*There’s another update on the “As Seen On…” page tonight – from Bored Panda…all I can say is…. “Oh dear! What were we thinking!”

What a very interesting day! We had to be off early this morning, to get to the Vermont South “Water Feature House” by 11.00am for the “Open For Inspection”. There weren’t as many people as one might have expected, this last Saturday before next week’s Auction – I’m not sure if this is a good, or a bad sign! Hopefully good… Anyway, we went around the house, as one does, and this time Julian didn’t scowl at me when I opened cupboard doors and turned on the kitchen tap to test the water pressure (which seemed fine – maybe a bit better than ours here (which wouldn’t be too hard, come to think of it!)) With a sly look, I turned to the fridge, and put out my hand as though to open the fridge door, raising one eyebrow at Julian, as though to say “shall I?? 😉 ” 🙂 He did scowl then – “don’t you dare!”, he growled – but he knew I was only teasing 🙂

As you walk through the front door, there’s a good sized room to the right, with wooden slatted shutter-type window coverings that was set up as a “home office”. To the left there are three reasonably sized bedrooms, a separate toilet, and a decent sized bathroom with a bath, a double vanity unit (two sinks) and a decent sized shower. Then you move out of the bedroom area, where you face a short corridor that leads into the double garage (it’s a big double garage, too – we’d have no trouble getting the Merc and the Lexus in there, plus there’d probably be room to park (and charge!) my wheelchair) However, turning left into the entry area from the bedrooms, you come to the master bedroom on the left, and a sitting room type room on the right. The master bedroom has a very big separate walk in wardrobe, which is next to the en-suite. There’s a big double door space into the en-suite – but… no door! The bed would sit facing the open door into the en-suite, which, though we’re no prudes by any stretch of the imagination, we found a little… uncomfortable. There are a few things that I do not want to see Julian doing, and a few things that he doesn’t want to see me doing, so I think we’ll install a sliding door there (if we manage to buy the place, that is!) Then there’s a very nice sized laundry, with plenty of cupboard space, and a lovely, clear beveled glass door leading outside to a nicely finished “pebble mix” path to the back yard. I know that pebble mix is largely passé these days, but all the paths are done out in this creamy-oatmeal coloured pebble mix, and it does seem to suit the place… Then the entry area opens out into the kitchen and “living” areas – the kitchen has an island bench with a double bowl sink in it, dividing it from the meals and family area. Along the outside wall there’s a Bosch gas “aga” type stove – well, that’s what Julian called it – I’d just call it “a big stove with the hot plates on top and the oven underneath” – but I suppose it’s easier to say (and write!) “aga”. There are plenty of very nicely finished cupboards, though I’m not sure if the fridge space would accommodate our rather large fridge without “some adjustments” – we should have taken a measuring tape – though I hardly think that the fridge not fitting in the space provided would be a deal breaker, if it came to that… Anyway, the place is Open For Inspection again on Thursday, if we do want to go trotting back with the tape measure.. In front of the sink/island bench is the meals area – a very generous sized meals area, and beyond that is the family lounge/sit and watch television on the biggest screen you can get/relaxing area. There’s yet another large room off to the right of the kitchen which would make an ideal “Den” or “computer room”, that overlooks the decked and roofed outdoor entertainment area, which is huge! This outdoor entertainment area also has clear, as well as opaque, pull down blinds around two sides, so that if you really have to be outside, you can shut out the weather! (it’s almost as though it was made for me!) In the back “yard” (for want to a better term!) and behind the large double garage is a medium-sized shed, painted nicely in blue and white, and with a very nicely constructed wall of bamboo (fake, I think!) facing the rest of the outside area. There’s a garden bed along the back and side fence – just enough for the extant lemon tree, a small veggie garden (he promised!), and maybe a small herb garden. There’s some grass in the middle – nicely manicured, though a little on the dry side of “well watered”, and everything is surrounded by these nice, creamy-oatmeal coloured pebble mix paths. The “Water Feature” outside the front door is a big – perhaps about 4 feet tall?… coloured concrete? stone? I dunno – “urn thingy”, standing in a small square pool of water (which actually has one small red and white fish lurking in its murky waters!) The pump was going both times we’ve been there – probably to impress the prospective buyers, and water bubbles out of the top of this “urn thingy”, runs down its sides, and back into the little pool, to be pumped back up to the top again.

And that’s what we’ll be bidding on next Saturday! Please, everyone, cross your fingers for us next Saturday! 🙂

Then we went on to watch a couple of Auctions in progress. Julian’s terribly nervous about this whole business – he’s so afraid he’ll muck something up! I know he won’t, but he won’t believe me 🙂 It is actually a little fraught – neither of us have ever been involved in an house Auction before, but this time the week after next will come, and we’ll either have the house, or we won’t 🙂 And we’ll either be penniless paupers, or we won’t – but we’ll survive! To the Auctions, Batman!…

The first one was a 3 bedroom unit in Mount Waverley – part of a small “retirement” enclave. I didn’t go in to look around, but Julian did. He said it was very nice – “impressive” was the way he put it – but we weren’t there to appraise the house, we were there to observe how Auctions work. The house was Open For Inspection for half an hour before the Auction started – the Auctioneer strode out of the house ringing a large hand bell, to announce the start of the sale. First of all he has to announce to everyone what’s happening, what the terms and conditions are, and how the Auction works – a sort of a “three strikes and it’s yours”, type of deal. Bidding was slow to start off with, and although a lot of people were interested – in fact very interested – no-one seemed too keen on paying what the Vendors wanted for it. It was eventually “passed in” at about 1.2 million, without even reaching its reserve price.The person who’d put in the last bid offered was invited inside to “negotiate” directly with the Vendors.

The second Auction that we watched was in the Glen Waverley/Wheelers Hill area – not too far from where we used to live. Once again, I didn’t go through the house, though Julian did. The Auction started off in much the same way – the Auctioneer comes out ringing a large hand bell, and explains all the ins and outs, and terms and conditions. Bidding was patchy – but the difference with this firm was that they had people working the crowds, talking and jollying along those who were bidding, and doing their best to pit one against the other (which is of course, part of their job – to get the best possible price for their client, the Vendor!) A very young Asian chap and his girlfriend arrived late, so he was escorted inside to pick up the necessary paperwork. In the end, there were just two bidders left – the young Asian chap, and another guy. Every time the second guy put in a bid, the young Asian chap would up him by one thousand. The second guy would then raise the bid by two or three thousand, probably thinking, as I know I was, that this young Asian “kid” was far too young to have that sort of money – but no, every single time the second guy put in a bid, this kid up’d him by one thousand. It was like watching a game of tennis! Second bloke was on my left – young Asian kid was standing in the middle of the road on my right (I was in the car!) Your head would swivel when one made a bid – the swivel back again as soon as they had, knowing that the other one would counter. In the end, the young Asian kid got the house for $878,000 (is that right? eight hundred and seventy eight thousand?) and I was pleased – I’d been barracking for him from the beginning, after he stuck his finger in the air and said, with a very small smile, “and one thousand!” 🙂

Then we came home, I ripped off my shoes and went for my Stair Walk, and had a most welcome cup of coffee when I got back. Now it’s almost time for me to go on my evening Stair Walk, and I’ve really been rattling on long enough – your brains are probably numb by now! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. I went down another one point to 87.6kg. I tell you, I’d much rather go down in one point increments than slide a long way all at once and then have to bounce back!

Well, tomorrow is Sunday, and we’ll be splashing around Goboro Reef in the Plane of Water – I’ll fill you all in on that tomorrow night! Monday looks like being back to house hunting again – just in case we’re not successful next Saturday (and of course, there’s always “The ‘C’ House” which is being Auctioned the following Saturday!) I’ve been busy working on making adjustable frames for future headers, and I have been re-instated on the Facebook page I couldn’t get to for the last couple of days – thank you, my friend! 🙂 And now, before this blog qualifies as a stand-alone volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica, I’ll remind you all to call back again tomorrow night to catch up on all our doin’s in the ruins of Goboro Reef, what my weight did next, and all sorts of interesting tidbits! Until then, however, bee good, remember to focus on what’s right in your world instead of what’s wrong, don’t forget to keep warm, drive carefully (especially when it’s foggy!), and look after yourselves… but above all…. stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

*There’s an update on the “As Seen On…” page – copied from the little Cat Calendar on my desk – I thought it was sweet 🙂

Well, I’ve had to give in and make the font big enough to see to edit properly… I’ll switch it back just before I Publish it (actually, if anything, I’ve made it too big now! Arrggghhh! Why does writing a simple little blog have to be so fraught!) Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, changing the font sizes backwards and forwards! We had a relatively peaceful day today – Julian did some Body Corporate work this morning, and I Rifted. I created another character this morning – I wasn’t terribly happy with one of the two girls I’d rolled the other day on Laethys, and I knew that feeling as dis-satisfied with her as I did, she wasn’t going to last long in Telara… so I preemptively rolled a new one. This girl’s a Mathosian (i.e. a human) a Mage, and her name is Fyrecat. She’ll replace Darkruby, the High Elf Mage that I created about two days ago. Actually, I might even blow both of them away, and roll the two of them into one – so to speak. I like the name “Darkruby”, but I’m getting a little tired of High Elves… and I’m not really happy playing a Dwarf, so that leaves me with a choice of… well, only one choice, really – Mathosian! But I’ll call her “Darkruby” (unless I can come up with a name I like better in the meantime!) Of course, what usually happens is that I create a character, stuff around for half an hour or so trying to find her a decent name that isn’t already taken, finally settle on a name that I only sort-of like, but that I can live with, name her, and start playing with her. As sure as apples aren’t oranges, within two or three hours I’ll suddenly think of a fantastic name, take a risk that I’ll be able to use it, delete my almost “mint condition” Mage, and create a new one… only to find that the fantastic name I’d thought of is already in use, so I have to either think of a different way of spelling it, finding another new name, or going back to the one I’d used on the recently deleted character. So, playing Rift isn’t easy, you know! It’s not all fun and games and romping through Telara slaying monsters! It’s a lot of hard work – creating characters, finding novel and innovative names for them, kitting them up in their new clothes and getting them ready for their first day of picking up quests and completing them! 😉

Anyway, that’s what I did this morning. Well, for part of the morning. Our cleaning lady arrived and wanted to have a chat (at great length!) so I only got as far as half way through the starting area with Fyrecat before it was lunchtime. After lunch, and a cup of tea, I went off for my Stair Walk, and when I came back I switched into graphic mode. I started out trying to make a new and much brighter background tile – seeing that a certain person, who I thought was my friend, doesn’t seem to be reading the blog anymore (plus they seem to have banned me from their Facebook page – which was not only unkind, but terribly childish and petty. I hadn’t even corresponded with them for a couple of weeks!) (of course, they might even be dead, and some kind relative or other has closed down their Facebook site – how the [censored] hell would I know?) anyway, seeing as I don’t have to be careful about using bright colours that they’d said hurt their eyes, I thought I might switch back to the yellows and reds. However, while I was making a frame for a new header, I thought “If I’m going to stick with this template,” (but which I probably won’t – you know me! 😉 ) “I should probably make up a whole series of them – with adjustable frames, so that I can use them on other templates if I want to!” 🙂 Brilliant thinking, Winter! So that’s what I did this afternoon. It annoys me though, that there are people who make really nice brushes, and fonts, but do really sloppy work, so that lines not only aren’t straight, but seem to wander this way and that, with no rhyme nor reason… With a brush, you can generally “hide” mistakes like that by erasing bits of it here and there, but with a font, all I can so is zoom in, and straighten out the lines, pixel by pixel – second guessing what the creator of the font had in mind when they first made it. It took me all afternoon to create just one single frame successfully – I’d spent about an hour on another one that was just too badly mangled to straighten out, and I had to ditch it. It was a shame, too, as it was a very nice Art Nouveau type of frame. Ah well…

Julian has been swotting up on “The Language, Customs, and Etiquette of House Auctions”, ready for tomorrow morning 🙂 The Vermont South place (i.e. “The Water Feature House”) is Open For Inspection tomorrow morning at 11am, and after that, there are two Auctions in the area – one by the same people who are selling “The ‘C’ House” – that we’re going to watch (and presumably learn from!) though I might wait in the car during the second one… dunno, yet… I’m looking forward to seeing “The Water Feature House” again – and make an assessment of how much work (if any!) has to be done on it to make it habitable (for us!), compared to “The ‘C’ House”. All in all, it promises to be a very interesting day, and there’ll be heaps to tell you all tomorrow night! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. Despite all the running around yesterday, I only dropped one point this morning 😦 A bit disappointing that it was only one point (two points would have been nice!) but it was certainly much more betterer than the massive four point drop of yesterday! We’ll see how I go tomorrow morning… I’m well and truly overdue for a bounce-back…

We got the results of my Warfarin test late last night – my INR level continues to sit stubbornly at 1.9 – it should be somewhere between 2.0 and 3.0 for me to avoid the risk of embolisms – so they’ve upped my dosage to 3mg of Warfarin per day, every day, and I’m to have another test in a fortnight. I shall cross my fingers…

Anyway, that’s about it from me for tonight, but do drop in again tomorrow night, as there’ll be lots of stuff to fill you all in on (let’s just hope we don’t make a mistake at the Auctions and end up buying a house by mistake! 😉 ) Yes, there’ll be “The Water Feature House” to tell you about, and the Auctions, and what we learnt (if anything) from them… whether my weight went up, or down… or stayed the same. Sunday, of course, will be our “Wading Through Coral Groves” day in The Plane of Water. It’s summer time “over there”, and so the Summer Festivities have started – lots of special quests to do, and lots of special goodies to win, but being the anti-social curmudgeons that we are, we tend to avoid all these Seasonal Celebrations. Of course, we don’t mind if we “accidentally” find ourselves involved in one of those festive quests and just happen to win something nice, nor do we throw out any seasonal tokens that our Minions find under bushes and other questionable places which they then decide to bring home to “Mummy” and “Daddy” – these tokens can be saved up from year to year, and used to purchase pretty new mounts, or pets, or clothing, so it seems a shame to waste them… *innocent, angelic smile* So that’s it, gentle readers, until tomorrow night. Do try to bee good, remember that the more you plan, the less time you have time to enjoy yourself, and don’t forget to keep warm, to drive carefully, and look after yourselves… but most importantly, remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

Oh dear, I’ve done it again… picked a template whose editing font is too small – you just about need a microscope to see it The trouble is, I really like the template, and I spent quite a bit of time constructing the opals for the header! I’ll see how it goes – I might just have to bite the bullet and change the font size while I’m writing and editing, and then change it back just before I put the blog online *sigh* Why can’t everything be as perfect as I am?! 😉 *snort*

So… what happened today.. Lemee see… Not much this morning – we went up to have a chat with the Bank Manager, and to get all the necessary papers ready for whatever eventuates in this mad, mad, house hunt 🙂 then we came home, picked up the dry cleaning that we’d forgotten to take with us when we went out to see the Bank Manager, and had a cup of coffee. “The ‘C’ House” was Open For Inspection between 12.00 and 12.30pm – we actually checked three times this time around – we didn’t want to miss out again! 😉 We arrived pretty much on time, to find the place absolutely swarming with prospective buyers. With a grin, I muttered ‘sotto voce’, to the Real Estate Agent standing watching everyone like a hawk “What are all these people doing, traipsing through my house!” to which he replied, also ‘sotto voce’ “I know what you mean! Dreadful, isn’t it” – we both laughed 🙂 So, once more we paraded around looking at everything – there is a bit of work to be done on the place… A new kitchen, for starters… The stove top is very unusual – it only has four cooking surfaces – two electric hot plates, and two gas burners! Julian and I have never seen a stove top like it – they’re usually either electric hot plates, or gas burners… Whatever! Four cooking elements are simply not enough, no matter how good your microwave and oven are! The bathrooms would probably have to be redone, too – the en-suite has a large spa bath in it, and a bidet – neither of which looks as though they’ve had much use, and they’d get even less than that from us! This place had a bidet in the en-suite, too – Mum always said that she used it as a foot bath, but I think she was only kidding (at least, I hope she was!) When we redecorated here after Mum died, and before we moved in, we had the bidet removed and the shower enlarged, and in the main bathroom, where there was a completely unused spa bath (the plumbing had never seen water, said the person who came to remove it!) the spa bath came out, and a nice, big shower, taking up the full width of the room was installed in its place. And that’s pretty much what we’d have to do in “The ‘C’ House”, too. Oh, and this time I remembered to count the stairs on the mini “Grand Staircase”. There are six, so six down, and six up = twelve… and I’ve just spent a fruitless five minutes trying (unsuccessfully!) to work out how many times I’d have to go up and down them to equal 128 steps, then multiply that number by three, because that’s how many times I do those 128 steps every day (one complete Stair Walk = 128 steps) But my maths is about as good as my Brain Surgery, and I get lost by the time I get to “20”, because that’s when I run out of fingers and toes. I usually have to get Julian to translate for me, after 20…. Getting back to “The ‘C’ House” – because the sun was shining and the ground was relatively dry, Julian was able to go outside in the back garden for a snoop and a wander around, but I stayed inside because (a) I was cold, (b) my bare feet are highly allergic to damp grass – but most importantly (c) my back was beginning to give out, so I borrowed one of the (highly uncomfortable, as it turned out) kitchen chairs and sat down, instead. The tiny little bit of garden looks very “manageable”, and it looks like there’d be room for a small veggie garden along the side fence, which would be perfect! 🙂 Julian also found a sort of an underground cellar/storage area, which isn’t mentioned anywhere, in any of the house details at all – he said it was quite big, too, because storage was one of the things that was making him just a trifle reluctant, in regards to us moving in next week – or the week after that 😉 We also found a couple of rather large storage closets inside, which was a pleasant surprise. There’s one thing that has both the Estate Agents and ourselves completely intrigued – at the top of the mini “Grand Staircase, and right in the middle of the passage way there, is a large, round, indentation in the carpet, as though a heavy table, or a large (very large!) heavy drum of some sort had sat there for long enough to leave this very obvious round “dent” in the carpet. To get past the top of the stairs to the rest of the house, you would have had to hold your breath to squeeze past it – that’s how large the indentation is, truly! Anyway, after we left there and were on our way to Shoppingtown to have my Warfarin blood test done (a day early!), and to pick up some Flipper Food, we passed another “Open For Inspection” sign, so we did a “U-turn and went to have a look. It wasn’t much, really – it was “alright”, but not what we’re looking for, and most definitely not worth even close to the six figures they were looking to sell it for. However, the reason I mention this place is because I saw something there that really floored me! I was standing just outside the kitchen/family room, with a good view of the kitchen itself. Now when you go looking at houses, it’s always been accepted that people – strangers – will open cupboards to see how far back they go, open drawers to see how well they slide, and turn taps on to see what the water pressure is like. In fact, anything that’s considered a “fixture” (that is, it’s remaining in the house after the sale, usually because it’s built-in, or partially built-in) can, and in most cases should be examined. But free-standing furniture and electrical appliances, unless specifically included in the sales brochures, should never be touched, right? A woman came into the kitchen with a group of what appeared to be her family. The examined the sink, the oven, and the cupboards – fair enough – but then, bold as brass, this woman marches over to the fridge, yanks open the fridge door, and started examining the contents, as though she was looking for ingredients for dinner! One of her “group” came over and muttered something to her, but I was too far away to hear what it was. The woman looked cross, slammed the fridge door, and moved off. I hope I didn’t look as amazed and horrified as I felt – but I was stunned that anyone would… would… do such a thing! Crikey! Julian gets cross with me if I open a ruddy cupboard! Anyway, we finished looking at that, went to Shoppingtown, I had my blood test done (no results have come through yet)  and we did our few errands, then came home. I frittered away a bit of time looking for another blog template, and then made the header… and what you see before you is what I worked on this afternoon – I hope it meets with your (collective) approval?! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. Well, my last fluid loving and retaining pill was dutifully swallowed whole yesterday morning… and, proving that miracles do still happen, I went down four points. “This is good!” you’re probably all thinking. No, it’s not good! It only means that I’ll almost certainly be bouncing back up again, either tomorrow or the day after! It’s too soon after finishing off those wretched pills to be a “genuine” four point drop, anyway! *sigh* Two points are a good drop, even one is acceptable… but four? *shakes head in trepidation*

So that was my day that was… I’m not sure what’s happening tomorrow, apart from the fact that our cleaning lady will be here, but I’m sure we’ll do something exciting, newsworthy, or interesting 🙂 The Vermont South “Water Feature House” wasn’t Open For Inspection today, but it will be on Saturday, which means that Saturday will be extra busy, for Julian, if not for me too. We both want to see the house again, and he wants to go and “observe” at least two Auctions. I don’t know whether I should go or not – I’d need to take the wheelchair, as there’s far too much standing and walking around at Auctions for my (pardon the French!) buggered back. I’d really like to go, and of course it’ll depend on the weather… but at the moment, it’s in the lap of the ghods 🙂 And that’s where I shall leave you, gentle readers! 🙂 Do drop back again tomorrow night, if only to find out if my weight did bounce back violently or not, and to see if I have to take more rat poison (Warfarin), or less… but as usual, there’s sure to be lots of news, anecdotes, fun facts and fiction for everyone, so… don’t miss out! 🙂 Until then, though…. please bee good, remember that the best way to destroy an enemy is to make them a friend, and also remember to take care of yourselves, drive carefully, and keep warm… but above all…. stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

Oh, this is not good… I was just thinking “I’m soooo tired! I’ll just go up to the lounge room and read for a bit… (and maybe have a snooze as well, seeing that I got up at 4.30am!)” …and then I looked at the time. Alas! Too late for a read or a snooze – it was time to start writing this! All day I’ve been alternating between Rifting, and blog-template searching – as I fell asleep doing one, I’d switch to the other until I started falling asleep doing that, and then I’d switch back again, and so on and so forth… and if anyone had been keeping tabs on this blog, they’d have noticed that I’ve changed the template and the graphics here a total three times… and I’m still not satisfied with the results! However, I have learnt one thing today – how to make a cup of coffee using the Nespresso machine thingy! We’ve had it for over a year (I think!) and I’ve only ever made a cup of coffee with it once, when I had someone telling me what to do, every step of the way, and I’ve never used it since! I’ve never needed to – Julian’s always made the tea and the coffee, whilst I reclined in regal and indolent splendour! So this morning when Julian called from the airport to say they’d be boarding soon, I asked him how to make myself a cup of coffee. Well, he told me, but he used too many technical terms, like “jiggle the bottom bit”, and “press the button at the back of the machine”, and I…. thought “when Lee rings me to tell me she wants to get all her characters into the Guild this morning, I’ll get her to talk me through it!” which was indeed a brilliant idea! It was a lot easier to follow someone’s instructions when I was actually standing in front of the machine, rather than trying to imagine it from my desk in the Den! However, the main reason why I’ve never really learnt how to make a cup of coffee – apart from the fact that as I said, Julian’s always made the teas and the coffees – the main reason I’ve never learnt is not because I’m stupid, or slow, or lazy (though I fear that I do qualify for the latter!) but because my back has never been able to hold me upright long enough for me to walk to the kitchen, make a cup of coffee, and carry it back to the Den again. Actually, that’s not strictly true – I can walk around the house, and I can walk up and down the stairs, and so forth, but usually by the time I get from the Den to the kitchen, I’m pretty much bent over so that I’m staring at the floor. This is not helpful when you’re carrying a full cup of coffee. I’m not too bad on the stairs, because I’m hanging on, and partially leaning on, to the stair rail – and I’m not too bad between two rooms, because it’s not far enough for me to start folding in the middle – ditto if I’m using a stick, because it gives me something to lean on. But lately I’ve been finding that since I’ve lost weight, it is a lot easier for me to get around, and I can stand on my own for a lot longer than I used to be able to. I still tend to start folding in the middle after only a short time, and my back’s still sore enough for me to have to stop and lean on something whenever possible. But I am a lot better than I was – I’ve made two cups of coffee today so far, and I’ll make myself another one when I get back from my evening Stair Walk! I think I’ll probably need it – I won’t get dinner until after eight o’clock – and neither will poor little Flipper, who woke up about half an hour ago and discovered that “Daddy” still wasn’t home! She’s only just stopped caterwauling and gone back to have a bit more sleep, in the hopes that “Daddy” will be back by the time she wakes up again 🙂

I’ve just had a phone call from Julian – he’s at the airport and should be boarding in about ten minutes or so, so he’s on his way home 🙂 I have a feeling that we’ll be having another early night tonight – I’m completely bushed, and I’ve just been lolling around all day doing nothing – but he’s had to be polite and diplomatic to relatives we’re not terribly enthusiastic about, at their son’s funeral (memorial service really – he was buried last Friday) and then he had to deal with his mother, who is beginning to get very frail and debilitated, which is starting to make her a bit crotchety. I think we’ll both be a lot happier when we’ve had a good, full night’s sleep! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. I don’t know whether to discount it as being too early to weigh-in properly, or what! I stayed the same – I suppose I have to count it, because I didn’t go up, however I don’t have to always weigh myself at that time, because I didn’t go down, either! So… continue as I was, at 88.2kg (I know – really boring! )

So I have no idea what’s happening tomorrow – it’s getting close to the weekend, when himself wants to go and “observe” an Auction taking place, so he’ll know what to do when we do turn up at an Auction with a view to buying – or we could get a professional (? is that the right term?) bidder to go in and bid for us (we’d be there of course!) because they know Auction “etiquette”, like exactly when to put a bid in, and how not to get carried away and maybe end up paying more than you intended, in the heat of the moment. And I think the Vermont South “Water Feature House” is Open For Inspection again tomorrow – or is that “The “C” House” that’ll be open? I fergit! Maybe they both will be! We’ll have to scurry if they’re both open – Real Estate Agents play this little game with eachother, you see – the houses they have Open For Inspection are all open …. at the same ruddy time! What’s more, the average length of time that a house remains Open For Inspection on any particular day is 30 minutes (give or take a few loquacious would-be-buyers and/or Real Estate Agents! 😉 ) Anyway, I expect that tomorrow will be largely taken up with preparing for the weekend, and maybe some more house hunting, seeing that the finances appear to have been all sorted out now.

And that’s about all I have for you tonight – but I’ll be back tomorrow to fill you all in on weighty subjects, and whether one or both of the two houses we’re interested in was Open For Inspection, and if having inspected it/them for a second time, are we still just as interested in them? If you’re very lucky (or very unlucky, depending on your viewpoint) I might even have a new blog template with matching graphics to show you! Wouldn’t that be a surprise! 😉 But until tomorrow night, I’ll beg you once again to please bee good; remember that life is not so bad if you have plenty of luck, a good physique and not too much imagination, and also remember to take care, keep warm, and drive carefully – but above all, stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

*There is another short update on the “As Seen On…” page – this time from Goodreads – one of their Quotes of the Day…

I’m starting late again tonight – my favourite eldest daughter was over today, but we didn’t get much time to watch much of anything – just two episodes of Orphan Black! We both had Hairdressing appointments this morning, at 11.45am, so we weren’t finished until almost lunchtime, and then there was a bit of shopping to do – so by the time we got home it was almost two o’clock, and I hastily raced off for my Stair Walk before lunch. Then we sat around and chatted about – oh, lots of things really, and we debated whether to set Lee up on Julian’s machine to play Rift, so that she could bring her characters in, one by one, so that I could bring them into the Guild. We decided against it in the end – it could have become “awkward” if she’d become “Coin Locked”. “Coin Locked” – this is what happens when the Rift server decides that the password of the person logging on doesn’t correspond to their usual IP address (or something) – it allows you go log in and play the game, but it won’t let you access any Banks, whether your own or a Guild Bank, and it won’t let you sell anything, either to a Vendor or on the Auction House. What it does do is send you an email with a randomly generated number code that you have to type in to “unlock” your access. It’s a security precaution, and I think quite a good one – you must have access to your email, proving that you are who you say you are. So anyway, we decided to leave the Guild business until tomorrow – Julian will be off having a wonderful time in Adelaide (not!) so I’ll have plenty of time. She’ll ring me when she’s ready, and we’ll go through the process of getting everyone into the Guild and promoted to the appropriate level. After that, I’m in two minds – should I muck around with Rift? or should I muck around with graphics, and go through a few more templates for this blog. We’ve been so snowed under with everything lately that all our plans for a different blog host have sort of… melted… along with getting the rest of the forms ready for my change of name application – it’s no-one’s fault, we’ve just been busy  We did have a bit of good news today though, regarding finances – it seems that we will have ample funds available to be able to write out a deposit cheque on the spot – if we do bid (and of course, win) on a house Auction. The long and short of my options tomorrow: (1) I can look for a better blog template and fiddle with graphics, (2) I can ignore the world and Rift away to my heart’s content all day (or until I get bored), or (3) I can try to watch as many episodes of “Survivor: Worlds Apart” as I can, and free up a lot of space on the Foxtel box. Decisions, decisions! Of course, I could always say “Bah!! I can’t decide!” and stomp off in a huff – and just sit and read for the rest of the day (actually, you know, that doesn’t sound like a bad idea! Maybe I’ll do just that! 😉 ) What would any of you do, if you were me? But getting back to today, we ended up watching two more episodes of Orphan Black, and the plot is thickening up to the consistency of thick, creamy, custard – with lumps of mud in it! At one point I couldn’t watch the screen – I had to hide behind my scarf, because I thought that a totally gorgeous cat was going to be most cruelly tortured, or killed, by a really nasty and creepy sod – but it was alright, in the end the cat survived unscathed – but its owner caved in and gave the vitally important documents to the really nasty, creepy man. I would have done the same – I don’t care how “vitally important” the documents were, I couldn’t let any cat – let alone my own precious baby – be harmed, if there was any possible way that I could prevent it! I can’t wait for the next episode… 🙂

+————————–+ * Dinner & Television Break * +————————–+

Well, here I am again – that’s what happens when I get a late start at this… Oh well, better late than never, as they say in the classics! Well, I said earlier that my favourite eldest daughter and I went to the Hairdresser this morning – she had a much-needed haircut, and I had my usual wash and blow dry. The last time I went there was last Friday – it should have been Thursday, but events at the time forced me to re-schedule. Anyway, I mentioned that I thought that the red in my hair was fading a bit, and the girl recommended that I use a particular conditioner containing madder root – she said that it would tint my hair a soft “pastel” pink, and bring out the red in the other bits. Now, I don’t generally use conditioner in my hair as it tends to make it even limper and finer than it normally is, but being a trusting sort of soul 😉 I bought some of the shampoo instead (it only comes in 1 litre bottles!) I hadn’t had a chance to use it yet, but they used some of the conditioner in my hair today… and hot damn diggety doggy, did it turn my hair the most beautiful shade of deep rose with dark rose highlights! It’s gorgeous! I think that shampoo will be used quite a bit! 🙂 Lee’s hair looks much better after a good hair cut, too 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. Well, it looks like the “spike” is moving in slow motion at the moment. It’ll probably speed up a bit tomorrow… I went up another point today, from 88.1kg to 88.2kg. But it’ll probably go up to either 88.3kg – or 88.9kg tomorrow… 😦

We’re going to try to have an early night tonight, as we’re going to be getting up so early in the morning. Which will probably play havoc with my weigh-in, so if my weight’s really gone up a lot, I shall blame the 4.30am weigh-in and totally discount it. If it’s gone down, I shall declare that I must always get up at that time to weigh myself, because that’s when I do best on the scales! 😉 So I’m sorta hurrying this along a little, as I still have to process my Minions and do my “nightly humiliation” Crossword Puzzle. I call it my “nightly humiliation” mainly because I have utterly no idea how it works out its scores… Some nights, I make a lot of typos, and/or straight out mistakes, but still get a high score. On other nights, I’m quick, make no mistakes, and get a low score… and every now and then, I’ll make lots of mistakes, but be quick, and get a middle of the road score… so I dunno… but I make a point of doing one every night. I like jigsaw puzzles too, and I should try to get back to doing them online – they’re much less messy online! 🙂 The place is going to feel very empty without Julian tomorrow – Flipper will be quite distraught, with “Daddy” not around to pat her all the time – after wandering around crying for about half an hour, she’ll probably try to sleep through the “Dreadful Daddy Deprivation Debacle” – that’s what she did last time Julian went to Adelaide for the day, anyway! 🙂 So that’s about it from me for tonight, but drop by tomorrow night and I’ll be able to fill you all in on what transpired in Adelaide, what my wretched weight decided to do to me – go up, and be discounted because it was too early for an accurate reading? or whether I’ll be getting up at 4.30am from now on because I seem to weigh less then..hmmm.. interesting concept… And you’ll learn whether I Rifted, found a decent, working template and worked on the graphics for it, watched as much “Survivor: Worlds Apart” as I possibly could in order to clear out the Foxtel Hard Drive, or simply curled up somewhere and read… but until then, please continue to bee good, remember that criticism is prejudice made plausible, and that moral indignation is jealousy with a halo, but above all, remember to take care of yourselves, drive carefully, and most importantly… stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

*There has been yet another update to the “As Seen On…” page today…

I’m starting a little earlier today – it’d been a quiet-ish sort of day today – I started off Rifting, but then we decided that it was high time that the second pull-out drawer we’d bought for my bathroom was installed. Before that, though, I was having a look at Laethys, and I decided that I was going to do some “neatening up” of my names and faces there. I think I may have mentioned some time ago that I like all my characters to have names which start with a different letter? It’s so that when you send them anything in-game, all you have to do is type the first letter of their name and the magickmailbox automatically fills in the rest of the name for you. Not so, when you have multiple names starting with the same letter. The magickmailbox will rotate through all the names starting with that letter, adjusting it as you add letters after after the first one that you entered. Example: say I have two characters whose names start with the same letter – Calypso and Crystal. Another character, Azshara, wants to send Crystal a new shield. She goes to the magickmailbox, and in the “To:” field she types a “C”. The magickmailbox helpfully fills in what it thinks should be the right name, and fills in “Calypso”. You give an annoyed “tsk!”, and type in an “r”. The magickmailbox remembers that you typed a “C” in first, connects the dots, gets the message, and fills in the correct name, “Crystal”. Now, depending on how many characters you have whose names all start with the same letter, it can take a few seconds for the magickmailbox to work out what name you really want, and you’ve been diddled out  of valuable questing time! So that’s why I like all my characters to have names starting with different letters. Prior to this morning, I had two girls whose names started with “C”, two whose names started with a “G”, and two whose names started with an “S”. Three “pairs”. I didn’t want to delete any of them, so I moved one of each pair to another shard, and created three newbies whose names started with different letters… All I have to do now is work on them all, and get the up to speed 🙂

Then Julian decided that we should install the new sliding basket in my bathroom, which required me to go and clean out the cupboard first. It didn’t take long as it was mostly junk. Old bottles of shampoo and hand lotions, that had “accidentally” got themselves shoved further and further to the back of the cupboard as I brought home new ones, in the vain hope that they’d make my hair thick and luxurious, or make me look 30 years younger, overnight. Please tell me that I’m not the only person who does this?  I threw more than half of them out this morning, which was a horrible waste, but… if they weren’t going to make me look thick and luxurious, or make my hair look 30 years younger, then there was no point in keeping them, was there?! 😉 Or… I could say that I was “just practicing” for when we move, because I’ll have to whittle down what will come with us. So, anyway, the sliding drawer was duly installed, and I have a nice, neat, tidy, sparsely populated, bathroom cupboard again!

And then it was lunch time! I trotted off for my lunch time Stair Walk, and when I got back I looked up “low-calorie rice pudding recipes” – not for me, for Julian! After dinner every night, I have a small diet jelly for dessert, and three prunes. Julian used to have a small “Le Rice” tub, and some dried fruit – but for the last week and a half, the “Le Rice” tubs have totally vanished from the supermarket shelves! We have a horrible feeling that it’s been “discontinued”, and poor Julian is quite upset about it. I told him that he might have to start making his own – I was pretty sure that someone would have put up recipes for low-calorie rice pudding, and I was right! I actually found quite a lot, and he printed some of them out this afternoon. They nearly all seem to have a remarkable amount of sugar in them for supposedly “low-calorie” desserts, but when you stop and think about it, three tablespoons of sugar wouldn’t be quite half a cup – and most recipes for “normal” rice pudding specify around about a half a cup of the sinful ingredient. There’s one recipe that he’s printed out which calls for granulated Splenda, so he’s going to try making that one – probably on Thursday, as he’ll be in Adelaide all day on Wednesday, for this Memorial service for Jamie, and tomorrow, Tuesday, my favourite eldest daughter will be here. Julian and I had a bit of a mutual grizzle today about Public Holidays (today) and “disruptions” (Wednesday) to our week, especially with this house hunting business taking up nearly all of our spare time (not to mention getting all the finances in place for when we do find something “special”!) “The “C” House” (Doncaster East) goes to Auction on June 27th, and the “Water Feature House” (Vermont South) goes to Auction the week before, on June 20th. Why am I starting to get nervous?! 😉

After we finished lunch we Rifted again for a couple of hours, and it was rather forcefully brought home to me just why I hate Goboro Reef so much! It’s having to do things underwater that un-nerves me – I am totally hopeless at positioning myself underwater! I’m completely useless at trying to fight underwater! I’m even incapable of following Julian underwater, even when he puts a great big Raid icon over his head! I keep losing him, because I’m swimming along, following him, and all of a sudden I’m caught up on a branch of coral, or under a ledge and I can’t see where I am to be able to get out from under it! Today, we had a quest that we’d done before with other characters, and it had me screaming in fury that time, too – doing it again today was no different – it had me screaming in fury again! We have to kill this big bad Boss, right? And he has hundreds of henchpeople to help him fight you – but there’s this “fish” who can heal you, as long as you follow him and stay close to him. Well, I couldn’t even see where Julian, with his great big Raid icon over his head was, let alone this ruddy fish! So Julian put a big green “X” over the fish’s head. I still couldn’t find either of them. I died. By this time I was starting to get frustrated and angry… For some reason or other, I didn’t get a soul-walk, I had to “re-spawn” – that is, come back as a ghost, outside the special Instance where we’d been fighting – at least, that’s what I thought! (one of these days I’m going to learn not to think so bloody much!) I knew we’d entered through a flickering yellow oval “portal”, but when you’re a ghost, everything’s in shades of grey. However, I could see this sort-of “flickering” oval – “Aha!” thinks me “The portal back in!” …and I swam through it. But it wasn’t the way back in, was it?! I was already in the Instance – swimming back through the portal took me out of the Instance, and I became well and truly lost. That was when I started screaming in fury again at the stupid quest! Eventually Julian had to die to get out of the Instance and find me, then he “swam” me back in again, where I Feigned Death, and waited until it was all over. I swear, I never, ever want to do that wretched quest, ever, ever again! But, we got through it (more by good luck than good management!) and I went up to level 61 – I’m not sure if himself went up too, but if he didn’t, he’ll be close on my heels! 🙂 Then we finished off, so that I could start writing this!

Weigh-in this morning. I’m starting to get very trepidated… I did go up this morning, but not as I’d expected to. I went up by one measly point, from 88.0kg to 88.1kg! Where’s my spike? I’m getting distinctly jittery about it…

And that’s about it from me for tonight 🙂 My favourite eldest daughter and I have the Hairdresser, two more episodes of “Orphan Black”, and a couple more episodes of “The 100” to look forward to tomorrow, and I’ll fill you all in on that tomorrow night, along with any news of my missing “weight-spike”, and various other items of news and interest. So don’t be shy and miss out, call in again tomorrow night to see what’s been happening around here! 🙂 In the meantime, please try to bee good, remember that It’s easier to seek forgiveness than to ask for permission (but ask, anyway!), but above all, remember to take care, drive carefully, and always… stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

*There has been an update to the “As Seen On…” page today…

Well, there was no house viewing today – apparently my comments last night about living in the Caulfield area have been taken to heart 🙂 It’s not that I’m against living there, it’s just that everything, and everyone I know is from over this way. So, anyway, we spent a good part of the day Rifting, drifting, and swimming down the watery avenues of the Goboro Reef, smiting nasty mobs with tentacles for legs, and other ones that look like black and pale green caterpillars. We did have a late start to our gaming, though, as I had a call from my favourite youngest daughter, Kate. She and her husband Terry are going through a pretty rough patch at the moment – his eldest daughter from a previous marriage turned 21 the other day, and it’s hit him very hard that he’s had to miss it. His ex-wife has been bad-mouthing him and telling their two daughters lies about him ever since they separated, telling them that he didn’t love them and that he wanted nothing to do with them. She also made sure that she made it almost impossible for him to have any access to them, by changing times and holiday plans at the last minute, and only making them available to him, again, at the last minute, when she knew he had to work. Anyway, the poor guy hasn’t been able to get in touch with his two daughters for years now, despite all attempts, legal and otherwise. She keeps moving, and not giving out their address; has denied him access to their Facebook pages when they were still young enough to be managed and manipulated by her, and of course, over the years, the lies she’s been feeding them about him not wanting to know them or have anything to do with them seemed to be confirmed, in their eyes. And for years, he’s suffered anxiety and depression because of this. He does love them, very much indeed, and it’s really hurting him badly that he’s missed out on all the milestones in their lives – 16th Birthdays, 18th Birthday, and now his eldest’s 21st Birthday. Not a single, solitary word has he heard from them, nor has he been able to get a single solitary word to them. They think he’s an uncaring and neglectful father, but he’s not – far from it! I don’t think there’s anything that he wouldn’t do for those girls… He’s sought legal advice in the past, but is afraid to do anything that “might make things worse”. So he’s in a terrible state at the moment, and so is my poor, favourite youngest daughter, because she loves him, and she has to live with his pain. It’s a mess. So, if anyone has any advice or solutions to this rotten problem, please feel free to let us know! Things can’t get much worse than they are, right now… Anyway, Kit-Kat and I had a very long talk this morning, and we started Rifting close to lunch time.

Neither of us died during our massacrations (I just made that word up! It’s a good one, isn’t it! OK, well I think it’s a good one! The root word, of course, is “massacre”, and I’ve added the “ions” onto the end because it’s sort-of an action – as in something that one does, like “procrastination”, or “dedication”, etc. 🙂 ) …anyway, neither of us died during our massacrations today, though Julian came close to death a couple of times, and my pet died once – unfortunately we didn’t actually go up a level, but once again, we came close to it – I think I have about two-thirds of a “bubble” to go before I turn 61, and himself has slightly more… but it was a good bash, and hopefully we’ll be able to get another hour or so in tomorrow, seeing as it’s a Public Holiday an’ all. I received an email from my favourite eldest daughter this morning, giving me the names of all her characters on both Laethys and Hailol, which I’ll add to my “Friends” list, so I’ll know when she comes online – then I’ll be able to invite her into the Guild. In return, I sent her a list of all my characters on both Laethys and Hailol, so that she can add them to her “Friends” list and can “whisper” me if I haven’t noticed her (a “whisper”, in both Rift and WoW is sort-of like a private message, in real time) Lee will be over here next Tuesday – we both have a Hairdresser appointment – and I expect that she’ll be very early. Julian has an appointment with the Smoke Detector person at 11 o’clock, so when he started arguing about it the other day I just said “Look! I’ll come with you when you go to pick up Lee, and you can drop us both off at Doncaster Shoppingtown, and then be on your merry way to your appointment. We’ll hang around until it’s time for our appointment, and you can come and pick us up when you’ve finished! What’s so hard about that?! Problem solved! (*Men!*)” As it turns out, he should be well and truly finished with the Smoke Detector person before our Hairdressing appointment, so there won’t be a problem. And that’s what we’re doing on Tuesday 🙂 Which reminds me – I must ask Lee (or perhaps I should be saying that I must remind Lee) to send us that list of episodes she wants downloaded, so that we don’t run out of things to watch on Tuesday afternoon! Julian and I have our last episode of “Elementary” to watch tonight – the last episode of Season 2 – and I’m not sure what we’re going to watch after that – I was thinking I might start him off on “Person of Interest” – I think he’ll like it, and I wouldn’t mind re-watching it! But, we’ll see…

Weigh-in this morning. Not Happy Jan! I went down three points! From “up one” to 88.3kg. yesterday, to down to 88.0kg. today! Oh, I am definitely not looking forward to the spike I’m going to suffer, tomorrow or the next day! 😦

So there it is – “My Sunday”, by Winter. Julian booked his flight to Adelaide this morning. For Wednesday morning. He’ll have to leave here at around 5.00am so that means I’ll have to be up around 4.00am Still, what can one do, but roll with the punches! It won’t be a fun day for me, but it’ll be an even less fun day for him… and Thursday morning will come. It’s almost time for my evening Stair Walk (do you realise that I do a total of 384 stairs a day? 384! This time last year I wouldn’t have been able to even climb six stairs, I was so terribly overweight and unfit!) so it looks like this blog is going to be another “split” one. I really must start writing earlier (though that’s not really possible on a Sunday!) And as for my new blog – I’m starting to have trouble remembering what I called it! (no, not really – but you get my drift, I’m sure!) and I am getting quite anxious about getting on with it… There just aren’t enough hours in the day!

+————————–+ * Dinner & Television Break * +————————–+

 We watched the last episode of Season Two of “Elementary” this evening, followed by last Friday night’s “Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries” – naturally, being the last episode of a Season, “Elementary” ended on a cliff-hanger – I think we might have to try to get hold of Season 3 “by any means necessary”! I had to go and look all that up – I thought we’d been watching Season 3, but it wasn’t, it was Season 2 – what confused me was that the site I was looking at had the episodes listed from last (episode), at the top of the page, to the first (episode) at the bottom of the page! For goodness’ sake, who lists things from last to first like that, anyway! Especially when you’re looking for episode summaries! Grrr! It means you get all the spoil-e-r-s…. (*brightly*) what a good idea! All episode lists should be written with the last episode listed first! 😉 Anyway, drop by again tomorrow night – find out if my weight has spiked yet, and see what we got up to on our long weekend! There’ll be lots of news and gossip, so don’t miss out! But until then, at least try to bee good, never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups, and always – always, take care, drive carefully, and please… stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

I think this is probably the latest I’ve ever started writing this blog – it’s been a pretty hectic day, actually. It all started a couple of days ago when that totally evil SoftMaker Office look-alike program swatted Thunderbird and all my email into the Twilight Zone! We managed to get my email back, thanks to the wonders of nightly backups, but it took time in which I couldn’t get at my computer. Then there was the house hunting. That took even more time when I wasn’t able to access my computer, and then when I could access it, I had to do fiddly little mundane things, like finding and setting up a blog template that actually showed comments... and minding my (ruddy!) Minions, and dealing with all the goodies that they dropped oh-so-humbly at my feet. Then today, after we’d been out all morning looking at two houses, coming home, and then going out again later to have another look at our The “C” House – which we couldn’t have a look at after all, because Julian got the time wrong – the “Open For Inspection” time was 2 o’clock, not 3 o’clock… Julian set up The Bat for me, as an alternative to Thunderbird. And imported all my mail for me – and yes, it’s all there (I think!) But it all had to be sorted, and checked against the mail on Thunderbird, and new filters created and run on each individual email in my Inbox. But it’s ironic, you know… I first started using The Bat years and years ago, but I moved away from it to something “prettier“, like Incredimail, and Outlook Express, and then giving up on them and migrating to several lesser known mailers, and then finally, to Thunderbird – Julian decided that The Bat was pretty good, and he’s been using it ever since. So now I’ve come full circle, and of course, it’s changed over the years, and it’s all foreign to me now, so I’m having to learn how to use this “new and improved” version of The Bat all over again! It’s been a long afternoon…

Julian will be catching the red-eye to Adelaide next Wednesday for Jamie’s memorial service (we think it’s a memorial service – to say that informative details are scarce would be the understatement of the century!) and to catch up briefly with his mother, who is too frail to be able to go to the service. It’s not going to be a fun time for anyone (not that funerals and/or memorial services are supposed to be “fun”!) Jamie and his parents had been estranged for a long time, and apparently there’s quite a lot of bad blood and bitter feelings between them, and Jamie’s fiancée, so the air is bound to be thick enough with family politics to peel back with the blunt side of a knife… I’m sort-a glad I’m not going…

Now, the houses we saw today. The first one was in Vermont South, and would suit us right down to the ground! At the moment, I can’t make up my mind which one I really like better – the “C” House, or the Water Feature House (in Vermont South – it has a lovely big water feature outside – just to the right of the front door. It looks very “cool!” 😉 ) It has 4 bedrooms, to The “C” House’s 3, two of which would make an excellent Den and Office, a really nice kitchen with a good-sized family room, floor plan-wise it’s very well laid out, the bathroom and en-suite are not pokey or cramped (though the main bathroom has a very “stolid” looking bath in it – still, the shower is big enough to put a seat in it) It has a lovely covered deck onto a nice small garden area, a decent shed, and a big double garage with access directly to the house. The laundry is a good size, and there’s heaps of storage space – the one thing that The “C” House lacks

The second house was in Caulfield South and was very nice too – again, 4 bedrooms, to The “C” House’s 3, but much smaller, and – I dunno, slightly “claustrophobic”? The corridors seemed fairly narrow (or maybe it’s just that I’m still too fat? Probably…) and the three single bedrooms were pretty small – one didn’t have any sort of wardrobe or closet in it – and both the bathroom and the en-suite would have had to be re-built. It too had a nice little garden, with a lemon tree in it! but like The “C” House, it didn’t have a lot of storage space. And it was too small. I think I’d feel very cramped living there…

We have at least another one, if not two houses to see tomorrow – both in Caulfield South, but the more I think about it, the edgier I get about moving to that area – it’s so far away from what I realise I’ve come to think of as “my turf” – Doncaster Shoppingtown, The Pines, the fire escape stairs where I do my Stair Walks… (Winter sings, slightly off-key: ” mmm…  mmmm..mm….mmmm, in all the old familiar places, that this heart of mine embraces“) *sigh* Oh well… I do want to move, but maybe not that far away…

Of course, going out again tomorrow to look at more houses will mean we don’t get our traditional Sunday Monster Bashing in, but it’s a long weekend, so we could call Monday “Sunday”, and bash our monsters then… My favourite eldest daughter has informed me that she’s started playing Rift again, and she’s based in Laethys and Hailol – so welcome to Grumpy Old Farts, Lee! 🙂 I’m sure Jademoss will be very happy to make you a couple of Lanzan Bags! 😉 It’ll be fun – while she’s on holiday, we can all team up to bash the baddies! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. Well, I was expecting it. I went up one point, from 88.2kg to 88.3kg. The big spike should come tomorrow… However, “I’m expecting it” does not mean that I have to like it, or not grizzle and grumble and weep and wail about it! 😦

And that’s about it from me for tonight – call back tomorrow night, and I’ll fill you all in on whether we went out looking at houses, or stayed home and pummeled monsters in The Plane of Water, and whether or not my weight spiked alarmingly, compelling me to wring my hands in despair, gnash my teeth, scatter ashes in my hair and rend my clothing (no, I’d better not do that – I have few enough clothes that aren’t too big for me as it is!) So, right – no rending of clothing, then… (Winter peers over her glasses at her checklist: wringing hands… check! gnashing of teeth… check! ashes in the hair… check! Right, it all seems to be in order…) And of course, you can expect to get a detailed description of any and all houses that we go to inspect. It’s a real shame that we missed out on seeing The “C” House again this afternoon – after seeing the Water Feature House in Vermont South this morning, I was hoping we’d be able to compare them while they were both still fresh in our minds… But we will, we will… So until tomorrow night, bee good, remember to respect yourself if you would have others respect you, and also remember to stay warm and dry, and to drive carefully… but above all… stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

I suppose you’ve noticed that I’ve changed the blog template yet again? I really didn’t want to, I thought the old one was much nicer – cleaner, sleeker… but I was given no choice! The old one didn’t show comments – so although I liked the old one better, if I hadn’t received an email notification to tell me that someone had left a comment, I wouldn’t have known it was there! So I hastily scouted around for a semi-decent template that displayed comments, then I used the old header, chopped it down to the right size and re-framed it. Instant blog template change… well, almost instant, anyway… I guess it took me about three minutes to get the header re-sized, and about 10 minutes to find a suitable template to use.

I was going to tell you yesterday, but I guess I got a bit carried away with the house that I want us to get that I forgot to. Remember I told you that I was going to try out that new Windows Office look-alike thingy? Well, I did try it, a bit, but I didn’t have time to put it through its paces… now, I wish I’d never heard of the damn program! Apparently it uses, or has something to do with Thunderbird, the mailer that I use, because I opened Thunderbird to get the download address from an email I’d received from SoftMaker, and when I started installing the program it asked me to close Thunderbird. I just thought it was one of those installers that doesn’t like anything else being open when it’s installing something. So I closed Thunderbird, as one does when requested to by an installation process. However I didn’t have occasion to use Thunderbird again until the next morning, when I went to check my email. Thunderbird was there, installed an’ all, but everything else was gone! Thunderbird had been newly installed, but not set up to send or receive mail… and all my mail, all my settings, my address book, my filters, were gone! I was beside myself with anger, grief, and disbelief! OK, my email might not be terribly important to the fate of the world, but it was important to me! All my registrations! All my book records! All my personal emails, all gone! Blown away because this stupid SoftMaker Office 2016 program thought it would be a good idea to install the latest version of Thunderbird for me, and clean out all the “cobwebs” of my email setup and email at the same time! Thank ghod for nightly backups! While Julian was busy with the rather complicated process of retrieving my email for me, I got him to uninstall SoftMaker Office 2016 – and I can guarantee you all that I’ll never download or use anything from SoftMaker again! What if we hadn’t had backups? Lots of people (who should know better!) don’t… What if this was an important business venture,  or a law firm? What if overnight we’d lost important contracts, or irreplaceable legal documents!? (not that we would have – just about any high profile business or law firm would have been running nightly backups from which to retrieve the lost emails – one would hope, anyway!) So let that we a lesson to you all! If you’re going to try out a new, unknown piece of software, back up everything first!

We called in at the Commonwealth Bank this afternoon after I’d been to the Hairdresser, and you wouldn’t believe how long it took, and how difficult and complicated it was, to retrieve my “unclaimed money”! We needed an account number. A Commonwealth Bank account number. But we haven’t done business with the Commonwealth Bank for about 30 years, so we didn’t have an account number! We didn’t even know, at that stage, where the money was from, before it got handed over to “unclaimed monies”. We were there for about three-quarters of an hour before we were able to contact someone higher up in the Bank hierarchy who knew how to handle cases like this, so I should get my missing money in a week or so (hopefully!) Oh, and we did find out where the account was and how it had been “overlooked”. It had been with Bank West, as an account for e-trading with Andrew West (stockbrokers) both of which had been taken over and gobbled up by Comsec and the good old Commonwealth Bank – so once I gets me money, it’ll be “all’s well that ends well!” 🙂

Tomorrow we’re going to have another look at “our” house (or the “C” House, as I now call it) and on Sunday we have a couple of houses to look at in the Caulfield area. Normally houses aren’t open for inspection on Sundays, but Caulfield is pretty much the heart of Melbourne’s Jewish quarter, and they can’t have houses open for inspection on Saturdays (the Sabbath), because that would be considered “work”, so they have them open for inspection on Sundays instead! 🙂 And speaking about strange practices regarding not working on the Sabbath, did you know – or rather more to the point, would you believe, that in certain places in America (I think New York was one!) lifts (as in ‘elevators’) have a special device attached to them so that the lifts operate automatically, because pressing buttons is considered “work”… and some of the ultra-ultra orthodox even go so far as to believe that the movement of the lift’s counterweight constitutes work, and because you’re operating the lift, you are ultimately responsible for this work, which is a big no-no! (Winter shakes her head in sad disbelief) …But to each his (or her) own…

Did I tell you that I started writing this a little later than usual? 🙂 Time for my evening Stair Walk…

+————————–+ * Dinner & Television Break * +————————–+

Weigh-in this morning. Well, as expected, the spike is on its way – I clocked in at 88.2kg again – the same as yesterday. The timing’s about right – approximately six days into the fluid retaining pills, up I go… Oh well…

So. I got a little bit of Rifting in this morning, then we went out, and by the time we got home I had time to write this up until I went on my evening Stair Walk. It’s now 9.30pm. You know that handy little LAN Messenger thingy that I use to ask Julian things when he’s not around? It works great, when he’s in the Office. It works just as well when he’s in here and I need to pass him a url or file. It doesn’t work when he’s in the kitchen though – not because he doesn’t have a computer in the kitchen, he does – but because at this time of night in the kitchen he’s usually busy cleaning up after dinner and making cups of tea, and not looking at his laptop. I was going to ask him what time our… sorry, it’s not yet, I mean the “C” House is going to be open for inspection. I hope it’s not going to be raining again tomorrow – I’d like to see outside, and I also hope that not too many other people turn up! The less people who know about it, the less competition we’ll have! 😉

I have a horrible confession to make! While we were doing the Supermarket shopping, after I’d been to the Hairdresser, and we’d been to the Commonwealth Bank, I bought… a packet of sugarless, orange flavoured mints (guilt! guilt! guilt!) And I ate two of them… they were only little… (guilt! guilt! guilt!) They were delicious! (guilt! guilt! guilt!) I should never have bought them! I promise I won’t eat any more – Julian can have them – and if I do eat any more, I swear I’ll do an extra Stair Walk to compensate, even though they’re sugarless and have less than a poofteenth of a kilojoule per tiny little round, delicious mint! (I should never have bought them! What was I thinking?!)

And that, gentle readers, brings me to the end of my rambling recounting of today’s adventures! Be sure to call back again tomorrow night to see if my weight did spike up – or boringly stayed the same for the third day in a row. Will we still love The “C” House, or will we start to notice tiny little cracks and flaws in its magnificent façade? Will it rain on our house hunting (well, this is Melbourne! 😉 ) and if you want to know the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything (it’s 42, by the way!) as well as the answers to heaps of other questions you haven’t even thought of yet, then this is definitely the place to hang out! But until then, please endeavour to bee good, remember that a smile is a curve that can set a lot of things straight – but above all, remember to stay warm and dry, to drive carefully, and to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

I’m starting quite early today – himself is just heading out for a second viewing of a house we saw the other day – the one that Carmen had waxed lyrical about. I’m not going with him because it’s raining, and there’s a long path, with rail-less steps that one has to negotiate before getting to the front door – and I don’t walk fast enough in shoes to avoid getting drowned, even with an umbrella. And besides… we went and looked at our new house today!! (says she, bouncing up and down in the chair with excitement) Wel-l-l, it’s not ours yet, but I hope it will be soon! It’s absolutely my dream home! It’s to die for! I want to move in tomorrow! (bounce, bounce, bounce!) We’ve actually seen two houses today – the one this morning wasn’t too bad, really, and had a lot going for it – but once again, it was an “older” house (you could tell by the layout of the rooms, and the *sigh* number of ‘exposed brick feature walls’) it would have needed a lot of work. As I said to Julian as we got back in the car – “there’s no way I’d pay their approximate asking price – it’s not too bad, all things considered, but our place is much, much nicer, and really only needs re-painting, and perhaps re-carpeting, if whoever bought it didn’t want tiles. That place needs loads of work, on top of their almost ridiculous asking price – and we know that at least one Agent has been honest enough to tell us that we wouldn’t get what they’re asking for theirs!” Then we went on to Acuity to get the replacement lenses – which had finally arrived – put in my glasses. They look much more betterer now, without the chipped lens staring you in the face! 🙂 The second house we were going to look at today – the “C” shaped house (and hopefully, our new home!) wasn’t for another hour and a half, so we came home and had our lunch and a cup of coffee before heading out again. It was raining, so I made sure that himself picked up an umbrella before we walked out the front door. It’s a corner block, with about half a dozen steps or so up to the front porch, but they were reasonably shallow steps, and had a nice sturdy hand rail all the way to the porch. Once again, we had to remove our shoes, and we padded through the big double front doors into a small slate tiled foyer with a tastefully small pebbled garden on each side of it. In front of us was a miniature (only about a dozen steps) “Grand Staircase” (that is: wider at the bottom than at the top, with sweeping, curved bannisters on each side) At the top of this mini Grand Staircase, the house curved around to each side – one side, the right hand side, curved away to the bedrooms and bathrooms. The bedrooms were quite large, and so were the bathrooms – which was a change, as most of the bathrooms in the houses we’ve seen so far were grudgingly small and pokey! So, back to the mini G.S. again – the whole of that curved section at the top of the G.S. is glass walled, and looks out onto a beautiful, slate tiled, almost octagonal court-yard, which opened up at its far end into a nicely small and petite garden. Moving on to our left was a so-called third bedroom, but would be used better as a study or office. It has a beautifully large laundry, a spacious kitchen and meals area. a separate dining room or lounge, and another sitting room as well (from memory) It’s quite “split-level”, with a couple of three or four step stairs in a couple of places, but all steps have very nice hand rails, and there was nothing in the way of stairs that I wasn’t easily able to manage. It’s carpeted, which might irritate my feet, depending on the type of carpet it is, but it was OK today, and usually I know as soon as I step onto a piece of carpet if it’s going to cause me grief, and this one didn’t (not yet, anyway!) There’d be a minimum of work in the bathrooms, it needs proper, ducted, refrigerated air conditioning. The kitchen would need a new stove top and a bigger fridge alcove, but other than those little things, the place is absolutely perfect! 🙂 Ah, himself has just come back from his second viewing of “Carmen’s Choice” property – he’s just making us a cup of coffee, then no doubt he’ll come down and tell me all about it. We have another couple of houses to see this weekend, but for some strange reason, I find that I’m not particularly enthusiastic any more! 😉

I finished off my new Desktop-Wallpapery-thingy today – I reckon it doesn’t look too bad – what do you all reckon? 🙂 It took me ages to find just the right font for the header (“Winter Home” – I used a font called Filibuster NF in 75pt ) and even more ages to line everything up properly and get everything spaced correctly – but it’ll do until I get bored with it and want to change it again… 😉

After some lengthy discussions with himself about “Carmen’s Choice”, we’ve decided that it’s …. actually too small! Now, it’s not a small house, by any stretch of the imagination – it’s actually very big, and has oodles of storage space (which, unfortunately, the “C” house doesn’t have 😦 ) but the bulk of the house is “entertainment” area – and we… simply don’t entertain! It’s not even that we don’t entertain enough to justify such a large amount of space, it’s that we don’t entertain, at all! Now, as I pointed out to Julian, I think it’s only the way that they’ve arranged and decorated the area – we’d arrange it differently, and I think we’d find that the area wasn’t, or wouldn’t be, as wasted as he thinks it would (be) Upstairs there’s the Main Bedroom, walk-in-wardrobe and en-suite, a small study, and another bedroom (also with a walk-in-wardrobe and en-suite) Downstairs, there’s a third bedroom, with the same walk-in-wardrobe and en-suite arrangement (plus a small kitchenette!) So, if we used the small study as Julian’s Office, where would we put the computer room/Den? In the second bedroom upstairs? Or the third, “guest” bedroom downstairs? As I spend nearly all day in the Den here, it means that if we used the downstairs “guest” bedroom, I’d be cut off from the rest of the house for most of the day. If we used the second, smaller bedroom upstairs, I don’t think it would be big enough for two desks and all our equipment. Forget about the small study/Office – it’s even smaller than the second upstairs bedroom! So… big as it is, it’s too small, plus if we’re going to be spending the sort of money they’re looking at, I’d rather spend it on the “C” house! 🙂

So that’s where we stand on the Huge House Hunt, at the moment.

Weigh-in this morning. I went down another two points today – from 88.4kg to 88.2kg. Boy, am I going to pay the price for that, tomorrow, or the next day! I’m not looking forward to the massive upward spike that’s on my horizon! 😦

We’ve not been told anything more about Jamie’s very sudden passing – Julian is talking to his mother at the moment, so she might have some more news.. I’ll keep you all posted as to whether he has to fly off for a funeral or not. As you can probably gather, I’ve not had much of a chance to do any more writing today – we’ve been out for most of it, and I’ve also been racing to get my Desktop-Wallpapery-thingy finished. Trying to fit in all the places we had to go and see this afternoon meant that I had to re-schedule my hairdressing appointment – so now I’m going tomorrow afternoon, instead. And there’ll be more houses to look at on the weekend – why do we have to be so busy, just when I decide that I want to do some serious writing? *pout* And I’m not even going to get this finished before dinner, as I have to go off for my evening Stair Walk… in about… five minutes! That is something I’d get in the “C” House though – inside exercise via the mini G.S.! It’d take me a while – I’d have to work out how many times I’d have to go up and down the mini G.S. to get in my 64 stairs down, and 64 stairs up. Twelve? 12×12 is 144, and I do a total of 128, so yeah – twelve times down, plus 12 times up would be good! That is, if there are twelve steps, which unfortunately I didn’t count today. It might be less… Anyway…

+————————–+ * Dinner & Television Break * +————————–+

Back again. I asked Julian if his mother had said anything about funeral plans, but there’s been no news yet. I’m not quite sure what’s happening tomorrow, apart from a visit to the Hairdresser in the afternoon, so, who knows? I might even get a bit of Rifting, or some writing in! On the other hand, maybe I’ll just go down to the lounge room and read… or sleep! I could do with some of that… But that’s about all from me for tonight – call in again tomorrow night and I’ll fill you all in on what happened during the day, whether or not my weight has decided to go ballistic yet, and what our plans for the weekend are (F’rinstance, I can’t see us having our day in The Plane of Water on Sunday, though we might have time to fit an hour or two in, if we’re lucky!) and if we’ve decided to make a move on the “C” House yet (Winter crosses all her fingers… and decides that it’s too hard to type with just the tips of two nails, and uncrosses them again) So until tomorrow night, please bee good, remember that laughter is like a windshield wiper, it doesn’t stop the rain, but it allows us to keep going, but most importantly, remember to drive carefully, and above all, stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂