05.10 pm

Grr! I’m starting late again this afternoon, which means that I probably won’t get this finished before dinner! I’ve been playing WoW all day – oh, and working on a few graphics too, for a brand new Bookmarks Desktop Wallpaper – anyway, this afternoon I finally got completely fed up with not being able to use Arisnoë, because she was busy twiddling her thumbs in the middle of an empty paddock in Grizzly Hills – well, not entirely empty, really – it was full of Hunters, all hanging around and waiting for Arcturis, the Spirit Bear, to appear – for either shooting, or Taming – depending on their reasons for wanting to find him – and with that sort of competition, I felt that there was very little chance of Arisnoë ever getting to Tame him… The fact that Wynterthyme managed to get him was pretty amazing, and I was incredibly lucky – you see, we’re in Australia – most of the players on Quel’Dorei are in America. So not only is there the actual time difference – we’re seventeen hours ahead of them – there’s also a certain amount of “lag” time involved – a bit like when you see a news report, or Current Affair program on television – the news or current affair anchor will ask a reporter overseas a question, and there’s always a very noticeable “gap” or “pause” between the end of their question, and the reply from the correspondent overseas (this time is usually filled in with the overseas reporter standing there staring at the camera and nodding their head, for some reason!) So there’s a “time delay” between us and them – not a big one, but certainly enough to make a difference in game play. F’rinstance, if you’re playing WoW in Australia, and you go to pick something up (or to “Tame” something!) and someone from America is going for it too, even if you get there a split second sooner than they do, and you’re gleefully thinking “Yay! I got there first!”, you actually don’t. Thanks to that noticeable time delay, they get whatever it was that you were trying to get, first – every time! That’s why we were all so happy when Blizzard started up the server in Sydney (Nagrand) – now the tables would be reversed, and we’d get things before they did, for a change! And although we do have characters – a lot of characters – on Nagrand, we still always seem to stick with Quel’Dorei. When we first started playing WoW, we joined a Realm (server!) called Scarlet Crusade, because that’s where my favourite eldest daughter and her husband played – but we left there and migrated to Quel’Dorei because (back then) it was a smaller, less populous and much friendlier Realm (server) and we’ve pretty much been there ever since – it’s “home“! It’s also where all our best and favourite characters are, it’s got the biggest Guild Bank, and the most money. Sure, we could transfer the characters, the Guild Bank, and all the money, across to Nagrand, but unlike Rift, character transfer on World of Warcraft isn’t “Free” – and there are a lot of characters to transfer! So, we sit at “home” on Quel’Dorei, and curse and bitch at the time delay, but put up with it, the same as you put up with a squeaky floorboard in your comfy loungeroom! 🙂 So I grizzled and growled about Arisnoë not being able to get her Spirit Bear, and took her off to look for a different pet. But you all know me, I wanted something different, something unusual – something that not too many other Hunters would have… Unfortunately nearly all those sorts of “unusual” pets are either Rare or Elite, or both – and Arisnoë needed something under level 92. Once again I went and looked on Petopia, and found lots of nice pets, but… Wait a minute! That one wouldn’t be too bad! I’ll get one of those! It wasn’t a Rare, it wasn’t an Elite, and it looked – well, if perhaps not “pretty“, then certainly downright different and unusual! I wanted a red one… I talked Thuglet (Mouselet in disguise, i.e. Julian) into flying me around Pandaria to look for one, but… guess what! They’re invisible. Only Hunters can see them – sometimes – or even see their tracks! Air travel wouldn’t do me any good. Neither did running around in the wilds of Pandaria, because I got killed, while trying to follow the handy-dandy map of the Red Quilen path! Arisnoë decided to give up and just go home to her Garrison, but she really needed a Pet! Then Julian discovered that there was a Dungeon entrance close to where we were, and we thought we’d just poke our noses in and have a look-see what it was like – I mean, what could go wrong? If things started getting dire, we’d just duck out again, right? So in we wandered… and the first thing I saw was a lone Quilen, so I quickly started Taming him – while Julian started trying to kill him! “Don’t kill him! Don’t fight him! I’m Taming him!” I yelled! “What?” said Julian, still fighting my Quilen “I’m Taming him!” I explained again – but of course, fighting the Quilen had grabbed his aggro (the Quilen was now mad at Julian and wanted to bite him to death!) so Julian jumped out through the Dungeon “Portal”, and broke the aggro tie and I started Taming him. There was only one danger – to me – and that was that I was still suffering from “Rez sickness”. I told you that I died while trying to follow a path to a red Quilen, and I had run back for my body – but there were so many roving mobs milling around my poor little carcass that there was nowhere I could have reclaimed my body and resurrected myself that was even remotely safe So I returned to the Graveyard had got the Angel of Death/Spirit Healer to resurrect me – and paid for it by suffering from “Rez sickness” – 50% less health – for ten minutes. I wasn’t even half way through my Rez sickness when I started Taming my Quilen, but luckily for me, at level 92 I was still strong enough to withstand the Quilen’s attacks while I was Taming him (or her!) I’ve called him (or her) “Grog” 🙂 I then Hearthed back to my Garrison, stuffed around for a few more minutes, then quit, and started writing… rather later than I had initially planned!

Poor Julian had to go to the Dentist today, to have three fillings! Not because he had holes in his teeth, but because the Dentist wants to replace all his old, grey amalgam fillings with nice, shiny white composite resin ones. Apparently when amalgam fillings gets old they can start slowly releasing the mercury that’s in them into your system – which is not a Good Thing! He taxied there and back because I didn’t think it would be a good idea to drive back from The Pines with a mouthful of Novocaine, but he seems to have survived it all fairly well – and we’re having pasta for dinner tonight, so he won’t have to chew too hard 🙂

Must go – dinner’s almost ready… back anon…

---

09.43 pm

Back again… where was I? Oh yes, Julian going to the Dentist… He seems to be fully recovered now, which is just as well – my next Warfarin blood test is due tomorrow, so if we go early enough, we can go and do some shopping afterwards! 😀 I think we ought to head off, straight after breakfast! 😉 I’ve just noticed something annoying… the air conditioner and heater in this place are fantastic… but as I’m getting older, I find that I get colder in the cooler weather – or maybe it’s because I’ve shed so much of my insulating “blubber” – but anyway, the heater, of course, is on. Sitting at the dining room table, I’m cool, but not cold, but sitting on the couch watching television, I was shivering with cold, and most unhappy. Now I’m in the Den, with all the computers and what-have-yous, and I’m [please insert rude word here] very uncomfortably hot! The bedroom is coolish to warmish, but my side of the bed is very warm, because it’s directly under one of the air conditioning ducts. My bathroom is reasonably cool in summer, but struggles hard to stay warm in this cooler weather. I think we may need to adjust some of the air conditioning ducts… why can’t it be 24C all the ruddy time! (*disgruntled look*)

Food stuffz: last night we had pan-fried chicken breast on a bed of steamed rice, through which Julian mixed some finely chopped spring onions, which I suppose could be counted as “greens”, sort-of, and a half a store-bought Roma tomato. As I’d already had my slice of cake when Kate was over in the morning, I couldn’t have another one for dessert, so I had a Corella pear and a burnt fig yoghurt thingy. Because of Julian’s visit to the Dentist today, we had a late-ish lunch, which was a sandwich made with the extremely nice Coles-brand multi-grain, seeded crust bread, a bit of butter, and “plain-jane” sandwich chicken chunks. Quite delicious! 🙂 And for dinner tonight we had pasta with tomato sauce, and a small amount of parmesan cheese. For dessert, I had another Corella pear, the tiny “over-the-fence” fig that Julian picked for me the other day, and a slice of cake with a tiny bit of low-fat cream. I suspect we may have lunch out tomorrow, if we go shopping after my blood test, which although I love the sandwiches we’ve been having, will be a nice change.

Weigh-in this morning. Was a lot much more betterer! 😉  I went up to 63.9kg yesterday because I stupidly forgot to take my second anti-fluid tablet when Kate was over on Tuesday, but today I went down to 63.3kg – down 6 points (over half a kilo!) Innit amazing what a difference one teeny little pill can make! Ackshally, I’m a little bit anxious this evening – I hope I’m not starting to get Alzheimer’s! I forgot to take the ruddy thing again today! Mind you, I was a trifle distracted with Julian off at the Dentist an’ all – I’ve just taken it now though, even if it does keep me awake tonight – I just don’t want to balloon up to 63.9kg again tomorrow!

So there we are – in a minute I’ll go back and rescue Arisnoë and Grog – I left them in a very unsafe crater trying to get to a place that should have been a “given” Flight Point, but wasn’t. I’m not terribly good at reading half drawn maps, and I get lost easily in mazes of twisty little passages that all look just the same… and then I shall go see if Mouselet and Wynterthyme can get their evening Oil Dailies done – so that’s about it from me for this evening – do drop in again tomorrow night and find out if I got any sleep tonight, and what happened with my weight, how Arisnoë is getting along with her new Pet, and how my blood test went. Until then though, please bee very good, don’t forget that logic will get you from A to B, but imagination will take you everywhere, and remember to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep cool – or warm – depending on your preferences… but above all, please remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

04.35 pm

Well, here I am again – if not “bright and early”, then at least early enough that I stand a fair chance of getting finished before dinner (if we have a reasonably late-ish dinner? 😉 ) Anyway, it’s been quite an interesting day – as I mentioned yesterday, my very favourite youngest daughter was coming over, after she’d dropped her husband Terry off at work. Kate is at the moment a “lady of leisure”, having been made “Redundant” on Monday. She’s been with the company for two years – one day off two years, actually… Apart from the fact that it’s a bitter blow to them – they’ve been pretty much relying on her salary to keep going, as Terry’s not very well at the moment – she’s now going to have to look for a new job – not all that easy in today’s job market! However, for all that, I’m actually very relieved that she’s no longer a part of that company – I felt that they were, well, shonky and dishonest, and I’m so glad that she’s not a part of it any more! She worked for Jenny Craig for 15 years – she started off as a client, joined the company as a Consultant, and worked her way up through Centre Management, to Trainer, to Head Office, writing manuals for the Trainers! Then when Nestlé’s bought out Jenny Craig and tried to change things to “Truth, Justice, and The American Way”, things sort-of fell apart a little for the Australian side of Jenny Craig, as we tend to approach things somewhat differently from Americans… (thank heavens!) They decided to rely very heavily on Tablets for communication and training, and after fifteen years, Nestlé’s threw all Kate’s experience out the window, and made her redundant. So am I allowed to feel just a little smug about the fact that Jenny Craig hasn’t really been doing all that well since Nestlé’s took them over, and decided that the American system was far superior to the Australian one (simply because it was American, no doubt!) Kate still has friends that work there, so she hears a lot of gossip “on the grapevine” about how things are going at the moment, and the news isn’t very good, so I don’t think she’ll be approaching them for a job… One of her friends who works there has been made redundant, and then a couple of months later, re-hired… then a few months after that, made redundant a second time, and then re-hired again… she says she doesn’t really feel “secure” in her job any more… hmm… I wonder why?! Anyway, Kate’s out of work, and looking for a job, which means that until she does, hopefully we might get to see a bit more of her! (clouds, silver linings, an’ all that! 😉 ) The first thing she’s got to do before even starting to look for work, is bring her CV up to date, and then we can all cross our fingers, toes, eyes, and legs for her!

Still, we spent a pleasant morning chattering, drinking coffee, and having a piece of the Babka that Julian made yesterday – there’s not much of it left, now 😦  She’s also car-less at the moment – someone ran into the back of her car, damaging it quite badly, so it’s now off at the Insurance company, being pulled to pieces to see whether or not it’s possible to repair it, and more importantly, whether or not it’s even worth repairing – so for the foreseeable future, she’s driving Terry’s car, and dropping him off and picking him up from work. Those poor kids have had a terrible run of bad luck lately…

This morning before Kate arrived, I took Wynterthyme off to do her “Stable Dailies”. Apparently there’s an Achievement that you can get with gives you… er… extra something, I think, and perhaps a new Title or something. First you have to catch and Tame six different mounts – which I’ve done. Then you have to Train your mounts, by going out and killing Big Scary Mobs while you’re riding them – and lastly, you have to kill five different Big Scary Mobs, while mounted on each of your six mounts – twice! In other words, while riding each of your six mounts, you have to kill each of the five Big Scary Mobs – twice! (“Oh!”, says Winter sarcastically “I can’t wait!”) Anyway, everything’s going relatively well in Draenor – and elsewhere in Azeroth – except that poor old Arisnoë is not having any luck whatsoever in finding Arcturis (the Spirit Bear) in Grizzly Hills (not that Arisnoë spends a lot of time looking for him, mind you!)

This evening I might spend a bit of time looking through back issues of magazines online, trying to find the Almond Cake recipe that was so nice… I know we have it somewhere – it might even be with the sheaf of recipe print-outs that I’ve seen in the Pantry Cupboard recently (I’ll get Julian to have a look next time he goes out to the kitchen!) otherwise I’ll just have to make my Babka! Though he might have to do a bit of shopping before I do… I intend to stir finely grated orange zest into the mixture, and put spoonfuls of marmalade in the middle of the cake… or I could use “dribbles” of mixed, dried fruit! (or sultanas! I know Mum often used to put a small handful of sultanas into the mixture – they were great!) Anyway, we’ll see 🙂

Food stuffz: last night we had Lee and Neale over for dinner, and we had some wonderfully tender, very tasty, slow-cooked Corned Silverside, with mashed potatoes, green beans, and half a store-bought Roma tomato (Neale didn’t get his half tomato – he doesn’t like tomato!) And you know what? There was still enough of the Corned Silverside left over for our sandwiches at lunchtime today! That’s what I mean about Corned Silverside being excellent “value for money”! For dessert, we all had a slice of Julian’s latest culinary creation, the Babka, with a small amount of thickened, low-fat cream poured over it. Our sandwiches at lunchtime were made with the Coles-brand multi-grain, seeded-crust bread, lightly buttered, with some of the left-over sliced Corned Silverside and a little tomato sauce, though I’m not sure if Julian had tomato sauce, or mustard! Tonight we’re having pan-fried chicken breast, with steamed rice and finely chopped spring onions. As I’ve already had my slice of Babka today, I’ll just have either my over-the-fence fig, if it’s ripe enough, or one of my new batch of Corella pears (again, if they’re ripe enough!) and possibly one of the Dark Cacao Chia Pods…

Weigh-in this morning. I’m really cross with myself! I usually take two anti-fluid pills per day – one in the morning, and the second one around lunch time. Yesterday, because Lee and I were in the lounge room watching episodes of “Arrow”, I forgot to come in here and take my second anti-fluid pill! I didn’t realise I hadn’t taken it until around about 11.30 pm, when of course it was too late to take it, or I’d have been up and down all night, like a Jack-in-a-Box! So I wasn’t looking forward to clambering up onto the scales this morning! Mashed potatoes, made with butter and milk! (well, only a little butter, and it was the A2 low-fat milk, but still…) and the Babka, with a bit of cream… but the most damning of all was me forgetting to take my second anti-fluid pill yesterday at lunchtime! (I must have been awash with excess fluid – well, that’s my excuse, anyway) so of course, I did go up again, didn’t I! I went from 63.5kg to 63.9kg – up four points! 😦 Well, I made a particular point of taking my second anti-fluid pill this afternoon, though my stomach was gurgling well before lunchtime – so much so that Kate made rude comments about it! 🙂 So, let that be a lesson to me, to never forget to take my lunchtime anti-fluid pill, ever again! (Oh! The shame of it all!) 😉

Tomorrow Julian is off to the Dentist – not just for a check-up this time, but to have three fillings done – his Dentist wants to replace all his old amalgam fillings with nice, new, hygienic and non-toxic “white” resin ones, so I think that’ll put paid to use going out shopping afterwards, as he’ll be pretty doped up with Novocaine (I’m not even very happy about him driving at all, actually – if he’s too doped up with Novocaine to go shopping, he’s really too doped up with Novocaine to drive! I think he should taxi there and back! But Julian will be Julian, and you can’t tell him…) Anyway, I’m not too distraught – it gives me the whole day to stuff around looking for the Almond Cake recipe, working on a new bookmark desktop wallpaper, trying to up Wynterthyme’s Reputation with one of the Draenor Factions, so that I can upgrade my Trading Post to level 3, and making him copious cups of coffee. And that, Gentle Readers, is once again about it from me for this evening! 🙂 Do drop in again tomorrow night though, to find out how Julian got on at the Dentist, what Wynterthyme’s been up to all day, whether or not I found the Almond Cake recipe, if I’ve finished my new bookmarks desktop wallpaper, and how many cups of coffee I ended up making for the Novocained Julian! 😉 But until then, please try terribly hard to bee good, remember that if you smile at someone, they might smile back, 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! 🙂

09.27 am

OK, I have to write really, really fast this morning, as I’m not going to get much of a chance later on. Julian has gone to deliver my favourite eldest daughter to yet another appointment, and will then be bringing her back here for the day – then instead of dropping her back home this evening, her husband Neale is joining us all here for dinner tonight, so writing time is going to be meager, at best! (but I’ll try to fit everything in for you all, you lucky people, you! 😉 )

What happened yesterday. Erm… Julian and I sort-of got stuck into doing a lot of itty-bitty quests together, which unfortunately chewed up most of the day – but we did get through a lot, and only died once! My fault as usual – at one point, we were so hard pressed that in sheer desperation, I fired off an AOE (“Area Of Effect” shot – it targets multiple, but largely random, mobs, which has the unfortunate side effect of pulling in a lot more mobs who would otherwise have ignored the fight – and you!) and… we died. Oh well, death in WoW is largely fleeting – you do get better! 🙂 Then it was afternoon, Josh came over and I had my hair done, and then it was dinner time. Because there was nothing much to watch on TV, we decided to watch one of our last remaining episodes of “Foyle’s War” (which has been a truly excellent series!) which would have finished early enough for me to write my blog last night. I say “which would have”, because then the phone started ringing! All in all, we took three calls, none of which were the sort that only took a minute or two. So by the time Foyle’s War finished, it was pretty late – as you could see from the time stamp on last night’s brief sentence! Oh well… As I said – I’m gunna have to write fast this morning, and hope that my favourite eldest daughter is kept waiting the customary half hour or so, by the inestimable Dr. B.! 😉

Oh, remember I was talking about fish ponds and aquariums? And especially marine aquariums? There’s a certain type of marine fish that I’ve always coveted – they’re gorgeous, and I call them “Paisley Fish”, because to me they look as though their skin (scales?) are made from a beautiful paisley pattern. That’s not their real name, of course, that’s just what I like to call them. Their real name is “Mandarin Dragonet“, or, if you want to appear more learned, “Synchiropus splendidus”. I found them by Googling “marine fish paisley”, would you believe, which led me to this – and viola, as the French say, there they were! They come in a lot more colours than the ones in the linked pictures – the ones I saw and fell in love with – so many years ago in the decorative display marine aquarium at a Chinese Restaurant – were a creamy colour, with a brilliant jade and gold “paisley” pattern all over them – they were so beautiful, like little, living, jewelled brooches! And by the way, might I just mention here that I totally hate, loathe, and detest, Pinterest? I have absolutely no interest in signing up with that horrible site, but every time I go looking for “images”, or “photos”, that revolting place always comes up with the best examples of what I’m looking for (see above!) which I can never see properly because they keep sticking their [please insert foul word of your choice in here!] “sign-up” screed, on a black background, right in front of me, which gets bigger if you try to scroll down, and there seems to be no way to remove it, other than signing up with them – which I do not want to do! What do they think I’m going to do? Steal their ruddy images? The most I’d do (because I hate them so much) is put in a ruddy link to them (which I’ve done here, curse me for a fool!)

Anyway, Julian and my favourite eldest daughter have arrived – I’ll finish this late-ish tonight (I hope!)

---

10.24 pm

Right, here I am again – and I might even get this finished before midnight, for a change! 😉  Well, Lee and I had a good day – we watched one episode of “The 100” – the only one we had, and then we watched multiple episodes of “Arrow” for the rest of the day – aww! Oliver’s mother got killed Julian went off and did a bit more shopping for dinner tonight, because Lee and Neale were staying for dinner. I knew there wasn’t very much Banana Cake left, so I persuaded Julian to make a different sort of cake for dessert, as we had no more “over-ripe” bananas (in fact the old song “yes, we have no bananas, we have no bananas today!” sprang to mind this morning! We had to have a naked (as in a totally banana-less) breakfast this morning! It was terrible! 😉 ) I tried to find a copy of a delicious Almond cake that he made last year, which was absolutely super delicious, and made with mostly almond meal, but alas – I have no idea where I put it – it’s probably somewhere in either the “AAA-All 2015 Folders” directory, or in the “AAA-All 2014 Folders” one – and on further thought, it’s probably in the 2014 one, because we moved here in mid 2015, and I seem to recall that the weather was warm when he did make it, and that it was “later on” in the year, so it must have been 2014… or maybe even 2013… Who cares! It was a wonderful cake, and I’ll move heaven and earth to either find the copy, or find it on the ‘Net somewhere (in fact I think I actually found it in a magazine – so I’ll also look through all my back-copies of all my “Foodie” magazines! See, Julian?! I told you there was a good reason for keeping all those old magazines! 😉 ) In the end, I went back to an old, old recipe that came out of the Ark – my mother got it from a Polish friend of hers, and she got it from her mother, etc., etc. – you know the way it goes! 🙂 It’s a non-yeast recipe for a Babka, and it’s been adapted many times over the years. In the contemporary version, you put everything except the flour into a Vitamizer (they’re known as Food Processors these days) whizz everything up, pour it into the flour, stir well, pour it into a ring tin, and bake for about 35 minutes. There are lots of variations that we used to use, from sprinkling Nescafe crystals in the middle of it, to adding orange zest to the mixture, and dobbing teaspoons of marmalade in the middle. You can find my family recipe for it here. So, that’s what Julian made! At my insistence, he made a cinnamon sugar mixture, which we sprinkled into the middle of the mixture (pour half the mixture into the tin, shake it even, sprinkle whatever you’re using, making sure you don’t get any on the side of the tin, then pour in the rest of the mixture – it works, trust me!) So, speaking of cakes an’ all, I suppose I should hurry up and get onto…

Food stuffz! Last night we had pan-fried chicken breast on a bed of steamed rice with finely chopped spring onions, and half a home-grown tomato for dinner, and for dessert I had a small bowl of the yummy Coles-brand, very low-calorie, Rice Pudding, and a small slice of Banana Cake. For lunch today, I had a Coles-brand (again!) whole-grain, seed crusted bread, with sandwich-sliced roast beef, sliced home-grown tomato, shredded lettuce, and Halloumi cheese, and it was scrumptious! Dinner tonight was slow-cooked Corned Silverside, mashed potatoes, green beans, and half a store-bought Roma tomato, and everyone declared the Corned Silverside extremely good! For dessert, we all had a slice of the Cinnamon-sugared Babka, with a small amount of thickened light cream. It was so very nice – and exactly as I remembered it – I’m making it next time! 🙂

Weigh-in yesterday and this morning. Well, it seems like all my tummy gurgles are paying off! 🙂 Though mind you, after mashed potato and cake tonight, I’ll probably go up again *sigh* but I guess that’s just par for the course! Yesterday (Monday) morning I went from 64.0kg to 63.7kg – down three points… and this morning (Tuesday) I went from 63.7kg to 63.5kg – down another two points, which is all good, and I’m both very pleased, and very relieved to be going down again! No doubt I’ll go up a bit tomorrow, but I don’t think I’ll be too distraught – I’m pretty sure it’ll go down again – eventually! 😉

And that pretty much sums up my two days! We were going shopping tomorrow, but it seems like my very favourite youngest daughter will be coming over for a visit, so the shopping might have to wait until Thursday or Friday. On the WoW side of things, Wynterthyme now has six quests to do for the Stables, which I’ll attempt to get done before Kate arrives – I mean, how long can it take, to kill three large, scary monsters, whilst sitting on a terrified mount?! 😉 Actually, they’re called “Training your mount” quests… And that’s about where everything’s up to at the moment, so once more it’s time to tell you all that that’s about it from me for tonight! Do drop in again tomorrow night – I’m hoping to be able to start writing early enough to do it all in one coherent block, rather than in this somewhat disjointed and rambling fashion, so that you can find out all about what Wynterthyme’s been up to, if there’s still any Babka left, and how my mercurial weight’s going. Until then however, please make an attempt to bee good, remember that many of life’s failures are people who didn’t realize how close they were to success when they gave up, and don’t forget to keep warm – or cool – depending on the weather, to always drive carefully, and to look after yourselves… but above all, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

11.42 pm

Oh dear, this is starting to become a bit of a habit, isn’t it! The time simply ran away from me today, and now, as you can see from the time stamp above, it’s getting rather late – I’ll have to fill you all in on the day’s doings tomorrow… *sigh*

05.27 pm

Well, I’m finally here again! Thank you all for being so patient with me! I have no idea what was wrong with me yesterday, it just seemed as though all my words had dried up – and for once in my life, I honestly had nothing to say! The only other time I’ve been at such a loss for words was when my two very favourite daughters were very young – about 5 and 6 years old… and I got laryngitis! A pin dropping onto thick, shag-pile carpet made so much noise that you couldn’t hear me speaking – it was that bad! The kids, of course, thought it was all terribly funny!  I sure they thought that all their Christmases had come at once! Mummy couldn’t yell at them, or tell them not to do something that they jolly-well knew they weren’t allowed to do! I didn’t think it wasn’t funny at all! Oh, I could write things down to try to get them to do things, but although Lee could read – sort-of (because she was six, and took after me – a bookworm!) Kate was only just learning to read simple books – so there was no point in me writing down “Please ring Aunty Shiela and tell her I’ve got laryngitis, and can she come over, please?” because most of those words were outside of Lee’s – at that stage – fairly limited vocabulary! So, for this exercise, you should all consider yourselves to be very young children, and that Mummy had very bad mental laryngitis last night and couldn’t write anything – but she’s all better now, so you can all stop being naughty! 😉

Yesterday I mostly played WoW, this time concentrating on getting Wynterthyme organised, and running her Garrison properly. The addition of the Stables really keeps you running – every day there are at least five or more “quests” to go out and tame more animals, or to train them to behave appropriately when you’re in combat (like digging in their heels and standing firm while you’re attacking and being attacked, instead of running away in a panic – in training horses, it’s commonly called “bomb-proofing”) Some of the taming quests have been damned hard! You have to target and “tag” the required animal, which attaches a thick “rope” to your quarry, which then runs all over the place for up to forty-five seconds (but I can tell you, it sure seems like a lot longer when you’re doing it!) up hill, and down dale! Leaping over chasms, dodging around trees, or swimming off through a school of extremely hostile electric eels! If you can’t keep up, and the “rope” stretches too far, it “breaks”, and you have to start all over again!

Today, instead of doing our usual questing around Draenor, we did something completely different, and so totally civilised, I don’t know why we haven’t done them before! (I suppose probably because we haven’t been level 100 – and pretty much immortal – before!) Anyway, remember how I said ages and ages ago that Julian and I didn’t “do” Dungeons, Instances, or Raids, because you had to do them with a fairly large group of other players, which we didn’t like doing? Well, today Julian thought that we’d try some of the “Cataclysm” Dungeons (“Cataclysm” was the name of the expansion before last, and those Dungeons are for player levels 82 to 85) I was a little bit dubious – I know we tried to run a couple of Dungeons not that long ago, and the mobs just wiped the floor with us – but we went and tried them, anyway… I mean, what was the worst that could happen to us? Sure, we might die – but we’d get better again! 😉 So off we flew into the Cataclysm sunset, so to speak. I think we ended up doing them all! It was so easy! So “civilised”! We even had time to stop and look around, and admire the scenery! You can’t do that when you’re running a same-level Dungeon – you’re too busy just trying to stay alive! We were practically one-shotting everything, even the Big Bad Bosses! It was quite funny, actually – we’d get to the Boss fight, and the Boss would start to go into his (or her) Big Threatening Speech, about how Azeroth was Doomed, and we were going to be squashed like insects, or some such – and one of us (we took it in turns) would take a pot-shot at the Big Bad Boss, and he’d keel over, stone dead, still giving his Big Threatening Speech, as I happily started skinning¹ him (or her)! And so we waltzed through the Cataclysm Dungeons – maybe next week we could do some of the others – I’m not sure if we could handle the Pandarian ones, but we are level 100 now, after all, and… what’s the worst that can happen to us?! 😉

We’ll try to get our Dailies done tonight – I let my oil barrels stockpile up until I had over 3000 of them – I only started sending ships off on Missions again yesterday – and would you believe, I’m running low on oil again?!

And now on to the really important business of the blog 😉

Yesterday’s and today’s salient points:

Food stuffz: from what I can remember, anyway. Friday night we had a beautiful little piece of filet steak, with chips, beans, and half a home-grown tomato (which was yummy!) For dessert, I had the last of my Corella pears (we must get some more tomorrow!) and the very last (and also extremely small!) piece of the Flourless Chocolate Cake 😦 Last night – Saturday – we had chicken sausages for dinner, again with chips, green beans, and half a home-grown tomato (an Heirloom one this time – which are just as nice as the Black Russian ones!) For dessert I had no more fruit left, so I had to content myself with a small piece of Julian’s Banana Cake. For lunch today I had two Ryvita crispbreads, spread with some of my favourite basil-pesto hummus, with cucumber and red pepper batons, sandwich ham, and low-fat Jarlsberg Cheese piled on top of them – terribly awkward and messy to eat, but tasted brilliant! And tonight, being Sunday night, we’ll be having an omelet (yum!) probably with ham, spring onions, tomato, capsicum, and low-fat Halloumi cheese, which I’m looking forward to! I’ll most likely have another small slice of the Banana Cake for dessert, with one of the Dark Cacao Chia Pods (which look a bit odd, and I still think they have a really weird texture and “mouth feel” –  but they really taste nice! 😉 )

Weigh-in yesterday, and today. Is starting to improve a bit. My feet are still puffy, which I’m not at all happy about… However! So on Friday, I was 64.4kg… Yesterday (Saturday) I went down two points, from 64.4kg to 64.2kg. This morning, I went down another two points, from 64.2kg to 64.0kg, so hopefully I’m starting to get back to “normal”, now that I’m not eating chocolate and Hot Cross Buns with a little scrape of butter every day! It should be obvious, shouldn’t it, that if you eat chocolate, heavy desserts, and other such things, every day, that you’re going to put on weight – so why can’t so many people see this, and plan accordingly – Eat your chocolate, by all means – I need a dose of chocolate every now and then (or chocolate flavoured Chia Pods, anyway) but don’t eat (real) chocolate every day! Ditto cakes, and ditto anything that your common sense tells you you’re going to regret! So hopefully tomorrow I’ll be down a little more again – though of course, knowing my body, I’m just as likely to go up again! (*rolls eyes*)

Which once again brings us around to another Monday! I’m not quite sure what’s happening in the morning – no doubt I’ll be WoW-ing again (do I ever do anything else?) and hopefully, this time, getting back to Wïnter and maybe Shekinàh as well – as soon as I finish off the two Stables quests I still have (and then there’ll probably be another five to do!) however, I have caught up on most of Wynterthyme’s ordinary quests for the moment, so… cross your fingers that I’ll be putting young Wïnter through her paces tomorrow! 🙂 And, I’m afraid, that’s about it from me for tonight! Apologies again for last night, but that’s the way the cookie crumbles sometimes! Do call in again tomorrow night to find out just what I did get up to, whether my weight is still behaving itself or not, and if I’ve managed to find another cake recipe for Julian to make – because there’s not much Banana Cake left! Until tomorrow night though, please do try to bee good, don’t forget that we have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak, and remember to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm – or cool – depending on the weather… but most importantly, please remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

¹skinning… only where applicable! No humanoids were skun… skinned? in the running of these Dungeons!

11.20 pm

Sorry everyone – I just haven’t been able to write anything at all today – expect a double-dose tomorrow, and forgive your ultra lazy and not feeling all that crash-hot Blog Writer! 🙂

Ta… catchyas all on the flipside! 😉

10.22 pm

Well, here I am, finally… I didn’t get a chance to ‘jot thingz down’ today because my very favourite eldest daughter came over – a little earlier than usual, so we filled the day with chatter and watching our favourite TV series. I did have time to put Wynterthyme through her daily chores before Lee arrived, which included my Daily Stable Capture quest. This time I had to go out into the wilds of Frost Fire Ridge – Horde territory – to capture and Tame a Young Icehoof! I didn’t even have a Flight Point for the area, and I certainly wasn’t about to go galloping through various Horde towns and villages to try to get there under my own steam! Luckily the Stable Masters seem to have an arrangement with my Flight Master, to fly me out to these impossible-to-get-to places – but not fly me home again! I had to Garrison Hearth! Still, an’ all, I have that Flight Point now, just in case I ever want to go back there again… though goodness knows why I’d want to! It’s Horde territory! Extremely hostile to us Alliance folk! And it’s covered in ice and snow, it’s freezing cold, and has lots and lots of really big (as well as small but deadly!) nasty monsters lurking behind every boulder and stunted bush! *shudder* No… I can’t really see me going back there voluntarily, in the near – or even the far distant – future..

So when Lee arrived, we distracted Julian with our bright, chirpy conversation so much that twice in a row, he managed to copy and delete a whole long string of files that he was supposed to keep! (mind you, I wouldn’t have thought that our frothy and frivolous conversation was interesting enough for Julian to do that… or maybe we were being a little bit wittier than I thought… 😉 ) so under a somewhat frosty masculine glare, we two girls hastily repaired to the lounge room and the television, where we watched… two (I think) episodes of “Agent Carter”, two episodes of “Supergirl”, including a “Supergirl/The Flash” crossover one, featuring the theory and possibility of multiple universes (quite a fascinating subject on its own!) which I thought was very well done – and a couple of episodes of “Arrow”, where things are starting to look pretty grim, for our young hero! After Julian had dropped Lee home, we just had time to log onto WoW to do our “Daily” Oil Barrel quest… because we had a movie to watch after dinner! 🙂

While my very favourite eldest daughter and I were watching our shows, Julian went over to Doncaster, to drop off some Dry Cleaning, replenish our coffee store, and a few other bits and pieces – and he brought me home a present! 🙂 Season 5 of “Game of Thrones”! I can’t wait to start watching it! (Winter bounces up and down in her computer chair, which starts making strange sounds, so she stops bouncing, just in case it breaks) But wait! There’s more! He brought home a movie that we’d missed, when it was on in the Cinemas! “The Martian“, starring Matt Damon, and (in places) Sean Bean (from “Game of Thrones”) and that’s what we watched after dinner (which is why this is so late!) It was a good movie – it ticked all my boxes – no-one died, no-one got laid, there was no excessive or gratuitous swearing, and it had a happy ending! – totally unlike 99¾ % of American movies these days! I totally enjoyed it! 🙂

So, on to the important bits of tonight’s ramble…

Food stuffz: last night we had lamb back straps for dinner, with half a tomato, green beans, and rice with finely chopped spring onions in it – I love lamb backstraps – they’re really good value for money – no fat, no bone (so no waste!), and they’re lovely and tender and juicy! And for dessert I had my second last Corella pear, and a very small piece of the Flourless Chocolate Cake, because there wasn’t that much of it left! Today for lunch I had another sandwich using the very nice Coles-brand multi-grain, seed-crusted bread, with basil-pesto hummus instead of butter, ham, low-fat Jarlsberg cheese, and home-grown tomato! Using the basil-pesto hummus instead of butter is a really good idea – it tastes delicious, gives a “plain-jane” sandwich a bit of texture, and isn’t as fattening! We also splurged, and had a small slice of Julian’s Banana Cake so that Lee could see what it was like. For dinner tonight we had a really delicious little piece of fillet steak – absolutely the tenderest piece of steak imaginable – you could have cut it with a spoon! Tonight we had chips, green beans and half a home-grown tomato – another of the “Black Russian” variety that we’d had the other night. They are really nice – lots of nice, firm, juicy “flesh”, with not too many “seeds in tomato jelly” in the middle of the fruit. If you have a veggie garden with tomatoes growing in them, but aren’t growing any of the Black Russians, do try them – you certainly won’t regret it! For dessert, I had my last little Corella pear, and the very last, tiny little slice of the Flourless Chocolate Cake – Julian had another piece of his Banana Cake. So, for us, Easter is now Officially Over, and I can go back to eating “normally” again! (or what passes for “normally” around here! 😉 )

Weigh-in this morning. Was slightly encouraging… My feet looked like balloons again last night, but my stomach has been making quite a few gurgles, so hopefully that’s a good sign. I went from 64.5kg to 64.4kg – down one point… as I said, encouraging… and hopefully, a good sign… Now that all the tempting chocolaty things have gone (and won’t be returning until at least next Christmas!) I should start to lose a bit of weight – unless, of course, my body decides that “Well, I’ve tried 64 kilograms, and I’ve tried 63 and 62 kilograms, but I really feel much more comfortable at 64 kilograms, so I think I’ll just stay around this weight!” – because, you know – I don’t feel that I really have much say in the matter any more! My body, with no rhyme nor reason for what it does, or doesn’t do, does exactly what it wants to do – and I just get dragged along for the ride! Hopefully, it’ll decide that it really liked 62.5 kilograms best, after all, and head on back down there… I guess we’ll just have to weight and see…

And so to tomorrow – I have absolutely no idea what’s happening tomorrow, so you’ll all just have to drop in again tomorrow night to see what we did do! I know we’ll be WoW-ing on Sunday, but tomorrow? I dunno! Anyway, that’s about it from me again for tonight, but as I said before – drop in again tomorrow night and be surprised! Well, you’ll either be surprised by what we did, or you’ll all give a snort, a roll of the eyes, and with a sharp nod you’ll all mutter under your collective breaths “Typical!”, or “We might have known you’d do something like that!” But until then, please do try to bee good, don’t forget that all things are difficult before they are easy, and remember to keep warm – or cool – depending on your mood, to look after yourselves, and to always drive carefully… but please, above all, remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

01.34 pm

It’s the end of my lunch break, and I’m feeling… freed, somehow – because I’m no longer tethered to Easter Eggs and chocolates! That’s right, I’ve just eaten my last two Easter Eggs – one small Lindt one, and one medium-sized Haigh’s one – I’d actually opened up the Lindt one last night, and taken a healthy bite out of it, when Julian yelled at me “Don’t eat that now!” – something about eating that much protein? carbohydrate? whatever! so close to going to bed – apparently it prevents you from going into ketosis, or something. Mind you, most people don’t go into ketosis when they go to sleep at night, in fact it was my understanding of ketosis¹ that it only occurred when your body started to burn body fat instead of ingested carbohydrates and proteins – like I was when I was on the Optifast diet (in fact I think I was pretty much in a constant state of ketosis while I was on the Optifast – and I probably stayed in a state of almost permanent ketosis, for a lot longer than is considered wise, or safe, by most doctors – but hey! It did the trick, and I’m still perfectly healthy! 😉 ) So in glum disappointment, I put the Lindt Easter Egg back in the plastic box that I’d been storing it in, and left it until this morning. I opened up the Haigh’s one about ¾ of an hour ago, and now it’s all gone too! 🙂 Now I can start having Ryvita crispbread and low-fat ricotta cheese, and start concentrating on shedding some of this Easter Weight! Ahhh… once we’ve finished off what’s left of the Flourless Chocolate Cake, that is – which should only take two or three nights. I’m not counting the Banana Cake as that wasn’t “Easter fare”, and I don’t think it’s nearly as “fat producing” as the Easter Eggs and the Flourless Chocolate Cake. We’ll work our way slowly through the Banana Cake when we’ve finished the FCC one – and besides, most of the Banana Cake has been frozen, so we can eat it as slowly as we like, without it going “off”! 🙂

Anyway, I’m back off to WoW – we did our “Oil Dailies”, so I now have enough barrels of oil to at least send a couple of ships out on Missions…

More later –

¹Ketosis – paragraph 2 is the pertinent part – so in this case, ignore paragraph 1, unless you’re Diabetic…

---

11.05 pm

Back again – after a rather grueling day getting used to having Stables in my Garrison! Well, Wynterthyme’s Garrison, then – I decided to swap my Dwarven Bunker – which took Garrison Resources and turned them into interesting Armor and Weapons upgrades for my Followers – for about the only useful Building that would fit in its place – the Stables! The main advantage of having the Stables is that you develop the ability to interact with “thingz” without dismounting. Gentle Readers, this might not seem like a Big Deal to you, but I can assure you, it does to us players! If you’re galloping around the countryside and see a tree that you can cut down, or a herb that you can pick, or a dead animal that someone else has looted but not skinned – normally you have to dismount to cut, pick, skin, or loot, and because mounting isn’t “instantaneous”, this can get terribly irksome! You still have to dismount to fight (or shoot at) something, but other than that, you can stay on your ride and just lean over to do whatever it is you’re doing, except, as I said, for fighting. The Stable Masters do give you somewhat weird quests though – “Here! Take this special lasso and capture a Young [insert name of strange animal here] Don’t let it get too far away, and just follow it around until it’s Tamed” – so there you go, tethered to this weird-looking animal, charging around the countryside, following it, and dragging a bit of a train of killer wolves and whatnot behind you, for I suppose… oh, up to a minute? a minute and a half? Then, all of a sudden, the tether vanishes, the animal stops running, the train that was following you disappears into thin air, and hey, presto! one of the Stable Masters materialises in front of you and walks off with the newly tamed [insert name of strange animal here] It’s all very simple, really… Anyway, I’ve been using my hard-won Garrison Resources to buy sacks of Smuggled Gold, which, as their name suggests, are full of… gold! What’s more, opening up these sacks to get the gold is counted as “looting”, so I’m steadily creeping closer to the 2,500 gold I need in order to upgrade my Storehouse (read: “Banking Chambers”) to level 3. I only need to loot another 400 gold… *sigh* Of course, I still have to become “Exalted” with one of the Draenic Factions in order to upgrade my Trading Post to level 3 (which will mean that I can start building an Auctioneer, so that I don’t have to go back to Stormwind if I want to use the Auction House! Won’t that be très cool!? 🙂 ) and in this particular case, I just might die of old age first!

Food stuffz: last night we had beef sausages, chips, green beans and half a tomato, and for dessert, I had one of my Corella pears, and a small-ish slice of the beautiful Banana Cake that Julian made yesterday afternoon. This morning saw us back to our normal breakfast of Uncle Toby’s VitaBrits, 200g extra bran, half a sliced banana, and 200 ml of low-far A2 milk, as all the Hot Cross Buns have been eaten (*cry*) until Easter next year, and for lunch I had a sandwich featuring the extremely nice Coles-brand multi-grain bread, with tandoori chicken sandwich chunks. Tonight we had pan-fried lamb backstraps, with steamed rice and finely chopped spring onion, half a home-grown Black Russian tomato – which was delicious – a tiny bit “tangy”, plenty of “flesh” to it, firm, but juicy – mmmm! 🙂 and green beans. For dessert I had another of my Corella pears – I think it must have been that the first one I ate wasn’t quite ripe, and that was why the skin tasted a little bit “bitter” – because the one I had last night, and the one I had tonight, were both very nice, and not a bit bitter! We also had a very small slice of the Flourless Chocolate Cake, and I could see when Julian was putting the rest of it away that there’ll barely be enough for another slice each tomorrow night – so that’s almost all out of the way now, too! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. Still horrible – and what’s more, my feet haven’t been this swollen for quite some time! So, while I thoroughly enjoyed Easter, and will definitely repeat the enjoyment next year, I’m very glad it’s over for this year! I went up from 64.1kg yesterday, to 64.5kg today! Four points! Dreadful! At this rate, I will be reaching for the Optifast again!

So there we go – that’s about all I have for you tonight, but do drop in again tomorrow night to see what’s been happening around here, how my Garrisons are going, and if my weight’s still going up – or maybe it’ll start going down again now – who knows? Until tomorrow night though, please do try to bee good, remember – don’t wait for people to be friendly, show them how! and don’t forget to always drive carefully, to look after yourselves, and to keep warm – or cool – depending on the weather… but most importantly, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

09.37 am

And now… the continuing saga of “Who’s a lazy girl, then?” and why I didn’t return to write anything after my briefest-of brief morning “note to self”!

I…. ah…. I…. mmm… I got a trifle caught up! With “thingz”. Yes, mostly WoW, I admit it – however I did get quite a ways with Wïnter – she’s doing well, and starting to come to grips with questing for Garrison Resources. Shekinàh didn’t even get a look-in yesterday, and I spent an hour and a quarter, sitting around in Grizzly Hills last night, consoling Arisnoë, when Arcturis, the Spirit Bear, failed to report in for his Taming Date at 11.00 pm. I dropped in on her around 10-ish, and she was getting all excited, thinking that tonight would be “the” night, and there was no-one else there to interrupt them! I sat and held her hand (er… that is, I sat and spammed the macro to Target him, if and when he made an appearance, which as it turned out, he didn’t!) from about 09.50 pm until 11.13 pm. It was very sad – I left her sobbing into her red and white spotted handkerchief (the one she ties to the end of a long stick, and packs all her worldly possessions in, when she’s going walkabout!) because it was late, and I was feeling horribly guilty about not writing anything all day (more-or-less) so I decided to escape my guilt by getting ready for bed – trying very hard not to think about how guilty I felt (but not doing anything about it anyway)

So, to re-cap… it was a bit of a “bitty” day, Julian and I managed to get our Daily Oil quest done, though I was still bemoaning the fact that I was never going to achieve the Achievement that would allow me to upgrade my “Storeroom” (the building where my Banker, and the Guild Bank live) to level 3 (to gain me a Transmogrifier, so I could change my appearance, which would be very cool!) The Achievement blurb said I had to loot 10,000 gold in Draenor – and so far, I’ve only managed to loot less than 1,000 gold, and I was worried that I’d probably die of old age first! The Achievement blurb lied! I really only needed to get 2,500 gold! Anyway, Julian went off looking, and found a really neat trick that allows you to loot gold by selling surplus Garrison Resources – it works, too! Now all I have to do is earn myself another “surplus” of them, as I sold nearly all of my (non-surplus!) Garrison Resources last night – but at least I’m more than halfway there now! 🙂

And basically, that’s what kept me away from writing yesterday…

Now to the nitty-gritty bits.

Food stuffz: as Julian was out taking my favourite eldest daughter to an appointment, he made my lunch early – a ham, cheese and tomato sandwich, on that lovely Baker’s Delight wholemeal and seed-crusted bread. Most yummy! 🙂 Then I ate several “bits” of one of my Easter Eggs – as a sort of dessert. Dinner was the herbed lemon chicken that we’d been going to have the night before, only Julian was feeling “delicate” so we didn’t. It was simply pan-fried, and served on a bed of steamed rice, with sautéed onion – I thought it was very nice – the chicken was a trifle dry, but still tasty. Then I had the option of either having the very last of the Hot Cross Buns for dessert, or for breakfast this morning – I chose the latter, so for dessert I had one of my Corella pears (I think perhaps we’d better wash the remaining ones before I eat them – the skin was quite bitter! I dunno – maybe it was some sort of spray, or maybe it wasn’t quite ripe enough – but, better to be safe than sorry, eh?) and some of that very excellent Coles-brand very low-calorie Rice Pudding. Then I had some more tiny bits of Easter Egg… (well, it’s gotta be eaten, doesn’t it!)

Weigh-in yesterday morning. Was only to be expected – in other words, I went up another point – from 63.8kg to 63.9kg. I expect this upwards trend to last about a week and a half – at this rate though, I’ll probably be reaching for the Optifast again by the end of it! 😦

And that, gentle readers, was my day, yesterday. Although I wasn’t around to tell you to bee good, I very much hope that you were/did/still are! Do look in again tonight – there’s sure to be lots more news for you all, but in the meantime, remember that some people want it to happen, some wish it would happen, others make it happen, so try to be one of the “others”, and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm – or cool – take your pick! 🙂 but most of all, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

---

 2.33 pm

I’m on my lunch break! I had lunch late because Julian had to go out to get stuff for the banana cake he’s making this afternoon. Ermm – because our usual breakfast is 2 Uncle Toby’s VitaBrits, plus 2 hundred grams of bran (I have All-Bran – Julian has Vogel’s Ultra Bran, because it doesn’t get soggy and mushy like All-Bran – which is, of course, why I prefer All-Bran! 😉 ) half a sliced banana (each) and 200 ml of the A2 Light milk. However, since Easter snuck up on us and hit us over the head with delicious Hot Cross Buns from Ferguson Plarre, we’ve been having one and a half toasted buns – each – for breakfast instead (that’s 3 half toasted buns each, with a mere scraping of butter) and of course, the bananas that we already had for our usual breakfasts, started to go a little “spotty”, or “over-ripe”, as they say in the classics… and because we had our last Hot Cross Buns for breakfast this morning, this means that we’ll be back to the Uncle Toby’s VitaBrits for breakfast again, tomorrow morning, but alas, we wouldn’t have any bananas! Even if Julian wasn’t using the slightly over-ripe bananas in a banana cake, they’d be just a bit too over-ripe to slice up on our cereal – hence Julian’s late dash to the Supermarket for cake and breakfast ingredients! So anyway, not wanting to waste these bananas, I suggested that at least some of them might be saved by turning them into a banana cake. “Good idea!”, said Julian, quickly followed by “Find me a recipe!” – so I did! I found him three recipes (I love confusing people!) After discussing the merits of each recipe, and discarding the one that contained Buttermilk, because he hadn’t bought any of that, he’s picked one and is currently in the kitchen, making this culinary delight. I think. I can just hear “clunking” noises coming from the general direction of the kitchen!

 So as I said, we had a late(ish) lunch, and I’m about ready to hop back into WoW – I’d quit out of it just before lunch, when I realised that I’d unintentionally enmeshed young Wïnter in the stupid quest chain that culminates in the almost impossible task of killing a really, really tough Gold Elite Boss – Commander Vorka. You may remember me gnashing my teeth over him, and on the verge of deleting poor long-suffering Shekinàh because of him! So this time, before I get too impassioned, I think I’ll just go and play around with Wynterthyme, and when Julian’s got the cake in the oven, I think I’ll let him came and fight Commander Vorka, for me!

More later… 🙂

---

09.32 pm

Here I am to fill in the salient points of the day – namely, what I ate, and what my scales told me – so here’s the break-down:

Food stuffz: last night for dinner we had pan-fried herbed lemon chicken breasts, and some steamed rice with fried chopped onion – which all went together beautifully. For dessert, I had one of my Corella pears, just quartered and cored, and I could have had the last of the Hot Cross Buns, but I decided that I’d much rather have them for breakfast this morning, so I had a small bowl of the really yummy, Coles-brand, very low-calorie Rice Pudding instead. For lunch today I had a sandwich on a new sort of bread – it’s another “Coles own”, supposedly “baked fresh on the premises” every day sort of bread, but it was surprisingly light and tasty. It’s a whole-grain, rather than a whole-meal bread, and has lots of seeds and “interesting looking” fiber. If it came to a “you be the judge” contest, I’d put the Baker’s Delight wholemeal slightly ahead of this Coles one – the Baker’s Delight really tastes better all round, I think. Anyway, it was a yummy sandwich, on the new bread, and containing the chopped up remains of last night’s chicken. Very delish! 🙂 Again, as a sort of a dessert, I ate two of the chocolate “carrots” from my Easter Egg box, and one of the small, chocolate cream-filled Lindt Easter Eggs (approximately 3.5 cm x 2 cm in size!) For dinner tonight we had the last of the new Beef Sausages (sorry, I can’t remember the make – the same as the last lot we had though, if you feel like backtracking through a couple of nights to look them up!) with half a home-grown tomato, chips, and green beans. For dessert, of course, we had a slice of Julian’s freshly baked Banana Cake, and it was a great success! I couldn’t believe how high it had risen! It tasted exactly like Banana Cake (funny, that! 😉 ) and the icing, which was really just whipped Philly Light and icing sugar, was absolutely scrumptious! It tasted a lot like a tub of “[name a fruit] cheesecake yoghurt”! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. Is still on the rise, I’m afraid! I went from 63.9kg to 64.1kg – a rise of two points. I have two Easter Eggs to go – one small one, and one medium one – and there’s about (Winter guesses wildly) three? slices of the Flourless Chocolate Cake left in the fridge, and about half the Banana Cake – Julian cut off some to wait in the fridge for gluttonous mouths to gorge on, and he froze the rest. Neither of us knows what we can expect to happen with the icing, because neither of us has ever tried to freeze Philly Light before! It’ll either work, or it wont.. If it doesn’t, we can always scrape it off and put something else on it, like whipped cream… 😉 Anyway, it’s now only the two Eggs and the cakes that are standing in the way of my weight loss – I’m sort-of trying to eat it all as surreptitiously and as quickly as possible, to get it all over and done with, and behind me, so-to-speak – until next Easter…

Which, of course, brings me to tomorrow. I have no idea what’s happening tomorrow – we may be off to see if I can finally get to change my name with the Medicare people, and perhaps to look in at a couple of lounge suites on the way home – the one we did purchase for use in this house hasn’t really been… satisfactory. But for the moment, that’s about it from me for today – don’t forget to drop in again tomorrow night to find out what sort of adventures the two of us had, whether my weight is still rising (like Julian’s Banana Cake did this afternoon! It was quite remarkable!) and whether I’ve finally had the name changed on my Medicare card! Until then though, please try to bee good, don’t forget that one of the greatest gifts you can give to anyone is the gift of attention, and remember to always drive carefully, to keep warm – or cool – depending on the weather, and to look after yourselves… but most importantly, please remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

 

01.25pm

Well, I told you it would be a “bitty” day today, didn’t I! 🙂 As you can probably tell from the time (above) I’m now on my lunch break. Julian left to take the Lexus off to be serviced around the same time that I started my daily jaunt on the treadmill – usually between 08.00 am and 08.30 am – and didn’t get back before 10.00 am! There is a Lexus Service Centre in Nunawading, but he always takes the car down to their Brighton one, because the first and only time he took it to the closer Service Centre, they did a really lousy job, and when he complained to the Management there about it, they pretty-much just shrugged their shoulders at him and said “Oh well…” So now he takes it all the way down to the Brighton Service Centre… So the cleaning lady came (she’s just left!), and I’ve been pushing Wïnter through the long and very tedious “Dark Portal” entry into Draenor – where my teeny little Garrison is still confusing me as to where the front entrance is! It’s gone well though, and I’m about to go back to it and try to get it up to level 2 status before Josh arrives 🙂

More anon…

---