*sigh* Well, the culling and “refining” process drags on… Have you any idea just how boring it is, re-setting each and every character so that they all have the same key locks and macros? I spent most of this morning working on Deepwood – first, I “exported” the latest settings I’d created for Satai (my main character on Hailol) Then I went back to Deepwood and “imported” that setting to the first character on the character select screen. Then it was a long and boring process of going through each character, importing everything from that first one, and then adjusting all the Action Bars accordingly. By the time you’ve done two of them, you feel as though you’ve been working on them for ever! Your eyes start wanting to close, you lose concentration and focus… it’s a right drag, I can tell you! Anyway, Deepwood is now all done (thank all the powers that be!) and I’ve started on Faeblight – the shard with the second highest number of characters. Now, there are two Dwarven Mages there, that I’ve very reluctantly kept, because they both have full Troves of enhancement potions. I can’t make up my mind whether to get rid of, or keep, these two Mages. They’re both very low-level characters, and in actual fact, I’ll probably never play either of them – it’s just that the thought of throwing away all those lovely enhancement potions is agonising! My favourite eldest daughter was over today, and she put it very succinctly… “Look, Mum,” she said “if you’re not going to be playing those two Mages, then to all intents and purposes, those potions don’t really exist, do they! I mean, no-one else can use them, can they?!” and she’s perfectly right… if I don’t play them, the potions are useless and might as well not be there… it’s just that…. to… just… throw… them away! No, not even “throw them away”! to…to… just delete them?Arrrggghhh! What as waste!! *sob* Still, it would whittle Faeblight down from eleven characters to nine… which would be a big blessing… Yes, I could spend the Credits and change their Race, but it wouldn’t be the same… *sigh* Oh well, I shall delete the potions… I mean characters…. tomorrow… *sniffle*

So, as I mentioned, my favourite eldest daughter was over today – I explained to her why I couldn’t get rid of Miaprima – the one with the extra good Dimension that I’d built for her? She looked skeptical (she does that sooo well!) so I showed it to her. She was no longer skeptical 🙂 Said she was going to re-open her Rift account so that she could log on and vote for it, and create as many characters as she could, so that she could get them to vote for it too! Well, she won’t, of course, but it’s nice to know that she thought so highly of my Dimension. I showed her around a few other Dimensions that I’d thought were good (not mine – other people’s) – and as fate would have it they didn’t look as good as they had in the past – in “upgrading” and changing things too much, the ones we did look at had been spoilt – their creators should have left well enough alone! It’s really a shame… Last time I looked at them, about seven or eight months ago, they were good enough for “perfectionist” me to vote for, so I did (vote for them) but I’m afraid that even if I could have voted for them a second time (which you can’t) I wouldn’t have wasted my vote. So after that, I went on my Stair Walk, and then we watched three episodes of “Person of Interest” – oh! It’s really getting scary and exciting! The “gang wars” sub-plot is escalating, and henchmen are getting bumped off left, right, and centre – “Samaritan”, the “bad” machine, is hunting for our “good” machine, which may have just revealed its secret location to Samaritan in order to save two of our favourite characters – Finch, the “good” machine’s creator, and Root, its “voice”…. and we suspect that there’s only one more episode this Season! 😦 We also watched another episode of “Agents of Shield” – another really excellent series! 🙂 Himself is now dropping Lee off in Glen Waverley, and I’ve had my evening Stair Walk, so I can concentrate on getting this finished before Julian gets back and starts getting dinner ready. I’ve got chicken soup tonight – I usually have the semi-dried basil flakes on it, but himself bought some (semi-dried) ginger flakes, and they’re just sooo delicious sprinkled on the chicken soup – I had them last time (it’s a three night cycle – Tomato, Vegetable, Chicken – rinse, and repeat) and I’ve been hanging out for the chicken soup to come around again ever since! (I love ginger!) Oh, he’s back… and making some coffee… 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. Another trepidatious surprise awaited me on the scales! I didn’t bounce back up again this morning, after all! I bounced a bit further down! Three points, to 92.4kg! How much do any of you want to bet me that I will bounce back up again tomorrow morning, probably to something like 92.9kg, or even 93.3kg, because I’ve gone down so much, and so quickly! *gulp* I do not want to get on those scales tomorrow morning, I really do not!

Well, I’m not quite sure what’s happening tomorrow – but I think it’s probably a fair bet to say that I’ll be getting stuck into Faeblight, and getting all of that lot sorted out and ready to go… ready to go – where?! I have no idea, but if they do have to go anywhere, they’ll be ready for it! 😉 and if I get too bored with that, I’ll fiddle around with some more graphics. I had an idea last night on how to make a background tile with a pattern-less “panel” down the middle, so that text would be extra clear and easy to read – the header at the top would make the screen look like a plain, pattern-less panel, sitting bang-smack in the middle of a patterned page. Mind you, it might take a fair bit of fiddling (oh, alright then, a lot of fiddling, OK?!) to get the plain panel in the centre – but I should be able to do it (I are clever, I are! 😉 ) But whatever happens, you can be quite sure of one thing! There’ll be lots of news and gossip waiting for you here tomorrow night! So call in again tomorrow – find out which way my weight bounced! Up? or down? Or will it sit in the middle of the see-saw and tease me, as it so loves to do! 🙂 Will I finish “tidying up” Faeblight tomorrow? And, will I have the stamina and fortitude to start “tidying up” another shard as well? Will I really delete those two Dwarven Mages, and their full Troves of enhancing potions? *sob* Or will I ditch all that Rift stuff in order to work on my idea for a “Plain Panel Down The Middle” background tile? Tonight, even I don’t know the answer to those questions – but all of you will – this time tomorrow night! So until then, bee good, don’t stay up too late watching television, but above all… stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

I’m starting awfully late this evening – I probably won’t get even half way through writing before I have to dash off for my evening Stair Walk and dinner… Never mind – ’twas all in a good cause! 🙂 I wanted to see how the blog would look on a non-textured, but sort-of “softly busy” (if it’s possible to have something soft, and busy, at the same time!) background. If it doesn’t work out, no harm done, I’ll just… do something else, and see how that works instead!

Well, we played “Mob Chasey” in Dusken today, and once again, we went up two levels! Amazing! Up two whole levels, for two consecutive weeks! That’s practically unheard of, once you get to about level 30 or so, even when you’re soloing with an experience enhancing potion! Dunno how we did it, but we did – actually, Julian had to take one of those potions to catch up to me – I level faster because I spend more real-time $$ on store-bought Credits than he does – this accrues “loyalty” points, and extra loyalty points earn you extra “perks” – like leveling faster, and (unfortunately) riding faster. Why is riding faster “unfortunate”? Because I have to keep stopping and waiting for him, that’s why! It’s also a nuisance because you tend to ride over cliffs, and the edges of tall buildings a lot, because you get to the edge before you have time to stop… and …over you go! Luckily they’ve done away with “falling damage”! 🙂 I took a couple of screenies of us today – they’re not really all that crash hot – it’s terribly “gloomy” in Dusken – I had to add quite a lot of brightness to the image before I saved it – but for what it’s worth… Sylversong (me) and Saudades (Julian) 🙂 Julian’s the one wearing the hat 🙂 *sigh* I thought as much – sorry, back later….

+—————–+ *Stair Walk Break*  *Dinner Break*  *Television Break* +—————–+

Back again… Last night and this morning, before we started in Dusken, I started my “culling” of the other shards.  I wasn’t able to get rid of as many extraneous characters as I would have liked – some, I couldn’t possibly get rid of, like Miaprima, on Greybriar. She “owns” one of the best Dimensions I’ve ever built. It’s a smallish “bowl” shaped area, with a small pond, or pool in the bottom of it. You can really only go up in terraces, like rice paddies up a hill, so because it’s a semi desert oasis setting, I built upwards and turned it into a “jungle-esque” type place by putting in lots and lots of trees and bushes and vines. The house itself is one of the best I’ve built, with a very detailed hall, kitchen, lounge, dining, and living room downstairs, and 3 bedrooms, a study, and a bathroom, complete with toilet (and toilet paper on a toilet roll holder) upstairs. Down near the central pool there are sort-of “Roman Ruins”, with columns, and rocky steps surrounding the pool. There’s also a meeting room or chapel (the entire Dimension is supposed to be a retreat for the devout) and an outside alter. I could have dismantled it all and sent the items on to whoever I put in charge of Dimension building on Greybriar, but I put an awful lot of time, effort, and care into it – I just couldn’t bear to demolish it – far better to keep Miaprima, even though she’s a level 40 Rogue/Hunter that I’ll never play with again (I just don’t play Rogue/Hunters anymore – I prefer playing with Mages) If I ever get a round tuit, I might post some screenies of my better Dimensions – some of which are very elaborate and took hours and hours and weeks to build… you might get a surprise at how detailed and intricate some of the Dimensions are, and mine are by no means the best on the shards! So, bearing in mind that I started out with 12 characters on each shard, I have whittled them down to Greybriar: 9, Wolfsbane: 10, Faeblight: 11, and Deep wood: 8. Where possible, I got rid of characters I’d probably never play again, or who weren’t Mages. Mostly I kept the ones who had full, or nearly full, Troves of enhancement potions, and I made a list of deleted names that I would still like to use, if I can get them again. I’m still trying to decide if I should pull Laethys into the sorting bin as well – nearly all of my Laethys characters are high level (level 50 and higher), and it would probably be a good move to move (Ha! a pun!) them to other shards where they would make damn fine “farmers”, if nothing else. But I haven’t decided yet. Hailol, of course, is still too “young” to cull 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. Was a Big Surprise! Maybe I should go shopping for clothes more often – I’ve noticed that when I’ve been out shopping the way I was yesterday, I always seem to go down a bit… Only this time, it was a lot! Down 4 points, to 92.7kg! Oh boy, is that bounce-back, when it comes, going to smart! Oh well, hopefully I’ll only bounce back to 92.8kg, or 92.9kg (but once again – I’m not going to hold my breath!) But I can hope… 🙂

Apparently my favourite eldest daughter is coming over tomorrow, which will be good. I’ve been exceptionally lucky with my two girls – they’ve always been good girls – sleeping right through the night the week after they came home from hospital, when they were babies – never any teething problems… as they got older, I had less teenage angst and upsets with them than any parent has a right to expect. While not consistently the top of their class at school, they held their own with the best of them, and often outclassed most of them. They’re polite, kind, generous, and sincere, though they have, at times, been known to be outspoken about some issues (I guess they take after their mother in that regard 😉 ) As I said, I’m very lucky, and very proud, and I love them to pieces 🙂

So that’s about all my news for this evening – I do hope the new background I put in works properly, and isn’t too “busy” (but if it is, it’s easy to fix) If you call around again tomorrow night, you’ll find out what Lee and I watched, and what else I got up to before she arrived. I think I’ll “review” the characters on Laethys (says she very seriously, looking over the tops of her glasses at the screen, à la strict schoolmarm) before deciding what to do with all those characters. I don’t want to delete any of them, but they’re being wasted where they are… and you know, “waste not, want not”, an’ all that 🙂 Whatever happens, there’ll be heaps of news and other goodies for you here tomorrow night, so don’t be shy, and don’t miss out! However, until then, bee good, rug up warm when you go outside, and above all…. stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

So we did go shopping this morning, after all – well, we went to the Doctor’s first, as I had to pick up a new script, but then we went on to The Glen… first to Autograph, to get some much needed underclothing, and then on to My Size to see what they had in the way of slacks, with pockets in them. And miracle of miracles, they did have some – finally! Perhaps all the grizzling I always did whenever I went into a My Size store finally got through to the buyers – the fact that people actually wanted to buy slacks which had pockets in them! Oh, like wow! What a novel idea! Pockets? in a pair of pants?! Outrageous! – but where else is a girl to put her tissue, either used, or unused, hmmm? I bought two pairs – so that now, when I do my Stair Walks, I won’t have to carry a ruddy bag around with me, just to carry my keys… and a tissue (because I have hay fever at the moment and my nose refuses to leave the apartment unless I’m carrying a tissue for it!) I had two moments of déjà vu today, too… can you guess where? 🙂 One in Autograph, and after that, one in My Size – the two ladies in both stores oooh’d and ahhh’d over my hair colour, and wasn’t it gorgeous! (*rolls eyes*) I mean, I love my hair being this colour – I think it’s fantastic, and all… but hasn’t anyone ever seen bright red streaks in someone’s hair before, or something?! It’s extremely gratifying, and all that, and I’m really, really grateful that my friend did such a fantastic colouring job – but just between you, me, and the gatepost, it’s starting to get just a teeny bit embarrassing, especially when they ask me “Where did you have it done?” I just mumble that a friend did it, and quickly change the subject before they can ask me who, and could I get them to colour their hair too (which someone did ask me, once!) I wonder if it’s because I’m, er…. “not young”… and people are just taken aback to see someone… my age… with such a bright colour in their hair, which actually suits them, and looks good! I dunno… anyway, I also got another two tops at My Size, and a wrap (read: “long shawl”) in a deep red and black paisley design. I shall make use of that tonight 🙂 It does get a bit chilly, sitting and watching television in the evenings! 😉

After all that, we came home – it was starting to get late-ish, so once again, I came up in the lift first, ditched my detested shoes, grabbed my door propping book, the keys, and my fingerless glove, and headed off for my before lunchtime Stair Walk. Then I played a bit of Rift, experimented with some more designs and patterns for blog backgrounds and headers, and generally stuffed around. By the time I bethought myself to go and start culling some of the other shards, it was almost time for my evening Stair Walk, so I thought I’d better make a start on this evening’s entry here, and which, as you can see, I’m now doing. Oh, and I had a nice, long chat with my favourite youngest daughter, Kate, this afternoon – all is well over at their place – the dog, and the three cats, and the rabbits (which I’ve lost count of!) are all well. She’s started going to Pilates classes, which she’s been enjoying. She was in a swimming accident when she was in Primary School, and her back has never been right since – she’s been to chiropractors, physiotherapists, and orthopaedic specialists, all to no avail. Sometimes her back gets so sore that all she can do is lie flat on the floor, poor kid! 😦 Anyway, she says that these exercise classes seem to be helping, but she’s signed up for the classes, rather than just do the exercises at home, because (and she takes after me in this regard!) left to her own devices, she’ll never “get around to” doing the exercises if she doesn’t have someone standing over her, supervising her work. (That’s why I stopped going to Bounce – going there once a fortnight wasn’t doing me any good because I never followed up on the exercises at home! I’m just too bone lazy… )

Tomorrow, of course, is Sunday, so I expect that we’ll be galloping around Dusken, killing this, that, and the other, plus skinning whatever’s skinnable, mining ores, walking on the grass, and picking the wildflowers, for most of the day 🙂 so I probably won’t be able to get back to my “culling” project until Monday… (all my rings are falling off! Back to the jewellers, I suppose – to get them all made smaller… again…) Speaking of jewellers, and getting rings made smaller, my mother was very fond of gold – she preferred it to silver. Personally, I like the look of silver more than gold, but as it happens, nearly all of my “serious” jewellery is gold. Mum used to have all sorts of silver jewellery gold dipped, because she thought it “looked nicer” – one piece in particular, a large silver medallion that I wore almost constantly, she had gold dipped while I was away somewhere – when I came back I was furious! Well, it was her medallion, and I suppose (says she, very grudgingly) Mum had the right to have it gold dipped if she wanted to – but she never wore it, and I did, and I was really not happy! (bear with me, I am getting to the point of this story, truly!) so I spent literally hours, polishing off all the gold dipping. It never looked quite the same, but at least I could wear it in comfortable silver again. Now the thing is, as I said, most of my “serious” jewellery these days is gold – so I’ve been wondering if I should have at least some of my better silver pieces, that I usually wear with my gold rings …. gold dipped. I can’t make up my mind… any (polite) suggestions?

Weigh-in this morning. Another surprise awaited me on the scales this morning! A nice one, for a change, this time! 93.1kg – three points down on yesterday’s 93.4kg! I was very pleased, and very surprised… and very suspicious! Sizable drops like that are usually followed by correspondingly large bounce-backs! We shall see what we shall see, tomorrow morning….

+——————————–+ Dinner Break +——————————–+

Back again 🙂 I had to dart off for my evening Stair Walk (I’m getting quite good at “darting” these days – I can even almost out-walk Julian as far as the lift well! (in bare feet, that is – put shoes on me and I can only stagger! 😉 )) and when I got back dinner was almost ready, so… Anyway, I’m back now 🙂 Where was I? Oh yes… seeing what we shall see tomorrow, weight-wise. I think I’ve found a new pattern that might possibly turn out to be seamless – I shall do more experimenting… er…. maybe Monday? or if my favourite eldest daughter is coming over, then it’ll have to wait until Tuesday. But that’s about all the news I have for you at the moment – please tell me if backgrounds aren’t working out, and I’ll do my best to correct things – no point in reading a blog if you can’t read the text on the background, and no point in writing a blog if people can’t read it (I seem to get a fair amount of key bounce with this keyboard – you know, when you get two of the letter you just typed, even though you only typed it the once? Weird…) So call in again tomorrow night, and find out what we got up to in Dusken – how many times we managed to get ourselves killed, and how many levels we went up – you’ll probably also be all agog to see what happened with my weight, and whether or not it went back up again (let’s fervently hope not!) I’m wearing my nice new black and red paisley wrap/shawl/thingy, and as I hoped, it is lovely and warm 🙂 I’ll try out my new slacks tomorrow, but I’m not going to ask Julian “does my bum look big in this”, because he’d probably just say “Yes!” (even if it didn’t, though it probably will!) so I won’t bother 😉 So until tomorrow night, please try to bee good, don’t trip over the hamster, and above all…. stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

Seeing that our cleaning lady was not coming over this morning, I took the opportunity to really work hard on the new and improved Addian – he’s now level 16 – higher than his counterpart was when he got “transferred” 🙂 and I’ve created a “Screenshots” Album on Flickr, so you can get a look at the n&i (new & improved) Addain there. I might, eventually, create a “Rogues Gallery” of all my main characters, and even some of my better and more spectacular Dimension places… houses… jungle retreats… whatever… (which I must really get back to – I’m starting to get the “itch” again! 🙂 )  I expect that we’ll be out for a lot of tomorrow, but the rest of my time will be – nay, must be! culling the “holding shards” – a painful, but absolutely necessary job – if I need to move anyone, it’ll have to be to the PVP* shard, Seastone, which I’d really rather not do – knowing my luck, as soon as I materialised, I’d find myself set upon by a gang of bloodthirsty PVP players!

You will probably have noticed by now that I’ve altered the background and header again. I hope you don’t mind, but I absolutely love playing around with colours and textures – it’s great fun, and gives me something constructive to do when I get bored with Rift 😉 Well, it’s not really constructive, is it. My mother used to think that doing anything that wasn’t improving your mind, or bringing in money, as being both unconstructive, and almost immorally “unproductive”! I’m pretty sure that her idea of a “fun time” was balancing the books! Anyway, expect the unexpected in the blog decoration department for a while – who knows? I might even come up with something half decent, if I keep at it for long enough 😉 I do need more fonts though… I’m looking – seemingly in vain – for a handwriting, or script, font that does “W’s” as two round brackets, sitting on their curved bits. I don’t like “W’s” with pointy bottoms. I have found a few reasonably OK fonts with rounded “W” bottoms, but like everything else I decide I want or need, they’re always at the far end of the “*gasp* *choke* You want HOW much for that??!!” scale! It was the same with the glasses frames I chose yesterday – I didn’t even look at the price tag (I’ve learnt not to, or I’d end up never buying anything!), I just went for the ones I liked, and that looked reasonable on me… and while they ended up not being the most expensive frames in the shop, they weren’t that far off it! *sigh* Why have I got such expensive tastes?

Well, today was the big day – I went off to the Hairdresser, Oscar Oscar, over at Doncaster. We had a slightly early lunch, and I just had time, said Julian, to do my Stair Walk before we left. He said to come back to the fifth floor, and then just catch the left down to the car park where he’d be waiting – I wouldn’t need the keys to get inside again, just bring the door propping book and my fingerless glove down to the car park with me.  “OK, I’ll be quick”, says me. I’d gone a floor and a half before I remembered that I didn’t have any shoes, and I knew that Julian wouldn’t remember them, so I hopefully yelled out (half way between the fourth and fifth floors!) “I don’t have my shoes!”, then, realizing that he wouldn’t have been able to hear me, I turned around and (literally!) almost ran back up the stairs! Well, he’d heard me yell, but couldn’t understand what I was saying, so just as I got to the top, he opened the door. The shoes were then organised for delivery in the car park. So, I turned around, again, and re-commenced my Stair Walk. In the end, we managed to arrive a few minutes early! Just as well, too, because some sorting out of the appointment was needed. I very nearly didn’t get my hair done today – Julian’s phone number hadn’t been entered in their data base correctly – it was one digit out, so we never received the confirming SMS, and because we never replied, they thought I wasn’t coming. The girl who was supposed to be doing my hair, Brooke (or similar) was busy with another client, so I was placed into the tender care of Peter – the same one we’d spoken to last week, and who had entered Julian’s phone number incorrectly. Well, he was nice enough – we chatted quite happily whilst he snipped away at my hair. It’s funny, but everyone, wherever I go, from Optometrists, to My Size salesladies, to… yes, even hairdressers – fall all over themselves, cooing and exclaiming over my hair colour! Peter did, and even Brooke, their best colourist, who came over to say hello – said what a fantastic colour it was! She’s going to do a bit more with it next Friday – around the uncoloured parts – in other words, give me a bit more of the paler, strawberry blond colour around the back and sides, “to tie it all together”, whatever that means. I think. When we got home, as much as I detest having my photo taken (because I always look terrible in photos – though I’ll admit that the photo shoot the other day did make me look rather good) I got Julian to take some photos of the hair cut – front, back, and both sides. I think it looks pretty good – however it remains to be seen just how long it’s going to look good for! But for the moment, anyway, I like it. Peter told me: “Now, when you get home, I want you to get your comb…. and put it away in a drawer for a couple of weeks, and get used to using your fingers on your hair!” If you want to know what it looks like now, here is the Flickr Album! (but please don’t laugh!)

Weigh-in this morning. Was not good. Not good at all. I went up a point, to 93.4kg, despite all the standing and walking around that I did yesterday! And this, I’m afraid, does not bode well for the next 10 days! I started on those wretched pills this morning, so I expect that things can only get worse from here on in. I am not a happy little Vegemite today! And if I do happen, by some strange miracle, to go down tomorrow, it’ll probably be because more than half my hair’s missing! 🙂 *sigh*

So that was my day… it’s almost time for my next Stair Walk, too… And I expect that tomorrow will be just as busy as today, so there’ll be lots more to catch you up on tomorrow night! Like… Q: will my hair still look the same tomorrow? A: probably not. In fact, I could even go so far as to say “Surely you jest! Of course it won’t! It’ll be all slept on and flat!” – but we can always hope for the best! 😉 And… Q: What will my weight do? A: probably stay the same… or go up… or down, because of the missing hair weight… Q: Did we go shopping? A: Yes. I need more underwear, and another warm jumper. And who knows? I might even get around to painting my nails tomorrow, too! So, to find out if the above answers are correct or not, well, you’re in the right place – just not at the right time! You’ll need to be here again tomorrow night, to find out, won’t you! 😉 So don’t miss out – drop by again then and be regaled with tall tales and true – of my hair, my weight, and our legendary shopping quest! But until then, please bee good, remember your manners, and above all…. please stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

*PVP – Player Versus Player – not content with killing computer generated mobs, some players seem to find a great deal of enjoyment in bashing each other up, as well! I don’t really see the attraction, myself…

So I’m starting to write a bit earlier tonight – wanna bet that I still won’t get this finished before my pre-dinner Stair Walk? 🙂 Oh well… it gets done in the end… Today was a “bitty” sort of day – I got some Rifting in after breakfast, but we had to leave around 11 o’clock for the first of our two Optometrist’s appointments – and we didn’t get home until after 1 o’clock. Acuity, the Optometrist we go to, is sort-of around the corner (so to speak) so it’s very handy. It’s on the ground floor of the Manningham Medical Centre – right across the road from Macedon Plaza, where himself often goes shopping because it’s easier to park there than it is across the road! (mind you, when he goes shopping over the road without me, he usually walks across!) Anyway, we both needed new glasses – my eyes have changed a fair bit (no wonder I can’t see the screen properly with these glasses! It’s a wonder I can see it at all! – welll… they’re not quite that bad, but they’re still bad enough that I need new glasses!) I need new “walk around” glasses too, so that’s two new pairs for me – and two new frames! I’ll get the lenses in my current glasses changed over when I get the new pairs. Himself needs three new pairs of glasses! (three!?! Spoilt brat! 😉 ) mainly because his “all the time” glasses are totally broken, as I mentioned last night – but they only fell apart three times while we were at the Optometrist – a minor miracle! 😉 He also needs a pair of driving glasses, and a pair of reading glasses (I take my glasses off to read!) His should be ready next week. Mine are special! (*preens self*) They’ll take up to three weeks, because they’re a more complex prescription or something – or so I’m told. After we’d finished there, we came home for a late-ish lunch. I belted up in the lift first so that I could shed my shoes (awful [*censored*] contraptions that they are!) I quickly grabbed the door propping open book, and my hand protecting fingerless glove, then I made a bee line for the fire escape, and my before lunch Stair Walk. I actually did quite a lot of walking today – Stair Walk before breakfast, Stair Walk before lunch (albeit a little later than usual) – but we didn’t take my wheelchair to the Optometrist – I walked there from the car park outside, and stood around for most of the morning, leaning on counters whenever my back got too sore, and walking around looking at frames – I think my back will probably know all about it tomorrow, but I managed quite well, I thought! I know I would have managed a lot better if I hadn’t had my [*heavily censored*] shoes on! As Julian has happily been telling anyone who’ll listen (like our cleaning lady, who just rang up to say that she won’t be coming tomorrow, after all) I haven’t been able to stand around and walk around like that for about five to six years… All this Stair Walking must be making me a bit fitter! 🙂

So, we got home, had lunch, and I got stuck into Addain – a brand new Addain! I didn’t delete the old one (but I might have to!) again, I moved him to a “holding shard”… I realised this morning that I’d created him from the wrong “race” – I made him a High Elf, when I should have made him a Mathosian (read: “human”) To confirm this, I went and created a new character on one of the other shards, and sure enough, he was the wrong race! Please don’t ask me why this is important – I’m not sure I even know myself – but he just “looked” wrong, OK? I could have changed his race, for a (Credit) price, but when you do that you can’t choose your own “preset” (basic appearance and characteristics) I did try, but it wasn’t good enough – I had to start from scratch. So I shipped him off, and created a new him. He looks much more betterer now! 🙂 I’ve already got him up to level 11, which isn’t bad going for an afternoon, and seeing as our cleaning lady won’t be here tomorrow, I’ll get a chance to get him up to where his predecessor was pretty quickly – so I’ll have only lost about half a day in re-doing him. And of course… I have my first appointment at my new Hairdresser’s tomorrow afternoon (about which I am more than somewhat nervous!) but I can’t wriggle out of it – (a) it’s too late now, and (b) my hair desperately needs a clip around the ears… my hair’s beginning to stick out like Dagwood’s, only over my ears, not on the top of my head! A full report will be issued in tomorrow night’s blog… depending on how it went. So everyone, please wish me luck at 1.45pm tomorrow – I have a feeling I’m going to need it *gulp*

Weigh-in this morning. Was not bad! Quite good, in fact! I was down to 93.3kg this morning, down two points on yesterday’s 93.5kg. I wonder if all the walking and standing around I did today will make a difference tomorrow morning? I hope so – I start on those horrible pills in the morning 😦 Wouldn’t it be good if I could get well and truly under the 93kg mark, before the effect of the pills starts to kick in and I start retaining fluid like it’s going out of style! It probably won’t make much of a difference (all the standing and walking around) but a girl can hope, can’t she?! 🙂

Referring back to my shuffling off of the original Addain, I’m going to have to bite the bullet and go around culling a lot of extraneous characters from all my other, so-called “holding shards”. I saw with horror that I now have 12 characters on every shard! I have nowhere to move anyone anymore! What’s worse, I can’t even create an experimental character, or make a name “place holder”! This is not good! The thing is, all those characters are on those “holding” shards for a very good reason! I don’t want to delete any of them! But as I said, I’m going to have to bite the bullet. I’ll probably end up getting rid of anyone who doesn’t have a Trove, or at least a partial Trove, of “enhancement” potions. I’ll keep those that do have “enhancement” potions, and those whose names I can’t bear to lose… But that’s a job for another day – I’ve “parked” the new and improved Addain in the middle of the main road running though Freemarch. Not exactly an ideal location, but he’ll survive 🙂 Once again, I’m running him through as many “Carnage” quests as I can, to level him up as quickly as possible – and Freemarch is where the best Carnage quests, the best mining, the best skinning, and the best foraging is to be found! 🙂 I’m still mulling over the possibility of what colours to use in the (also new and improved) blog backgrounds and headers – I have an automatic leaning towards blues and purples, as they’re my favourite colours, however I did rather like the (rather a bit too bright) orange/yellow one I made the other night – maybe if I tone it down a bit… or a lot… I’ll have to see how it translates into a canvas/sandstone texture first though. And now, as it’s almost time for my evening Stair Walk, plus the fact that this is starting to get a little bit too long (as usual! 😉 ) I’ll take my leave of you all. Drop in again tomorrow night and hear all about my visit to the new Hairdresser – will I have any hair left? Will I have decided to have it all shaved off, and wear a wig? (Don’t worry – it has crossed my mind! Many times! Perhaps I should try a Burqa? (well, at least it would keep my stupid right ear warm!)) Well, find out tomorrow night! 🙂 Plus! What will my weight have decided to do, after all my standing and walking around today? Go down, hopefully! But… you never know, do you! 😉 So for the answer to all those niggling little questions about me that keep popping into your head at the oddest of times, this nightly blog is definitely the place to come! See you all here again tomorrow night – but until then, remember to bee good, slow down and take the time to smell the roses, but above all…. stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

P.S. I did get this finished, before my pre-dinner Stair Walk! 😀 [*blows raspberry at screen*]

Murder most foul!

Two innocent men were shot dead last night – but there will be no justice for them, and no punishment for their murderers! What happened to Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan was premeditated murder. Ten years ago those two young men made a stupid mistake – they attempted to smuggle drugs in Indonesia. The Australian Federal Police turned those two boys in to the Indonesian Police and that sealed their fate. I hope those Australians can sleep at night – Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan’s blood is on their hands, just as much as it is on the hands of that “joke” of a human being, Joko Widodo! I hope the firing squad can sleep at night – shooting those two men to death, after they’d spent ten long years in prison, after they’d expressed remorse, been totally rehabilitated, and completely turned their lives around! Make no mistake – it wasn’t “the death penalty” which Indonesia espouses, it wasn’t “punishment” for a crime committed a very long time ago, and it wasn’t as a “deterrent” to other would-be drug smugglers – if it was, then they should have been put to death at the time – 10 years ago, not now! No! It was “murder most foul”! Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan did not deserve to die, and they will not be forgotten! May their souls find the peace and mercy in death that they deserved, but were denied in life! There isn’t anything that anyone can do now – recalling the Australian Ambassador is, I think, the correct first political step to take. I do understand that politically and diplomatically there isn’t very much more that Australia can do – however, for my own tiny insignificant drop in the world-sized bucket, I will never visit their country, I will never knowingly buy anything manufactured or grown in Indonesia – and if I ever travel overseas again, and I will not land there for a stopover or to catch a connecting flight. I don’t think I want to be anywhere near such a savage, backwards and corrupt place. Peace!

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Here I am, late again! but at least I have a reason, not an excuse, this time! My favourite eldest daughter was over this afternoon and we spent an enjoyable afternoon watching four episodes of “Person of Interest” – where ‘the war of the machines’ is hotting up! 🙂

Last night I was just soooo frustrated with the lack of information provided about the “actual” dimensions of the header, so I did something that I haven’t done (haven’t had to do!) for nearly fifteen years. I counted each of the 200 pixels I was “told” that I had – one. pixel. at. a. time. One tiny dot on the screen at a time. And counting each one. It’s excruciatingly tiresome and tedious, but necessary, sometimes – and this was one of those “sometimes” – I simply had to know how much space I had to work with – I was sick and tired of guessing, and getting it wrong! So using the header dimensions given by Word Press, I created a “ruler”along the height of the header, with numbered markings every 10 pixels. From 1 to ten downwards from the top, and from 1 to 10 coming up from the bottom, and an awful lot of blank space in between. I uploaded the ruler as a “new header” because I wanted to see where the markings were cut off. My mistake – both top and bottom numbers were cut off well before they even appeared on the screen – only the un-numbered 10 pixel markers were visible. I increased the numbers to 20, top and bottom, and tried again. This time the numbers did appear on the screen, just before the “17” marker, top and bottom, so at last I had the actual, proper, dimensions of the header! 2000 pixels x 177 pixels – an extremely narrow “ribbon” of header to try and work with! To give you some idea, the text I’m currently using in the header comes to within 1.5mm of the topmost edge, and 1.5mm of the bottom edge of the header.

This morning, as you can see, I worked on my “canvas background” idea – it seems to be doing the trick – are you able to detect any “seams” between the header and the body?! 🙂 I know, it’s terribly “bland” at the moment, but I’m experimenting with patterns and colours. I’ve created a gray, “frosted glass” one that doesn’t show seams, and that being the case, I should be able to use any colour, or combination of colours. However I have to be careful with the colours I use so that text will still be legible on it – though I’m led to believe that if the background colour gets too dark, the text will change to white (or whatever colour I choose, once I work out how to do that! 😉 ) More news as it comes to hand! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. Much more promising – I think that maybe my body is getting scared that the day of the dreaded Fluid Retaining Pill is rushing towards it like an “Anti-Tsunami”, and thinking that it had better shed a bit of weight while it still can! I was down to 93.5kg today – two points down on yesterday’s 93.7kg. Hopefully it’ll be down again tomorrow! (but I wouldn’t count on it!)

———————————-=+  *Dinner Break*  +=———————————-

So, I didn’t get any Rifting in at all today – well, I mean I sorted out my Minions and stuff, but no proper questing, or anything… and I didn’t get my nails painted, either – Lee was over and we were too busy watching “Person of Interest” (a really great show – highly recommended! 🙂 ) I don’t think I’ll get much Rifting in, or my nails done tomorrow, either – because himself has made appointments for both of us to see the Optometrist around midday – his glasses are broken, anyway, and it’s getting to the stage where trying to see the screen properly means that I have to sit about a foot away from it So that was my day today, and also what my day will probably be like tomorrow – chopped up into little pieces, with not much time to do anything terribly worthwhile. Lee’s weight loss program is going well, but I worry that she’s not eating enough variety – she had an Optifast bar for breakfast this morning, because she was in a hurry to get to uni, and she had another Optifast bar for lunch today – goodness knows what she had for dinner – hopefully not another bar! I know she doesn’t much like the soups (I do, especially with a little bit of semi-dried chili added to the tomato and the vegetable soups, and some semi-dried basil to the chicken one!) and I’m pretty sure she’s not getting enough fibre – there I go – typical mother, worrying that her favourite eldest child is not getting the right nourishment! She’s a grown woman, Winter, leave her be! 🙂 (“Yeah, but she takes after you, Winter, and you know what a scatterbrain you are!” replies my conscience… 😉 ) Ah well – and that’s where I think I shall call it a night – but tune in again tomorrow night to find out all the latest! Will Julian and I need new glasses? More importantly, will he get his broken glasses fixed properly, instead of just stuck together with a paper clip and some blu tack? (Ah good! my cup of tea has just arrived – it’s a new one, called “Monk’s Pear”, and it smells and tastes wonderful!) Will I actually get any Rifting in, or will I spend most of my time concocting weird and wonderful, patterned and textured backgrounds for this blog? What will my weight do? Will it go up, or down… or stay boringly the same? These questions, and more, will be answered right here, this time tomorrow night – so don’t miss out! Until then, though, please remember to bee good, don’t drink from the Chalice with the Palace*, and above all… stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

*“The Chalice with the Palace is the one that has the poison – the Vessel with the Pestle has the brew that is true!” [but they keep getting them mixed up!] – from an hilarious old Danny Kaye movie called “The Court Jester” – if you ever get the chance, do watch it! 🙂

Tuesday… well, as bad luck would have it, my favourite eldest daughter didn’t come over today, after all 😦 she wasn’t feeling all that crash hot (well, she has changed her diet rather drastically!) and decided that maybe she’ll come over tomorrow, after her class finishes (at noon) So I thought “right! I’ll start working on my background ideas for the blog, and do a little Rifting with Addain, and… and…” – well, you know how your mind sometimes runs away with you… 🙂 Anyway, would you like the good news first, or the bad? Very well then, the good news… I did work out how to use my own backgrounds, and they look really nice! It’s very easy, really…  The bad news part of that is that the header on this particular Theme is soooo narrow (from top to bottom – or, from bottom to top – whichever!) that it’s extremely difficult to fit anything legible into the space you’re given… (as you’ll see from the current header, it seems somewhat… cramped?) but wait! I know you want more (bad news)! 😉 I created a nice gray, marbled, seamless pattern, which I used as the background of the header image, as well as the background of the blog theme. I use them all the time. I used them in the stationary I used to make, and the web sets that I gave away for fee. No seams, any-which-where! Except here. I tried the background and header together on about 20 different Themes here to see if they behaved differently, depending on which themes you used them on. Well, they did, and they didn’t. Some Themes coped better with the combination than others, but in the end, none of them really worked to my “standard” (even a small hint of visibility between the background and the header is totally unacceptable to my mind – I dunno – maybe I’m just too much of a perfectionist or something – *shrug* but that’s the way I work) I know what the problem is – it’s what I was grizzling about last night, with different Themes changing the aspect ratio of graphics to a larger or lesser extent. Unfortunately, other than buying out Word Press and hiring a programmer who knows what s/he’s doing, I just don’t know how to fix it. So I seem to be at an impasse… Oh well, never mind, I don’t have to use a marble background – I can use a canvas one (and I dare! I double dare! any junction line to show its ugly little face in one of those! (so there! *pokes tongue out at Themes in general, and this one in particular!*) 😉 ) So the personal background and header will just have to wait a bit, I think… But I will do it 🙂 The canvas “trick” should sort things out… 😉

The rest of my time today I frittered away in Telara, waiting, not terribly patiently, for the caravan carrying Reed Bellows to arrive. He’s the guy you have to kill to claim the title “Merchant of Death”, which is a “must have” for all my characters. I hung around, and hung around, and magically transported myself from shard to shard to see if he’d arrived on one of them, instead. He hadn’t. So I went Artifact prospecting, and found quite a few, while I was waiting for Mr. Bellows. He eventually turned up close to lunchtime, so I killed him, claimed my title, and transported home to Sanctum. I wonder why there isn’t an equivalent Achievement and Title over in Silverwood? You could easily be excused for thinking that the Defiants get all the fun things to do… I got Addain up to level 14, just by “exploring”new areas, and by killing lots of things while I was waiting – I also managed to level up my three “skills” (Butchering, Foraging, and Mining) so now I can move into other areas where the rocks are harder, and the plants and animals are harder to pick or skin 😉 I might  do a bit more Rifting tomorrow morning before my favourite eldest daughter arrives – it’d be nice if I could get Addain up to level 20 tomorrow… (but I’m not holding my breath!)

This morning, on my before breakfast Stair Walk, I remembered (hallelujah! she actually remembered to do something that she said she’d do, for a change!) to go and explore the strange steps from the Ground floor, and where they went. It’s quite spooky down there, you know – it’s like clean dungeons (well, cleaner than you’d expect a dark, dank, dungeon to be, anyway) Mind you, it’s neither dark, nor dank – but you feel as though it could easily become so, and even the softest whispers send back sibilant echoes… *shudder* Anyway, I boldly went down the three steps to the next little landing. then there were another two steps down, and I could see a door further down on my left, which himself informs me is the door into the car park. To the right of the little landing that leads to the door into the car park, there’s also another, longish flight of stairs which I believe lead to the lobby that opens on to the street that runs behind our apartment block. Mystery solved? I guess so… but I’m still not too sure why people in the car park don’t bump their heads on the ceiling of the floor above… it just looks… too low…

Weigh-in this morning. Things were a teeny- weeny little bit more encouraging – I went down a whole, whopping big…  one point. I was so excited, I almost jumped up and down on the scales! No, not really, but – wow! A whole one point! After three days of being the same, it was almost like a miracle! of sorts…. *sigh* – and I start those ruddy, wretched fluid retention pills on Friday… 😦 Then I only have May and June, plus about a fortnight – 75 days – to get below 86kg! About 10 weeks… and at approximately a kilo a week, I should be able to get there, but not if I spend too much time muddling around on the same [*censored*] weight! Grrr! 93.7kg this morning – one point down on yesterday’s (and the day before, and the day before that again!) 93.8kg

So, that was my day… a bit of good, a bit of bad, and a teeny-tiny ray of hope in the weight department. I’m not really sure what’s happening tomorrow – more of the same, I suppose, if my favourite eldest daughter doesn’t come over – though I did half promise myself that I’d do my nails on Wednesday (tomorrow) I’m thinking that as my nails got so terribly dry – almost to the point of splitting lengthwise – that perhaps I should go and ask them at Inglot if a base coat under the nail polish would help preserve the nails and keep them from getting so dry… I dunno… depends on whether we go out tomorrow or not. I’d also like to try a little bit of independence for a change – going across the road by myself. Someone would have to open the door for me to get out – and open it again to let me get back in (the doors weren’t designed with the disabled in mind!) and I’m quite jittery at the thought of getting across the road in a wheelchair – but other people do it and survive the running of the gauntlet – I expect I should be able to do likewise *brave little smile* Anyway, whatever happens, or doesn’t happen tomorrow, rest assured that there’ll be lots more news, grizzles, long, convoluted, and involved explanations of some of the more arcane aspects of graphics and Rifting, plus other interesting bits of trivia waiting here to amuse you all tomorrow night. 🙂 However, the time has come for me to once more bid you a fond adieu – and to remind you all to bee good, don’t walk on the grass, and above all… stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

Seen on Bored Panda today: Some of these shots appear to be somewhat over-Photoshopped, but they’re very pretty, nonetheless 🙂

Well, here I am, late again (still/as usual/always – please delete those that do not apply!) All I did was go and wash my hair (well, I started late! (see above!*blush*)) and here it is, five o’clock, and I’m just back from the bathroom! Arrggh! I was so late finishing my blog last night that I got into trouble (well, I was “fixing things” 🙂 ) and I had absolutely no idea that it was as late as it was. I’ve got a timer here, and a clock, but do I ever use the timer, or look at the clock? Of course not! Why on earth would I want to do that!? 😉 Oh well, I may have to just leave this in the middle and finish later…

I managed to find a good solution to my “Asima” problem! I got rid of her! No, I didn’t delete her, I farmed her off to another “holding” shard, and created a new character in her place! 🙂 Meet Addain! I thought I’d try a Guardian male for a change – so far he seems to be working out OK – but time will tell 🙂 I’ve got him up to level 12, and looking at our success yesterday, in which we went up two whole levels, I’ve decided to throw Addain at as many “Carnage” (“kill ‘x’ number of [named creatures] for money and extra experience”) quests as I can, and I must say, it seems to be working! 🙂 He’s already level 12, and he hasn’t even done any questing yet! He’s died once though – he was trying to get at an Artifact that was surrounded by feral pigs, four levels higher than he was – well, he got the Artifact, but he got mobbed by three of these feral pigs, and alas – his pet died, and so did he. Still, it’s no disgrace to be killed by three creatures four levels higher than yourself! 🙂 Anyway, I spent most of this morning creating him and setting him up – and I think he’ll be a “keeper” – however my favourite eldest daughter will be over tomorrow, so I won’t get much of a chance to work with him – but it’ll be back to work for the two of us again on Wednesday! I plan on taking him right to level 40, without the “rest break” at level 20 (much the same as I did with Chryzanthemum)

As you’ll have noticed, I changed the colours on the blog last night – but I’m still not terribly happy with the overall “look”. I think I’ll try to create the header first, and then colour the theme around the header – there’s even a command in the colour selection area to do so – “Match header colour” – and it does do its best, but… it sometimes misses the mark by a long way! So I’ll just scribble down the colours that I used in the header, input them manually, and cross my fingers that it turns out the way I hope it will. I noticed something else about customizing the blog the other day, too! I always thought that you were stuck with the patterned backgrounds that Word Press provides – there’s a lot of them, and some are even quite nice – except for the fact that you can’t read any text written on them! Not much use writing a blog if no-one can see the text, is there! And I always wished that I could provide my own background pattern – a nice marble, or something lightly textured, but against which text would still be legible. I think I spotted a way to do that last night, but I was in a hurry, and just made a mental note to go back and investigate it – which of course I forgot to do today, didn’t I, and I can’t go and check now, because I’ll lose what I’ve written so far (I get a polite message saying “Are you sure you want to leave the page you’re on? If you do, all work will be lost..” – or words to that effect, anyway) so I shall finish first, look second, and maybe have a surprise for you tomorrow night (or… maybe not – depending! 😉 )

Weigh-in this morning. Terrible! Shocking! Horrible! Sob-worthy! 😦 For the third day in a row… I stayed the same. 93.8kg Yes, I know that at least it didn’t go up, but it might as well have! I’ve only got stuck at the same weight for three days once before, on January 16th! And on the fourth day, I went down four points (which was totally amazing, however I have no illusions whatsoever that I’ll manage to pull the same stunt off again this time!!)

                       ….Stair Walk Break….Dinner Break….Television Break….

I’m back! 🙂 Yes, the Great Weight Disappointment this morning. I’m not looking forward to getting on the scales tomorrow morning, I can tell you! Anyway, I’ve started doing four flights of stairs now – four down to the ground floor, and four back up again to the fifth floor. I don’t know what the deal is with the Parking level, which is below the ground floor, because it looks like there’s only about four steps down, as far as I can see – maybe there’s more around the corner? I might have a look tomorrow morning… And if this extra floor up and down isn’t enough? I’ll walk up the stairs to the sixth, and last floor, turn around, and walk down to the ground floor, and then back up to the fifth! Whatever it takes!

We watched the last episode of Game of Thrones, season 4 tonight… it was very sad – The Hound was involved in a vicious sword fight with Brienne of Tarth, and left terribly injured – probably dying. Arya certainly thinks he is – she steals his remaining money and goes off and leaves him, even though he begged her to put him out of his misery. However I read recently that apparently there’s some speculation as to whether The Hound actually does die  – perhaps he’ll survive? I hope he survives – I like him – unfortunately though, I don’t think he will… But you know, even in the book it’s never made quite clear if he really does die.  It’d be a real plot twist if he’s found by a sympathetic peasant and nursed back to health, to reappear in both the books and the series at a later date! 🙂 In the book, someone (I can’t remember who – I read the book quite some time ago now) says that they found his famous Hound’s head helmet and an unidentifiable decomposing body, so of course everyone assumes he’s dead. Usually, the HBO show has stuck pretty closely to the books, but this last episode – especially the part about Arya and The Hound – was completely different from the book! Talk about “artistic licence”! *shakes head* I wish season 5 was over so that the DVD set would be released! Goodness knows what we’ll watch tomorrow night – I’d like to start watching “Elementary” (Sherlock Holmes set in America, with a female Dr. Watson! Can you believe it?! 🙂 ) – my favourite eldest daughter says it’s an excellent series, and we have the first two seasons that she lent us… anyway, I’ll let you know… 🙂 Hmmm… now… any other news? Oh, I’ve decided that my nails are long enough to start painting again now, so I’ll probably do that on Wednesday. I’ll try and work on a new header that I can match the blog background to – or maybe, if I was right, a “personalised” background as well, either later tonight, or tomorrow morning, before my favourite eldest daughter arrives. I hear (very proudly!) that she’s lost 3 kilos already on her own Optifast diet! 🙂 Julian follows her on Facebook and passed the good news along to me 🙂  And now once again, it’s time for me to bid you all to bee good, remember what your mother always told you, and above all… stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

As you can see, the blog has undergone a very slight colour change 😉 Whilst I did like the yellow – so different from anything else I’ve ever used, (a) it could only display “smilies” as two dots and a curved bracket (only up the right way, not on its side), and (b) it was a trifle harsh on the eyes 😉 I had the devil of a job with this new header though – I didn’t want it to be exactly the same as the body of the blog, but I didn’t want a clear demarcation line between the two, either. I thought of using a gradient, and that worked well… except for one teeny thing. As usual, the header size, as given by Word Press, is again totally incorrect. The width is fine… the height is wrong! I have no idea how high (deep?) the header actually is – normally, I’m really good at judging distances – I can judge images to within one pixel – so why couldn’t I with this? Because what you and I see on the screen here in the blog is not the same size as the header images I make. For whatever reason, Word Press alters the aspect of the image – you can see it if you look closely at the text edges on the header – there’s an ever so slight blurring effect; it’s no longer crisp and knife-edge sharp, as it is in the original image. This tells me that the aspect ratio has been changed – made smaller, actually. Yes, I could fiddle around all day for a couple of days, and still not get the header size right – it’s a bit like sawing a random bit of a table leg off, to try to get it to stop wobbling – in the end you end up with a useless table, that still wobbles! Well, the gradient idea was a good one – it just didn’t work properly. In the end, I used a gradient that went from darker colour on the top, to transparent on the bottom, allowing the blog background colour to show through. Well, it seems to work from my side of the screen, anyway – but as Julian and I have found, time and time again, sometimes different browsers display the exact same colour, differently. Go figure! 🙂 However – I hope it meets with everyone’s approval 🙂

Another good day in Dusken was had by all – even though I died three times! Julian didn’t die at all – he took a leaf out of my “Cowards Book of Excuses”, and ran away a lot I was the bunny left holding the bag… What happened was that we foolishly allowed ourselves to be talked into doing a Rift quest*, by a cowardly little quest giver in Tempest Bay (why these lazy little quest givers can’t go off and do their own dirty work, is what I want to know!) We had to buy (with out own gold!) a special Rift “lure” – this means that when you find a Rift forming, you can poke this lure into it and turn the Rift into the sort of Rift you want or need it to be. In this case, a “Hunt” Rift. I had the bright idea of opening it up in Freemarch, a “baby” area, so that the Rift would be low-level and easy to close. Unfortunately, it had to be in either Dusken or Brevane. We went back to the Dusken “training” area, found a “tear”, and opened our Rift. The first part wasn’t so hard – we had to establish a “conduit” or something – that was the easy part. Then we had to defend it for an unspecified length of time. Wave after wave of nasty mobs were rushing towards us and the conduit. I raced in and got as close to the conduit as possible – I have two AOE spells which are very effective at dealing with hostile mobs (AOE stands for Area Of Effect, and they affect an entire area, not just a single target, with devastating results) So I’m standing in close, more or less spamming these two spells, himself is standing outside the area, blasting away at individuals. This worked really well until one very nasty individual also decided to stand outside my sphere of devastation, and zap me! It didn’t take him long to wipe me out. But I got better! 🙂 I came back and continued my defense of this stupid conduit. By this time, the Big Bad Boss that we had to kill had arrived, and we had him almost dead! Almost! He was “slivered”! But then I died again, didn’t I! Exactly the same was as I met my doom the first time, too! (you’d have thought that someone would have noticed the pickle I was in and zapped the zapper, wouldn’t you! 😉 ) The thing is, when you die, the surviving mob you were fighting returns to full health.  Not a good look. That Boss was so very nearly dead! (*shakes head in dejection*) We were beginning to think that we wouldn’t be able to get this Boss down with only the two of us… But we tried again. And once again, we got him slivered. Once again that wretched, evil, no-good mob zapping me stood there, outside my circle, and zapped me. It was a race to see who’d die first – me, or the Big Bad Boss! I’m happy to say that I didn’t die that time, the Big Bad Boss did! The rest of our adventures in Dusken were pretty routine, after that – we mowed ’em all down, no problemo – and we went up. not one, but two levels! 🙂 Mainly because I insisted on doing every possible Carnage quest available. They don’t take long, really, and it’s certainly worth the extra experience points you get from them. When we finished up for the day, I went straight off and did my evening Stair Walk so that I could concentrate on this…

Weigh-in this morning. Was not good! I didn’t go up, but I almost wish I had… I stayed the [heavily censored] same! 😦 I am not a happy little vegemite today! I hope I do better tomorrow – the day of the dreaded fluid retaining pill is creeping steadily closer…

And so that was our day that was – I thought that my favourite eldest daughter would be coming over tomorrow, but she’s not – she’s coming on Tuesday – so I think I’ll wash my hair and start work on Asima tomorrow – see how far up the ladder to level 40 I can get her (she has a Trove of experience boosting pots, too! 😉 ) I came across (yet another) name that I liked for a Rift character today, too – I’ve already created a character – just to see if I could get the name (which I did) “Hepzabeth” – a combination of Hepzibah, and Elizabeth – I think it’s nice – and it sounds unusual 🙂 I don’t know what I’ll do with this new girl yet – probably nothing, but at least I’ve put a “place holder” on the name 🙂 And that’s about all from me for tonight – see? I told you last night that there’d be heaps for you again tonight, and I was right, wasn’t I?! 😉 And I can promise you that there’ll be lots of goodies for you here tomorrow night, too – so call back and see if my weight has started behaving or not, and if I’ve really started working with Asima, or if once again I’ve abandoned her for yet another Defiant character – maybe one of the boys, this time… who knows? (I just can’t seem to get a handle on Asima – even if she is me – maybe I should “re-roll her…) Anyway, you’ll find out tomorrow night 🙂 Now all that’s left for me to do is to tell you all to bee good, don’t let the bed bugs bite, and above all… stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

*Regarding Rift Quests: *makes note to self: remember to decline any and all quests that even hint of Rifts, or Dungeon!*

Happy ANZAC Day, everyone! 🙂 I’m not sure that that’s an appropriate expression to use or not – in fact, I’m pretty sure it’s not – but it’s a holiday we’re not supposed to forget, so would “Happy Don’t Forget It Day” be more appropriate? Again, the answer has to be “No!” And what exactly is it that we’re supposed to remember? The fact that thousands of our young men and women went off to fight and die in Europe and the Middle East? Not for “us“, as we’re constantly being told, but for good old Mother England, and because each of the Crowned Heads of Europe decided that they were right, and everyone else was wrong! If you don’t believe me, the first paragraph here puts it in a nutshell. And so, peoples, remember our Australian fallen, and what they sacrificed for Mother England – but remember, too, the fallen from all the other countries participating in the nightmare that was Europe and the Middle East between 1914 and 1918 – they also fought and died in that ghastly and largely unnecessary war… because they were asked, or told to. I’m asking you all to remember all those who went… all those who remained behind… all those who returned, and all those who did not return. And those who returned, broken. Sometimes war is a necessary evil – that one wasn’t.

And now for a little light relief 🙂 As seen on Bored Panda today:

30+ Crazy Photographers Who Will Do ANYTHING For The Perfect Shot

The mind fairly boggles!

and

Rainbow Pastel Hair Is A New Trend Among Women

Oh, how I wish that I was [mumble] years younger! And how I wish that I’d never cut my hair! I would give both my right arm, and my left arm, to be able to wear my hair like that! Old Age just isn’t fair! *sob*

Anyway, moving right along – we had a fairly quiet-ish morning – I Rifted quite intensely, until I finally – and without the benefit of any experience enhancing potions (which I can’t afford the Credits for at the moment) managed to get Chryzanthemum  to level 40! I feel as though it’s taken me an absolute age to get her there, and I have to keep reminding myself that I wasn’t taking her to level 40 from level 30, I was taking her from level 20 (I usually go up in increments of 10, you see, only this time, I got greedy! 😉 ) So it’ll probably be back to Asima on Tuesday – tomorrow, of course, is our “Team Telara”, or should I say “Team Dusken” day, when Julian and I run around like hairy goats smiting anything with a Red (i.e. hostile) name plate (and sometimes anything with a Yellow (i.e. neutral) name plate, too!) A lot of the so-called “Carnage” quest mobs have the neutral “Yellow” name tags over their heads – they won’t attack you on sight, like the mobs with the hostile “Red” name tags will. And they’re called “Carnage” quests because if you kill one of them (for whatever reason), you’re then supposed to go and kill a specific number of them – for which you’re given a nice lot of experience points, and, next to questing, it’s the quickest way to earn experience points and go up levels. So we’ll be belting around Dusken for most of tomorrow – we did have an hour’s bash this afternoon, too – but you really can’t accomplish much in an hour 😉 We left both our girls with “to be continued” nameplates around their necks 😉

I picked up a new Windowblind this morning. What’s a Windowblind? A Windowblind is a pretty “skin” which makes your ordinary and totally boring old Windows screen look nicer. Julian hates them – he says that they break all the programs and stuff – I disagree, and besides, I’d rather have a pretty looking screen that I can make equally pretty wallpapers for, and if anything breaks, I just go “Joooolian! This program won’t work any more! *pout*” and he fixes it! Sometimes… Of course, sometimes the breakage is caused by Windowblinds, in which case it’s usually just a matter of choosing a different Windowblind that’s known not to have that effect on whatever program it was. If you’re interested in having a look at Windowblinds, you can find out about them here…. and if you want to know how they’ll make your screen look, click on the thumbnails here to see a preview 🙂  If you’re interested in getting a different look for your boring old Windows screen, you’re going to have to get and install the WindowBlinds utility, which I think comes with several free skins that you can play with – and you can always download more skins from WinCustomize – nearly all of them are free – a few, every now and then, are not (free) and will cost you about $5AUD

Sorry, I got side-tracked! As I was saying, I downloaded a new Windowblind this morning – but it’s blue – a slightly lighter shade than a “Junior Navy” blue – it’s a beautiful blue, actually – one of my favourite shades of blue – and it looks really nice, and works well too… but… it didn’t quite go with the cyan-ish/green-ish marbling of my new Desktop Bookmarks wallpaper. Hmmm. It just looked wrong… so I did this. What do you think? Better? 🙂 You can see the lovely blue of the Windowblind on the Task Bar – I think it’s one of the nicer blues they’ve had in Windowblinds for a while – they’re usually too Cyan-ish, and/or too “harsh”. Anyway, I like it, and that’s the main thing! 🙂 It’s still a little greenish on the top, but that’s not the skin – that’s the Chrome (my browser) theme, which I’ll change later this evening.

Weigh-in this morning. All I can say is: *sigh*! Why!? Why me?! It stayed the same… 93.8kg… again! It’s not fair! It’s a conspiracy! It’s all an evil plot to keep me fat! Sometimes I think I’d rather go up, than stay the same! “Up” implies that you’re going to come down! Staying the same implies that you’ve come to an end. That’s it. You’re not going any further, you’re going to stay there for ever and ever! (or go up!) I am not pleased!

So, here it is again – almost evening “Walkies” time… I ran into some of our neighbours when I was coming back from my lunch time Stair Walk – almost literally! 🙂 I was barreling around the corner of the lift well, just as the lift doors opened and they stepped out! Almost right into the path of an incoming Winter barrel! 🙂 *sigh* So what could I do? I had to stand there and make dutiful and charming small talk – my back was killing me (I’m not too bad if I keep moving, but standing still for more than about two minutes is excruciatingly painful!) in the end I was (unobtrusively) leaning my back against the wall and wishing that I could go and sit down, when I was saved by the opening of a door! 🙂 Our door! Julian was wondering what was taking me so long – had I fallen down the stairs, or something? So we said our goodbyes, we came back inside and I had a nice cup of tea to celebrate with! 😉 Next week I think I’m going to have to stretch my Stair Walk from three floors, to four floors – I’m just not having to work hard enough only doing the three floors… I get more puffed coming back from the fire escape than I do climbing up and down the stairs! I also noticed that I can now get my thumb, and two of my other fingers (one at a time!) to completely encircle my wrist! Many years ago now, there was a time when I could get my thumb and all of my other fingers (one at a time!) to completely encircle my wrist! 🙂 I’m gettin’ there! 🙂 And there you have it – once again, there’s not much more news that I can fill you all in on this evening – but rest assured, there’ll be lots more to astound, astonish, and amaze you with tomorrow night! Don’t miss out! Drop by again this time tomorrow night to find out all the latest – how we went in Dusken, what my weight did, or didn’t do, and whether I managed to really knock down innocent neighbours exiting the lift! But until then, bee good, remember to always exit the lift carefully, and… above all…. stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂