I just got back from the Hairdresser – I wonder where they picked up the idea of giving a neck and head massage prior to treatment from? 🙂 Well, whatever or wherever – it was a brilliant idea, and the person who decided to make it part of the “Oscar Oscar Experience” deserves a medal! (they have good coffee, too! 😉 ) I still got a bit of water down my back though! It’s a little hard to just turn your head to the side, when the person washing your hair grabs hold of the back of your head, and gently, but very firmly, pulls it up! It wasn’t to rinse me off, though, it was to massage some sort of soothing scalp goop into my head – part two of the first neck and shoulder massage – or so I was told. There was water involved though, and as I said, a little bit managed to trickle its way down my back. Ah well, both parts of the massage were nice 🙂

Unable to wait until the “prototype or experimental” blog is set up on the alternate server (Julian’s waiting for information on how to [insert complex, unintelligible (to me!) technical jargon here] (it sounded like: something, something “data base”, something something “Word Press”, if you really want to know!)) Anyway, being the impatient little sod that I am, I thought I’d fiddle around with the current menu a bit… It doesn’t really help that I don’t understand, and don’t have even a smidgen of a clue what I’m doing! I finally – by trial, a lot of rude words, and error, managed to get it to work. I think. I added another two items to the menu that you can see under the header. I added “HOME”, and “Reading”. I found something out while I was doing it, too! There appears to be no way back from any of the menu items! This is a bit… er…. confusing? The only way to get back to these blog posts – that I can see – is to either “back arrow” to where you started, or to close the page and re-open it. Does that sound right to you? It doesn’t to me! And I don’t read enough blogs to know whether everyone else’s blogs behave the same way – I used to read Lisa’s, when she was still writing it – but she stopped writing that years ago – and I haven’t found one worth reading since! (because I haven’t been looking! 😛 ) From what little I can gather, “Pages” are what’s in the menu, and “posts” are what I write here. The “Pages” in the menu each have a very short, and sometimes a little oddball, “holding” paragraph, mainly to remind me of what I was originally going to put in there, but never got a round tuit. What confuses me though, is that when I open up one of the “Pages”, I’m given an editing screen exactly identical to the one I’m writing this on! I suppose I really should go and open up one of those pages and write something, just to see what happens – but I think it’ll either just append itself onto the end of what I’ve already written, or overwrite it – depending on where I start writing… I wish there was someone who could explain the way it all works – I did ask Lisa once – she’s a writer, she was a blog writer, and she knows about these sorts of things (well, she knows more than I don’t!) but she’s an even worse teacher than I am! (if that’s even possible!) So, anyway – I finally managed to make the two new menu items display for me – hopefully they’ll display for all of you, too – even though there’s nothing of any interest there – “HOME” is just a “holding” blurb, and “Reading” is just what I’m currently reading. I plan on listing my current book(s), and then posting a short but pithy revue on it/them when I’ve finished (reading… it…them…) I might try posting something in one of those Pages… tomorrow! (if I remember! 😉 )

Weigh-in this morning. Down another 2 points to 91.6kg. I’ll bounce back again tomorrow, I suppose.

Our cleaning lady comes tomorrow – and not before time, too! We are positively wading through rafts of Flipper fur, and other pieces of grot and grunge. She only comes once every fortnight, and if for some reason she can’t come on “her” Friday (like last Friday week!) then she can’t come on the following Friday either, because it would be the middle of “her” fortnight for cleaning for us. It’s complicated! 😉 So it’ll have been a month since she last cleaned here (well, vacuumed, mopped, and sort-of dusted, anyway) We could, and do, clean the place ourselves, when we really have to (like the imminent arrival of visitors!) – but I hate nagging (and in fact I won’t nag!) and Julian’s always busy. Besides, he does everything, including all the washing and cooking – and I feel like a criminal if I turn around and say “Thank you for washing my “smalls” – now would you sweep and mop my bathroom for me, please?” I mean, that’s why we have a cleaning lady, right?! So that he doesn’t have to! Only… sometimes she doesn’t…. We’re also hoping to get a bit of Rifting in tomorrow – I said to Julian “but… E.’s coming tomorrow…”, to which he replied “That’s alright, we can play while she’s working,” I just stared at him for a second or two, and went back to what I was doing, telepathically sending him a “yeah, except when she wants to sit and chat… or have a smoke…or gossip… “

So, hopefully we’ll have a clean house again by this time tomorrow, and hopefully, we’ll be able to get a bit of Rifting in. Julian has to go and pick up his new reading glasses tomorrow, and I should be taking my new computer glasses back to get the lenses changed. Remember I said I could see the screen perfectly, but not the keyboard? When I rang up to tell them, they said “Oh, but they’re only single vision glasses – did you want bi-focals?” I growled back “I need to be able to see the screen and the keyboard! I don’t touch-type, and I do a fair bit of transcription, so I need to be able to see both!” *sigh* Couldn’t they tell from my old prescription (which they looked at!) that they weren’t meant to be single vision? Or if they weren’t sure, why didn’t they ask? We should have gone in today, but it was raining, and parking is hard at the Medical Centre. If it’s raining again tomorrow – we can cross our fingers that an underground car space will be available, or leave it until Saturday. Or Monday. Or one day when it’s not raining. It’s not pleasant getting the wheelchair out of the car and re-assembled in the rain – and although I can walk the distance unaided (it’s not all that far) I’m not all that fast, and I’d be drenched before I got half way to the door – not a good look when you’ve just been to the Hairdresser! 🙂 And that’s about all that I know of that’s happening tomorrow – but drop in again tomorrow night and catch up on the news – did E. turn up to do the cleaning this time? Were we able to get some Rifting in? And did we manage to pick up – and drop off – our respective optical appliances? aids? (glasses!) Will my weight suddenly soar back up all those points lost, to over the 92.0kg mark again, or will it have dropped even further? Find out tomorrow night! 😉 But until then, please bee good, don’t try to melt the ice off your windscreen with warm water, use cold water, or you’ll crack the windscreen! But above all… stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

Thank goodness it’s not Friday! 😉 (see above date!) I’ve been very busy today – Addain has finished all of Silverwood and is now on his way to Gloamwood. I decided that the first “dark” Bookmarks Wallpaper was a trifle too severe – as you can see – so I made another one. Still dark, but a touch more “friendly”, don’tcha think? (I’m really starting to dislike that word!) This morning I received a Goodreads “Quote of the Day that I actually liked, and thought that all of you might like it too:
“You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you mad.” ― Aldous Huxley

I think it rather depends on the “truth”, though, don’t you? Yes, the truth can certainly make you mad, as in angry, and quite often does (especially if it puts you in the wrong! 😉 ) But more often than not, it upsets you, and in fact, really depresses you – especially when something you thought was true turns out not to be the case at all, and in fact, you’ve been badly let down by someone you trusted. So the truth can do many things – it can set you free, for instance, or it can make you happy and relieved, or “angry” mad – and very rarely, it can make you “insane” mad (temporarily!) So is truth really a “good thing” to know? Are people better off left in blissful ignorance, if that ignorance isn’t really hurting anyone? Like certain people who believe that the Creation stories as told in the Bible should be taught in schools, as an alternative “science” to the theory of Evolution? Speaking of which, is it a good idea not to read children “fairy stories”, because they’re not true? Not real? Isn’t it better to use “fairy stories” as a tool by which very young children can be taught to discern the difference between reality and fantasy? All food for thought. We’re taking the first steps to preparing a new blog home 🙂 First we want to set one up, so that I can “play” with it a bit. I’m hoping I’ll be able to create my own themes, setting my own header dimensions, and my own text area width (I think this one is too narrow!) …and have my own choice of fonts! (yes, yes, I know they have to be “web fonts” (which usually means plain and boring! 😦 ) and I know I can’t just “embed” fonts that I like because not everyone will be able to display them (I seem to remember having this sort of problem with my very first website!)) So we’ll have to have a bit of a play around first – see what is, and what isn’t possible, on this “alternative” server.

I’m planning on returning to Facebook in the reasonably near future – once I’m totally sure that my old account has been deleted – apparently it takes two weeks to completely delete an account, and I can’t remember how long ago it was that I had to log on again to get the contact details for the guy who made my shoes, which I’d neglected to get before I logged off for what I thought would be the last time. I know they say “Once bitten, twice shy” and all that, but this time there will only be three people who’ll know I’m there. Julian, Lisa, and Kate. I’ll be using a new name, new email address, and no-one else will know I even exist (no matter what I’ve said in the past – quite frankly, I’m sick to death of people not understanding me, or even worse still, misunderstanding me! My old, recurring childhood nightmare becoming reality! Never again!) I miss being able to just look and see what Lee and Kit-Kat have said – it’s a bore having to ask Julian all the time – and half the time I forget to ask anyway, and so miss out on things I ought to know about.

Oh, I just saw these on Bored Panda! Absolutely gorgeous! I really love the first cat, though he’s either (a) not well, (b) terribly stressed out, or (c) wonderfully relaxed and happy! 🙂 Cats have a third eyelid which they can raise or lower – some cats only do it when they’re very ill (so if your cat’s been a bit off his or her food, and a bit lethargic, and they have their third eyelids raised, like the cat in the first photo, race them off to the Vet, toot sweet!) Other cats raise their third eyelid when they’re particularly stressed out about something – like having their photograph taken 😉 and still others do it when they’re warm, and happy, and relaxed, like sitting in your warm lap and being petted 🙂 It’s not related to any specific breed – it’s just something that some cats do, sometimes (typical cats! 😉 )

Tomorrow I’m off to the Hairdresser, and Julian is off to get his ankle scanned – he went to see Dr. B. this morning about it – he’s been grizzling about it for almost a month (if not longer!) now, and despite my nagging him to see the doctor about it, he’s only just got a round tuit (men!) Dr. B. was quite alarmed at how swollen it was, so he’s off to have an ultrasound tomorrow morning – and if that doesn’t show up anything definitely wrong, he’ll have to have a C-T Scan as well. I’m thinking I’ll ask for a cushion or something at the Hairdresser tomorrow – and see it that’ll boost me up closer to the back of the basin – if they don’t have one, perhaps I can sit on a pile of towels (clean, dry ones, please! 😉 )

Weigh-in this morning. More annoyance! I went down six points, to 91.8kg. This means I’m most likely to bounce hideously back up again tomorrow, or the day after! Stupid body, bloody weight! 😦

Well, I started writing this really early today (actually, I started writing it this morning, when I entered the Goodreads Quote of the Day thing) I’ve discovered that I can write stuff, and just leave it – Word Press automatically saves your Draft every few minutes – I discovered this the first time I had to race off in the middle of writing to go to dinner. All I could do was cross my fingers and hope that we didn’t have a brown out or something, and that what I’d already written would still be there when I came back. When I came back, everything was as I’d left it, but I noticed, down in the bottom right hand corner of the page “Draft saved at [insert time here]” – f’rinstance, at the moment it’s saying “Draft saved at 4.30.48 pm.” So this morning I thought “I can start the blog now, and just leave it – and I can come back and jot things down as they occur, so I won’t forget anything that I wanted to say tonight!” Brilliant idea! One that’s left me with no more excuses about “forgetting” something! So I might do that from now on – jot things down, and “pretty them up” when I start editing it later on… And apart from the Hairdresser and the Ankle Scan, I don’t think there’s much happening tomorrow – I’ll start Addain off in Gloamwood, maybe try a few more headers and backgrounds for the blog – dunno, really… But I’ll fill you all in on whether we did, or didn’t find out what’s wrong with himself’s ankle, and if he has to also have a C-T Scan or not – and whether or not I got another dose of water down my back… You’ll also find out just how badly I bounced back up again after that ridiculously large weight drop this morning – and lots of other things besides! But until then, please try very hard to bee good, do remember to drive ultra carefully in this wet weather, and above all…. stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

Firstly, allow me to wish a very hearty Many Happy Returns, and Big Birthday Cheers to Terry, my favourite youngest daughter’s husband! I hope he had a great day, even if he did have to go to work! 🙂

I worked on my graphics today, sorting out all of the fonts I downloaded the other day – some of them are excellent, some of them, not so excellent – but one in particular caught my eye, and I think I’ve managed to make a very nice Bookmarks Wallpaper with it. It’s called “Vulcan Script” (from the Vulcans of Star Trek fame) It’s a lot different from anything I’ve done before, and more or less reflects my still very somber mood. I’ve not put a screenshot up, because it’s not completely finished yet – I was just lining up all the elements and getting everything positioned correctly when my favourite eldest daughter arrived – so I got all of that done, and left it. I still have to work out and set up the colours for the text, hyperlinks, visited hyperlinks, and active hyperlinks, before it’ll be ready to display. I’ll put up some pictures then. The amusing thing about this one is the Vulcan Script (you do realise that it’s not real Vulcan Script, don’t you?) I used my initials to make the side panels – facing the right way on the left hand side, and reversed on the right hand side (mainly just for symmetry) See if you can work out what they are – I’ll bet each of you fifty dollars that you can’t guess or work out what they are without downloading the font and working it out from looking at that! You get three tries! 🙂

So Lee came over today, and brought me one of her Optifast Caramel Milkshakes to try – she likes them you see, and I had it for lunch… It was nice enough, I suppose, though it did leave a sort of a funny aftertaste which I didn’t really like… If we have any of the milkshakes we bought to try, I’ll donate them all to my daughter, I think – I don’t like drinking big quantities of liquid – I hardly even drink water – I really only drink enough to swallow pills with… which is probably not as much water as I should be drinking, but if I’m not thirsty, drinking water just makes me feel bloated. I drink three cups of tea a day (breakfast, lunch, and evening), and about the same amount of coffee (at morning tea time, afternoon tea time, and around “supper” time) And that’s about all the fluid I consume in a day… Anyway, having the milkshake (made with water, not milk!) for lunch made me feel as though I hadn’t eaten anything at all (which technically speaking, I hadn’t! I had consumed fluid, but I hadn’t eaten anything) and I felt quite… discombobulated – which means exactly what it sounds like it means! I missed chewing on my bars – I missed the texture of the bar and the taste of the bar… so I won’t be alternating my bars and my milkshakes any time soon.

We watched the last episode of season 4 of “Person of Interest” – a really-truly cliff hanger, if ever there was one! Right back near the very beginning of the series, in an act of self-preservation, “Our” (good) machine “escaped” from its mainframe confines and… vanished. No-one was able to locate it. We find out today (or in this last episode for the season) that it “escaped” into the national electrical grid – spread out throughout the entire north American continent. I think I recall telling you last time we watched it that it had given itself away to the bad, wicked, and evil machine, “Samaritan”, in order to save one of “our” heroes, and “Samaritan” had instigated electrical power surges and outages, starting from the West Coast, and sweeping across the country until “Our” machine was wedged up in a small area near Manhattan. Our three (no, sorry, four!) heroes are trying to save it – they’re attempting to download its core code to a briefcase stuffed full of solid state drives (I think!) Scary stuff, as they still have to get safely out of the building which is surrounded by “Samaritan” operatives, with their precious briefcase! So now we sit and we wait, and we bite our nails down to the quick that there will actually be a season 5, and that no-one else that we like will die! (Elias, one of the crime bosses, who was really very likable and played quite an important minor role, got bumped off in this episode 😦 ) Then we watched “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” until we ran out of episodes, and then we watched “Agent Carter” – another series from the Marvel stables. It’s set in the 1940’s and is an off-shoot from the “Captain America” movies, and looks like it could turn into quite a fun series to watch – nothing deep and meaningful in this show – just a lot of fun 🙂

Then Julian took Lee home, and I went for my evening Stair Walk (I really don’t know why I bother!) came back in, and started writing this (reprise: I really don’t know why I bother!)

Weigh-in this morning. I went up another point, to 92.4kg. I really don’t want to talk about it – and there’s nothing more to say, anyway.

And that’s about it, really – tomorrow I want to finish off my Bookmarks Wallpaper thingy – as I said, it’s quite black… and apart from finishing that, and a bit of Rift, that’s about all that’s happening tomorrow. I think. I have a visit to the Hairdresser on Thursday, where I’ll probably end up with more water down my back. Every hairdresser I’ve ever been to has basins which love spilling water down my back – and the same thing happens to Julian, too! I had a theory that it’s because I’m too short – when I sit in the chair my neck doesn’t reach the basin “curve” (or whatever) properly (which also means that the back of my head doesn’t get rinsed off properly, and I get a rash there from the shampoo they use!) Now, proving my theory wrong, is the fact that (a) Whereas I used to be tall (5’7″) I’m now short (unfortunately) and I also have a very short torso (or high waist – always have had) This means that the distance between my neck and my “derrière” is very short. Ahhh… Must go – dinner time! Back soon with the rest of why my theory is wrong!

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

 Here I am – back a bit later than usual – we had “things to discuss” 🙂 So… my marvelous theory wot doesn’t work… where was I? short torso… high waist…. don’t reach the basin… yeah. So maybe this is why I get water down my back. But (b) Julian has the same problem if he has his hair washed at the hairdresser… and his build is completely opposite to mine! He has a very long torso – and really quite short legs – so the much longer distance between his neck and his backside should pose no problem for his neck fitting comfortably into the “curve” of the basin, right? So why do we both end up with wet backs? Of course, all the hairdressers we’ve ever been to could have all had faulty basins… but I doubt it. One or two, maybe, but all of them? Nah…. So, there’s something for you all to ponder, on those long, cold nights of winter that are fast approaching! Anyway, I have Minions to sort out, and you no doubt have better things to do than listen to me waffle on about why we get wet backs when we go to the hairdresser. Do drop back again tomorrow night though – there’ll be lots more news, hopefully a couple of screenshots of my new Bookmark Wallpaper, and lots more waffle to entertain you all. I’ve pretty much given up on my weight – it’ll do what it wants to do, regardless of what I do. But until then – please bee good, make sure you wear your warmest gloves tomorrow morning, and above all… stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂  Continue reading “Winter’s log, earthdate 201505.12” →

It’s not been a very good day all round… I’ve not been able to settle on anything, though I did manage to get poor old Addain up to level 20 this morning… and I did make some progress about finding out about blog hosting – this particular place I contacted said that yes, they did do blog hosting, and did I want them to design one for me! I have yet to write back and tell them no, I didn’t want them to design it, I wanted me to design it, and how did I go about setting one up on their system, please? But that’s work for tomorrow. As you can see, I’ve not only fiddled around with headers and graphics, I’ve also fiddled around with yet another template (herein after referred to as YAT! It’s quicker and easier to write, and as I seem to do a lot of it (switching templates) I thought it’d be a good idea) This template is on the edge of being: quote [spoken in a drawn-out reluctant tone] “alright…” end quote. But it’s not what I want – I’ve spent quite literally hours today trying template after template, and you really don’t need, or want to know what some of them did to my graphics! So I’m tired, dispirited, and depressed today – please bear with me.

My favourite eldest daughter was Julian Taxied off to the doctor today to see what was wrong with her sore leg – doctor promptly sent her off for scans, just in case it might have been a blood clot. It wasn’t, thank heavens, as that’s where most pulmonary and cardiac embolisms come from (they’re often found to have come from blood clots forming in the lower leg due to lack of movement and exercise – and commonly called DVTs (deep-vein thrombosis) It’s been theorized that that’s where my two bouts of multiple pulmonary embolisms came from) So thank heavens they didn’t find any blood clots – and apart from the horrendous health risk they’d pose for my favourite eldest daughter, at least it’s not something else that I have to feel guilty about!

You know how sometimes you feel as though your whole life has come to a muddled sort of stand still? Well, you might not – this is me we’re talking about, and I do tend to muddle a lot, and at the moment I’ve muddled myself into a stand still. Nothing’s happening. Nothing’s moving along as it should. I’m at an impasse, with no idea of where to go or what to do next. I feel as though I have no direction – I don’t even know what I want to do! Oh, I’ll get sick of this mood soon enough, I suppose, but at the moment I’m in a brown study, with a big fat black dog lying across my feet and making them far too hot. I’ll have to kick him off soon…

Weigh-in this morning… Was depressing. I went up another point to 92.3kg. I’m getting thoroughly sick and tired of this – I walk up and down the stairs, even though it’s killing my knees, I eat virtually nothing – all for what?! I was losing an average of a kilo a week – now it’s more like a kilo every week and a half to two weeks. As I said above – everything seems to be dragging to a stand-still. But I’ll keep going, because I said I would, and because everyone expects me to, but really and truly? I really can’t be bothered anymore.

My favourite eldest daughter will be over tomorrow – we’ll probably watch some episodes of either “Person of Interest”, or “Agents of Shield”, or both, and if I’m very lucky (or unlucky, depending on your viewpoint) I might even get an hour or two of Rifting in – or stuffing around with graphics.

This is a very short blog tonight, and not a very nice one. I’m sorry for that, but it’s the way I feel at the moment. Don’t worry, I’ll get over it – you’re just getting a small glimpse of the real, “not very nice” me. Luckily she doesn’t surface very often. No doubt there’ll be lots of interesting things to tell you about tomorrow – “Person of Interest”, “Agents of Shield”, and perhaps a paragraph or so about the new series Julian and I are watching at the moment – “Elementary” – the one I told you a bit about some time ago – Sherlock Holmes set in America, with a female Dr. Watson. It’s quite good, but it takes a bit of getting “into” because it’s so far removed from just about anything you’ve become accustomed to with Sherlock Holmes. I’m not sure at all if I’ll mention my weight tomorrow – at the moment, we’re not talking to each other. As for the rest of…. “everything”…. I’m sure I’ll be back to normal tomorrow… or the day after… or something. So do drop around again tomorrow night for the next installment of “What Ails Winter and Is She Better Yet” – but until then, bee good, don’t hide your light under a bushel, and above all… stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

I’d like to with a very Happy Mother’s Day (or what’s left of it now) to all mothers out there! 🙂 I didn’t see my two favourite daughters today, but I did speak to them both this morning, which was lovely 🙂 As is rapidly becoming a new “Family Tradition” with us, we’ll be having our Mother’s Day celebration next Sunday – for an “afternoon tea”, instead of a “luncheon” – I mean, it was all very well having big family meals with all the trimmings when it was only me that was sitting there eating an Optifast bar and sipping mineral water, but there’ll be two of us sitting there eating Optifast bars and sipping mineral water now, and I know that my favourite eldest daughter is still finding it hard to “think positive thoughts and smile” while others around her are eating things that she would rather be eating too… and then apologising to her for eating those things in front of her! It’d be much more betterer if they’d just shut up, enjoyed their dinner, and talked about other things. In time she’ll get used to it, however the road is more boring than hard, and it’s just a matter of shrugging off the boredom, and doing, or thinking, of other things. However I did get a Mother’s Day Card and present this morning – from Julian 🙂 (well, I am old enough to be his mother! 😉 ) it’s a Salt Crystal Lamp with a USB plug on the end of the cord, so you can plug it into your computer, or whatever. It is made of salt (well, the outside of it is – if it were a solid ball of salt you wouldn’t be able to see the led light inside it!) and the leds cycle through pretty rainbow colours. It’s one of those “Negative ion generators” that were so popular from late 1960 to the mid ’70’s – approximate dates only, I fear – I can’t g/find much about them, other than that they’re “really wonderful!”, and are still (apparently) very popular! Anyway, it’s sitting on my desk in front of me, cycling through it’s pretty colours and looking very fetching indeed! 🙂

Before I forget again – I’ve been meaning to put this up for the last two days, but I keep on forgetting… so without further ado:

Seen on Bored Panda today (and yes, it’s still there – I just checked! 😉 )
Extraordinarily beautiful double exposure animal portraits

As you know, today was our “Sunday In Dusken”, where we run around killing the wildlife, pulling up the wildflowers – I mean “weeds” 😉  and digging up the minerals. The last two Sundays we played, we went up two levels each time – this week, we only went up one. As we’re progressing through Seratos (the area we’re currently questing in) the quests are getting harder, taking longer to complete, and the “rewards” not worth as much in terms of resale value. However, most of the “gear” rewards (read: armor and weapons) that we’re given are reasonably big upgrades for us – though some (like the fancy gloves that we got as one quest “reward”) aren’t worth the cost of carting them around until we can locate a Vendor to sell them to! Luckily, that’s the exception, rather than the rule! Still, a good time was had by all (except for all the nasty critters we killed) and neither of us died, or even came close to dying, once! 🙂

Last night I went searching for “third-party” Word Press templates – and I found quite a lot! But a lot of them seem to be the same ones that Word Press already makes available to you, and none of the sites with the (and I’m not sure if they even are third-party themes or not, now!) so-called “free” Word Press templates give you any idea of how to go about using them! In fact, they all claim that they’re “free” templates/themes, but then go on to talk about you having to sign up and pay for the privilege of doing so?! I think (but I’m really not sure, so don’t take this as gospel!) that you sign up with them, (i.e. not with Word Press) they provide the blog template, but you have to run your blog on their terms, and on one of their servers. In other words, you’re tied to their apron strings – like Apple users are to Apple products! and what’s more, you may lose control of your own content. But I’m only guessing. What I don’t like is the fact that I was not able to easily find any information about these concerns on their website(s) – such a complete lack of really important information always makes me very wary indeed! However, there may yet be another solution to my theme and/or template graphical problems available 😉 but I’ll tell you more when I find out more myself 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. You know? I think I’ll blame the cold, and the fact that I was shivering so much – it must have made me weigh more, or something! Thank goodness today is the 10th of the month! I can stop taking those [*heavily censored*] fluid retaining tablets at last! I was not a happy little Vegemite this morning, no sirree! 😦 I went up one point to 92.2kg! I’m sooo cross about it! And I did extra walking around yesterday, too! *pout* What’s a girl gotta do to lose weight these days, anyway! 😦 S’not fair! (reprise *pout*)

Because I knew I’d be busy with this blog tonight, I set Foxtel up to record “Compass” tonight – it sounds quite interesting. Compass is a faith and religion half hour program on Sunday nights (ABC1) presented by Geraldine Doogue – sometimes we watch it, sometimes we don’t – it depends on what they’re discussing. Some of the shows are very good indeed, and offer a lot of information on religious and/or ethical subjects that you might be curious about, but not curious enough to go and do the research and digging off your own bat. Sometimes we might need a little push in the right direction… There’s a new set of half hour documentaries starting tonight, based on “Whatever happened to….” (various things) F’rinstance, tonight’s show is called “Whatever happened to Sunday School” – it sounds intriguing, and I’m quite interested – I was occasionally packed off to Sunday School, sometimes by my well-meaning parents, and occasionally at my own insistence – as were Lisa and Kate, by me 🙂

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

I think I went once or twice to just about all the Sunday Schools – Church of England, Methodist, Presbyterian – even Roman Catholic, especially when I was living in Italy. I even went to the local Hebrew Shul with a Jewish girlfriend a few times – although I was not allowed to attend the part where the kids were taught Hebrew. But I was always interested in what all of these “early religious training” places had to say, and teach (as you can probably gather, I was a somewhat “different” child!) Whatever – I’m interested to see what Compass has to say on the subject, and knowing our viewing habits, it’s always a good idea to have a few half hour shows tucked away for when we want to finish up the evening a bit earlier than usual (like tonight, when I haven’t finished writing my blog!) If tonight’s Compass is any good, I’ll tell you about it later – if you’re lucky. And if you’re even luckier, I’ll watch it, form an opinion, fully intend to mention it, but forget all about it when something else grabs my attention! 😉 So there it is! Another day, another exciting episode of “Life Chez Nous”! Never doubt that yet another equally exciting, thrilling, and nail-biting episode will be waiting here for you, tomorrow night! 🙂 Did my weight go up more, or did it go down a bit – and we won’t even mention the possibility of it staying the same, will we! I’m really sorry to disappoint you all, but I won’t be able to do my nails tomorrow – the ruddy “textured” wall in the stair well tore off another nail this morning – right down at the quick! Through my glove, even!! But there’ll be lots of other things for me to tell you all about! (isn’t there always? 😉 ) So until then, bee good, change out of those wet clothes immediately! and above all… stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

Well-l-l… do you want the good news first, or the bad news? 🙂 The good news is that Julian and I picked up our new glasses today – he still has one more pair to come – and I don’t know about his, but mine are much more betterer! 🙂 I can actually see the screen without squinting! (squinting causes wrinkles, don’t you know! So we don’t want to be squinting, do we?! 😉 ) Unfortunately, now I have to squint to see the keyboard! (Ahem! the previous statement about squinting causing wrinkles has never been proven beyond reasonable doubt, thank heavens!) The bad news is that I tried out a paneled background and header, and they looked really good! Until I tried them out on the blog. Once again, Word Press’s strange way of rendering graphics has reared its ugly head. For some completely unknown reason, the header part of the equation gets shrunk to about 3/4 of its original (“what you see is what you should expect to get”) size… while the background portion of the graphic – the second of the two pieces – both cut from the same original graphic – and each having exactly the same dimensions as the other… gets magically enlarged (magnified?) to the same proportions that the header was shrunk! How?! Why?! It’s stupid! It doesn’t make sense! The theme obviously didn’t do it with the current background and header, if it had, you’d see “join” lines where the header sits above the top of the background. The background doesn’t tile all the way to the top of the page – it ends – comes to a full stop – just below the bottom edge of the header! The background underneath this header is just plain “pink”, which I can only suppose the system chose after “sampling” the header pattern colours and coming up with a “reasonable match” (which it still managed to get wrong anyway – it’s far too dark!) So it looks like there will be no paneled backgrounds – at least with this theme – some themes seem to behave differently just because they feel like it! I’d move this blog away from Word Press, but apparently it’s the best of a bad bunch I saw some sort of article somewhere – or it might even have been a piece of spam in my email – I can’t remember now – all I can remember is looking at it and thinking “Oh!? Maybe there are “third-party” Word Press themes available?! I wonder how you install them… I must…” – and then I forgot about it because something else grabbed my attention… Say la Vee, as the French say! So, perhaps I will go hunting for “third-party” Word Press blog themes, now that I’ve finished all the mind numbingly boring Rift re-setting ups.

Anyway, graphics and Word Press aside, we went off early this morning to pick up our glasses (minus one pair of Julian’s because they weren’t ready yet) and from there we went on to The Pines shopping centre, because there’s an Autograph and a My Size there. I’d seen a rather nice cardigan/jacket in my bit of My Size email this morning, and I was desirous of having a quick squint at it before declaring it (as I should have!) “too expensive” for what it was. Autograph had their “40% off everything” sale on, and of course, since I was going to My Size first, I left my nice $50.00 gift voucher wot they’d given me for being such a good customer…. at home, on my desk. So, just to prove to them what a good little customer I really was, I bought the (rather too expensive, I’m afraid) cardigan/jacket. It’s a size “Small”, and if anything, it’s really a teeny bit too big for me – even though I was wearing a fairly bulky jumper this morning – but it’s warm, and snug, and has a nice collar that I can turn up to keep my stupid right ear warm (no, that wasn’t the main reason I bought it – though I’ll admit it did float through my mind while I was trying to think of reasons not to buy it… 🙂 ) Have any of you ever been to The Pines? It’s quite a nice shopping centre – and has just about everything you could want – Woolworths, Coles… an Aldi (all quite large ones, too!) there’s a well-appointed Chemist shop (which also sells Optifast products) a Pet Shop that seems to sell mainly dog beds, gift shops, hairdressers, The Bank of Melbourne, Priceline… a reasonably sized food hall, lots of half way decent looking food stalls… and pigeons, well, one pigeon, anyway, strutting around and pecking at crumbs scattered around one of the food stalls – he certainly looked well fed and happy – then he fluttered off somewhere else. It’s odd, seeing a largish bird like a pigeon in the food hall – sparrows, yeah, I’d expect to see them in a fairly well closed shopping centre (but I didn’t) – they’re little, and I suspect that if the health authorities did a spot check on all the supermarkets in Melbourne they’d find whole colonies of sparrows inhabiting most of them – but pigeons? I’ve never seen birds that big hanging around in closed off food halls in the middle of a shopping centre… Oh, I also bought a pair of full fingered gloves from one of the little kiosk thingies there – I usually wear one of my fingerless gloves when I’m doing my Stair Walk because the over-textured and razor sharp rendering on the wall of the stair well absolutely slices my hand to ribbons! Not to mention chipping off all my nails, one by one – even the ones on the hand that’s nowhere near the wall! That’s how lethal those walls are! So I tried them out when I got home – they worked very well – what a shame the gloves will probably get ruined – they’re a lovely shade of purple… 🙂 Anyway, after lunch I did a bit of Rifting, then I got onto those graphics, wot I’ve already told you about 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. Was a big relief! Yesterday I went up two points, to 92.4kg. This morning I came down three points, to 92.1kg 🙂 Perhaps the Big Bounce Back figured it had the wrong address, after all, when I didn’t scream and cry, rend my clothes, shave off my eyebrows, and scatter dirt and ashes though my hair… Now let’s wait and see what happens tomorrow morning – my last morning on those wretched tablets! Maybe then I’ll be able to shed a bit more fluid… (but it’ll take a couple of days for my body to wake up to the fact that it doesn’t have to hoard fluids anymore, like they were going out of style or something!)

So tonight we’ve got another ABC1 night – another in the new Father Brown series, about a bumbling priest who solves murder mysteries (Father Brown is played by the actor who played Ron Weasley’s father in the Harry Potter movies – I fergit ‘is name, but!) followed by part two of another “detective”-type show, DCI Banks. It’s quite good – worth a watch, if you’ve nothing better to do (Hmm… coming in half way through a two-parter might be a bit confusing – you could catch up with iView, though 😉 ) So that’ll be largely our night! Tomorrow, of course, is Sunday, and once again, we’ll be happily sashaying around Dusken. I remember the first time we ended up in Dusken – I was scared… it was too hard… it was an ugly place! (and everyone knows how I always go for “pretty”! 🙂 ) No, I didn’t like it at all! This time around though, I think I’m almost blasé about it… even the “Pus Swamp” doesn’t fill me with dread, simply by the sound of its name! (shudder!) So you can be sure there’ll be lots to tell you about all our adventures in Dusken – maybe we’ll die multiple times – maybe we’ll go up several levels – maybe we won’t die, or even go up a level! But we will have fun! 🙂 I’ll be able to give a much better report on our new glasses, after our eyes get accustomed to the new prescriptions in the lenses, and weight-wise I’ll tell you whether I went up, or down… or whether I stayed frustratingly the same! So tune in again tomorrow, for a night of fun, frivolity and… other interesting stuff! 😉 Until then, bee good, keep warm tonight, and above all… stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

I’ve finished! I’ve finished! I’ve finally finished all that Rift messing about! Six shards! It seems like it’s taken for ever and ever! I was getting so tired (not to mention bored!) that my eyes kept crossing, and then closing… and I’d wake myself up with a shake and a startle, heave a great sigh, and keep on working. Those Guild Bank Vaults are a real must have, though! I was nearly going bonkers trying to find places to put items – no-one had any money with which to buy bags, I’d really hit my limit buying Credits to finance more personal bank vaults… oh, it was a damn long hard slog! But it’s over! Finished! 🙂 (Winter does a little virtual dance around the room) Yay me! 🙂 And you know what? In all that messy work this morning, I still found time to go and look for my Guild Wars 2 receipt, the game’s serial number, and my account – so it does exist, and I’ll look into it properly after I’ve calmed down after that massive Rift sorting out/culling/re-setting up, and spent a couple of days fiddling around with my graphics 🙂 I think I remember why both Lisa and I left Guild Wars 2 – although it can be played solo, it’s not really designed to be played that way – it’s much more of a social, interactive type of game. Unfortunately, my favourite eldest daughter takes after me in that regard – she’s almost as anti-social as I am! (and I’m better than Julian is, so you can see why we’re not terribly socially active!) We don’t have many friends, but those we do have, we count as dear as family. I might ask – er – Daniel? next week if Guild Wars 2 is still like that or not… Sometimes I wish “they’d” (you know, the ubiquitous “They” that seem to be in charge of, and at the root of, just about everything?! “They say”, “They think”, “They don’t” etc. etc.) come up with a new MMO – like Rift, only easier to follow, understand, and play, and with far better character creation abilities (which was one thing that GW2 did have over Rift – and WoW, for that matter!)

You remember I said we’d had a Real Estate person here the other day? Well, he sent us, snail mail (! “Yes, Virginia, Snail Mail does still exist at the bottom of your garden!” 😉 ) some printed matter of places we might be interested in having a look at – just to see what’s available these days – we haven’t been involved in the property market for over 12 years – I guess it’ll be much the same – only the prices will be different, I suspect! 🙂 Five sheets with both descriptions, photos, and a floor plan, and a separate sheet with 13 other new listings. None of the ones with the floor plans attached were what I would call “comparable” to this place – all of them would turn into massive “Warland Road” jobs (Warland Road was the place I inherited from a family friend, and which we gutted and re-furbished for Kate and Terry to live in) In the past, we’ve found that you start off saying “Yes, well I want all the carpet out, and tiles put down, and the bathrooms will have to be re-done with no bath, a but a much larger shower with a bench seat in it, and….” But the “and…. and…. and’s” grow into a list about a block long… and once you start pulling things apart to do them differently, you start finding… little problems, like “Good grief! Look at that! That pane of glass in the window is actually holding up the roof! We’re going to have to get a supporting beam in there, somehow!” (which was exactly what happened in Warland Road!) Renovations and refurbishments are never easy, straight-forward, or quick, no matter what you see on “The Block”, “Grand Designs”, or any other “Home Improvement” shows! It’s a headache, an enormous pain in the hip pocket nerve, and they drag on for ages. Quite frankly, it’d probably be better to build from scratch – that way there are no nasty little surprises, you know exactly what you’re going to get from the word “go”, and you know (if you’re project managing it yourself!) that it’s been done properly, from the ground up. No more roofs resting on a window pane for us, thank you very much! Of course, building from scratch brings its own problems, including the “where do you want to build” one. Where indeed! I can’t even decide which suburb we should be looking in for an existing house! Ringwood? Glen Iris? Balwyn North? Mitcham? Basically, we’re looking for a three (or four) bedroom place, with two bathrooms. Why three or four bedrooms, when there’s only the two of us? Well, we need a “spare room”, just in case someone decides to come and stay, and we need a “computer room” or “den”, and we need an office/library/somewhere where Julian can work in peace and quiet – that’s already three bedroom-sized rooms, let alone the “master bedroom” with an ensuite… Oh, and we have to have loads and loads of storage space, for all our junk (some of which is still in storage from our last move in 2007!) So, if any of you know of a suitable property, please let us know, OK? 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. It found me. Tracked me down, and pounced, scratching and clawing at me with all its claws and teeth! The Big Bounce Back attacked just after dawn, while I was clambering onto the scales, still half muzzy with sleep. Well, I wasn’t surprised – I’d been expecting it – and to tell you the truth, it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. I went up two points, from 92.2kg to 92.4kg But as I said, it could have been worse. In September last year I went up four points (and came down three the next day) October last year I went up three points (and came down more than half a kilo the next day!) Three points in December (and down two the next day) Four points up in February this year (but only one point down the next day! That was an abysmally slow month!) Seven points up in April – last month – and only two down the next day (I think I cried a lot over that one!) Of course, we don’t know how much I’ll go up again (or, hopefully, down!) tomorrow… I suppose we can only weight and see… 🙂

So, there is was – “moi day”, by Winter Thyme 😉 We’re looking forward to tonight  – “Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries” is starting again on ABC1 – it’s a fun little show – full of froth and bubble, nothing too deep and meaningful – an enjoyable and entertaining hour – if you haven’t watched it before, I can highly recommend it! 🙂 Tomorrow I should be able to get back to normal (or what passes laughingly for “normal” around here) activities. Autograph is having a 40% off sale – and I do need some sort of cardigan, or jacket… but perhaps I’d better wait and see if the BBB is going to stack a few more points onto my rapidly shrinking frame? Dunno… I’ll see how I feel after I weigh myself tomorrow morning 😉 I should be able to get a preliminary paneled tile ready for experimentation tomorrow – if it’s any good, I might even put it up tomorrow night for you approval – we’ll see what happens – I might not get a round tuit, especially if I do decide to go jacket hunting (after all, 40% off is not to be sneezed at!) and I got a $50.00 voucher from My Size in the mail today, too! ….for having spent so much money there! Ya gotta laugh! I spend the money there, and they give me some fiscal “encouragement” to continue spending more! So whatever happens, gentle readers, you can be very sure that there’ll be lots of news, happenings, visitations, and other things for me to tell you about tomorrow night! But until then, please remember to bee good, don’t forget to brush your teeth, but above all…. stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

As Seen on Bored Panda today:
Beautiful Owls (I love owls!)
and
25+ Pets That Need To Go Inside RIGHT NOW

Would you believe it’s a quarter to six, in the evening, and we’ve just got back from my 3.15 hairdressing appointment? Well-l-l… we did stop off on the way home so that Julian could get himself a “casual jacket” that he can bum around the house in, and Big W is a bit labyrinthine, the way they have things laid out (and it’s definitely not designed in any way shape of form for use by disabled people!) However! No screenies of my hair tonight – in this lighting you wouldn’t really be able to tell the difference – it’s subtle, designed more for toning my hair towards blending in with the rest of the colours (you got yet another complement, Josh – Brooke, their best colourist, said that whoever had done the foils had done an “expert” job! And no, I didn’t tell them) But wow! What an experience! I arrived… and was, as usual, offered a cup of tea or coffee (standard procedure) but then I was given – if you can you believe it – a very enjoyable and relaxing massage! Neck, shoulders and base of the skull. A little later on, the guy – Daniel, I think his name was, came back to give me a hand massage as well! Then, when the colour was finally rinsed off, Brooke used some sort of a “treatment” on my hair and scalp, then covered it all with a hot towel, and put a warm eye pad over my eyes, and left me to “relax” for about ten minutes. Then the hot towel (which was by then a “cool” towel) and eye pad were removed, my hair was given one last light rise, and I was ready to be dried. I don’t think I’ve ever had a hair colouring treatment quite like it! If that’s their standard hair colouring procedure,  maybe I should have my hair coloured every week! Young Daniel is quite interested in the sound of Rift – he plays Guild Wars 2, and says that it’s quite confusing until you get up to about level 30, but that it’s worth persevering with. I have actually played it, a fair while ago, but I think I only ever got up to about level 11 or something – so perhaps I’ll give it another go…

And speaking of Rift, I started my work on Greybriar last night. I’d managed to get two characters re-set up properly, and all of a sudden there was a sort of a doorbell chime (“ding-dong”, Avon crawling!) and a notice appears on the screen saying that the server’s coming down in 30 minutes for maintenance, and would we all please get ourselves to somewhere safe. The system was expected to be down for five hours, and a “Sorry for the inconvenience!” was tacked on at the end. Grrr! I was just getting into my stride, too! Oh well, so I started again this morning, right after breakfast, but only managed to get another four characters done before it was time to get ready to go out. That leaves me with another four to do tomorrow – unless I decide to go and have another look at Guild Wars 2 – which may be easier said than done! I know I had an account, and I know I played it. I’m also pretty sure I bought it – mainly because it doesn’t say anything about “Free to Play” on it’s home screen – and because I have a vague recollection of Julian saying that it was cheap enough, I might as well get it (because my favourite eldest daughter was not only playing it, but very enthusiastic about it too) And of course, this all means that I’m going to have to open up my email in order to check back through ancient messages for receipt type emails, and confirmatory messages… and I object, very strongly, to opening up my email more than once a day in the morning! So it’ll just have to wait until tomorrow! Why do I object to opening up my email except once a day, in the morning? In all honesty, I don’t know! I think it stems back to the time when checking your email meant being deluged in more than a hundred pieces of spam that you had to wade through to get to the “good bits”. This should give you all a clue as to how long ago that was – I think email filtering might have progressed just a teeny bit since then – but old habits die hard. On the other hand, I have been known to check my email repeatedly, at all times of the day or night, when I thought that a particular piece of email might have been coming in. Anyway, this business with Guild Wars 2 isn’t really all that important – it’s just that I’m curious, now…. And I’m sure you’ve all met people similar to a “curious Winter” before – they prowl around like a demented tiger, snapping people’s heads off, fretting, fidgeting, sulky, waspish… need I go on? 🙂 (Why is my right hand sore? It feels like a toothache in all of the bones in my palm – on top of my palm? duh! In the palm region of my hand!) Ooops! Look at the time! Five minutes to the news, and dinner! Back again later! 🙂

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

Right – back again! 🙂 Yes, I’m curious about Guild Wars 2 – but even more curious to know what happened to my account, and what my password was! I guess I’ll find out tomorrow… 🙂 And besides, I have too much work to do on Rift at the moment. Not to mention my graphics, which I haven’t really touched for two whole days! You know, there’s only one thing wrong with having really, really short hair, like me! My right ear gets freezing cold, to the point where it aches! Only my right ear – my left ear’s perfectly fine… so here I am, typing away, wearing that lovely new red and black paisley shawl… with part of the shawl wrapped around my right ear. I know I look stupid, but at least my ear’s warm!

Weigh-in this morning. Was quite mystifying! I keep expecting the “Big Bounce Back”, but it obviously hasn’t located my address yet…I went down another point, to 92.2kg! I’m thinking that by the time the “BBB” locates me, and it will, I might well be in the 91kg zone! But I hope it doesn’t locate me until I get down to at least 91.0kg 😉 So now I’m getting worried about weighing myself tomorrow morning! What if I go up eight points? Even if you live in Mildura, I think you’d probably hear me scream!

So… as far as I know, we’re not doing anything vitally important tomorrow, which will give me ample time to finish off Greybriar, (hopefully) locate my missing Guild Wars 2 account and password, do a bit of work on my “paneled” background tile, and paint my nails! [fx: hysterical laughter /fx] And if you believe all of that, well I have this wonderful bridge to sell you…. 😉 Seriously though, I should not only get Greybriar finished off, but I should also have had a chance to look at Laethys, and see if I can do anything sensible with my higher level girls there. The thing is, I can solo my girls up to around level 50, with only minimum help from himself for some of the harder zone-ending Rift quests – but past level 50, soloing gets fairly hard core… that’s why a lot of my characters end up sitting on level 50 for (sometimes!) years… however, whatever I do end up doing tomorrow, you can bet your sweet bippy* that there’ll be plenty of news, interesting (and boring) anecdotes, gossip, and obscure phrases like the sweet bippy one above 🙂 – so don’t miss out! call in again this time tomorrow night! 😉 But until then, remember to bee good, don’t hide your (collective) lights under a bushel, and above all…. stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

* “you can bet your sweet bippy” (see “Catchphrases”, just past half way down the page…)

Five past four in the afternoon, and I’ve just finished (re)setting up Wolfsbane. I started before breakfast, worked until lunch time, and had a bit of a break while I did my Stair Walk and ate my bar. Julian was out – we’d had a phone call from my favourite eldest daughter – she’s done something to her leg and she didn’t think she was fit enough to catch the bus home from uni – could Julian go and pick her up, please? She’ll make an appointment to see the doctor, and I suppose we’ll be providing the taxi service for that, too. Goodness knows what’s she’s done to her leg – but I suspect it’s her weight more than anything else. She is being a good girl, sticking to her weight loss program and losing kilos steadily on her version of my Optifast diet, but quite frankly, I think she might have reached the tipping point for joint damage some time ago – I guess we can only hope it’s not permanent joint damage…  More news on her leg as it comes to hand…  Anyway, I ate my lunch and got straight back to work on Wolfsbane – that was the shard with the four level 50 girls, and another six of them under level 40… What a job! Only one shard – Greybriar – left to go…. I’ve decided that after I’ve done that one, I’m going to have to set up a Guild on each shard, mainly because we desperately need the extra storage room that a Guild Bank Vault will give us. And that’s going to be fun! fun! fun! too – these days it seems to have become “customary” to offer bribes to get people to sign your Guild form (in other words, if you don’t offer the bribe, you don’t get the signatures, and from memory, you need nine of them!) Another inducement is to tell them that they don’t have to stay in the Guild – it’s just until you get it set up. Sometimes they take the gold and skip before the Guild is created, and sometimes they don’t want to leave this nice, cosy little Guild that you paid them to join, in which case, you have to kick them out. Personally, to avoid any unpleasantness, I always wait until they’re off-line before I kick them out 😉 So, I guess that’s more work to look forward to. Back when our “Gaming Religion” was World of Warcraft, Julian and I both had two accounts – two accounts? 🙂 double the number of characters you could have! Paradise, for an altoholic like me 😉 and in those days, Julian wasn’t all that much better 🙂 We were talking about that this morning, actually, and after a long-ish sort of pause, Julian said, a trifle hesitantly, “You can have a second account (on Rift) if you want to…” Well! My little heart started to go pitter-patter, pitter-patter – Oh joy! A chance to have more characters? What bliss! 🙂 However, I demurred – saying that I thought I had enough on my plate at the moment… (but just wait until I’ve cleared the backlog, tee hee hee! 😉 ) So, to sum up, I have one last shard to (re)set up, and four Guilds to create (what a shame that Guilds can’t be multi-sharded!) before I can get back to any serious questing – that is, if I don’t go on a wild rampage creating another fifty or sixty characters on a second account! Just kidding… 🙂 (at the moment! 😉 ) So I’ve not had a chance to do any graphic-type work at all today – I didn’t want to have a bit of a fiddle at lunch time – I knew I’d only get involved with it and not want to get back to Wolfsbane… but at least it’s done, now… 🙂

By the way, did any of you read the somewhat startling and extraordinary news that Texans (that’s the one in the USA where all the oil is/was) actually believed that their own Government was about to…. *gasp*! *shock!* *horror!* invade them?! and take them over?! I kid you not! Julian told me this morning, and I could hardly believe my ears! Why would the American Government want to invade Texas, one of their own states, anyway?! But here it is, in The Age (*sigh* I knew that that once respected and much admired newspaper was turning into a Tabloid! I just knew it!) Honestly, was it even worth publishing? Or maybe it was an attempt to make Australians (and maybe the rest of the world?) realise just how totally and incredibly crazy [loony, stupid, away with the fairies] a lot of Americans are! And they’re supposed to be one of the great leaders of the modern world? One of the world’s “policemen”? May heaven help us all if that’s the case, because apparently quite a few Americans can’t seem to be able to tell the difference between fantasy and reality, on a good day, with a fair wind behind them!

Weigh-in this morning. Well, I was dreading getting on the scales. I shivered my way into the Den (where the scales are) and dithered, putting things away. I really didn’t want to get on the scales… I just knew it would be horrible…. I hopped on… the scales wavered around between 92.4kg and 92.5kg…. then settled down on… 92.3kg! Amazement! One point less than yesterday! Just think – if I wasn’t taking those ruddy pills, I might even be into the 91kg zone by now! However, I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth – I’m thankful for small mercies (some of the time, anyway! 😉 ) Hopefully my Big Bounce Back has lost my address…

I have another Oscar Oscar appointment tomorrow afternoon – they want me to go in a bit earlier, so that they’ll “have more time” (more time? I wonder what for? I don’t have all that much hair, anyway!) However, I believe I’m having some colour done, and I know that takes for evah, so that’s prolly why. Well, you lucky readers, you! 🙂 You’re getting a somewhat shorter blog than usual, because I’ve been too busy, nose down, tail up, to do anything interesting enough to want to tell you about (apart from those amazingly idiotic Americans, that is! My mind is still boggling!) So what about all you lot out there? Anyone been doing anything novel? Exciting? Interesting? Read any good books lately? Ah yes, talking of books, I don’t know if any of you know that my maternal Grandfather used to write short stories for magazines, a long time ago. We have some of his old manuscripts here somewhere, and when we manage to find the “safe place” we put them in, I’m thinking of starting up another blog, or perhaps I should say “anti-blog”, because I intend to transcribe his stories into this “anti-blog” so that other people can enjoy them too. Some of them are hilariously funny, and some of them are a teeny bit off-putting (from what I can remember of them, anyway) but he could certainly spin a good “yarn”, and I think it’s high time that they saw the light of day again! 🙂 I’ll let you know when we find them… hmmmm…. I’m just looking at the word count on the bottom of the screen – maybe this blog won’t be quite as short as I thought it would be, after all! Sorry about that one, chiefs! 😉 Anyway, that really is about it from me to all of you out there tonight in Readerland – but do drop back in tomorrow night – find out in my Big Bounce Back has managed to find out where I live after all, and paid me a visit, or if I’ve managed to give it the slip again! And learn what happened when I finally finished Greybriar – will I have created my Guilds? Have I even got enough gold for the bribes? Will I have created a second Rift account for myself? Lots of questions – lots of answers, and lots of news! If it turns out alright, I might even put up some photos of my hair colour… so as you can see, there’ll be lots stories and hot goss! So, from now until tomorrow night, remember to bee good, don’t forget to eat your greens, and above all…. stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

Do you know, it’s about 3 minutes to six – I’ve just come back from my evening Stair Walk, which I was going to take a break for at about half past five… but I hadn’t quite finished the re-setting up of Faeblight, and I wanted to get that done first! It’s taken me all day, even after I’d deleted those two Dwarven Mages! Nine characters… all had to have their Dimensions checked (to make sure there were no super-duper-cool ones there that I might have deleted by mistake – as I have done once before!) their settings changed, their banks re-sorted, their spells re-set out, and finally, they had to be dressed appropriately! (I had to re-do their “wardrobes” – all their old stuff had been returned to them, so it all had to be done again) What a job! I hope I never have to go through all my shards deleting extraneous characters again for a long, long, time! And I still have Greybriar and Wolfsbane to do, not to mention having a look at Laethys to see if there’s anyone from there that I can move across to the “needier” shards… however I did have a short break of about three-quarters of an hour where I experimented with some graphic stuff – no, not the plain central panel one I was talking about last night, I was actually working on a new idea I had for my Bookmarks Wallpaper… I’m not sure how it’ll work out yet – I think the side graphics are just a tad too big for it at the moment – I think I’ll be able to shrink them a bit, but it might not be enough (the graphics are branches of fluffy blossoms, and if I make them too small, they’ll look too fiddly) in which case it’ll be back to square one and I’ll have to start all over again. Tomorrow though I think will be mostly taken up with clawing my way through Wolfsbane and Greybriar – though I’ll probably only be able to manage to get through one of them – they’re both nine characters strong, and looking at their lists, I see that Wolfsbane has four level 50’s, which means extra work pour moi (level 50 and above are being given an extra Action Bar because they have more junk that has to be easily and quickly accessible) Greybriar only has two level 40’s… I think I’ll work on Wolfsbane and get it over and done with, and out of the way! I hope we’re not supposed to be going anywhere tomorrow…

Oh, I saw two things on Bored Panda yesterday that might be of interest to some of you – but the first one comes with a warning! Do not look at these photos if you’re not into clowns, and Stephen King horror stories, OK?!! 🙂 They’re really horrid! Remember! You have been warned! The second one though, is amazing, and fantastic, and absolutely beautiful! I want them all! Especially the Owl ones…she is one very talented lady! 🙂

I’m so tired after all that work on Faeblight today – I’m quite sure I’ll dream of ruddy Action Bars and macros all night! I hope I don’t though… It’s not so much that it’s hard work, because it’s not hard at all – it’s just tedious and boringly repetitious work. Hard work is good for you (in moderation, of course! Everything and anything, in moderation, right?! 😉 ) Boring and repetitious work tends to make you go to sleep… well, it makes me go to sleep, anyway! I have promised myself that I will not get myself into a position where I have to do another major cull like this, for at least twenty years – well, at the very least, six months, anyway! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. Was both annoyingly frustrating, and humblingly pleasing. I stayed the same, at 92.4kg Frustrating, because I really hate being left in “the middle of the see-saw”, and humblingly pleasing, because I didn’t sky-rocket back up again, after my two satisfyingly large drops (that’ll happen tomorrow – you mark my words! Because I will go up again (but hopefully not by too much!)) *sigh* Dinner’s ready… back soon…

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

And, here I am again. Well, we did have a visitor for a while this afternoon – an Real Estate Agent. We’re not moving – not yet, anyway, but we did want to get some idea of how much this place was worth – the answer to which was not as much as I thought it would be! Oh well. However, this place is getting a trifle old, there are new apartments going up all over Doncaster Hill, and there’s always the worry that our local Council – bless their stony little hearts – might be “persuaded” by self-interest to alter their by-laws concerning building heights (that is, what’s the likelihood of some developer buying up the apartments below and opposite us, and building a massive high-rise there, blocking our city views?) Not much chance of that, said our friendly little Estate Agent, reminding us that the apartments opposite are all owned separately, and it’s not very likely that all the owners would sell, en mass, making the prospect of a huge high-rise being built there less than a mere twinkle in a developer’s eye. However, we do have a decision to make. Do we stay here, or do we move on? On the one hand, whatever we do here, we’re beholden to the Body Corporate. For example, we can’t put in double glazing, without their permission. Nor can we build in that window wall, inside and out, without the approval of the Body Corporate – even if Julian is the B.C. secretary! Stuff like that. If we do stay here, we want to make a lot of renovations, which will require a lot of re-wiring, and the moving (or should I say re-moving!) of ceilings. It’s not easy to renovate here – we did it once before, in 2007, so we know what’s involved. On the other hand, we have a fabulous view, we’re a short walk across the road from a really nice shopping centre, we have three car  parking spaces, a lift, reasonably good security, and (at the moment) we can’t be “built out”, even if they re-built the Pub next door. If we move, we want to move into a house, not another apartment (which would be a case of “from the frying pan into the fire” situation) so we either have to find something that’s at least on a par with this place, standards and space-wise, but preferably a lot better – or we have to build (which we have considered) Our main problem has been…. “but where?” I have no real problem with location, and I don’t think Julian does either (if he does, he’s never mentioned it!) – of course, there are areas I would prefer not to move to – but I’ve never thought (or been known to say) “Oh, I’d love to live…[please insert name of favourite suburb here]” – actually, that’s a lie – I’d love to have a fabulous “Addams Family” type mansion, right at the top of Oliver’s Hill – only problem is, it’s in Frankston (so there you go – that’s one of the suburbs I’d prefer not to move to!) Decisions, decisions… whatever the outcome, whatever we decide, you’ll all be amongst the first to know 🙂

And that’s really about all my news for tonight – I’ve been so busy, head down, tail up, slaving away and wearing my fingers to the bone over a hot shard – to do anything else exciting! But tomorrow’s another day – and now that I’ve got my routine down pat for ploughing through the characters, I’m sure to get Wolfsbane finished in, oh… about eight or nine hours? 😉 But news there’ll be aplenty, so drop by and catch up on all the latest at chez nous! So until then, once more may I remind you all to bee good, don’t let the bed bugs bite tonight, and above all…. stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂