Boy, am I exhausted! I’ve been working on Shekinàh pretty much all day – I gave her the boost up to level 90, as you know – and she’s now level 92 and a half (slightly more that half way to level 93, actually!) It’s a damn hard slog, doing it all solo, but thanks to Blizzard’s nerfing, it’s not been excessively hard (so far, anyway – this, of course, is liable to change without notice!) in fact I’ve found that the hardest part of going solo for questing is trying to work out (a) exactly what I’m supposed to be doing, and how – I’m quite sure that some of the quest “instructions” are a literal translation from the original Sanskrit! and (b) how to get to where I have to go! Today, for instance, I spend nearly all of my time running around annoyingly mountainous rocky molehills, trying to find a way up – and of course, you run (or gallop) around some rocks at the foot of this mountainous obstacle only to come face-to-face with a small (medium – large – take your pick, they’re all there, all around the mountain!) mob of vicious, snarling, bent solely on your demise, wolves, or demons, or orcs, or ogres – which you can either try to outrun (which doesn’t always work) or fight off (which doesn’t always work either, and it also takes a lot of time, especially when you’re maniacally running around a stupid mountain, trying to find a way up! Oh, I’m sorry, did I sound somewhat disgruntled just then? Well, I was!) Gahh! I need to be able to fly! Anyway I think I did fairly well, all told! Poor old Arisnoë has been temporarily put into suspended animation in Grizzly Hills, as I simply don’t have the time to sit around for a couple of hours, mindlessly spamming my “N” key, while waiting for a Spirit Bear to materialise – but don’t worry, I will get back to her – she’s one of my best characters! 🙂 Every now and then during the day, I went back to Wynterthyme, to check on her Followers Missions, and her fledgeling Fleet – (*very proudly*) she now has six ships! Three Transports, and three Destroyers! (*preen*) I’ve set up Shekinàh’s Garrison slightly differently from Wynterthyme’s – now that she’s turned level 92 and the Town Hall has reached Level 2 status, she’s had access to more building sites. One of the first things I did was get rid of the Barracks – all it was good for was military things and producing Body Guards, which I didn’t want. It’s now the Mage’s Tower, Level 1, and instead of the Lumber Mill, I’ve put in a Trading Post (Level 1), and I’ve put in an Enchanter’s Studio, so that I can DE things, and a Salvage Yard, because you can get some way cool Follower as well as Personal Gear out of the Salvage Bins that you get in your Mission Rewards. I also put in a Storage Shed, which will be the first Building I’ll be trying to get to Level 2, so that I can have unfettered access to my Guild Bank, and I’ve completed the quest to open up my Mine, so that’s operational now, too. I dithered a bit between putting in a Lumber Mill or a Trading Post, but the Trading Post won out – the Lumber Mill is an excellent source of Garrison Resources, but it’s also very time hungry – you have to be constantly going out to harvest timber for it to produce the Garrison Resources, and I figure that can wait until I get my next Garrison upgrade, when I hit level 98 (or is it 96? I fergit!) whereas with the Trading Post, I only have to have excess Crafting Reagents, and heaven knows, the Guild Bank is already bursting at the seams with those! So at the moment, everything seems tickety-boo with the Garrison itself – I’ve also been picking up a lot of Followers, where I’ve made another change from Wynterthyme’s group! When I was given a choice of three Draenei Followers – a female Rogue, a male Warrior, or a female Priest, I chose the female Priest, where Wynterthyme chose the male Warrior… actually I was very dubious about making that switch – the male Warrior has been an excellent Follower, but there’s no way I can go back and do things differently now! I probably would have played a bit longer this afternoon, but the Podiatrist was coming, so I logged off and went and read a magazine until she arrived…

Food stuffz: last night we had frenched lamb cutlets, steamed rice with finely chopped spring onion, green beans, and our usual half a tomato – all delicious! I love frenched lamb cutlets, all the fat has been trimmed off, they have a nice little built-in bone handle so that you can pick them up and gnaw on them, and they don’t have too much meat on them! For dessert I had my yummy over-the-fence fig, and a delicious Jalna yoghurt with black cherries. For lunch today I had a scrumptious wrap, with basil-pesto hummus, sweet chili chicken sandwich chunks, tomato, red chili batons, and a different sort of Halloumi cheese, and for dinner tonight, Julian accepted my “Food Challenge” and made this Chicken Provencale (I found this recipe for him last night!) and we had it with a reprise of last night’s rice with the spring onion, and steamed broccoli florettes. It was really, really nice – it’s a “keeper” recipe, that’s fer sure! 🙂 The chicken breasts he used were a little on the large side, and I hate to think what the scales are going to say to me tomorrow (I think I’ll wear a blindfold when I get on them in the morning! I don’t think I want to know!) but it made a lot, and there’s enough left over for Julian to freeze so we can have it again next week – but it was lovely! For dessert I had a very nice store-bought fig, and… (do I dare say it?!) even more rice, in the form of that wonderful Coles brand very low-calorie Rice Pudding! Oh dear – the amount of rice I’ve eaten in the past two days would probably sink one of Shekinàh’s Destroyers! Oh well, he only puts the food in front of me – I’m the one who eats it, so I’m the one who has to live with the consequences – the trouble is, he’s such a good cook! It would be a lot easier if he was a terrible cook, then I probably wouldn’t want to eat so much (of it)!

Weigh-in this morning. Slowing down a bit now – I went from 62.2kg to 62.2kg – that is, I stayed the same! It’s probably my body slowing down and psyching itself up – getting ready for the gigantic leap skywards that it’s going to be making tomorrow morning! As I said – I think I might wear a blindfold tomorrow morning when I get on the scales – I don’t want to know! The we’re going out for lunch on Sunday, and next week is the “Great Chocolate Eating Weekend”, with Hot Cross Buns, too! I’m scared…. 😦

And so to tomorrow – I’m not sure what’s happening – Julian did the shopping today, so I don’t think he’ll have to go out again until Sunday – and quite frankly, unless the weather’s calmed down a bit, I don’t think I want to go out in it! The rain, very early this morning, actually woke me up, it was so heavy and loud! No doubt I’ll be working on Shekinàh again – it would be nice to get her up to level 98 (or 96) but I doubt it’ll be tomorrow! Still, it’s fun doing things a bit differently. We won’t be able to do our normal “Dusting Down Draenor” on Sunday, because we’re going out for lunch, but maybe we could do that tomorrow instead – I dunno – depends on what himself has planned! Anyway, that’s really about it from me for tonight – do call in again tomorrow, and find out what Shekinàh and Wynterthyme are up to, and how much my weight did go up! If I do wear a blindfold when I get on the scales tomorrow, I’ll have to get Julian to type in what my weight was, because I don’t want to have to see it! And if he tries to tell me, I’ll put my fingers in both ears and go “Lalalalala!” really loudly, so I won’t have to hear it either! No, I won’t do either of those things – but I know I’m not going to like it! So until tomorrow night, please try to bee good, remember that ability is what you’re capable of doing, motivation determines what you do, and attitude determines how well you do it… and don’t forget to keep warm and dry – or cool and dry – depending on what the weather’s like tomorrow, to always drive carefully, and to look after yourselves… but above all, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

And now, just to confuse you all, here I am, starting early! Oh, it’s been a very intense day today – getting Shekinàh “instant leveled” to 90. Now, that was an experience that I don’t want to have to repeat! Well, I can’t, anyway, because the single level 90 boost is granted to one character only, when you buy the Warlords of Draenor expansion. So, never having done it before, I wasn’t fully prepared to find myself suddenly dumped, minus my Pet and most of my Abilities, at the Dark Portal – not the sort of place you want to go to totally unprepared! Even my Hearthstone had been re-set to the Dark Portal! Good grief, you know I don’t think there’s even a decent Inn there! My plan had been – sweet, innocent liddle-ol’-me – to use the level 90 boost to get Shekinàh from level 76 to level 90 in the one foul swoop, then to neaten myself up, straighten my tie, put my Pet in the Stables, and go off looking for a more “Draenor suitable” Pet – if there even is such a beastie! I decided not to trespass on Arisnoë’s turf by looking for Arcturis, because that wouldn’t be fair to Arisnoë, after I’d left her outside in Grizzly Hills for so many nights. So, I wanted to have a quick snoop around in Petopia, looking for something else to Tame – possibly a Turtle or some other type of Bear – and I did find a few – but this turning up at the Dark Portal, totally unannounced, and with most of my shot rotation “missing in action”, and three-quarters of my Abilities all greyed out, was a teeny bit of a problem! I could go along as I was, more-or-less fighting with the equivalent of one and a half hands tied behind my back, tightly blindfolded, and without my Pet, and (I was told) I’d get all my missing Abilities back once I established my Garrison – or I could turn myself into a pretzel, trying to get my missing bits and pieces back again. I chose the latter. One thing that Blizzard did – in their wonderfully expansive generosity – was to give me a new weapon and a new set of armor, which was much more suited to a level 90 character than my old level 76 armor had been! And it was all good gear too! I checked on what was available for a level 90 character in the Auction House, and there was absolutely nothing there that even came close to being as good as my new gear! Thank heavens for small mercies, eh?! 😉 And thank heavens too, for favourite eldest daughters who’ve been playing WoW for a lot longer than Julian and I have! Lee knows World of Warcraft inside out, back to front, and upside down – and she was able to give us some pointers as to how to get all my Abilities back – unfortunately it took a lot of time! I’d found a cool looking Turtle in Mt. Hyjal, called “Terrorpene” – he was a Rare Silver Elite “flaming turtle” – and as Turtles make good Tenacity Pets, and have the ability to shield themselves with their shell, he would have been the perfect choice! I went to Mt. Hyjal – at this stage, I hadn’t realised that nearly all of my Abilities were “greyed out” – I thought I’d just be able to retrieve them from my Spell Book, you see. I’d also looked for other information on this turtle – and learned that he spawns about every six to twelve hours, and that being a Rare Silver Elite, a lot of people like to kill him, because they think that he’ll drop some good loot – he doesn’t. He drops a single Crystalline Tear of Loyalty, worth about 29 gold, if that! So there I was, flapping around in Mt. Hyjal looking for this turtle – and I did! I had his Portrait up on my screen! But I couldn’t locate him on the ground… then his Portrait vanished, and I couldn’t find him again 😦 Either someone had killed him, and skinned him, because I couldn’t even find his dead body – or they’d Tamed him 😦 Either way, it’d be another six to twelve hours until he respawned again, so I left – bitterly disappointed, and went to look in Petopia again… Boars make good Pets! 🙂 They’re pretty rugged and very aggressive – and there was (yet another!) Rare Silver Elite in the Eastern Plaguelands, called “Varah” – I’d try for him (or her) instead! Time was passing – I’d been doing this all morning, and I just wanted to get this ruddy Pet and go and do all the prerequisites for getting my wretched Garrison, and I still wasn’t aware of the fact that I wasn’t going to be able to just re-acquire my Abilities from my Spell Book. I’d been in the Eastern Kingdoms, and to get to Mt. Hyjal I’d had to catch the boat to Kalimdor – now I had to go back to the Eastern Kingdoms to get to the Eastern Plaguelands – I’d been Hearthed in Stormwind, and I would have been able to fly from straight there from Stormwind – but now I was Hearthed at the Dark Portal, so I took the ruddy ship all the way back to Stormwind, and flew to the Eastern Plaguelands (now can you see why it took me such a long time to do all this? and this was just the beginning!) I eventually got to where I needed to be to get “Varah”, and started looking for him (or her) and that was when I realised that it wouldn’t do me any good even if I did find this Boar, as I wasn’t able to get my Taming spell out of my Spell Book – it was greyed out! Locked! For once in my life I was speechless! And that was when we started the long and involved quest to get my Abilities back! In the end, the answer was to go to Ironforge – a l-o-n-g way away from the Eastern Plaguelands, but it was the nearest capital city with a Hunter Trainer. So, off I trekked again – this time to Ironforge – found the Hunter Trainer, and re-set all my Abilities! Hey presto, I got all my Abilities back – scrunched in any-old-where they’d fit on my Action Bars, so then I had to go and waste more time, getting everything all set up again! (this was starting to get really annoying! Thanks Blizzard, for needlessly obliterating a character’s Abilities!) Finally I had everything ready, and off I flew again, to the Eastern Plaguelands. Well, I never did manage to find “Varah”, but I figured that it didn’t much matter – all Specials, Silver Elite or not, lose any special abilities they might have had when they get Tamed, so I Tamed a “Varah” look-alike Boar, called “Eggsand” – because he’s basically “Bacon”, isn’t he! 😉 I was then able to Hearth to the Dark Portal, complete all the Garrison prerequisites, and Shekinàh is now the proud Commander of her very own Garrison! But it took me from about nine thirty this morning, plus several less strands of hair, some  – shall we say – rather colourful language, and a couple of foaming-at-the-mouth temper tantrums, until just after four o’clock this afternoon. If I hadn’t had to contend with Blizzard’s totally needless meddling, the whole thing from go to whoa, would have taken about two hours, and I probably would have been able to Tame “Terrorpene”, the flaming turtle! Not impressed, Blizzard!

Food stuffz: last night we had chicken sausages for dinner, with green beans, chips, and half a home-grown tomato (not one of the Heirlooms this time, but it was absolutely delicious! juicy, firm, nice thin-ish skin that was easy to cut and bite through – a perfect specimen!) For dessert I had a low-fat burnt fig and salted caramel yoghurt, which in my opinion, is probably the nicest of all the low-fat yoghurts! Julian cooked all of the chicken sausages, so there were a couple left over for lunch today… which I had sliced up in a wholemeal sandwich with some of the basil-pesto hummus and a bit of salt and pepper! We should have chicken sausages more often… Tonight we’re having Frenched Lamb Cutlets, probably with all the usual suspects – chips, green beans, and half a tomato. The over-the-fence fig that Julian picked the other day should be ripe enough to eat tonight, so I’ll have that, along with some sort of low-fat yoghurt. Tomorrow night, Julian wants me to give him a “cooking challenge”, so I’ll have to start looking at recipes tonight 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. This morning I went up… one, whole point, from 62.1kg to 62.2kg – I do hope this isn’t going to be a “growing trend”! Well, I’m not eating anything that I shouldn’t, and I’m very diligently doing my 32 minute, 2 kilometer walk, at 3.8 kilometers an hour every morning before breakfast, so hopefully I’ll either stay the same tomorrow, or go down. Mind you, if I go up one more point tomorrow, I won’t gnash my teeth and weep and wail… but I will if I go up too much, like about 7 points, or something! 😉

And so to tomorrow! More of the same, probably, though I do want to go and do a bit of shopping – I want to get some fruit! I’m missing my apricots, and figs are almost out of season – especially in the fruit shops. What I want are Corella Pears – which according to that link, have just come into season, so I think a visit to The Colonial Fruit Company is in order, as they seem to have the best and freshest produce! I know there’s one at Forest Hill Chase, and another at Doncaster Shoppingtown, but I’m not really sure if there’s one at The Glen, or Knox City – however I need to go and look for myself, because if Julian rings me and says “They haven’t got Corella Pears – what else would you like instead?” I just go blank – I need to see the fruit before I know what I want! Oh, and we didn’t get to Bunny’s or a Pet Shop today to get one of those fish net-thingies, but we have got a very fine mesh plastic tea strainer – one of its little arm rests (that sits on one side of the cup to balance the tea strainer) is broken, so I’ll try that out as soon as I finish this – hopefully I’ll have some positive news about the mud-puddle tomorrow night! 🙂 And finally – that’s about it from me for tonight! 🙂 Don’t forget to drop in again tomorrow night – find out how Shekinàh is getting on in her new Garrison, whether Arisnoë has her Spirit Bear, and what Wynterthyme’s been up to! See if my weight has been behaving itself or not, and whether the tea strainer was able to scoop any gunk out of the mud puddle (actually, it’s not green mud, it’s green algae!) But until then, please do try to bee good, remember that confidence is the companion of success, and don’t forget to keep cool – or warm – depending on the weather, to look after yourselves, and to always drive carefully… but most importantly, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

Well, here it is, another late start – but it’s been a good day all round – another day of WoW-ing, the washing is all folded and (mostly!) put away, my hair’s looking great, and I have some new ideas for the backyard! While I was outside chatting to Josh as he was leaving, we were watching my two little fishies in their mud-puddle. Our gardening man had been over this afternoon and had done a wonderful job of mowing, trimming the hedge, weeding, and generally straightening the place up, but he’d used a leaf-blower, amongst other plant taming implements, and the leaf-blower had managed to send a load of leaves, twigs, grit, and very fine dust into the already putridly green “pea-soup” liquid that my poor little fishies have to swim around in (it’s a wonder that so far, no-one has reported us to the R.S.P.C.A. for cruelty towards fishes!) It was bad enough before, but I was quite horrified this afternoon! Tomorrow, I want to go to either Bunny’s, or a Pet Shop, to get one of those fine mesh fishpond net-thingies, so that I can at least try to fish the worst of the debris out – and I also want to see if any of the aquarium places have some sort of “pond doctor”, who’d be able to come out and clean our mud puddle, remove the algae, and generally make it a nice place for fish to swim around in. Once we can get the water feature mud puddle under control, I want to plant a tree in our back garden – probably a fig tree, and definitely not the sort that needs a second fig tree to fertilise it into producing ripe, luscious figs! Once those two objectives are realised (the mud puddle cleaned up, and the fig tree planted) I want to put in a slightly larger, proper rock pool, close to our new fig tree – with a water filter, and a few shade producing water lilies that small fish can hide under, as well as the whole pool being able to get a bit of shade from the fig tree during the summer months. It’ll require a bit of plumbing for the water filter, I suppose – and electricity to run it, and the small fountain that I’d put in to help aerate the water, as well as provide a gentle, soothing, “burbling” sound when it’s running… If I can find anything suitable to wear on my feet, and we had a small table and a couple of garden chairs out there, I could go and sit in the shade of the fig tree, and offer advice, as Julian worked on the veggie garden! How idyllic! 😉 (I wonder if we’d need a third bug zapper out there…)

As I said earlier, I WoW’d for most of the morning – and no, Arisnoë still doesn’t have her Spirit Bear! 😦 When I went and looked in on her this morning, for once she was all alone next to the spawn point, so I sat there spamming my “/tar Arcturis” macro, and wondered where all the other Hunters were – normally at that time – around 10.15am – it’s a real jumpin’ place! Half an hour later, I was still there on my own! Where was everyone! I began to get suspicious! Suspicious that some time before I arrived on the scene, someone had either Tamed Arcturis, or killed him, and all the other Hunters, having seen this happen before their very eyes, had all gone off to do “other things”, knowing full well that Arcturis wasn’t going to spawn again for another 12 to 16 hours – so no point hanging around, eh?! I gave it another quarter of an hour – still no Arcturis, and still no other Hunters – so I left Arisnoë there, and went off to play another character – a level 76 Draenei called Shekinàh – that I haven’t played for yonks! I thought that in between Wynterthyme and her Garrison, and Arisnoë and her wretched Bear, I might trot Shekinàh out again – maybe even auto-level her to level 90, so that I can get started on her Garrison, now that I have a better idea of what I’m doing! I’ll see if I can do that after I finish this, depending on what time I finish (otherwise I’ll have to wait until tomorrow… and I hate waiting!) Anyway, Julian and I are quite mystified about something that occurred today… We were setting off to do a quest that would (supposedly) give us “great powers!” – I said to Julian at the time “Great powers! Yanno, I bet it’s something that Hunters can’t use!” – however, all we had to do was collect three items from a rather noxious area of Draenor – so we set off… but when we got there, all we found was the swirly-whirly entrance to a Dungeon (or Instance) which we definitely didn’t want to do! With very bad grace, we kept the quest, but turned “Tracking” off, so that we wouldn’t see it in our quest logs, and went back to our Garrisons. We played on as a Group, but independently of eachother, and – this is the part that has us a bit mystified – Julian bought the plans and updated his Trading Post to Level 3. “Good-o!” thought I, “I can do that too!” So… I went to buy the plans for the Building – only to find it locked! The padlock on the plans said that I had to be “Exalted” with one of the Draenor Factions! Julian had no problem buying the plans, but he has exactly the same “Exalted” status as I do! Julian did a bit of research into this small puzzlement, and apparently a lot of people are peeved, upset, and annoyed – there’s some sort of “bug” with this Building Upgrade – some people can just buy the plans, like Julian did, regardless of their Faction status. Some people, like me, can’t – though presumably once I get to “Exalted” with one of the Factions, hopefully I will be able to get it. And then again, some people who have reached “Exalted” status with a Draenor Faction can’t buy it, because their “Exalted” status isn’t recognised by the plans (or the plan Vendor, or something!) Personally, I think Blizzard should just drop the “Exalted” requirement, because too many people have already been able to buy it without this requirement, so to “fix” the bug would only alienate those who have to wait a l-o-n-g time to build up their Reputation to “Exalted”, when all their friends managed to get it without it! Leveling the Trading Post up to Level 3, by the way, increases your Reputation points by 20% – which would make getting to “Exalted” a lot quicker – but then, what’s the point, if you already have the upgrade? Egg-Chicken-Egg!? (Yes, I know the 20% will make Reputation farming a lot quicker and easier for all the multi-myriads of other Factions where you might want to gain Reputation points! I’m just saying that in this particular case it’s rather pointless!) So, Julian has a Level 3 Trading Post, and I don’t – and I won’t have, for quite a long, long time! *sob*

Food stuffz: last night for dinner we had pasta with tomato sauce and a little bit of parmesan cheese – I love my pasta, and even if I do only get to eat a small plateful about once a month, it’s still a great treat that I look forward to! 🙂 For dessert I had the last of the absolutely delicious Coles brand, very low-calorie Rice Pudding – Julian went and did some shopping this afternoon, but the Coles up at Vermont South Shopping Centre doesn’t have it – we have to go to a bigger Coles for that, so… no more Lovely Rice Pudding for Dinner Again tonight, Mary Jane! 🙂 Today for lunch I had a wrap – with pastrami, Swiss cheese, tomato, basil-pesto hummus, and baby corn – as usual, terribly messy to eat, but totally delicious! For dinner we had chicken sausages, chips, half a home-grown tomato, and green beans, with only a low-fat burnt fig and salted caramel yoghurt for dessert, because the fig that was hanging over our back fence and which Julian picked yesterday, still wasn’t quite ripe enough to eat. It should be by tomorrow though! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. I continue to amaze myself! Would you believe I went down again?! I went from 62.7kg down to 62.1kg! Six points! And I ate all those carbs yesterday! However, last night my stomach started gurgling, which apparently means that fluid is on the move, and it was steadily gurgling all this morning too , though it’d stopped by lunchtime, than heavens! So… who know what lies in store for tomorrow’s weigh-in! I guess we’ll just have to weight and see… 🙂

And so to tomorrow! I’m not really sure what’s happening – more of the same, probably, though I am determined to try and get a fine net with which to scoop the worst of the debris that got blown into the fish mud puddle today – poor fishies! I don’t know how they manage to live in that water! It must be like living in a house with a dozen heavy smokers! Anyway, if I want to get this online before it turns into a pumpkin at midnight, I’d better say that that’s about it from me for tonight! 🙂 Feel free to drop in again tomorrow night though, to find out if my stomach gurgles meant anything at all, or absolutely nothing, and that my weight’s gone back up again! And see if Arisnoë has her Bear, or if I leveled Shekinàh up to level 90, as well as all the other adventures and misadventures that were my lot during the day! However, until tomorrow night, please do try to bee good, don’t forget that information is not knowledge, and always remember to drive carefully, to look after yourselves, and to keep cool – or warm – depending on your mood… but most of all, please remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

Ooo-er! it’s the Ides of March today – though I guess it’s a little late in the day to be saying “Beware the Ides of March!” to you all at this stage of the day, even if there are only a few hours of it left before midnight! 😉 If only Julius Caesar had listened – who knows what the world might be like today! I often wonder about historical events, and what would have happened if they had ended up differently – I mean, what if Richard III hadn’t been killed at Bosworth Field? What if Elizabeth I had married, and produced children? Though I guess that if Richard III hadn’t been killed at Bosworth, there never would have been an Elizabeth I, because the Tudor dynasty would never have eventuated, the Stuarts would never have sat on the English throne, and Cromwell probably would have been just another soldier in the Plantagenet army! Just think! All that glorious history lost, or changed, simply because Julius Caesar had stayed home on the Ides of March! 😉 Australia might not have been discovered yet, or we might all be speaking Spanish, or Portuguese! Ho-hum!

My favourite eldest daughter did come over today, but before she arrived I did a fair bit of WoW-ing. I managed to get my Mage’s Tower up to Level 3, I’ve decided that I don’t want a Menagerie, as it’s mainly and arena for Battle Pets, which I don’t use, or play with, or whatever you do with Battle Pets (Julian says it’s like PvP for cute little Pokemon critters, which quite frankly, I don’t have the time or inclination for!) However, I just had a thought! You can put up a Building in your Garrison, and if you decide that it’s not what you really wanted, you can change it, simply by dragging another Building icon over the top of it – which is what I did to my Level 2 Inn today. I originally built the Inn because once a week you get the opportunity to get yourself another Follower, and you can choose what abilities or “traits” you want them to have – but really, that’s about the only advantage you do get from the Inn… and a week is a long time to wait for a choice of new Followers, when you can “Hire” them in your Town Hall any time you like (for quite a lot of gold, or Garrison Resources, or both – I fergit which!) Besides, I already had 19 out of 20 Followers, and I “accidentally” managed to get myself another one today, just from cutting down trees! 🙂 Anyway, I changed the Inn for a Trading Post, which I’ve also brought up to Level 2. The Trading Post allows you to “Trade” Crafting Reagents for Garrison Resources (Crafting Reagents are what characters who “Process” rather than “Gather” use to make things with) Wynterthyme is a “Gatherer” – she Gathers herbs and skins – she doesn’t do any Processing (like Leatherworking, or Tailoring, or Blacksmithing or whatever) so she has all these herbs and skins, that once upon a time, used to sell like hot cakes on the Auction House. Unfortunately, as in Rift, the economy has been totally stuffed, and these days, you’re hard pressed to make even a meager living selling your Crafting Reagents there – a “stack” of 200 skins sells for a pittance, and some of the lower level Reagents fetch more from a lowly Vendor (who buys at the lowest possible price – usually a few coppers) than you can get on the Auction House. So there’s Wynterthyme, with skins and herbs coming out of her ears, and no way to make any money from them – and then – Along came a Spider Trader, who offered to buy her Crafting Reagents for Garrison Resources, which she does need! … so Wynterthyme’s over-supply problem is solved, and the Auction House becomes even more redundant! Oh, I did get back to Arisnoë last night – I spent the better part of an hour sitting there waiting for the Spirit Bear – unfortunately, she was not alone. There was one other contender for the Bear – a Pandarian Hunter – who was very obviously waiting for Arcturis – and another total nutter who seemed to have collected every single Spirit Beast available except for two – Arcturis, and a ghostly Spirit Porcupine – all of which he kept summoning and then dismissing, one after the other, whilst leaping insanely all over the place! He was either there to distract Arisnoë and the Pandarian, or to Tame Arcturis for himself – and I don’t know about the Pandarian, but he was really making me angry! If he distracted any of us, including the Bear, any chance of Taming  would be ruined! Anyway, I got there around 10.15pm and sat there, spamming my “/tar Arcturis” macro solidly with my left hand, whilst my cursor sat poised and ready over the Taming icon, until 11.15pm, which was a quarter of an hour later than when Wynterthyme had found and Tamed him, so I figured he was going to be a “no-show”, and quit for the night. If I get this finished in time tonight, I’ll try again, otherwise I’ll have to leave it until tomorrow night.

As I said earlier, my favourite eldest daughter was over today, and we had a good time watching two episodes of “The 100”, one episode of “The Shannara Chronicles” – which really should have been the last one, because that’s where the (book!) story ends – but apparently they’re going to tack something onto the end – I have no idea where they’ll go from here – we’ll just have to wait until we can get hold of the next one! And then we watched several episodes of Marvel’s “Agent Carter” – I love that show – it’s so far-fetched, and so typically ’50’s in speech and dress! We didn’t have any more episodes of “Supergirl” to watch – according to Lee, they’re “on hiatus”, or something – I hope we can get some more soon though… And of course, the next Season of “Orphan Black” starts next month, which will be really good, and I really hope that we’ll be able to get more episodes of “The Librarians” and “Person of Interest”, too – coz I know there’s more of the latter – we just haven’t been able to get them yet (I don’t know about my favourite eldest daughter, but I’ll probably have to re-watch the last few episodes to refresh my memory of what had been happening!) So it was a really good day, all round! 🙂

Food stuffz: last night we had the most beautiful piece of King Island steak – juicy and tender (drool!) with chips, half a tomato, and green beans. Alas, there was no fresh fruit, so all I had for dessert was a Vanilla Chia Pod, which once again, was weird, but very nice. Today for lunch I had a wholemeal sandwich, with basil-pesto hummus and turkey sandwich chunks, which was really nice – we usually have the tikka chicken sandwich chunks, but this time it was turkey – Julian said that he thought the turkey was a bit salty, but I didn’t think so (after all, I’m quite addicted to salt!) Tonight I had a small plate of pasta with tomato sauce, and a small sprinkling of parmesan cheese, and for dessert, I had the last of the really yummy Coles brand Rice Pudding, so I’m not expecting to lose any more weight tomorrow!

Weigh-in this morning. Was good, actually – I went down from 63.1kg to 62.7kg (just call me “Yo-yo”!) Tomorrow will probably be the reverse! You should see my weight graph! You know I said it looked like I was drawing a silhouette of Batman in his cape, with its little pointy ears? Well, I was wrong mistaken! I’m actually drawing a saw, with a couple of rather long, broken teeth, and a few worn down, short teeth! Up… down… Up… down – across – Up! Rinse and repeat, multiple times! But… I’m pretty pleased that although it’s so up and down, overall it appears to be quite steady! Now let’s see if I can maintain that for a whole year – or until I see Dr. Y. next! 🙂

And so to tomorrow – I’m not quite sure what’s happening – Josh is coming over and I’ll be having my hair done in the afternoon, and I have two boxes labeled “Bathroom” to sift through, mostly looking for my Inglot “breathable” nail polish, which I promised I’d “lend” to my favourite youngest daughter, and another couple of nail polishes that I might start wearing again – apart from that, I’ll probably keep on WoW-ing, as usual – I have young Moonsöng to level up, a Spirit Bear to find for Arisnoë, and Wynterthyme has Missions to organise for her Followers, and her new, fledgeling fleet of ships (OK, so she’s only got two ships so far, a Troop Carrier and a Destroyer, but at least it’s the start of a fledgeling fleet! 😉 ) And that’s about it from me again this evening! 🙂 Do call in again tomorrow night to see if my weight did go up after the heavy carb day I had today, with the wholemeal sandwich, the pasta, and the Rice Pudding! Find out if Arisnoë is back in her Garrison with a new and transparent bear, whose eyes and teeth can be seen through his big bear rump, and whether or not I found my nail polishes! Until then, however, please bee good, remember to never let a bad day make you feel like you have a bad life, and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to keep cool – or warm – depending on the weather, and to always drive carefully… but above all, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

Goodness gracious, I feel as though I’ve been running from pillar to post today! We had another nice sleep-in this morning, because it was a Public Holiday, but ever since breakfast I’ve been running around Draenor like a chook with its head cut off, hither, thither, and yon! Still an’ all, we finished that painfully obtuse quest, “The Legacy of the Ancients”, and Mouselet and Wynterthyme now have their level 3 Lumber Mills – at long ruddy last! Remember when I told you yesterday that we were supposed to get something from a Petrified Ancient, and although we’d killed two of them, it didn’t “drop” for us – and that Julian “Took out a Ticket” (left a message for one of the Moderators) ? Well, he got a reply this morning! The Moderator told Julian that he’d had a very detailed look at our logs from yesterday, saw that we had indeed found, and killed two Petrified Ancients without getting the required drop from either of them, and that we weren’t trying to diddle them into giving us a freebie item so that we could get out of doing a rather nasty, long, and very involved quest… and each of us found that we had the item waiting for us in our (in-game) mail boxes, with a short, apologetic note! The way the quest was worded, it had sounded like a book of some sort, so all we had to do was read it, and get on with finishing the rest of the quest. Well, as it turned out, it wasn’t a book at all, even though it was called “the Barkskin Tome” – it was a receptacle for bits and pieces of four different Ancient trees! Naturally this involved a lot of running around in different zones, chopping down medium-sized trees until we made the Ancient we were after angry enough to come out and confront us – whereupon we killed him! So we eventually got our required bits of tree, took them all back to the Lumber Mill and handed them in. As a reward, we were told that we could now go and buy – at enormous expense (1.5 thousand gold!) – the blueprints for the Level 3 Lumber Mill – and of course, then you had to pay the workers, in gold and Garrison Resources, to go and build the ruddy thing! And all because we wanted to be able to chop down “Large Trees”! *sigh* Anyway, no tree in Draenor is safe from Mouselet and Wynterthyme now! (fx: echoing, evil laugh: Muuhahahahaha! /fx)

So I went back to my “architect’s table” in my Town Hall, and went through all my buildings. I noted with interest that I now have the facilities to open up a Menagerie – of course, you do need to do a quest first, to “unlock” it! (Winter rolls her eyes) No, I don’t have any real idea what advantages a Menagerie will give me, and at this point in time, I’m not in any great hurry to find out, or to get one – all in good time! 😉 What I did do after I’d completed my level 3 Lumber Mill was check up on which Buildings were Level 3, and which were still Level 2. The Level 3 Buildings so far are: The Town Hall, the Lumber Mill, the Herb Garden, and the Mine – all the main earners for me. I thought I might have been able to get my Mage’s Tower to Level 3 today, too – all I needed was another 61 Ogre Waystones – or so I thought – so off I went to get them, slaughtering Ogres left, right, and centre! It didn’t take me long to get over seventy Waystones, even though someone else was running along in front of me, collecting the Waystones too! When I picked up my 62nd Waystone, I got the Achievement I needed to unlock the Level 3 Mage’s Tower, so I quickly Hearthed back to my Garrison, ran into the Town Hall, triumphantly bought my Blueprint, learnt it, and turned to the architect’s table to order the construction… Guess what! The Tower needs 1200 Garrison Resources to bring it up to Level 3, and I only had 951! *sob* I even raided my Full Garrison Cache to get me up to that many – I’ll just have to wait until it replenishes itself, or until I can score a few good Follower Missions that will net me some Resources – I only need another 249…

After lunch, Julian moved the cupboard that used to be in the hallway to the garage, into his Commodore 64 room, where it’ll look better, and be of more use (it’s the same as the two cupboards that we’ve got here in the Den!) Then he went off to Ikea and bought another white cabinet like the one next to Miranda (the big mermaid lamp) to put in the hallway to the garage, and which he’s currently putting together. We’re both hoping that it’ll be more practical than the large cupboards were… I think it will be, as it’s only about table, or desk high, I reckon it’ll be useful for dumping things on when we come in from outside, or doing the shopping. Anyway we’ll see what it looks like there when it’s finished. Tonight I should have time to go back and help Arisnoë get her Spirit Bear – for the past four nights I’ve been flat-out at eleven o’clock – either writing my blog, or trying to finish off one of Wynterthyme’s stupidly complicated quests. Tonight will be my third attempt to Tame this bear – and what is it that the ubiquitous “They” always say? “Third Time Lucky!” 🙂 so please cross all your fingers, toes, and eyes for us! 😉

Food stuffz: last night, being Sunday, we had an omelet for dinner, and it was one of Julian’s nicest! Ham, tomato, diced yellow and red peppers, low-fat Halloumi cheese, and chopped spring onions – very delicious! 🙂 For dessert I had the last of the bought figs, and we both had some more of that extremely nice, very low-calorie, Coles brand Rice Pudding. For lunch today I very daringly had a wrap – it was delicious too, with basil-pesto hummus, ham, tomato, sliced yellow and red peppers, and chunks of low-fat Halloumi cheese – I’d eat them every day for lunch, if I thought I could get away with it, weight-wise! Tonight we’re having King Island fillet steak, probably with chips, half a tomato, and either green beans or sugar-snap peas (I think we’ve finished off the Brussels sprouts – and besides, I’m not supposed to have too many of those because they contain too much vitamin K, which stuffs up my Warfarin dosages) I’m not sure what we’ll have for dessert – there are no figs left (unless there are some ripe ones hanging over the back fence!) and I don’t think there’s any more of my current favourite, the very low-calorie, Coles brand Rice Pudding – so I might just have to rough it with low-fat yoghurt or a Chia Pod, instead! 😉

Weigh-in this morning. was rather disappointing – I went back up again – two points! From 62.9kg to 63.1kg Well, it’s not too much, I suppose, and I am still around-about the weight I want to be, so – we’ll just have to see how much damage that yummy wrap I had for lunch today does! 😉

And so to tomorrow – I’m not sure if my favourite eldest daughter is coming over or not – if not, then no doubt I’ll be Darting around Draenor, either dragging Arisnoë up by her bootstraps towards level 100 – if she’s got her Spirit Bear, that is, or trying to wrangle more Garrison Supplies out of thin air for Wynterthyme – or even running a brand-new new Night Elf, called Moonsöng, through the baby areas! (yes, I went and created another character! Sorry! ) In other words, whatever happens tomorrow, I’m sure I’ll be busy – which means that there’ll be lots to tell you all tomorrow night – because right now, that’s about it from me for tonight! 🙂 Do drop in again tomorrow night though, to find out if Arisnoë finally got her Spirit Bear, if Moonsöng is still in Dolanaar (the baby area), what nasty or nice surprises my weight decided to spring on me in the morning, and whether or not Wynterthyme managed to get the Garrison Resources needed to upgrade her Mage’s Tower to Level 3! Lots-a-things! 🙂 Until then though, do try to bee good, remember that obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal – and don’t forget to keep warm – or cool – depending on your preferences, to always drive carefully, and to look after yourselves… but most importantly, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

My mouse just died! 😦 It’s been a little on the “fussy” side for a couple of days – clicks didn’t always register, when I was playing WoW, and running along (or flying along) and I had to go around a wide bend, or change direction suddenly, sometimes it would just make me go straight ahead instead of turning – annoying little things like that. Then this evening, just before dinner, it suddenly stopped dead in its tracks – erm – quite literally, actually! I was most displeased! I really liked that mouse too – it was a lovely little white Toshiba mouse – definitely a cut above your common or garden-variety Logitech and Microsoft mice – and now it’s deadiebones! At the moment I’m using a makeshift Logitech mouse with a red sports-stripe, and I don’t like it very much – the wheel is so “loose” you could almost say it was “freewheeling”! It seems almost reluctant to position the cursor quickly and accurately (I hope I’m never asked to do any graphic work with it!) and it feels heavy and unbalanced, compared to the little Toshiba mouse. It’s rather strange really – because during the many, many years that I’ve been working with computers and their associated hardware, I’ve never really had any mechanical problems with either corded or the optical cordless, mice! But all of a sudden, in the last ten months or so, I’ve had nothing but problems with my cordless mice, no matter what brand they were! I haven’t used a corded mouse for years – I find that the cords are awkward, and get in the way when I’m gaming, or if I need to clear away my desk for anything. The cords are always horribly black, chunky and thick, clumsily unwieldy, and somehow always manage to get themselves caught up under, behind, or on top of, items on my desk, and… well, I just don’t like them! 😛 I might see if I can find yet another new mouse on Tuesday, though I doubt that there are any left that I haven’t already tried – and found wanting! 😦

Today being a Sunday, Julian and I teamed up in Draenor to go questing. The first part of that went alright – we managed to knock over quite a few quests that had been sitting in my quest log for a while, and we decided that we’d go looking for the Petrified Ancient (a sort-of Tree Ent, if you will!) in order to get a particular item from it which would start us off in our bid to get the Achievement “Legacy of the Ancients”, the Achievement needed to get the plans for a Level 3 Lumber Yard, and the ability to cut down really big trees, as well as small and medium-sized ones! Julian had seen one of these Petrified Ancients just last night, so we took off for the area in which he’d seen it – only to find that it was no longer there – either because someone else had already been there, killed the Ancient, and made off with its book-thingy. So we went around for ages, looking for this ruddy petrified tree, and eventually, we were able to find another. We did all the right things. We killed off anything that might attack us in the area, and then set to work on the Petrified Ancient itself. So we killed it. It didn’t drop a brass wazoozie! So, after much grizzling and complaining, because we were sure we’d done everything properly, we plodded on to see if we could find another Petrified Ancient to kill. Well, we didn’t exactly plod along – it was more like a mad scramble and dash to outrun and outwit the hordes of mobs and monsters that chased after us, trying their best to turn us into pulped tree fertilizer! We both died quite a few times during the course of the day – mostly from leaping off very tall cliffs in a flimsy motorbike (with me and Swipe belted into the sidecar!) and another time, Mouselet had kindly and thoughtfully provided me with a set of Goblin-made glider wings, in which I was supposedly going to be able to glide gracefully from the top of a very high cliff, gently down to the ground – unfortunately, I clumsily managed to fumble their deployment on my way earthward – because they cannot be opened up while you’re on the ground, where it’s safe – they can only be activated while you’re in the air, falling astonishingly quickly to your death! (Julian, despite being a bit of a klutz in real life, managed to use his Goblin-made glider wings just fine, thank-you-very-much!) However, we did manage to find another of these extremely rare Petrified Ancients, and after carefully reading the printed out instructions several times, and thoroughly memorizing the text, we killed this one too… and… would you believe… the item we needed still didn’t drop? Whaaat?? This item is supposed to have a guaranteed 100% drop-rate! I just said “extremely rare Petrified Ancient”, didn’t I… that’s because we spent the best part of the afternoon running around two different zones, where they’re supposed to live – and we only found two, both of which failed to deliver the 100% guaranteed drop! Julian decided to “Raise a Ticket” – that is, send a polite in-game message to the Moderators, asking them what the hell was going on! We’re supposed to get a response in 24 hours (but it could be longer!) Look, I really do realise that Achievements shouldn’t be too easy to get, but this was just damned ridiculous! The mob density around those areas would make each sardine in a tightly packed tin think that it was all alone on a desert island, and whereas you could be excused for thinking that most of the mobs on World of Warcraft were both blind and deaf, in that you can generally run around only a few yards away from them, and they don’t notice you, these ones were so sensitive to your presence that they’d try to attack you, even when you were half way up a steep hill, about a quarter of a mile away! Julian’s going to try again tonight, to see if he can get the item to drop – because there’s only one thing we didn’t do – allow the lumberjack who attempts to fell the Petrified Ancient to get killed for his temerity, before we start attacking it. I dunno – it might work – I only read that in one of the six or seven discussions that I found when I was looking for clues on how to complete this Achievement – none of the others mentioned this one tiny fact, so maybe it won’t work… who knows! But first, Julian has to find another one of these stupid Petrified Ancients!

Food stuffz: last night we had lamb backstraps, pan-fried, with half a tomato, Brussels sprouts, and a reprise of the steamed rice with finely chopped spring onion in it. The lamb backstraps weren’t quite as good quality, or as thick, as we usually get, but they still tasted good, and I really do like having rice for a change! I had another of the bought figs for dessert – they’re nice, but not quite as red and “jammy” inside as the ones that hang over our back fence (maybe there’ll be some more ready for picking tomorrow!) and I had some yummy Coles Rice Pudding – I hope no-one at Coles ever finds out how much we like them, because they’ll become a “Discontinued Item” by the following week! Today for lunch I had a very nice whole-meal ham, cheese, tomato, and sliced red and yellow peppers sandwich – and instead of the usual low-fat Swiss Cheese that Julian uses, today he used the low-fat Halloumi cheese, which is my favourite! 🙂 Tonight we had Julian Omelets – some of the best he’s made so far, I think – ham, low-fat Halloumi cheese, tomato, chopped red and yellow peppers, and spring onions – there’s a bit of a story to these omelets, actually – Julian had noticed that the fridge had been smelling a bit “off” for a couple of days, so he cleared it all out, and threw a lot of stuff away, but the smell persisted. This morning, he pulled out the new carton of eggs that he bought only a short time ago – they were well and truly within their “Best Before” date – and just checked to see that we had eggs for the omelets tonight. The smell had been coming from these so-called “fresh” eggs! Needless to say, they were disposed of, and he made a special trip out this afternoon to get “safe” eggs for our dinner! 🙂 For dessert tonight, I had the last of the bought figs, and a reprise of the Coles Rice Pudding… psst! don’t tell anyone at Coles that we both really like it! 😉

Weigh-in this morning. Getting better! 🙂 I went down another three points this morning, from 63.2kg to 62.9kg! Personally, I’d like to lose a bit more of this fluid – my feet are still very puffy, although my fingers have gone back to their normal size again. Let’s just hope that we don’t get any more really humid weather again until next year! Anyway, with a wrap for lunch yesterday, and a sandwich for lunch today – I may just be a bit up again tomorrow, and unfortunately I won’t be able to say “It’s just fluid!” 🙂

And so to tomorrow – Monday.  I think Julian is planning on having another go at tracking down this Petrified Ancient, and press-ganging my favourite eldest daughter into doing fly-overs to search for these rare beasties for us – because she’s able to fly in Draenor, and we’re not – but as I said to him – it all depends on what she’s doing tomorrow! Anyway, we’ll see… I’d like to clear out a few more of the quests on my quest log – one’s been there for almost two weeks! I’m also rather anxious to get back to Arisnoë, and her personal quest for her Spirit Bear! I wasn’t able to get back to her last night, and I haven’t been able to get back to her tonight either, so hopefully she might get her Bear tomorrow night! But until then, I think that’s about it from me for tonight – it’s well past midnight, but – better late than never, eh?! 😉 Do drop in again tomorrow night to see if we’ve managed to get our drop from the elusive Petrified Ancients, whether poor old Arisnoë has been able to get her new Pet, and what my weight’s doing to annoy or please me! In the meantime, please do try to bee good, remember, if you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito, and don’t forget to always drive carefully, to look after yourselves, and to try to keep cool – or warm – depending on what you prefer… but most of all, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

 

Well, another quiet Saturday, though last night was quite exciting! I finally Tamed my Spirit Bear in Grizzly Hills! It was about 11-ish, and I’d pretty much finished playing for the night, and thought I’d just give Wynterthyme a few minutes to look for Arcturis before retiring – on materialising virtually on his spawn spot, I looked around – well, as usual, he wasn’t anywhere that I could see – but then I hadn’t expected him to be – but knock me down with a wet tadpole, neither was anyone else! For the first time since I’ve been looking for this ruddy Spirit Bear, there were no other Hunters hanging around, “loitering with intent”! I said to Julian “There’s no one else around – this would be the ideal time for him to show up, but I bet he won’t!”, and we both laughed, and agreed that because it was such a good opportunity that of course he wouldn’t spawn! So, I stood there spamming my “/tar Arcturis” macro – tap… tap… tap… and watching my nice new gold carriage clock – it was ten minutes to 11 – thinking to myself “I’ll give him another five minutes…” and then “I’ll just give him another five minutes – I’ll stop at eleven!” Tap… tap… tap… eleven o’clock… tap… tap… And then – there he was!! He suddenly appeared out of thin air, about two yards in front of me! And what’s more, he wasn’t “hostile” (i.e. he didn’t have a red nameplate) he was neutral (he had a yellow nameplate) so he wouldn’t even try to maul me during the Taming process! (most Tamable Pets will try to fight you while you’re Taming them – you’d be surprised how many Hunters get killed trying to Tame their Pets!) Anyway, I targeted him, and hit my “Tame” button, and in a few seconds – he was mine! 🙂 So, woo-hoo! 🙂 I now have a rather spooky-looking Spirit Bear for my Pet – I’ve called him “Swipe”, because “swipe” is a bear’s main attack, and I couldn’t think of anything else at the time (well, it was late, and I was tired, so now he’s “Swipe” for the duration – or until I can think of a better name, buy a Certificate of Ownership, and then re-name him!) As for the “spooky-looking” bit, well, he’s clear… er… a see-through-able-type clear, and when he’s running along next to you, or in front of you, you can see his eyes and his teeth – showing through his big, fat, bear rump! It looks really odd… and a trifle “disturbing” (to me, anyway!) So, now all I have to do is procure him for Arisnoë too – I already have her standing primed on his spawn spot in Grizzly Hills, where I’ll try again for her around the same time tonight… hopefully we’ll be lucky again! 🙂

Yesterday Julian was getting all hot under the collar because he was doing a very dangerous and complicated quest in which he was continually getting overrun by mobs and Elites – who kept killing him with monotonous regularity – but he won through in the end and got himself and his Garrison a splendid new harbour and shipyard! So, today, he offered to escort Wynterthyme through this quest, and I accepted with alacrity – I think if I’d tried to do it on my own, as he did, it would have taken me forever, and the language in this room wouldn’t have been pretty! So anyway, we did that before lunch today, and now Wynterthyme has a splendid new harbour and shipyard, too! 🙂 Then after lunch, he had to help me out once again – I had to collect three pieces of a crystal shard, all of which were being held in an Orc stronghold. I knew where I had to go, but I couldn’t get there – yes, I can read a map – but every time I take off in the direction I’m supposed to be going, if there are any hills, mountains, or other obstacles in the way, somehow or other I always seem to get turned around, and pretty soon I realise that I’m running in the opposite direction! It happens every time! I hate it! So, this time was no different – I was getting really narky because I just couldn’t work my way through the obstructing hills and mountains! To rescue me from my growing angst, Julian logged on as me – and of course, never having done this quest before, and not knowing the area at all well – went straight through to where I was supposed to go as though he were galloping along a wide, smooth boulevard, running directly from “A” to “B”! Aaaarrrggghhh! And then it took the two of us again to finish that ruddy quest – I think I died three times, and he died once! Not a pleasant quest! I really hope I can get Arisnoë’s bear tonight – her Garrison needs her tender loving care – not to mention that she won’t get any further with it now until she reaches level 96 – and she’s still only level 92! I really gotta get going with her – she needs more Followers, too, and she’ll only get them by questing (she could buy some, but she doesn’t have enough money – and there ain’t that much gold in the old Horde Guild Bank at the moment!) and I can hardly go questing in Draenor, while she’s hanging around Grizzly Hills in Northrend, waiting for her Spirit Bear to materialise!

Food stuffz: last night for dinner we had the pan-fried pork cutlets, with steamed rice, which had some finely chopped spring onions stirred through it, half a tomato, and some sugar-snap peas. For dessert, I had another fig, and Julian had bought some more of the Coles brand low-calorie Rice Pudding, so we both had a very small bowlful of that – and it was absolutely delicious! 🙂 Today for lunch I had a lovely wrap, with some of our “favourite of the month” basil-pesto hummus, red capsicum batons, sliced tomato, Halloumi cheese, and some more of the leftover Corned Silverside – and I have to say that those wraps are quite sinfully delicious! 🙂 I just asked Julian what we were having for dinner tonight, but he said he doesn’t know yet – so I guess you’ll all just have to wait until tomorrow night to find out what we had! 🙂 I’ll be having another fig for dessert, and either some more of that yummy Rice Pudding, or the last of the Chia Pods – whichever comes first! 😉

Weigh-in this morning. Was a lot much more betterer! 🙂 I went down five points (half a kilo) from 63.7kg to 63.2kg! It probably has a lot to do with the weather – and the fact that my stomach was making squelching noises yesterday – whenever my stomach gurgles a lot, I usually find that the next day I’ll have lost weight – weird, innit! I suppose it’s probably more coincidental, than the gurgles actually meaning anything – ah! I just went and had a very quick Google about it (actually it was more like a 5 second scan!) and apparently it has to do with fluid moving through your intestine, so that could mean (I suppose) that the stomach gurgles indicate the liberating of some of the fluid that my stupid body insists on hoarding – which of course, would mean that I’d weigh less the following day! I hope. Don’t quote me on that! It was only a very quick, five second scan of two articles I found on Google!

And so, to tomorrow! There’ll be a lot more Delightedly Dashing around Downtown Draenor, by that Daring Duo, Wynterthyme and Mouselet! At the moment I have so many quests in my quest log, that I’m not sure which are “shared” quests that Wynterthyme and Mouselet are both doing, and which are solely Garrison (Building-related) quests – that is, quests that I have to complete in order to advance a particular part of my Garrison. F’rinstance, I need to complete the quest “Legacy of the Ancients” in order to raise my Lumber Mill to level 3. Because Julian has a Lumber Mill too, we can do that quest as a Group, but I have a Dwarven Bunker which I’d like to get to level 3. Julian doesn’t have the Bunker, instead he has a Gem Boutique, which I don’t have, and both of those Buildings have leveling-related quests which will be different from the other. We can still do the quests together as a Group – which would make them much easier and quicker to complete – or we can go our separate ways and do them individually. I also need to get both my Inn, and my Mage’s Tower to level 3, and I think some of the quests I have in my quest log are related to those, but I won’t really know until Mouselet and Wynterthyme sit down to compare notes tomorrow, when we can decide whether to do them individually, or to do all of them as a Group, alternating the quests between each Garrison. Anyway, that’s a decision for tomorrow! 🙂 In the meantime, I really think that that’s about it from me for tonight! Do call back tomorrow night though, and find out if today’s stomach gurgles did herald another drop in weight, or whether I should have read those articles a little more carefully; whether Arisnoë has her Spirit Bear yet, and how Wynterthyme and Mouselet fared with both their Garrison questing, and their “questing in Draenor for Fun and Profit”! 🙂 Until tomorrow night though, please try to bee really good, remember that he who fears to suffer, suffers from fear, and don’t forget to keep warm – or cool – depending on the weather, to look after yourselves, and to always drive carefully – but most importantly, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

…Just because I didn’t really like the header that I did yesterday… Well, most days around here are fairly quiet, but today has really been a quiet day for me – our cleaning lady came, dusted, terrorised poor Flipper with the vacuum cleaner noise, mopped, and left. And once again, I forgot to ask her to sweep and dust the front and back decks! I really need something to remind me – so I think that a nice, long, relaxing visit to Office Works might be a good idea, so that I can get some Post-It notes, then – if I can remember what I got the Post-It notes for – I can write “Remember to tell K to dust the front and back decks!” on one of them, and stick it in the middle of my Monitor screen. Well, maybe not in the middle of the screen – that would make it a wee bit hard to read emails… and kill things… and make headers…

So once again I played WoW nearly all day, for a change! 😉 I’ve left Wynterthyme sitting in the middle of Grizzly Hills waiting to see if Arcturis turns up or not. And so far, he hasn’t! Or at least, not when I’ve been looking! I’m even beginning to wonder if he’s still in the game, or if Blizzard have removed him – but I don’t think that that’s the case – if he doesn’t exist any more, then why are there always a lot of high-level (level 96+!) Beastmaster Hunters, parked in a rough circle around his spawning point? And as for the Spirit Cat (which Wynterthyme already has) there’s been no sign of him, either, and I’m finding that quite a lot off-putting, actually! He has more than a dozen spawn points, all around the Sholazar Basin. It’s not a terribly big area, so you’d think it would be reasonably easy to catch up with him fairly often – I always have in the past (alright, it was about four or five years ago, but still…!) Also, I haven’t seen any sign of the mob of Beastmaster Hunters that are always hanging around the spawn point for Arcturis – oh, you see the very occasional character flying past on their way to Wintergrasp, or wherever, but I don’t think they’re responsible for shooting Loque’nahak – because I would have found his poor cold, still, body lying on the ground, at least once or twice, as I patrolled the perimeter looking for him! No, I don’t know what’s going on with those beasties – I know they’re “Rares“, but really, this is going a bit beyond “rarity”! It’s beginning to look a lot more like “extinct-ity”, and I’m not appreciating it!

After wasting a lot of time sitting around clicking on my “/tar Arcturis”, and “/tar Loque’nahak” macro (“/tar” means “target [insert name of the creature you’re hunting]”, remember? 🙂 ) I moved on to Arisnoë, and did a bit more questing and exploring with her. It’s not easy, you know, with Arisnoë being a new-comer to Draenor, and only level 92 (she went up to level 92 this morning) the countryside isn’t very pleasing to the eye, I’m soloing, instead of working with another character in group mode, so leveling up is not only a lot harder to do, but it also takes a lot longer to complete quests! And some of the mobs I’m having to deal with are really, really mean and nasty! I died twice today fighting a multi-headed winged beast – only a level 92 mob, the same as me and my turtle, and we usually deal with level 92 mobs with not too many hassles – but these [censored] sods just wouldn’t go down – I suppose I really should look at my Combat Log next time it happens to see how they manage to take me down so easily – maybe it’s poison breath, or something – but one minute I’m fit and healthy and battling away – the next minute, I’m lying there dead! Anyway, I’m giving them quite a wide berth, for the nonce –  at least until I get a little “older”, anyway – then it’ll be them lying there dead (and skinned!) Arisnoë’s Garrison is coming along reasonably well – I now have a level 2 Great Hall (the Alliance call theirs a “Town Hall”) I’ve opened up my Mine, and put up a few new Buildings, but it’s still pretty primitive and rough, compared to the neat and orderly Alliance Garrisons! I can’t wait until I get out Frostfire Ridge – the area where I am now – because as you all know, there are three things that I really hate having to fight in – underwater, in a snow storm, and in the dark! And Frostfire Ridge is – shall we say – prone to blizzards and snow storms! 😦 And Arisnoë’s Garrison is right in the most snow and blizzard-prone part of it!

Food stuffz: last night for dinner we had some lovely, slow-cooked Corned Silverside – it had hardly a skerrick of fat on it, but just enough to impart some flavour to the meat. With it, we had some very delicious mashed potatoes, a half (each) of one of our own, home-grown Heirloom tomatoes, which I reckon was the best one that we’ve had of those yet! Firm, juicy, lovely taste and texture – a wonderful tomato! And we had some home-grown green beans – which were really different from the beans you buy in the supermarket, or frozen beans! They were quite dark green on the outside, and when you bit them, or cut them, they were almost grassy-green inside. Julian thinks he might have left them on their vines a bit too long, but I didn’t think so – I thought they were delicious! For dessert, I had a fig – yes, Julian did buy some – and a low-fat strawberry yoghurt. For lunch today I had two Ryvita crispbreads, with Philly Light, some sliced up left-over Corned Silverside, sliced tomato, and a dob of basil-pesto hummus. They were very yummy, especially with the Corned Silverside, and for some obscure reason, weren’t quite as crumbly as they usually are, which was a real bonus! 🙂 Tonight we’re having pork cutlets, pan-fried with a little butter, olive oil, and pepper, with which we’ll probably be having chips, half a tomato, and something vaguely green – probably the rest of the Brussels sprouts, and for dessert, I’ll have the (I think!) last remaining Chia Pod, and another fig (I wish there was a way of eating figs where you don’t get sticky white fig-sap all over your fingers – even soap and warm water doesn’t seem to wash it off terribly well!)

Weigh-in this morning. Was not good! I went up yet another two points, from 63.5kg to 63.7kg! Yesterday, not only did my feet look like sausage balloons, but my fingers got swollen too – so much so that I could very happily have gone out, and worn all my good rings without the slightest fear of them falling off! I really, really hate this [censored] humid weather, and what’s more, it really, really hates me too! 😦  My feet are still swollen today, but at least my fingers have almost gone back to their ring dropping sizes! Thank heavens for small mercies, eh?! What we need is a good, old-fashioned thunderstorm, to clear the air and burn up the humidity – or perhaps we should start seriously thinking about moving to Tasmania, or New Zealand!

This weekend’s a long weekend, though we probably won’t notice too much difference – once upon a time, “when I was a gel”, as they say in the classics, for starters, nothing was open on Sundays anyway (except Churches, of course) and the holiday Monday was sacrosanct – again, nothing was open – not even a Milk Bar, so that you could go and buy some milk, or  bread, or lollies! No! One did all one’s shopping on Friday night, or Saturday morning (and even that got grumbled about!) – these days, everything’s open just about all the time – even on Christmas Day, and Easter Sunday! So – what’s in a Public Holiday then, apart from some office workers not having to go in to work on the Monday (and sometimes even the Friday before!) but heaven help you if you work in Retail – you’re expected to show up, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, on Friday morning, Saturday morning, Sunday morning, and of course, the Public Holiday Monday morning – for which you do get paid quite well – or so we’re led to believe, anyway. The point I’m trying to make, in a sort of a round about and typically long-winded way, is: is there really any point in having Public Holidays any more? It would make much more sense to just roster jobs a bit better, and then everyone could have one day off a week, or two days off every fortnight – or something. What do all of you out there in reader-land think? But as for tomorrow, I guess I’ll be up to my eyeballs in Frostfire Ridge, Shadowmoon Valley, Grizzly Hills, and the good old Sholazar Basin, still looking for Arcturis, and Loque’nahak… I’m not sure what Julian will be doing – he’s trying to unpack, and set up, his Commodore 64 Room, so he’ll probably do a bit more of that, however at this particular point in my epic dissertation, I have once again to inform you all that – well, that’s about it from me for this evening! 😉 Please do drop in again tomorrow night, to find out what sorts of adventures and scrapes I’ve managed to get either myself, Wynterthyme, or Arisnoë into, and how I manged to extricate us out of them, and whether or not my weight has decided to start behaving itself again – or if I’m starting to reach for the Optifast again! There’ll be lots more to regale you all with, so don’t miss out! Until then though, please try to bee good, remember that success comes in cans, not cant’s, and don’t forget to always drive carefully, to keep cool – or warm – depending on your preferences, and to look after yourselves… but most of all, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

I’ve been putting off starting to write this afternoon because I wasn’t sure how well I was going to be able to type. I did a “Julian” this morning, and accidentally managed to cut the middle finger of my left hand, whilst cutting the store label off one of my new pairs of slacks. Well, I was wearing them at the time, and if the silly people doing the tagging of the garments had taken a bit more care, and not managed to get the little plastic “T” poked half way through the waistband, as well as their “Made By” label, I wouldn’t have been holding the scissors at an awkward angle, and I wouldn’t have cut myself quite so badly! But of course, I’m on Warfarin, aren’t I, and blood just went every which-where (it was quite a nasty deep cut, actually) and it damn-well hurt a lot, too, so I sat there dangling my injured finger under the cold water tap (so as not to get any blood in the grouting, something that Julian is very strict about!) in the bathroom and called out “Julian, can I have a band-aid please, NOW!” He brought the band-aids, and I took my finger out from the cold water and we tried to dry it so that we could use the band-aid – but the wretched thing wouldn’t stop bleeding! We eventually got the bleeding to at least slow down a little, and applied the band-aid, but by the time I got to the Den here, blood had soaked through the band-aid and was happily getting all over anything I touched  I had to do everything one-handed for a while, which let me assure you, wasn’t terribly easy! I used a tissue to apply pressure to the band-aided cut, and everything calmed down again (but I wasn’t a very Happy Little Vegemite!) The cut is just below the fingerprint pad of my left middle finger, and only just slightly above the top finger joint crease, so it’s an awkward and uncomfortable spot – typing is fairly uncomfortable, so this blog might be a bit shorter than most, depending on how many typos ol’ fumble-fingers Winter manages to make (or not, as the case may be!) So, apart from trying to cut my finger off with a pair of scissors, how has my day been… well, pretty much “same as, same as”. I alternated between Wynterthyme and Arisnoë today, still looking for Arcturis (the Spirit Bear) and Loque’nahak (the Spirit Cat) to no avail – you know, in all the years I’ve been playing World of Warcraft, I’ve never, ever had such difficulty locating and Taming a “Special” Pet, or a Spirit Beast! Never! Either Blizzard have wound back the spawn rates, or there are simply too many people lining up for their chance to get something “different”. When I got to Grizzly Hills this morning, there were already two people there who were obviously waiting for Arcturis. How did I know they were waiting for Arcturis? 🙂 Well, why else would two level 100 Beast Master Hunters be hanging around a level 76 area, at the exact co-ordinates where Arcturis spawns? That’s why Wynterthyme was there, too! 🙂  After a while of hanging about wasting time there in Grizzly Hills, I went off to the Sholazar Basin to look for Loque’nahak. Once again, I don’t know what Blizzard have done with the spawn times – once upon a time, Loque’nahak used to spawn about every twenty minutes – give or take a few seconds if your watch wasn’t set correctly – but now? S’truth, I waited there for thirty minutes yesterday and didn’t see hide nor hair of him, alive or dead! He’s also got an awful lot of spawn points, and the Sholazar Basin isn’t all that big an area, so if you fly around the perimeter mountains, spamming “/tar Loque’nahak” (“tar” is short for “target”) if he’s around, dead or not, his “portrait” will pop up on your screen – you really can’t miss him – or should I say “you really couldn’t miss him!” – once upon a time… obviously you can now! 😦 I’ll give them both another try tonight, but I really don’t like ma’ chances! Too many people are after them – all one can do is try to pick a server time when just about everyone in America is likely to be asleep, and try then. Anyway, Wynterthyme and Arisnoë both had things to be done for their Garrisons, and I did a bit of straight Draenor questing with Arisnoë, and boy, it really is tougher for Horde than is was for Wynterthyme and Mouselet! I did notice a couple of new things though! In Wynterthyme’s Garrison, I was unable to locate the Stable Master – because there wasn’t one! I hit the Forums looking for information, and there were a lot of threads complaining about this lack of a Garrison Stable Master. In the end I had to go to Dalaran to stable my Pet while I looked for these Spirit Beasts (only because I knew where the Stable Master was in Dalaran!) However, last night when I was doing my “rounds”, I noticed that there was a new path, just outside my Town Hall! “Hello,” says I “I wonder where this goes!” so of course I had to go and look, didn’t I! Well, it goes down to a new little town, which I’ll swear black and blue wasn’t there the day before yesterday, and guess what! There’s a Stable Master there! This little town, by the way, is also down near where we did our Fishing Quests to open up the Garrison Fishing Hut – and quite frankly, the map doesn’t make sense – the little Village wasn’t very far down the new path that I found, but it was miles away from the Garrison – that is, following the path from the Garrison to the Village, and from the Village back to the Garrison (and yes, there is only the one path!) it took a lot longer to get back to the Garrison than it took to get to the new Village! The other thing I found while I was questing with Arisnoë, is a large Horde City – very similar to the old, pre-Cataclysm Orgrimmar! Arisnoë got a quest to go to Ashran for something or other, and she arrived at this “city”! It has a multi-Teller’d Bank and Guild Bank facilities, an Auction House, Stable Master ( 😉 ) both Class Trainers and Profession Trainers, and there’s a Portal to Undercity, and another to Orgrimmar – I think if I’d spent a bit more time looking around I would have found a Portal to Silvermoon City, the Blood Elf Capital, too! I don’t recall finding anything like that for the Alliance side – though no doubt my favourite eldest daughter will write a Comment if I’m wrong! 😉

Food stuffz: last night we had a gorgeous piece of King Island steak for dinner, plus our usual half a tomato, chips, and steamed sugar-snap peas – it was one of the nicest pieces of steak, too! For dessert I had an apricot, and a low-fat strawberry yoghurt. It was the last of the apricots, and when Julian went to buy some more today he was told that the apricot season is over, and there won’t be any more good ones until next season! 😦 But they did have some figs there, and I think he got a few of those – I hope he did, anyway! Lunch today was a reprise of Tuesday’s sandwich – chicken tikka sandwich chunks with some basil-pesto hummus in whole-grain bread – very yummy, and a lot less messy to eat than Ryvita crispbreads with toppings! Tonight we’re having slow-cooked Corned Silverside, with mashed potatoes, half a tomato, and, with any luck, some home-grown green beans! I have no idea what I’m having for dessert – you’ll just have to wait until tomorrow night to find that out! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. Wasn’t as bad as it could have been, what with me having that BLT on sourdough, half a piece of flourless Orange and Almond meal cake, and half a chocolate-walnut Brownie (well, it was my Birthday!) I went up two points – from 63.3kg to 63.5kg, which I didn’t think was too bad, all things considered! Now I have until March 20th to get rid of a bit of it, because March 20th is when we’ll be having the Winter and Julian Big, Double, Birthday Bash – so I need to go down a bit, so that I can come up a bit! 😉 Back to the crumbly Ryvita crispbreads…. 🙂

Julian has just come in to show me a plate full of beautiful, lovely, and luscious home-grown green beans! Oh! They do look splendid! 🙂 I can’t wait to eat them with our dinner tonight! It’s so exciting, growing your own vegetables – there’s a baby capsicum growing there, too, and some baby leeks! Tomorrow our cleaning lady will be here instead of Monday, because Monday is a Public Holiday (Labour Day and Moomba, or something, I think?) She could come Monday, she said, but we’d have to pay her Penalty rates or whatever, so she said that Friday might suit us better? 🙂 Nice girl… So I’ll probably have another day of trying to find those pesky Spirit Beasts, and trying to get Arisnoë a better sort of Garrison – once I can find where to buy the Garrison Blueprints so that I can put up some more buildings, that is! And get her a few more Followers (she only has three at the moment!) And also at the moment, that’s about it from me for this evening! Do call in again tomorrow night to see if Arisnoë has a Spirit Beast yet, or whether my weight is slowly starting to drop down again – and there’s sure to be lots of other news and gossip, too, so make sure you don’t miss out on anything! Until then though, do try very hard to bee good, remember that life is like a coin – you can spend it any way you wish, but you can only spend it once… 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! 🙂

Well, I know you’re all dying to find out how my day today went, so I’ll keep you in suspenders no longer! From the top, then! (or should that be “bottom”? if morning is the beginning, or bottom part, of the day… I digress…) I was a little disappointed when I weighed myself this morning, but I’ll get to that later – because my appointment with Dr. Y. was at 11.00am, I did my morning ablutions in the wrong order (again!) – I did my 2 kilometer/32.something minute’s walk as usual, before breakfast, but opted to go and brush my teeth, etc., etc. after breakfast, when I normally do all those sorts of things between walking and breakfast. Anyway, I did my walkies, and then came back to the Den to have my first cup of tea for the day, and my breakfast. Sitting on my desk was a gold-wrapped package, with an envelope under it. “Whatever can it be!”, I thought. Well, inside the wrapping was a black box – it was quite heavy, and I was quite eager to know what it contained! “Careful!”, cautioned Julian “It’s quite fragile…” – now I was even more curious! Fragile?! Putting the box carefully on my desk, I opened it rather cautiously… Inside the box was a very pretty, gold, replica of a Carriage Clock – a real clock, a wind-up one, with a double-ended key! The little clock stands about 10cm high, and it has three clear glass sides, and a clear glass top, so you can see the clock mechanism working, its gold key is double ended – one end is for winding the clock, the other end is for turning the hands, if you have to re-set it. It’s a dear little thing, and very easy to read, too, because it has a white face, with fine black numerals. The clock that I had on my desk was a digital one, and it told me the temperature inside and out, as well as the time, but it was very hard to read because the background was a dull, gun-metal grey, and the digits that gave me the time, date and weather were only a couple of shades darker. But the little gold Carriage Clock looks great sitting on my desk – unfortunately I’ll no longer have an excuse for being late to dinner! 😉

I’d just finished getting ready this morning, and was playing a couple of games of Solitaire before heading off for “The Appointment”, when Julian got a call on his mobile from Dr. Y.’s Receptionist – Dr. Y. was running late, so could I come at 11.30am instead, and did I have my (new) Referral? Yes, 11.30 was alright, and we didn’t mind – but… Referral?! No, I didn’t have one – yet! Remember last night I told you that I looked (belatedly) at my appointment card which had “A new Referral from your Doctor will be required” written on it. Well, that’s what happens, I suppose, when you write appointments into your calendar – but neglect to add any notes that might be on the card! Anyway, we apologised, and said we’d organise something with Dr. B. to be either emailed or faxed through to Dr. Y.’s surgery. Apparently it didn’t matter that we didn’t have the Referral with us today, but when we did get it, it should be back-dated to march 9th (today) We rang Dr. B and arranged to have her fax it through sometime today, so all should be well. Dr. Y.’s Receptionist said that if she hadn’t received it by Friday, she’d ring Dr. B. herself, and “hurry it up” – but I reckon that they’ve probably already got it by now – there are no flies on Dr. B.! 😉 So I duly turned up at Dr. Y.’s at 11.30am, where we sat and waited another half an hour (which we’d thought we’d have to do anyway) and finally we were ushered in to the inner sanctum! Dr. Y. was looking great (perhaps I am a good influence, because I thought he looked like he’d lost a little weight since last November, when I last saw him – and he’s always saying that he needs to lose some weight…) and was very pleased with me – I told him what I now weighed, and he said “Well, don’t lose any more!” to which I replied that I wasn’t trying to lose any more – I’d been on maintenance since November last year, but the weight was still trying to desert me (oh dear… a horrible thought just crossed my mind! About my weight trying to desert me? A bit like rats “deserting” my sinking ship? Is that a bad omen?! 😦 ) He was most impressed, and is very proud of me. Then he gave me quite a long and very thoughtful look, and said something about me being “inspiring”, and that I’d make a good motivator – that a lot of his patients would benefit from talking to me, and would I be interested in doing something like that – somewhat taken aback, I said “Are you serious?” “Yes,” he replied with a nod “I am serious!”. When I’d finished fumbling around on the floor while I picked up my jaw, I said “Yes, sure! I’ll talk to anyone you suggest, if you think it might help them” – he seems to think I’d be a great “motivational speaker”, I’m not quite sure why… but if I can help anyone, then I must.

And now he doesn’t want to see me for a whole year this time – I’m to stay on the horrible little fluid-retaining tablets (one month taking them, two months not taking them, as I’ve been doing since last November) until then – I’m to have another ultrasound before I see him next March, and we’ll revue my situation again then. So I guess we’d better not make any plans to visit Massa Marittima* in the (European) spring next year! 😉

Food stuffz: we had King Island Beef sausages for dinner last night, with Brussels sprouts, half a tomato, and chips. For dessert I had one apricot, and a small tub of “regular” (i.e. not low-fat or low-calorie – but Julian said it was low-calorie enough so as to make never mind, so I ate it!) rhubarb and vanilla yoghurt. As we were already out, and it was not only my Birthday, but lunch time as well, we first thought that we might try to have lunch at the East Empress Bistro, but we had some shopping to do, and we really didn’t want to do too much parading about in the heat and the humidity, we went to The Glen, where I got the second part of my Birthday present – two pairs of slacks, with pockets, because the only “bottoms” (apart from underwear!) that fit me at the moment are two and a half pairs of jeans (“how can you have half a pair of jeans”, I hear you muttering to yourselves… it’s perfectly simple, really – two of the pairs fit me, more or less properly, and one pair sort-of fits me – I can wear them, but they’re really too big for me, so they only “half” fit me, see?! 🙂 ) I also got another top, because it had long sleeves, and I can only wear long, or three-quarter sleeves now because of my yukky arms! I was talking about food though, wasn’t I! Sorry! So we ended up having lunch at The Shingle Inn – Julian had some sort of omelet-y looking thing (I think!) and I had my usual BLT, on sourdough bread, and we had half a Flourless Orange and Almond meal cake and half a chocolate and walnut Brownie each for dessert (there goes my weight! blossoming up like a mushroom cloud again!) Tonight we’re having pan-fried steak, I presume with all the usual suspects (half a tomato, chips, and some sort of “green” vegetable!) and I’ll have another apricot, and possibly another Chia Pod for dessert, OK?

Weigh-in this morning. Was very disheartening! I was hoping to have gone down another little bit today, but as usual, my stupid body let me down again! I went up… four ruddy points! From 62.9kg to 63.3kg – and from the look of my feet, I’d say that it’s nearly all fluid retention too, because of the abysmally rotten hot and humid weather! 😦 Ah well, my weight’ll go down again, once the weather cools down a little… I was just thinking – you read of elderly people who swear that they can predict the weather by their “rheumatics” – well, I must be some kind of human barometer then – predicting the heat and humidity, by the swelling of my feet! Now, that’s gotta be a first! 🙂 Anyone feel like notifying the Guinness Book of Records? 😉

And so to tomorrow – Julian has a trip over to Doncaster, to pick up, and drop off, some Dry Cleaning. Why, oh why does Daisy Dry Cleaning only have two shops in Melbourne! They’re the only Dry Cleaners that I’ve been able to find who don’t use chemicals, and only use water (or so they say) – it’s much gentler on the clothes, and even things that say “Do Not Dry Clean” come out like new! *sigh* So we shall continue to support their “Buy Me A Rolls, Next!” fund, even if it does mean a trip all the way over to Doncaster – though here’s a thought! It also gives us the opportunity to stock up on Nespresso Pods and T2 teas – because they’re not at The Glen or Knox City! (I think T2 might be up at Knox, but I know there’s no Nespresso outlet there!) I think I’ll stay home, if it’s going to be hot and humid again, and work on getting either Pangur Bán or Arcturis for Arisnoë, and Arcturis for Wynterthyme. And that’s really about it from me for this evening – I’ve had a very nice Birthday, I received a very pretty clock, some clothes, and some pats on the back from Dr. Y. and I’ve had calls from both my very favourite daughters! 🙂 Who could possibly ask for more! Do call in again tomorrow night to find out how I fared in getting Spirit Beast Pets for Arisnoë and Wynterthyme, and what my weight got up to (quite literally!) after the BLT on Sourdough Bread and half a Flourless Orange and Almond cake, and half a chocolate and walnut Brownie that I had for lunch today! Until then though, please bee good, remember to never regret. If it’s good, it’s wonderful. If it’s bad, it’s experience… and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep cool – or warm – depending on the circumstances… but most importantly, don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

*Massa Marittima – a very small town (well, it was then!) in Tuscany, where I stayed with my three Great-Aunts for about seven months, when I was five and a half years old…