11.10 pm

Well, this is just a short note to let you all know that we’re fine, Flipper’s fine, and the Fishies are also fine 🙂 (but I really must think of names for them!) As you can see from the time stamp above, ’tis very late indeed! So I’ll just leave you with a promise to tell you all about our adventures today, tomorrow (Hey! That sounds like a really good and catchy name for some sort of Current Affairs television program! Hmm! so I shall also write to Channel 9 tomorrow, and suggest it! “Today, tomorrow!” – it could be a real winner! 😉 )

What do you all think of the new blog template?

Until tomorrow then, please try to bee good, remember that every exit is an entry somewhere else, and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to keep warm – or cool – depending on the weather, and to always drive carefully… but most importantly, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

04.31 pm

Well, it’s been another interesting and productive day today – Julian “forgot” to look at his shopping list properly yesterday and consequently didn’t get quite a lot of essential supplies, like… toilet paper, and food… and what-not, so while he was out “reshopping”, I neatened up all of Arisnoë’s quests (read: I finished off all of her quests prior to the Commander Vorka one, which I am incapable of doing on my own!) and then parked her until Julian got home and we’d had our lunch. In the meantime, I pottered around toying with the idea of starting a new character, then I decided against that, and decided to change Shekinàh’s name and Race instead, as being the fastest way I could think of to get a Night Elf character with the name “Sylvanas”. Now, “Sylvanas” is a very pretty name, that I’ve admired and coveted for a long time – but it already belongs to Sylvanas Windrunner, one of the major NPCs in World of Warcraft, so I couldn’t use it – but I could, and did, use “Sylvänas”! So the lovely level 94 Draenei known as Shekinàh, is now the lovely level 94 Night Elf known as Sylvänas! Although Shekinàh, now known as Sylvänas, had been created a Draenei, it’s actually about her third or fourth name change – I can’t remember what they all were now, I’ve had her for so long, but I do know she’s had lots of different names – but this time, she’s changed Races, too. I prolly shouldn’t have though, as I have this “theory” that Draenei are more likely to “slip through the cracks” and obtain the Trading Post upgrade to level 3, without having to get an “Exalted” Reputation with a Draenor Faction, seeing they’re of the same Race. Oh well, it’s a theory that I can’t very well prove or disprove, now that she’s a Night Elf called Sylvänas! Never mind – one of these days I’ll get bored with Garrisons and go and bring a young’un up to level 90 – though by then I’ll have become so old and doddering that I won’t be able to play WoW any more, anyway!

Aside from all of that, after lunch Julian logged on as me, and took Arisnoë through the Commander Vorka quests in less time than it takes to say “Commander who?”! So, now that’s out of the way, Arisnoë’s busy running around in Gorgrond, and killing all these nasty, walking plants (weeds, really! 😉 ) I really, really hate those nasty little pant things! They’re easy enough to kill, but they jump out at you when you’re in the middle of fighting something a lot more worthwhile, and they gang up on you at the most inopportune times – and if you don’t get rid of them, like about two minutes ago, they can, and often do, inflict quite severe damage upon your person, and that of your pet! (if you happen to be a Beastmaster Hunter!) but hey! I made level 95 – in fact I’m about four bubbles into level 95, so Garrison Building Upgrades are not all that far away now, so I’d better start scraping together as many Garrison Resources as I can!

Julian still had a few other things to get done, but when he’d finished, we set up the very rudimentary and temporary Fish House! It’s sitting on the marble top of the dining room sideboard, on a nice clean (if somewhat wrinkled, because we don’t own an iron!) tea-towel. After cleaning it with tap water and some paper towels, Julian worked out its volume, then we filled it to the half way mark, and put the appropriate number of drops of this anti-gunk-stuff (er… hnag on a minute, I’ll go and get it so that I can tell you what it is, in case you ever want to re-house some fishes!) Right, it’s called “Biotec Water Ager CN“, and it cleans the water, gets rid of chemicals and heavy metals, and puts a layer of slime on the fishes to help protect their skin. Then came the fun bit! 🙂 We got a large-ish jug and went out to the muck-puddle, where we scooped up a nice big jugful of the disgusting liquid. Then Julian used the fish-net to locate and capture the poor little fishies, one by one, and put them into the jug. Unsurprisingly, they seemed quite agitated and distressed! They kept bumping their noses into the glass walls of the jug, in a vain attempt to swim through the glass and escape, poor little babies… Then Julian fetched a large bucket and scooped up a bucketful of watery green slime, and with me carrying the fish in their glass jug, and Julian carrying the disgusting-looking bucket of “wet stuff”, we went inside. First, the contents of the bucket went into the temporary Fish House, then the contents of the glass jug were added to the mixture… “Oh!” cried the little fishies “Let us flee back to the safety of our stone caves under the fountain!” and… promptly bumped their noses into the glass walls of the Fish House! I’m sure they were surprised and a little bit upset – probably feeling as though these weird-looking aliens from outer space had landed, and then abducted them in order to perform all sorts of nasty experiments upon their little bodies. I hope they don’t get too hungry – we have purchased special Fish Food for them, but we’ve been told not to feed them for three days – so… I guess they’ll lose weight! (though there’s probably still enough algae in their water to last them a couple of days) We put the lid on the Fish House, not so much to keep Flipper out, but to keep them in! They were swimming around exploring their new, temporary premises and one looked as though he was going to make a jump for it (perhaps he though he was an octopus!) I had visions of finding a cold, stiff little body on the floor, so we decided that discretion was probably the better part of valour, and put the Fish House lid on. Then we went out to have more fun! Draining their erstwhile home, and getting as much of the evil muck out as we could. The little pump thingy that Julian had bought did the job beautifully, and the puddle emptied surprisingly quickly! It’s quite deep, really, and has lots of river stones on the bottom – and it’s probably just as well that we emptied the puddle now, as one of the two hollow bricks that the water feature (fountain) rests on was crumbling away – it wouldn’t have been very long at all before the water feature tumbled into the water, and probably squashing, or trapping, the little fishies in a landslide of broken rubble! All that’s left in the bottom of the puddle now are two crumbling hollow bricks, some rather nice (if filthy!) river stones, and a lot of mud and dead algae. It’ll take quite a bit of cleaning – the stones really need to be individually scrubbed by hand I think, but we should end up with a nice little pool, with fresh, clear water, ornamental blocks for the water feature to stand on, and some shady, protective and sheltering floating water plants. I’m not sure if we’ll put the fishies back in there, or keep them for the bigger pool that we’ll be putting in the back garden… But that’s where the fishies are up to, at the moment – at least they’re still alive… let’s hope they stay that way! 🙂

Food stuffz: last night for dinner we had pan-fried chicken breasts on a bed of steamed rice with our very own finely chopped spring onions, and half a tomato. I had a slice of my cake, and one of my Corella pears for dessert. I didn’t get a sandwich today, I was given a nice, fresh, wrap, with sliced up capsicum, tomato and spring onions, all organically grown in our own veggie garden, and some ham, and chunks of low-fat Halloumi cheese. Most delicious! I’m not sure what we’re having for dinner tonight – ahh… himself has just informed me that we’re having chicken sausages, with green beans, chips, and half a tomato. For dessert, naturally I’ll have a slice of my yummy cake – without cream again, as I think that was one of the things that Julian forgot to get yesterday – and today! And I shall have another of my Corella pears…

Weigh-in this morning. Was a bit better – I went down two points, from 63.6kg to 63.4kg, and I’m starting to feel a bit like a yo-yo! Still, I don’t much care if my weight does go up – just as long as it comes down again! I suppose it’ll go up again tomorrow… *sigh* I just feel as though I have absolutely no control over it any more…

And then there’s tomorrow – Sunday! Julian and I will be doing one of the biggest Dungeons, or Instance, in Azeroth – Ulduar! It’s supposed to be terribly hard for the appropriate level of adventurer who would normally go there – but it should be a lot of fun for two, hardened and seasoned level 100 characters like Mouselet and Wynterthyme! 😉 Let’s hope we don’t die too many times! 🙂 Anyway, I’ll let you all know how we went tomorrow night! However – for now, that’s about it from me for this evening! Don’t forget to drop in and catch up on all our adventures, both in, and out, of Azeroth, and how our little Fishies are going (and if they’re still alive after their traumatic move!) What my weight’s up (or down!) to, and if there’s still any cake left! Until then though, please do your level best to bee good, remember, you can’t be brave if you’ve only had wonderful things happen to you, and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm – or cool – depending on your preferences… but most importantly, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

05.33 pm

My goodness! I’m starting quite late tonight – that’s because I’ve been busy finishing off my new desktop bookmarks wallpaper thingy – I really wasn’t happy with the last one – and besides, it didn’t really go with the new window blind that I got this morning 😉 It’s quite dark – as in a fairly dark charcoal – with a very smart “ox-blood” type of red (it has a fair bit of brown in it) for the trim – so I’ve done a sort-of reverse. I did try for the charcoal background, but that made the screen terribly dark and gloomy – so I’ve reversed it and made the background the smart “ox-blood”, and used the charcoal (which actually looks black) as the “trim” – with accents of gold on my “Winter” symbol, up near the top next to the text frame, and white on a small snowflake down near the lower right-hand corner. It does look quite smart – but who knows when I’ll decide to change it again – probably the next time I download and use a new window blind, I guess… 🙂 Well, look at it this way – while I’m happily messing around with new desktop bookmarks wallpapery thingies, I’m not fiddling around changing the blog templates and headers, am I! 😉

I spent most of the day playing WoW – only breaking off to work on my graphics when my right shoulder and arm got too sore to keep playing. I’m beginning to think that the arms on my chair might be just a wee bit too high, which tilts my posture to the left (which is probably why all my tops keep sliding off my almost non-existent shoulders on the left hand side! It’s extremely most annoyment!) however, I managed to get Arisnoë to within four bubbles of level 95 – and she’d pretty much only just turned level 94 yesterday at close of play – so that’s not too bad going for a day, I suppose. While I was out hacking away at monsters and demons and such, Julian was out doing some shopping for our disgusting grot and algae puddle, laughingly called a “fish pond”. We now have a pump, to get the water out of the puddle, and we have a small glass aquarium, in which to place our two little fishies while we clean up their home (it also has a glass lid, so that Flipper can’t get in and have a bath with said fishies!) This will all be happening tomorrow (I think!) but we may yet keep the fishies in their small holding tank for a while longer. We’ll clean out the grot and algae puddle, and put in some water plants and some snails, so that it will look nice, and keep reasonably clean, but not put these fishies back in there – we thought we’d get going with planting our fig tree, and installing a somewhat larger and deeper, proper fish pond, with some pretty water plants and a small waterfall-slash-fountain in it, where it will get plenty of shade from the fig tree and the shed on summer afternoons (we don’t want boiled fish!) and then put our little fishies in there, and get them a few new friends to play with. Those lucky little fishies! I’m starting to feel quite jealous! I wouldn’t mind frolicking around in a nice clean little pond, with pretty plants, and a waterfall or fountain to play in! According to the gentleman in the Aquarium place that Julian went to, we’re to fill the little holding tank half full of tap water, let it sit for a bit (Julian did tell me how long the man said to let it stand for, but that was half an hour ago, I was concentrating on my graphics, and I’ve forgotten what he said! Sorry!) and after it had sat there for “X” hours (or minutes!) to fill the rest up with their disgustingly filthy, grotty and algae filled pond water, and then we can catch our fishies and transfer them to the holding tank, where we’re not to feed them for about three days, as they’ll be stressed out from their enforced  resettlement – and I guess with slightly different and cleaner water, they may get upset tummies, too!

Ah yes! Tummies, and what’s good for them, and what’s not so good for them! Remember that cake I made yesterday, with the sultanas and apple bits in it? It was absolutely delicious! I’m not quite sure what I was expecting, but it’s been a very long time since I made even a packet cake, let alone one from scratch! But, it seems that I haven’t lost my touch – next time I’ll make the citrus variation, and if that turns out alright, I might even try my hand at a Devil’s Foodcake recipe! It’s one that my mother made every Saturday, for years and years and years, when I was growing up. Friends would always come over on Saturday night to play Poker, or Solo, and it was always to our place because they were all bachelors, and I guess they liked getting a good meal when they arrived, and a luscious chocolate cake for supper! Anyway, Mum would make this cake, and one of my favourite things to do on a Sunday morning, while my parents were still asleep, was to get out of bed, creep into the kitchen, cut myself a healthy size chunk of cake, pour some cream over it, then scuttle back to bed with my cake and a teaspoon, where I’d cuddle into the blankets and devour my filched prize with glee! Ahh… nostalgia! 🙂 It’s a fairly easy cake to make, in that most of it is created in the blender (or Vitamizer) then you simply add the blender mixture to the flour, and bake it – in two tins because it’s a two-layer cake. The icing, or frosting, is a little harder – Mum used to make it with Copha, I think, and it can get a bit tricky – I always found that the Betty Crocker ready-made chocolate frosting tasted exactly the same as Mum’s icing, and all you had to do was scrape it out of the tub and apply it to the cake! Much more easier! 🙂 It’s also nice just to eat it straight from the tub, but I’d never do that now (well, maybe just a teeny taste then, just for old time’s sake! 😉 ) But getting back to the cake I made yesterday, the sultanas and apple bits all went where they were supposed to – that is, they didn’t all just sink down to the bottom of the cake – though next time I’d use three or four mini-packets of the dried fruit – I thought it could have done with a bit more in it, and the texture was right, and it tasted… just like it should! 🙂

09.32 pm

Food stuffz: last night for dinner we had another one of those delicious steaks – the ones you could cut with a spoon – with our green beans, from our own veggie garden, and which were very, very nice – half a store-bought tomato, and chips. Naturally for dessert I had a piece of my cake, and a low-fat strawberry yoghurt. We had sandwiches for lunch today, made with the Baker’s Delight whole-meal bread, with sliced sandwich silverside, low-fat Halloumi cheese, and some tomato and chili relish – very delicious – and tonight for dinner we had pan-fried chicken breast on a bed of steamed rice which had our very own home-grown, finely chopped, spring onions in it. Julian also got some more Corella pears today, so for dessert I had another piece of my cake, and one of my pears, so I feel very well-fed! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. Was a bit of a shocker! I must admit, I’d grown so used to bobbing around the 63.2kg – 63.3kg mark that I was a trifle taken aback this morning to see that I’d shot up four points! From 63.2kg to 63.6kg! And I didn’t even have any cream on my cake! S’not fair! If I’d known I was going to go up like that, I would have at least put some cream on my cake, and be damned to the consequences! Unfortunately, those damned consequences must have known what I had planned, and got their crumb in the door first! *pout* I didn’t have any cream on my cake tonight, either… because the cream had gone past its “use by” date *cry* Oh well, let’s see what my weight does tomorrow…

And then there’s tomorrow – Saturday – with all its fishy connotations… It’ll be fun to see the little fishies swimming around on top of the dining room sideboard – which is about the only place they can go, apart from the hall table, which is really a bit too dark  – the little fishies would think we’d moved to Alaska, and the land of the midnight sun! And Sunday, I believe that Mouselet and Wynterthyme have a hot date planned in Ulduar! Now that I’ve finished my new desktop bookmarks wallpaper thingy, I’ll be able to concentrate on Arisnoë’s very gradual level advancement, though I’m sure that Mouselet and Wynterthyme will also get a good run with their Reputation and Riding quests! And once again folks, that’s about it from me again for tonight! Don’t forget to look in again tomorrow night to find out if there’s any cake left, what my weight is up to (or, hopefully, down to!) and whether Arisnoë has reached level 95.5, with only a few more bubbles to the longed for level 96! Until then though, Gentle Readers, please do your very best to bee good, don’t forget that if you don’t raise your eyes you will think that you are the highest point, and remember to always drive carefully, to keep cool – or warm – depending on the weather, and to look after yourselves… but above all, please! Remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

04.50 pm

Well, today’s been quite “productive”, as my mother would have said! Alas, the tomato plants have all been removed… however we did manage to salvage one more good, small tomato! It’s not quite ripe yet, but it’ll only take about a day to get it ripe enough to eat. Julian harvested (“harvested” – isn’t that a nice word! 🙂 ) a beautiful bowl full of green beans from the main veggie bed, and a fistful of fresh spring onions from the second veggie bed. We were going to use the lovely little green capsicum that he picked yesterday in our lunch today, but I’ve had a better idea. We’ll get some baby bocconcini, slice up some tomato and the capsicum, plenty of salt and pepper, a couple of torn up basil leaves (unfortunately our basil plant has all but gone to seed, but I think there are still enough edible leaves on it for one “last hurrah” ) and make a little salad, to have with our dinner tomorrow night! It’s so nice having a veggie garden at long last – and everything we get from it is organic! Alright, so the baby bocconcini in the salad won’t be “organic”, but I know how to make cheese (it’s very, very easy! Can you still get junket tablets?) and we can jolly-well make our own! Well, not our own bocconcini – they’re supposed to be made with buffalo milk, and we don’t have a buffalo – yet! 😉 But we can make our own cottage-type cheese with organic milk – which I suppose we could then roll into little balls, and pretend that they were baby bocconcini! 😉 We also planted the little kumquat bush this afternoon – we’ll get some slow-release citrus plant food tomorrow, to give it a bit of a boost – I fear it’s been languishing somewhat, parked out on the back deck for so long 😦 but it should perk up (I hope!) We’ve put it in the middle, between the two veggie beds, where it’ll get plenty of sunshine, and being under our noses, so to speak, it shouldn’t miss out of getting watered regularly. When it develops its first crop of kumquats, I’m going to make marmalade! 🙂

And I made a cake today! 🙂 I was so torn – I didn’t know whether to make the sultana version, adding “about a small fistful” of sultanas to the cake mixture, or to make the citrus version, by mixing the zest of one orange into the mixture, and adding a generous “trail” of mixed peel through the centre of the cake. I ended up making the easier of the two, and added some sultanas to the mixture – only it wasn’t just sultanas! When we were buying all the stuff for my cake(s) I was loath to buy a whole, great big packet of sultanas, so I got Julian to get me down an 8-pack of those “school lunch snack” sultanas, in the little boxes. When we got them home, we discovered that they weren’t just sultanas – Julian had grabbed a pack of sultanas, and dried apple “bits” by mistake! Oh well – what’s the difference? You put apple in some cakes too, so I just tossed in two little packets of sultana and apple bits (of course I discarded the little cardboard boxes first!) We’ll have some of that for our dessert tonight – and I’m very curious to know how the sultanas and apple bits turned out! I’d read, many times, that to stop fruit from sinking to the bottom of a cake, the best thing to do was dredge and dust off the dried fruit through a bit of flour before adding it to the cake mixture – so I thought I’d try that – I didn’t want all the sultanas and apple bits sinking to the bottom of the cake! Well, I didn’t have to dredge the fruit through the flour, I simply added them to the sifted flour and mixed them through a bit – this particular cake is nearly all made in the food processor, which you then pour in, and mix into your bowl of sifted flour (on this occasion, with the sultanas and apple bits in it!) so I’m curious as to where the sultanas ended up – all through the cake, or all up the top of the cake (because the bottom of the cake tin becomes the top of the cake when it’s turned out to cool, so if the fruit was going to sink to the bottom while it was cooking, that bottom would become the top when you turned it out onto the cake rack!)

I also managed to get Arisnoë up to level 94 – I haven’t had to do Commander Vorka yet – someone evidently tripped over a cable at Blizzard this morning, and I had to log out – the lag was so bad that the game was unplayable Still, Wynterthyme did get her Dailies done, and she did finish off all her Mount Training, at long last! So now we (Mouselet and Wynterthyme) have to take their six different types of Mount, and defeat all the nasties, before getting the Achievement (and I think Title!) of “Stable Master”! It’s supposed to turn out to be (Julian did the math!) or add up to be – six times six – six Mounts, one after the other, against each nasty, or 36 battles altogether… And yes, there are six different Mounts, and each one has to battle each nasty – that makes sense, and I understand that – but there are more than six nasties – there’s about 12 of them – so does each of your six Mounts have to battle the same nasties, or can they pick and choose which nasty they’ll face, as long as they battle six of them? It’s very confusing… Anyway, we’ll look into that tonight, ot tomorrow…

Food stuffz: Last night we had chicken sausages for dinner, with half a store-bought tomato, snow peas, and chips. I had the last piece of Julian’s cake and a Dark Cacoa Chia Pod for dessert – I miss my fresh fruit! 😦 And for lunch, I had a sandwich made from the Baker’s Delight whole-meal bread, with corned silverside, low-fat cheese, and tomato relish – which was extremely nice! Tonight we’re having steak, half a store-bought tomato, the green beans that Julian picked this afternoon, and probably chips… and for dessert, I’ll have a piece of my cake, possibly with a bit of low-fat cream (I haven’t decided yet!) and another of those delicious Dark Cacao Chia Pods. We’d like to plant some broad beans this autumn – I must look up “broad beans” in relation to Warfarin though – there are so many things that I should avoid as much as possible – like leafy greens – though if I’m consistent, and eat them on a regualr basis (that is, don’t have heaps of say, Brussels sprouts one day, and then not have any more for a couple of weeks, and then eat another huge plateful of them) the regular blood tests will manage my INR levels. However, I don’t really want to eat broad beans every day while they’re in season! More research will be needed as to what we plant next…

Weigh-in this morning. Yup, still bobbing around like a good little cork in the weight-and-sea! I went from 63.3kg to 63.2kg this morning – that does make a full week, vacillating somewhere between 63.1kg and 63.5kg – so I suppose I must be what laughingly passes for “stable” at the moment – but who knows what my silly body is likely to do next week! 😉 Especially if I do decide to have some low-fat cream with my cake! 😮

And that brings me to tomorrow – Friday! Hopefully I might even get Arisnoë up to level 95! Wouldn’t that be good! However, I have no idea what’s happening tomorrow – I know Julian’s going to be going out to look at some things for my favourite youngest daughter – but hopefully that won’t take too long. I haven’t decided whether I’ll trot along or not – because I’m also working on yet another new desktop wallpaper-y thingy, as I’m not really happy with the one I’ve just finished. It sounded like a good idea when I first thought of it, but the actuality didn’t match with the concept, so I’m trying something different. Anyway, dinner’s nearly ready, and that’s really about it from me for tonight! Don’t forget to call in again tomorrow night and see if my weight is still bobbing aimlessly around, or whether it’s decided to do something different, for a change. I’ll be able to catch you all up on what’s going down the Drainor – oops! sorry, in Draenor, and what my sultana Babka was like! 🙂 Until then though, do please at least attempt to bee good, remember that you will never be like the ‘Little Engine That Could’ if you sit around on your caboose, and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep cool – or warm – depending on how high the central heating has been set… but above all, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

04.09 pm

Oh well, at least it’s not a Friday! 🙂 I decided to try using different colours today – what do you all think? Is it too bright, or not bright enough? It looks good from this end, but everyone’s monitors seem to display colours differently – I wonder why? Surely it can’t be that hard to develop, or work out, a colour display standard that everyone (including monitor manufacturers!) can stick to! *growl* Ruddy programmers! Why can’t they produce some intelligent and badly needed software for a change, instead of producing silly new bells and whistles that nobody really wants – except for maybe one person in their own office, who – once upon a time – thought that maybe it might be a fun thing to try out! I dunno…

Anyway, we took the opportunity to get the bulk of our Dailies out of the way this morning – the usual oil quests and so forth that we usually do in the evening, because Julian was going to be hard at work in the Office for the rest of the morning. I, on the other hand, was very happy to have the chance to get Arisnoë a little closer to the elusive level 96! Unfortunately the Mount Training Dailies don’t become available until late afternoon, so I’ll have to wait until tonight to see if I can get all my trainee Mounts ready to take human passengers (plus, of course, the Achievement that goes with that accomplishment!) Actually, Arisnoë’s getting pretty close to that ghastly section where I have to face Commander Vorka, where I’m going to have to get Julian in to do that for me – I suffer from “fluster lock” too badly and just end up dying, multiple times. It would be much easier if we could do it as a group, but Mouselet’s already done that quest so he can’t pick it up again – and as the quest is “instanced” – that is, it goes into a sort-of “closed circuit” routine, where only one player can participate at a time – I’m sure you can imagine the chaos if fifty or more players wanted to do that particular quest at the same time! It’d be totally impossible to complete – whereas forcing each player into a little “fenced off” corner of the game of their own to complete the quest, means that quite literally, hundreds of players can do the same quest at the same time, without getting in eachother’s way. So the only way that I can get Julian to help me is to get up and vacate my seat, and let him take over my character, while I go off somewhere and nervously chew my nails down to the quick! 😉 No, I go and stand behind him, peering over his shoulder – gasping in shock, horror, or awe – and sometimes all three together – at all the carnage and mayhem! There actually aren’t very many places where I have to call of Julian’s services like that – maybe about three, in the entire game, I suppose – and I don’t really look on it as “cheating”, because I’d probably manage to get through it on my own – in about seven or eight months of dying continuously and denuding the Guild Bank to pay for all my armor repairs – and if I still couldn’t finish it on my own, I’d give up, and call Blizzard a lot of very rude names for forcing me try to get through such a ghastly quest on my own (the Forums also have a lot to say about this quest, along exactly those lines!) then cancel my account, and Blizzard would lose my valuable contributions to the running of BlizzCon next year! 😛

Food stuffz: Last night for dinner we had herbed and marinated chicken breasts, pan-fried, and served on a bed of steamed rice into which had been mixed some finely chopped spring onions, and half a tomato – a store-bought one this time, because unfortunately, all of our tomatoes are finished for the season, and Julian plans to pull them out tomorrow 😦 However, on the bright side, our capsicums are starting to come on very well indeed! We’ll even be having one of them chopped up in our sandwich tomorrow! 🙂 But going back to dinner last night, I had the last of my Corella pears – which was really, really delicious – very juicy, but also very firm! I also had a slice of cake – without cream, this time, and it’s just as nice, with or without cream! For lunch today I had a sandwich made of the extremely nice Baker’s Delight whole-meal bread, with some basil-pesto hummus, some of the left over chicken breast from last night, and sliced low-fat Halloumi cheese. Very yummy! 🙂 Dinner tonight will be chicken sausages (no, I don’t know what brand they are) with chips, half a store-bought tomato (*cry*) and snow peas. And seeing that I have no more fresh fruit available, I’ll have a slice of cake – probably without cream again – and either a Chia Pod, or a low-fat yoghurt. I was actually reading in The Age today (unbelievable, I know, that the newly “Tabloid” Age does still have the occasional article worth reading!) that we should be starting to move away from the low-fat products, and back into the full fats, but steering clear of any and all artificial sweeteners and processed foods. You can find it here, if The Age hasn’t pulled it by order of the so-called “diet food” producers, and the low-fat Food Manufacturers. I’d like to start having the non-low-fat dairy products for a couple of months, anyway – and just see if it does make any difference to my weight and my health! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. It seems I’m bobbing around like a cork in a tub of water at the moment! I mean it’s interesting that – at the moment, anyway – I’m bobbing up and down around the same weight – give or take a couple of points here and there. It’s gone like this: [Thu] 63.3kg [Fri] 63.0kg [Sat] 63.1kg [Sun] 63.3kg [Mon] 63.3kg [Tue] 63.2kg [Today] 63.3kg. All up and down around the same weight, and if it’s the same, or close to it, it’ll have been for a full week! It’s quite… strange, for me – I usually fluctuate much more than just one or two points… not that I’m complaining! I’m quite pleased that my body seems to be happy, bobbing around at this weight! Let’s see what happens tomorrow morning! 🙂

I’m not sure what’s happening tomorrow – more of the same, I expect, as Julian still has a bit more office work to do. I think, that if I really get stuck into it, and try very hard, I can possibly get Arisnoë up to level 96 by the end of the weekend, even taking into consideration that Julian and I spend nearly all of Sunday with Wynterthyme and Mouselet. But who knows? We have a kumquat bush to put in a nice big new pot, and we have to decide what to plant for autumn… it’s a real shame that I’m on Warfarin, because I’m supposed to steer clear of “leafy greens” – which I love, and which are so good for you – it’s just that they do funny things to your INR when you’re on Warfarin. Oh well, we can plant onions, and garlic… and broad beans, I suppose… so roll on winter and spring! 🙂 And once again, that’s about it from me for this evening – but do drop in again tomorrow night and find out if my weight is still just “bobbin’ along”, or if it’s decided to make a bigger move – if it does, hopefully it’ll be downwards! 🙂 There’ll be heaps to tell you all tomorrow night, so make sure you don’t miss out on all the hot goss and interesting trivia! Until then though, please try to bee good, remember that a positive mind finds a way it can be done; a negative mind looks for all the ways it can’t be done, and don’t forget to keep cool – or warm – depending on how you feel, to always drive carefully, and to look after yourselves – but above all, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

05.45 pm

Yes, I’m afraid it’s yet another late start for me! Well, my very favourite eldest daughter was over today, and we had a lovely day watching episodes of “Arrow”, and “The Flash”, including the “cross-over” episode where we meet up with Flash and Arrow discussing their activities. Some of the “Arrow” episodes were quite harrowing – a favourite character dying – but apparently she comes back after a trip to the Lazarus Pit (which Lee’s mentioned to me – more than once or twice – but apart from that, I know nothing!) so it’s all very new and exciting – even my very favourite eldest daughter hasn’t seen any episodes from this season of “Arrow”, so it’s all “new stuff” for both of us! “Orphan Black” should be starting again – next week! I’m really looking forward to seeing that again – I’m going to recommend getting as many episodes as we can, and saving them up, so that we don’t have to watch it s-l-o-w-l-y, one episode per week! I hate doing that! I like to know what happens next – which is why I don’t mind spoilers – in fact, if I think someone knows what happens next, I’ll keep on pestering them until they tell me, or hit me over the head with a wet fish! 🙂 Anyway, we had a very good day watching “Arrow” and “The Flash” – and I’m really looking forward to next week! Hopefully we might even have some more episodes of “The 100” and “Supergirl”, too! 🙂

Before Lee arrived this morning – I know I should probably have been playing “catch-ups” with last night’s extremely truncated blog – but I decided to sort out Wynterthyme and Arisnoë’s Followers and quests, because I knew I probably wouldn’t have time to do them tonight, such a busy life I lead! I found a new WindowBlind¹ this morning, too, which I bought, as it’s quite decorative, and the colours all go extremely well with the new bookmarks desktop wallpaper wot I made – you should all go and have a look at them – they’re easy to use, and they make your screen look so much more nicerer than the boring, “same-old, same-old” Windows look! The one I’m using at the moment is called “Andromeda” – click on the Thumbnail to see a screenshot! 🙂 But getting back to “Les Girls” 😉 Arisnoë is now level 93 – oh, it seems like such a long way to level 96, and her next Garrison upgrade! I just want to get some new buildings up, and level up the Mine and the Storeroom – but you have to be level 96 before you can do that 😦 S’not fair! If we get a bit of time this evening, Wynterthyme should be finishing her last two Mount Training quests – Julian finished off his last night, and as he was a day ahead of me, I should finish mine tonight! I wonder what they’ll give us in the way of Dailies, once all our Mounts are fully Trained! Wynterthyme’s also been racking up quite a few Achievements for all her efforts to build up a decent Fleet – so far (so far, cross fingers, touch wood!) I haven’t lost any ships in battle – Julian’s lost one that I know of – but I think I’ve just been lucky! When you lose a ship, you can build another one to replace it – it even gets the same name, I think – but you really have to start all over again, and re-build your ship’s “experience” from “beginner” (I’ll bet that not very many of you knew that ships level up by earning experience points, just the same as character do! 😉 ) So as I said – I think I’ve just been lucky so far! At the moment Wynterthyme’s been eyeing off a vacant plot of land down near the Garrison’s Main Gate – it has a dirt “driveway” (for want of a better term!) or path, leading to a round patch of bare ground. It looks like the ideal spot to put a Medium Sized Building on! At the moment it’s covered in stacks of building materials (bricks, planks, rope, “stuff”) so I’m betting that come the new expansion later this year, we’ll be allowed a new Garrison Building. At the other end of the Garrison, I have a Menagerie that I could unlock – but I don’t want it! It’s a complete waste of space because it’s for Battle Pets, and I don’t use Battle Pets! I’ve toyed with the idea of unlocking it, getting it to Level 1 or 2, and then trying to move something else onto its space, but I’m not at all sure that I’ll be able to do that! I tried moving something else into the space occupied by the Herb Garden and the Mine, when they were both outside the Garrison walls (the Herb Garden has since been moved – not by me – to be inside the Garrison walls) I haven’t tried moving anything into the Herb Garden since it’s been moved inside though… I might go and have a look at that when I’ve finished this…

09.57 pm

Well, I’ve just completed “Training” my last two Mounts, but I didn’t finish, and I didn’t get the Achievement! I succeeded with one of the Mounts, but the other, apparently, still needs work! I am not happy! Not happy at all, actually! *frown* The animal that I didn’t expect to finish with, because someone else was killing Maimclaw (a very vicious Giant Dire Wolf) at the same time. Usually when you’re successful, you get a sort-of “Ta-dahhh”, and a very quick sort-of a yellow sunburst effect will flash over the Mount’s head – which I didn’t get. I got it for the other Mount though, the one that apparently needs more Training. No… definitely not happy! *frown* [please insert very rude word here!] Grrr!

Oh well, on to much more important matters!

Food stuffz: Last night for dinner we had very delicious lamb backstraps – cooked very simply and pan-fried – with half a tomato, Brussels sprouts, and chips. For dessert I had a Corella pear, and a piece of Julian’s cake with just a smattering of cream. Lunch today was a very nice ham, cheese and tomato sandwich, on the delicious Baker’s Delight whole-meal bread. I really don’t know which bread I like most – the Coles-brand whole-grain bread with the rather heavily seeded crust, which is very tasty and (hopefully!) good for you, or the Baker’s Delight whole-meal bread, with a fairly plain crust, which is equally as tasty, and (hopefully!) just as good for you! I have a great idea! (“Oh no!” cries Julian – he really hates it when I get one of my “great ideas”! 😉 ) No dear, it really is a great idea! You’ll love it! If we got a loaf of each, we could use one slice of the Coles-brand bread, and one slice of the Baker’s Delight bread in the sandwiches! That way we could have the best of both those tasty breads! 😀 Tonight for dinner we had pan-fried “pre-marinated in some sort of herb-y stuff” chicken breasts, which were really very nice (and I noticed that there was probably enough left over for a sandwich tomorrow! 😉 ) on a bed of steamed rice that had some finely chopped spring onion through it. For dessert I had the last of my Corella pears, and a slice of cake – this time without cream – so maybe the scales will be a little kinder to me tomorrow morning (though they really weren’t that cruel to me this morning, anyway!)

Weigh-in yesterday morning. Was OK, I guess – and at least I didn’t go up! I went from 63.3kg to 63.3kg – that is, I stayed the same! It’s actually been a while since I’ve done that! I wasn’t too upset about it – it’s still within the margin of error (i.e. between one or two points, either way) And I have to say that I really don’t think that the slice of cake – with or without a smattering of cream – has anything to do with one or two points either way…

Weigh-in this morning. More or less proves my point, I think. I went from 63.3kg to 63.2kg – down one point – not really enough of a “trend” to start worrying about – well, not yet, anyway! As long as I go down again, just as much as I go up occasionally, I think I’m reasonably safe – and I watch my weight every morning like a hawk looking for a field mouse! So I reckon you could say that my weight is fairly stable, overall… Yanno, “everyone”² keeps telling me “Don’t lose any more weight!” – and I look at them pensively. Yes, I’ve lost a lot of weight – over 70 kilograms – and yes, I look a lot thinner (obviously! I’d be a lot worried if I didn’t!) I wear a size 14 now, instead of a size 26… BUT! I still could – and probably should – lose another couple of kilograms… Size 14, in most circles, is considered to be a size for the obese. Size 12 is considered “overweight”, and even size 10 is looked askance at. Fashion (HA!) dictates that to be slim and trim, you shouldn’t be any more than a size 8 – and preferably less than a size 8. I think that size 8 is going just a wee bit too far – but I should probably aim at trying to go down to a size 12. One of my jumpers is a size 12, and it fits me… like a glove? 😉 It’s a trifle tight around the neck – I’m no Ann Bolyn – but once it’s on, it’s very comfortable, and doesn’t look tight on me – so yeah, I could go down another size…

Anyway, those were my two days – yesterday and today. The other two jumpers that I’d ordered arrived today – one’s a size “S” (which, I’ve found out, is mid-way between a size 12 and a size 14) and the other is a “proper” size 14, and they’re both great – I’d like to get another one like the one I’m wearing now – it’s a turtle-neck, and really lovely and warm around the neck! Only in black, or some other, darker colour – this one is a dark magenta, or fuchsia – which is very nice, but… (I don’t think I’m really a dark magenta, or fuchsia sort of person) Julian has some more office work to do tomorrow, so I guess I’ll be labouring to drag Arisnoë up to level 96 – though I doubt I’ll get anywhere near that tomorrow! But anyway, I’ve rambled on long enough, and really, that’s about it from me for tonight! Do call in again tomorrow night to find out what’s been happening around this neck of the woods – but until then, please bee good, don’t forget that if you are not willing to risk the unusual, you will have to settle for the ordinary, and remember to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm – or cool – depending on your preferences… but most importantly, please remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

¹WindowBlinds – a “skin” for Windows, to make your desktop look prettier (because boring old Microsoft are sooo unimaginative!)

²“everyone” = people like Doctor B., Dr. Y., Julian, my favourite youngest daughter Kate, and the nurses who take my blood for my Warfarin tests…

11.23 pm

Sorry everyone – I got a bit caught up with things this evening (alright, we were getting our Dailies done – I need the oil to run my Naval Missions, don’tcha know! 😉 ) Anyway, it’s a bit too late to start writing now, so I’ll fill you all in on the days doin’s tomorrow morning, before my favourite eldest daughter gets here! All is well – no need to worry or anything – catchyas all tamarra mornin’! 🙂

P.S. Bee good, remember that when you know yourself you are empowered – when you accept yourself you are invincible, don’t forget to always drive carefully, to keep warm – or cool – depending on your preferences, and to look after yourselves… but most importantly, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

05.15 pm

Sunday – and a fun day it’s been too! Last night I changed Arisnoë’s Faction, from being a member of the Horde, to a member of the Alliance! 🙂 And despite what the “instructions” said, I was able to choose my Race, as well as keep my name without having to change any of the letters or accents – so I’m really pleased about that! 🙂 I’m a Human now, and I’m now able to move around in my Garrison without getting hopelessly lost because everything’s so grubby and messy, clumsily built, dark and dingy, and quite frankly, ugly! Alliance Garrisons are much more betterer! 🙂 I didn’t get much of a chance to play with Arisnoë today – I got her into the Guild first thing this morning, and did a quick bit of a tidy-up of her bags and bank at lunch time – the rest of the time Wynterthyme and Mouselet held the Fort – or should that be Garrison now? This morning they did their Stable Training quests, and it’s surprising just how long they take to do! We each had six quests to do – four of those were the same – we both had to kill the same mobs – so we were able to complete them together, and have those “kills” counting for both of us. For the last two though, we had different mobs to kill, and we had to go from one side of Nagrand to the other to complete those, but it also gave us plenty of opportunities to collect ore for Mouselet, and trees (lumber) for me, so it was all good. We sleep in on Sundays, so we didn’t start on these quests until after 10 am – and it took us most of the morning to get them all finished! We also did our Daily Oil quest, and another one, which we ended up doing twice, because I hadn’t picked up the quest when I should have, and Mouselet couldn’t share it with me because it was a Garrison quest. The quest was to kill this giant worm, which looks something like the huge Sand Worms from the movie “Dune”. Has anyone reading this seen “Dune”? If not, go and Google “Dune sand worm”! 🙂 Very nasty! The quest recommends using three players, as this “worm” is a level 101 Gold Elite, and as I said to Julian, “well, we are more or less three players! You, me, and Swipe!” so fully expecting to die a horrible and painful death, we decided to give it a go anyway! So of we trotted, and found our Giant Worm (called “Tremor”) and lit into him. For a level 101 Gold Elite, he wasn’t all that tough, but his worst trick was to disappear into the earth, and summoning groups of what looked like giant lobsters to fight us. These giant lobsters swarmed onto the beach wearing what looked like skirts made of rope netting, which they dropped when they died. It looked very strange… The “skirts” was “pick-up-able”, and we weren’t quite sure what they were for, at first – it turned out that they were to throw over Tremor to stop him disappearing underground, and once we had that sorted out, it wasn’t all that hard to kill him, so after we’d danced on his carcass a bit, we were about to go off and do something else, but as our bags were still full of used Mount whistles, we went back to our Garrisons, got rid of the whistles, and I picked up the “Tremor” quest – then back we went, and did it all over again! 🙂 We stopped for lunch at around one o’clock, and while Julian was making the sandwiches, I tidied Arisnoë up a bit, and sent her Followers off on their new Missions.

After lunch, because Wynterthyme and Mouselet didn’t have any really serious or interesting quests to do (as opposed to the ordinary old “Daily” type quests) we decided to continue working our way through some of the old Dungeons from earlier expansions – the main one which peaked our interest was Karazhan – a Dungeon from “Burning Crusade”, the expansion that had just been released when we first started playing WoW, all those years ago! At the time, Karazhan was considered to be probably the toughest, hardest, and most important “Raid-type” Dungeon¹ in WoW. I only went along on one Karazhan run, and only managed to complete a very small section of it – it was busy, it was hard, and it was very confusing, with so much going on all around you. I was not sorry to leave! Julian did a lot more of it than I did, and he didn’t get more than about half way through it. Some players had a regular weekly Karazhan run organised, and for those involved in them, it was a Very Big Deal! Some of the drops were certainly well worth the fighting and the dying for, too! Anyway, off we went to Karazhan – just the two of us, and Swipe. We waltzed through the place, one-shotting everything, and having a great time! It’s really so good to go through those places and be able to look around at the magnificent art work that’s gone into the construction of these areas – it’s really worth seeing – which you can’t, when you’re up to your eyeballs in bloodthirsty ghosts and monsters! The loot that we picked up – worth your character’s multiple deaths, back then – but totally useless to us now – we Vendored (well I did, I don’t know what Julian did with his!) It was too low-level for me to even think of DE-ing it back at the Garrison, and not having an Enchanter, I didn’t have anyone else who could DE it for me – so I had to Vendor it 😦 After we’d gone through Karazhan like a dose of salts, we went on to do another two Dungeons from the next expansion – “Wrath of the Lich King” – the “Halls of Stone“, and the “Halls of Lightning” – we didn’t have time to do “Ulduar“, the third in that series of Dungeons – Julian says that it’ll take about two hours to do that one, even at our level, because there’s lots of Achievements to pick up there! Ooo-er! 😮 We’ll probably do that next week… We’ve both done the two Halls before – ages and ages ago – and as we were in a fairly large group (there were about ten of us, from memory) we didn’t fare too badly – but today we were actually able to see what the place looked like! I find it amazing that Blizzard go to such efforts to make the interiors of these Dungeons so absolutely splendid and spectacular, because who has time to look around and admire the scenery when they’re fighting for survival! It’s only now that we’re such a high level that we can get into and run these Dungeons with so much ease that we can see and appreciate the work that’s gone into them. Totally fantastic! 🙂

Food stuffz: last night we had beef sausages for dinner (no, I don’t know what brand they were – sorry!) with chips, green beans, and a whole, small home-grown tomato. For dessert I had one of my Corella pears, and a slice of Julian’s Babka – fresh baked that afternoon – with a small blob of low-fat cream. Lunch today was another sandwich made with the Coles-brand multi-grain, seed encrusted bread, sandwich sliced corned silverside, low-far cheese, and shredded lettuce – all extremely nice! And tonight being Sunday night, it’s omelets for dinner, with ham, home-grown tomato, spring onion, and low-fat Halloumi cheese (Julian really does make extremely nice omelets!) And for dessert, another Corella pear, as well as a slice of cake (with a little bit of low-fat cream!)

Weigh-in this morning. Was a bit surprising, actually! I went up two points, from 63.1kg to 63.3kg… it’s gotta be the cake! Maybe I shouldn’t be having the low-fat cream with it… hmm… I might have my slice tomorrow night without it, and see if that helps (I doubt it though!)

Every morning, before breakfast, I walk for half an hour on the treadmill – that’s 2 kilometers, at 3.8 kph. This morning I didn’t. This morning was Sunday, and my back, my hips, and both my arms were really sore – I dunno – maybe it’s the cold weather – though it’s never bothered my joins before! Anyway, it’s not my arm joints that hurt, it’s my arm bones, so I don’t think it’s anything to do with the colder weather – I’m just getting old. Anyway, so this morning I decided that if I walk 2 kilometers a day from Monday to Saturday, on Sundays I deserve a bit of a break, and I’ll only do a half walk – 1 kilometer in 15 point-something minutes, at 3.8 kph, and if my weight goes up half a ton, so be it! *scowl*

So it’s the end of another week – I’m not quite sure what’s happening tomorrow, except that K., our cleaning lady will be here in the morning, and I’ll be seeing Josh in the afternoon. Julian has a bit of shopping to do, and a lot of work in the office and his Commodore 64 Room – he actually got his C-64 up and running the other day, and after finding the right cables, even got a colour display up on the monitor! I’m quite looking forward to hearing the old Commodore games music again after so many years! 🙂 And that’s about it from me for this evening! Do drop in again tomorrow night and find out how things are progressing in the Garrisons, whether my weight went up again or not (if it did, I’ll be having my cake “sans crème” from now on!) and all sorts of other bits and pieces of varying degrees of interest – but until then, please try to bee good, remember that you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with, and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm – or cool – depending on the weather… but above all, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

¹Raid Dungeon – needing 10 to 20 players – usually more – to complete it. Definitely not for the faint-hearted!

04.48 pm

Here I am again – later than I wanted to start, but that’s because I was busy getting Arisnoë totally lost in Frostfire Ridge. I hate it. I hate the dingy, dirty colours, I hate the smoke and the flames and the snow – I just told Julian that while I’m not going to totally abandon Arisnoë, but I won’t be playing her in Draenor any more – I’ll bring her back to Pandaria, or wherever – but her ugly Horde Garrison can look after itself, because she won’t be! I spend the majority of my time wandering around the wilderness, trying to get from Point A to Point B – usually the really l-o-n-g way round big chains of mountains; getting lost, getting bored, getting cold, and getting thoroughly frustrated and exasperated! So no more! However, Julian came up with a good idea! I can do a Faction Change! Change Arisnoë from Horde to Alliance, and live and quest in a more civilised environment! Uno momento – I’m gunna have a quick look-see how much it costs to change Factions… right… basically, it’ll cost US$30. There are some restrictions, rules, and limitations – it looks like I won’t be able to choose which Race I want to be – apparently I’ll have to become a Draenei, but that’s OK, because the two “best looking” Races in WoW are the Blood Elves (what she is now) and the Draenei (what she’ll apparently become) there’s a lot more stuff about levels, how much gold you can take with you, what happens to Guild Banks, etc., etc. – all of which is easy enough to do. So! Next time I write to you all, Arisnoë the Blood Elf, will be Arisnoë the Draenei! I hope they’ll let me keep my name! If not, I’ll just change the accent over one of the letters! 😉

So, as you can see, I’ve been playing WoW just about all day (oh come now! Do I ever do anything else?! 😉 ) This morning Mouselet and Wynterthyme went out and did all of their Stable Dailies – taking the Stable mounts out and training them, an’ all that. When you get one of these “Training your Mount” quests, you’re told what you have to kill whilst mounted on the particular creature you’re training, and you’re given a special whistle, to call it to you. These special whistles occupy a whole bag slot, and you get six of the wretched things – one for each type of mount. Well, your Backpack is only a sixteen-slot bag, so by the time you’ve collected all your individual whistles, there ain’t much room left in your bag for such things as loot, gatherables, food, and whatever else you like to carry around with you on a permanent basis, so it makes sense to go and get rid of the Mount Training quests and hand them in, before getting yourself involved in something that’s likely to need a lot of “bag space” – the whistles go back to the quest giver when you hand in the completed quest. Anyway, after Mouselet and Wynterthyme had finished their Training quests, and dealt with their Followers and their Work Orders, Julian went off to finish constructing his small chest of drawers for the Commodore 64 Room, and I went off to work on my new desktop Bookmarks Wallpaper – which is now finished, and in use! However, I’m not all that happy with it… it’s simply too “plain-jane”! It’s nice enough, but it really needs some sort of a pattern or something in the background – I’m not quite sure exactly what yet, but it does need something. In the meantime, it’ll just have to look… empty and unfinished!

Once I had that installed properly, I went back to retrieve Arisnoë from the icy cold crevasse where she’d been left last night. After a long, cold, hard slog around a huge mountain chain, I did actually manage to get to the place that I hadn’t been able to find yesterday – and I got that quest done… then I had to do another quest in that terrible tundra, and I got killed! The mob density (the number of hostile creatures that want to kill you as soon as they see you) is phenomenal! There were so many trigger-happy Orcs (where I was) and their blood-thirsty flying creatures milling around that it would have made a newly opened, full can of sardines look like a desert island! Usually, if you’re careful, and give these sorts of mobs a fairly wide berth, you can sneak around the edges of them – but these ones must have had an aggro range of about 200 kilometers or something, because they’d come racing all the way across huge empty caverns, just to attack you! Not nice!  I got killed again there, too… Finally I got through those quests, and Garrison Hearthed back home, where I was supposed to meet up with a quest giver – somewhere just outside – the Garrison. I went outside. Nothing! I went out the other Garrison gate. Nothing! I ran all around the damn Garrison! Deserted… I could see the little yellow question mark with denotes a quest turn-in – I just couldn’t find where it was! By this stage I was upset and grumpy. No, actually I wasn’t! I was distraught and almost hysterical, and tears of anger and frustration were shed. All I wanted to do was hand in this stupid quest, quit out, and settle down to write, and I’d been struggling with this wretched quest for two hours and I. Had. Had. Enough! In the end, clever Julian found this particular person – guess where? Not “outside the Garrison”, where the quest had told me to look for him, but inside the ruddy Garrison, right bang-smack in the middle of the central common area! That was when I made the decision not to play Arisnoë in Draenor again, and Julian suggested I change Faction, instead. I’m not quite sure what I’ll do with the Guild Bank though… I think I’m the Guild Mistress at the moment – and while I could bring the whole Guild Bank with me, that would leave all my “junior” Horde girls without a Guild Bank, which would be a very mean thing to do (even though there isn’t much in it at the moment!) If it turns out that I am the Guild Mistress, I’ll hand it all over to one of my other Horde girls – after stripping it bare of anything that might be useful to the Alliance side of things, of course! 😉 But I’ll do all of that this evening, and let you all know what transpired tomorrow night, OK? 🙂

Food stuffz: Last night we had another of those fabulous pieces of fillet steak – the ones that are so tender that you could cut them with a tea spoon! Oh, it was just delicious! With it was had our usual half tomato (home-grown!) green beans, and chips. For dessert I had a low-fat citrus yoghurt, and one of the last two slices of Julian’s cake. I was going to make one myself this afternoon, but I didn’t want to leave Arisnoë in limbo again, so Julian has made the cake today – I will make the next one though, I promise! He says it’s the same as the one he made last time, with the cinnamon sugar in the middle of it – so I’m really looking forward to trying this one out tonight! For lunch today we had a reprise of the sandwich that we had the other day – with Coles-brand multi-grain, seed encrusted bread, sandwich-sliced cold roast beef, shredded lettuce, and sliced Halloumi cheese. Delicious! 🙂 Tonight we’re having beef sausages, green beans, chips, but this time, because our tomatoes nearly all finished, and these ones are very small (not much bigger than a large cherry tomato, really!) we’re having a whole home-grown tomato each! I shall have one of my Corella pears for dessert, as well as a slice of Julian’s new cake (maybe even with a little smidgen of low-fat cream!)

Weigh-in this morning. Well, considering the slightly oily spanakopita, and the rather over-syruped little cake slice that I had for lunch yesterday while we were out, I only went up one point! From 63.0kg to 63.1kg – so that’s not too bad, I guess! It’ll be interesting to see if I go up tomorrow though, after the beef sausages (which have virtually no fat in them, but probably lots of carbohydrates!) and a slice of Julian’s cake (with some low-fat cream 😉 ) Oh well, I guess we’ll just have to weight and see, won’t we! 🙂

And tomorrow we come once more to another Sunday! Traditionally, it’s a Mouselet and Wynterthyme Day for fossicking around Azeroth, or Draenor, but now that we’re both level 100, and each have our own separate Garrisons and Garrison quests, it’s getting quite hard to pair the quests up! Although both our Garrisons occupy the same space and time, they’re uniquely autonomous – his Garrison quests are different from mine – and of course we can’t share them – where would we hand them in? His Garrison “Scout” wouldn’t accept a quest that my Garrison “Scout” had given me – and vice-versa! The other quests, yes, we can share, but not the Garrison-specific ones. It doesn’t mean that we can’t do them both, each of us helping the other to get through the quest quickly, neatly, and efficiently. However, even though it does somewhat mess our Sunday quest scheduling up quite a lot, it’s “annoyment value” only, and we can live with it! So having said that, it’s now time for me to tell you all that it’s “that time” again, where I say “And that’s about it from me for this evening!” – so please do drop in again tomorrow night and find out how my weight reacted to more cake, and how Arisnoë’s Faction change went, whether she kept her name or had to change it. Plus, you’ll find out how we went in our general questing, and whether we died or not! 🙂 Until then though, please try to bee good, remember that life doesn’t imitate art, it imitates bad television, and don’t forget to keep warm – or cool – depending on your preferences, to look after yourselves, and to always drive carefully… but most importantly, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

05.00 pm

Well, here I am again – I’ve been persevering with Arisnoë since we got home from our shopping expedition, and I’m reasonably pleased with her progress… at least I’ve managed to get her over the terrible quest that I was having so much trouble with yesterday (I really must cut my nails! – they keep snagging on all the wrong keys, and I’m spending more time backspacing and correcting typos, than I am typing! *frown*) Anyway, I finally managed to finish that (muttermutter) quest, and moved on to the next one, which is proving to be just as impossible to navigate to as the last one! I hate Frost Fire Ridge! It always seems to be very dark there – it’s snowing nearly all the time, and the colours are… black…. and a dingy, dirty grey – with the occasional patches of blindingly white snow. Not good colour choices, according to my old eyes! Well, I can’t see where I’m supposed to go, anyway – and just because Julian doesn’t seem to have any problems navigating around the area, doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t, either, and that I’m just being silly, or that I should go and “look it up” in the forums! I can look these quests up in the forums until I go purple in the face, but if I can’t see where I’m going in the dark and dingy colours, reading up on the quest in the forums isn’t going to help! (why is it that all young-ish men seem to like dark (read “black”) “things”, colours, and places?!) So once again, Arisnoë is camped out in the snowy wilderness, with no clue as to how to get to where she has to go, while I sit in heated comfort, writing this. Oh! I never got around to telling you all what sort of Quilen Arisnoë managed to Tame, did I! It’s not a red one, unfortunately, it’s a white one – and this is what he (or she) looks like!

We had to go off this morning to have my Warfarin blood test done, and for once, we did manage to leave fairly early this morning! We were also going to do a bit of shopping – I needed a few items for the Babka that I’m going to be making – and we also wanted to look at some lounge suites… Yes, lounge suites. The one we got when we moved is a very nice one – it’s comfortable, too – if you’re just sitting down to have afternoon tea, or something, but sitting for a couple of hours watching television is… I’m not quite sure what the right word is! It’s not that it’s un-comfortable – it’s comfortable enough, but it’s also “very firm” – almost bordering on “hard” – and the leather upholstery is very smooth, and a bit shiny, so that if you sit on the chaise part to relax and watch something on TV with your legs up, your derrière tends to slide down the seat until you’re virtually lying prone, instead of sitting in an upright position in order to see the television properly. The salesman we saw today had a valid point – when you’re going out looking for a lounge suite, of course you’re going to want to try the seating out, so you sit down on the sofa, or one of the chairs, wriggle around a bit to get really comfy, and ask yourself three short questions: “Is this comfortable? [yes] Is the colour you want available? [yes] Is the price acceptable? [yes]” – then you jump up out of the chair or sofa that you’ve sat on for fully 3 minutes, and either say “I think I’ll think about it”, or you go ahead and buy it. The guy today had us both sitting down on the lounge suite as well as the chairs, with our feet up, exactly as we’d be sitting if we were watching television, for a good quarter of an hour or so (well, I probably sat for longer than that because Julian was up and down like a Jack-in-a-Box, measuring, and so forth!) because you really need to be sitting on the chair (the salesman said) for over ten minutes, before you have a reasonably good idea of whether or not that particular lounge suite is going to be what you want. We did have three or four places to go to, and look at lounge suites, but we didn’t bother – the lounge suite that we’d sat on for fifteen minutes ticked all our boxes, and was a very good price! It’s an electronic recliner lounge suite – in other words, the sofa and chairs are all plugged in, and instead of a lever or a little push-pull round button-type thingy, you have two very small, very discrete, buttons. One to raise your legs (and lower the back of your chair, so that you can sleep in it if you have to) and one to lower your legs (and raise the back of your chair again when you wake up) Now, if you planned on having your lounge suite arranged in the middle of a room, you could possibly strike a few problems with people constantly tripping over the wiring for the recliner mechanism, but as ours will be sitting against walls where there are plenty of power points, it won’t pose a problem for us. We’ll end up with six recliners altogether – two x two-seater couches, and two arm chairs. Leather, of course (for some reason cats don’t usually seem terribly interested in clawing leather upholstery to shreds – thank goodness!) in a fairly light and somewhat subdued red wine colour – they should be ready for delivery in about 8 weeks. If anyone out there in Reader Land is interested in buying our current lounge suite at a very reasonable price, please leave me a message or a comment! Ta… 🙂

I just got the results of my Warfarin blood test back My INR has gone up a lot, to 3.2 (it’s supposed to be around 2.5!) and they’ve changed my Warfarin dosage a bit – still 5mg Monday to Saturday, but only 4mg on Sunday. Next test is on April 22nd… *sigh* In the meantime, I’d better be careful not to cut myself… I might bleed to death… (that’s not very likely though! 🙂 )

Food stuffz: Last night we had some very nice pasta with tomato sauce and a modicum of parmesan cheese for dinner, and a slice of Babka with a drizzle of low-fat cream on it for dessert – I also had one of my Corella pears, and the extremely small (almost too small to be able to peel!) “over the fence” fig that Julian procured for me a couple of days ago. Today we were out at lunch time, so we stopped at a little coffee-type shop up at the Vermont South shopping centre for lunch. Julian had a ham, cheese and tomato croissant, and I had a piece of spanakopita – unfortunately with a very over-dressed salad on the side (which, of course, I didn’t eat!) and a small, tasty, but un-named piece of cake for dessert. Both the spanakopita and the little cake thingy were very nice – the spanakopita was a little on the oily side, and the cake was a little on the “over syruped” side, but all in all, it was quite nice, for a small coffee-type shop. I’m not sure what we’re having for dinner tonight – you’ll have to wait until tomorrow night to find out what we had! 😉

Weigh-in this morning. Not too bad (it’ll prolly be up tomorrow though, after the spanakopita and the over syruped cake!) I went down another three points, from 63.3kg to 63.0kg. And I remembered to take my anti-fluid tablet when I got home this afternoon, so maybe I’m not getting Alzheimer’s, after all! 🙂 As for taking my anti-fluid tablet so late last night, it didn’t keep me awake and trekking to the bathroom all night, I slept very soundly – but I wouldn’t like to risk doing that again! 😮

Which brings me to tomorrow! And you know what? I have absolutely no idea what’s happening! Julian is building a small set of drawers (from an Officeworks flat-pack) for his Commodore 64 Room, though I think that’s almost finished – and tomorrow will probably be another WoW day for me – though I would like to finish off this new bookmark Desktop Wallpaper what’s-it that I’m making – there’s not much more to do to it really, as it’s very, very, “ultra plain” – but being me, I do want to put some sort of decoration on it – somewhere! I’m still thinking about it… and that’s really about it from me again for tonight! 🙂 Do call in again tomorrow night and find out if our coffee-type shop luncheon piled a few more points onto my weight, if I managed to extricate Arisnoë from her icy emergency camp-site, and if Julian has finished his little set of drawers for his Commodore 64 Room! Until then, however, please try to bee good, remember that if you can’t explain something simply, you don’t understand it well enough, and don’t forget to always drive carefully, to keep cool – or warm – depending on what you’re doing, and to look after yourselves… but above all, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂