Yogg-Saron, the Big Bad Boss at the end. He creamed us! He annihilated us! He folded, spindled, and mutilated us! And we both died, multiple times… however, I can boast that Wynterthyme died more times than Mouselet did, because I’m not as fast as he is, my stupid Pet kept running off to fight and bite anything that even looked as though it was going to twitch an eyebrow in our general direction, and… I didn’t have a ruddy clue as to what I was doing, or was supposed to be doing! Well, that’s not quite true – I did know what I was supposed to be doing, but every time I went to do just that, either my mind would be controlled by Yogg-Saron and I couldn’t move, or I’d be gyrating madly in the air, being maniacally flag-waved by nasty, Yogg-Saron controlled tentacles – which I was supposed to shoot at and kill, and which I tried to shoot at and kill, only to get the ridiculous error message “Target must be in front of you”, over and over again. So when Julian and I started getting cross with eachother because I wasn’t fast enough, and when I’d lost count of how many times I’d been killed (and also by which time I’m afraid my mind was busier figuring out how much gold I was going to have to pay out to get my armor repaired when this was all over, than on strategies to handle this debacle!) we decided that maybe – just maybe – a 25-Man Raid was a teeny bit too much for us big, brave, cocky, and vastly over-confident level 100’s to handle on our own! We left, and crawled back to our Garrisons to lick our wounds, and cry over all the fantastic loot (for level 80 to 83 characters!) that we’d pillaged from the minor Bosses and Mobs, and now had to Vendor as trash! Oh, how we would have loved to have had these things if we’d gone through the Dungeon when we were level 80, or to be able now to pass these amazing items on to our younger alts – but alas! It was all soulbound to us, and all we could do was Vendor it, and cry bitter tears! 😦 Once we’d cleaned ourselves up, dried our eyes, and repaired our somewhat dented and mangled armor, we finished off the day running two or three short, “normal” type instances and Dungeons, just for “old time’s sake” – which brought us up to dinner time, so I didn’t get a chance to write anything!

Today Wynterthyme and Mouselet got their dailies done early – Julian has to fly to Adelaide again tomorrow, for the funeral of an old family friend who passed away last week. It’s a 10.00 am Service, so at least he’ll be home early tomorrow afternoon, but funerals are never fun things to go to… I took Arisnoë through a few quests, including a Fishing quest, where I had to fish for Fat Sleepers (a rather strange name for a fish!) in Nagrand – and I didn’t have a single Flight Point there! “Oh, that’s alright,” though I, “it’ll give me a chance to boost my experience by Exploration!” So I set out to “explore” my way to Nagrand… but I couldn’t get through, or past, Shattrath City – the Capital City of Draenor, now overrun by the Iron Horde – which was why I couldn’t get through that way!

08.44 pm

So I ended up swimming around the harbour there – all the way around the coast line to one of the hairiest places in Nagrand, where a soft whimper, followed swiftly by the despairing, bloodcurdling cry of a Hunter casting “Feign Death” brought a kind-hearted Mouselet with his motorbike and side-car to offer assistance to a sadder but wiser Arisnoë, who hadn’t thought that Nagrand might have been a bit more than she could handle on her own. Mouselet drove her around to pick up as many Flight Points as possible, and she ended up where she wanted to be – in Telaar, where she could safely fish for her Fat Sleepers behind safe Outpost Walls! 🙂

Then I quit, and started writing this until Josh arrived, and then it was dinner time, and we have to have an early night tonight because Julian has to leave for the airport at 04.45 am tomorrow morning. 😦 Oh, the joys of flying interstate for a funeral!

So, now on to the important bits!

Food stuffz: do you all really want to know what we had for dinner on Saturday night, and for lunch yesterday? No? Oh, good! because I can’t remember now – that was a whole day ago! 😉 However, last night being Sunday night, we had omelets – and delicious omelets they were, too! Julian put in ham, store-bought tomatoes, Halloumi cheese, home-grown spring onions, and home-grown green capsicum – really delicious! For dessert I had a slice of my cake, and a Dark Cacao Chia Pod. Today I had a sandwich for lunch, with turkey breast sandwich chunks, and basil-pesto hummus instead of butter (which works extremely well, I promise you!) on the very tasty Baker’s Delight whole-meal bread. Tonight we had lamb backstraps, with mashed potato, half a tomato – the very last of our wonderful home-grown crop *cry* – and steamed fresh, store-bought green beans – all very nice, and once again the lamb backstraps were fantastic and tender! For dessert, I had the last slice of my cake (I’ll be making another one on Wednesday – I’d make another tomorrow, but Julian won’t be here to tell me where everything is, so it’ll have to wait until Wednesday!) and another of the Dark Cacao Chia Pods – they really are worth trying!

Weigh-in Sunday morning. Was not good! I went up quite a bit – from 63.4kg to 63.9kg – I suspect fluid retention, but I spent the rest of the day trying to concentrate on WoW, instead of fretting about going up four points – and I asked Julian to give me a smaller slice of cake from now on!

Weigh-in this morning. Wasn’t too bad, but still wasn’t good, and my feet were swollen this morning – apparently they couldn’t even wait until this evening! Actually, looking under the desk at my feet now, they don’t seem to be as swollen tonight as they were this morning when I first got up! Weird! But then, that’s me – topsy-turvy! This morning I went from 63.9kg to 63.8kg – down one point. As I think I said the other night – I’m beginning to feel as though I have no control over my weight any more – it just seems to do whatever it feels like doing, whenever it feels like doing it!

I’ve been walking on the treadmill every morning before breakfast – two kilometers @ 3.8 kilometers and hour, which takes me about 32+ minutes. Lately I’ve decided that if I do 32+ minutes Monday to Friday, on Saturdays and Sundays I’ll only do one kilometer. I’ve also sped things up a bit, and I’m now walking at 4 kilometers an hour (and still not breaking into a sweat! I really don’t feel as though I’m working hard enough…) So not only am I walking faster, but I’m still walking the full two kilometers from Monday to Friday – and you know what? It only shaves two minutes (!) off my time! I was hoping that by speeding things up, I’d be able to do the same distance but spend less time getting “there” – but I wouldn’t call two minutes much of a saving! Oh well, I’ll keep on with the 4 kilometers an hour speed because quite frankly, it feels more comfortable! (I feel more comfortable walking faster? Go figure!)

Our little fishies are still doing well – or they seem to be, anyway! Julian went out and bought a small filter and aerator for their little Fish House today, and they seem to be delighted with it, and we also gave them a teeny little bit of fish-food, because although we were told not to feed them for about three days, we thought that they might be getting hungry, seeing that they were nosing about on the bottom of the tank trying to nibble the gunk that arrived in their puddle water with them. The fishy-food went in a matter of minutes, once they realised what it was, so I guess they must have been hungry. I’ve decided to call them “Auric” (which means “gold”) and “Dapple” (because one has more silvery spots on him (or her) than Auric) 🙂 We still haven’t decided where they’re going to end up living permanently…

Which once again brings me to tomorrow – although Julian won’t be here until the late afternoon, my favourite eldest daughter will be over and it’ll be fun, because we’ll be able to turn the television up, and laugh and talk loudly without disturbing himself, and getting glowering looks because the television is too loud! 😉 So, it’ll be a fun day tomorrow for us, but not for Julian – and I fear that as we both get older, there’ll be more of these unhappy impromptu trips hither, thither, and yon – as old family friends leave us – but, that’s the cycle of life, I guess… and on that somewhat doleful note, it is my sad duty to tell you all that… once again, that’s about it from me for this evening – but do drop in again tomorrow night to find out what my weight decided to do to me in the morning, what my favourite eldest daughter and I watched during the day (I’m even going to have to make my own lunch! How ’bout that!) and how Auric and Dapple are doing. But until then, please remember to bee as good as you can; and that opportunity is often missed by most people because it’s dressed in overalls and looks like work, also, don’t forget to keep warm – or cool – depending on what it’s like outside, to always drive carefully, and to look after yourselves… but most importantly, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂